by Don Hoesel
His intel said the man worked for Van Camp Enterprises, which meant he would spend the bulk of his time in Atlanta. As logic would dictate, he owned a home in a high-end section of the city. That was another thing that amused the Ethiopian: a man who could wield such influence and produce such devastation in a country not his own could allow himself to be wholly unprotected in his country of residence. Dabir knew the American counted on anonymity to protect him, but he himself was proof that luck could send the entire arrangement crumbling. With a well-timed tail to an African airport, he had uncovered Canfield’s secret.
Now Dabir had to decide which course to pursue—whether to expend resources studying Alan Canfield or the company for which he worked. At first blush, Van Camp Enterprises was a monster corporation. CEO of one of the largest media enterprises in the world, Arthur Van Camp also had a hand in an impressive number of unrelated concerns. And yet Dabir had never heard of the man.
As much as he wanted Canfield, Dabir decided that much of what he needed to know began and ended with Arthur Van Camp. He pondered this as he finished his first American-made burger, and he hoped, indeed prayed, that whatever he wound up accomplishing in this country would not disappoint him nearly as much as this simple meal.
December 11, 2012, 9:15 P.M.
The Southern Ocean beat mercilessly against the Shackleton Ice Shelf, its massive waves coming with foam-tipped crests, striking the monstrous frozen platform that stretched for more than two hundred miles before turning southeast and degenerating into an arc of malformed ice with fissures ripped by the elements, hemming a bay filled with icebergs once married to the shelf. The ice shelf was in the death throes of a geologic formation not long for this world, if only in the stress fractures spider-webbing their way through its surface and the bergs newly calved to the sea.
Farther inland, where the glacier that formed the ice shelf narrowed, the effects of whatever natural forces had decreed its demise were most evident, strangling the shelf, shattering its brittle bones. The estimates were that the shelf would retain its shape—its place—for roughly thirty years. A wink in the period by which the growth of mountains was measured, but an eternity in the life of the average researcher.
And it was those three decades Canfield counted on. Without them, the time and expense exhausted by this project were wasted, and while Mr. Van Camp had money to spare, a project like this one was pricey enough to warrant extreme care.
Canfield stood on the flat ice, gazing straight ahead, the dim light rendering everything beyond him as shadows, including the ice that stretched for miles in three directions. The Shackleton Shelf covered more than twenty-three thousand kilometers, which meant that, even if it were a perfectly clear day, he wouldn’t have been able to see the ocean from where he stood.
Looking to his right, though, he could hear the expanse of seawater assaulting the shelf. Twenty yards away, an Ashok Leyland truck with a mounted DTH drilling rig bored a hole in the ice, forcing the bit down a quarter mile; the operation was illuminated by fluorescent kits that gave off no heat. What they were about to do required depth, which was why Van Camp had spent the money to have the hydraulic motor modified to push the bit through the deep, compressed ice. Other parts of the unit had also been adapted to the job, as well as to the environment in which it performed, such as the white surface that camouflaged the truck’s presence on the ice, including its tires. Even a refrigerant system had been set up to expel heat-stripped air around the cabin, masking the warmth inside. All to avoid detection from those satellites Van Camp’s money and influence were unable to reroute.
From Canfield’s spot on a slight rise, he could make out the locations of eight more units. The units were arranged in a straight line and spaced twenty-five yards apart. For the last four months they’d been working their way across the shelf’s surface—drilling, lowering charges, and filling the holes again, all the while progressing northward. Of all the projects on the Van Camp docket, Canfield thought this one the riskiest. It was also his idea, which prior to his recent change in goals made him more than concerned for its success.
In a perfect world, Canfield would have been there every moment, and that may have shaved two weeks off the project time. But with his other responsibilities sending him around the globe, he’d been forced to leave the supervision of the shelf to others. And it wasn’t until this last week—when they were nearing completion of an endeavor that would qualify as perhaps the most ambitious project ever attempted on earth—that he’d felt nervous.
