Dry Ice (39 page)

Greg was acutely aware that all the people he’d been traveling with—the Flint executives and security teams—had remained seated and were watching him with avid, silent interest. The two flight attendants, the pilot, and the co-pilot were clustered at the front of the plane. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the security people were actually grinning. He returned his attention to the agent standing in front of him. “Why are you taking me there, Agent Gray?”

“There are a lot of people who’d like to speak with you, Dr. Simpson. Please stand up.”

“I’m due in Connecticut.”

“Dr. Simpson, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I can assure you that going down those aircraft steps is not easy when your hands are cuffed behind your back. Please stand up,” the agent said, her voice betraying no frustration.

Reluctantly, Greg stood up and moved toward the doors. From the corner of his eye, he saw his luggage being taken out of the hold. The two men and the other female agent preceded him down the steps; Special Agent Gray followed him. He was escorted to one of three large, black Suburbans parked in a line. All five of them climbed in. He was seated between the two FBI agents in the second row of seats. The two others sat in the front.

No one said anything as the car began to move across the tarmac. As they made a turn onto a road, he saw the Gulfstream taxiing slowly toward the runway.

*   *   *

The silence in the White House Situation Room was dense with tension. Every chair at the long conference table was filled and there were more ribbons and brass in the room than there were left at the Pentagon. It was the third time in two days Candy had been here and the second time in several hours.

Under other circumstances, I might say this is getting old. I wish.

Candy had never minded being center stage but, at this very moment, with the president’s famously intense attention focused on her, she would have preferred to be in the wings.

“Have you initiated your plan, Ms. Freeman?” the president asked.

“Yes, ma’am. A Special Operations team has deployed to TESLA aboard a Peregrine Hypersonic Transport aircraft. Admiral Teke Curtis is accompanying them as an advisor. They’ll be over the installation in five hours and the team will be dropped from twenty thousand feet. A C-17 specially reinforced for polar emergencies carrying support and medical teams is en route from Christchurch to McMurdo Station. They should be touching down in about two hours and will refuel and deploy to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole base, where they’ll remain on alert for immediate deployment to TESLA as needed.”

“What’s going on at the installation?” the president asked.

Candy let out a slow breath. “It’s hard to say. They’ve been dark for about fifty-five hours. We’re attempting to contact them using alternate methods. Greg Simpson is on the ground and in FBI custody here in Washington. We have confirmed that Croyden Flint died in the Park City avalanche. The board of Flint has authorized Gianni Barone to make all of Flint’s resources available to us. A Flint plane is en route from Capetown to McMurdo as backup for us.”

“The U.S. Navy needs Flint’s backup?” the president asked with a cool lift of an eyebrow.

“Technical support, ma’am,” Candy replied over snide chuckles from around the table. “The Flint crew knows TESLA: the winds, the runway, the people. We might need that intel.”

“Is the array still active?”

“Yes.”

“So it could fire again.”

“Yes, ma’am. It appears to be firing at six-hour intervals. The intensity has escalated with each event and the only areas not hit so far are Asia and Russia.”

“What if it fires when our men are in mid-air?”

A silence grew that Candy knew she had to break. “Depending on the specifics, we could lose some assets,” she said, hating the dispassionate, sanitized language that was part of their code.

The president studied the faces around the table. “We can’t afford to wait and see what happens. We don’t need to speculate about what might happen if Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang gets hit with something.” She looked directly at the representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “What are our options? In real time.”

“The
Louisiana,
an Ohio-class sub equipped with Trident D-5 nuclear missiles, is on alert, ma’am, and within range. The
Texas
is also within range for its nuclear Tomahawks. Or we can fight fire with fire and blast them with some electromagnetic pulses from one of our satellites. We’ll have one in position within an hour.”

“What will happen to the people down there?” the president asked, her voice quiet and calm, her face impassive.

“There will be collateral damage with any of the options, ma’am. We can’t get around that. The pulse would create the least amount of physical damage, but the results would be no different for the personnel.”

In other words, they’ll die horribly no matter what.

