Frozen Fire (16 page)

“It’s halftime, which means there’s half a game left to go. And being ahead by a field goal doesn’t qualify as kicking our asses,” Marty pointed out, his voice as dry as the dust on Sam’s TV. “What are you doing watching the game anyway? Doesn’t she have you wallpapering a powder room or stenciling rosebuds in your bedroom closet or something?”

Sam winced. There had never been any love lost between Marty and Cyn. Not since the day they met, when Marty had come into town for the weekend and Cyn had insisted on hanging around. And pouring their beers into glasses. And telling them to take their feet off the coffee table. And laughing at Marty’s truly putrid Hawaiian hula-girl shirts.

Nobody was allowed to laugh at his shirts.

“She’s on a whale-watchin’ cruise off the Bahamas on one of those clipper sailboats. The kind where you pay for the privilege of bein’ a crew member,” Sam replied. “Went with a bunch of girlfriends this morning.”

“Anywhere near Taino?”

“Hell, yeah. They got permission to go divin’ with the humpbacks off Taino. Although I’m guessin’ that’s not going to happen now.” Sam wandered out onto his deck, which backed up to a small nature preserve. “You see that stuff about the crash?”

“Yeah. Can’t believe the fucking timing,” Marty muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I wasn’t supposed to say anything, but I just got a call saying it was all off anyway, so I figure the secrecy is, too. A few of us were going down there for a meeting late next week.”

Sam stopped short. “What for?” he demanded. “And why didn’t you say anything?”

“I just told you. I couldn’t. And I’m not really sure what for. All I know is about a month ago I got this invitation from Dennis Cavendish to attend some sort of conference he was calling a Geo-Marine Summit. I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. They wouldn’t tell me who else was going, just that I’d be flown down to Taino on one of his jets this Friday and flown home on Sunday.”

“They wouldn’t tell you what it was about?” Sam repeated, frowning as he stared absently into the swampy woods.

“Well, come on, Sam, what else could it be about but that methane hydrate gold mine Cavendish is sitting on? He was hot for you eight or nine years ago when you were polishing that reputation of yours. Mine’s the one with the high gloss now,” Marty said. Sam could practically hear him grinning. “I’ve been quoted in
The New Yorker
and
Newsweek
. Everybody wants me. I’m Martin Collins, Methane Man.”

“You’re also even more full of shit than you used to be,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah, but nobody else has figured that out yet, so keep your piehole shut,” Marty replied with a laugh.

Squinting into the middle distance and taking a long, thoughtful slug from his beer, Sam paused before asking his next question. “You really think he’s going for the methane?”

“Oh, hell, yes.” He paused. “This goes nowhere, right?” Marty waited for Sam’s grunt of acknowledgment. “I think he’s already done it.”

Sam frowned. “Done what? Mined it?”

“Yup.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Seismic activity, mostly. But, I don’t know, maybe it’s just a gut feeling.
You know, the oddball questions coming up on some loops, some of the research he’s been offering to sponsor. Then this weird invitation to the mystery conference. I guess once I figured out who some of the other people invited were, it all made me wonder. That’s when I went back to the seismo readings. Some of the activity was just odd enough to make me start to plot it, and I think I see a trend.”

“A trend?” Sam repeated.

“I think I might have seen evidence of some tests, Sam,” Marty replied bluntly. “Exploratory activity of the drilling kind.”

“Are you sure? There haven’t been any fluctuations in atmospheric levels there. I’ve got a grad student doing a dissertation on eastern Caribbean microclimates right now, and she’d have noticed something.”

“Well, I’m not looking at that end of the data with a fine-tooth comb, but I’d have noticed a blip. And she’s right: There aren’t any.”

“How can he be mining methane hydrate without any atmospheric release?” Sam demanded. “There would have to be something there. I mean,
something
, Marty.”

There was a long silence that Sam knew better than to break.

“Okay,” Marty said at last. “You know I’m not crazy, right?”

“Hell, yes, you’re crazy. You just called yourself ‘Methane Man,’” Sam replied.

“Yeah, well, okay. I’m crazy. Here’s what Methane Man thinks Dennis Cavendish is up to.”

