Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  But the boom broke off and tumbled into the barren scrub. The aircraft wobbled from side to side, then finally touched down. It skidded, then the tires kicked up foam that enveloped the plane. All Bayclock could see was a huge ball of dust, foam, dirt and debris as ambulances and emergency vehicles raced down the runway.

  Bayclock slammed his hand on the staff car, leaving a small dent. “Shit hot!” Jumping inside, he took off for the runway, barely giving Mayor Reinski time to climb in. He didn’t care if the mayor had to walk.

  As they pulled up to the KC 10 hissing and cooling on the tarmac, Bayclock saw long streaks of water and dirt along its fuselage. The crew staggered out of the plane down a long aluminum ladder, and an ambulance whisked them away. He felt vindicated as emergency personnel stepped up to the tanker and sprayed fire retardant over the fuselage.

  General Bayclock’s perfect track record had yet to be broken.

  Chapter 9

  In the middle of San Francisco Bay, the volunteers gathered on forested Angel Island to meet the oncoming black tide. Standing on the rocky shore, they looked like desperate defenders pitted against an overwhelming force.

  On the pier in Ayala Cove, Jackson Harris fought to keep despair from crushing him. Three days, and the job still seemed immense, impossible—but if he let himself start believing it to be a hopeless task, he wouldn’t be able to go on. His stomach felt watery and knotted from his anger.

  While corporate cleanup crews concentrated on the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, and other high-visibility areas, Harris was outraged to learn that they had written off one of his favorite spots in the Bay Area. He and his wife Daphne had worked the phones nonstop to bring a team together on the secluded island state park in the middle of the Bay. Together, they had plugged into their own activist network and mustered volunteers to protect Angel Island. The group received equipment from a handful of Oakland industries, which had donated dozens of dumpsters and tons of plastic garbage bags to hold the oil-stained rags and other debris from cleaning the shoreline.

  Acrid chemical fumes mixed with the stench of decaying bodies of birds and fish. Staring across the foul water, Harris spoke into his radio to the boats out on the slick. “Keep to your search pattern. Pick up all the birds and sea otters you can get.” They would try to save the live ones, but even carcasses were important for the lawsuits to be filed against Oilstar.

  Harris lifted his thumb from the TALK button. He scratched his scraggly beard, still frowning. He hadn’t showered in days, not that primitive and isolated Angel Island had such facilities; he hadn’t slept much in the past three days either.

  Off Point Stuart, the edge of the island closest to the spill, Harris’s group had sunk 55-gallon drums filled with cement to anchor a long string of buoys in an inverted “V”. Between the buoys, they strung heavy plastic fabric as a diversion boom to split the flow of thick crude and deflect it around the island. Yesterday when the spill struck, the “V” bifurcated the oil… but not enough. Now the black flow curled around to slop against the shore.

  Harris left the pier and crunched down the crumbling, poorly maintained road. At the charcoal picnic grills, groups of volunteer kids cooked an endless supply of hot dogs and hamburgers for the famished workers. Harris stretched his aching arms, but decided he could stand some more heavy work. No time for rest. Never any time for rest. The spill would keep moving, keep destroying, and only he and his volunteers stood in its path.

  At the water’s edge, people in rubber wader boots stood in the oozing crude. They dunked five-gallon buckets to scoop thick oil from the surface, passing each bucket to the next person in line. Once again dredging deep inside himself for just a little more energy, Harris slipped into the brigade line, relieving one of the brothers who looked ready to drop. The man nodded his thanks, then staggered to the grassy picnic area and collapsed onto a weathered picnic table.

  A loud radio boomed music from a San Francisco Top 40 station, but few of the volunteers seemed to hear the tunes. Harris loved music, but in the last few days it seemed like his capacity to love anything at all had been smothered by the spreading blanket of crude.

  The fire-brigade line skimmed oil, one bucket at a time. It would take his people ten million buckets to remove all the oil spilled by Zoroaster. Harris refused to admit it was a hopeless task, because that would pop the fragile soap bubble of stamina that kept him going.

