Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

“Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then we’ll presume they’re incapacitated at the very least,” Victoria replied tautly. “But we’ll discuss that in a moment.” She turned to her companion. “This is Lieutenant Gray. He’ll explain what his team needs to do.”

  As the lieutenant spoke, Victoria carefully watched Maggy. She seemed to be regaining some of her usual good sense, but not all of it. Which could come in handy.

  By the time they were shaking hands and saying their goodbyes, Victoria’s mind was made up.

  “Maggy, would you have the survivor of the clipper brought to us?” she asked, then turned to the lieutenant. “Did Commander Duffy tell you that you’d be bringing back an injured—”

  He nodded and Victoria smiled. “Excellent. If you would let Dr. Briscoe know when she’s aboard, I would appreciate it. We have reason to believe the woman is his fiancée.”

  The lieutenant’s brows drew together in a frown. “I’m happy to, ma’am, but wouldn’t it be just as easy for you—”

  “I’m not returning to the Eutaw Springs, Lieutenant. At least not immediately. I have work to do here with my staff. Thank you so much for escorting me. Please tell Commander Duffy that I’ll be in contact with him shortly,” she replied, and turned to face a surprised Maggy Patterson.

  “Ma’am—” the officer began.

  “But—Ambassador Deen—” Maggy sputtered.

  Victoria cut off both of them with a cool smile. “Lieutenant, as I said, I’ll be in touch with Commander Duffy soon. As for Ambassador Deen, he isn’t here, Maggy, and I am. And I will take full responsibility for everything that happens while I am. Ah, there’s the passenger,” she said, turning to look at a bedraggled and somewhat stoned young woman with a makeshift sling cradling one arm.

  “Ms. Davison? I’m Victoria Clark. I’m so sorry for all of your troubles,” she said gently. “This is Lieutenant Gray. He will take you to the U.S. Navy ship over there.” She waved toward the horizon, which the Eutaw Springs dominated like a disapproving giant. “You will get better medical treatment there.”

  The woman gave her a wan smile. “Thanks.”

  “Ma’am, Ms. Clark, I really—”

  “Lieutenant,” Victoria interrupted with a glare, “I’m staying aboard the Marjory, which is part of the Taino security force, which I command. Please tell Commander Duffy that I will return to his ship after the operation has been executed. Until then, I must remain here if for no other reason than to be certain no one and nothing interferes with the operation from this end. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?”

  Obviously furious, the officer nodded. Maggy looked from one to the other, then directed two of her crew to assist Cynthia into the navy boat tied up to the side of the Marjory.

  Less than twenty minutes later, Victoria and a grim, silent Taino security officer cautiously berthed the Marjory’s inflatable above the high-water mark on the island’s southern beach. Wearing face masks and air tanks, they made their way carefully along the sand. There was no life, no sound but the pounding of the waves against the shore.

  Bodies of gulls and other seabirds lay strewn across the black beach. The odd angles of their crumpled wings and necks told of their fast, plummeting deaths. Crabs and insects were frozen in their places. Not even flies had landed on any of the carcasses.

  It didn’t take long for Victoria and her companion to reach the first human corpse. Forty-eight hours in the tropical heat had caused it to burst and now it lay simultaneously rotting and desiccating in the sun. Victoria was glad she couldn’t smell anything through her mask. The sight was more than enough to make the bile rise dangerously in her throat. The only thing that kept her from vomiting was the sure knowledge that removing the regulator from her mouth would guarantee she would rapidly end up in the same condition as the corpse.

  Willing her mind to ignore the horrors surrounding her, Victoria stepped past the bodies as she continued making her way up the path and finally pushed open the door to the communications center.

  More of her fellow islanders lay sprawled in chairs and slumped over keyboards. She went directly to the workstation of her network guru. Pulling on one of the sets of latex gloves she’d brought with her, Victoria pushed the chair, with the dead man still in it, away from the desk. Body fluids had leaked into the upholstery and the liquefaction of the soft tissue had made the chair as gruesome as the body it held.

  Solar panels had kept the generator, located on the other side of the island, alive. The computer was still humming, seeming as loud as a jet engine in this otherwise silent tomb, and the monitors, although dark, were only in sleep mode. She reached out a hand, then hesitated. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

  A methane-enriched atmosphere was highly combustible. One spark—

  The humidity in here is too high to allow static. Get moving.

  Gritting her teeth, Victoria let her fingers touch the edge of the keyboard, half expecting to see a flash.

  Nothing.

  Letting out a mea sured breath, Victoria tapped a key and brought one of the screens in front of her to life. The bright blue glow of the background and the flashing cursor were eerily cheerful in this stinking place of death.

  Her eyes focused on the screen as her fingers began to fly over the keys. Her surroundings seemed to fade as she quickly lost herself in the maze of commands and code that she knew so intimately. In just a few minutes, she reached the root of the system and carefully tapped in her emergency password.

  The system began to rapidly delete directories.

  God damn you, Micki. I’ll personally put you in Hell if you’re not already there.

