Deep Ice (11 page)

Everyone from McMurdo has been evacuated, too, and they’re moving north in the
Glomar Explorer
as fast as the ship will go. Other boats are meeting them at sea to take the people home. Most of you know we ourselves are sailing towards the coast of Chile. We’ll reach our destination in about three days. But I’ll get back to that.

“Anyway” – he turned as if to examine the map –

“we’re putting some distance between us and the Ross Shelf, because the ice is cracked and might break off. In deep water the tsunami wouldn’t do us much harm – that’s not what we’re worried about. The ice hasn’t broken yet, but a big piece is hanging loose at the bottom. The people who did this have claimed to have two devices. That means there’s still one in the ice. . . Who knows? Maybe more than one.” He shook his head. “Thanks to a suggestion from Ms French, we have some ideas about where to look for them. Sites that would figure to cause the most breakage. But we don’t have a clue as to how to locate them exactly. There’s only a little wire to give the spot away, and if we try to find it with detectors it might blow by itself.”

Hayes looked to the rear of the room and pointed.

“That guy back there, Henry Gibbs. He’s the only one who’s seen the bastards who did this. They apparently slipped into and out of Antarctica posing as a Norwegian expedition in case anyone, like Gibbs did, ran into them. Now they’ve vanished.”

Heads turned to examine Henry. He looked around the room, embarrassed by the sudden attention, and noticed Grimes leaning against the wall with his arms folded, smirking at him.

Hayes continued. “Our intel has concluded that the terrorists dumped their drilling rig and materials into the sea and took off in choppers specially equipped to refuel in midair. Meanwhile, we’ve been wasting our time looking for boats. The terrorists. . .”

“Extortionists, sir!” called Grimes.

Everyone now turned to look at the SEAL.

Grimes didn’t seem to care at all if eyes were on him. “Begging your pardon, General Hayes, but these
extortionists
shouldn’t be dignified by the term ‘terrorists’. They don’t care about politics. All they care about is that four billion dollars.”

Hayes smiled and nodded. “In case some of you don’t know him, gentlemen, that outspoken fell ow is eager to be the first to wring the goose’s neck.”

Laughter rippled through the room.

“He’s Lieutenant-Commander Kai Grimes of the SEALs. He’s a. . .”

“. . . a bored sonofabitch, sir,” interrupted Grimes.

The general smiled at him. “Damned right. That’s why we’re here. Right now in the Pentagon they’re holding bul sessions like this, full of people itching to
do
something. At stake here is the possibility that a fifth of the world’s population could soon be living on the ocean floor.”

No one laughed at the general’s dark humour. They knew he wasn’t joking.

“If the ice shelf goes,” continued Hayes, “so does the world as we know it.”

“You think they – the terror. . . er, the extortionists went to Chile, sir?” asked an officer.

“Yes. We think they would avoid New Zealand as the obvious first choice. Our guess is they would have chosen a mountain site somewhere in the Andes. From there they could broadcast a signal and explode the. . .”

“Not if we find ’em first,” interposed Grimes.

The room began to fill with conversation. Instead of calling for order, the general sat calmly, gazing around him. He seemed happy to be letting the audience vent their steam.

Henry touched Sarah’s arm. “I don’t see why you’ve got to sit through this.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides, who knows? I might get a bright idea that’s helpful.”

At last the general raised his hand. The room fell silent. “Any questions?”

An officer raised his hand and asked about the size of the ice shelf.

“It’s roughly a circle of ice, about four hundred miles across and maybe two thousand feet deep in places. A piece of ice has popped off the bottom, but it’s not too big; a fraction of a per cent of the total mass of what we expect to break off if the whole thing goes. But, I have to tell you, our satellite data shows the world sea- levels have already risen an eighth of a centimetre.” Hayes smiled ruefully. “I feel like Ted Koppel here. I may as well fill you in on all the facts. Already there’s a crack in the ice – a few, actually, that are above a hundred miles long. In one place the fissure is over two hundred yards wide. Easy to see from space. And here’s the tough part. The cracks seem to be widening, but the ice tremors – the quakes in the ice – have all but stopped. We don’t know why this should be so. Some think the ice is just settling.”

The room was quiet.

