Breakthrough (9 page)

17

The President’s VH-3 helicopter, Marine One, slowly approached the back lawn of the White House and stopped in a hover just a few feet above the grass.  It gently touched down with little more than a bump as the giant shocks absorbed the weight of the heavy craft.  The marine on board waited for the rotors to begin winding down before opening the door and deploying the step ladder.  He held Kathryn Lokke’s hand and helped her down the first steps and into the hand of a second marine waiting at the bottom. 

She instinctively clutched her satchel tight as she reached the ground and was quickly escorted away from the helicopter.  An older man with gray hair approached with a quick short stride that almost made it look as though he were stumbling.  Bill Mason was the White House Chief of Staff and known for his no-nonsense approach to all things security.  Kathryn had only met him a few times before and noted he always seemed impatient and in a hurry, though relatively polite.

“Nice to see you again Ms. Lokke,” he said, motioning up a small manicured path that headed toward the back entrance of the White House. “Please follow me.”

They reached a set of thick double doors and stepped inside where Kathryn was asked to put her things on a conveyor belt to be scanned.  She was then patted down by a female Secret Service agent and escorted forward.  Kathryn quickly grabbed her bag from the far end of the belt and continued following Mason.

“Your flight was a few minutes late, so the President should be waiting.” Mason turned a corner and led her down a flight of stairs into the basement.  Two additional turns left them at the doors to the infamous Situation Room.  “Is there anything you need?”

Kathryn shook her head.  She had gone over the material and the presentation several times.

President John Carr was standing when she entered the room.  He turned to meet them as Mason stepped in behind her.  “Mr. President, may I introduce Dr. Kathryn Lokke from the USGS.”

President Carr seemed to tower over her with his six foot, four inch frame.  “Pleased to meet you Ms. Lokke.”

She smiled nervously.  “It’s my pleasure, Mr. President.  Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Not at all,” he replied, as he stepped back and grabbed a chair.  “Please forgive me for being curt, I have a call with Israel in about twenty minutes.  Shall we get started?”

“Yes, yes of course,” Kathryn answered and quickly fumbled to get her laptop out of her bag.  Several other men were already sitting around the table.  She recognized the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor.  Most of the others wore decorated uniforms and looked to be high ranking officers from the military.

She started speaking as she opened up her laptop and connected the cable to the giant monitor behind her.  “Mr. President,” she looked at the others, “gentlemen, the USGS has been closely tracking some accelerating changes in the Earth’s north and south poles for the last couple of decades, and more specifically the last several years.”  She pressed a button and the large screen lit up with the map she was displaying on her laptop screen.

“These are four pictures, two of the Arctic and two of the Antarctic.  The pictures in each set are separated by two years.”  She turned around to point to the screen.  “From this high a level you can easily see the changes occurring, and in fact these changes are accelerating.  You may have heard a few years ago that a huge section of the Ronne Ice Shelf separated and fell into the ocean, floating north.  The separation of the shelf happened due to the growing weight and pressure of the ice pack as measured over the years, at which point the pressure surpasses the strength of the frozen ice and a collapse occurs.”  Kathryn hit a button on her laptop and a larger screen of the Antarctic was displayed.  It was a satellite image from earlier in the year and showed the giant Ronne shelf piece which had broken off.  It could already be seen a few hundred miles away in the photo.  “This break was a surprise but fortunately the impact was not serious.”  She paused and looked around the room again.  “The reason I am here is because a few days ago we received a very large wake up call.”

“An earthquake, or more specifically a geological shift, has occurred along the shelf and this time not in the ice.”  She advanced to the next slide which showed the large ice portion of the shelf.  Further south a red line traced the shift that just occurred.  It was clear the recent shift was on land and near the first large mountain range heading into the heart of the continent.  “When the huge part of that ice shelf broke off years ago, it floated away.  It floated because it was ice and its overall mass was less dense than the water below it.”  The screen now zoomed in on the red line.  “This latest shift occurred at the base of a glacier which is a far heavier section of land mass than just ice.  This land mass has now dropped by almost fifteen feet.”

President Carr looked around the table and back at Lokke.  “What does this mean?”

Kathryn paused.  Her heart was beating fast but she wanted to be careful how she phrased this. “It means a high level of risk for an impending natural disaster.”

Mason spoke up from the left side of the table.  “How high a risk are we talking about?”

“We don’t know exactly,
” Kathryn sighed.  She noticed a couple of the men frown.  “We cannot determine how high without a more accurate timeline.  Measured in likelihood and impact, the risk is…very high.”

One of the men started to speak but the President held up a hand.   “Ms. Lokke, when you say impact what do you mean?”

“Well,” she started, “there are a number of scenarios escalating in severity.  The scenario we must consider is a massive slide of that glacial base into the ocean which would send a giant tsunami up through the Atlantic, and of a size like modern history has never seen.”

