Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  Birk ran, viciously poked and prodded to the gangplank by Raggedy Ass’s weapon. He looked around and saw that there was no one to save him; only one barrel poked out from the crack of a metal door, and it was the lens of chickenshit’s camera.

  Raggedy Ass grabbed the RPG from a dead jihadist and screamed at Birk all the way up to the deck of the Dick Cheney. The correspondent had no idea what the jihadist was saying now, but the porker whom Birk had suspected of carrying a suicide bomb was speaking all too clearly of blood and bedlam with his half-naked show-and-tell. Birk took no comfort in seeing that his deductive powers had remained as sharp as ever. The vest looked like it held enough C-4 to take out the tanker, dock, and anything and anyone else within a half-mile radius.

  Raggedy Ass cracked Birk on the shoulder with his rifle stock, collapsing his legs and forcing him to lie down, probably to be executed—and this really hurt—off camera.

  Birk stretched out facedown on the filthy deck. The metal was so goddamn hot he felt like a boneless breast of chicken slapped on a grill.

  Raggedy Ass cuffed his hands behind his back with plastic restraints, tightening them way too much. Birk took this as a good sign: Who cuffs you and then shoots you?

  Idiots the world over, he answered himself.

  * * *

  Adnan felt sorry for the old man lying on the deck, captured by the surviving Waziristani. The seaman had been hoping that the jihadist would be killed along with the other three, or so seriously wounded that he wouldn’t make it aboard. Then Adnan wouldn’t have had to worry about the crazy, murderous Waziristanis. He would have ordered the captain to take them out to sea, and after three or four days of world attention, the great martyr would have blown up the tanker so he could have paradise and pomegranates and virgins who would make him want their ridiculous bodies with those silly breasts that shook like rice pudding.

  Instead, Adnan eyed the jihadist, who pointed to himself and the ship’s bridge. Adnan nodded, and the man ran toward a metal stairway, holding his rifle ready, so he could shoot anyone who got in his way.

  That means you, too, Adnan reminded himself.

  * * *

  Birk figured that the laminates had saved his butt. Raggedy Ass must have been smart enough to know the value of his prize.

  So they’d use him, and that was fine with Birk. This could resurrect his career, win him a George Polk Award for foreign reporting. Not much competition for it these days because there wasn’t much overseas reporting anymore; Americans just didn’t give a fig about the rest of the world—focus groups didn’t lie—and network executives didn’t cram foreign coverage down viewers’ throats anymore, not with their corporate overlords constantly carping about the costs of running a global news operation.

  So this escapade could turn out to be the pièce de résistance of Birk’s career. Go out in a blaze of glory. He might win everything—Polk, Emmy, duPont-Columbia, Peabody. And why not? He deserved every one of them, a whole goddamn panoply of prizes. And with any luck at all, he might get to accept them in person, rather than posthumously.

  The asshole in the vest had plans, but they weren’t imminent or they’d all be dead by now. Birk figured the suicide bomber wanted airtime, and he, Rick Birk, would do everything possible to make that happen. It would keep him alive and on camera.

  Birk held hostage, day one, he mused. Look what those Americans in Iran did for Ted Koppel’s career, and that poor shmuck looked like Alfred E. Neuman.

  Birk laughed, then stifled his mirth with a mighty effort—mistake; don’t show them you’re amused—but he could feel his whole body shaking. Maybe that’s what an earthquake is, he thought. The whole planet trying not to laugh out loud at mankind’s latest folly.

  * * *

  The deck shuddered and Adnan looked up. Moments later he heard automatic weapons fire. Everything according to plan: The jihadist had forced the captain and crew to the bridge. Then the Waziristani had killed them, except for the captain himself.

  Parvez had told them to leave the captain alive only till they got out to sea. “He can sail the ship by himself, if he has to.”

  How did Parvez know all this? Adnan wondered. And in the same moment he realized that Parvez had studied far more than the Koran in Waziristan. He’d studied jihad.

