Frozen Fire (32 page)

“So who could do that?”

Victoria stopped and faced him. “Micki. Or Dennis.”

A long silence built between them until Charlie broke it. “
Micki
could have planted the bombs?”

“Anyone with access to a dive suit and well-honed homicidal tendencies could have planted them. So could a trained dolphin. Or a well-built robot.” She shrugged. “But I vote for Micki.”

“Despite all of your background checks, could a competitor have gotten to her?”

She shook her head. “Industrial espionage doesn’t make sense as a motive. Any competitor would want the people—the knowledge and experience. A competitor might sabotage the habitat to make the personnel come topside. You know—introduce Legionnaire’s disease into the air supply or do something else that would get the crew out of there fast and make them feel that Dennis wasn’t taking good enough care of them. The competition wouldn’t kill them or destroy the structure. Either would be counterproductive.”

“This isn’t a better mousetrap, Vic,” Charlie snapped. “There’s a hell of a lot of money at stake. Tens of billions already spent, hundreds of billions more to be made when the methane is brought to the surface.”

“What are you getting at?”

His gaze was cold and hard as it met her own. “If someone can penetrate our security and plant bombs underwater, they may already have gotten all the information they need.”

She stared at him, her chest tightening and burning with her held breath, and wished his words, his meaning hadn’t sunk in.

10:15
A.M.
, Sunday, October 26, Gainesville, Florida

Up early with Cyn on his mind and no distractions, Sam had gone for a long run around Lake Alice, and then, still twitchy, had headed into his office. Sunday mornings during football season were always quiet, but with a home-game victory the day before, it was even more so. Victory parties always knocked the campus comatose.

Before he’d left his house, he’d pulled together all of the information he’d found about Caribbean methane-hydrate deposits and e-mailed it to his office account. Upon arrival, he’d started trolling through specialized databases that he could only access on campus, and was still at it. Long ago Sam had taped to the edge of his computer monitor a quote cribbed from Justice Potter Stewart, which Sam had always said defined his own research methodology: “I know it when I see it.”

At the moment, the line fit his quest more than he would have liked. Sam had no idea what he was looking for, and was waiting for something to jump out at him. But the only thing jumping in his office that morning was him nearly jumping out of his skin when he heard a quiet tap at the door.

“You gotta get a grip, son,” he muttered as his heart rate began to return to normal and he swiveled in his chair. He didn’t have to get up to twist the
doorknob and pull open the heavy door, but when he saw who was standing there, he wished he’d been on his feet.

Just what I need. My relationship with the woman I love is heading for the rocks and here comes a mermaid to get my mind off things
.

Sabina Haskin, one of Sam’s atmospheric science doctoral students, was framed by the doorway, looking hesitant, alluring, and confused at the same time. Sam had to admit that it wasn’t a look too many women could pull off, but it was a good look on her. Then again, any look was a good look on Sabina. She was Salma Hayek, J Lo, and Penelope Cruz rolled into one incredibly compact, gorgeous, lush woman with dark eyes that could swallow a man whole, and an accent that was an orgasm for the ears. And she had brains. Serious brains. And lots of ’em.

The combination had the capacity to make Sam forget his own name. But he was her dissertation advisor, much to the disgust of his married colleagues, and therefore he tried very hard to counteract the Sabina Effect. Playing the geek and remembering the four months he spent doing postdoc work on one of Greenland’s ice sheets occasionally helped. But, with Cyn away and infuriating him from a distance, a sprinkle of saltpeter in his Wheaties would have been in order this morning if he’d known a meeting with Sabina was in the cards.

“Hi, Sabina. What can I do for you?” Sam asked in his most noncommittal voice.

“Good morning, Professor Briscoe.”

Breesco
. She said it so softly, so hesitantly in that sultry voice of hers. Every time he heard her say his name, he wondered if he’d have the will to put up a fight if she ever actually came on to him.

“I was just fetching some new data from the satellites for my research and I found some things that seem funny.”

“It’s Sunday morning, Sabina,” he said in a mildly scolding tone. “You’re supposed to be sleeping off a hangover, not working in the weather lab.”