“As big as the one in Indonesia?” asked Mason.

“Bigger.  Much bigger.  This could have the energy to destroy every major city or seaport on either side of the Atlantic all the way up to London.  The surge could reach many miles inland which means several orders of magnitude larger than Indonesia.”

There was a long silence in the room.

“So,” the National Security Advisor took off his glasses and held them between his two fingers, “what do we do?”

Hank
Stevas was a highly political figure.  Short and in his late sixties, he had attracted criticism from both sides of the aisle for being confrontational and overly brash, or rude as others would politely call him.  Someone Kathryn was hoping would not be in this meeting.

Kathryn took a deep breath.  “Well, the best step would be to take a proactive approach and try to avoid what could turn out to be a global panic.  This would mean purposely finding a way to relieve some of the strain being created.  There are few possibilities that require a certain amount of time and resource-”

“I see,” replied Stevas cutting her off.  “And does everyone at the USGS agree with your assessment?”

Kathryn was expecting this.  Hank
Stevas had not so subtly attacked her a year earlier during one of her environmental reports.  She was amazed at his total disregard for empirical facts, even his lack of interest in
learning
the facts.  Instead he attacked politically by going after a person’s character or reputation.  After her run in with him last year, she later learned that he was friends with her predecessor.  It seemed he was not going to let sleeping dogs lie.

Kathryn hesitated only because of the satisfaction he was about to get, even though the answer was far from simple.  “No.”

“No,” Stevas repeated nodding his head and frowning.  “So how many other scientists
do
agree with you?”

His accusing tone lingered in the air as she stared at him.  How convenient that he said ‘agree with
you’
instead of ‘this conclusion’.  “It’s not that easy-”

Stevas
spread his hands in a mocking gesture.  “How many agree with you, half?  Less than half?  Does anyone agree with your view?  Being the head of the largest scientific department on the planet, I would hope that at least
some
of your subordinates would agree.”

Kathryn had to force herself not to glare at the man.  “Some, yes.”

“Some,” he nodded sarcastically.  “Some.”  Stevas looked around the room addressing everyone at the table.  “So we have a minority
scientific
opinion here regarding a geological event that may or may not be a serious risk, and that could cost who knows how much.  Might I remind everyone that last year you gave a presentation claiming that the ocean levels worldwide were actually falling in contradiction to everyone else in the scientific community suggesting the exact opposite, even in fact
calculating
the opposite.”

Kathryn did not want to respond but would not let it go unaddressed in front of everyone in the room.  “My suggestion was that the widely accepted calculations were flawed based on failure to account for a number of variables such as lunar gravitational patterns
, the Earth’s equatorial bulge, and-”

“You claimed,”
Stevas cut her off again, “that the water level was falling but could not explain where the disappearing water was supposedly going!  Tell me Ms. Lokke, does anyone agree with your claim now, a full year later?”

If Kathryn did not want to respond to his last question, she
really did not want to respond to this one.  Stevas had clearly known what the subject of this meeting was about and decided to dig up some dirt.  Reluctantly she answered.  “Not to my knowledge.  But you have to understand this isn’t like walking down to the nearest beach with a measuring stick.  There are many calculations involved.”

“Not to your knowledge,
” he repeated.

“Look,” she said ignoring
Stevas and addressing the others, “this is a grave situation.  If we don’t do something, and soon, to release some of the pressure along that shelf, we may be talking about the greatest disaster we have ever seen.  If that piece of the continent collapses, we could have just a matter of hours to evacuate 50 million people.”  Now she glared at Stevas.  “How smoothly do you think a last minute evacuation plan would go?”

Kathryn looked to the President who had been watching the rest of the table with his hands folded in front of his mouth.  “Ms. Lokke, do we have actual proof that this collapse is imminent?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Stevas putting his glasses back on.  “No,” she answered.

“Well I’m afraid I’m not ready to go around warning half the countries on the planet, and potentially starting a panic,
over something that we cannot provide real proof of.”  He stood up and the rest of the table abruptly followed.  “I’d like you to have your team conduct more research and return when you have something more concrete.”  He shook her hand.  “Thank you for coming in.”

Kathryn watched in stunned silence as all of the men shuffled out of the room, some
shaking her hand on the way out.  Stevas was not one of them.

She slowly gathered up her things and put them back into her bag while Mason waited for her in the hall.  She could not believe what had just happened.  The President sat there and completely bought
Stevas’ argument, which in the end was that she was incompetent.

She began to feel slightly sick to her stomach.  She had been completely dismissed for nothing more than some political strutting.   If she
was right, then Stevas and the President of the United States had just condemned millions of people to death. 

She walked out of the conference room and followed Mason back upstairs.  Knowing they would do nothing until it was too late made her now hope that she was wrong, really wrong.

