Freezing Point
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART TWO
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
PART THREE
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Praise for Freezing Point
“Palpably exciting. A scientific thriller about a looming global crisis far more critical than oil. Karen Dionne is the new Michael Crichton.”
—David Morrell, bestselling author of Scavenger
“Fascinating and action-packed, Freezing Point by Karen Dionne is a riveting tale of cutting-edge science, boardroom greed, and the triumph of those who respect nature. Dionne’s voice is authentic and fresh. Watch out, Michael Crichton!”
—Gayle Lynds, bestselling author of The Last Spymaster
“Karen Dionne’s Freezing Point has everything. Exciting to read, highly original in plot, provocative in subject matter, and peopled with engaging characters. What a very promising debut!”
—John Case, bestselling author of The Murder Artist
“From the pulse-pounding beginning to the intrigue of multibillion-dollar corporate shenanigans, this is a tale of corporate greed and the triumph of one good man. Readers won’t be able to put it down.”
—David Dun, bestselling author of The Black Silent
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
FREEZING POINT
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Jove mass-market edition / October 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Karen Dionne.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form
without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in
violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-436-28032-7
JOVE®
Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Jeff, for everything
Acknowledgments
No author writes in a vacuum, but when it comes to assistance and encouragement, I am more indebted than most.
My deepest thanks go to my husband, Roger, for his love, support, and fabulous gourmet meals.
To my agent, Jeff Kleinman, whose unwavering faith in a raw talent and keen editorial eye turned an aspiring writer into a published one.
To my editor, Natalee Rosenstein, who took a chance on an unknown, and to Michelle Vega, who answered my questions with patience and grace.
To a terrific author and my most trusted reader, Dr. Jeffrey Anderson, for helping me get my science right. Any errors in the text are most definitely my own.
To the experts who offered assistance: Dave Rutledge, David Jefferies, John Dunn, Ed Niehenke, Richard Bowen, Stan Lippincott, and Paul Miller. You may have forgotten about the help you gave me, but I haven’t.
To Christopher Graham, a true friend and the best business partner ever, and to Mark Bastable, Simon Burnett,
Jon Clinch, Eileen Cruz Coleman, Keith Cronin, Tom Davidson, Susan Henderson, Harry Hunsicker, Jessica Keener, Kelly Mustian, Kristin Nelson, and all of the other fabulous writers at Backspace. It’s impossible to list you all here, but know that I appreciate the help and support of each and every one. Everything I know about publishing, I learned from you.
To the marketing, promotion, production, and art departments at Berkley, whose combined talents turned the manuscript into a real book.
To my parents, Dwite and Marian Walker, for instilling in me the conviction that I could do anything I put my mind to.
And to my children, Sarah, Daniel, Carolyn, and Deanna, who grew themselves into such fine adults while I was gone.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
—STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
PART ONE
Access to a secure, safe, and sufficient source of fresh water is a fundamental requirement for survival . . . yet we continue to act as if fresh water were a perpetually abundant resource. It is not.
—KO
FI ANNAN, UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL
Chapter 1
St. John’s, Newfoundland
The wind howled around the solitary trawler like an angry god. Inside the wheelhouse, Ben Maki braced his feet as an errant wave hit broadside and the trawler listed heavily to starboard. Sleet spattered the windows on the port side. White patches of sea ice told him they were close. He gripped the back of the first mate’s chair and glanced at the captain. In the hurried introductions, Ben hadn’t caught the captain’s name, and the guy was so intimidating with his overshot brow, deep-set eyes, and unruly salt-and-pepper beard that Ben was afraid to ask him to repeat it. The captain grinned—at least, Ben hoped it was a smile; the expression could have been a grimace as it wrapped around an unlit cigar.
He shifted his feet again when the trawler finally righted herself, thanking God he’d eschewed his oxfords this morning for a pair of Doc Martens. He peered out at the forward deck. Derek MacCallister, the Arctic Dawn’s owner and the man Ben had flown 3,400 miles to see, stood at the open prow, nylon jacket flapping furiously in the wind, bare hands gripping the icy rail. Ben shook his head. He’d entrusted his life to a madman. Only a lunatic would leave port in this kind of weather. Dark clouds in the east promised more snow, the St. John’s fishing fleet were safely tucked into their berths, and yet here they were, out here all alone, battling waves the size of small mountains with the harbor two hours behind them. Back at the dock, the trawler and her crew looked like something out of The Perfect Storm, and now that they were out to sea, the resemblance hadn’t diminished. The lawyers who’d flown up with him were probably sitting in a bar or a pub or whatever they called them up here, laughing at Ben’s impulsive decision to play iceberg cowboy and sucking back beers while Ben tried not to upchuck and to stay out of everyone’s way.
“Where’s Derek?” Jack, the first mate, climbed the narrow gangway to the bridge.
The captain jutted his chin toward the ice-glazed window. “Where else?”
“Out there? Can’t he watch the scope?”
The captain shrugged.
Tyler, a skinny kid they’d hired for the season, joined them from the galley below. His eyes grew wide as the ship rode the crest of another swell and fell with a sickening thump. Ben’s stomach plummeted with it. Swallowing hard, he held on more tightly to the chair.
