Dry Ice (37 page)

“What things?” Lindy asked. She was sitting at the workstation next to Tess, and had abandoned her task to watch them. As had everyone else in the room.

“I don’t know. Big things. And they’re going to go off like a string of firecrackers.” Tess managed to give her a weak smile. “Something tells me he isn’t sending sunshine where they want rain.”

“We have no idea where it’s going to happen?” Etienne asked.

She looked at him and shook her head slowly, feeling the situation weigh upon her so heavily that she had to fight the urge to sag to the floor. “No, but based on the range of coordinates at first glance, it looks like … everywhere,” she said, her voice gone quiet. “The best I can figure it is that if you take the equator, the International Date Line, and the Greenwich meridian, you effectively divide the globe into four segments. The last set seemed to include one event in each quadrant. It looks like that’s going to repeat. He’s into equal-opportunity destruction.”

“Well, that narrows it down. I think I need coffee,” Ron said somewhat weakly as he stood up. “With a splash of cyanide.”

“Hey, none of that,” Tess said, brushing the air between them with her hand. Then she sighed. “I’ll join you. I need a momentary change of scenery.”

They left the sandbox together and hadn’t gone but a few feet when Fizz Reilly came charging up the stairs and stopped in front of them.

“The radios aren’t working,” she said, slightly out of breath. “The walkie-talkies.”

“What do you mean they’re not working?” Ron interrupted, sliding the small device at his hip out of its belt clip and fiddling with the buttons. Tess checked her own. The power lights on all of their units were lit, but the units were making no sound. Not even static.

“I mean that none of them work,” Fizz snapped. “They were fine five minutes ago, and then nothing. All channels are down.”

Tess stared at her, wondering if she were hearing Fizz correctly. “But we secured that system.”

As the three of them stood there, the units crackled back to life.

“Well, look at that—,” she began, and stopped when she saw both Ron and Fizz slowly raise their heads to look at her. Ron looked grave, Fizz a little alarmed.

“Well, they work now.” Tess smiled uncertainly. “It was just another blip. I’m sure it’s just like the other ones. Nothing to worry about.”

Fizz cocked her head at Tess and then moved it from side to side slowly. “We don’t have blips here, Tess. Ever. You may not be concerned over those power blips, but everyone else is freaked out. And now the local communication is flickering in and out of life?” She took a breath. “I don’t know what goes on in there”— she pointed to the sandbox door—“but I know how the rest of this place operates. There are backups for everything, and backups for the backups. Our local communication network is a critical system. It doesn’t just go down for no reason.”

“I understand that, but it’s electronics, Fizz,” she replied tiredly.

“No, Tess, Fizz is right,” Ron interrupted. “These radios are on an independent, local system, not connected to anything else. Just like the power system.”

“If it’s independent, why are you looking so grim?” Tess asked, a little bewildered.

“Because Greg’s letting us know he’s tunneled his code into everything, Tess. He’s letting us know that nothing is safe. With another set of crazy-ass commands ready to execute, we need to double down and find a solution,” Ron said.

*   *   *

It might have felt like the middle of the night, but it was only the middle of the afternoon. Teke Curtis stood near the large conference table in the Situation Room, hands at his sides, looking around idly and wishing like hell he didn’t have to be here.

“Penny for your thoughts, big guy.”

He swung his head at the deep voice so close to his ear and grinned at sight of Mike Rowan, fellow career naval officer and frequent partner in crime.

“How’s it going?” Teke said as they shook hands.

“I’m still living the dream,” Mike replied, quickly surveying the room. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

Teke frowned. “What?”

“The blonde.”

“You mean Candy Freeman, the national security advisor?” Teke asked drily.

“Is that who she is? I thought she was a tour guide,” Mike said absently, and Teke stifled a laugh at his deliberate blandness.

“She’s over there, but I wouldn’t let her hear you say that. In fact, you might be better off if she doesn’t see you.”

“Shit. Too late. I pinched her on the ass as I walked in,” Mike replied. “So where’s Hormann? He’s coming, isn’t he?”

“Should be here any minute.”

“So we’re here to cover your ass, right? Is it a speaking role or just a walk-on?”

“We’ll see how it goes.”

“Hey, kids.”

Both men looked over their shoulder to see the man they were waiting for.

