Frozen Fire (30 page)

Dennis blinked to clear his vision, then lifted his hand to his face when that didn’t work. To his surprise, it came away wet. “That wall was stable. We had it assayed. We checked it with everything—ground-penetrating radar.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It was stable, Micki.”

“Was it?”

He raised his head to look at her. Her tone—

“This is a volcanic island sitting at the edge of a trench at the end of one of the most seismically volatile regions in the Caribbean,” she pointed out in a voice gone a little high and breathless. “The stability of that wall and everything else down there is relative. In some ways, this accident should come as no surprise. You were drilling into sediment you knew was riddled with fault lines. You were disrupting—” She stopped, and he watched in growing horror as her color deepened, her breathing became tighter.

Before he could speak, before she could continue, the door to his office was flung open with a crash and Andi, the daytime supervisor of the topside monitoring station, burst into the room, her eyes wild and streaming.

“The mining operation.” Her voice broke in a breathy shriek. “The pipeline’s been hit. It’s discharging,” she panted, nearing hyperventilation. “The hydrate is vaporizing in the water column. It’s broken the surface. Atmospheric sensors are going wild.”

Her first words had brought Dennis to his feet. Her last words enabled him to find his voice.

“It’s what?”
he demanded.

“Vaporizing,” she repeated. “Loss of pressure is forcing the clathrate out of the cavity, shooting it to the surface. It’s breaking down as it rises—” She stopped and sagged against the doorjamb, fighting for each breath. “The wind. Is blowing. Onshore.”

Galvanized by the news, Micki dragged Andi, now swaying on her feet, to the nearest chair and pushed her into it, then made her cover her mouth and nose with her hands and breathe deeply. Over the now-sobbing woman’s head, Micki’s eyes met Dennis’s.

“Look what man hath wrought,” she said softly. “From the depths of the Earth, you shall reap both your material reward and your eternal fate.”

She’s lost it
.

Dennis stared into her eyes, watching the shock he’d seen in them earlier dissipate, and be replaced by a furious heat.

“What the hell are you talking about? Snap out of it, Micki. I need you to keep it together. We’ve got a crisis—”

Her attractive face split by a cold, terrifying smile, Micki took her hands off Andi’s shoulders and walked toward him with the feral grace of a jaguar closing in for the kill. Without realizing he did so, Dennis backed up a step.

“That’s right, Dennis. You be afraid of me. You should be. Because the party is over.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her expression grew more intense, and anger seemed to seethe around her. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Dennis. But if you insist on playing dumb, I’ll enlighten you. You got greedy, Dennis. You had to tamper with Nature just like those other people did, the ones you were bringing here. Your executive
audience
. Y’all got greedy, and they died because of it. You will, too, and so will a lot of people. People who don’t even know they deserve it.”

“What people? What are you talking about, Micki?”

She gave a tight, jagged shrug. “Swimmers, people on boats and who live near the shore. Oh, and not just people, Dennis. You’re going to kill innocent creatures, too. Whales. Dolphins.” Micki’s demented gaze bored into his eyes, her expression sending a river of ice down his spine. “Ships are going to drop like stones into the sea. Aircraft will fall out of the sky like your big jet did yesterday, but with much less fuss and drama. No flames, just here one minute, gone the next.” She snapped her fingers and the sharp crack of it seemed to shatter the very air in the room.

Dennis stared at her, his bloodstream running hot and full of adrenaline. “You’re sick.”

“And you would know all about that kind of sickness, wouldn’t you, Dennis? Oh, don’t move, precious. Stay right where you are. I have so much more to tell you,” she said as he started to cross the room toward her. “The winds are calm right now, Dennis, and coming from the west. They’re blowing inshore from the site of your little mishap. That means your precious, invisible cloud of poison will reach land very soon. But that will change in a little while. The wind will change and then your deadly
cloud will move into the west, to the U.S.” Her mouth twisted into a frown, as if she’d suddenly tasted something bad.

