Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “Dr. Briscoe,” Lucy interrupted, giving him a look intended to freeze the blood in his veins. “You’ve made your position on this matter perfectly clear. Obviously, this scenario is subject to further review and, while I appreciate your input, the decision about what to do is not yours to make. I need more facts before I mention anything to the president.”

  “Okay, here’s a fact. Dropping a bomb into a methane cloud will—”

  “You’re getting ahead of me, Dr. Briscoe. I never said anything about a bomb,” Lucy replied calmly. “Given what you said earlier about pressure differentials and aircraft, I inferred that the reduced density of the methane-filled air column would cause a rocket’s casing to disintegrate. The sudden change in pressure would just sort of pop the rivets, so to speak. Wouldn’t it?”

  Sam stared back at her. “It might.”

  “So we could feasibly deploy rockets carrying payloads of microbes rather than warheads, couldn’t we? With some sort of nonreactive propellant to help disperse the microbes if needed.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Excellent.” Lucy turned to Marty. “Pull together that list of researchers, Dr. Collins. And, by the way, thank you very much for bringing the subject to our attention.” She scanned the faces in the room. “Now, unfortunately, I have to close this meeting and head to the White House to meet with the president. Ms. Clark, I’d like you to continue trying to get through to Taino. Let me know instantly if you do. Dr. Briscoe, I need you to continue monitoring that plume and figuring out how best to eliminate it.”

  Everyone nodded silently, with the exception of Sam, who glared at her with something close to loathing. Lucy pressed a button on her phone console and instantly her office door opened and her assistant stepped in with a smile and began to usher everyone out.

  CHAPTER

  30

  6:30 P.M., Sunday, October 26, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

  As they were being led down the hushed corridor, a still righteously pissedoff Sam ended up walking by himself, a few feet behind Marty and Victoria Clark, who were following Lucy Denton’s aide. As furious as Sam was at Marty and what that so-called best friend had just done, Sam knew he had to get over it. And it was probably a good thing that they weren’t somewhere private, or they’d most likely both have black eyes about now. There was no mistaking that Marty was mad as hell that he’d had to be the one to bring up that old research paper—and that everyone but the paper’s author was jumping on it.

  Well, damn, shouldn’t that say something to you, Methane Man? If I don’t buy in to the idea that the microbes are the solution, how the hell can anyone else?

  Sam shook his head. It was just like Marty to pull shit like this. For all his rigorous research and geeky habits, Marty Collins had always had the soul of a tree hugger, whereas Sam had always considered himself a reality-based scientist—and had told Marty so on many occasions. While Sam’s choice of terms had been intended to annoy the hell out of his friend, the terminology hadn’t been entirely facetious. The conversation that had just taken place was proof of it.

  “Whatever the microbes might do, it probably won’t be as bad as what the methane will most certainly do if left unchecked.”

  Sam jerked his head up to see that Victoria Clark was walking beside him. “Excuse me, Ms. Clark. Was I thinking out loud?” he asked, surprised.

  She was probably one of the quietest people he’d ever met, and undeniably striking, even when she was obviously exhausted as she was now. He’d had a hard time looking away from those eyes of hers every time he’d glanced at her.

  Victoria gave him a tired smile and shook her head. “No. You didn’t say anything. I just thought that there was probably only one thing on your mind at the moment.”

  “Dozens, actually, but they’re all related,” he admitted.

  “I know you’re not in favor of releasing the microbes, but is that because you think it won’t work?” she asked softly.

  “Mostly.” He shrugged and let out an exasperated breath. “I have no idea if it will work. That question—this scenario—this wasn’t anywhere near what I was thinking when I did the research and wrote that paper. I mean, there was no thought of those bugs ever havin’ any practical, large-scale application.” He shook his head. “Even discussin’ the microbes further is goin’ to get Lucy Denton’s or the president’s hopes up, and that’s a huge mistake. We’re not talkin’ about a small thing here. We’re talking about a major release into the atmosphere—Ms. Clark, it’s too much of a long shot to work.”

