Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller (11 page)

“You know, Jock,” Wundt said, “when we were together the other day, I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell you a little more about our brotherhood, about how we look out for each other; how we circle the wagons when it becomes necessary. I got the feeling you wouldn’t have been receptive, so I held my counsel. I asked you to leave Judge Epson’s past where it belongs. What did you do? Exactly the opposite. You requested the files from archives. Then there’s a dead woman in your driveway.”

“Judge, do you want a fucking letter from the detective in charge of the investigation saying that I’m not a murder suspect? I can have it for you in an hour. If that’s not the purpose of this meeting, I have things to do. How the hell did you know I requested the case files from archives, anyway?”

“Since we’re using the vernacular, I’ll answer as follows. That’s none of your fucking business. And the purpose of this meeting is not to ask you for a goddamned letter from some alcoholic has-been of a police detective. It’s to ask you to take leave from the bench.”

“What?”

“I think three months should be adequate. Maybe in that time you can give a little thought to the importance of unity between those of us who bear this responsibility.”

“I came home and found a dead woman in my driveway. I had nothing to do with it and the cops know it. You’re condemning me? You can’t be serious.”

A wry smile broke Wundt’s stern countenance. He was enjoying this. “You’re right, of course, and this would be a good time for all
of us on the bench to come together and express a unity of belief in your innocence. Sadly, we can’t do that. Your brawling in a redneck bar aggravates the situation. No, Judge Boucher, I’ve discussed the matter with my colleagues. It will be hard on us, of course—God, two vacancies on the bench—but we’ll survive. You will take a three-month leave of absence.”

“You can’t—” Boucher said.

“You’re right. I can’t force you to take leave. You’re appointed for life. But as chief judge it’s my job to oversee the conduct of our judges. I can reprimand, or I can recommend further action. Take my advice. Take a leave. I think you will appreciate the value of cooperation when it’s time to come back. Oh, and please, try to stay out of redneck bars in the meantime. That is all. Meeting adjourned.”

Boucher stood, walked to the door, and turned. “The bar wasn’t redneck. It was Cajun. Like me.”

He left, the door slamming behind him.

C
ONFLICTED:
THE WORD SUMMED
up Judge Boucher’s feelings. He walked to the river that evening and stared out from the embankment down the Mississippi. The sun had set. A string of barges being towed looked like some prehistoric predator gliding through black waters, the lights of the tug’s wheelhouse the yellow eyes of the beast. Was Fitch right? Had he jumped to conclusions regarding Judge Epson? Had he given Palmetto too much benefit of the doubt? Fitch had implied that the skinny old fart had played him like a drum, and the longer he thought about it, the madder he got. He had no idea where Palmetto had gone, but he had more questions for him—and he had a way to get him back, if luck served. Taking a leave from the bench might not be a bad idea, but he had an official act to perform before he left. First thing tomorrow. Standing looking over the brooding Mississippi, he took out his cell and speed-dialed Malika.

“Hi,” he said. “How are you?”

“Fine. You?” Her voice sounded flat.

“I’ve been asked to take a leave from the bench till questions about that fight and the murder are resolved. I don’t have to do it, but
I’m thinking it might be a good idea for a couple months. Maybe sort this stuff out in my head.”

“What will you do?”

“Whatever I want, wherever I want. Other than a lot of time for contemplation, I haven’t thought about specifics.”

She asked about Ruth Kalin.

“I’ve met with the police. They don’t have anything yet. These things take time.”

“Where are you now? I hear something in the background.”

“I’m not too far from the French Market; just staring at the river. You?”

“I’m in my apartment, getting ready to go to bed. I’ve been tired since I got back, and things have been hectic.”

“Your voice sounds kind of funny.”

“I’m tired, Jock. I haven’t slept well. That incident, well, it upset me. I’m not as—what was your word?—as dispassionate as you.”

He didn’t know what to say, but at that moment she felt a lot farther away than New York.

“Jock?”

“I’m here. I just wanted to say hello. You go on and get some sleep. I’ll call you soon.”

“I’ll try to be in a better frame of mind. Good night, Jock.”

It was not one of their better conversations. He blamed Bob Palmetto for that too.