The handle on the wheelhouse door turned, and Derek stepped through. The cabin temperature dropped ten degrees in the time it took to dog down the door behind him with a clang. Derek pulled off his toque and shook the ice crystals out of his hair like Ben’s Jack Russell after its bath. His cheeks—what could be seen of them above his curly brown beard—were bright red; each with a white patch in the middle the size of a quarter where the skin was just beginning to freeze.
“It’s there! Three hundred yards dead ahead!”
The captain nodded. “I got it on the scope.”
“Okay. Start circling around. Jack, you and Tyler get ready to pay out the cable.”
“How’s she look?” Jack asked.
“Big,” the captain answered grimly. “Maybe seventy thousand tons.”
Jack’s brow puckered. Ben’s mirrored his concern. You knew you were in trouble when the first mate looked worried.
“Not to worry,” Derek said. “Sure she’s big, but we know what we’re doing, eh? And snagging a berg this size means we won’t have to come out for the rest of the season. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Tyler?” Giving the boy a good-natured shove that sent him sprawling into the opposite wall.
“Aye, sir!” Tyler scrambled to recover the proper seaman’s attitude of attention. Derek guffawed, and the boy added a nervous grin.
“All right!” Derek pulled on his toque and turned to his men. “Let’s do it!”
The captain spun the wheel, and the Arctic Dawn swung around, rolling and pitching as she turned sideways to the waves. The crew donned safety harnesses and survival suits, then stepped out of the wheelhouse onto the icy deck.
A hundred yards ahead, the berg towered fifty feet above the ship. “Icebergs calve off the Greenland glaciers,” the captain said to Ben as he leaned forward to wipe the condensation off the windows with his shirt sleeve. “Tabular bergs are the most stable, but this far south, we hardly ever see ’em. By the time they get to us, the bergs’ve eroded into all kinds of shapes. Domed and wedge-shaped are the most unstable. They can roll over in seconds, just by looking at ’em.”
Ben studied the craggy, gray mountain looming off the starboard bow. The berg looked stable enough. Was the captain trying to frighten him on purpose?
The captain cut back on the power to let the drift carry them closer. “No way to know what she’s like under the water. The Arctic Dawn was retrofitted with a three-inch steel-reinforced hull when we changed from fishing trawler to ice hauler, but there’s not a ship afloat that could survive that kind of collision.”
Hardly reassuring, but Ben didn’t figure it was meant to be.
As the craft made its slow circle, the crew paid out the towline: A yellow-and-black polypropylene rope as thick as a man’s arm that floated conspicuously atop the rolling sea. The captain kept a watchful eye on his men, cringing when Tyler tripped over a coil of rope and a wave nearly washed him off his feet.
“Boy needs another hundred pounds on him. Skinny ones are too easily swept into the sea.”
Another unlucky thought. What happened to the much-vaunted sailors’ superstition? Ben’s seafaring experience was limited to working weekends as a teenager on his grandpa’s Great Lakes fishing boat, but even he knew that a sailor foolish enough to voice misgivings invited disaster.
The captain turned back to the task at hand, chomping on his cigar until forty-five tedious, stomach-churning minutes had passed. Ben sighed his relief when they completed the circle without incident. Jack snagged the towline with a grappling hook while Tyler worked the winch handle and Derek made the junction and added cable. Once the pelican hook snapped into place, Derek gave the signal, and the captain began the long, slow turn that would take them home.
A clear patch of sky opened directly overhead. Instantly the iceberg transformed into a shimmering celestial blue, its faceted surface reflecting the sunlight like a thousand mirrors. Ben shielded his eyes. He had just decided the sun was an omen of success when a flock of seabirds resting on the berg’s peak took flight, their raucous calls audible above the wind. The iceberg leaned to the right. It hung undecided for a moment, like the stuck secondhand on a clock, then tilted even more.
The captain flung open the door. “She’s going over!”
Out on deck, Jack was already shoving the boy toward the wheelhouse. Ben held the door as the captain regained the helm and pushed the engines for power, desperate to put distance between them and the collapsing berg.
“Where’s Derek?” he bellowed when Jack and Tyler burst inside.
“Out there!” Tyler pointed toward the stern. “He’s still trying to unhook the cable!”
“Mother of God!” Jack cried. “Back off! Give him slack!”
The captain jammed the engines into reverse. The ship groaned in protest, and Ben’s gut wrenched along with it. As long as they were connected to the berg, their fates were irrevocably tied. If it rolled, they were going with it, and the Arctic Dawn would be flipped into the air as easily as a child’s toy tied to the end of a string.
Jack leaned out the door. “Hurry!” he called to Derek.
“I’m trying!” Derek yelled back. “The hook’s jammed!” He stripped off his gloves to fumble barehanded with the ring release.
The captain’s hand twitched on the throttle as the seconds ticked by. At last Derek waved the all clear and they started forward—just as the iceberg split in two with a thunderous crack and roar.
“Inside!” Jack screamed to the deck. “Now!”
“There’s no time!” Derek wrapped his safety line around the rail, yanked the survival suit hood down over his head, and hugged t
he rail in a death-grip, bracing for the killer wave they all knew was coming.
Seconds later it crashed over the ship, engulfing them in icy white.
The captain pulled Ben toward the ship’s wheel. “Hold on!” Ben barely had time to hook his arms through the spokes before the ship yawed leeward at an impossible angle, leaving his legs dangling in midair. The crew smashed into the opposite wall, map charts and coffee cups raining down on them like confetti.