  * * *

  Parvez sat blocks away in an Internet café, watching a computer screen that showed the tanker heading away from Malé. Live video of the hijacking. Parvez had arranged for a jihadist who’d studied with him in Waziristan to set up a camera and provide a feed to an Islamic Web site, which was making this historic event available to the whole world.

  The authorities would track down the camera soon enough, but every minute of video would draw more viewers. Even more important, it would attract the attention of world media.

  Parvez clicked on the major news Web sites, including Al Jazeera, CNN, and the BBC. All of them were streaming video of the tanker leaving port, noting the decimated bodies in the foreground, and commenting on the “terrorist attack” in barely restrained voices. It was already a huge story. Hundreds of journalists would race to the Maldives, much like the rescuers who’d run to the bombing last week, to try to save the ruined survivors.

  And then what happened? Parvez thought with a smile. The second bomb exploded.

  He lifted his heavy-lidded eyes to the luxurious Golden Crescent Hotel across the street, where every room would soon become home to a foreign journalist.

  Kill them all. The most famous faces.

  Parvez knew that with each bomb, the story would get bigger, almost as huge as the orange stain that would soon spread across the sea.

  * * *

  Jenna stared stonily at her television, scarcely believing what she was witnessing: Maldivian soldiers blown up and gunned down by jihadists taking over Senator Gayle Higgens’s supertanker. That brazen moron. What was she thinking, making that kind of move on her own? And now, thanks to the hijacking, the task force was really in a state of suspended animation. Everything was on hold—except the phone starting to ring beside her. She looked at the digital readout: Marv, the executive producer of The Morning Show.

  “What’s up?” She didn’t bother with niceties. Why pretend?

  “You watching your old stomping grounds?”

  “I am.”

  “You see Birk getting taken hostage?”

  “I did.” Birk was unmistakable both in appearance—shock of white unruly hair—and personality, which she declined to consider at any length.

  “Elfren wants to see you in the morning. Soon as we’re off air.”

  As in James Elfren, the vice president in charge of correspondents and producers. Smart guy. He didn’t waste anyone’s time. If he wanted to see her, she was about to take off for the Maldives.

  CHAPTER 14

  The hijacking of the supertanker trumped every other news story, including the presidential race. As soon as Jenna finished her weather segment, she rushed over to the main set to join host Andrea Hanson and Harold Swenson, a portly, gray-haired senior researcher at the Washington Center for International Terrorism Studies. Swenson immediately sparked an impromptu debate.

  “We’re looking at a doomsday scenario.” The expert sat forward.

  “I don’t think it’s responsible to call it a doomsday scenario,” Jenna said. “We don’t know that to be the case.” She found herself still adjusting to her new role as the network’s resident expert not only on geoengineering but also the Maldives. And now a debater to boot.

  “How can you not see this brazen act of ecoterrorism in those terms?” Swenson demanded. “If they blow up that tanker and release five hundred thousand tons of iron oxide, worldwide temperatures could drop five or six degrees. That’s a distinct possibility.”

  “It is possible,” Jenna said, “but—”

  “That’s a new ice age,” Swenson interrupted. “That’s doomsday.”

  “A five- or six-degree drop would be a new ice age,” Jenna agr
eed, “but it’s difficult to calibrate the impact of that much iron oxide in the ocean. Yes, it will cause a massive algae bloom; and yes, the algae will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But it’s more likely that we would see a two-degree drop in temperatures.”

  Swenson shook his head. “Two degrees? That’s no picnic, either. Two degrees would mean massive crop losses in North America, Europe, Russia, and China. We’re talking famine. There wouldn’t even be summer in many places.”

  “That’s very possible, and that would be horrible,” Jenna said, “but we know from the Mount Pinatubo explosion, which did drop temperatures almost two degrees worldwide, that it’s not doomsday.”

  “Can you explain about Mount Pinatubo?” Andrea asked.

  “That was a volcanic explosion in the Philippines in 1991 that sent millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere,” Jenna said quickly.

  “So any drops in temperature in the Maldives would also be felt worldwide?” Andrea followed up.

