Frozen Fire (42 page)

“You know what volume of methane is entering the atmosphere from this release. We know how large the deposit was that we drilled into. If we could—” Victoria Clark stopped suddenly and her eyes darted to Tom
Taylor’s face. Sam looked from Victoria to Tom to Marty, whose eyes had gone wide and whose mouth had sagged open a little.

“Did you say you
drilled into
the methane bed?” Marty asked.

Victoria hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. We drilled into it.”

“From where? There’s no rig. There’s no production facility—”

“From an installation on the seafloor.” Victoria stood up, crossed the room as if her body couldn’t stop itself from moving. A moment later, she got a grip on herself and came to a stop, then leaned against the wall near Lucy’s desk.

Sam noticed that as calm as she appeared, her hands were folded into white-knuckled fists and her disconcertingly blue eyes were tense and shadowed with dark circles.

“Dr. Briscoe, I remember meeting you several years ago when you visited Taino. Dr. Collins, I know you were expected to arrive next week,” she said coolly. “You are both experts with regard to the topic of methane and are highly regarded in your respective fields of research. You know of President Cavendish’s interest in methane hydrate. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to you that the Climate Research Institute developed a mining system. But what happened today on the seafloor has happened in defiance of every statistical risk we studied, and the extent of the damage has overwhelmed our ability to contain or repair it. We need some answers and we need some help.”

Well, that explains why they let us in here
.

Sam met Marty’s eyes, which were on fire with anger.

“I appreciate the information, Ms. Clark,” Marty said, his voice not nearly as even as it had been a few minutes ago. “But that deposit you opened up is only the tip of the problem. I won’t even get into how environmentally reckless it was to drill in such a seismic area but, after this morning’s landslide, the effects of that drilling are indisputable. After just a few hours, we saw the subsidence of one nearby area of seafloor that caused a small pock-mark to open up. You can be sure that that pockmark implosion won’t be the only one. The real risk is precipitating a catastrophic underwater landslide—one much bigger than the last—and that risk is growing as we speak.”

“It wasn’t a pockmark implosion, Dr. Collins. The place where the methane is breaking the surface is directly over the spot where the pipeline enters the seafloor,” Victoria replied quietly. Marty’s eyes widened. “As for another landslide doing more damage, I think that risk can be ruled out.
There was only one pipeline laid. We were planning to do some testing before we opened up the rest of the bed. In that respect, I suppose we’re lucky.”

“You’re joking, right?” Marty said, then paused. “According to what that wildman’s been saying on the Internet—and I haven’t heard anybody in this room contradict him—that first event was a planned detonation. And now you’re admitting that whatever it did apparently led to the pipe getting ripped out of the way. Well, here’s some breaking news for you: because of all the unnatural seismic activity in the area combined with the fault-ridden structure of the seafloor there, whatever happens next—and something
will
happen—is going to be
natural
, which means
unpredictable
.”

“Dr. Collins—”

“Let me finish,” Marty interrupted, looking directly at Victoria. “Lady, that methane bed you poked into is
huge
. And judging by what’s coming up, I’d guess that pipe you shoved into it isn’t small. I’ll tell you right now that if another underwater landslide happens in the right spot, it could rip open a fissure that could result in the release of one gigaton, maybe more, of methane
all at once
. That would be a thirty-three percent increase in the concentration of atmospheric methane over an incredibly short period of time. I’m talking
days
here, or weeks at the most. And, like Sam just said, atmospheric methane is bad news—” He stopped abruptly and shrugged, then sat back in his chair. “But I guess it really doesn’t matter much at this point, does it?”

“Get back on point, Dr. Collins. You’ve just stopped making sense,” Lucy snapped.

“Director Denton,” Sam said quickly, knowing Marty was about to blow. “Marty’s makin’ perfect sense. What he means is that none of it will matter because none of us would likely be around to care. As I was sayin’, the thing that made the Permian event so remarkable was the suddenness of the release. We’re not even sure how ‘sudden’ it was, but nearly all oxygen-dependent life on earth died because of it, and very quickly, long before the release itself ended. And there were no people around then.”

