Dry Ice

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  Considering his words, Tess let out a long breath and dropped back into the chair she just vacated. “Has this ever happened before?”

  “Never for this long. The power blipped for about two minutes about a month ago.”

  “Two minutes?” she repeated, wide-eyed. “Why?”

  Nik waved a hand in dismissal. “It was nothing. Greg took responsibility. Said he’d goofed on a parameter.”

  Tess sat up straight. “He what?”

  “He’d just fired the array and said he got something wrong.”

  “And you didn’t investigate?”

  “Tess, there wasn’t any need to investigate. Greg knew what happened almost immediately. He put a report in the files.”

  “Well that ‘report’ never made it to Flint, Nik. Believe me, I would have seen it and read it if it were in the files.”

  Nik shrugged, annoyed. “Do you really need to focus on this right now? It was a minor glitch—”

  “According to Greg.”

  “Yes, Tess, according to Greg, who caused the glitch and fixed it.”

  The situation was bad and had the potential to get much worse, and Tess was torn between wanting the security outside involvement would bring and wanting to prove herself capable of handling whatever Greg could throw at her.

  “All right. We’ll wait,” she said slowly, meeting Nik’s eyes. “For a little while.”

  * * *

  Nik looked at his watch as he walked back toward his office.

  Damn it.

  He took a deep breath. It was pointless to try to fight off the mixture of guilt and nervousness that was assailing his conscience. The tropical storm he’d concocted in a fit of annoyance twenty-four hours ago, the one that was guaranteed to ruin at least the start of Eleanor’s honeymoon, would be breaking any minute.

  What the hell was I thinking? I’m no better than Greg.

  The conversation he’d just had with the team in the conference room had shaken him. He was sure that everyone was a lot more concerned than they were letting on—he sure as hell was. The thought of Greg playing God just to get back at Tess, or at Flint, or whatever other motive he might be harboring was enough to chill his blood—yet he’d just done the same damned thing out of jealousy.

  And that’s all it really is, Nik, old boy, isn’t it? Jealousy and a bruised ego. Ellie found someone who treated her better and you just can’t take it like a man. You can’t even pretend to be a mature adult where Ellie is concerned. You couldn’t resist the temptation to make her cry. Nice going, Nik, you stupid ass.

  It wasn’t just guilt. There was a hell of a lot of helplessness built into what he was feeling. If he could undo it now he would, but he couldn’t. That was the bitch about TESLA—there was no escape button to hit, no rewind, no pause. Whatever they wanted to make happen, happened. Most of the time, it happened just like it was supposed to, but sometimes Nature added her own surprise. That was never easy to take.

  In the beginning, when they’d gone to live testing, and then had actually gone live, none of it had been easy to take. He’d fall into bed and try to block out the knowledge that everything he’d done that day would have both intended and unintended consequences; some people would benefit, others would likely be harmed. And he’d thought about leaving—a lot. Then the WinFly window had closed and he’d been stuck. Slowly, he’d gotten comfortable with what he was doing, with playing God; it had gone from being a job to being a challenge. He hadn’t been alone.

  Greg had known that everyone in the sandbox had serious conscience issues when what they did moved from the realm of theory to application. He’d skillfully and deliberately led them along the path from conscience-stricken to competitive; up until a little while ago, they had all been living comfortably in the same cozy rut, wreaking havoc for fun and profit. Sometimes Nik would realize they were like kids striving for gold stars or a pat on the head, but he’d get over it. Greg had been brilliant when it came to making what they did seem like a dangerous game, one step removed from reality. After all, nothing they did ever affected their reality.

  We were all complicit. Now, we’re all culpable.

  He could kick himself for being such a clueless, adolescent prick. Now—when he couldn’t do a damned thing to stop his own storm or anything more that Greg might have planned—Nik felt like he was waking from a coma, wondering why the hell he’d done what he did. It wasn’t just Ellie his storm was about to terrorize, it was the hundreds of people on that flight. Everyone on any military, cruise, or container ships in the region. Islanders would be nailed as the storm broke up and dissipated across the South Pacific—and possibly a lot of them if the storm didn’t break up and instead combined with some unforeseen variable and grew into something really big. Supercyclones weren’t unheard of.

