Climate Killers: Book 3. Bernadette Callahan Detective Series

by Lyle Nicholson

  “Oh—my—god, you did sound mixing for Marvin Gaye.” Winston clasped her hand over her mouth. She’d said it so loud other patrons looked at her.

  Sebastian swallowed his bread. He swirled his wine and sipped it, smacking his lips as if he’d tasted the best Chardonnay on the planet. “Yes, the last song I helped him with was Sexual Healing.”

  “Now, don’t be lying to me, Sebastian,” Winston said.

  Sebastian raised he hand. “No, as god is my witness, I did the sound for his song, Sexual Healing in 1982.”

  “But you’re a white man.”

  “Ah, yeah, but I got me an ear for soul. Marvin knew that about me. He knew what I’d done for The Eagles, well before they broke up, and of course Janis Joplin was incredible, until her overdose.”

  “I’ll be damned. I’m in the presence of the man who has been in the presence of Marvin Gaye. That must have been incredible,” Winston said.

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I had to help Marvin with his lyrics, and with his own healing… you know—”

  “Now, stop it, now you’re lying to me. Nobody had to teach Marvin anything.”

  “Well, I did. I helped him get to his true sexual side. You see I’ve had that way about me. I’m not only a Shaman in the truest form but also a sexual healer,” Sebastian said lowering his voice.

  Winston said nothing. She sipped her wine and stared into his eyes. Sebastian thought this afternoon was going remarkably well.

  When his Lear Jet landed at Bermuda Airport Sokolov couldn’t believe that the jet McAllen had stolen from him was still at the Charter Terminal. He ordered his pilot to park as far away from it as possible.

  He had picked up two Cuban exiles to accompany him, but he wasn’t happy with either of them. They were low life criminals who could use a gun. That was it. They had passports that claimed they were American and no active warrants on their present identities.

  What he was going to use these two idiots for was going to be a problem. He’d given them both submachine guns with orders to never shoot at anyone unless he ordered them to. He hoped they got that. They hadn’t looked too stoned when he picked them up, but they looked a little high now.

  The one who called himself Rozales, had pupils like pinholes, and the one called Fuentes now had a smirk on his face. He’d never seen them pop any pills on the plane, but they’d gone to the bathroom five times in flight.

  The problem was Bermuda. This place was uptight. In Miami he could get away with some gunfire and leaving a few dead bodies on the street. Here, they absolutely frowned on it.

  The island was tiny. There was no escape once they’d hit McAllen and his people. He’d have to tread carefully here. If he could find McAllen and his people in some seclude place, he’d kill them all, dump their bodies and get back on his plane and head back to San Francisco.

  His cell phone rang. It was Adam Morgan. “I hope you have something for me,” Sokolov said.

  “You wanted next of kin for Sigurdsson I have them. I’m sending a text of pictures of his granddaughter and one of his three wives,” Morgan said.

  “Three, what the hell? Is this guy an Arab Sheik?”

  “No, two of them he divorced, and from what I see, if you took either one hostage he’d tell you to shoot them.”

  “Sounds like a few of my ex-wives. Where is the third?”

  “Samantha Sigurdsson runs a research ship out of Hamilton Harbour in Bermuda.”

  “Bermuda?”

  “Why, are you close?”

  “I’m right fucking here.” Sokolov grinned into the phone.

  “Good, maybe you can also find his granddaughter, Becky, she was doing a reef study off Key West. The place your people attacked. Did you see her with McAllen?”

  Sokolov nodded. “Yes, I saw a young lady with them in the helicopter in Miami.”

  “Then, this is easy. Find them, get them to tell you where Sigurdsson is and he’ll come to us. And kill McAllen and his accomplices” Morgan told him.

  “Yes, easy,” Sokolov said ending his call. He did not like taking orders or advice from this sniveling FBI agent. He’d faced many American agents in battle. They were good, this Morgan was a pansy—he imagined breaking his neck when the new order was established. But he’d do it slowly; first he’d do something horrible to those manicured nails of his.