“We have pictures from the Ozzie One satellite that have given us a good idea of the damage to the ice. So far the eggheads don’t see a big problem.”

A few conversations began to grow among the officers, but the general continued to speak. “Then there is the matter of the volcano.”

The conversation in the audience ended.

“Mount Erebus – the volcano near McMurdo, at the edge of the ice shelf – has increased its activity. It began with the explosion of the bomb.”

Suddenly several hands raised, and the general found himself answering a score of questions on subjects ranging from volcanic hotspots to whether the Great Lakes would be affected by a rise in the oceans.

“Gentlemen,” he said final y, “we all have personal concerns. But, right now, we’re the cops and the world is calling 9-1-1. So when we talk here let’s keep it general.”

The room soon filled with a blue-grey haze. It seemed all the recent quitters were bumming smokes from those who hadn’t.

“The good news,” said Hayes at one point, “is that everybody from MI5 to INTERPOL to the FBI is on this. We
will
get those bastards.”

A young lieutenant in the second row raised his hand.

“May I ask something, sir?” he said courteously.

Hayes nodded.

“What do our families. . .? What does
the world
know of this?”

“Right,” said Hayes. “I didn’t get to that. Good question.”

He crushed out his cigar, removed his glasses and began cleaning them with his handkerchief. He was obviously considering his reply.

“Before I answer that,” he said at last, “I think you should also know that Grimes and I were assigned the duty of overseeing the military response to this situation. Not that we’re the guys with all the answers. It’s simply we’ve become specialists at counter-terrorism. That’s why it’s not the admiral here talking to you. Nothing’s changed in the command structure,” he assured his audience. “But Grimes and I were flown in to McMurdo to look things over and” – he finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on – “I was therefore the lucky S.O.B. whose radio transmission set off the nuke.”

A murmur of commentary rippled through the room. The general briefly told of his own misadventure on the ice. He concluded, “I have to take responsibility for the triggering of the atomic device, but I must add that our experts tell me it may have been a good thing I did so.

The early detonation of the bomb was probably not the terrorists’ plan. Our experts think the bomb was intended to detonate when we tried to dig it out of the ice. That would have meant the deaths of many people.”

As nervous as Henry was when speaking before an audience, he felt obliged to stand up and make a comment. Sarah looked surprised as he rose from his seat.

“I was there with you, General, and everyone should know you were very careful at the site.” He paused nervously for a moment, then continued. “As soon as he found the wire, he got us out of there. One more second’s delay and we’d have been toast.”

The officers in the room seemed to appreciate the remarks. But the general interrupted before too much conversation could begin.

“Thanks, Gibbs, but the truth is I shouldn’t have used my radio so close to the antenna. I didn’t think of that, and I should have. In my business that’s one big boo- boo.”

The general’s gaze roamed the room, then fell back on the sailor who’d asked about the public’s awareness of the situation.

“I was about to tell this gentleman what I know about any. . . public knowledge of this crisis. It was announced at the UN in a communication to the Secretary General’s office. Just a single sentence. Most of you know it by heart: ‘
TWO NUKES IN DEEP ICE. DETONATION ONE OCTOBER UNLESS FOUR BILLION DOLLARS US IS PAID
’. Since then there has been only one more communication, and I’m not at liberty to say what that was at the moment. What I
can
say is that somehow the internet got hold of the story, and it has forced its way onto page two or three of most of the major newspapers; however, it’s currently being reported like just more end-of-the-world bullshit. Even so, the word on the street isn’t so sceptical. I won’t lie to you. My guess is that nobody living anywhere near the ocean is getting much sleep right now. Shit, our intelligence has been working for two days just trying to come up with a ballpark estimate of the possible damage in property and lives.”

Hayes regarded his audience sadly. “It isn’t exactly fun telling you this shit.”

“I’m lovin’ it, sir,” yelled Grimes.

The room exploded with laughter.

“Glad to hear that, Kai.” The general eased back on his stool. “That doesn’t surprise me, somehow.”

As the laughter quickly died down the general pulled another cigar from his pocket, then changed his mind and put it away.

“Don’t know how many more of these I’ll be able to get,” he said softly.

The audience grew hushed again as the true gravity of the situation reasserted itself in people’s minds.