She smiled and looked away. “I decided to do a little work. You don’t mind?”

He shrugged with a faint smile. “It’s your time. What did you get?”

She took a step through the door and handed him the slim manila folder she held in her hands. “Some of the gas chromatography readings from Region Nine went haywar a little while ago and have remained that way. See? Right there. The methane.” She pointed to a line toward the bottom of the folded dot-matrix sheet.

“Hay
wire
,” he said absently, scanning.

“Yes, thank you. Hay
wire
.”

Sam squinted at the page, looked back at the page’s margin to make sure he was following the data correctly. Then he blinked. Twice.

Sure enough, just about an hour ago the atmospheric methane level had suddenly shot up to one hundred times its normal concentration in the northern Caribbean, from 1,700 parts per billion to 170,000 parts per billion.

Which was scary as hell and made absolutely no sense.

“What are the coordinates?” he asked absently, still staring at the numbers. When she told him, he plugged the location into his computer, then stared at the screen in disbelief. “That’s Taino.”

“I know. It makes no sense. Is it maybe a mistake? Or something to do with that airplane that crashed yesterday?”

“No, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the plane going down. Let me contact the guys up at GISS,” he murmured, using the shorthand name for the Goddard Institute for Space Science, NASA’s atmospheric research group, which was headquartered at Columbia University. “There has to be some explanation for an anomaly this big. It’s probably a software glitch. I think there was some maintenance done on some of their satellites recently. Thanks for bringing this to me, Sabina. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“You’re welcome.”

Several seconds ticked by before he looked up, though he’d been aware all along that she was still standing in the doorway. “Is there something else, Sabina?”

The look on her face was unmistakably “yes,” and she started to say something, then stopped. Instead, she gave him a tight smile, shook her head, and left. He stared at the space she’d just vacated and wondered if this nonsense with Cyn would lead him to determine the strength of his moral fiber before the weekend was over.

He was looking up contact information for his colleague at GISS when his cell phone rang. A glance at the caller ID set his stomach into a slow burn.

Sam grabbed the handset. “Hey, Marty.”

“Hey, Sam. You got a minute?”

The cold, leftover chicken tacos he’d wolfed down for breakfast lurched in his stomach as his brain registered the gravity in Marty’s voice. “Sure, I got a minute. What’s up?”

“You checked the GISS data this morning?”

Sam leaned forward, elbows on his desk, frowning. “I just saw it. In fact,
I was looking up Jimbo’s number when you called. Something’s got to be wrong with the—”

“Save your nickel. I just talked to him. They’re already running the hardware and software diagnostics for the second time.”

Sam felt his stomach flip. “Why for a second time?”

“The first set showed everything to be working just fine.”

Sam shook his head and walked to the windowsill to lean against it. “I don’t buy it. Something’s got to be wrong. Those numbers don’t make sense, Marty.”

“They’re consistent, though.”

“It’s an anomaly. A spike.”

“Can’t be. The volume shot up, that’s for damned sure, but it’s been consistent at the new level since it was recorded,” Marty replied patiently. “That’s not how we define an anomaly.”

“What are you thinking? Some deep-sea monster let one rip?”

Silence from Marty in the face of adolescent bathroom humor wasn’t a good sign. Sam cleared his throat. “What are you thinking?”

“One of the oceanography guys was all fired up about some underwater event that happened close to the time that the spike occurred, at the southern tip of the Tongue of the Ocean,” he said, naming the bizarrely shaped, mile-deep trench that hugged the Bahamian island of Andros—and Taino.

Which is right where Cyn is if she’s following her God-damned plan
.

Sam rubbed a hand along the jaw he hadn’t bothered to shave for two days. “What sort of event are we talkin’ about?”

“Two small jolts. We’re not sure what they were, but whatever they were, they precipitated an underwater landslide.”

Sam squeezed his eyes shut for just a minute.
This is just too damned weird
.

“So these jolts—nobody’s callin’ them earthquakes?” he asked slowly.

“Too shallow. They happened at about two thousand feet. Practically at the surface,” Marty replied.

