Arctic Fire (17 page)

As soon as the door closed, Mallory spoke.
“You’d better do something with him, Nigel,” she said, grabbing a
doughnut and biting it viciously in half, “
darlin,
or I
will
.
”

“I guess it’s a good thing I showed up when I
did then and came to the rescue.” Cain replied.

Mallory shot him a dirty look. “I can take care
of myself.” She replied defiantly.

Cain laughed, “I showed up to rescue
him
,
not you.”

“Damn straight. I don’t see how he and his ego
fit on this chunk of ice. It’s a wonder we haven’t capsized
yet.”

“I know you don’t like him, Elizabeth, but for
now we need him.”

“And he needs us. You know that as soon as he
gets what he wants he’ll drop you like a bad campaign promise.”

“That’s why we have to beat him to the
punch.”

“Did you say beat him?” Mallory’s grin was
sadistic.

Cain frowned. “Just be patient a little longer;
don’t worry, I’ll tell you when the gloves can come off.”

“Fine.” Mallory replied like a spoiled
child.

“I know Pug well enough to know that he has
something else on his mind but he’s too good at the game to tip his
hand. See what you can find out from his aid, Robert. There’s
already a little bit of animosity between them. Let’s see if we can
exploit that.”

“Divide and conquer?”

“Exactly.”

Chapter
Seventeen

“Mr. Pike, Dean Miles.” Miles introduced himself
as he walked up and stretched out his hand. Miles was a tall,
rugged-looking man of about fifty with short wavy brown hair who
looked more like a Texas oil wildcatter than an engineer. Pike
caught himself. Here he was, an engineer himself, and he was
putting the stereotype of the nerdy glasses and pocket protector on
him. Pike introduced himself and both men shook hands; from his
grip, Pike knew Miles was no nerd.

“Welcome to the ice planet Hoth.” Miles smiled,
holding up his hands, presenting the underground room. It was a
huge cavern that was nearly as wide as the iceberg itself at eighty
feet and almost as long at sixty. The room was well lit with banks
of florescent lights that hung from the ten-foot high ceiling.

As Pike looked around, he noticed that there
were stacks of lumber, pallets of supplies and other building
equipment scattered around. The whole scene looked like any other
construction job site except they were
inside
a huge iceberg
floating toward New York City. He thought the walls would have been
shinier since they were made of ice, reflecting light like a giant
disco ball, but instead, they had a dull sheen. The two men stepped
into a small trailer that acted as the office where Miles pulled
out a set of blueprints.

“This is just an overview print.” Miles said as
he spread out the plans. We have detailed plans for each level and
you can see them anytime you like. We’re here,” Miles said as he
pointed to the plan, “and you have three main vertical tunnels,
here, here, and here, that all connect to the Broadway tunnel here.
It’s the main and largest horizontal access tunnel that runs just
above the ships. From there, we have two vertical tunnels each,
running to the four ships encased in the ice. There is of course, a
honeycomb of service tunnels running throughout the iceberg. These
shown here are just the main ones.”

“The four ships here,” Pike asked, “they’re
supposed to melt the ice once we arrive at our destination?”

Miles nodded. “The ships are old WWII mothballed
liberty ships that Mr. Cain dug up from who knows where; they are
all part of the big, reduce-reuse thing. The superstructures have
been removed and they’ve been stripped of any asbestos and any
another toxic material and are eco-friendly just in case there’s an
accident. All four still have their engines and supply all the
power for the barge.” Miles paused for a moment. “Ah, don’t ever
call the iceberg a barge in front of Mr. Cain, he doesn’t like it.
It really is a giant barge if you think about it but he prefers not
to think of it like that, not good PR he says.”

“I’ll want to take a closer look at all the
specs later but right now I think I’d just like to take a look
around. Can you give me the nickel tour?”

“Sure thing, but you’ll need this first.” Miles
opened up a locker and tossed Pike a dark colored fur-lined
parka.