  After dragging another heavy bucket partway up the beach, Harris handed it to the next person in line, who lugged it to the reservoir tanks. Harris looked down at his thigh-length rubber boots, yellow rain slicker, and canvas gloves, all smeared with sticky brown oil darker than his skin.

  The walkie talkie at his side crackled again. “Jackson, this is Linda. We have to come back in. Boat’s overloaded.”

  He handed off another bucket and stepped out of the brigade line, pulling off his gloves and grabbing the walkie talkie. “All right, man. We’ll get another crew to take over.”

  A few minutes later, a fishing boat puttered toward the dock. Harris yelled for another group to help off-load the cargo of carcasses and surviving animals the rescue crew had scooped up. Among the other volunteers, his wife Daphne ran up to help.

  Trim and wiry, with very dark skin, she looked beautiful even with oil smeared on her face and frayed overalls and sweat trickling down her neck. When Daphne had studied law at Berkeley under a scholarship, she probably never imagined herself in a place like this. But Daphne wanted to help needy people, help the environment, taking a job in a small firm in Oakland so she could work in the volunteer legal-aid clinics.

  She gave Harris a weary smile, bent toward him for a kiss, then laughed, smudging him with oil. On his lips, the oil tasted like vile medicine. The humor lasted only a moment before they both helped to off-load the stricken animals onto the pier.

  They carried the live ones first—sea otters, terns, and gulls soaked in oil. Three people stood together, straining to haul the first sea lion from the boat. It panted, squirming in a slow-motion effort to fight. Its wide brown eyes were encircled by the red of internal hemorrhaging.

  Harris knew what the oil was doing to the internal organs of this struggling creature. Its kidneys would fail, unable to filter such massive amounts of waste products from the bloodstream; its intestines would be immobilized, preventing the absorption of nutrients. He felt bile rise in his throat. He remembered hundreds of sea lions sprawled on Fisherman’s Wharf, sunning themselves and bellowing.

  Most animals, even the ones “rescued,” would probably die from the spill anyway. Oil-soaked pinfeathers or fur no longer insulated the animals from the cold waters of the Bay. Many could not float, and would drown in the sludge-covered water.

  Daphne and the others took the animals to hand-pumped shower stations, where they squirted soapy water and used brushes to scrub off the oil. Daphne worked quickly, weaving her hands out of the way of an exhausted seagull, alarmed by the movement but too exhausted to struggle, as the panicked but stunned bird tried to peck any object that came near it.

  The team worked in silence, unable to manage the usual banter of volunteers engaged in a large job. Even if the animals survived to be released again, they would simply return to the Bay, where they would get contaminated again. Seeing the animals’ plight tore at Jackson’s heart; he could not just leave the creatures to die a variety of slow, cruel deaths. The odds were against them, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

  The boom-box radio announced a spill update, and gave a short human-interest story on the heroic volunteer efforts under way on Angel Island, which drew a scattered but lukewarm cheer. Then the reporter said, “Oilstar Public Relations Officer Henry Cochran claims their efforts to clean up the spill are being hindered by environmental restrictions that prevent them from mounting an all-out response.”

  A man’s voice continued, speaking for the oil company in a slow, reedy voice that sounded like a prepared statement. “We have well-researched a
nd innovative solutions for coping with this problem, but the government says we need weeks of study before taking this action. That’s ridiculous! Look out in the Bay—how can we just sit around, knowing we’ve got a possible cure? Tomorrow, Oilstar will hold a ‘town meeting’ to discuss a crucial plan to decrease the spill by 40 percent within a four-to-five day period, leaving no toxic residue. But we’ll probably be restrained—again—by bureaucracy and finger-pointing. We have a solution. If the State and Federal governments won’t let us use it, don’t blame Oilstar.”

  Jackson Harris stared across the water to the northern part of the Bay. He could see where the Richmond-San Rafael bridge terminated near the Oilstar refinery. How could they make such preposterous claims? Forty percent of the spill gone in a few days? No toxic residue? Did they have some sort of magic wand?