“What’s that?”

“I think he’s doing whatever he’s doing on the seafloor.” Marty’s voice had dropped to a little above a whisper.

Sam blinked, then blinked again. “Say what? Well, of course it—”

“No, you dumb shit,
from
the seafloor,” Marty said, interrupting.

Sam paused as he let this sink in. “You think he’s got some sort of . . . facility
on the seafloor
?”

“I can’t think of any other way he could be doing it, Sam. Over the years, I’ve looked at a lot of satellite shots of that island and there’s no production facility there. There’s a volcano, palm trees, sand, a few clusters of small buildings, and a very simple, streamlined, deepwater port, and I know the last thing sounds like an oxymoron. But that is all there is, Sam. There’s no mining operation on that island. Nothing visible offshore, either.”

“But that island is surrounded by some of the deepest water in the region, Marty. How the hell could he—”

“I don’t know. I mean, really, not a fucking clue, Sam,” Marty replied, and Sam could practically hear him shrug. “But why else would he have invited me and a bunch of other pointy-headed methane hydrate groupies down there next week? I don’t know the whole guest list, but I confirmed three other guys, and just the four of us constitute one serious geek squad, Sammy.”

“But how—who the hell would—” Sam stopped, not even sure what questions he wanted to ask. “That’s just too wild, Marty. Nobody can build anything that deep. Even the U.S. Navy hasn’t attempted anything beyond a few hundred feet, at least anything that I know about.”

“Yeah, well.” Marty sighed. “Sam? Game’s back on.”

“Okay,” Sam replied absently.

“Think about it for a while,” Marty said. “If anything comes to mind, let me know. I can’t really come up with any other conclusion.”

“Well, yeah, okay, I will.”

“Hell, there goes the kickoff.”

The click as Marty hung up on him snapped Sam’s mind back to the present, and he wandered back into his house and parked himself in front of the TV. In the real scheme of things, what Dennis Cavendish was or wasn’t doing on his island wasn’t quite as important at the moment as what the Yellowjackets were doing to the Terps. He rearranged the stack of silk pillows beneath his head and brought up the volume.

3:35
P.M
., Saturday, October 25, Taino

Not entirely recovered from her upsetting conversation with Micki, Victoria let herself into her cottage. All of the large, screenless windows in the room were open, admitting a breeze that retained heavy hints of the acrid odor of burning jet fuel and little else. Even the frangipani that curled up and around the windows and doors couldn’t obliterate it.

Dennis was standing in the doorway to her private lanai.

He still looked like hell.

“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly as she moved to his side.

He looked down at her with a hollow expression in his eyes. “I won’t lie to you, Vic. I’m numb.”

“Why don’t we sit down for a minute?” She urged him toward the small table nestled in a corner of the patio and then stopped short. “Oh.”

A thin layer of greasy black dust lay on the bamboo furniture, and the broad shafts of sunlight that pierced the canopy of palms and catalpas held
particles that spun and swirled but didn’t sparkle as they fell. They were matte and dark, reflecting nothing but the horror that spawned them.

“I’ve never faced a situation that left me not knowing what to do, Vic. Never. It’s like my brain is paralyzed.”

She said nothing, just looked at him with an expression she kept as neutral as she could. It was as if she hardly knew the man standing in front of her. Frustration and grief had replaced the adrenaline-fueled anger that had rushed through him at first. She knew it was a natural progression, but it was a dangerous one.

Neither one of them could afford to let grief take precedence. Not when there were countries interested in more than altruism, with ships and crews at the ready to invade her space. She needed Dennis sharp, decisive, and in command, not frozen.

Leaving her standing in the dappled sunlight, Dennis turned and walked to the other side of the room where he stood silently in front of open French doors that led to a wide, waving communal lawn of sea oats and sawgrass, and eventually the beach.

“They almost got me, Vic. Came damned close.”

She had to bite her lips against the raw emotion in his voice. “Yes, but they failed. That’s the important thing. And they don’t know it yet. That’s important, too.”

“What will they do when they find out?”