They stepped out of the office and into an open
ended freight elevator. Miles pulled a metal gate across the
entrance and pushed the button.

Feeling the excitement grow, Pike watched as the
sheer ice walls passed in front of them as they began to descend
deeper into the berg. They reached bottom and emerged into a cavern
a little smaller than the one they just left. Here, there were no
pallets of equipment lying around; in fact, it was deserted except
for two vehicles that resembled golf carts.

“I thought there’d be more people or equipment
around,” Pike said, stepping out of the elevator.

“Right now there’s not a lot to do other than
keeping an eye on the generators and fixing any coolant leaks we
may find.” They got into the cart and started down the tunnel. As
they were driving Pike noticed that there were two dozen,
three-inch pipes nestled in the ceiling with branches jutting out
every twenty feet or so and disappearing into the walls. Seeing
Pike looking up, Miles explained. “The pipes you see are for
keeping the ice cold during transit and then we use them to melt
the ice once we arrive. There’s nearly 40 miles of piping spider
webbed throughout the barge, sorry, berg. This is the Broadway
tunnel I mentioned earlier. It runs the entire length of the
iceberg and is the only tunnel large enough to drive through but
there are dozens more just wide enough for a man to walk through
that we use to inspect the pipes.

“Okay, here we are.” Miles said as they parked
the cart in a small cutout that was just large enough to hold three
of the small electric vehicles. The two men got out and walked down
the short crystallized passageway and ended up in front of a metal
tube that looked like a phone booth. Inside the tube, there were
two sets of ladder rungs.

“This is one of four main tubes that go down to
the ships.” Miles said as he climbed onto a rung and began to go
down. “There are four more escape ladders that go to the surface
and four more that go up just above the waterline and end up on
narrow shelves.”

Pike peered down the tube and was a little
surprised to see such a bright light at the end. “Follow the
light,” he chuckled to himself as he began to go down. They
descended inside the dark tube for twenty feet, then suddenly came
out the other end, like a swimmer broaching the surface of a lake,
only backwards. Pike felt his fingers tighten their grip around the
rungs of the ladder as he suddenly found himself suspended in
mid-air.

The access tube they had been climbing down had
ended but the ladder continued down another twenty feet to the deck
of the ship below. He had gone from the close confines of a
six-foot diameter tube and had emerged into a vast cavern that was
nearly three football fields long and almost as wide. He could see
all four ships but it was odd not to see them floating in water.
Instead, they were surrounded by fog, a solid, frozen fog.

“Enjoying the view?”

Pike looked down and saw Miles was on the deck
looking up at him.

“Sorry.” Pike apologized and climbed the rest of
the way down. For some reason he took great comfort in the feel of
the solid deck.

The two forward ships each had four large pipes
coming up out of their decks, like giant smoke stacks that
disappeared into the ice overhead. From the point where the pipes
entered the ice, Pike could see smaller pipes branching out, like
blood vessels breaking off the main artery, making the iceberg look
like it had varicose veins.

Pike found himself gawking at everything
like a little country boy on his first visit to the big city.
Suddenly he was aware of Miles standing in the hatchway just
looking at him. “We get that from everybody the first time they
come down here.” Miles said smiling. “Come on,” he continued with a
wave of his hand, “I’ll show you the belly of the beast.

Pike followed the engineer through the hatch and
narrow hallway where they descended three decks. Pike felt the
proverbial butterflies swarming in his stomach . He’d seen lots of
engineering projects over the years but ones like this came along
only once in a lifetime. Suddenly he felt very small and humbled to
be a part of something so grand and so important; he only hoped he
was good enough.

He had felt a slight vibration when standing on
the deck and heard a low rumble, like a stampeding herd of cattle
far off in the distance. The lower he got into the bowels of the
ship, the more pronounced both the noise and vibration became. The
noise had now turned into a deep bass sound that rumbled in his
stomach , the feeling that one gets when pulling up to a stop sign
and hearing the blare from a teenager’s radio three cars away.