He pointed toward the window and the Capitol dome visible through it. “There were no megacities huggin’ coastlines fifty miles from the release point, no populated islands, no boaters, no cruise ships, no fleets of submarines, no airplanes zippin’ around at thirty thousand feet. What’s happenin’ right now, this minute, is that, thanks to Dennis Cavendish and that crazy GAIA guy, the earth is
pumpin’
methane through highly traveled
waters and into the air supply of highly populated areas. When those crystals start to melt into gas, ma’am, their volume expands one hundred and sixty times. Do you have any idea what that means?” He stopped and shook his head. “But what’s really concernin’ me is that the gas comin’ up isn’t pure, and nobody—NASA, NOAA, nobody—knows what’s in it. Or if they do, they’re keepin’ it real quiet. So that mixture of methane-and-whatever comin’ out of President Cavendish’s big ol’, badass pipeline is huggin’ the surface.” He stopped and pushed a hand through his hair, then returned to his seat, his energy suddenly gone. “Don’t any of y’all get it?”

“You’re saying this is the apocalypse.”

Sam looked up at Tom’s impassive face. “Call it whatever the hell you want to, Mr. Taylor. Call it the Dance of the Methane Fairies and set it to music,” he snapped. “All that methane will kill off living things much faster than any models have ever predicted, even the doomsday ones. If that storm brewin’ off the Bahamas changes course and moves toward Taino, you could see a hurricane form that would make Katrina and Rita and Simone look as scary as a Beastie Boys reunion tour.”

Finally, Victoria Clark seemed a little alarmed. “A hurricane? Wouldn’t the high winds disperse the methane?” she demanded.

Sam shook his head. “Nope. It would get sucked into the spin and concentrated, and the temperature in the convection tower would shoot way up.”

“Why is that bad?” she asked.

Sam looked at her. “The methane will drive up the temperature inside the storm, which increases the speed and drives down the air pressure, which lets the circulation get bigger. And it keeps on goin’ that way. Like I said, it’s a feedback leap. Before you know it, that hurricane’s winds could be movin’ at five hundred miles an hour and spannin’ the Atlantic. Okay?
That’s
what I’m talkin’ about.”

Looking around, Sam was satisfied. The so-called intelligence experts were finally looking a bit green around the gills. He smiled coldly at Lucy Denton. “Of course, that’s a worst-case scenario. What’s more likely is that the methane gas will collect in some places, like urban areas, for instance. And if the concentration gets high enough in those places, and I wouldn’t rule that out, that gas could ignite. Then, literally, you’ll see fire in the sky and all Hell will have broken loose.”

“Dr. Briscoe, let’s keep this in the realm of the believable.”

Sam couldn’t help himself. He rolled his eyes against the condescension
in Lucy Denton’s voice. “Unfortunately, Ms. Denton, I’m serious. Marty and me—we’re not makin’ this up. It’s a simple fact of basic chemistry that air containing less than about five and a half percent of methane won’t explode. If it gets higher than that and there’s a big spark, say a lightning strike or a fire nearby, exothermic combustion—that means an explosion—is a distinct possibility. And I’m talkin’ about one
hell
of a big bang, ma’am.”

“If the methane replaces the oxygen and doesn’t ignite—”

Sam turned to look directly into Victoria Clark’s exotic blue eyes. She stopped talking.

“Okay, there’s a good set of choices: asphyxiation or combustion,” Sam said. “They’ll be either cold and blue or charred and smokin’, but either way, there will be a lot of dead people around, Ms. Clark.”

“Dr. Briscoe—”

Sam swiveled his head to look at Lucy. “With all due respect, Director Denton, we need to get this show on the road,” he said, getting to his feet again. “The gas is movin’ in a fairly compact plume but it will soon begin to disperse. Given the steady supply, it will blanket large areas of land, killin’ a lot of people and a lot of critters.”

He dropped back into his chair as if he were one of his students, legs spread wide and hands folded over his waist, and looked from face to expressionless face. “I know I’ve been goin’ on like I’ve got a battleship mouth and a rowboat ass, so I’ll shut up, but just let me say one more time that it’s not like there’s any lead time involved. People are probably already dyin’, and that’s not goin’ to stop unless we do something about it.”

You arrogant hillbilly
.