It seemed to Candy that the unspoken words echoed in the room.

The president’s eyes came back to her. “Candy, keep me informed. Let me know when your team—” She stopped for a moment. “We’ll hold off for now on exercising the other options. If the situation changes, I’ll reconsider.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Candy replied, getting to her feet as the president did.

Without another word, President Hernandez left the room.

*   *   *

Helena took the stairs back to the Oval Office. She hadn’t had a moment to work out in the last few days and was starting to get twitchy. The distance from the Situation Room to her office was as good as ten minutes on a StairMaster, which was better than nothing.

Maribeth was waiting for her.

Helena slid behind her desk. “All set?”

“Yes, ma’am. Secretary Bonner is in the anteroom.”

“That was fast.”

“He’s only just arrived back from the Middle East. He came here directly from Andrews.”

“Thanks, Maribeth. Show him in.” The president sat back in her chair.

Frederick Bonner strode through the door like the military leader he was, yet he was clearly jet-lagged and clearly annoyed, but keeping the latter in check. “Ms. President,” he said as he came to a stop near her desk.

“Hello, Frederick,” she said easily. “We need to discuss that Afghanistan report.”

His eyebrows rose at her abrupt introduction. “I’m happy to do that, Ms. President. When would you—”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?” Helena asked.

“Well, I’d like to read it again to refresh my—”

“I really don’t think that will be necessary, Frederick. I’ve read it and I’ve spoken with some people about it. The consensus is that it’s a great piece of fiction.”

She watched his face darken with anger. Having dealt with him many times while she was in the House and the Senate, Helena knew that his response was multi-layered. He didn’t like being spoken to like that, and especially not by a woman. Even if that woman was his commander in chief.

“It’s not fiction, Ms. President. It’s a full and accurate accounting of the situation.”

“No, it isn’t, Frederick. There’s no mention of Admiral Medev in it, or Croyden Flint, or TESLA, or Greg Simpson,” she replied, sitting forward to lean on her forearms. “That makes it incomplete at best and, as I said, fiction at worst.” She paused. “Are you aware that all the trauma happening in the world the last two days has pretty much been triangulated to TESLA?”

“No, ma’am,” he said stiffly.

“Then you must be out of the loop,” she snapped. “Simpson is in FBI custody, claiming that he has immunity from prosecution, thanks to you. Would you care to explain why he’s making that claim?”

The look in the secretary’s eyes was priceless. All those years of battle-hardened living hadn’t prepared him for seeing his career flash before his eyes at the words of a woman nearly half his size. And that woman was relishing the moment, relishing the mixture of fear, caution, and fury that had settled on Frederick Bonner’s craggy, aristocratic face.

“Can I speak with him?”

“No. You can speak with me. Did you offer him some sort of immunity? And, if so, in return for what?” she asked.

“I can’t answer those questions right now, Ms. President.”

“I didn’t think you would, Mr. Bonner,” she said, deliberately not using his title. “But here’s something you can do for me. Present me with a letter of resignation before my press conference, which is in”—she glanced at her watch—“about forty-five minutes.”

His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but she just shook her head.

“Game over, Frederick,” she said. “You serve at the pleasure of the president, and I’m no longer pleased. Under extreme pressure from the party, I nominated you. It was against my better judgment because I didn’t trust you. And you have fulfilled my expectations.” She paused. “I’d like you to know that your cooperation in the matter of Greg Simpson and TESLA will go a long way to helping me decide whether I direct Justice to include you in the investigation. In the meantime, you have a letter to write.”

*   *   *

Five hours had passed since the arrays sent their last pulse into the atmosphere. It had been nearly that long since Tess had asked them to begin making preparations to deal with a worst-case scenario. Everyone in the installation was on edge; the easygoing atmosphere had disappeared. The only conversations that took place were those related to the situation. Most of the inhabitants had retreated into silence since their usual banter, jokes, and smiles did little to relieve the dense, choking tension that filled the air.

