Arctic Fire (39 page)

He took a deep breath as he stood outside K.D.’s
door. He didn’t know if she felt the same way but there was only
one way to find out. With fear, hope, dread, and a thousand and one
other emotions, he knocked.

As he did, the door popped ajar. He stuck his
head in and knocked again, calling her name. The room was dark so
he flipped on the light. Nothing in the world, in the universe,
could have prepared him for what he saw. He was stunned and frozen
in place. K.D. was lying on the bed, one hand tied to the bedpost
and her shirt ripped open. The room was a shambles and Senator
Williams was on the floor, floating in a pool of blood.

His eyes were seeing, but his mind was having a
hard time comprehending the message they were sending his brain.
Pike felt emotions surging inside him. He didn’t know if they were
fear, anger or revenge, but they burst through like a lightning
bolt, freeing him from his frozen indecision.

He leaped over the Senator’s body and rushed to
K.D.’s side. He was hoping she was just unconscious but when he
touched her face, her head fell to one side, revealing a blood
soaked pillow and the entire side of her head covered and caked
with dried blood.

“No, no, no,” he heard himself saying over and
over. At least he thought the voice was his, it sounded so faint
and far away, so lost. What had happened here? Who did this to you
K.D.? Who? His eyes drifted over to the Senator on the floor. “Did
you do this to her or did you try to save her and they killed you
too?” He didn’t know if he should hate the man or be grateful to
him. It added all the more to his confusion. Right now he
desperately wanted to hate someone but he didn’t know who to
channel his hatred towards.

As he looked at the body of the Senator sprawled
out on the floor, something caught his eye. He tried to move but
his legs suddenly felt like they were made of lead and weighed a
thousand pounds each. Feeling more like a machine than a man, he
managed to move one foot in front of the other until he was
standing in front of the familiar object. He bent down and picked
it up. It was a Swiss Army Knife,
his
Swiss Army Knife. He
had had it this morning. How did it end up here?

“Quiet down now please.” Mallory was flanked by
two reporters and their film and sound crews. They were moving down
one of the hallways in the guest quarters section of the iceberg.
Mallory continued. “As much as he’s been in the news lately,
Gabriel Pike is still a man of mystery to many of your viewers and
they want to know more about the man behind the leather jacket.
Package it however you want, but as promised here’s an inside look
at what Gabe does on his off time. As some of you may have heard,
there’s romance brewing in our hero’s life.

The group of reporters followed Mallory around
the corner and entered the hallway that led to K.D.’s room. “We’re
in luck,” Mallory whispered, “the door’s open and the lights are
on.” The two groups quietly made their way to either side of the
door. Mallory silently giggled as she held her finger up to her
lips and pointed at the door. As soon as the groups were ready,
Mallory pushed it open and stepped through. “Hi Gabe and K.D.,” she
said in a loud voice, “I hope you two are decent because you
have…”

Mallory stopped speaking in mid-sentence then
let out a horrific scream when she saw Pike standing over Williams’
body with the knife in his hand. Both film crews rushed in and
began filming the grizzly scene.

Pike looked up at Mallory after she screamed.
“Help me...” His voice was faint and sorrowful.

“What did you do?” Pike heard a voice
scream.

Pike looked over to the reporter who asked the
question, “Tabatha, is that you?” Pike was still in a daze when he
heard another man standing in front of the camera speaking.

“We don’t have all the facts yet but it appears
that the popular figure, Gabriel Pike, also known to millions as
the Blast from the Past, has killed Senator Harlen Williams, in an
apparent fit of jealous rage in a lover’s triangle gone horribly,
horribly wrong.”

“WHAT!” Pike shouted. The reporter making the
newscast may not be responsible for K.D.’s death but Pike now had
someone to focus at least part of his anger on.

“How dare you? How dare you make a statement
like that? I didn’t kill anyone. You call yourself a reporter? You
walk into a room and make a snap judgment like that in five
seconds?”