  He shut his office door behind him and leaned against it for a long moment, feeling vaguely nauseated. Then he walked to his desk and woke up his computer, grimly determined to find out what Greg’s code was doing and stop it before it could do any more damage.

  CHAPTER 15

  Eleanor Ryder-Pentson, the former executive assistant to and brand-new third wife of one of the most powerful lobbyists in the agriculture industry, looked at her left hand, which was clasped—partly in affection and partly in desperation—with her new husband’s right hand on the armrest of their first-class seats on the inaugural Dreamliner flight from San Francisco to Fiji. It was an eloquent, telling tableau. His hand was so tanned, so rugged, so scarred and lived-in despite the neat, buffed nails; her hand was pale, smooth, and pampered. And it sported a pink marquise-cut diamond that would make Paris Hilton weep with envy.

  The stone was huge, cold, and heavy on her hand. Wearing it still felt strange even after nearly a year. Ellie was sure she’d get used to it. Eventually. It was a bit more flashy—make that a lot more flashy—than she’d have chosen, if she’d been given the choice. But she hadn’t been. With every ounce of diplomacy in her, she’d tried to explain that she generally went for simpler things. But Mitchell hadn’t gotten where he was by taking no for an answer, so she’d acquiesced as gracefully as she could. After nearly a decade of wearing a plain gold band while married to a plain old man, Mitchell had said, she needed something with some sparkle and flash to suit her new life.

  If Nik had heard that, he would have ruptured his appendix laughing.

  She stiffened and caught her breath. Get out of my head, Nik.

  “Are you doing all right, Ellie?” Mitchell’s voice, so deep, so well-trained to convey exactly what was called for—in this case, kindness tinged with just a hint of condescension—reached her ears and went no farther. She turned to look at him, a tight, bright smile on her face.

  “I’m fine,” she said with considerably more cheerful confidence than she felt. He smiled back and squeezed her hand.

  “Good.”

  A scrawny kid raised in the vast openness of central Wisconsin, Mitchell Pentson had learned early on that the last thing he wanted to do was spend his life shoveling snow off barn roofs for a few months a year and shoveling cow shit out of stalls for all of them, and doing it while denying himself every pleasure. Years of listening to his parents and their neighbors worry over every expense and rant about the cuts in government subsidies and land grabs by greedy agroindustrialists had taught him what true power was. He’d realized then that money was more important than loyalty because it could get you what you wanted faster. Using your brains brought bigger rewards than using your brawn ever could.

  He wanted that money, that power, that influence, and a whole lot more besides. So he’d done whatever was called for to get himself into the University of Wisconsin, then Harvard Law, and then onto K Street. Still only in his early forties, he was already widely respected—or feared, depending on who you asked. And not just in his own industry, but in Washington in general. Several movers and shakers had suggested to Mitchell that he move back to the center of the country and consider running for office.
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  Ellie knew that Mitchell’s mature, easy good looks hid a ruthless determination to succeed. He got what he wanted and rarely played fair. With his Common Man background and insider experience, Mitchell would do justice to any office.

  “Happy?” Mitchell asked, his eyes scanning her face.

  “Divinely.” Ellie forced another smile and leaned forward to accept his kiss.

  She hated to fly more than just about anything in the world. She hated to fly even more than she’d hated being single; more than she’d hated getting divorced; even more than she’d hated being married to Nik for that last year, which was saying a lot.

  Yet here she was, cruising five or six miles above the biggest, deepest ocean on the planet. It wasn’t a complaint, she assured herself, it was a sign of how much she loved and trusted Mitchell. He was wonderful and thoughtful, and there would always be topics on which they differed. Some, like this one, would be a topic she considered significant. He thought her usual mechanism for coping with flight-related stress—sleeping pills—was dangerous, and he’d made it clear that he didn’t want to spend the first day of his honeymoon next to an unconscious bride. Good Champagne was his solution to her jitters.

