Climate Killers: Book 3. Bernadette Callahan Detective Series

by Lyle Nicholson

The smoke cleared. Bernadette walked forward slowly, her weapon scanning the area around her as she came up to McAllen, “Did you see where Sokolov went?”

  Sebastian went behind the counter then down a hall searching for him. He shook his head when he returned. “He commandeered a UPS van and left the driver dead outside.”

  Bernadette looked around the hanger. “Let’s see if these guys left anyone else alive in this building.”

  The offices and waiting room were empty. Winston found a woman and four men tied up in the bathroom. They were very happy to be set free.

  “I’ve found two pilots and a lady flight attendant. They were supposed to fly Sokolov out of here,” Winston said.

  “Did they have a flight plan?” McAllen asked.

  “San Francisco.” Winston replied.

  McAllen walked up to the pilots. The older one, a man with salt and pepper hair, bushy eyebrows and face with crevasses that looked like it had seen too much sun identified himself as the captain. “You hear anything about where these guys were headed after they landed in San Fran?” he asked.

  The captain shook his head. “They were pretty tight lipped. The head guy, he said his name was Smith.” He raised his eyes at the irony. “He said we were to wait for someone to arrive and then fly out of here.”

  “Why’d they tie you up?” Winston asked.

  “We told this Smith guy, that we needed to fly the plane out of here due to the approaching hurricane. We didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  “And, I assume Smith didn’t like that?”

  “Ah, yeah,” the captain said massaging his wrist where he had been tied. “When I told him his flight was cancelled and we were leaving, he pulled guns on us and pushed us into the men’s room. When we got there, we found the hanger staff there as well. They’d tried to close the hanger down and leave. He didn’t like that either.”

  “What size of plane do you have?” McAllen asked.

  “A Challenger 300,” the pilot said. “But, look, thanks for setting us free, we’re happy to give you guys a lift somewhere, but it’s got to be out of the path of the hurricane.”

  “How’s Bermuda?” McAllen asked. “And consider your plane chartered, I’ll have money deposited to your company.”

  Bernadette was standing beside McAllen. “Why Bermuda?”

  “Simple, his wife Samantha is there. She might know where he went,” McAllen replied.

  “It’s not an underwater lab again is it?” Winston asked.

  “Nope, it’s above water.”

  “Above water? What the hell does that mean?”

  McAllen walked off in search of Becky, waving his hand as he left. “You’ll be fine.”

  Winston looked at Bernadette. “I hate it when he says that. It means the shit is going to hit the fan again, doesn’t it?

  “I’d say so,” Bernadette admitted. She looked over the situation of three dead men, one dead UPS driver outside and two helicopter pilots that were in need of an explanation, as well as the Executive First Flight Center staff. If they were going to get out of here, without a visit from the Miami Police she needed to do something. It was time to make some tea.

  “You want to help me make some tea?” Bernadette asked Winston.

  “Tea, who the hell drinks tea after a gun fight?”

  “I find it great to calm the nerves,” Bernadette said. She found the executive lounge, pulled out some teacups, poured in hot water and dunked in a tea bag from her pocket.

  “Now, I want you to be very careful with this tea. Give it to the helicopter pilots and the hanger staff only, okay,” Bernadette said.

  “Why, what’s in it?” Winston asked.

  “It’s an old native remedy from my grandmother back home. She used it to calm everyone down. It’s also going to put them to sleep for about four hours. We’ll be long gone by the time they wake up. I’ll call my people in Canada and have them file some kind of a report of us fighting some terrorists.”

  “Really, you think someone’s going to believe that?”

  “They’ll have to. I’ll file the report, and I’m sure our dead guys have a rap sheet that extends all the way back to Russia or some place that looks equally as bad.”

  Winston shrugged and walked away with a serving tray full of tea. She distributed it to the helicopter pilots and the hanger staff who gratefully sipped it and were asleep in minutes.

  Winston came back and dropped the serving tray on the counter beside Bernadette. “That’s quite tasty.”