Boucher woke up next morning eager to face the day. He arrived at his chambers before his assistant and had the order drafted when she arrived. It was quickly typed, signed, and filed with the clerk’s office. Before expiration of the ten-day period after which judgments
became final, Judge Boucher rescinded his previous ruling and reinstated the contempt order against Robert Palmetto; a free man once again made a fugitive with the stroke of the pen. He would be totally unsuspecting. Sooner or later he’d be ensnared. This time it wouldn’t take twenty years. Like adding a codicil to a will, Judge Boucher had added a unique instruction. He was to be personally notified whenever and wherever the man was apprehended. A one-of-a-kind kicker, he had given his home and cell phone numbers.

He wasn’t the only one concerned with the whereabouts of Bob Palmetto.

Above it all. Figuratively and literally, that’s how one felt in a private jet.

John Perry was economizing, using the Learjet 60 instead of one of the company’s larger aircraft. Though it had a capacity of up to eight passengers, he’d had this one fitted for four, with two of the seats converting to a bed if he needed to rest or fancied one of the hostesses. Several politicians he transported were particularly partial to this unique aspect of in-flight service. His flight attendants were extremely well paid. They never said no; not that women ever said no to John Perry, whether compensated or not. He was in his mid-fifties, but his thick black hair had not yet begun to turn gray. His good looks had not faded; in fact, maturity added to his attraction. He had remained married to the same woman for almost thirty years. He’d seen careers ruined—and fortunes squandered—by extramarital affairs. When he got the urge, he’d hop on one of his jets and do it among the clouds with women whose only expectations were monetary.

On this occasion, though, sex was the furthest thing from his mind. Nor was he traveling alone. Two black leather seats faced each other with a table between them. Holes in the four corners held glasses, and a caddy fixed to the side of the table, not unlike the food trays used in old drive-in restaurants, held a bottle of scotch and bucket of ice. He and the man sitting across from him were engaged in serious conversation and did not want to be interrupted. The plane’s flight plan would take them to the South Carolina coast, where the company’s long-range helicopter, a Sikorsky S93, would transport them to a ship two hundred miles offshore. John Perry would see, before this day was out, some of the deepest core samples ever taken on planet Earth. And he would see his legacy: energy independence for what was once—and would be again, he thought—the greatest country on earth.

“What am I looking at, Bert?” Perry asked. The documents had been unrolled and were larger than the table’s surface. Crystal glasses at the four corners weighed them down.

Bert Cantrell had been John Perry’s closest confidant and master geologist for over thirty years. They were partners but didn’t treat each other as such. To Cantrell, Perry would always be the boss. To Perry, Cantrell was his employee. It worked. In a business where the end justified the means, not only was one usually incapable of understanding the logic employed by the other, in many cases ignorance of the other’s activities was bliss. But they had one thing in common. Both were ruthless to a fault when set on achieving a goal.

“These are substrata soundings we’ve taken of the Carolina Trough,” Cantrell said. “They give the location and size of the methane hydrate fields and surrounding formations. Palmetto was working on geologic sequestration, among other things. His plan called
for separating carbon dioxide from the methane and storing it underground. Carbon dioxide has been stored in geologic formations for aeons. But separating methane from CO
2
and storing it under the ocean floor is something new. We’re just beginning to study the possibility and its effects.”

“I can’t believe it’s taken us twenty years and we still can’t find out what he did.”

“What we think he did. The papers we got in that court case just reveal his theories. Sorry to hear about Judge Epson, by the way. We don’t know if Palmetto actually produced results. Man, I wish we’d gotten him to come over to our side; if I could have just one hour with that guy . . .”

“I’d settle for one minute.” Perry lifted his glass of scotch on the rocks with his left hand and took a sip. With his right hand he formed a pistol with thumb and index finger and fired an imaginary shot. “He and his damned lawyer nearly blew the whole deal.”

“Yeah, well . . . we dodged that bullet.”

Two hours later they were over South Carolina, descending to a small airstrip near the Atlantic coast. On the same strip, the Sikorsky S93 corporate helicopter was revving up for the final leg of the journey. Within minutes they were airborne again and heading out over the open ocean. Hours over the open sea, the research vessel was spotted, the red-ringed
H
on the aft deck guiding them to a soft touchdown. Perry had not spoken a word during this phase of the trip, and when asked why he’d been so silent he said, “I don’t like helicopters.” They were escorted belowdecks.