“So what do they have to do with the spike in atmospheric methane?” Sam asked bluntly. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that the landslide cracked open the seafloor above the deposit?”

“Yeah.”

Sam recoiled at the speed of the reply. “Come on, Marty. You just said what happened wasn’t an earthquake and, believe me, no landslide is goin’
to open a fissure a few hundred feet deep,” Sam stated flatly. “The odds of that happening are bad, Marty. Real bad. You’d have a better chance of winning the Powerball twice in a month using the same numbers.”

“What if,” Marty said after a short pause.

“No, Marty, there is no ‘what if.’” Sam pushed a hand through his hair and knocked off the Gators cap he’d forgotten he was wearing. “Look, if a rupture in that methane bed is what’s causing this spike, we’re not talkin’ about some crack in the seafloor. We’re talkin’ about one hell of a big canyon that’s opened up down there.” He shook his head as if his friend were standing in front of him. “We got methane spewin’ out of the ocean like a wildcat oil well and you’re tellin’ me it wasn’t an earthquake that did it. Well, I’m here tellin’ you that there aren’t rocks heavy enough to do that sort of damage in a landslide. And you don’t need me tellin’ you this. You know it yourself.”

“Could a bomb? Could that do it?” Marty asked quietly.

Sam felt as if his feet had suddenly become rooted to the floor. “Say what?”

“A bomb. Something detonated underwater. All the background noise from the landslide could mask a bomb’s concussion.”

Sam stared straight ahead, not liking the weird churn in his gut. “Maybe, but it would have to be one big fucker of a bomb, and set off deep. But that would mean the landslide was triggered deliberately, too.”

“Okay, what if.”

This is getting surreal
. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Marty. Who the hell would want to blow up the seafloor?” Sam demanded.

“Somebody who wanted to blow up a methane-hydrate mining operation,” Marty replied quietly, and Sam stopped breathing. He couldn’t even form a coherent thought.

“You still there?” Marty asked after a moment of silence had passed.

“I think so,” Sam said weakly, leaning against the windowsill that wasn’t quite deep enough to serve as a seat. “You think the methane deposit was breached by Cavendish?”

“And the landslide broke up the equipment. What if.” Marty’s voice was quiet and deadly serious.

Sam shook his head. “Shit, Marty. I mean—
shit
.”

“Yeah.” Marty let out an audible breath. “Think, Sam. There are some weird stories circulating about what’s going on down there. I’m trying to
get my hands on some video of what’s happening, but with that plane crash yesterday morning, everybody wants the same thing and at GISS they’ve queued everybody who got in before the server crashed. I’m on a few other lists, too, but haven’t been able to cop any priority. When I get the data, I’ll copy you on it, okay? You can look at it yourself.”

This is turning into one hell of a day
. Sam rubbed his suddenly burning eyes. “Well, hell, yes, I’ll look at it. But what are you thinking we’re going to see, Marty?”

“Bubbles breaking at the surface, if nothing else. If the numbers are right and there really is methane coming up that fast and at that volume,” Marty said slowly, “it’s got to be messing with the water column.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s damn close to that crash site, Sam, and there are a hell of a lot of ships nearby. If I’m wrong and it is a fissure, like you said, the release won’t stay localized. The differential in the density of the water column—well, it could get real ugly real fast, Sam.”

Sam didn’t need to hear more. He knew what his friend was thinking. All that gas fizzing through the water column could cause what some researchers had termed the Bermuda Triangle effect; too much gas released under pressure would turn the water to foam, and foam can’t support a ship. Anything in the water column would sink like a stone. And anything requiring a specific pressure, like a body, would burst as it sank.

And Cyn was there, right there, on a boat. Right down there where all this crazy shit was going on. The thought made his stomach heave, and bile backed up into his throat, burning it.

“—and that gas is just going to keep rising,” Marty was saying as Sam refocused on the conversation. “It could mess with the air column if the wind doesn’t disperse it fast enough. And the winds are pretty calm right now. But if that tropical depression kicks up, we could be in for—”