The Alarmists (20 page)

December 17, 2012, 10:11 P.M.

Brent thought that what he saw as he looked out the window of the cargo transport was how the world would look minutes before it breathed its last: a maelstrom of ice chips riding winds that obeyed no meter, spires of ice towering over frozen deserts, glimpses of monstrous cracks in the fabric of the earth that looked dormant but seemed to hold the promise of fire and magma issuing from the earth’s molten belly.

Added to that was the very real possibility that he would make use of the airsickness bag before the plane alighted on terra firma.

He realized, as he watched the plane split the elements in two, that it was insane for him to be there. The stakes in this thing exceeded what he’d signed on for. There was no set of axioms that should have resulted in his sitting in a seat in the cold cargo hold of a plane that vibrated as if it would shake itself apart, knowing that if it did there wasn’t another living soul around for a thousand miles save for the foolhardy adventurers who had chosen to brave the elements with him.

However, as he looked around him, taking in the faces of the men he’d come to know over the last two weeks, he saw nothing but an equanimity that bespoke another day at the office. Taking his cues from them, he decided not to cry.

Rawlings had made quick work of the satellite imagery. The first thing he’d noticed was the rerouting of several commercial satellites that seldom were rerouted. At first, Rawlings and the technicians, whom NORAD had loaned him, approached the problem linearly. The technicians, accustomed to altering orbits to gain a better view of a target, attacked this problem with the same mind-set. It was Rawlings, more used to approaching things with a unique perspective, who suggested that the satellite moves might not have been meant to bring something into focus but to blur something else. From that point it was a simple matter of finding the manufactured blind spot, which lined up precisely with what Albert Griffiths had recalled about eastern Antarctica.

However, as Rawlings had explained to Colonel Richards, the effectiveness of creating a blind spot rested on making sure
everyone
turned their heads. And while whoever had organized the altered orbits had demonstrated a frightening array of resources, the type of task they’d assigned themselves was impossible to pull off. Someone was always watching.

Rawlings suspected whoever had orchestrated the satellite moves would have known that. They would have acted accordingly.

It took Rawlings and the technicians—with the captain allowing the techs to do what they did best—to find faint yet regular energy signatures where none had ever been recorded. Now with a place to look, the team had gone for a visual, but the one old satellite that could provide a picture had a lens that wouldn’t grant the pictures enough detail to make out anything beyond the emptiness of a forbidding continent.

Thus, another field trip.

The plane dropped as the air pockets shifted around it and Brent grabbed hold of the armrests. But in a second it was over—the plane resettled at its new, if not entirely chosen, altitude. Brent wondered if that said something about the concept of free will, but he chose to relegate that thought to a time more appropriate for trolling the depths of it.

All of a sudden the plane began what Brent assumed was a controlled drop, a rapid descent he hoped was dictated by radar and pilot expertise, and through a break in the opaque clouds he saw a flat surface. Less than fifteen seconds later the wheels of the plane touched something solid and Brent’s lunch fought against making a reappearance. He was thrown forward as the pilot hit the brakes, as the transport locked down on the ice of a world the professor had known existed but had never considered in empirical fashion.

It took the plane almost a quarter mile to stop, although Brent just registered it as a long time. He forced thoughts from his mind of the plane either running into a mountain or running out of road and falling into the sea, and waited for someone to tell him what to do. As it turned out, he had to wait a while.

As the plane powered down and the team—their numbers supplemented by Army Rangers on loan from General Smithson—jumped into motion, he found that not one of them paid him the slightest bit of attention. Each one had a series of prescribed duties to execute before acknowledging anything outside of that list. Rawlings, who had assumed responsibility for Brent in Maddy’s absence, was the first to include him among those duties.

“Stick with me,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere and don’t touch anything.”

“Got it,” Brent said.

They told him the clothes they’d outfitted him with were good for forty below zero, but when the bay door opened and the team spilled out onto the ice, it was difficult to convince his face of that. As the team assembled, Brent saw a number of pieces of equipment that he hadn’t witnessed the team using up to that point, and he suspected the weather necessitated use of the big guns.

The team moved as one across the frozen surface, led by Rawlings, who consulted his handheld device. When enough distance separated them from the plane so that Brent lost sight of it, he felt the beginnings of panic set in. What kept that panic from becoming debilitating were the attitudes of the rest of the team, all of whom acted as if the loss of a visual on the plane meant nothing.

How long they progressed over the ice, Brent didn’t know. It seemed to him that they traveled far past the time he’d heard the colonel say a person could survive in this place without the proper equipment, and it was at some point during this journey that he realized he trusted these people. And with that realization came the knowledge that he had no idea why he trusted them. On the sociological chart that mapped the progression of relationships, he understood that his camaraderie with them was the result of a compressed relational period defined by stress and a shared agenda, and for one of the few occasions in his professional life, he was ready to toss all his theories out the window. He liked and trusted these folks, for no other reason than they were good people. Despite the career sociologist in him, he decided that was enough.

Rawlings, walking a step ahead of Brent, stopped and Brent did the same. Rawlings consulted his scanner, turning his body first to the left and then to the right.

“I’ve got something, Colonel,” Rawlings yelled over the wailing of the wind. He used his gloved hand to wipe particulate matter from the scanner and set his body in the direction of whatever the machine had revealed to him. “About fifty yards that way.”