  “That’s right,” Swenson said, getting back into the discussion. “But Mount Pinatubo wasn’t even two degrees. And anything beyond a three-degree drop is the end of the world as we know it.”

  “Look,” Jenna said, “we’re sitting here talking about specific drops in temperature when the reality is that we don’t know how bad the impact would be.”

  “Maybe,” Swenson said, “but what’s very clear now is that suicidal Islamists have taken control of the Earth’s thermostat. This,” he pointed an accusing finger at Jenna, “is precisely why we can’t be soft on terrorists.”

  “I’m not saying we should be soft on them,” Jenna remonstrated. “We should get their hands off the thermostat as fast as we can and make sure that they never get another chance to do something this frightening. But the issue about how much temperatures will drop cannot be resolved here and now, because dumping iron oxide in the ocean is a crude tool, if you want to think of it that way. And dumping five hundred thousand tons is the very definition of chaos theory. That’s why scientists insist on small-scale studies.”

  “And why radical Muslims want to send us into a new ice age.”

  “Hold that thought,” Andrea said to Swenson. “We’ve got Special Terrorism Correspondent Chris Randall in our Washington Bureau with an important update on the hijacking story.”

  Jenna shifted her attention to a monitor on the set and watched Randall, a strikingly handsome former Army Ranger, offer Andrea a tight smile. Then he reported that the same Islamic Web site that had released the video of the hijacking had just announced that the jihadists would blow up the tanker—if the industrialized world didn’t reduce its carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next five years.

  Over video of the supertanker, Randall said, “The jihadists have given the U.S. one week to shut down the country’s ten largest coal-fired power plants as a show of good faith.”

  Randall reappeared on camera, naming a handful of the plants listed by the hijackers.

  “Thank you, Chris Randall, special terrorism correspondent.” Andrea turned back to Jenna and Harold Swenson. “What do you make of those demands?”

  “To be expected,” Swenson said. “Al Qaeda’s been blaming climate change on the U.S. for the past three years.”

  “There’s no way to get anywhere near a fifty-percent reduction in greenhouse gasses, even in the next fifteen years,” Jenna said. “That’s a nonstarter.”

  “I’ve just been informed,” Andrea adjusted her earpiece, “that President Reynolds is calling the hijacking ‘Islamo ecoterrorism.’ That’s a new term.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better,” Swenson said. “Maybe Al Qaeda remembers what the oceanographer John Martin once said: ‘Give me a half tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age.’” Swenson looked pointedly at Jenna.

  “I would never go that far,” she said.

  “Where does this leave us?” Andrea asked.

  “On the brink of the abyss,” Swenson answered.

  “In a dangerous spot,” Jenna said, “but—”

  “The abyss,” Swenson repeated emphatically.

  That’s how the segment ended. Jenna found it ironic to see herself as the voice of reason after years of being criticized for trying to raise awareness of the dangers of climate change. But her position was nuanced, and she would not join in Swenson’s dire prophesying.

  Now she was off to see James Elfren. The urgency of the meeting with the news division vice president—scheduled for minutes after The Morning Show signed off—signaled its importance, but when Marv hustled to join Jenna on the way to Elfren’s office, she knew without question that a pivotal development was in the works.

  Elfren’s young male assistant jumped from his desk outside his boss’s office to escort Jenna and Marv into a spacious corner lair, which was well insulated from the squawking horns, squealing brakes, and piercing sirens of Manhattan traffic. Elfren rose from behind his cherrywood desk and smiled at Jenna. She saw him so rarely—Jenna was not officially in the news division, as Marv was wont to remind her—that Elfren’s tall, slope-shouldered stature took her aback. As did his bright hazel eyes and mocha-colored hair. An altogether attractive example of the executive species.

  He gestured to a sitting area, and Jenna knew instinctively to take the tufted couch. Marv appeared to weigh the wisdom of claiming the brass tack armchair, before realizing, or perhaps remembering, that that was likely the boss’s perch and that it might not behoove him to long so openly for the perquisites of power. Jenna thought Marv looked like a stumpy Ecuadorian general lusting after the presidential palace in the hours before a coup.

