Tom shoved the throttle forward and pulled up on the collective, but the helicopter runners were frozen to the ice in a vice-like grip. He shoved the throttle forward to full power. When he pulled up on the collective, the vibration threatened to tear the helicopter apart, but the runners remained frozen to the ice.
“What’s wrong?” Sonja asked.
Tom let go of the collective and pulled back on the throttle until the engine was idling. “I can’t break free. We’re stuck to the ice.”
“Can I do something to help?”
He shook his head. “If we can’t break free with the rotors, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Call for another helicopter to pick us up.”
“Are you kidding? No one else can land to pick us up. They would just be stuck, too. We’re trapped out here, Sonja.”
Sonja wrung her hands together on her lap while she tried to think of a way out of their situation. “Call the research station and tell them what happened. We have many intelligent people working at the facility. Maybe someone will think of a way to help us.”
Tom entered the research facility’s frequency into the radio and pressed the button on the side of his headset. “CHARS research station, this is CHARS helicopter one. Come in please?”
No one responded and he tried again. After several minutes without a response, he changed frequencies. “This is the CHARS research helicopter calling anyone on the emergency radio frequency. Please respond.”
Sonja and Tom waited in uneasy silence as Tom tried again, but the plea for assistance remained unanswered. “Something must be interfering with the radio signal, Sonja.”
“Do you have any survival equipment?”
“Not much. Spare water, a small supply of power bars, first aid equipment, and signal flares.”
“If we do not return to the station, they will send a search and rescue unit to find us.”
“Even if they do, they still can’t land to pick us up. Without radio communication, we don’t have any way to warn them about the ice. They’ll be stranded out here with us. When our fuel runs out, it’s going to get very cold in here.”
“How long do we have before that will happen?”
Tom looked at the digital readout. “Even leaving the engines at idle, we’ll run out of fuel in less than four hours, and without heat, we’ll be dead two hours later. I’m sorry, Sonja.”
* * *
Chapter 2
MONDAY. SEATTLE FEDERAL BUILDING. FEMA REGIONAL OFFICE:
“Listen up everybody,” Director Charles Simons hollered across the control room. “We’ve just received a report that there has been a major seismic event on Vancouver Island, Canada. It hit Victoria the hardest, but the United States’ San Juan Islands also felt some seismic activity. Call your contacts and find out the extent of the damage so we can get the emergency response teams moving. Make it happen, people.”
Sharon Aniston, the USGS, United States Geological Survey, supervisor from the sixth floor stepped out of the elevator and hurried across the room, into Simon’s office. “It didn’t register as a major earthquake, Charlie.”
Simons stared up at her. “What do you mean?”
“We don’t know what it was. All we know right now is the ground suddenly rose up beneath Victoria. It was a small tremor that only affected that specific area.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Logically? Not a chance. We don’t have a clue how to explain what happened.”
“Do you think it’s a prelude to a major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest?”
“I don’t want to speculate right now. We just don’t have enough information. I’ll tell you one thing, Charlie. If whatever caused that destruction in Victoria happens here, in Seattle, there won’t be anything left standing. There’s a helicopter on its way to pick me up on the roof. I’ll look at the damage and try to figure out where it started. I’ll call you when I have more information.”
Simons stood. “I’m going with you. I need to see the San Juan Islands to get a better idea what I’m dealing with.”
“It’s only a two-person helicopter, Charlie, but I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Simons sat back down. “Okay, thanks, Sharon.”
*
Sharon stepped out of the elevator and climbed the stairs to the roof access door. When she looked at the digital thermostat mounted on the wall, the outside ambient temperature was close to eighty-five-degrees Fahrenheit. It should be in the upper seventies, but global warming was already causing the temperature of the planet to steadily increase.
She stepped out onto the roof, walked across to the two-person Bell helicopter, and climbed in next to her pilot, Steve Bolton. A few moments later, they were flying north over the Puget Sound. The damage to the San Juan Islands appeared to be minimal, so she asked Steve to drop down for a closer view of the damage to Victoria.
She stared down through the smoke to see the devastation was far worse than she had imagined. The old city was nearly destroyed. The beautiful castle built for a long ago Queen was now a pile of shattered marble. Large sections of the once majestic hotels had collapsed into mounds of concrete and shattered glass. The mooring docks had been tossed around the harbor like rubber bands and beautiful yachts lay smashed into tangled heaps of sunken wood, fiberglass, and sail masts. Dozens of emergency workers and dogs were searching through the rubble for survivors and bodies were being stacked in long rows on what remained of the streets.
“I’ve seen enough, Steve. Take me back to the Federal Building.”
She leaned back in her seat and stared out the front window as the helicopter turned south, back to Seattle. For registering as a minor tremor, the damage was horrific, she thought. What could have enough energy to do that much damage without registering as a major earthquake? And why did it only damage that specific section of the Pacific Northwest? None of it made sense.
Steve set the helicopter down on the roof of the Federal Building, and Sharon climbed out and walked across to the single grey steel door. She entered the building and went down the stairs to the elevator. When the doors opened, her geophysics expert, Patrick Chandler, was waiting.