“Everyone has scaled back what they can,” Fizz Reilly said in a low voice as she and Tess sat alone at a table in the dining room having a quick cup of coffee. “Ewan powered down the kitchen. The gas lines are secured. The knives are locked up. It’ll be cold food—salads, sandwiches, and the like—until you say he can power it up again. Kendra is set up for triage. She and Mick have been turning the clinic into an emergency center. They’re set up for whatever needs done: surgical supplies, oxygen, the odd straitjacket.”

Tess looked at her in surprise and Fizz gave her the ghost of a grin.

“Sorry, gallows humor. The housekeepers and Mick and I moved a lot of stuff into the growth station. That’s the emergency shelter. It’s got the water supply and an independent heat supply and it’s next to the clinic.”

“What did you put there?” Tess asked, having moved past exhaustion into overdrive hours ago.

“Blankets, heat packs, non-perishables, flares. It’s near enough to the ready room so I didn’t move the ECW gear, but we can bring that into the growth station if you’d prefer.”

“We’ll hold off until we need to do that.
If
we need to do that,” Tess corrected herself.

“Dan tested the emergency backup power and ventilation systems. He tests them weekly anyway, but he did again. They’re operational. What else do you want to know?”

Tess met the younger woman’s eyes. “How are people holding up?”

Fizz gave her a tight smile. “Most of them are following the ‘keep calm and carry on’ method of dealing with this. We’ve had a few hissy fits and some tears, but most are just doing what needs to be done.” She paused. “Everyone would feel better if the bloody power blips would stop.”

Tess smiled. “It’s been an hour or so since we had one. Maybe that was the last.”

“It’s been two hours, and I’ll believe they’ve ended when a month goes by without one.” Fizz put her hand around her mug and stood up. “I’ll do another spin through the place to see what’s what.”

“Call me if you need me,” Tess said, getting to her feet.

The women walked together to the corridor, then went in opposite directions.

Tess entered the sandbox quietly. The mood in TESLA’s control center had been tense and somber for hours, the hush broken only by the sound of keys being tapped and the occasional profanity muttered under someone’s breath. Everyone jumped when Ron slammed his fist onto the desk, shattering everyone’s concentration.

He stood up, white-faced and looking faintly sick. Tess glanced at Nik, who rose to his feet.

“What’s up?” she asked, feeling her voice break before she got the second syllable out.

“There’s only one more in the queue, Tess.”

“One what? Series?”

“One more command sequence. One more event. Looks like it might be another earthquake, but I don’t know where. I’ve logged the similarities between this command and the others that I think triggered the quakes, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the southern hemisphere. Timing is soon.”

“How soon?”

Ron shrugged and couldn’t even fake casualness. The rest of the room had become as silent as a morgue.

“Real soon.”

“That fucker.” Nik was looking at them and breathing hard through his nose like a bull in a ring. “I’d give a lot to drag Greg’s sorry ass in here and make him tell us what he’s doing.”

“Let it go, Nik,” Tess said, her shaky voice betraying that she was barely holding it together. She turned to the rest of the people in the room. “Please, keep going. We have to stop this.”

CHAPTER
32

“Ma’am, Ms. President, please. Please don’t give those orders. Our support team is at the Pole. The Special Operations Team is—” Candy had to stop and swallow the rattle in her voice. “They’re nearly at the drop zone. Once they go in, everything will be over quickly.” Candy stood in the Situation Room, facing the grim woman at the table. The president looked like she’d aged years just in the last few hours.

“Candy, I understand where you’re coming from, but this has gone on too long. I can’t let it go on any longer. More events triggered since our last meeting. Heavy rains have begun flooding Southeast Asia. A massive earthquake hit near Anchorage, destroying the city and pulling HAARP out of commission. A volcano that’s been dormant for decades blew in Peru with no warning, just a big boom followed by tons of ash clouds and lava flows. And since before dawn, temperatures are rising across Scandinavia and eastern Russia, and down into northern Europe just like they have been in Dallas. Above the Arctic Circle, a twenty-eight-degree rise in five hours
in April
is a catastrophe,” the president said tightly.