As they reached the last hatch, Miles grabbed a
hardhat and earmuffs off the wall. “Safety first,” he smiled as he
handed them to Pike then put some on himself. For the second time
in less than five minutes Pike found himself speechless and
standing dumbfounded when Miles opened the hatch.

He didn’t know quite what to expect, but he knew
this wasn’t it. All the bulkheads in the ship’s hold had been
removed, leaving one massive room. Pike envisioned the cargo hold
to contain gigantic machines large enough to create their own
weather patterns that would be surrounded by an array of smaller
machines, filling every dark nook and cranny with pipes and wires.
He thought he’d see endless panels full of dials and gauges
attended by an army of men in white coats carrying clipboards.

He did find four gigantic machines lined up in
rows that were attached to the huge funnels he’d seen sprouting up
above the deck but that’s where the similarities to his vision
ended. The immense space of the ship’s hold was still surprisingly
spacious and there was very little clutter from smaller support
machines. The room was well lit and not blast-furnace hot as he
expected from all the heavy equipment.

“These are the generators that supply the
refrigerant, keeping the berg cold. The other forward ship has an
identical set up.” Miles explained. “When the time comes for the
meltdown, these two stations will convert from cooling to heating
and begin thawing out the ice while the plants in the aft two ships
begin processing the water and pumping it out.”

“Very impressive.” Pike said, staring at the
massive machinery.

“Do you want to see the processing ships
now?”

Pike shook his head slowly. “I would like to see
them but what I think I should do now is go back to my room, study
the specs and formulate an inspection plan and check-off list. I’ve
got the Coast Guard regulations so there really shouldn’t be a
problem; the only snag we might run into is the sheer size of this
thing.”

“All the specs are on here. I thought you might
want to see them.” Miles handed Pike a thumb drive then continued.
“I’ve got work to do here so I’ll have one of my men take you back
topside. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

“Thanks.” Pike replied as he shook Miles’ hand.
“I’ll leave the coat back in the office.”

“Keep it, you’ll need it.”

Pike nodded as he followed his guide back
through the labyrinth.

Chapter
Eighteen

Williams was blowing steam like a locomotive as
he stormed away from Cain’s office. He was angry that Cain had
outmaneuvered him by cleverly dismissing him before he was ready to
go. He did have to admire him though, Cain was good. He just hoped
the billionaire didn’t get bored spending all his money and decide
to run for office.

Williams chugged down the hallway and burst into
his makeshift office. Thornton was sitting at his desk, surrounded
by several stacks of papers.

“Senator?” Thornton said as his boss came
storming in. “You’ve had three phone calls from Washington while
you were gone.”

“Not now Bobby!” He shouted.

“But sir…”

He’s up to something, I can smell it.”

“Sir?”

“You don’t get to a position like mine without
developing a sixth sense about things like this.”

“Who sir?”

“Cain, Cain! Who else you idiot? Haven’t you
been paying attention?” Williams threw his hands up in the air out
of frustration as he stared at his aid.

Thornton sat there quietly biting his lip and
biding his time. Before he took this job, he’d heard all the
stories from Capitol Hill about Williams and his reputation for
chewing up interns and aids for breakfast and spitting them out
before lunch, but he took the job anyway. He didn’t need
a
job, he
wanted
this one. Despite what Williams thought, he
had been paying attention and he did know what was going on.
Williams had the experience and the connection and even if he was a
Class A jerk, he was the one to learn from if he wanted to get
anywhere in the political world.

“Of course sir.”

Williams transformed from the thundering
locomotive to a caged animal, pacing back and forth in the office,
tapping his chin, thinking as he walked. Thornton had seen his boss
act like this before but not very often so he knew something big
was up. Thornton sat quietly as he watched his boss criss-cross the
room, talking to himself. Slowly the furious pacing began to
subside to a gentle walk and Thornton knew he could talk now
without disturbing the beast.