  She slammed a fist onto the desk and spun around, racing to the far side of the room and the door that led to the room housing the backup system. Running into the room, she began yanking plugs out of the walls, knowing that would probably not do much. The commands had been sent and received and all the machines were on battery backups. All the data for the island, for the systems, the research, everything she’d worked to protect for years, would be gone in minutes, if not sooner.

  Sliding to a kneeling stop in front of the tower that held all the backup hard drives, she began tearing out cables and power cords, bringing the buzzing drives to a chaotic stop.

  As she dropped the last cable, she rocked back on her heels, aware that she was breathing too fast and would run out of air too soon if she didn’t calm down. She turned to motion to the guard she’d brought with her, then reached for the set of tools that was always kept near the rack. Together, they began loosening the clamps and screws holding the hard drives in place. They carefully placed the units in the empty backpacks they carried. The drives might or might not contain any salvageable data, but whatever was there, she was going to be the one to decide what happened to it, not the Americans, who were undoubtedly furious that she hadn’t returned to their ship. She had no doubt that Commander Duffy had a reconnaissance team on the way to the island right now.

  When the last hard drive had been harvested, Victoria went into the room housing the command encoder and decoder units and placed them in her backpack. The balpeen hammer lay in wait on the table near the units. She turned away from it abruptly and left the building, then she and the guard headed inland on the rugged path that led to the bunker.

  They had been on Taino for nearly an hour when they rounded a curve and saw piles of books lying open on their spines in a haphazard trail leading in the direction they were going. The pages she could see were stained with something.

  She knew there would be only one reason to douse books with anything, and that was if you intended to burn them. Setting them on fire in this methane-enriched environment would turn the island into an inferno.

  Hot, sweaty, and already exhausted, Victoria continued up the trail at as fast a pace as she could manage. She was in good shape, but running up a mountain with fifty or sixty extra pounds on her back was a strain, and she couldn’t keep up the pace for too long. She came to a stop
, sucking hard against the regulator. Too hard, she knew. Especially considering that she was already into her second tank.

  Tough.

  She stood against a tree as she caught her breath and realized that she was hearing things.

  Live things.

  The silence of the southern end of the island had been replaced by the normal sounds of the jungle. A bird careened past. Victoria looked at the ground. Insects were thriving on the shadowed path.

  She signaled to the security agent that they should continue their trek, and after moving forward several more yards, Victoria slowly removed the regulator from her mouth and took a shallow, cautious breath.

  With a relieved grin, she dropped the regulator and reached behind her to shut the valve on her tank. Pulling off her mask, she felt like laughing out loud. She was still alive.

  That could change any minute.

  The thought sobered her and, dropping to a crouch, she carefully lifted one of the sodden books and gave it a cautious sniff, then looked up at her companion.

  “Tommy, what is this? It smells familiar but I can’t place it,” she said and handed it to him.

  Tommy Friedman didn’t even need to bring it close to his face. “It’s propane.”

  She dropped the book and sprang to her feet. “Good God.”

  As if all that methane isn’t enough? What madman is doing this?

  “We gotta keep moving. If this stuff goes up, we’re toast,” he said.

  The adrenaline burst that followed his words was what Victoria needed and, now able to breathe more easily, they resumed hiking.

  The unmistakable stink of rotting meat began to assail them when they were about one hundred yards from the bunker’s entrance, and Victoria’s sense of elation disappeared. Without a word passing between them, each unholstered the sidearm they wore and then eased into the clearing.

  The presence of dead bodies up here would not be due to the methane, and she braced herself for more death. For murder.

  “Let me go first,” the officer behind her whispered fiercely, and Victoria looked back at him with a tight smile.

  “It’s all right. I know how to use this thing,” she replied and kept moving forward, listening carefully for any human sounds as they drew closer to their target. It was probably futile. The cacophony of the jungle would have masked any low conversations as efficiently as it masked the sound of their own movement.

  They slowed as they approached the curve in the trail that would lead them into the clearing near the bunker’s entrance. The stench was nearly unbearable, and holding up her hand, Victoria counted down from three. Then they both rounded the bend, arms extended and hammers cocked.

  Ignoring the hissed “no” of her companion, Victoria uncocked her gun and holstered it as she rushed to Dennis’s still form.

  She was about to feel for the pulse in his neck when he shifted and let out a soft . . . snore.

  Rocking back on her heels, Victoria didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or strangle him while she had the opportunity. She settled for grabbing him by the shoulders and giving him a hard shake. And then another, until his eyes finally blinked open.

  When he focused on her, she saw him start as if he were seeing a ghost. She stood up and took a step away from him.

  “What are you doing with all those books?” she demanded, jerking her thumb in the direction of the trail.

  Clumsy and still disoriented with sleep, he rose to his feet. “What are you doing here? Vic—how did you get here?”

  “We came up from the south end.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Toxic. I know. Who else is here?”

  “Just me. Alive, I mean. Micki is in there.” He motioned toward the bunker. “Simon Broadhurst and two other security officers are over there. Micki killed them.”

  “And you killed her?” she asked dispassionately.

  “Yes.”