  “Releasing the microbes is the only solution on the table, Dr. Briscoe.”

  “Call me Sam,” he said absently, and held the door open for her as they entered the conference room a few steps behind Marty and the aide.

  “Thank you.” She waited for him as he closed the door behind himself. “The microbes are natural; they’re not a manufactured organism, and you said all they do is eat methane. What damage could they do, other than to die without consuming the methane?”

  “I don’t know. Mutate. Replicate. Infiltrate other systems or organisms. Even if it works, there will be negative side effects, Ms. Clark. It’s just impossible to know how bad they’ll be.”

  “They could be negligible.”

  “They could be.”

  “Sounds like there’s no reason not to give it a try then.” Victoria looked him straight in the eyes and he found it hard to look away or even blink. “I’ve never been accused of being an optimist, Sam. I’ve spent my career studying the dark side of things and preventing worst-case scenarios from happening. But I think this is a chance we have to take. Work with us. There isn’t any alternative.”

  “For me, or for the methane?”

  “Either.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Any chance you know what’s in that methane?”

  Victoria’s expression zeroed back to neutrality before she answered. “What do you mean?”

  “We all know it’s not pure. You would have done analyses on it before going into a full-scale drilling operation. What’s corrupting it?”

  “What I know won’t help you,” she said after a brief pause. She set her briefcase on the table.

  “Try me.”

  She hesitated again, then met his eyes. “We injected a chemical into the deposit to stabilize the methane hydrate and keep it in a solid state as we removed it. That’s all I can tell you. It was developed in-house and I don’t know what’s in it. Only a few people do—” She stopped and Sam could see a muscle move in her cheek as she clenched her jaw.

  “And in all likelihood, all of those people are dead,” she finished. “All I can tell you is that the compound was named dennisium. I don’t know its chemical composition or properties.”

  Fucking great. “That’s all the more reason we shouldn’t mess around with microbes, Ms. Clark,” he muttered. “The strain I used was very fast-growin’. How it might interact with that dennisium is a total crap shoot. Microbes are fussy in some ways but, on a microbial scale, there will be lots of variation in environmental parameters within that plume and there’s no way of tellin’ which ones will be hospitable. The organisms could form new mutations faster than you can blink. And not just one mutation. Could be lots of different ones. Nasty ones.”

  “We have to hope for the best,” she said weakly and looked away.

  Hell, yeah, lady, you should be damned embarrassed to have just said that.

  “I’ll do that, Ms. Clark,” Sam replied sarcastically, then turned away from her and slapped his laptop on the conference table. “I got a question for you, Ms. Clark. Doesn’t have anything to do with microbes or methane.”

  “All right.”

  “I was talkin’ to someone over at your embassy earlier today and got hung up on.”

  The look she gave him left Sam in no doubt of her opinion of his brain power.

  “I’m sorry to hear it. As you can imagine, it’s been rather hectic—” she began quietly. />
  He shook his head. “Thank you, but I’m not lookin’ for an apology. I called over there to try to find out some information about a boat that might have been taken into custody.”

  Victoria’s expression didn’t change but everything about her seemed to go still. “Taken into custody? By Taino security?”

  A spider of panic raced up his spine and disappeared. He shuddered before nodding at her question. “My girlfriend and a few of her girlfriends were on a clipper cruise and got permission to go divin’ somewhere inside your waters. After the crash happened, they were told they couldn’t go divin’, but they decided to go nosin’ around anyway. My girlfriend is a TV news producer and an all-around bad influence,” he finished, his attempt at humor falling flat.

