Trident Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

  McGivern put up her index finger. Talk about looking war weary and ruffled. “I’m surprised to hear—”

  “Except for Russia.” Besserman had the presence of mind to let that bulletin settle in.

  “But you just said,” Tenon broke the silence, “that ‘No state actor would have—’”

  Besserman rode right over the analyst: “Until the Delphin. Taking over a submarine of that caliber by hackers working without the support of a state security apparatus is so unlikely that our latest calibrations rank it as a 1 in 1.9 billion possibility. It’s not just the sub, it’s all the onboard systems. And to launch the missiles, there are codes, required verifications, keys, and a number of manual procedures. We’re looking at such extreme expertise needed in so many areas. U.S. submarine technology alone would demand teams of highly trained specialists, all of which would require unprecedented incursion skills, not to mention bringing all that to bear on the earth’s Achilles’ heel. It’s so demonically inspired, it’s mind-boggling.”

  “So nobody saw it coming,” Wourzy said, “yet it was hiding in plain sight?”

  “Yes,” Besserman said. “It’s the single most vulnerable climate-change catastrophe that could be set off immediately. We can watch Greenland melt, Arctic ice disappear, the Amazon burn—along with the American West—and the Sahara spread north into Mediterranean countries, but there’s not much we could do to speed up any of that, other than what we’re already doing inadvertently by continuing to accelerate the release of greenhouse gases. But as we all know now, the WAIS is the world’s first big tipping point.”

  “So what changes if the ice sheet gets hit?” Holmes asked, urgency fueling his tone.

  “What doesn’t change is the question, if I may reframe what you’ve just asked, sir.”

  Holmes nodded.

  “With an eleven-foot rise in sea level, every map of the world will have to be redrawn. It would shut down our country for months, at the very least, quite possibly years. Every port would flood, and many, if not most, would disappear. They would be underwater. Storm surges could be more than twice that eleven-foot rise. We’re still assessing how many major military installations would be wiped out but I can tell you that we’d be looking at more than one hundred. Even if we were sure of how to respond to the attack on Antarctica, we’d still be severely handicapped by the absolute necessity of responding to what would be our overwhelming domestic crises. One hundred fifty million Americans, about half our population, would either be racing from the coastlines, with calamitous results, or those not immediately affected would be overrun by climate refugees. All imports and exports would cease right away, and not just on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Great Lakes would rise, too. From the shores of Lake Superior to the St. Lawrence Seaway, cities would eventually flood. Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Duluth, Syracuse, Rochester. Our most critical cities are on our shores. For all intents and purposes, they would come to a standstill at best, or float away at worst.”

  Besserman looked startled by his own words. His stunned gaze took in everyone at the conference table. Then he drew another breath and went on: “I’ve talked to every one of my colleagues at Defense, CIA, you name it. They all agree. This has got to be Russian in origin. The Russians are denying any role, but they’ve always done that and we know that’s true because we’ve caught them red-handed at it, though nothing of this magnitude. And then they always blame it on ‘patriotic citizens’ hacking at their leisure. We’ve even discussed that in here. But this was not a casual incursion. This was planned for a long time and executed with precision.”

  “What’s your sense of the likelihood of a launch?” Holmes asked him.

  “Strong likelihood for one deceptively simple reason: The Russians will gain the international upper hand almost right away. They would not be spared entirely from the rise of the oceans, but given what their chief competitors would endure—meaning us, China, the NATO nations—the Russians would be mostly insulated from the worst impacts of the rise. The brutal truth is that in a matter of weeks they would become the dominant world power for decades to come.”

  “Not if we bomb them to rubble,” Admiral Deming said.

  “Of late, we’ve looked at that as well, Admiral,” Besserman replied, “and that kind of response would be almost as dangerous as a bomb landing on the WAIS. We’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face because, first of all, we may never be able to conclusively prove their role. No smoking gun. And, even more painful to accept, maybe, is that we, along with the rest of the world, would become highly dependent on Russian aid. Without it, billions would starve. Every year they have more arable land stretching up into Siberia because of the warming. Their vast agricultural base is expanding. And I’m sure you realize the radioactivity released from a massive bombing of Russia would soon sweep over the rest of the world, including America. And of course they’d respond in kind.”

  “So you’re saying they’re going to have us coming or going?” Lana asked, unable to keep the outrage from her voice.

  Besserman nodded.

  Lana didn’t accept that pinning it on the Russians—if they were indeed the hackers—would be impossible. Identifying hackers was what she did for a living, but the other part, the radioactive blowback and depending on them for aid, well, that was truly “mind-boggling,” to borrow Besserman’s own words.

  And humiliating.

  “But the Russians are being ordered out of the Arctic, too,” Tenon said.

  “They’re giving themselves cover,” Besserman replied. “Nobody’s actually leaving, are they? Which was the result the hackers no doubt expected. If and when the WAIS gets hit, Russia will probably pull out of the Arctic, too, but only for a little while. They’ll argue that the gas and oil will be needed to help save the world. And the most galling fact is, they’ll be right because with much of the fossil-fuel economy shut down everywhere else, Arctic resources will become very valuable. We certainly won’t have the means to begin massive extraction up there. Every possible vessel and all our human resources will be dedicated to simple survival. That’s going to be true for all the Arctic nations, and most of the rest of the world as well. Holland, for one, will disappear. If the Russians retreat from the Arctic at all, it will be purely a performance. They believe the Arctic belongs to them. They always have.”