Rawlings started off and the rest of the team followed. Brent hung somewhere at Rawlings’s elbow. The fifty yards unfolded below them, and by some inward count that only someone used to measuring distance without the proper instruments could utilize, Rawlings slowed and the team spread out. Brent, who had no idea what to look for, remained at the man’s side. It was with a growing feeling of uselessness, then, that he suddenly fell down a hole.

It wasn’t a deep hole, perhaps sixteen inches, yet the ground beneath his feet felt soft. It was enough, however, to turn his ankle and to require help from Rawlings to find solid ground again. After the officer pulled him up, Brent spent a few seconds looking into the hole.

“It felt like it might go down farther if someone pulled the loose snow and ice out of it,” he said.

At that, Rawlings knelt down, bringing his monitor closer to the hole. Then he set the instrument down and cleared some of the snow away until he’d revealed a hole rounder than nature could have produced in that environment.

“Score one for Albert Griffiths,” he said, looking up at Brent. “This was drilled.”

He touched a button and a rectangular piece of what looked like metal slid from the front of the scanning unit. Rawlings lowered the monitor into the hole and held it there for at least thirty seconds before withdrawing it. When he pulled it from the hole he touched another button with his gloved finger and sent the rectangular sensor back into the machine. Within fifteen seconds he was flagging down the colonel.

“Traces of octanitrocubane,” he shouted to him.

While the layers of protective gear kept Brent from seeing the true effect of this pronouncement on the colonel, he saw the man’s body go taut. Seconds later he was calling the rest of the team, and the loaned Army Rangers, around.

“Rawlings found traces of octanitrocubane,” he yelled, pointing at the hole. “We’re looking for shallow depressions, about eight inches in diameter.”

With that as their charge, the team set off. Brent stayed with Rawlings, but he didn’t move from his spot, giving the rest of the team a point from which to spread. Fifteen minutes later, Brent saw Snyder begin to wave from about twenty-five yards away. Ten minutes after that, one of the Rangers made another hit. Even to Brent’s unpracticed eye, he saw that the three holes formed a straight line.

The colonel sent Bradford and Addison in opposite directions, overshooting Snyder and the Ranger by the same distance that separated those two from Rawlings. When, after a bit of searching, each man returned a wave, the colonel made a hammering motion in the air, followed by a circle. As Brent watched, each person positioned at a hole pulled a stake-mounted flag from his pack and drove it into the ground, after which they started back to Richards, who motioned them into a tight circle.

“Dr. Michaels was kind enough to take one for the team and find a hole for us,” Richards said. “And it looks like we have some others in a straight line. Now, what does that mean?”

The thing about working with a group of smart people was that it seldom took long for someone to venture an opinion. In this case it was Addison.

“We’re at the grounding line, Colonel,” the man said. “It can’t be coincidence that we have holes filled with the most powerful nonnuclear explosive known to man, spaced about twenty-five yards apart along the line. My guess is that the line of explosives covers the entire length of the grounding line.”

“So you think someone’s going to blow the ice shelf,” Richards said.

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel nodded. “That’s what I think too.”

Richards looked past Addison, following the line marked by the flags, imagining flags heading into the distance as far as he might see on a clear day.

“Too many to dig out,” he said. “And probably too dangerous.”

Snyder shook his head.

“It’s a pretty safe explosive, sir. Safer than just about anything out there. Your problem is time.”

The colonel grunted and studied the flags for a while longer as if they might offer up a suggestion. Finally he turned to Brent.

“Dr. Michaels, it looks like we’ve found your polarizing event.”

—

“So what does this mean?” Brent asked Richards as the team finished boarding the plane.

Before the colonel could respond, Addison cut in.

“Colonel, there’s going to be a simple triggering mechanism, probably no bigger than a remote control.”

“Where?”

“It could be anywhere, sir. It would feed a signal to a satellite, which would set off each of the explosive caches simultaneously.”

“And I’m guessing there’s no way to keep that from happening?” the colonel asked.

“Technically, whoever has the detonator could blow the whole thing right now, from anywhere in the world,” Addison said.

The fact that Addison was the most cerebral member of the team and, as such, often delivered information with the passion of someone reading the newspaper, added a peculiar weight to his statement—enough to make everyone within earshot stop for a second, including the colonel.

“I doubt we’re in any danger now, Colonel,” Brent said. “Whoever planted these charges—whoever’s responsible for everything we’ve seen to this point—will wait until the twenty-first. They won’t do it any sooner.”

The colonel nodded, turning his attention to the rest of the team.

“Can they do it?” he asked. “Can they really separate the ice shelf from the continent?”

While he waited for an answer, the plane rumbled to life.

“It depends on how deep they drilled,” Addison said. “And how much octanitrocubane they’re using.” He paused and seemed to do some calculations in his head. When he looked back up at the colonel, his face was grim. “It’s possible, sir.”

On the heels of that, the plane began to move and Brent almost lost his footing. The colonel motioned for everyone to take their seats. Once everyone was seated and buckled in, Richards swiveled his seat around so that he faced the team. The Rangers, who had fulfilled their obligation, clustered in the back, talking amongst themselves.

“What happens if the ice shelf goes?” Richards asked, but then immediately held up a hand. “And I know we don’t have enough data. I’m looking for conjecture, folks.”

“I think the first worry is a tsunami.” This came from Addison, again, who was in his element with a puzzle like this one. “A slab of ice this size basically falling into the ocean could create a wave that would reach who knows how many miles inland if it were to hit a landmass.”

“Okay,” Richards said. “What else?”

“Rising sea levels,” Bradford said. “The shelf will break up over time and parts of it will float into warmer water. And with the size of this thing . . .”