“All the pretty parasites on the beaches of the Florida Keys, all the people on sidewalks, in cars, in the buildings will die. They’ll be fast but ugly deaths. I wish they would be the only creatures to die but, unfortunately, everything will die, Dennis. The birds, the animals, and the insects. Anything that needs oxygen to breathe will die. And then the plants will die, because there won’t be anything left to produce the carbon dioxide they need,” she continued in a slow voice that was hypnotic with insanity.

She was describing the worst-case scenario. How did she even know about it? He hadn’t told her everything.

“No, Micki,” he said, trying to keep his own voice calm. “No one on land will die. No animals. Methane is lighter than air. It will rise—”

“Shut up,” she shouted. “Just shut up. Do you think I’m a fool, Dennis? I know all about your additive, Dennis, your precious dennisium—”

His gut puckered, then lurched, at her use of the term.

The chemical composition, even the name of his creation, was a heavily guarded secret. Only he and Victoria and a handful of people—most of them now dead—knew about it.

Micki wasn’t one of them.

At Victoria’s insistence, he’d kept Micki out of the inner loop.

Victoria
. He stared at Micki as if at a ghost, a monster.

Mother of God, what have I done?

A harsh, ugly laugh burst out of her. “Surprised, aren’t you? You might as well understand now that you have no secrets from me, Dennis. Neither does the lovely Victoria.” She shook her head. “I know all about the precious secret that was going to make you king of the world. You know, for all your intelligence, you’re so predictable. You couldn’t resist naming it after yourself, could you? How trite.”

“There is no—”

“Oh, shut up, Dennis,” she snapped. “I just told you I
know
about it. I know what it is and what it does. How you’ve pumped tons of it into the Earth. How it’s supposed to stabilize the methane hydrate and allow it to remain solid at higher than normal temperatures. And I know that the one little drawback to using it is that when those crystals eventually vaporize, the adulterated methane is heavier than air.”

He said nothing, just watched her preen.

“Your whole revolutionary idea, the one that was going to change the world, depended on keeping the temperature and pressure stable until you had all your lovely methane crystals safely topside, didn’t it? Poor Dennis. All that equipment, destroyed. All that time and effort, all that brain power, gone. Your grand experiment is dead beyond all reason. It’s completely out of control.” She grinned, and gave another short laugh before she continued.

“Your precious methane, your ‘clean’ fuel, is being injected into the atmosphere under pressure. Hundreds of millions of cubic feet of it, remember? In its natural state, it’s dangerous, but it’s also lighter than air, so it would have just drifted up into the atmosphere,” she said in a singsong voice and let her words fade away. Then Micki paused and stared at him, her gaze hard, in contrast to her tone. “And it would have collected at the poles, trapping more and more heat, exacerbating the environmental damage the rest of your criminally arrogant predecessors started.

“Of course, Mr. President,” she said, her voice seeming to scorch the air with its acid, “even if you had left all that lovely methane hydrate pure and tried to bring it up in its natural state, the accident still would have happened. The world still would want to crucify you for bringing the Earth to an early death. The people still would want to hang you high for all to see, to watch you die for the crime of filling the atmosphere with cataclysmic quantities of a deadly greenhouse gas.”

Micki paused again. “But leaving those crystals alone wasn’t grand enough for you, was it? You had to ‘improve’ them. So all of it is coming up on its own now, Dennis. Pumped full of your precious dennisium and vaporizing on its way to the surface. And once it reaches the surface, the methane won’t rise as quickly through the oxygen and accumulate, will it? It will hug the water and diffuse the oxygen, pushing it up and out of the way. It’s coming up so fast, Dennis, that the lovely easterly Caribbean breezes will just keep spreading it toward the west.” She shrugged nonchalantly before continuing. “And we both know that anything that moves into that methane-enriched, oxygen-deficient area will die instantly, won’t it, President Cavendish?”

Dennis stared at her in horrified fascination.