The lab aboard the ship was as complete as any geophysicist could have wanted. Half a dozen scientists were busy at computers. A larger screen displayed video transmitted from a remote camera on the ocean floor.

“Hey, guys, the boss is here,” Cantrell said.

Only then did the scientists look up. Intrusions were not common and not welcome. The team leader introduced himself to the CEO and gave the names of his colleagues—each nodding and giving a wave and an expression that said,
I’m busy here.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Perry said. “Carry on.”

The team leader, Ed Strake, explained the group’s activities.

“What you see on this screen is the ocean floor photographed by our remote camera. It’s fixed on the site where we’re taking our core samples. Not much going on at the moment. The guys with their noses stuck to computer screens are analyzing data from our soundings. We’re using Raman spectrometers, they’re like lasers, to identify the boundaries of the field. We brought up methane hydrate; samples are in the freezer. Want to see them?”

“How did you find them?” Perry asked.

“We found these on the surface.”

“You just pick them up?”

“Sometimes they’re right there in the open, sometimes just below the ocean floor. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not like finding a rock—more like finding a diamond or a gold nugget. Sometimes where there are large deposits you do stumble across a surface sample, probably a piece broken off from a larger stratum. A hydrate is not as strong as rock, but it’s twice as strong as ice. Also, if the pressure is constant, they remain frozen at temperatures above the melting point of ice. That’s good news for extraction; makes it much more like mining than drilling.”

He led them to a walk-in freezer. On a stainless steel table that resembled something from a hospital—or an abattoir—was a baseball-sized chunk of what looked like ice.

“Pick it up,” Strake said.

Perry did. “Feels like Styrofoam,” he said. He put it down.

“That’s because a hydrate is a very poor conductor of heat. But it’s ice. It melts. Watch this,” Ed said. He flicked a lighter and held it to the chunk. The ice was immediately enveloped in waves of blue flame. The three men stared in silence. The ice was on fire. “Not much to look at, but this clump of ice comes from one of the biggest—and oldest—hydrocarbon deposits on earth.”

“What’s next?” Perry asked.

“That’s up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“We need to clear the surface of the ocean bed. It’s mostly sandy bottom but there is some sedimentary rock. There’s a deep stratum of methane just below. You need to determine the manner in which we remove the top sedimentary level.”

“We blast,” Perry said.

Strake’s eyebrows arched. “Underwater explosions deliver more energy than explosions aboveground. The heat from an explosion could melt the hydrate and release methane. The gas bubble expands because its pressure falls below the pressure of the surrounding water, until it collapses and forms a second bubble. Both create shock waves which can rise to the surface, creating a tsunami effect. Underwater blasting is very dangerous.”

“Not if we limit the size of the blast. Tell him, Cantrell.”

“We’re just sweeping the surface of the seabed. We’ll use low-velocity explosives, carefully placed. Heat rises, even in water, and with the temperature we have at that depth, there won’t be a heat issue. By my calculations, the shock wave will be minimal and will in fact contribute to clearing the surface. There won’t be any seismic effects. There are no reflecting surfaces or thermoclines on the seabed in the blast area, so the waves will just sweep over it and dissipate.”

Perry smiled and put a hand on Strake’s shoulder. “We’ll blast. I’ll tell you when.”

Again silent in the refueled helicopter, Perry spoke only after they were heading back in the jet and the scotch was poured. He contemplated his glass.

“It’s still risky,” he said.

“Blasting?”

“Yeah. But we’ve got to get started. We’ve wasted too many years trying to get the federal regulators on board with this while everybody else is moving forward. Hell, New Zealand has announced it is going to be the first country to begin commercial extraction of methane hydrate. New Zealand, for Christ’s sake—a country of eco-freaks, and they’re beating us to this energy source. Well, screw the regulators. Do you know where we just were? We were two hundred miles offshore, the boundary of the U.S. exclusive economic zone. If we have to, we’ll stay in international waters. Then they can’t touch us.” Perry sipped his scotch, then said, “We’ve got to find that fucker.”