  Before she could respond, the first of a series of small, distant explosions shattered the eerie tranquillity and Victoria felt the blood drain from her head.

  The missiles.

  The microbes were out there.

  CHAPTER

  37

  11:08 A.M., Monday, October 27, aboard the USS Eutaw Springs, off the coast of Taino

  “All systems are go, sir.”

  Sam’s head snapped up as the words came from the mouth of the sailor at one of the terminals across the room from where Sam and Marty were sitting.

  “This is it,” Marty whispered harshly. “I hope to fuck you know what you’re doing.”

  We’re only here because of your big mouth. Sam didn’t spare him a glance but kept his eyes on Commander Duffy as his crew answered the staccato questions he fired at them. The commander had been righteously pissed off when his lieutenant had arrived back on board without Victoria. And with Cyn.

  They’d only let him see her for a few minutes and he’d nearly fallen over at the sight because, Jesus, she looked bad, like she had been rode hard and put away wet. Dopey on drugs and hugging him with one arm, half crying and half moaning all sorts of nonsense about boats and foam and seagulls. It had been tough to leave her like that, but he had to get back to the command and control center. Since then she’d had X-rays taken and had gone into surgery. She wouldn’t be conscious until the excitement was over.

  That was probably a good thing or she’d want to be in the middle of it.

  Sam could feel the tension in the room rising until it finally spiked when Commander Duffy gave the order to release the first torpedo.

  The sonar images showed the tube racing through the water, then its abrupt disappearance. It was as if everyone in the room held their breath and waited in suspended animation until the first report came back seconds later.

  “Strike.”

  Other calm voices from around the room called out their results.

  Sam was really only concerned with one result, and his eyes were glued to the monitor in front of him. When the numbers on the screen began to change, he felt himself go limp.

  “There’s no spike in the methane readings,” he murmured and looked at Marty, who seemed about ready to pass out.

  “What does that mean?” the commander barked.

  “It means we haven’t opened a new fissure. It’s the best news we could have at the moment, sir.”

  Several more minutes passed with hardly a word being said in the room. At one point, Sam felt his hand begin to tingle and looked down to see it curled so tightly that his knuckles were white. Unclenching it, he returned his attention to the screens.

  The order was given to fire the second torpedo, and then the third, and Sam didn’t think it was possible that the room could have gotten any quieter than it had the first time, but it did. Even the equipment seemed to stop making noise.

  The strength of the second concussion knocked out one of the sensors, and the sudden extreme turbidity in the water confused a few of the others. Overall, it took longer this time for meaningful readings to register and, to Sam, the wait seemed endless. When solid information finally started to become available, it was announced in hushed voices.

  “We scored a hat trick, sir.”

  “The abyssal floor has been penetrated.”

  “Seismic readings indicate there’s slight lateral movement.”

  “Dr. Briscoe? Do you have anything?” the commander asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Sam took in a hard breath and pointed at the screen. “The volume of methane in the water column is decreasing,” he said in a voice gone hoarse with emotion. “And the water density is increasing.”

  As Sam watched the monitor, the numbers next to the notation for methane were dropping rapidly.

  “What does that mean? Did we seal the rupture?” Commander Duffy demanded.

  He shook his head. “It’s too early to tell. But something closed part of it, anyway.”

  “Then let’s deploy the microbes.”

  There wasn’t mu
ch excitement in the room when that first microbe-filled torpedo burst, because there was nothing to watch blow up. No flash and no bang, as he’d been warned, but Sam thought he would nearly lose his cookies anyway at the thought of it.

  “Dr. Briscoe.”

  Sam had to give his head a little shake before he could focus on the man in front of him, who was watching him curiously through half-squinted eyes. “Yes, Commander?”

  “We’re going to deploy the missiles now. Would you like to watch from the bridge or would you like to remain here?”

  The sight of all that water was a sight Sam was willing to forgo, especially in his current condition. “I’ll stay here, sir. Thank you.”

  The commander nodded and then the hum in the room resumed immediately. Sam’s attention was torn between watching the slowly changing numbers on his monitor and the real-time images on the monitors across the room. The day was sunny and clear, with a nearly cloudless sky. It was a perfect day in a tropical paradise.

  Except for the deadly plume of methane and phyrruluxine that was killing everything in its widening path.

  “Systems ready, sir.”

  “Dr. Briscoe, do you have anything to say?”

  Oh, hell. Sam looked at the commander, wondering if he meant something like a prayer. As if I could think of one now.

  “Uh, bombs away. Sir.”

  The commander and a few of the officers surrounding him smiled. “That’s what the flyboys say, son. Air force.”

  Sam mumbled his apologies as low laughter erupted from a few corners, and the tension in the room dropped for a moment until the countdown to firing the first microbe-laden missile began. The missile was gone in a blink, the stream of smoke behind it the only evidence it had been fired. Seconds later one of the monitors captured the visual of it shattering in midair.

  “Take that, you son of a bitch.” Marty’s muttered words seemed almost a shout in the heady quietude of the room.

  The firing sequence was repeated four more times, with the missiles streaking along different trajectories so as to disperse their payloads at different places and levels in the toxic plume.