“Well, you always said you wanted to change the world.” Micki sighed. “Of course, eventually the additive will dissipate and
then
the pure methane will rise, and collect at the poles, and start superheating the world.” She paused and her normal, beautiful smile lit up her face, extending to her
mad, sparkling eyes. “The world will become a wasteland. Earth’s devastation will be on your hands, Dennis. Just think of it. Your legacy will be the death of the world as we know it.”

Keeping his gaze trained on Micki, he noticed a small, blurred movement behind her. Forgotten on the chair in the back of the room, Andi had dropped her hands to her lap; her mouth hung open as she listened to Micki’s crazed monologue. Now she had eased out of the chair and to her feet, and was moving slowly to the door. Dennis dared not shift his eyes away from Micki, knowing that to do so would alert her to Andi’s escape.

“Micki, you’re losing your—”

“No.” Her voice was as harsh as a slap as she took a step toward him. “I’m losing nothing. Long ago
you
lost your chance to do the right thing. You gave it up; you abdicated your responsibility to the Earth. You said you were going to balance the dynamics of life, to realign the economics of living. That sort of arrogance always deserves vengeance, but you were given the benefit of the doubt. We gave you time to prove yourself, Dennis, and you failed us. All you ever intended to do was make money and rape the Earth again in the process.”

Andi had made her way to the door and now lunged through it like the hounds of Hell were on her heels. Micki didn’t flinch, didn’t turn around to see what the commotion was.

“Let her go. She’s dead anyway,” she said carelessly.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll kill her in a few minutes.”

Disbelief warred with fear as her words sank into Dennis’s brain, as the look in her eyes grew more heated.

“You did this,” he said. “It will be your legacy, Micki, not mine. You’re insane.”

She began walking toward him. “You’re mistaken. It’s your doing, Dennis. I’m only a cog in the universe, an actor carrying out a critical role. But I didn’t do this alone. There are more people in this world who hate you and what you stand for than just me. And you’re hardly fit to call me insane, what with all your big, badass plans to change the world.” She shook her head with a look almost like wonder on her face. “I guess you never got the memo, Dennis, but the world isn’t yours to change. The world simply
is
, and She’s teachin’ you the hard way to leave Her alone.” She reached the edge of his desk and perched on the corner of it. “I believe you called this a crisis a little while ago. I have to disagree, Dennis. This is a
disaster
. This is
a global Bhopal. People will die more slowly but just as horribly. And it’s all your fault.”

“Who are you? Who are you working with? Who told you to do this?”

“Why, bless your heart, Dennis, I’m who I always have been, and it hardly matters who else worked with me to accomplish this.” She lifted a languid hand and pointed toward the window and the volcanic peak that rose in the distance. “I suggest we head toward your bunker while there’s still enough oxygen to breathe. There are hazmat suits there, and a filtered air supply. And your precious independent backup communications system.”

“I can’t leave my—”

“Of course you can. They don’t matter any more. No one else matters, Dennis. It’s just you and me, darlin’. And your life is in my hands. Now get movin’.” And to back up her quietly fierce command, she pulled a Taser from the back waistband of her shorts and pointed it at him.

9:35
A.M.
, Sunday, October 26, aboard
Air Force One

“Mr. President.”

The soft voice wasn’t his wife’s, and it wasn’t his valet’s. Winslow Benson blinked in the darkness and made out the shape of his campaign manager. “For Christ’s sake, Ken, what are you doing?”

“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I think we need to go back to Washington.”

The president pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed a hand over his face. “What happened? What time is it?”

“It’s a little after nine, sir.”

They’d been in the air for just over an hour. He couldn’t have been napping for more than twenty minutes. Seemed like the only place he could ever get any sleep any more was aboard the flying White House. He fought a yawn.

“This better be worth my while, Ken. What happened?” he repeated.

“The cruiser stationed off the coast of Taino has reported seismic activity in the area. It’s been confirmed by NOAA and the USGS.”

“So?”

“It’s not your basic submarine earthquake, sir. The early satellite footage coming in is pretty strange.”

“Strange how?” Win snapped. “Who’s seen it?”

“Navy Intel and the NRO. It’s being analyzed, but no one who’s seen it has been able to say what’s going on.”