  His Cubans were outside, smoking cigarettes and whistling at any woman who walked by. He called them over and gave them directions to watch from behind a maintenance shed.

  “Here is a picture of this McAllen and the FBI Agent and this Canadian woman. You will text me the moment you see one of them arrive. You understand me?

  They nodded and smiled and with their machine guns tucked under their jackets then sauntered off towards the shed. Sokolov hoped they stayed awake. How he wished he’d had the Kazak he’d sent off to Key West with him.

  Winston and Sebastian finished their lunch at the bistro. The wine was good, the conversation stimulating and Winston hadn’t felt this good in years. She was a little high on the wine. Had Sebastian ordered a second bottle?

  They fell into a cab together. Sebastian sat close to her now. She felt his heat. He smelled good. Like a man, one with all hormones and hair and, damn, he made her feel sexy. They hummed the tune of Sexual Healing, he rested his hand on her leg and by the time they got back to the charter terminal she was ready to jump this little old guy. He’d somehow morphed in her vision into a man who would transport her to someplace she hadn’t been to in some time. Orgasm Ville.

  Her relations with her husband were strained. There’d been no sex in…so long she couldn’t remember. Here in the bright sun of Bermuda, wearing fine linens and silk, she was someone else. And that person needed to get laid.

  Sebastian subtly guided her to the Charter terminal, told reception they needed a room to freshen up in before their next flight and in a heartbeat they were in a private room with shower, bed and soft music.

  “Now,” Sebastian said as he kissed her slowly while removing her clothes, “I want you to know, that the doctor is here and the sexual healing session is about to begin.”

  Winston groaned softly as Sebastian moved down her body. She began to tremble as he disrobed her and walked her to the shower. The next hour was lost in her own private heaven… she was in Orgasm Ville many times.

  The Cubans Fuentes and Rozales had seen Sebastian and Winston enter the terminal. They’d spotted them the moment they got out of the taxi van. For the next half hour they discussed whether this was the una mujer negra, the black lady, they were looking for. The man didn’t match the picture of McAllen.

  She’d been arm in arm with a viejo hombre blanco, old white guy. Fuentes laughed and told Rozales the Viejo hombre probably had a pene pequeno, a little penis which had them laughing until they had tears in their eyes.

  It was when Sokolov called them to ask if they’d seen a black woman of small height perhaps with an older white man that they began to fear for their lives. The Russian was not to be messed with. They responded that yes, they’d entered the building just a few minutes ago and they were just about to report it.

  Sokolov walked into the Charter Terminal. There was no one there so he walked out to the tarmac. The Challenger jet was being refueled and the maintenance crew was working on the plane. A team of cleaners was entering.

  He walked back into the terminal and approached the front desk. “Excuse me, madam,” he asked the lady with a smile, “I’m looking for my friends, a black lady, about this tall with an older gentleman. Have you seen them?”

  “Ah, yes, they’ve taken one of the private rooms, to rest,” the lady said. Only one eyebrow went up in a slight sign that this was mildly interesting.

  He smiled. If Winston and McAllen were in the room together, he could kill them easily. But to do so he’d have to kill this lady as well. He did his calculations as he reached inside his jacket for his gun.

&n
bsp; The doors to the terminal opened and three policemen entered escorting a dignitary of some sort. Sokolov shoved his gun back inside its holster and slunk away to a chair to wait. He hated waiting.

  19

  McAllen woke with a damp cloth on his forehead. Bernadette was standing over him. “That woman has one hell of a right cross.” She said.

  He massaged his jaw and sat up. He was on a cot in a room below deck. “How did you get me here?”

  “Becky and I carried you down. I had to convince Sam, that she couldn’t stomp on you when you were down. I also told her we were looking for her husband.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Outside this room, standing guard. I think she wants us out of here now that we’ve dropped her granddaughter off. You know, McAllen, I didn’t realize you had this kind of effect on people. But now, I kind of see how you can rub people the wrong way.”

  McAllen shook his head to clear the two Bernadette’s dancing in his eyes, “Well, some people don’t always get my drift.”