Hayes sighed. “I guess that about sums up my part of this little gathering. Time to open it up to you folk.”

“What’s the plan, sir?” asked a flight officer.

“On hold,” said Hayes.

“Did that second communication give you any clues, sir?” asked a bridge officer in dress whites.

“You can stow the ‘sirs’ until this meeting’s over, Lieutenant. I don’t know if the second message has been officially validated. It might be meaningless, or a hoax. It said something about a radio broadcast detonating the bomb. Which, I guess, is validation enough for
me
. I don’t see how whoever sent the second message could know the first bomb went off or that a transmission did it if they weren’t the boys responsible. But the Pentagon isn’t taking it at face value, for some reason. My guess is they’re sitting tight for instructions about the money.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know where we go from here, frankly. I think what I’ll do is reconvene this meeting in a few hours, so we all have time to think things over. Meanwhile, I can only add that we suspect that one of the men involved, possibly identified by Gibbs here, may be presently located in the mountains of Chile. That’s a lot of turf to cover. The Pentagon thinks our best play is to send our biggest gun to the area and wait for a target. That means we may need all of you to jump when we say ‘frog’. And that’s why we’ve had you all on Defcon Four readiness for the past twenty-four hours.

“Dismissed.”

The general and his aide left the room.

Henry looked at Sarah. “What do you think?”

“That I’d rather be on this ship than in Washington when the other bomb goes,” she said.

Suddenly Henry was reminded of his home outside Boston. He and Tess had been so lucky to have found the waterfront cottage. It had been practical y given to them by a spinster who’d found Henry fascinating and Tess even more so. It had been a perfect winter retreat, whichever pole Henry’s work took him to during the rest of the year. Here he could unwind to the sound of seabirds and waves. He could col ect himself and finish the paperwork he’d let slide all year. He even had a darkroom and computers installed to process and analyse his footage of the aurora. His specialty was documenting the upper-level atmospheric dynamics. The cottage represented the place where his heart rested – the core of his life with Tess and the kids.

But he had never returned there after the accident. It had been too painful. Now he rented it to a friend on an annual basis. It had been three years since he had been near the place, and even then, though he’d visited someone just a few blocks away, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go to the cottage.

Now he felt betrayed by the idea that fate might take another piece of his life from him, that he might never see that home again.

Sarah gave him a shove. “You there, Henry?”

“Time to go, hero!” said Kai Grimes, pushing past them on his way out the door. “Listen to mama.”

Sarah stared after him with hate in her eyes. “Is he always as annoying as this?”

“That’s his good side, I think. I keep telling Shep to eat the guy and save the dog food, but Shep thinks he’d be too stringy. That much bone and gristle is hard on the teeth.”

#

Henry showed up early at the next meeting, this time with Shep in tow. He wanted to talk to the general, and thought it might not be too bad an idea to have his “legal muscle” with him. Shep was game to go anywhere, and his enthusiasm always gave Henry a boost. But, in the tight corridors that separated the labyrinthine flight decks, the dog seemed too big. As they walked the hall s, sailors would jump out of their way as though a man-eating tiger were being paraded past them.

He had felt almost smug about his power of intimidation until Grimes had advised him to keep Shep clear of the aft part of the ship, where the ship’s dogs were kenneled. Henry was surprised to learn that the
Enterprise
contained a kennel of over thirty specialized dogs. Grimes told him they were mostly sniffers, but there were also few “combat types” that put the fear of God into the men when they walked the halls – the kind of dog Henry had once met.

Sword had been a huge guard dog, a German shepherd, a retiree from the Vietnam War. His most outstanding feature was a dime-sized hole in his snout, put there by an AK47 machine gun. In spite of his wounds, the story went, Sword had attacked and killed two Vietcong who’d shot his master. According to witnesses, the Cong who’d fired was attacked first. The Cong fired again, hitting Sword in the face, but that hadn’t stopped the dog. He’d leaped and grabbed the man’s jaw in his teeth, then ripped his face off. Seeing this, the other Cong screamed and ran. The dog pursued, jumping on the fleeing soldier’s back. As the man fell, the dog crushed his neck and spine with a single bite. Later Sword was retired and, after being “debriefed”, toured the world.