The wind had picked up over the last hour and he could hardly hear it when his foreman, a journeyman and pipeline supervisor named Ricker, said something to him over the radio. Canfield brought the radio closer to his ear and asked the man to repeat himself.
“We’re finishing up the last one, Mr. Standish,” the man said. In the background Canfield could hear the roar of the rig, the scream of the bit ripping through thousands of years’ worth of ice.
“Excellent,” he shouted into the radio. He waved a gloved hand across the distance before realizing Ricker probably couldn’t see the gesture. But the other man, a white blur almost missed against the whiteness around him, raised his hand in response.
Canfield had selected Ricker for the simple reason that he was the best in the world at what he did, one of only a few who could take on a project of this magnitude. The problem was that as a former marine accustomed to thinking of everything in tactical terms, Ricker was bright enough to know that what they’d done there could have only been initiated for one of two reasons: scientific research or war. And the cost of the equipment—Ashoks with state-of-the-art drill rigs, crawlers with 800mm auger drillers, and the monstrous blast-hole drill—was far too expensive for all but the most well-financed of science expeditions. Not to mention the amount of explosives they’d buried beneath the ice, which were they lumped together in a single location and detonated, would leave a crater the size of Rhode Island. Canfield knew that Ricker understood all of this, which was why he had to consider the man yet one more loose end in a long string of them.
The foreman stood by one of the drill units, watching as the operator put the hydraulic cylinder in reverse and started to thread the line out of the fresh hole. Not far from Canfield, a white helicopter sat idle on the ice shelf. The chopper would carry him back to a research vessel working its way around Bouvet Island. He turned toward the helicopter and flashed a light, and immediately the pilot brought the bird to life.
Canfield lifted the radio to his lips. “Great work, Max. When the last charge is set, get everyone back to base camp. I’ll have the plane there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Does that give you enough time to finish breaking down?”
Even across this distance, he could see the man’s shoulders shake with laughter.
“I’d have the camp down in fifteen minutes if you had the plane here now,” Ricker said. “ ’Cause there’s a hot shower calling my name the second we get back to the boat.”
“I’ll make sure there’s a clean towel and a bar of soap waiting for you,” Canfield returned with a chuckle.
He watched for a few moments longer, until the drilling rig finished its egress from the new hole and a pair of men began removing the bit and attaching the cable and payload to be lowered to the bottom. Then he turned and headed toward the helicopter.
Once there he placed a call to the research vessel, to the team waiting to clean up the camp. Once the call was made, and he knew that he would pass the second chopper in the air, he offered the endless ice outside the window a tired smile, knowing that Van Camp would appreciate his heeding his last dressing down. He was using company resources for this one. And once the deed was done, no trace of the drilling operation—or its men—would remain.
—
For more than an hour after arriving at the hospital, Brent was unable to locate a single person who spoke English. He’d finally given up, allowing the nurses, and the doctor who looked at him for less than ten sec
onds, to poke and prod. Their treatment of him was a good deal more gentle than the prodding he’d received from the Afghan authorities. The professor didn’t necessarily blame them. When the police—with an ambulance close behind—arrived at the restaurant, they found a half-dozen dead men, a gravely wounded American woman carrying a gun, and a foreign man who could do little but babble and point. Thinking back on it, Brent was grateful they hadn’t shot him on sight.
Once they wheeled Maddy in for surgery, all he could think to do was call Colonel Richards. For despite his barely knowing the man, Brent found it a comfort to talk to someone who assured him that all was under control and that he, Richards, was in charge, even from thousands of miles away. Later, he felt a whole lot better when a lieutenant with the marines showed up. According to the soldier, American forces were surrounding the hospital just in case the enemy was planning a repeat attack, though everyone thought that to be unlikely.