  “What’s tasty?”

  “I spilled some of the tea in the saucer. I sampled it,” Winston said. “A real nice sweet yet pungent taste.”

  Bernadette took Winston’s arm. “You’ll need to sit down.”

  “Why… I don’t… feel…” Winston said as her knees buckled.

  Bernadette carried Winston over to a couch and laid her down.

  “Winston opened her eyes slowly. “That’s really potent stuff. Why do you carry it… was it for me?”

  “How’d you guess?” Bernadette said. “I’d planned to drug you in case you wanted to interfere with my plans to capture McAllen.”

  “… Oh… I see… I’d planned to kill you… and him… interesting…” Winston said as she nodded off to sleep and started to snore.

  Bernadette shook her head. She turned to see McAllen standing beside her.

  “Interesting conversation I just overheard,” he said

  “Hmm, yeah, well about that—”

  “No, I get it,” McAllen said. “You can’t get over the fact you’re an officer of the law, and still need to exercise an outstanding warrant on me—isn’t that it?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Bernadette said, massaging the back of her neck, “You know, I’m just like that scorpion in the old tale about the river crossing with the frog.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Well, the story goes that a scorpion wanted to cross a river, and he asked a frog to take him across. The frog said, no way, you’d sting me. The scorpion convinced the frog he won’t and he climbed on his back and half way across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog yelled to the scorpion, now we’re both going to drown, and of course the scorpion says, sorry, couldn’t help myself… I’m a scorpion.”

  “So, do I call you Detective or Scorpion?” McAllen asked with a chuckle.

  “Detective will do. I think I’ll be putting my stinger away for the duration of our journey.”

  “Speaking of that. What do we do with our FBI lady? We could leave her here,” McAllen said looking over at Winston on the couch.

  “I think we should keep her with us,” Bernadette said. “If someone in the FBI is trying to kill us, then she’s also on the menu. Perhaps with her we can draw them out once we have some more answers as to who is behind this crazy scheme to heat up the Earth. At least now we’ve confirmed that Sokolov is connected to someone in the FBI who wants us dead.”

  McAllen shrugged. “Well, in the spirit of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer—what the hell. There’s lots of room on the plane.” He turned to the airplane captain. “What’s the ETA to Bermuda?”

  “Two hours and fifty minutes after wheels up,” the captain said.

  “Let’s get going,” McAllen said.

  He helped Bernadette pick up Winston and they carried her to the hanger with the private jet. They also had to carry the drugged body of the flight attendant on board as Winston had given her tea by mistake. The pilots did a system check, and were rolling down the runway a short while later.

  Bernadette pulled out her cell phone as they lifted off the runway and headed for Bermuda. She went through all of her text messages. There’d been nothing further from Chris. Somewhere, in some time in this day or the next, they needed to have a conversation. It was the conversation they should have had a month ago, actually six months ago, before everything had fallen apart.

  She gazed out the window and saw the big fluffy clouds that
were forming in the south. This was the hurricane that was bearing down on Miami. They were being pushed by the elements and threatened by humans. It was hard to know which was worse at this point. There was an answer out there. She looked down at the deep green of the Atlantic. She realized there were some questions she needed to ask McAllen.There was a lot he wasn’t telling her.

  15

  Sigurdsson looked over his shoulder twice before he entered the street. He felt he was being followed. He called himself a halfviti in his native Icelandic language, it meant idiot. He walked down the street of Anchorage, Alaska.

  He looked all his seventy-one years, and with maybe a few more added on. A full head of grey hair was draped down over his neck and needed a cut several weeks ago. His eyebrows were bushy and sat over eyes that were once a bright blue and now faded grey. His tall frame was slightly hunched over, not from arthritis but from fatigue. He shuffled when he walked. His feet hurt.

  He’d been here for two days now. The journey had been perilous. First, he’d stowed away on the supply boat. His fellow Icelanders and some Norwegians on the submarine had come to his aid and smuggled him off.