18

After nearly an hour of twenty foot swells the conditions slowly calmed and the Pathfinder continued plowing north.  The ship’s crew and guests, thoroughly battered, began nursing their wounds.  Several of the journalists had sustained
injuries after being flung around the lounge, requiring treatment and some bandaging by the ship’s medical staff. 

On the bridge Alison had made her way out to the side of the ship to make sure
Dirk and Sally were still with them.  The two dolphins remained near the bow swimming and jumping effortlessly through the waves.  Alison turned and stepped back inside just as Emerson returned to the bridge from the other side.

“Alright Clay, I’ve got a ship full of sick and injured
people and my lounge has been turned into a clinic.  We’ve damn near run out of bandages and splints.  What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know Rudy.  I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”

Emerson shook his head.  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.  A storm out of nowhere with perfect skies, nearly sinking my ship, something awfully strange is happening here.”

“I wish I knew,
” Clay replied.

“Well, what the hell was that call about?  Sounds like you learned something.”

Clay turned toward Alison and her team.  “I don’t suppose you have a security clearance?”

They all shook their heads in unison.

He sighed.  Clay turned back to Emerson.  “They’re all going to need to be read on.  Caesare and one of our experts at the Pentagon seem to have found something on the Triton video recorded by your team.”

Emerson looked at him expectantly.

“It looks like there may be an unidentified object on the ocean floor, something very big.”

“How big?” Emerson asked.

“Upwards of twenty five kilometers.”

“Jesus Christ!” choked Emerson.  “Are they kidding?”

“I don’t think so.  They said it was in the shape of a ring.”

Emerson furrowed his brow.  “A twenty five kilometer
ring
.  What the does that mean?”

Clay shrugged helplessly.  “You know as much as I do. 
I’ll call him back and see if we can get more information.  In the meantime, Ms. Shaw shall we find out what your dolphins have to say?”

Alison nodded.  “We’ll need to shut down the engines first.”

Emerson looked at his first officer.  “Give them a rest.”

“Yes sir,
” Harris responded and gradually reduced the engines, finally shutting them down.  The ship slowly coasted to a stop.

Lee sat down at the table and typed
Hello Sally Hello Dirk
and clicked the translate button.

Hello Lee.

Are you okay?
  Lee asked.

Yes
.

Did you find the metal bubble?

Yes.  Very far.  Follow us.

Wait
.
Lee frowned at the captain.  “I’m guessing you are not interested in going back.”

“I thi
nk I’d rather chew broken glass,”  Emerson scoffed. 

“I think we should-”
Clay suddenly stopped and stared over Chris Ramirez’s shoulder.  A person was watching them from outside the window.  Alison and the others turned around as Clay took a step between them to get a better look when the person suddenly raised something up and pointed in their direction.  “Get down!” Clay shouted and stepped in front of Alison.

Alison grabbed Clay and peered around his shoulder.  She instantly recognized the person in the window
; it was the journalist she saw earlier with the dumb hat.  The man was focused, not on them but on Lee Kenwood’s monitor screen.  When he realized the others were looking at him, he quickly put the object down and darted away.

“Hey!” Clay yelled and ran after him.  He burst through the door and chased the stranger along the long catwalk, his feet banging the thick metal grate with every step.

The stranger ran quickly to the stairs and half slid, half jumped to the level below.  He bolted past the lounge and headed for the stern of the ship.

“Stop him!” Clay yelled and cursed the fact that there was no one else outside.  Most of the crew was inside helping the ship’s doctor tend to the rest of the passengers.  Clay reached the end of the second level catwalk and turned the corner to find the observation deck empty.  He crossed over to the port side and looked forward.  Emerson was running down the other side toward him.  Clay
looked around again just in time to see the man sprint past behind him.  He reached the railing of the deck above the stern’s platform and the dolphin’s makeshift tank.  He looked around and then back at Clay.  With Clay now just a few feet away, the stranger swung over the rail looking for something to land on but at the last moment the man’s sleeve caught a protruding bolt.  The sudden change in motion caused his legs to pitch inward and his head and shoulders to turn out.  He tried to correct his orientation as he fell but could not correct in time.  He hit hard, head first, making a sickening crunch.

Clay, followed by Emerson and now another crew member from the bridge, scrambled down the last flight of metal stairs and ran to the motionless figure.  Clay put his fingers against the man’s neck and felt for a pulse.  “He’s still alive.”

Two more crewmen arrived.  “Get the doc down here!”  Emerson shouted.  One of the officers ran back up the stairs.  The remaining two knelt next to Clay and helped slowly turn the man on his back.  They cut his clothes open looking for other obvious injuries.

Clay and Emerson stood up and stepped back as the ship’s doctor came running down the stairs and started checking his vitals.  After a few minutes
, the doctor looked up at the crewman.  “Get him on a stretcher
gently
and get him to medical!”