  Dream on, twit.

  “Your outfit was a huge improvement today,” Elfren said to her, adjusting his smartly striped tie as he assumed his throne.

  As soon as he spoke, Jenna recalled why Elfren had never been a candidate for on-air honors: His voice sounded as if his throat was being continually throttled by a murderous hand. Every high-pitched word sounded panicked.

  “Yesterday, you had her looking half undressed out there in that sleazy Dorothy outfit, Marv.” Elfren spoke without a smile or any evidence of cheesy, male-bonding humor. To the contrary, this was unadulterated admonishment, Jenna realized, and brought to mind Elfren’s other appealing quality: He was a decent guy, a married man with two kids and no reputation for chasing women.

  “I’ll talk to Jeremy,” Marv said.

  “You mean you didn’t have him clear those outfits with you first?”

  Marv looked pained, like he wished more than anything that he could slink back to the fourth floor. “I trusted him.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Elfren said in a way that made it clear that Marv shouldn’t have, either. “I never want to see that again.”

  “Numbers were up,” Marv peeped.

  “So were viewer complaints. Thousands of e-mails have come in. They’re still coming, and most of them thought our host looked like a slut. I don’t want viewers thinking of Andrea—a mother-to-be—as a slut, Marv. It’s bad morning television.”

  Maybe Marv’s getting fired. Jenna had never seen a show producer so severely dressed down—Bad pun, she told herself. But she loved every moment of it. Go, Elfren.

  “To the business at hand,” Elfren said, to Marv’s evident relief. “We’ve got two stories that I’m concerned about. Let’s start with the murder of that GreenSpirit woman. I want you to see what CBS had on just minutes before our show ended.”

  “I know about it,” Marv said.

  “I want to go through it with you anyway,” Elfren said.

  His office had five large, wall-mounted flat-screen TVs. He used a remote to click on the one closest to them. It was cued to the story in question. Video of naked men and women—breasts, bottoms, and pubic areas digitized—opened a report on the killing. The reporter’s off-screen voice was filled with gravitas:

  “This was the aftermath of an initiation of two witches Saturday night, presided over by GreenSpirit, the
self-described witch and Pagan leader who was murdered just hours later. Pagans and witches from a wide region attended the gathering; followers included Suze Walker, a daughter of the Malloy County sheriff, Nate Walker. The young woman wouldn’t talk to CBS News,” the camera stayed on her as she turned away, “but her father has declared that this high school quarterback, Jason Robb, shown in a recent game, is a ‘person of interest’ to law enforcement authorities.”

  “We want to talk to him,” Sheriff Walker said to the unseen reporter. “We think he might know something.”

  “Did you know that your daughter was at the initiation?” the reporter asked.

  “Yes, of course I did.”

  “Are you a Pagan?”

  “No, we’re Baptists, proud Pentecostals, and so is my daughter. My wife and I don’t encourage belief in Paganism but we understand the spiritual curiosity of young people.”

  “The sheriff’s tolerance,” the reporter continued over video of the man as he walked away, “may not be shared by everyone in this rural region. People at the gathering say that Jason Robb,” the football video reappeared, “the young man the sheriff named a ‘person of interest,’ threatened some of them, including GreenSpirit, the night before she was murdered.”

  The reporter then stood before the camera detailing Sheriff Walker’s request for help on the homicide investigation from the New York State Police and FBI. The reporter also noted that law enforcement authorities said that the crime scene “appeared to have been compromised,” which sounded consistent with the sheriff’s own statements the day before.

  Elfren clicked off the report. “What did we have on your show, Marv? Biggest story in the New York region, and one of the biggest in the country, and what did you have?”

  “There was a screwup on the assignment desk. We’ve got the Northeast Bureau on their way up there now.”

  “We had video of downtown Bennel, and aerials from a trip that Jenna took up there last week. And what I’m hearing from you are excuses. First, it’s wardrobe’s fault that the women on your show look like hookers. Now it’s the assignment desk’s fault that we’re getting skunked. I don’t like getting skunked. Do something about it.”