  “Is it coincidence, then, that Professor Ahearn and his wife were murdered and his prototype likely stolen just before this happened?” Lana asked.

  Besserman paused. “Outside my purview, okay? But I don’t think it was a coincidence. If Ahearn had the breakthrough with AAC that we’ve come to believe, and the Russians took it, they’ll have the means to use it on a wide scale while the rest of us are tripping over ourselves trying to recover from the collapse of that one very fragile part of the planet.”

  A messenger entered and handed Holmes a slip of paper. In the silence before the woman passed back through the door, Lana watched Holmes crumple the paper and drop it on the table.

  He lifted his eyes to them. “They’ve announced the threat publicly. While we’ve been hoping they’d keep it secret for as long as possible, they were planning a worldwide communications takeover to say that at any moment a Trident II will strike the ice sheet.”

  Holmes, perhaps thinking better of himself, leaned forward and retrieved the balled-up paper and unfolded it. “They even wrote the headline.”

  Lana had no trouble reading it: “The Oceans Rise. Billions Die.”

  CHAPTER 8

  AMERICA WOKE UP TO the momentous announcement. Montevideo, Oleg’s favorite hippie city, woke up to it. Moscow went to sleep knowing about it. And everybody everywhere was shocked. The whole world was quaking to Oleg’s threat. He sat watching reports on his big flat screen from all over the Big Blue Ball, which was about to get a lot bluer.

  “A great flood is coming,” a reporter with a grav
elly voice announced over video of an endless sea on NBC TV in New York City. Then the same newsman intoned, “This clip from the movie Noah is what a huge flood might have looked like the first time.”

  Okay, Oleg got it now. The reporter who sounded like a three-pack-a-day smoker was mixing a little entertainment with the news by dragging that flick back off the shelf to make the most of the crisis. How purely American.

  But the WAIS flood would be real, and people knew it. Boat prices were going through the roof. In fact, prices for anything that could float—rafts, dinghies, inner tubes, bathtubs—were getting priced right out of reach of most people. Bologna—the city, not the sausage—was putting up barriers to prevent coastal dwellers from the Adriatic and Ligurian Seas from overrunning its ancient streets.

  There were boat people in Kiribati, the Maldives, Bangladesh, La Jolla. And in Florida, street gangs were “boatjacking” yachts, according to a reporter down there. The term caught on fast, but not as fast as the gangbangers in speedboats could catch up to cabin cruisers. Those banger boys were like cheetahs pouncing on lumbering wildebeests.

  Oleg gawked at video of tattooed guys who looked like linebackers storming a sixty-foot boat. Two of the biggest grabbed a hefty woman in a muumuu by her ankles and wrists and swung her back and forth—“Uno, dos, trés.” He could read their lips—before they tossed her into the sea.

  At least the gringa could float. Not all of them could.

  He sat there stunned by what he was seeing. For reasons he could not fathom, “Itchycoo Park” started playing in his head. The worst earworm of all time.

  PP’s third wife used to sing it to Oleg when he was a teen: “It’s all too beautiful, It’s all too . . .”

  He hated it, but loved the way her dangly earrings caught the sunlight. Finally, one day he grabbed both of them and jerked her close, head-butting the hippie. Fourteen years old and so sick of hearing “It’s all too beautiful” bullshit that he couldn’t stand another second of it. But he did like her earrings. He walked away with one in each hand.

  Look, look at that! Big news. And it was beautiful. New York Stock Exchange—collapsed. NASDAQ—collapsed. Dow Jones—collapsed. The Nikkei—collapsed. London Stock Exchange—collapsed. Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges—collapsed. The Moscow Stock Exchange—through the roof. Huge profit taking, and then even higher, like Trident IIs, up-up-up. Just like the Russian spirit when the President assured his people that their country would not leave the Arctic and succumb to a terrorist threat, saying, “Destiny is on our side.” So was geography.

  When the camera zoomed in on the Russian President, Oleg could almost glimpse another wink and a blink just for him. The President was a great man. He could ride race cars, race horses, racy women. All man.

  Oleg clicked his remote, bringing in news from America. A white weather guy was talking to a black anchorwoman on a New York morning show. The weather guy was so funny. He actually said sinking the WAIS would be like raising the floor of a basketball court so that anyone could dunk.

  Dunk? And they say Russians have a dark sense of humor.

  Numero Uno called. Oleg muted the TV.

  “Yes,” he said in his most amused voice.

  “Best bet for first Trident is the big ice shelves, like dams, near the Weddell or Ross Seas.” The north or south part of the WAIS, close to the Transantarctic Mountains, which ran roughly north and south along the eastern edge of the massive ice sheet. “You choose, you can’t lose, Oleg.” The Ukrainian laughed.

