Dry Ice

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  There is going to be an ass-kicking like no other when I see him.

  He took a deep drag on the first Marlboro Red he’d smoked in five years. The harsh burn of the smoke entering his lungs was like the handshake of an old friend and, as such, he held on to it for a minute.

  It had ceased to matter to Croyden that Gianni had kept things humming at TESLA as Greg went down the tubes, that he’d found the perfect replacement for Greg, and that the array was beating all expectations in terms of benefitting the company and trashing the competition. It didn’t matter that the whole project was moving toward profitability faster than even the most optimistic estimates had predicted.

  In thanks, Gianni had become the whipping boy. Greg blamed him for the selection of Tess as his replacement. Croyden blamed him for Greg’s attitude. And Secretary Bonner had had a few choice words for him on a secure call late this afternoon. With Medev gone, Flint’s relationship with the Pentagon was in tatters and probably beyond repair.

  He took another drag and blew a stream of blue smoke toward the ceiling.

  It’s time to start thinking about the future.

  * * *

  On the other side of the country, the northern mountain air had been engaged in a metastatic churn for the last twenty-four hours. Overnight, Thursday’s heavy clouds had cleared and the storm that had trailed them had stopped unexpectedly and was parked on one side of the mountains. The other side, home to Park City, Utah, was graced with a surprising, blindingly clear sky for Friday morning’s first run. The multitude of spring-break skiers packed into the gondolas and the lines waiting for them had been in high spirits, laughing at the turn in the weather that had the TV weather guys stumped while keeping this bastion of sportsmen, socialites, and celebrities a paradise for one more day. Sunny skies, easy breezes, and deep powder, with the promise of more snow overnight, had resort managers beaming and their personnel working overtime.

  By noon, the well-heeled skiers still on the slopes and those lunching on the balconies overlooking them were reveling in the warmth of the high-altitude midday sun. Jackets were off, and, in some cases, shirts. The temperatures continued to climb and by late afternoon the conditions on some of the more exposed trails had become slick. Experienced shushers handled it; the inexperienced and the show-offs kept the Ski Patrol and emergency care centers busy with breaks and sprains. A few black diamond runs and the bunny hills were reluctantly closed due to unsafe conditions.

  When the sun slid below the high horizon, the expected slide in temperature didn’t happen and the town officials’ initial glee turned to more-than-mild concern. The warm air lingered, in defiance of local memory and natural order. Hotel executives frowned while, oblivious to the worries of their profit-minded hosts, guests lingered outdoors, enjoying their drinks in the oddly warm night air and wondering idly what the skiing would be like tomorrow. Sheriff’s deputies patrolled the streets, braced for a long shift filled with shouting revelers who had no need for an early night and no reason to remain sober.

  Not long after the town was finally asleep, the stalled storm began to move. Slowly pushing their way over the Wasatch peaks, the still-heavy clouds encountered the warm air.

  It began to rain.

  CHAPTER 24

  Helena Hernandez had already become used to the near-constant stream of people and interruptions.

  But when getting dressed at five A.M., I should be allowed a sacrosanct moment.

  With a sigh, she acknowledged the tap on her dressing room door. It could only be her personal assistant. “Yes?” she said, pulling on the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy T-shirt that she favored for working out.

  “Ms. President, I’m so sorry to bother you, but Ms. Wonson would like to see you for a moment.”

  “Thank you. Send her in.”

  The door opened and Maribeth walked in, in a suit, hair in place, makeup flawless, not at all discomposed by seeing her boss in sweats with no makeup and her hair heading in all directions. “Thank you, Ms. President. Candy Freeman called a few minutes ago. She would like to see you as soon as she can.”

  Helena was the first president in the nation’s history to have a national security advisor focused solely on the atmosphere and environment. Candy Freeman was one of the few people she could trust to sift through the hysteria and hyperbole that infected every mention of climate and weather. Candy had spent twenty years at the Central Intelligence Agency, first as a weather analyst, then as a supervisor, and eventually as a chief in the directorate of technology and research. She’d brought the nerdy weather research group from career-killing obscurity to career-making prominence, and was leading the way in the emerging world of counter-eco-terrorism.