  Reluctantly, Ellie had agreed, and the first cork had been popped before business class finished boarding. She’d been smiling and sipping dutifully ever since because she wanted to please him, but Ellie knew there wasn’t enough bubbly on the planet to turn her into a carefree flier. That’s why, without telling Mitchell, she’d taken enough anti-anxiety meds to make water-boarding sound like a good time. But even that wasn’t working.

  She truly, truly wanted nothing more at this moment than to be on solid ground or even the deck of a ship or, failing that, unconscious. Anything would be better than enduring this hours-long feeling that each moment could be her last, that the natural laws of force and motion and momentum would succumb to the supremacy of gravity and she would fall out of the sky, hurtling to earth in a ball of smoky fire and screaming metal.

  The thought became all too real a split second later, when the plane did one of those odd, startling little mid-flight plummets. Perfectly typical. Perfectly terrifying.

  Ellie choked on a breath and instinctively squeezed Mitchell’s hand as hard as she could.

  He laughed gently and disengaged his hand to slide his arm around her. His other hand covered hers as it gripped the armrest. “Ellie, sweetheart, you’re safer up here than you are driving home every night across those D.C. bridges,” he murmured into her hair. “Relax. It’s like hitting a bump in the road. Harmless.”

  “I know the statistics, Mitchell,” she hissed, trying to sound reasonable and failing miserably, “but we’re not on a road. We’re in the air, over the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from the nearest land mass. There are no bumps up here.”

  “Updrafts. Whatever. Darling, nothing is going to happen. Let’s have some more Champagne,” he said, reaching up to press the call button and then taking her hand again.

  His easy gesture and soothing words were interrupted by the soft bong of the seat belt sign coming on, immediately followed by the click of an open microphone and the pilot’s voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a bit of high-altitude weather forming ahead of us. It’s not unusual in the tropics to run into these upper-air disturbances. We’re going to try to get above it, but things might get a little bumpy. At this time, I’d like to ask you to please return to your seats if you’re moving about the cabin, and make sure your seat belts are securely fastened.”

  The flight attendants moved a little more quickly as they passed through the cabin, removing trays and empty glasses, and checking passengers’ laps for compliance.

  “Ellie, you’re cutting off my circulation,” Mitchell laughed, kissing the back of her hand as he disengaged her fingers.

  “Oh God, Mitchell. I hate turbulence. I hate flying. I hate … this,” she whispered, tightening her seat belt until there was no more give and wishing her seat had a chest harness like the flight attendants’ seats had.

  “Just breathe, Ellie. Slowly. Close your eyes if it helps, darling.” Mitchell pulled her close, tucking her head onto his broad, warm chest just as the plane began to bounce and wobble.

  “Oh God, Mitchell, I told you staying at The Greenbriar would be fine,” she snapped. “We could have driven there. You wouldn’t listen.”

  “Ellie—”

  “Why did I ever agree to this?” she moaned into his shirt, her eyes squeezed shut, her body rigid.

  “Shh, Ellie, Ellie, it’s nothing. Just a little bumpy air.” He ran a gentle hand over her hair.

  Then, making a liar out of him, the plane jerked and swayed as wildly as a Wall Streeter on a mechanical bull. The gasps and muffled cries from around the cabin did nothing to console Ellie. She gripped the front of Mitchell’s shirt in her hands, not even hearing the small sound of the fine silken threads snapping.

  I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to—

  The public address system came on again, more staticky this time. “Flight attendants, take your seats.”

  Oh God. Oh God. Hail Mary, full of—shit, shit, shit, what am I doing up here?

  A scream built in her throat as the plane made an unnatural movement sideways, as if the hand of God was trying to slap it out of the sky. Ellie’s mind went blank. She felt like she had the time she got caught in one of those awful, heavy Alaskan blizzards, when every human sense was smothered by white and cold and you couldn’t tell if you were hallucinating or dying.

  The aircraft made a sudden, steep plunge that felt like it would never end, as if the plane had been thrown toward the earth. Screams came from all corners of the plane. Even Mitchell stopped murmuring reassuring platitudes. She felt his body go rigid, his hands gripping her painfully, his fingers digging into her arms and back. Lightning strobed outside so brightly that it lit up the insides of her squeezed-shut eyelids.