She stepped inside the elevator and leaned against the back wall. “I hope you’ve figured out where this started, Patrick.”
Chandler shook his head. “We don’t have any idea. It’s unlike any seismic disturbance we’ve dealt with before. What did it look like from the air?”
“The damage was extensive and very precise, as if planned to hit only that specific city. I need to find out if the CIA knows of any terrorist activity in the area.”
“You can’t be serious. It was a seismic disturbance, not a bomb.”
Sharon sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. “You’re probably right. I’m just frustrated and searching for answers.”
The doors opened and they stepped into the hallway of the USGS headquarters. Chandler followed Sharon to the command center. All the seismic data for the western region of North America was collected and analyzed in this large room and her team was trying to pinpoint the origin of the event using sophisticated software.
A young woman ran up and handed Sharon a sheet of paper and they stopped walking while she read the information. She shook her head and gave it to Chandler. “This day just keeps getting worse by the hour. The tsunami warning detectors in the northern Bering Sea just activated.”
Sharon looked at the young woman. “We need to find out if there was any seismic activity in that area. Put it up on screen number three, please.”
Sharon turned and walked across the room to study the information displayed on the large video screens mounted on the walls near the ceiling.
Chandler stopped while he read the report, and then caught up to her. “This is very bad, Sharon. If this is happening along the entire northwest coast, it means there is some major tectonic activity along the Pacific Rim. I’m just surprised we haven’t noticed an increase in vo
lcanic activity.”
“Did you call Wesley Patterson about this? He must be monitoring the volcanic activity here, in the Pacific Northwest.”
“Three times, but he didn’t answer.”
“After the Mount Saint Helens incident, can you blame him?”
Chandler looked down at the floor for a moment as he remembered the devastation caused by the eruption, and then stared up at the monitor. “I guess not. Even so, he must have noticed what happened.”
They stopped in front of a large display showing all the seismic detectors in Western North America. The only flashing red dot was the one in Victoria. The tsunami sensors in the Bering Sea showed a ten-foot surge radiating south toward the Pacific Ocean, with nearly no surge past the Aleutian Islands.
“That’s a bit of luck,” Chandler stated. “It would seem the islands broke up the surge before it reached the Pacific.”
Sharon crossed hers arms and continued to stare at the screen. “I wouldn’t be so sure. If it wasn’t an earthquake that created the surge, what did?”
Chandler stared at the screen. “None of this makes any sense.”
*
MOUNT BAKER, WASHINGTON STATE:
Wesley Patterson had ignored the messages from the USGS, but his seismic detector on Mount Baker registered a significant disturbance deep beneath his sleeping volcano.
His personal seismic activity center was his barn, near the Mount Baker National Forest and State Park, where he lived in his cabin and had studied the volcano for the past ten years. He knew that most seismic activity on Baker was caused by a normal rise in elevation, but this activity was coming from several thousand-feet beneath the surface, and that would only occur if the sleeping giant was awakening because of the new seismic activity.
He studied the picture on a thirty two-inch flat screen television sitting on a beat up wooden desk. It displayed two seismometer readings recorded during the first and second event. What was puzzling was they did not show major seismic activity on the surface, so why was it affecting his mountain?
He rewound the recording back to the time of the last event, and moved the cursor to an area just past the end of sensor needle. He clicked the mouse to zoom in on the black line, and when he saw the magnified view, he leaned back in his chair and released a long, slow sigh. “What the hell is going on?”
*
BOZEMAN MONTANA:
Alex threw a yellow tennis ball for his dog to chase, grabbed his ringing phone from his front pocket, and recognized the caller ID from the United States Geological Survey headquarters in Seattle, Washington. He walked up onto the back porch and sat in one of the green plastic chairs. “This is Alex Cave.”
“Hello, Mister Cave. I’m Sharon Aniston, from the USGS in Seattle. Sorry to bother you, but we’ve had a major seismic event in this area. It did significant damage to Victoria earlier today and we’ve just had another event in the San Juan Islands. This may sound impossible, but they did not register as a major earthquake. None of our people know what caused it and we’re worried it could be a prelude to a major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.”
“I live in Montana, so I’m not sure what I can do to help.”
“We have a mutual friend in Yellowstone. Jerry Mercer spoke very highly of you. He said you were the one person he could count on when all other ideas fail. I was hoping you could help me with this problem.”
“Jerry might have exaggerated a little, but I’ll make some calls and try to figure out what happened.”
“Thanks, Mister Cave.”
Alex turned off his phone, his dark brows bunching together in thought. He had grown up in the Pacific Northwest and there was very little seismic activity. Still, the amount of energy required to destroy an entire city could only be on a seismic level. So why didn’t it register as an earthquake?
He tried to remember the name of a man he had met at a conference in Iceland three months ago. He lived in Washington State, and his particular field was volcanism, the study of volcanos. He was currently studying the volcanic activity in the Pacific Northwest.