  Victoria gave him a tight smile, any recent softness he might have imagined in her eyes gone. “My orders were that all vessels not our own were to be kept outside the boundary waters, Dr. Briscoe. Any boat that did cross over would have been escorted back to the territorial coordinates. We don’t take anyone into custody.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, but Cyn—that’s her name, Cynthia Davison—she told me they were goin’ to sneak in from around the other side of the island,” he said, looking down as he clicked his mouse to open an application. “And if you knew her, you’d know why I’m concerned. To say she’s a loose cannon is like sayin’ a rattlesnake isn’t the ideal pet. Is there any way you could check if a boat—” A glance at her face made him stop. “Ma’am?”

  She swallowed and immediately replaced her look of alarm with one of relative composure, which did nothing for his gut.

  Oh, hell, Cyn, what did you do?

  “There was a report of a boat that had strayed into our waters near the southwestern end of the island,” she replied slowly. “What sort of boat did you say it was?”

  “A clipper. One of those big old-fashioned sailboats where the passengers pay through the nose to be a crew member for a week.”

  “And when did she say they were going to try to make this attempt?”

  “Last time I talked to her was yesterday. They were goin’ to try it today, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Do you know the name of the boat?”

  He frowned. “Something Dutch. They took off from Miami, but the boat was registered in the Bahamas. The Flying Dutchman?”

  “The Floating Dutchman, perhaps?” Victoria asked slowly.

  “That sounds more like it. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the name,” Sam replied, the knot in the pit of his gut tightening painfully.

  After a split second of hesitation, Victoria gestured that they should move toward the corner of the room. Sam glanced over his shoulder to see Marty seated at the far end of the table, where a laptop had been set up for him.

  Sam and Victoria came to a stop near one of the tall windows and when she didn’t start talking right away, Sam shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “I appreciate you tryin’ to think of a way to soften whatever news it is you have for me, Ms. Clark, but it’s not necessary. Just tell me where she is. I’m guessin’ she’s in jail.”

  “No, she’s not in jail,” Victoria began slowly. “As I said, we don’t take anyone into custody. But—Dr. Briscoe, I’m not sure how to explain this, and it pains me to be the one to have to tell you, but my security personnel did have an encounter with the Floating Dutchman earlier today. The clipper had crossed into our territorial waters and was coming around the southern headland when our officers made visual contact. The timing—”

  “Ms. Clark, please just get to the point,” he said, trying to keep his impatience out of his voice. “I haven’t been able to contact her since yesterday, and I’m gonna wring her neck when I finally do. Just tell me where she is. Please.”

  “She may be on one of our ships that is taking part in the search-and-recovery operation. There was a passenger from the Dutchman who came aboard after—” She stopped. “I don’t know her name.”

  “Came aboard after what, Ms. Clark?” Sam demanded, a sick jitter in his gut.

  Victoria paused and took a deep breath and, to her credit, kept her eyes on his. “The clipper was in the area where the landslide occurred at the time it was occurring. Going by what we know of the landslide and the initial reports from our security officers who encountered the boat, the clipper appeared to be almost directly above the . . . the pipeline. The point at which the methane is erupting into the atmosphere,” she said slowly, her words softening as her voice became hoarse. “Nobody knew exactly what was happening, but the officers reported that the sea surface became unstable. They described it as turning foamy.”

  Sam stared at her with mounting horror. “Ms. Clark, did you say ‘foamy’?”

  She nodded, her face tight with suppressed emotion. “Our officers reported seeing the boat sink, Sam. With all hands on board. No one on the boat was able to escape. No survivors were found. My officers were too far away to offer assistance, and the nature of the situation precluded any rescue attempts.”

  Her words couldn’t have had a bigger effect on him if they’d been delivered with a brass-knuckled blow to his solar plexus. His breath was just as hard to come by, and his brain was just as foggy.

  As Sam stared at Victoria Clark, her face, her eerie blue eyes, seemed to fill his entire field of vision. Her voice was low and indistinct, and coming at him as if from a great distance.

  After a minute of what he thought might be silence, he felt a hand grip his arm lightly and then felt his body move forward until it dropped into a chair.