  Candy had cemented her reputation by maximizing her team’s skillful intelligence-gathering and analysis of Hurricane Simone a few years earlier; their behind-the-scenes response to the recent undersea methane release in the Caribbean had been not only impressive but critical to saving millions of lives. Among those intimately familiar with both crises, there was wide agreement that Candy was one of the unsung heroes. In the court of public opinion, though, there hadn’t been any heroes, only villains, and the government’s halfhearted response to the disasters had been the tipping point in the downfall of the previous administration.

  Whatever it was Candy wanted to talk about now, it couldn’t be good.

  “When’s my next opening?” she asked, tying her workout shoes.

  “Now. Your schedule is already overbooked. She asked if you could meet her in the Situation Room.”

  Years spent in the public eye had given Helena the ability to avoid showing surprise under the most trying circumstances, but nothing had ever been able to quell the jump in her gut at the sound of certain phrases. “Meet me in the Situation Room” was one of those phrases.

  “Did she say what she wanted to discuss?”

  “That storm in Connecticut yesterday afternoon and the floods in Central California.”

  “What about them? I’ve already declared each area a federal disaster zone.”

  “She wouldn’t tell me, Madam President. She said I wasn’t cleared.”

  The president’s secretary is cleared for everything.

  “Who else will be there?”

  “Defense, NDI, NOAA, and—” Maribeth glanced at the pad in her hand. “Someone from the Office of Ionospheric Monitoring.”

  Helena frowned at her secretary. “Is that NASA?”

  “Pentagon,” Maribeth replied, then looked up and shrugged. “I never heard of them until yesterday. That admiral who committed—”

  “Oh God. Don’t remind me.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He worked there.”

  Wonderful. Helena kicked off her shoes and shimmied out of her workout pants, motioning for Maribeth to hand her a pair of casual pressed slacks hanging behind her. She ripped off the T-shirt and threw on a cotton sweater. Slipping into a pair of loafers, Helena left the room in search of a hairbrush.

  Minutes later, the president entered the main conference area in the Situation Room suite, casually dressed, barely coiffed, and flanked by an aide. Nodding at the small group standing around the table and the larger group lingering near chairs that lined the walls, Helena noticed that the flat-screen monitors lining the walls were alive with images of the aftermath of each of the storms. The scope of the damage was unfathomable.

  The storms had been incredibly severe, destroying the heart of each community like a well-aimed bomb, then spreading outward in every direction. Video feeds from the ground, helicopters, and satellites showed the destruction in varying degrees of horrendous detail.

  News footage showed the displaced residents wearing the same dazed, disbelieving expressions the nation had seen on the survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Simone as they stood weeping, surveying the complete destruction of their lives and neighborhoods, and sometimes their families. It didn’t really matter whether the cars upturned or floating in the muddy waters were Buicks or Bentleys,
or whether the flattened homes had been huge and priced in the millions or tin-roofed shacks. The shock and horror and sense of loss were the same.

  Helena took her seat at the head of the table. Before the others had seated themselves, she turned her eyes to Candy Freeman, possibly the only woman in her administration shorter than herself.

  “What do you have?”

  “Weather manipulation, ma’am,” Candy said without preamble, her deep, West Texas accent sounding curt for the first time ever. “I’ve got a meeting in a little while with a man who might be able to help us out. His name is Gianni Barone. He was the last person to speak with Admiral Medev before his, uh, accident. Barone is an executive with Flint AgroChemical.” She paused minutely. “He’s in charge of their weather manipulation division.”

  “I didn’t know they had a weather manipulation division,” Helena replied drily, not liking the plunge her stomach took at Candy’s words.

  “Most people don’t. They call it their ‘climate research working group’ when they refer to it at all, which isn’t often. We’ve been watching them for a while. I’m still gathering information, but it appears that we may have even done a little business with them.”