The reporter signaled to his cameraman to keep
rolling, then he turned around to face Pike. Pike’s eyes grew wide
when he saw that it was the Toupee man, Peter Wright.

“Hey buddy, I’m not the one standing over a dead
body with the murder weapon in my hand and it wasn’t my girlfriend
playing stuff the ballot box with the Senator.”

“Why you son of a…” Pike said, taking a step
forward.

“GABE!” Mallory shouted. “Stop! Just stop and
put the knife down, please! We can talk about this.”

Suddenly Pike realized what all this must really
look like with him standing with a knife in his hand then moving
toward the Toupee man with it. With a huge sigh, he set the knife
down and raised his hands. “I know what this must look like but I
didn’t kill anyone and K.D. was not sleeping with the Senator,” he
said, glaring directly at Wright.

“Okay, everyone. Let’s just all take a deep
breath here and take a step back.” Mallory said. “Gabe, I’ve called
Nigel and he’s sending a couple of the crew to escort you back to
his office until we can get this whole thing sorted out. Are you
okay with that?”

“Yes! yes, yes! I want to know what happened
here more than any of you.”

“Yeah, right.”

Pike heard Toupee Man mutter under his breath,
which really wasn’t that quiet. He knew he was baiting him and it
was all he could do not to rip the man’s head off. “Yes I do,” he
replied as calmly as he could.

“Good. Ah, here they are now.” Just then, two
crewmembers Pike didn’t recognize came in the door, one carrying a
length of rope.

Pike looked at Mallory and shook his head in
disappointment. “Is that really necessary?”

She looked at Pike and saw the hurt in his eyes.
“No, but don’t make me regret it, Gabe.” She nodded, and the rope
disappeared into the man’s pocket.

“Thank you.” Pike walked toward the door and
everyone gave him a wide birth as he approached, all except Toupee,
who stood where he was, making a statement to Pike by making him
walk around him.

Chapter Forty
Four

“I like you Gabriel, I really do and I would do
anything for you but even with all my money there’s not a lot I can
do when a news camera shows you standing over the dead body of a US
Senator with a knife in your hand.” Cain said, sitting behind his
desk in his office.

“But I didn’t kill him. Don’t you believe me?”
Pike pleaded.

Mallory shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what
we believe. What matters is what the evidence says.”

“Remember when we first met?” Cain said, “I told
you that we needed the public on our side, that to them, perception
was everything? That’s why we molded you into the Blast from the
Past. So they would believe in and support this project. It was a
bonus, a very nice bonus that you happened to live up to your
billing.”

“And the public perception of you now is that of
a fallen hero.” Mallory added. “We found a vial of GHB, a date-rape
drug, on the table. It would appear that the Senator used it on
K.D., she resisted, he got carried away and killed her. You walked
in on him, went insane with anger and killed him with your knife.
I’m sorry Gabe,” Mallory said shaking her head sadly, “but the
evidence is overwhelming.”

“But I didn’t do it.”

You keep saying that,” Mallory replied, “but
what you say doesn’t make any difference.”

“As I said earlier, Cain continued, “I really do
like you but unfortunately you are just too good at your job.
Although I really don’t think you can claim all the credit for your
discovery because the chain of events that led us to this moment
are a direct result of a butterfly effect.”

Mallory rolled her eyes, “You and your butterfly
effect.”

Cain just frowned at Mallory, then continued.
“Who would have thought that the simple act of spilling a glass of
water would lead to the premature deaths of so many people?

“Discovery? What discovery did I make and who
else is dead?” Pike pleaded, more confused than ever.

Cain smiled at Pike as he walked by slowly. He
was smiling because at an early age he had learned that the old
saying, knowledge is power, was true and right now he held all the
power because he had knowledge that Pike wanted so desperately. He
stepped up to the bar where he took a silver martini shaker out of
the refrigerator, took off the lid, and set it on the counter.
Next, he grabbed a martini glass and poured four ice cubes into it.
“I think the term, hidden in plain sight, best fits this
situation.” Cain said, all the while, still smiling like the
Cheshire cat. With glass in hand, he walked over and stood in front
of the massive model of the iceberg he had used at his corporate
headquarters when he first revealed his master plan to the
press.