  “The only person from the clipper to survive was a female passenger the boat’s captain had dispatched to meet our security officers. The male crew member with her became hysterical and drove the inflatable they were in back toward the boat. She threw herself overboard. The inflatable—” She stopped talking and looked down at her hands.

  A small, silent movement at the blurred periphery of his vision caught his attention and it took him a minute to realize it was a tear splashing on to the back of her hand, which was clasped over its mate and hugged to her chest.

  Marty had joined them and was crouched near Sam’s chair, looking concerned. Sam nodded at him, then blinked and refocused on Victoria Clark’s face. She looked hollow. About as hollow as Sam felt.

  Sam shook his head as if to dislodge the information, and then tried to swallow. It was nearly impossible to do, his mouth was that dry.

  “What I said back there, what I said would happen—the Bermuda Triangle—” he said, his voice so hoarse that it didn’t sound like his own. “It happened to Cyn? She just . . . disappeared?”

  “I’m so very sorry to have had to tell you, Sam. Let me try to find out the name of the survivor,” Victoria whispered in a voice that wasn’t steady, and picked up his hand and clasped it between her own. “Let’s hope for the best. Let’s hope it was Cyn who survived.”

  7:10 P.M., Sunday, October 26, off the coast of Islamorada, Florida Keys

  Sixteen-year-old Glory Bennett sat in her ocean kayak rocking in the light chop. Her paddle was out of the water and resting in her hands against the bright red fiberglass of the hull. The rest of the girls from her group had already headed into shore. She could see them climbing out of their kayaks and pulling them onto the beach, or pulling on their sweats for the drive home.

  Such obedient girls. Glory could hear her mother’s voice as if she were sitting out here next to her. She could also hear the comment her mother would never say out loud: You should try to be more like them.

  “Right. As if you know a thing about any of them. As if you know what they do when adults aren’t around,” she muttered.

  Glory knew she should have followed the others—they’d had a full day on the water and it was a long drive home—but she just wanted one last look at the sunset, one last, quiet, solitary moment on water that had turned to molten gold. So they’d leave ten minutes later. Maybe fifteen. It was no big deal.
Her mouth turned down into a pout and she stared defiantly straight into the last glare of the melting sun.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like there will be consequences when I finally do get back to shore.

  Her father—Pastor Ted to everyone else—wouldn’t do anything more than frown at her. He frowned at her most of the time regardless of what she did anyway, so what difference would this make? He’d frowned at her when she’d told him she didn’t want to join the all-girl teen Bible study group that he led, and then he’d frowned again when she’d grudgingly changed her mind and said she would. There was no pleasing the man.

  She heard her name shouted from the beach and deliberately didn’t turn to acknowledge it. It wouldn’t kill them to wait another few minutes for her.

  She took a deep breath and tilted her face to the last of the rainbow hues painting the sky. “Only two more years and then I’m free. I don’t care what they say. I am so outta here,” she whispered into the breeze.

  The promise, made to herself and the warm, darkening wind, made her smile, and then the thought of what she’d be like once out from under the microscope of her parents’ nosiness turned the smile into a laugh.

  Another shout from the shore wiped it from her face.

  The whiff of a rancid odor, like something rotting, blew toward her on the breeze.

  No doubt Dad would call it a Sign. Or a punishment.

  Rolling her eyes, Glory lifted her paddle and took a deep breath to brace herself for the exertion of getting back to shore. But the breath didn’t help her get going.

  An invisible sheet of fire seemed to coat the back of her throat, making her cough, and she dragged in another huge breath. That only made it worse, and Glory bent forward, dropping her paddle in the water as her hands rose to claw at the neck of the wet suit she wore.

  With the next inhalation, the fire in her lungs burned hotter and she flung herself into the water to get away from the searing pain. Nothing helped, and Glory wasn’t sure if the darkness that settled over her was the water or something else.