Brent had explained the events leading up to the attack, doing his best to leave out anything he thought Richards might prefer to remain classified. But since the lieutenant and his men were operating on specific orders to protect the army captain and her civilian traveling companion, anything more than the basics wasn’t required.
Brent’s ears were still ringing from the shotgun, as well as the rounds fired in his direction, and somewhere along the way he’d twisted his ankle. Yet he couldn’t complain, given how Maddy looked when they wheeled her away. He tried his best not to think about it, because each time he did his stomach knotted up.
“How are you, sir?” the lieutenant asked as he extended a plastic cup of water to the professor. Brent noticed the name Templeton on his shirt.
“Just fine,” Brent said, accepting the cup with a grateful nod. He hadn’t realized he was so thirsty.
He suspected he should say more to the man who’d choppered in from Kabul on his behalf, but nothing came to him and his eyes remained on the door through which Maddy had disappeared.
“Dr. Michaels, I’ve spoken with the local police and explained what I could, and while they’re not happy about it, it looks as though they’re deferring to us for the time being.”
“That’s good to hear,” Brent said.
The lieutenant followed Brent’s gaze to the gray windowless doors. “I’m sure she’ll be alright, sir,” Templeton said. “I hear Captain Madigan is pretty tough.”
Brent couldn’t help but smile, because in his assessment, Amy Madigan was indeed tough. Still, the lieutenant didn’t see how much blood she’d left in the restaurant. “Thanks,” he said.
The lieutenant nodded and walked away, leaving Brent to his own thoughts.
—
“I want that blast report yesterday!” Richards snapped.
The large briefing room was now a war room, teeming with officers. What had begun as a quiet investigation by his team was now a multi-branch operation between the army, air force, and Homeland Security. Although grief-stricken about the recent tragic events, Richards glanced around the room and was filled with pride, admiring the level of professionalism on the faces of his team. Even Snyder, who had spent more time with Petros than anyone else in the unit, maintained a look of resolve as he pored over the first of the reports taken from the blast site. Richards knew they would have time to grieve later; if they began now, they wouldn’t do right by Petros—or Madigan.
“We picked up traces of PTEN,” Snyder said. “The blast radius indicates whoever did this used a lot of it.”
“If they used PTEN, we’re talking about someone organized,” commented one of the Homeland Security techs, a smart-looking woman in her twenties who sat nearby working on a laptop. “And if they had enough PTEN to create an explosion that large, then they either had tons of money or a serious support system, or both.”
“Okay,” Richards said, “so we have a professional hit on an army officer in Washington, and a brute-force attack on another officer in Afghanistan. Who could strike both of them in less than twenty-four hours, and why?”
“If they’re even connected, Jameson,” said General Smithson. “Not only do you have to take into account the distance, the methods are different enough to give me pause about suspecting one person or group.”
Richards couldn’t blame the general for his skepticism. Were Richards not involved in investigating just such a far-flung series of unique events, he wouldn’t have bought it either. At some point he would need to pull the general aside and fill him in, but he harbored doubts about divulging that information to such a large and diverse group. Besides, he agreed with the Homeland Security tech’s assessment: any one person or group that could pull this off, and that could orchestrate everything the team had catalogued so far, was well positioned to infiltrate at least one of the groups assisting him now. Any man or woman in the room could be watching and listening for someone else. Richards scanned the room, aware of the paranoia, which only made it easier to indulge it. He looked back at General Smithson.
“You have to trust me on this one, Frank,” he said, and despite the differences in their ranks, Richards’s long tenure in this building allowed Smithson to take a measured look at the colonel’s face and then nod.
“Alright then,” said Smithson. “It looks like we have our work cut out for us.”
Richards saluted the general and returned to his work, barking out orders across the room.
December 12, 2012, 7:52 P.M.