  They knew there was something wrong with the drilling job. Sigurdsson wished he’d known when Volkov approached him all those months ago. The Russian knew how to apply enough praise and money to get him to come on board.

  What had Volkov said? Something about Sigurdsson’s talent being wasted, how the private sector would take his ideas and show the world how amazing he was. Sigurdsson scoffed at that thought now. They’d shown him what an amazing idiot he was. It sounded better in the language of Iceland. Halfvitii, the word resounded longer on the tongue.

  His problem now was whom could he tell? Who would believe a washed-up professor from Iceland roaming the streets with hardly enough money in his pockets to get another few nights in a flophouse. Soon he’d be living on the streets.

  To get here, he’d hitched rides out of San Francisco on trawlers, shrimp boats, anything going north. Now, he was at the end. The technology necessary for Volkov to succeed with his plan was in his head. He’d been careful to never make notes.

  Now, the only way to make sure he erased any possibility of the Earth heating up, he needed to erase himself, one step off the pier would do it. He’d dreamed up the plan last night. He’d pick up some big rocks by the river, put them in his pockets and jump off the pier. The fisherman would find him sometime the next day, but then maybe they wouldn’t. The crabs would. He shuddered at the thought.

  He tried to put these imagines out of his head. He needed a drink. Not just one, many. He needed to get very drunk. He had that need deep inside of him and knew where to go. Maybe this would be his last night, then the rocks, and then the pier. A plan was formulating in his head. It was the best plan he’d had in some time. He shuffled down the street, looking once more over his shoulder. “Halfviti,” he muttered to himself.

  16

  Bernadette found some food in the plane’s galley. An elegant linguine with shrimp in an unpronounceable sauce, that went well with a chilled Chablis and some warm rolls. She threaded her way by the sleeping Winston and flight attendant and served up portions of the meals to McAllen, Sebastian and Becky.

  “Don’t get used to me serving you,” Bernadette said. “I’m terrible at anything but tear back foil and heat—this is as good as it gets.”

  Becky looked up and smiled. “My stomach hasn’t seen food since this morning, and this is wonderful. And, hey, I’m happy to scavenge in the galley for seconds.”

  Bernadette thought Becky looked like she was coming around, to almost normal for a human under stress. They’d pulled her out of an underwater lab, she’d seen her friends killed, been almost attacked by sharks and seen several men killed in Miami. The girl was resilient. They’d found some shorts and t-shirt for her to wear, and she looked like a regular young lady travelling in a very swanky private jet.

  Bernadette sat down with McAllen out of hearing of Sebastian and Becky; “You want to fill me in on how you’re related to Becky?”

  McAllen wiped some sauce off his lips with his napkin. “I’m sort of an uncle, through my long friendship with Sigurdsson. We spent a lot of time together in our early years in university. We even had jobs together working on fishing boats out of Seattle to pay our tuition.”

  “And, you kept in touch with him all these years?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been around the Sigurdsson family on and off for years. I kept in touch with Barney when I went to Vietnam, he of course didn’t have to serve, as he was an Icelandic national. We reconnected when I went to Canada.”

  “When did you two hatch your plan to save the world?” Bernadette asked. She took a sip of her wine. “Sorry, I don’t want to sound so trite… When did you decide to do something about climate change and turning down the temperature?”

  McAllen winked at Bernadette. “No, you were right the first time. Barney and I did want to save the world. He had come up with a way to cool off the oceans currents. It would have dropped the Earth’s oceans by three to four degrees.’

  “Wouldn’t that be too much?” Bernadette asked. “I mean, don’t we need some heat in the ocean? Wouldn’t that have created another ice age going that cold?”

  “Not a chance of that happening,” McAllen said. “That hurricane we just escaped from is one of several barreling down on the East Coast of the USA. They’ve been building like a chain. They gain their force from the ocean’s heat. Hurricane season has now moved to May and ends in late December.”

  “And Sigurdsson could stop that?”