“Hey, Chris.”

“Mike, Teke.” The taller man gave Mike a cursory glance. “Did you get a bad haircut, or did you give up growing hair for Lent?”

“Gosh, what a deadly sense of humor, Chris,” Mike replied, then stopped and squinted at the other man’s uniform. “What’s that?”

“What?” Chris asked, looking down at his chest.

“No, on your collar. Oh, it’s only
two
stars,” Mike said, but before the other man could respond, Candy Freeman walked over. Mike said hello to her, then strolled to the other side of the room, leaving Teke fighting a smile and Chris simmering.

“So the gang’s all here,” Candy said, nodding at Chris. “What are you up to?”

She’d changed her clothes before they left her office at Bolling, and was now wearing an uncharacteristically sober business suit. Teke knew that when the Queen of the Technicolor Wardrobe wore black, it wasn’t a good sign.

“What else would I be doing except contemplating life and its many wonders?” he replied easily.

The president entered, followed by at least two Cabinet members, several security advisors, and a few assistants. President Hernandez glanced at Teke, nodded at Candy, and continued across the room to take a seat at her desk. Candy, Teke, and the president’s entourage settled into the comfortable chairs arranged around the table.

“Candy, I believe you have some information on the situation developing at TESLA,” President Hernandez said.

“Thank you, Ms. President. We’ve confirmed that the storms in Connecticut, Park City, Central California, and the Mediterranean were triggered by the TESLA installation,” she said calmly, “as were the earthquakes in Mexico and Los Angeles. We’re continuing to investigate other significant events that have happened in the last thirty-six hours. Gianni Barone, an executive from Flint, is cooperating with us and he’s confident that the installation has gone rogue. He believes that TESLA is not under the control of the personnel on site but is being controlled by Greg Simpson. Simpson is currently en route to Annapolis Naval Air Station on a corporate jet that’s being escorted by two F-18 Super Hornets. He’ll be met by FBI and CIA personnel when he lands and brought to the District for questioning.”

“Will that stop the madness?” the president asked drily.

“That depends on what, if any, information he provides, ma’am. We anticipate that the atmospheric and terrestrial havoc will continue.”

“For how long?”

“We don’t know.”

“What is Flint doing to regain control of the situation?”

“They’re trying to re-establish communications with TESLA and determine how to disable the arrays. There isn’t much more they
can
do.”

Teke watched as the president leaned back in her chair and looked at Candy with an expression that was well on its way to becoming legendary. Piercing, cool, and unwavering, Helena Hernandez’s gaze could bore through titanium.

“What can
we
do?” she asked bluntly. “Could something be done to make a catastrophic equipment failure look like an accident?”

“Ms. President, if you don’t mind, I’ll let Admiral Curtis field that question.”

“Go ahead, Admiral Curtis.”

“We could destroy the arrays, but I would strongly caution against that, ma’am. The risks to the personnel are too high. The entire installation is just a few hundred acres, and the arrays are close to the habitat. If the life support systems are damaged, they’re in serious trouble. They have nowhere to go.”

“What are our options? Can the arrays be taken off line?”

“Ma’am, if that were possible, I imagine it would already have been done.”

The president kept her gaze fastened on him. Her voice was very calm. “I’m not referring just to powering down the installation. I’m asking about taking it
off line
. Remotely, if necessary.”

The room was silent for a long minute as Teke stared at the president’s serious, unwavering expression.

Holy shit.

Teke kept his gaze trained on the small woman at the head of the big table. Anyone tough enough to be born in the shallows of Miami Beach to a mother who’d just waded ashore from a boat with nothing but rags on her back, and rise up to be sworn into the Oval Office sixty years later could probably face down anyone and win. Even a psycho scientist named Greg Simpson.

“If you’re asking whether we could destroy the arrays, ma’am, the answer is yes. Using fighters or bombers at this time of the year is out of the question. There are no staging locations and the weather conditions are too risky. But remotely, via satellite?” Teke shrugged. “Sure. It would take a while to get an armed bird into the correct position and orbit, but we could zap TESLA with some electromagnetic pulses that would incapacitate it. Snap, crackle, pop. Or we could take the big bang approach and launch missiles from one of our subs, but, likewise, it would take some time to get them into position. Both options put the people at TESLA in jeopardy.”