“Hidden in plain sight.” He said making a grand
sweeping motion over the model. “And here,” pointing to the room.
“It’s all around us.” Cain enjoyed the confused look on Pike’s
face.

“What’s all around us? What’s hidden in plain
sight? Pike cried out in frustration.

Cain reached into his coat pocket and pulled out
a cigarette lighter. He set the martini glass on top of the display
case, then held the open flame from the lighter onto the top ice
cube. To Pike’s astonishment, the ice cube sprouted a tiny flame
like a candle on top of a birthday cake.

Pike slowly stood and walked over and gazed at
the burning ice cube much the same way Moses must have stared at
the burning bush. “That’s exactly what happened in the restaurant.”
Pike said dumfounded.

“Amazing, isn’t it.” Cain said as he circled
behind Pike, enjoying his bewilderment. “It’s called Methane
Hydrate.”

“Methane? You mean like in swamp gas?”

“Yes.” Cain said as he went back to the bar.
“Methane Hydrate, simply put, is methane gas trapped in water or
ice. The methane is released when it warms up or the pressure on
the ice is reduced. Frozen methane hydrates can contain 170 times
its own volume of methane gas.”

Pike thought for a moment digesting what Cain
had said, then he snapped his fingers. “That’s it! That’s what
caused the explosion. There must be methane in the ice in the
tunnel and when the cooling pipes ruptured, the ice melted just
enough to release the vapors and Williams’ cigarette ignited
it.”

Cain smiled and looked at Mallory. “I told you
he was good.”

Pike shook his head, “But why put such a
dangerous and combustible gas into a project that would put it into
such close proximity to a large population? Was it part of the
process to keep the ice from melting? Surely you knew the dangers?
If this entire iceberg were constructed with the methane hydrate,
the potential for the level of destruction would be unimaginable.
If it were to explode in the New York Harbor the blast radius…”
Pike’s words trailed off as he began to realize the implications of
what he was saying. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach .

“So all this is…”

“A giant floating bomb.” Cain said, finishing
Pike’s sentence.

“But how, why?”

“The
how
is a little complicated but
being an engineer, I’m sure you’ll appreciate how complex yet
simple the idea is. Methane gas has great potential as a natural
source for power and we discovered a huge deposit of the methane
hydrate while doing exploratory drilling on the ocean floor.

“Methane hydrate is nothing new. President
Clinton signed the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act to
help industry exploit the energy source. The original concept was
to construct an iceberg of methane and float it to the states and
process the methane here, but legal was quick to point out that no
city government, let alone the Coast Guard, would allow such a
potentially dangerous and lethal cargo into any US port. It
wouldn’t be cost effective to build a processing plant on site, so
plans were shelved.”

Cain picked up the glass with the burning ice
cube in it and swirled the cubes around. Instantly the other cubes
caught fire and turned the glass into a mini bonfire. “In business,
I have learned never to close the door on any project completely
and to always look for options and opportunities. When I saw the
television program about World War II I told you about when we
first met, I instantly saw the potential.

“The entire structure of the iceberg is
permeated with the methane hydrate. The center of the berg was
purposely hollowed out to allow tens of thousands of cubic feet of
the gas to accumulate until the time of detonation. As you guessed
earlier, with a few simple additives, the juice will become
extremely volatile, acting as an accelerant. The force of the
explosion will level nearly everything within a one mile radius of
ground zero while hundreds of secondary fires will be started by
the falling debris and still burning chunks of ice.”

Cain walked over and sat down in a leather
recliner. “That’s the
how
, the
why
is equally simple.
This country is sick Gabriel, and has been for quite some time. I’m
tired of seeing this great nation tear itself apart with
self-serving, mindless bickering; we have lost our focus. I’m also
tired of seeing two-bit thugs who rose to power in third rate
nations through murder and intimidation threaten us with blatant
terrorism, all in the guise of religious intolerance.