  “Partially. He was also going to find a way to lower the water temperature to take some of the carbon monoxide out of the ocean. That underwater lab we saw in Key West, that was to see how fast the reefs are dying. Ocean temperature and carbon monoxide are bleaching the reefs, the coral is dying and the fish are losing their habitat. None of that is good for the oceans—unhealthy ocean, unhealthy planet.”

  “How far did your plan progress?”

  “We were just getting started, but we needed a lot of money, more than I had, or that I could even steal,” McAllen said with a grin, knowing it would get a rise out of Bernadette.

  “Was Sigurdsson trying to get government funding when he was in Stockholm?” Bernadette asked. She chose to ignore McAllen’s remark about stealing money.

  “Yes, that was it. There were governments there with big bucks. Most of them had coastlines that were starting to go underwater from the rising sea, and many of them like Canada and the USA were losing massive hectares of land due to forest fires. He had their attention,” McAllen said.

  “So, what went wrong?”

  “Barney texted me that someone else was coming to the table. He was all excited. These people claimed they could get things done right away. They had the money. All he needed to do was to show them the plan, and they’d be cooling the Earth in no time,” McAllen explained.

  “Then you lost contact with him?”

  “That’s right. All of a sudden he disappeared.” McAllen shrugged, tipped back his glass and drained his wine.

  Winston woke up from the couch. She sat up, shook her head and looked at Bernadette. “How long was I out?”

  “About two hours. I should have warned you about even tasting the tea. It’s very potent.”

  “Where are we heading?”

  “Bermuda.”

  “Really? I thought that was just a joke. Where are we headed for there… no don’t tell me… you’re probably going to say the Bermuda Triangle or something crazy like that,” Winston said.

  McAllen poured himself another glass of wine. “Ah, pretty close. The Bermuda Triangle, which the US Government claims does not exist, by the way, is a triangle from Miami to Bermuda and back to Puerto Rico.” He sipped his wine and smiled. “We’ll be going somewhere into that triangle to find Becky’s grandmother, Samantha Sigurdsson.”

  “And, why exactly are we trying to find her?” Winston aske
d as she opened a bottle of water.

  “Because, Becky said Sigurdsson was going there some months ago,” McAllen said.

  “You think he’s there?”

  “Oh, hell, no, I think he’s been gone for some time. But Sam always knew what Barney was up to. She could almost read his mind. I need to find out where he might be heading. And, I also want to find out from Sam how The Ocean Conveyer is doing?” McAllen said.

  “The Ocean what?” Winston asked.

  “The Ocean Conveyor. Oceanographers see it as a series of currents and heat transfers that moves warm and cool water from one place to another on the planet. Without it, Norway would be a sheet of ice, and Alaska would be even colder in the winter than it is now,” McAllen said.

  “Sounds like some pretty scientific stuff,” Winston said.

  “Nope, not that hard to understand really. If you watch the currents rise and fall in a stream you see how things move from one place to another. That’s the same for the ocean. It’s just that it moves hot and cold water from the depths up to the surface and transports it around the world.” McAllen looked at his watch. “We should be landing soon, we’ve got to do something about getting Becky off this plane.”

  “What do you mean?” Bernadette asked.

  “I don’t think she had a passport stuffed in her wet suit when we got her out of that lab in Key West. She’ll need one to clear customs in Bermuda.”

  Bernadette looked at Becky, then at the sleeping flight attendant. “I have an idea.”

  17

  Volkov woke up in bed. He was naked. The sun was shining outside the window. He thought it must be morning but what time? He tried to raise his arm to see his watch but his arm was tied. So was his other one.

  Raising his head he saw that both his feet were tied and a bright red ribbon was affixed to his penis. He screamed in anger. “That bitch!”

  He yanked his right arm hard and the bindings came loose. The one on the left came away just as easily. He was about to remove his leg binding when the housekeeper came in. She screamed and ran out of the room with a mumbled stream of apologies following behind her.