  “Oh, she drifted you alright.” Bernadette chuckled.

  “Not what I meant.”

  “I know, but it’s still funny as hell. How about if I see if she’s ready to make nice?” She poked her head outside the door.

  Samantha Sigurdsson was in a muted conversation with Becky. She looked up at Bernadette. “Is he conscious?”

  “Yes,” Bernadette said. “And, it would be nice if he could stay that way for a while. Maybe we can go to your mess hall and get a cup of coffee?”

  Sam shrugged. “Sure, follow me.”

  Bernadette took McAllen by the arm and they followed Sam to a mess hall beside the kitchen. Becky found coffee mugs and placed them in front of Bernadette and McAllen.

  Becky whispered, “It takes my grandmother a little while to warm up to Uncle Mac, but she usually comes around.”

  Bernadette smiled at Becky. “Yeah, I’ve faced a few Grizzly Bears in Northern Canada with the same attitude.”

  Sam leaned forward on the table and stared across at McAllen. “Well, what crazy ass story have you got for me this time?”

  McAllen sipped his coffee, to buy some time and let his jaw relax. “Well, I was going to tell you—”

  “Stop right there.” Sam raised her hand. Bernadette thought she was about to jump over the table at McAllen.

  “I don’t want no more of your bullshit lies—you hear me?”

  “No, Sam, I’ve only come here with the truth.”

  “Really? Is that so? Well isn’t that something.” She looked at Bernadette and Becky. “Seems, like you’re about to experience a first ever from this man. The truth.”

  “Look, we may have gotten off to a bad start,” McAllen said.

  “Bad start. You call filling my Barney with all kinds of crazy ideas about cooling the planet’s ocean a bad start?”

  “I know I may have given him an idea or two, but listen Sam, some of those crazy ideas were his, I just gave him a little direction,” McAllen said.

  “Oh, really?” Sam asked, her eyes going wide. “Fertilizing the ocean to produce plankton blooms that would supposedly absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was his idea?”

  “Well… okay that was my idea,” McAllen admitted.

  “How about inserting large vertical pipes in the ocean to bring up cool water from the deep to the surface—Barney’s idea?”

  “Ah, no… that was my idea as well.” McAllen lowered his eyes from Sam’s gaze.

  Sam looked from Bernadette to Becky. “You see. Mac here has been leading Barney on all kinds of silly experiments that have got him nowhere.”

  She sipped her coffee and looked back at McAllen. “I’ll tell you what’s happened in the year that these two wannabe geo-engineers have been playing with their experiments, the Earth’s oceans have been getting warmer at an alarming rate.”

  “How bad is it?” Becky asked.

  “We’ve seen a rise by two degrees in all of our heat transfer and current studies. I have data from the Pacific to the Atlantic and it’s all the same. A constant rise,” Sam said.

  Becky nodded. “You know, Grandma, we thought we were getting a strange anomaly in our reef study off Key West, but the reef is dying at an alarming rate. The fish can’t handle it. Their numbers were dropping.”

  “Did you notice any cruise ships in the harbor when you arrived?” Sam asked.

  “No, should there be?”

  “This is their season. The oceans have heated up so fast that they are producing hurricanes one after another. Becky told me you brought her up from her lab in a category 2, well, there’s a category 5 coming behind it, and another one forming after that. On top of that—the oceans are rising so fast they’ll swamp all the lower islands in the Caribbean.”

  “It’s all caused by the warming ocean?” Bernadette asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the cause. I know there’s a bunch of climate deniers running around saying this is just a blip, but this started in August, and hasn’t let up,” Sam said.

  “Before I left Canada,” Bernadette said, “I was told a group of scientists thought this latest temperature increase wasn’t normal. They were sure it was a man-made incident. They sent my partner and me out to use McAllen to locate your husband. You think there’s any truth to this?”

  Sam put her hand on her forehead and sighed. “Well, our data is showing a definite spike. We’ve been monitoring a gradual increase and sending in our data to the world’s governments. Not that it’s done any good. I guess someone in Florida is going to have to see their house flood from the sea before they get excited.”