The acute nausea billowing through Lucy’s stomach was momentarily forgotten as she held Sam Briscoe’s gaze for a few heartbeats. Despite her annoyance at his condescension, she had to admit she respected him. He’d come storming to Washington, demanding to see her, and had shouted down an entire shift of armed military police at the entrance to the base. Then he’d sat in custody for half an hour while they debated whether to bother her with his story. And he’d just given her a semester’s worth of earth science lectures.

He might be a loose cannon, but the man had balls.

“Thanks for the overview, Dr. Briscoe. I don’t suppose you have any idea what we should do about it?” she asked conversationally, as she rose to
her feet. As she’d known he would, he immediately stood. He was a Southern boy, after all.

“I’m thinkin’ hard on that one, ma’am.”

“Good. Let me know when you come up with something.” Lucy let her eyes sweep across every face in the room and settled her gaze on Marty Collins, who had gone silent and was looking alternately angry and scared as he sat there, unshaven and wearing a truly tasteless Hawaiian shirt. “Dr. Collins, do you have anything to add?”

He nodded, then shrugged. “Everything Sam said is true, but I think it has to be noted that there are several moving parts to the situation and they’re independent of each other. First, there is the pipeline, which has to be sealed, and then there’s the problem of the released methane, which is now present in extraordinary volumes in both the water and the atmosphere. If we don’t get rid of it, we’re going to face a runaway greenhouse effect.”

“First things first. How do we plug the pipeline?” she asked.

Marty shrugged again. “Beats me. Call Red Adair back from the dead. This problem is just as nasty as plugging those oil well fires. Except we’re dealing with water currents instead of wind, not to mention depth and pressure, and the pressure differentials in the water column directly over the leak.”

Not bad
. Lucy pressed a button on the console of her desk phone. “I need some hydrogeologists, marine chemists, and some underwater demolition guys in here.” Moving her hand away from the phone, she met Tom’s wary frown.

“You want to use explosives to close a methane leak?” he asked, his incredulity poorly hidden.

She lifted an eyebrow. “It’s just an idea. If the seafloor can be blown open, maybe it can be blown closed.”

“Sending explosives into a column of methane would turn the Caribbean Sea into the Cuyahoga River circa 1969,” Tom pointed out, frowning at her. “Remember the headlines?
RIVER ON FIRE
. Only this would be a bit more spectacular.”

“Hardly, Mr. Taylor,” she replied coolly. “The Cuyahoga River was never actually on fire. But as for the matter at hand, if small, uncontrolled explosions caused so much damage, perhaps controlled explosions could be used to repair some of it.”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“Perhaps,” she snapped, “but that pipeline has to be sealed before anything
realistic can be done to counteract the atmospheric release. I’m willing to consider all options, and mine is only the first one to be brought up. All of you are welcome to add your thoughts at any time.”

Tom shook his head and resumed his position leaning one shoulder against the wall.

“Excuse me, Director Denton, but were you listening to anything I just said? The atmosphere. Can’t. Be. Repaired.” Sam Briscoe paused, staring at her as if she had sprouted a second head. “There’s
nothing
that will change the amount of methane already in the atmosphere until it oxidizes, and after that happens, there’s nothing viable that’s going to pull the CO
₂
out of the atmosphere in any significant quantity.”

“Nothing viable? Would you care to define that?’

“Oh, hell, Ms. Denton,” he exploded. “You’ve heard all the ideas about creatin’ artificial carbon sinks. Plantin’ more trees, seedin’ the ocean with iron pellets—any one of ’em might have worked up ’til yesterday, but this is a whole different scenario. We—”

“Excuse me.”

All heads turned to Marty, who sat in his chair looking a little surprised at the sudden attention.

Lucy nodded at him before any of the others could speak. “Yes?”

Marty looked at Sam. “What about that paper you wrote for that in de -pen dent study your first year in the doc program? The one on microbes.”

Sam Briscoe blinked once, then shook his head. “Oh, hell, Marty. That was a controlled experiment in a lab. It’s not real-world. Besides, there’s no precedent, and there were no follow-up studies.”

“But it worked,” Marty said flatly. “And there have been follow-up studies. I’ve read them.”

Lucy flicked her eyes between them, not wanting to miss any clues. “What experiment?”

“It was microbiology—” Sam began, shaking his head dismissively.