  He did not trust the big oil company, but they wouldn’t make such wild claims unless they had something. And after seeing the relatively minor success of his volunteers’ efforts, he was just about willing to give Oilstar a chance.

  Chapter 10

  Heather Dixon fixed her eyes on the set of plane tickets in her new boss’s hands, trying to control her frustration. Albert “You can call me Al” Sysco tapped the tickets against his palm as he sat on the corner of her desk in an attempt to make himself look taller.

  “Sorry, Heather,” he said. “Boston changed their mind and wanted me to go at the last minute. They think people will be more receptive dealing with managers instead of the worker bees.”

  Bullshit, she thought. Surety Insurance knew he’d take this trip as soon as he got the promotion instead of me.

  Sysco tucked the tickets in the breast pocket of his polyester suit. Heather knew the itinerary: a small plane to Phoenix from the Surety Insurance western headquarters in Flagstaff, Arizona, then a jet into San Francisco International. Sysco would be traveling with four other Surety middle managers, all male, none more qualified than herself.

  Ambulance-chasing lawyers were descending on the Zoroaster spill like locusts, sniffing for lawsuits. The insurance industry was orchestrating a defense, gearing up to fight the claims. The main Surety headquarters in Boston had already announced plans to argue that damage caused by the oil spill should be classed as the result of an Act of God or a terrorist action, neither of which would be covered by most policies. Sysco would fly to San Francisco and stay in fine hotels, leaving the “worker bees” back home in Flagstaff.

  “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Heather asked, knowing damned well what he was going to say.

  “Take over my desk.”

  For months Sysco had dropped unpleasant innuendoes about Heather Dixon’s incompetence, about her lack of dedication to Surety and her ability to be a team player. If it hadn’t been for Sysco’s self-serving maneuvers, she would have gotten the job of auto claims section manager herself.

  Heather decided not just to hope, but to actually pray that his plane crashed en route. Not a big fiery crash—just one so that Sysco would never be found, where he could survive for awhile in the Arizona desert and spend a long, slow time dying of thirst. Maybe the other middle managers would have to eat him for sustenance… but then they’d probably die of food poisoning.

  “Gee, I’ll do my best, Mr. Sysco.” She batted her eyes like the brain-dead bimbo he seemed to think she was.

  She had never learned how to wear a dress with feline grace; she was tall and well-built, yet not graceful enough to be a model. Her mother called her “clunky.” Her reddish-brown hair hung perfectly straight. In her thirty years, Heather had tried dozens of different styles, long and short, even once with a punkish scarlet streak. No one seemed to notice.

  Albert Sysco didn’t catch the sarcasm in her answer. “I’ll be back in three days. Try not to screw up too much.” He turned, a medium-sized man on the outside, remarkably small on the inside.

  Heather gave him the finger under her desk. She heard a quiet snicker and whirled to see Stacie, the other claims-resolution assistant, watching from her desk. As Sysco slipped into his cubicle, Stacie flipped him off too.

  Heather smiled. She had worked at Surety for seven years, but she couldn’t say she enjoyed it.

  The phone rang, but Stacie ignored it. “At least he’ll be out of our face for a few days,” she said.

  Heather nodded. “I guess that’s a better vacation than going with him.”

  Chapter 11

  Everybody screwed up. Everybody insisted it would never happen again. No one learned the lesson.

  Alex Kramer felt numb, standing in the eye of a storm of shouting and accusations at Oilstar’s “town meeting.” He wanted to shout back, to wring a few necks at the insanity of the entire situation: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. More than anything, he wanted to be at home, alone, searching for peace.

  He had known Oilstar’s public meeting would be a circus, but he hadn’t thought he himself would be thrust at the center of it. The bedlam in the room drowned his words. Standing at the podium, he closed his eyes and took a breath, trying to ignore the pain from the cancer chewing at his body.

  Mitch Stone, at first disappointed at not being Branson’s chosen spokesman, now sat in the front row—in a new suit and tie, of course—grinning support for Alex.

  The audience murmured like a torch-bearing mob ready to storm the scientist’s castle. Alex gripped the sturdy podium with stiff hands, using it as an anchor. Just get it over with, he thought.