For an hour Canfield had held his wife’s hand, almost like an experiment to see if heat would transfer between them, but her fingers remained cold to the touch, as if he were holding the hand of a statue. He ran a thumb along the taut skin around her knuckles as he talked quietly to her. The talking was something he performed out of duty, for he wasn’t certain whether he wanted her to awaken. Still, it was one of the duties he felt compelled to hold on to, having abandoned so many others over the course of just a few days.
He thought it incredible how such a short period of time could so alter a man’s life—how it could grant him a completely new perspective. He’d come to realize that he was indeed his own man. Up until he’d learned that Van Camp would likely seek his death once the ice shelf fell into the ocean, he could tell himself that it was the job, and the influence of a powerful man, that had turned him into someone who could kill with impunity. After all, he seldom left anything to chance. That was why the drill team couldn’t have been allowed to return to the States. The chances of even one of those men going his entire life without telling someone how he’d participated in separating an ice sheet from a continent were longer than he wanted to bet.
Now, with the artifice of company loyalty stripped away, leaving only self-interest as motivation, he knew the calculated brutality was his alone. He knew when he’d stood on the windswept Antarctic ice and ordered that the drill team be eliminated, the decision belonged to no one but himself. And he would know it too when he took Van Camp’s life.
And in speaking to his unresponsive wife, Canfield wondered if he was avoiding taking into consideration the new tactical error he had made. He’d made the mistake of allowing his newfound freedom—the headiness that came with commanding his own fate—to cause him to overstep. Worried about the investigation by the NIIU, he’d struck a devastating blow. However, would the deaths of some of their own cause this odd little military unit to back off, or would it breathe new life into the investigation? Had he let the team alone, would they have been able to put together enough of the pieces to make sense of the whole? At this point, he would probably never know.
—
Brent wasn’t sure how he’d managed it, but he convinced one of the soldiers on guard duty to go to his hotel and retrieve his laptop. The professor suspected the man chafed inwardly at running an errand for a civilian, but then it got him away from the hospital for a while, so it was a win for both of them. Brent felt mildly guilty that he didn’t want the laptop so much for his ongoing research as he did for entertainment. They got the Intern
et in Afghanistan too, and he could find any variety of shows to keep him entertained while he waited for Maddy to wake up.
The captain had come through surgery well. The bullet wound, while horrible looking, showed a strike between her shoulder and sternum, staying clear of the heart. In fact, had it not severed an artery, she could have had the round removed with as little hassle as getting a few stitches. As it was, the severed artery would have killed her had it taken another fifteen or twenty minutes to get to the hospital.
He’d been in to check on her and to show her that he was in good health, and then he let her rest, promising to pop in again in the morning. That left him in a hospital lounge, surfing for something interesting to read to pass the time.
At some point he wound up on CNN, where he perused both the U.S. and international news sections, which now that he’d worked with the NIIU for a while he couldn’t view except through a lens crafted by this consult. It left him seeing ghosts everywhere. After searching a number of news stories, he was about to click on Sports when the video articles did their programmed JavaScript shuffle and moved an interesting looking one to the top. Curious, Brent clicked on it and found one of those Mayan end-of-the-world stories that had so irritated Richards.
He supposed the consult was the reason he hadn’t given more thought to the Mayan 2012 phenomenon. He’d become so involved in this job that a once-in-a-lifetime event with significant sociological implications was passing by him untracked. Almost a year ago he’d considered soliciting a research grant to study the 2012 phenomenon through the prism of Y2K, which was the closest parallel to the forthcoming event. He could have put together a pretty important paper about how far-reaching apocalyptic prophecies influenced the global psyche. It might have been interesting to study the lessons learned from Y2K as they related to the current situation.
He edged the volume up a touch on his laptop. The reporter, a silver-haired man with a serious expression, was standing uncomfortably close to a crowd of people in full riot mode. The text at the bottom of the screen identified the place as Stuttgart. As Brent watched, a group was pelting a line of police with rocks, bottles, and anything else within reach. The police were taking the brunt of the assault using their clear riot shields, and Brent could see that they were close to advancing against the angry mob.