  The plummeting stopped just as suddenly as it had started, as if that same awesome hand had jerked the huge jet to a shuddering halt. Braced to hear the hellish squeal of the plane’s superstructure being torn apart, Ellie heard nothing but sobbing, cursing, and moaning. There was no thunderous crack as the composite frame fractured, no violent splash of icy salt water or ungodly roar of frigid, sucking air. Fully intact, the plane kept flying, buffeted viciously by winds that Ellie just knew were about to rip off the wings.

  Death has to be better than living through this. Death would be peaceful. Death would be calm. Take me. I’m ready. I don’t want to do this anymore.

  Yet the massive jet, made puny by the magnificence of the storm, kept moving, as if it would never give up even such a hopeless fight. Over and over, the airliner lurched up through the sky at ear-popping speeds only to freefall again as if in mortal agony, the helpless victim in a sadistic game of atmospheric cat-and-mouse.

  It didn’t take long for the acrid stench of vomit to fill the cabin and, in sympathy with her fellow panic-stricken passengers, Ellie’s stomach released its contents all over the beautiful, comforting man who had just sworn to be at her side through the good times and bad. And then the woman Nik had called a perfection-seeking, brass-balled bitch with a glacier where her heart should be the last time he saw her began to sob like a terrified child.

  CHAPTER 16

  The windows in Gianni Barone’s office stretched nearly floor to ceiling. They were scrupulously kept clean and offered an unsurpassed view of the Greenwich Yacht Club and, in the distance, Long Island. The view and the office had only been his for a little over a year, since he’d been brought from the depths of mid-management into the C-suite at Flint AgroChemical as chief technology officer and vice president of strategic planning. Before that he’d been, well, not quite a grunt, but a mid-level executive who kept his hands dirty playing with the toys he’d helped create.

  Gianni had come up through the ranks of the software development world, but not on the retail s
ide or the Web side. His early employers didn’t have pool tables and latte machines in the office, didn’t take their nerdy wünderkinder on cruises on a whim, didn’t sponsor intramural Nerf basketball tournaments with their fiercest competitors. No, during the years when the chic geeks were vying to see who could place the most outrageous demands on their employer, Gianni was working on the dark side of technology, for military contractors. No cushy offices, fancy food, or prima donna behavior had ever clouded his vision.

  He’d started earning his chops straight out of college, working in top-secret installations that rivaled one another for re-creating the most Spartan workspaces: cavernous warehouse sites with cement floors and forty-foot ceilings from which dangled infant spacecraft mock-ups held together with duct tape and tinfoil, the coated wire of their guts spilling to the floor in Gordian tangles. He’d kept at it for a decade or so, burrowing deeper and deeper into the darkest recesses of the black tech world until he’d found his niche. In Alaska. At HAARP, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program funded primarily by the United States Navy. HAARP’s multi-acre array of antennae held the promise of changing the world.

  Weather “research”—a euphemism for the manipulation and control of the world’s most chaotic and powerful system—was something Gianni had never considered getting involved with only because he hadn’t known it existed outside of comic books and science fiction novels. When the Beltway bandits he worked for pulled him off a space-borne-weapon project to put out some high-end digital fires on HAARP, it was as if angels had started humming in his ears.

  His new boss, Greg Simpson, hadn’t had to persuade Gianni to remain on the tundra. Or to follow him when Greg left HAARP for Flint and TESLA seven years earlier.

  By that time, Gianni had had enough of endless snow and ice. Connecticut sounded like heaven. The lure of a big salary and somewhere to spend it—like Manhattan—had enticed him back to the lower forty-eight and kept him there. Greg had been disappointed when Gianni had remained at the corporate headquarters instead of accompanying the newly assembled team to the depths of Antarctica. As a trade-off, Greg had asked Gianni to become his eyes and ears in the halls of power. Gianni had accepted eagerly—especially since Croyden Flint had asked him, not long before, to keep a close eye on Greg.