  “Help me,” Oleg said gregariously. “North is closer to the U.S., right? Maybe get the gravitational shift going sooner.” Which would raise the seas on both sides of America higher than in the rest of the world, but not the full 25 percent bonus that Oleg wanted most. That wouldn’t come till the whole WAIS was bombed loose.

  “Maybe not such a big gravity shift with just one ice shelf,” Uno told him, “but oceans would get deeper. I can guarantee that. No telling how deep because this is chaos theory, like you say, Oleg.”

  Trying to butter me up. Another Americanism. Oleg knew he was watching too much American TV. But it was so much fun.

  “Either one, north or south,” Uno said, “will be like blowing up a big dam so lots of ice can slide into the ocean.”

  “Like a sleigh ride!” Oleg laughed.

  “Sleigh ride? I don’t think so,” Uno replied soberly. “But very good chunk of ice. Hard to be so precise.”

  What? “You have their launch systems.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  “How are things on board? They still dead?” Oleg laughed again. He hadn’t checked on the Delphin for a while. Didn’t like micromanaging Uno or the men whom the Ukrainian was working with on the vessel, all under severe duress. Oleg had the same well-dressed crew that had seen to the Ahearns keeping a close eye on the families of the sailors assigned to the submarine’s Operations Compartment, including the upper level where Control housed the ballast control panel, a navigation station, attack center, and more. In fact, photos of the Ahearns had even been shown to them. That was just in case they decided they didn’t want to cooperate in keeping the vessel moving through the southern ocean, though watching the rest of the crew drop dead would have persuaded most anyone to put on an oxygen mask.

  “Still dead,” Uno replied.

  “And Hector Gomez?”

  “Don’t see much of him but he’s still kicking.”

  “Try to nail down what happens when you hit those ice dams,” Oleg ordered before hanging up. “And I mean work on it,” he texted Uno promptly. The hours were ticking by. He wanted to launch tomorrow. And Uno knew that. He should be ready now.

  What? Do I have to do everything? Take out life insurance on deadbeat dad? Arrange his accident? Find way to hack into White House? And now Galina was texting him: “I must see u.”

  What’s going on?

  Made him a horndog to think of her so worked up.

  Make-up sex, he thought right away, imagining her next to him, already quivering. Are you really sorry? Super sorry? He would whisper those words in her ears, lick the curly cartilage and watch her squirm with delight. Listen to her breath grow faster. How sorry are you? Show me, bad girl, Galina. Show me.

  The “bad girl” business always got her. Made her crazy. Made her do things she swore she’d never done with deadbeat dad. And now she never would. Oleg was sure of that. Deadbeat dad would never do anything to anyone again, except provide a nice death benefit to little Alexandra.

  He brought up the sound on his flat screen to hear the American President, who did not race cars. He did not race horses. But he had a very racy wife. So hot. Like horrible Henry Kissinger once said, “Power is the great aphrodisiac.” Only reason toadstool like him got laid.

  But the American President was starting to look like a woolly mammoth. Too tired for sex. He was getting grayer every day. All the American Presidents do. Fun to watch it happen. Like Grecian Formula 44 in reverse.

  “My fellow Americans,” he started. “We face an unparalleled challenge . . .”

  Must have been reading a boilerplate response filed under “Nuclear Bomb Threat.” But what Oleg listened for most closely was the finger-pointing. And there was lots of that. But—Ho-ho-ho—at everyone. Which meant no one. Everyone who’s a terrorist, that is. Oleg wasn’t a terrorist. Oleg was a Pirate of Diplomacy.

  But now he needed to be sensitive for Galina, who texted that she was on the elevator: “I’m coming now. Now!”

  He’d heard that many times before, under the most pleasing circumstances.

  The elevator stopped and he opened the door, ready for some frisky fun.

  But she was carrying Alexandra, arms under her knees and shoulders. The girl’s head lolled back like a rag doll’s. She looked shriveled, too, which did not arouse Oleg, who didn’t appreciate Galina bringin
g such sickness into his apartment. Penthouse, no less! That made Galina a very bad girl, but not a good bad girl. Just a bad girl. Nothing he would want to whisper into her ear. What did she think the penthouse was? Kiddie cancer ward? Like book by Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward. Great story with magnificent hero named—what else?—Oleg.

  Galina rushed Alexandra to his couch and spread the girl’s bunny blanket over her, the one that matched her bunny pajamas. The girl’s eyes were slits. Such a pretty kid not so long ago. What happened? She needs to smile more. Cancer feeds on despair. Just read Solzhenitsyn. That was why they had an epidemic of cancer in America.

  Galina turned to him. “What have you done?”

  She sounded hurt, really upset. Not sexy.

  “Done? What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been busy.” She moved her hands as though they were working an invisible keyboard, then pointed both index fingers at him. “You are doing this to the world. Do you know what could happen down there?”

  “Down where?” He walked to his Sub-Zero Pro. “Do you want some fresh-squeezed orange juice? From Florida, the Sunshine State, but we better drink fast. I hear it’s going to be Florida the Flood State pretty soon.”

  Smiling at her. Making joke! Brushing his dark bangs aside, giving her all the moves that made her moist.

  She shook her head and advanced on him. She looked murderous.