“That depends on who they are. But whoever they are, they’ll try again if it means that much to them. You know that. This isn’t the first attempt, Dennis.”

“It was the best so far.”

Snap out of it, damn you
. “What do you want to do?” Victoria made sure her voice was as quiet as it always was, but she could hear evidence of the strain she’d been under for the last few hours. It felt like days since she’d watched the footage of the plane coming down.

“I want to do the same thing to the bastards who tried to do this to me.”

Okay, maybe you are coming back online
. “I meant now.”

“I know what you meant.” He let out a long breath. “What did the neighbors say?”

“They’re providing the assistance we’ve asked for. Keeping them away from the crash site will likely be our biggest challenge.”

He turned and looked at her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had a hand in it just to get in here for a look around.”

Victoria gave him a hard stare. “State-sponsored terrorism? Too convenient, Dennis, and too ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “I’ve been thinking, and for all of our security precautions and background screening, for all of our encryption and double-blind controls on information transfer, for all of your constant surveillance, do you really think we haven’t been infiltrated somehow? I don’t mean electronically, I mean by someone. That we have an enemy in our midst.”

“Of course I’ve considered it. At the hangar in Miami, yes, perhaps we have been penetrated, but here on the island? No. We’re secure. I know no security system is perfect, but we’ve taken system redundancy to the extreme, as you well know. And only you and I know the extent of that redundancy,” she replied easily, lifting one slim, dark eyebrow of her own. “Other than a few, a very few people in Washington, no one living outside of this island knows about the mining operation, Dennis. They may have their suspicions, but no one can
know
anything. Half the people living in
Atlantis
don’t know what the other half are doing.”

“I’d like to believe that, Vic. I’m glad you’re so confident.” He turned back to look at the beach.

Victoria crossed her arms and walked to the doors and stood next to him, careful not to lean against the wall. The more she looked around, the more it appeared that everything was covered with the greasy soot.

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re not glad. You’re horrified. And you don’t pay me to be confident, you pay me to be paranoid, and I’m exceptionally good at it. I won’t deny that this—”

“Act of terrorism,” he interjected. “That’s what we’re calling it, isn’t it?”

“This incident,” she continued, “is highly suspicious as well as tragic. The consequences are already rippling across the world literally at the speed of light. Or the speed of tele vision, anyway. Charlie has been fencing with the press for hours,” she said, referring to Charlie Deen, Dennis’s oldest friend and his Georgetown-based ambassador to the United States. “But I’m not entirely convinced that a real insider is involved.”

“Humor me. Who inside this organization could have been involved?”

She shrugged tightly and wondered what he would say if she told him he topped Micki’s list of suspects. “That’s the question of the day, isn’t it? I’ve already requested all the work records associated with the plane from the day its components started being fabricated until the day we took delivery.
We need far more basic information about the aircraft and what happened to it before we can start making conjectures. The first batch of—” She’d been about to say “debris” when the realization that the remains of fifteen people were mingled with the wreckage of the plane flashed into her mind. She stopped and swallowed hard, waving a hand in dismissal as she collected herself.

“The first batch of recovered material has already been brought ashore and is being labeled and packed for delivery to the NTSB in Miami. It should be on its way in a matter of hours. Charlie has arranged for a private hangar to be used as the staging area for reconstruction and . . . and as a morgue,” she finished, stumbling over the last words and hating herself for it.

Be cold
.

“We’ve arranged for the families of the victims to stay at Kamelame Cay on Andros if they would like to come down for . . . whatever. To see the site. We’ve arranged with the captain of the
Ma Belle
to have it available to them—”

“What’s that?”

“A yacht. With a helipad, so they can be closer to the site if they’d prefer.”

A soft tap on the door preceded its opening, and Dennis watched as Victoria’s assistant poked her head into the cottage.

“Excuse me, Victoria.” Gemma shifted her red-rimmed eyes to Dennis. “I have the office of the American secretary of state on the phone, sir. She’s patched through the embassy in Washington. She’d like to speak with you.”

“I’ll bet she would,” Dennis said with a hard laugh. “Unfortunately, we haven’t decided yet whether I’m still alive.”