  Helena stared at her. “Say that again.”

  “We might have availed ourselves of their services. Not the administration, ma’am, or at least not yours, but possibly the Pentagon. I’ve got to get more data on that.”

  “Please do.”

  “This group, Barone’s group, isn’t like the research groups at other agribusiness conglomerates, Ms. President. Flint isn’t just funding studies to try to find the best conditions and locations for growing their crops.” Candy shook her head, setting her fluffy blond curls into motion. “Flint has been quietly engaging in active and expensive types of applied research. For years they’ve been hiring upper-atmosphere experts and other geniuses, like high-level software developers with deep experience in aerospace navigation, military weaponry, and high-end communications systems. They’ve hired hardware guys who’ve built next-generation weapons as well as some who’ve designed and built deep-space telescopes and other data-gathering equipment.”

  “Why?” Helena interrupted. “Flint’s core products are seeds, poison, and Frankenfood. Everything the environmental lobby loves to hate. What are they up to with weather manipulation?”

  “They have a vertically integrated business model. In this case, it’s literally vertical—ground to sky. Besides the things you mentioned, Flint has farms, fisheries, you name it. If it’s edible, Flint has a hand in producing it. As such, they’ve gotten into a lot of risk management lately. They offer consulting—”

  Helena barely refrained from laughing. “Okay, I’m a city girl to my core, but, Candy, risk management consulting? For farmers? I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It can mean a lot of things.” Candy shrugged. “Advising farmers about the latest practices or products to avoid crop failures, blights, or diseases, whether they’re raising plants, animals, or fish. Flint also has a very low-key financial arm. Disaster insurance, weather derivatives, that sort of thing.”

  Helena felt a chill settle at the back of her neck. “They use the financial markets to bet on natural disasters and the weather,” she said tightly. It wasn’t a question.

  “Or against them,” Candy added. “It’s not a new thing, ma’am. Enron started doing it years ago.” She paused. “We know Flint is doing atmospheric testing. They built a base in Antarctica a few years ago, very hush-hush and state of the art. They persuaded Australia to hand over some strategic real estate, which really pissed off the Russians, who are already nearby, and the Chinese, who were negotiating for the same spot.”

  “What’s the attraction?” Helena asked.

  “Isolation, for one. It’s a thousand miles from any coastline. Very difficult to get to from anywhere. They have a fleet of planes—Russian planes—specially equipped to make long-haul flights, and flight crews that consist of ex-military personnel with polar flight experience. They typically fly out of Capetown, South Africa, instead of Christchurch, New Zealand, like nearly all other U.S. interests. In other words, they’ve been pretty obvious about not wanting anyone to know what they’re doing. That folds into what I think is the bigger reason for their secretiveness, which is that their little slice of heaven is critically near the South Geomagnetic Pole.”

  “We have a base at the South Pole, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do, a small one. But the South Pole is just a geographic marker, and the ice it’s on moves about ten feet a year. Then there’s the South Magnetic Pole, which is somewhere in the Southern Sea off the Antarctic Peninsula. The pole I’m talking about, the one Flint is interested in, is the South Geomagnetic Pole, which is the best place on the planet to study—or interrupt—the earth’s natural electromagnetism. And the talent they have sequestered down there on the Ice is a stellar group, ma’am. They pilfered several of our people from HAARP.” She stopped. “Ms. President, do you know about HAARP?”

  Helena met Candy’s clear gaze. It was as cold and hard as the ice she was talking about. Blond, pretty, confident, Anglo—women like Candy had always intimidated her. Granted, it was easier to shrug off these days than it had been in high school, and college, and early in her career. All she had to do was remind herself that she was the leader of the most powerful country on earth.

  Helena merely lifted one eyebrow in response to her advisor’s question. “I do. I was on the House Intelligence Committee and was contacted regularly by the tinfoil-hat crowd.”

  Others in the room twitched their mouths to avoid a smile. Candy grinned openly.