“How much time would it take to get a satellite or sub into position?” the president asked, ignoring his last statement.

“We could have an armed satellite in position within five hours, ma’am. We have an attack sub, the USS
Texas,
in the region transiting from Perth. It carries both conventional and nuclear Tomahawks,” Teke replied, hoping the big
n
word would make her change course. “However, we can’t use conventional weapons. Their maximum range is six hundred miles with a top speed of five hundred fifty miles per hour and the TESLA base is one thousand miles inland. The nuclear Tomahawks have a longer range, about fourteen hundred miles. Based on how close we can get the sub to the coast due to the buildup of winter sea ice, the flight time would be approximately three hours from launch to target. I can have my staff draft scenarios and run estimates on the collateral damage to the environment and to the installation—”

“Don’t forget about the Tridents, Teke.”

Teke looked over his shoulder at Chris Hormann.

“Thank you, Admiral Hormann,” Teke replied curtly. “A Trident missile would be an option, ma’am. It’s a submarine-launched ballistic missile with multiple nuclear warheads. It has a range of seventy-five hundred miles with a top speed of eighteen thousand miles per hour. We have an Ohio-class sub carrying D-5s on deterrent patrol in the Indian Ocean south of Diego Garcia, which puts it well within range. Once launched, a modified low trajectory D-5 launch could be on target from the southern Indian Ocean in under ten minutes, ma’am.”

The president frowned at him. “Let’s keep nuclear missiles off the table for the moment, Admiral Curtis. The environmental fallout—no pun intended—would be extreme and we have international treaties to uphold. I’d prefer to do it without fireworks if we can help it. The media coverage—images on Google Earth—”

“With all due respect, ma’am, the environmental fallout would be less than you might imagine,” Chris interjected smoothly.

Teke controlled his surprise as he looked at his colleague and friend.
You want to nuke Antarctica?

Chris sent the president a reassuring smile. “We could send in a D-5, set up an airburst at ten thousand feet. It would take out the troublemakers, melt some ice—maybe down to bedrock, maybe not—but that would be about the extent of it. Even with the high winds. You see, ma’am, when you nuke a city, all kinds of things become irradiated: metal, concrete, dirt, living tissue. But you can’t irradiate oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which is all water is. Even in a nuclear reactor, it’s not the water that gets tainted; it’s the stuff
in
the water—particulates and whatnot—that get irradiated. Antarctic ice is pretty pure, so if you melt it and blow a few icebergs worth of the resulting water vapor into the air and it gets carried a few hundred miles, it’s not the same as if it were tons of irradiated and airborne dust from an urban blast. There’s just not much to contaminate down there, ma’am. I think it’s a viable solution.”

“Thank you.” The president looked at the room’s other occupants. “Other options?”

“I’m not so sure about the nuclear option, Ms. President,” said a familiar, laid-back voice and Teke jerked his head around to see Mike Rowan leaning forward at the table, hands folded in front of him. “I suggest considering a HALO drop.”

The president looked at him. “Who are you?”

“Admiral Michael Rowan, ma’am. HALO stands for High-Altitude, Low Opening, Ms. President. It involves dropping a Spec Ops team into the installation. We send a Delta Force team over there on the Peregrine Hypersonic Transport. We drop ’em above TESLA at 20,000 feet. Takes ’em two or three minutes to land. One bounce and in they go, assess the situation, do whatever they have to do”—Mike shrugged—“blow up the arrays, extract the people, stay for lunch, whatever.

“Meanwhile, we scramble a support team to McMurdo. Once the Spec Ops team has the area secure, the support team comes in on a C-17 and evacs everyone to McMurdo and then to Christchurch. They’d be having a pint of Speight’s in some pub about twenty-four hours from now.”

The room stayed ominously silent and after a minute, the president looked at Teke. “What do you recommend, Admiral Curtis?”

Teke hadn’t felt such stabbing pain in his gut since his appendix burst, but he ignored the feeling and met the president’s eyes. “I prefer to use human assets whenever possible rather than a nuclear missile, ma’am. While the nuke would present a faster solution, I think it would be overkill. I have a team in Christchurch on alert since early this morning. It could be deployed to McMurdo now.” He paused. “It’s risky, but the HALO drop has merit, ma’am.”