  Out in the room, the spectators fidgeted on folding metal chairs that creaked as people sat down. Tripods with cameras stood in the corners. In the back of the room a silver coffee urn crouched above flickering blue sterno flames, flanked by stacks of styrofoam cups. Alex could smell the fear, feel palpable anger rising in waves from the audience. It strengthened his resolve.

  It’ll never happen again. I promise.

  Alex saw two factions in the audience: “Luddites” and “Techno-Nazis.” The Luddites feared change, arguing that industry had caused the disaster in the first place. They would tear up experimental pest-resistant crops because they had been “tampered with,” only to complain later about the use of pesticides; or they would “liberate” animals from medical labs, and later complain about the lack of progress in AIDS and cancer research.

  On the other side, the Techno-Nazis believed that science could solve every problem, that researchers could scribble on a blackboard and whip up a miracle cure given a few sleepless nights and a lovely lab assistant. They would wave aside checks and balances, safety regulations and argue that “natural” solutions were too slow, too late, and too ineffective.

  Alex flinched but stood like a statue against the public outcry. Once he dropped the first pebble to start the cleansing avalanche, Alex could collapse and let the events bury him. But not until he succeeded in setting it all in motion.

  The ear-splitting squeal of an air horn shocked everyone into silence. Alex jerked around.

  Sitting in a chair toward the edge of the stage, Oilstar CEO Emma Branson held up the air horn. Her wrinkled, powdered skin was pale with controlled anger. She raised her voice beyond any need for a microphone. “Stop this nonsense!”

  Near the stage, two security guards shifted, readying themselves. Their presence made Alex uneasy. Someone had taken potshots at Branson’s house the night before, blasting out her downstairs windows. The Oilstar refinery had received two separate bomb threats in less than twelve hours, and demonstrators blocked the refinery gates. Before entering the packed meeting room, everyone in the audience stepped through a metal detector.

  The night before, Mitch had helped Alex put his presentation together. Branson had insisted that Alex be the one to speak at the press conference, implying that Mitch looked too young, that an older researcher like Alex had more credibility. “These people have seen too many slick fast-talkers,” Branson had said. “So we’re going to give them Pa—Lorne Greene—instead.”

  Now Branson stepped to the e
dge of the stage, smoothing her dress and looking down at the quieted audience like a sour high-school teacher announcing detention for the entire class. “If you let Dr. Kramer finish speaking, you’ll hear how Oilstar wants to solve this problem! Why argue before you have any information?”

  Alex tried to remember what he meant to say next. Glancing down at his notes, he pushed the ADVANCE button and turned to look at the slide on the screen.

  The picture showed an Alaskan shore, gray sky, steel-colored water. Rocks studded the beach, and thick oil covered everything. This had been the start of it all. “Here you see part of the shoreline in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez spill. Looks familiar to all of us.”

  He realized he was mumbling his words, and cleared his throat before clicking to the next slide. A rectangle of the shore, 30 meters by 12 meters, had been cordoned off. Men and women in yellow rain slickers stood outside the ropes.

  “As part of the cleanup, Exxon spent ten million dollars to test bioremediation work similar to what Oilstar is proposing. They sprayed a fertilizer called Inipol to encourage natural bacteria in the environment to break down the slowly volatilizing alkanes and simple ring hydrocarbons in the spilled crude.”

  He clicked to the next slide, showing the same test plot. This time the rocks inside the ropes showed little of the black stain. He let some of the pent-up anger and defensiveness leak into his voice. “Within ten days, the concentration of natural bacteria in shore soil samples had increased a hundred-fold, and you can already see the benefits. It’s obvious that this sort of treatment has a substantial effect.”

  Alex took a sip of tepid water, then continued through slides showing the progress of the oil-eating bacteria. “Neither Exxon nor the EPA investigated which bacteria were doing the most work, but Oilstar has had an aggressive bioremediation program under way for years. We’ve researched Alaskan bacteria and samples from deep under the ocean near natural oil seeps. We think we have something that can radically reduce the effects of this spill.”