  “Doesn’t the present model show 2030 for that to happen anyway?” Becky asked.

  “Yes, that’s the forecast. But something else is happening. The increased sea temperature is causing the ice sheets to melt in the Arctic and Antarctic far too fast. The increased fresh water shuts down the ability of the oceans to move the water from one place to another—”

  “That means a total shutdown of the ocean conveyer,” Becky said.

  “I assume it’s really bad,” Bernadette said.

  “Yeah, most of the European coast goes into an ice age, and so does Alaska. The rest of the world suffers from strange droughts as moisture is no longer carried properly by the currents,” Sam told her.

  “How do you think someone could be affecting this?” Bernadette asked.

  “As much I as hate to say it, I think your scientists are right. Someone is messing with the ocean’s temperature. And, I think I know what they might be up to,” Sam said.

  “How about if you enlighten us,” McAllen said. He was smiling now. The focus was no longer on his crazy antics.

  “Barney was working on a strange phenomenon, it had to do with rivers of fresh water under the ocean,” Sam said.

  “I remember that,” McAllen said. “There was a study of one off of Australia. And everyone knows about the ones in Yucatan called Cenotes. Did Barney tell you what he found?”

  “Yes and no,” Sam said. “When he was at the PEARL lab in Canada, he came upon some references to it. He was excited; said it confirmed some rumours he’d heard about it back in Iceland.”

  “What’s PEARL?” Bernadette asked.

  “The Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory,” McAllen said. “It was just finished being built in 2017 on Ellesmere Island, then the Canadian Government pulled the funding.”

  “Sounds like the forward thinking of a government,” Bernadette said turning to Sam. “Do you think that your husband might have returned to the lab, maybe to retrieve his notes?”

  “Maybe to hide out?” Becky asked.

  “Pretty barren place to do so. But that’s a possibility,” Sam said. “Barney kept most of his information in his head, but then, if he found clues to a giant underwater river, it might be there.”

  “What’s our next move?” Bernadette asked. “We need to either find Professor Sigurdsson or whatever he was working on. If he was loo
king at an underwater river that could cool the ocean, maybe that’s where we should look.”

  “I agree,” McAllen said. “There are so many things that don’t add up. The minute we go looking for Sigurdsson we have someone else on our tail. Matter of fact, they’re trying to get there ahead of us to get to him.”

  “Do you think someone wants to capture Sigurdsson to force him to work for them?” Bernadette said.

  McAllen tilted his head sideways as if a thought had just hit him. “What if he’d been working for them and he escaped?”

  “I doubt it,” Sam said. “How could he be helping someone increase the temperature of the earth’s oceans?”

  “I don’t know. What if he was telling them to drill for volcanic vents in hopes he’d find the rivers. Maybe he left when he couldn’t find his rivers,” McAllen suggested.

  “Great speculation,” Sam said. “Do you think he’d be foolish enough to gamble on a tactic like that?”

  “You never saw him play Blackjack,” McAllen said. “That man would go bust more times on a seventeen, when everyone knows the odds are in the dealers favour.”

  “The world isn’t a card game, McAllen,” Sam said.

  McAllen rolled his eyes. “I think you’re wrong. It’s a high stakes card game, and too many people are playing as if they have the winning hand. In the end, mother nature always has the trump card.”

  “Okay, great, McAllen. You can sit here and spout cliché’s all day, or get the hell off my ship and go do something about it,” Sam told him.

  “Good, I’m going with them,” Becky said.

  McAllen put his hand on her shoulder. “No, Becky, you need to hang here with your grandmother. Besides. I can’t keep passing you off with that Polish flight attendant’s passport. I need to get that back to the plane.”

  “But… I…” Becky protested, a tear forming in her eye. Bernadette could see she loved McAllen and wanted to be with him.

  McAllen closed his eyes. “Not going to happen, Becky. Now, get yourself out of the flight attendant’s uniform. I’m sure your grandma has something for you.”