* * *
Chapter 3
PACIFIC OCEAN. 60 MILES WEST OF VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA:
Mike Tanner stepped out from the control bridge of his white, two-hundred-foot ocean research ship, the Mystic, and stared down at the open deck on the stern. His research company in Seattle had developed a new type of ultrasound system capable of finding methane hydride, a compressed methane gas held together by frozen water molecules, and only found in deep water.
An hour ago, the ultrasound unit on the ship had located a large deposit, and he had sent the two-person submarine down to retrieve a sample. After decades of burning fossil fuels, everyone was desperate for a clean energy source, such as methane.
He leaned his arms on the railing behind the bridge and listened to the quiet humming from the hydraulic pump as the extension arm on the hoist raised a fifteen-foot white submarine from the ocean. Water dribbled across the dull-gray deck as the submarine was swung around and placed into a storage bracket on the left side of the stern.
A moment later, the winch shut down and Mike stood and looked at the slim Scandinavian man standing beside him at the railing. “They said it was a pretty big slab of methane, John.”
Captain John Dieter grinned at his boss. He had waited years for an opportunity like this, but it was not just to be the Captain of the Mystic and searching for methane. He had a far grander need for this ship and its submarine. For now, he would play the part as the dutiful Captain and friend. “It appears your new unit is working as promised, Mike.” he said with a slight accent.
They walked down the outside stairs to the deck, and across to the submarine. The deckhand leaned a white fiberglass ladder against the side of the sub. Both men looked up at the sound of the hatch being opened.
Lisa Harding climbed up through the opening of the submarine and waved down at Mike and Dieter waiting on the deck below. “It’s what we expected, Mike,” she hollered and then turned around to climb backward down the ladder.
Mike smiled as he remembered meeting Lisa at the alternative fuels seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada two months ago. At the end of the seminar, the slender five-foot-four brunette had timidly followed him to the lounge and asked to sit at his table. Her hazel eyes stared at him through thin steel-rimmed glasses, as she stated she was a chemical specialist and he needed her expertise. He liked her self-confidence about her ability and told her when and where she would start working for him here, on the Mystic.
When Lisa stepped down on the deck and turned around to face him, Mike noticed the concern in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. There’s something else mixed in with the methane.”
“Is it dangerous?” Dieter inquired.
Lisa shook her head. “The methane has an odd color, but it’s not dangerous.”
They heard the hatch close and looked up at the operator standing on top of the sub.
Okana, (O’Kaw-nuh), ran his hand through his shaggy blond hair, and then turned around and climbed down the ladder. “I have a recording you should look at, Mike. We saw something very strange going on with the methane.”
Mike stared up at the six-foot-one, solidly built man from San Diego, California, and was even more curious about the methane. “Josh is waiting for us in the lounge. Let’s go take a look.”
They followed Mike across the fifty-foot-wide, by sixty-foot-long open deck, and through the double doors centered in the rear bulkhead of the ship. The doors opened into a long walkway that continued straight through the center of the main deck, to Mike’s office and personal living quarters at the bow. Just inside the doors, they passed a single door on the left that went into Lisa’s laboratory, and twenty-feet farther, they turned right, through a ten-foot-square opening in the wall. Just inside the opening on the right, a set of stairs went up to the control bridge. On the left, across from the bridge stairs, another set of stairs went down to th
e individual cabins, bathroom facilities, and the engine room on the lower deck.
They went past the stairs, into the large open lounge and dining area, with smoke tinted windows spaced along the far wall. On the right side of the room, a serving counter divided the open kitchen from the dining table and chairs, and on the left side of the table, was the lounge area.
A burly man stood up from a desk in the corner, near a window. “I hear you found the mother lode,” Joshua Mason stated in his baritone voice.
Mike thought the six-foot-six gentle giant from the Midwest looked more like a lumberjack, not the computer and electronics expert for the ship.
Joshua grinned at Mike. “I get stock options for this, don’t I boss?” he asked jokingly.
Mike pointed at Okana. “He has a recording we need to see.”
Joshua took the flash-drive from Okana and inserted it into the computer on his desk. A fifty-eight-inch flat screen television was mounted to the forward wall, and the picture from the recording appeared on the screen. The brilliant lights from the submarine illuminated the gray-green frozen slab of methane on the ocean floor. The massive oval-shaped slab was roughly three-hundred-feet-long by two-hundred-feet-wide and close to twenty-feet-thick. Oddly, it appeared to be growing upward from a long, large crack in the ocean floor.
Lisa walked over, stood next to the television, and pointed at the slab. “What has me concerned is the green color. It could be some type of algae. Maybe we’ve found a new species that lives in methane.”
“Here it comes,” Okana told them. “We saw this on our approach. Keep an eye on the area beyond the methane.”
A mass of white bubbles wobbled up beyond the slab and everyone looked at Lisa for an explanation.
Lisa shrugged her shoulders. “I have no idea. At that temperature and pressure, the methane cannot be melting on its own.” She held up a small silver tube. “I’ll take this sample of methane to my lab for analysis. Maybe the strange color is a new type of organism and the bubbles are a waste product.”
The Alex Cave Series. Books 1, 2, & 3.: Box set Page 31