  “Yeah, well, in this case, some of those Reynolds Wrap Wonders might be on to something. Flint’s Antarctic research station is called the Terrestrial Energy Southern Land Array, TESLA for short, which is kinda cute because in the early twentieth century, Nikola Tesla did all kinds of research on harnessing and directing ionospheric energy.”

  Helena held up a hand. “Wait. That office of—what was it?”

  “The Office of Ionospheric Monitoring,” Candy supplied.

  “That’s it. Someone from that office is here, right?”

  “He’s waiting in the wings over at the Pentagon.”

  “What do they do?”

  “I’ll get to them in a minute. If I could just explain something else first, Ms. President, with your permission.”

  Helena nodded for her to continue.

  “Nikola Tesla did a lot of oddball stuff, high-end, wow-factor research like building a lightning tower out on Long Island. But he also did some things that were less well known, even a little scary, like building a particle-beam weapon. He came up with the idea of using the earth itself as a transmitter for radio and other electromagnetic signals. That idea eventually morphed into the ELF grid in the upper Midwest.” Candy cocked her head questioningly, asking without asking if Helena knew what she was talking about.

  I’ve only been in office two months and have been busy rebuilding the nation’s economy, international reputation, and a few major cities. I might have missed a few details.

  “Go on,” was all she said.

  Candy nodded once. “Yes, ma’am. ELF stands for Extremely Low Frequency. It’s a range of radio frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum that can be used to transmit messages over long distances. But instead of the regular sort of antennae, like dishes or dipoles, the physical system for ELF is a huge underground grid of transmitters that we use for, among other things, staying in contact with our submarines when they’re deeply submerged. The grid covers hundreds of square miles of the Upper Midwest because at those frequencies, the wavelengths are measurable in miles. The subs trail receivers a few miles long to pick up the transmissions—”

  “Are you getting off track, Ms. Freeman?” Helena asked, feeling as if her brain were starting to swell and press against the inside of her forehead. Unfortunately, science had always had that effect on her.


  “Yes, ma’am, a little. Okay, back to Tesla. The man, I mean. He also messed around at the other end of the spectrum—and again, I mean that literally. He pioneered the idea that the sky, the atmosphere itself, could be used as a giant transmitter to bounce signals around the earth. Fast signals traveling long distances with no interference. Well, we’ve tried that, and it works. It’s why we built HAARP.”

  Candy tapped a long fingernail against the polished surface of the cherry conference table. “This is where the conspiracy-theory whackdoodles come into it. Their undies are in a permanent bunch. They swear that messing around in the atmosphere causes everything from the ozone hole to the Northern Lights, from earthquakes to erectile dysfunction and PMS. They say we use radio waves for mind control and weather as a weapon to punish uncooperative countries, and they get more creative from there.”

  She paused and folded her manicured hands, with their hot-orange nails, in front of her on the heavy table. “Trouble is, some of what they say is close to accurate, ma’am, at least when it comes to HAARP. We think that at Flint’s TESLA base, they’ve taken it a few steps closer to the edge of woo-woo, that they actually can manipulate weather—move weather systems, stall them, even create them.”

  Helena felt a disturbing flutter at the base of her throat as her pulse kicked up a few beats. She held up a hand, indicating Candy should pause, then motioned to the aide standing nearby. She scrawled I want the Afghan report from SecDef Bonner ASAP and nodded at the aide, who nodded back and immediately left the room.

  The president returned her attention to Candy. “You think that Flint might be behind yesterday’s storms.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The room was silent except for the soft susurrus of temperature-controlled air breezing through the ceiling vents and the very faint background hum of the white noise deliberately introduced as a security feature. Helena kept her eyes on Candy and the cloud of blond curls that framed her gracefully aging Barbie-doll face. The only thing that didn’t mesh with the national security advisor’s carefully constructed aura of ultimate femininity was the look in Candy’s eyes. It was unmistakably challenging, though not disrespectful.