Even against the rocking of the ship, Emerson’s crew managed to get the injured man up the stairs without losing him or the stretcher. Clay and Emerson watched as
the men made it to the second deck and took him forward of the lounge to the medical area, located just below and back from the bridge.

Emerson shook his head.  “This day is getting stranger by the minute.”  He started for the stairs when Clay reached out and grabbed his arm.

“Before we head back,” he said reaching into his pocket, “take a look at this.”  Clay pulled out a small silver object and showed it to the captain.

“What is this?” Emerson took it and turned it over in his hand.  It was a small, flat rectangular piece of metal about an inch thick.

“I don’t know,” Clay replied.  “But that is what he was holding up when we saw him through the window.”

“Where did you get it?”  Emerson asked.

“It was in his pocket.”

“Hmm…looks like a
silver brick.  Or maybe a digital camera, except there is nothing on it.  No lens, no button, no anything.”  He handed it back to Clay.

Clay ran his fingers up and down the smooth sides.  “Why would he be holding this up?”

“No idea.”

Clay frowned.  “The funny thing is that when I saw him he looked like he was pointing it.”

“Like a weapon?”

“I doubt it,
”  Clay said.  “Besides he wasn’t pointing it at us.  He was pointing it at that kid Lee Kenwood and his monitor.”

Clay was standing outside the door to the medical lab watching Doctor Kanna
, the ship’s doctor, examine the man who lay unconscious on his table.  They had run a check on his fingerprints which came up empty as did his identification and press credentials.  They were not sure how he managed to get aboard with the others and assumed it was a mistake or some kind of forgery during check-in at the dock.  After some questioning, they also found that none of the other journalists had any idea who he was.

As the doctor examined the motionless figure, he spoke into a small microphone to record the details of his examination.  The injury was significant
, and they had already sent for an airlift to the nearest hospital.  Clay was watching Kanna take an x-ray when Alison walked up behind him.

“Any news?” she asked.

Clay shook his head.  “Not yet.  He seems to be a bit of a mystery.”

“I hear a helicopter is coming out to get him.”

He nodded.  “The doctor thinks it’s pretty bad.”

After a long silence watching the doctor, she turned to Clay.  “Listen…I wanted to thank you.”

Clay turned away from the window.  “For what?”

“You shielded me from whatever he was doing.”  She motioned to the figure on the table.

“Oh,” Clay gave her a casual shrug.  “It was nothing, just instinct.”  He began to turn away when he noticed she was staring at him.  “What?”

Alison said nothing.  Instead
, she glared at him.

Clay finally got the message and smiled.  “You’re welcome.”

Alison relaxed.  “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Were you really just in this to find your probe?”

He smiled again.  “Yes.”

“No hidden agenda?” she said with a skeptical tone.

“Just the probe.”

Alison nodded at that.  “I guess I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Well in case you haven’t notice I’ve been kind of a bitch.”

Clay laughed.
  “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Then you’re blind.”

“Is this the bitchy side?” he asked motioning to their little exchange.

“Oh shut up.” She said shaking her head.

“Don’t worry about it.  For what it’s worth I don’t blame you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I read up on you a little, on what the Navy did with your project in Central America.” 

“What?” she said. “You
read my file?”

Clay smirked.  “File, what
file
?  I ‘Googled’ you.”

This time Alison laughed.  “You found out about
that
from Google?”

“You’d be surprised.  A lot of times we use it instead of the Navy’s system.”

Alison nodded her head while still grinning.  “So…” she said holding out her hand.  “No hard feelings?”

Clay took her hand and gave it a gentle shake.  “No hard feelings.”  He glanced back at the doctor continuing his examination.  “So how are Dirk and Sally doing?”

“They’re fine.  A little hungry but good.”

Clay turned back to her.  “I have to tell you Alison, I’ve seen some amazing things but what you’ve done with those dolphins is nothing short of earth shattering.”

“Thanks,” she said with a shrug.  “But it wasn’t all me.”

“I know.  But it was a lot you.”  He looked seriously at her.  “I think you’re about to change the world Alison Shaw.”

Alison smiled.  “I hope so.”

Clay thought for a moment.  “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully.  “Is there anyone who would not…want you to succeed?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean do you have competitors, other teams maybe, working toward the same goal?”

“Of course. There are several other teams.  A few in the States and a couple in Europe.  Why?”

Clay looked back to the man unconscious on the other side of the glass.  “That guy seemed awfully interested in what you three were doing upstairs.”

Alison looked confused.  “I thought that was the whole point of being on the ship in the first place, to cover this.  I just assumed he was trying to sneak a shot of the screen, you know something to ‘up’ his story.”

Clay turned back to Alison.  “Then why would he run?”

Alison gave him a perplexed look.  The thought had not occurred to her.  “I don’t know, maybe he thought he was going to get in trouble for leaving the lounge or something.  The conditions were getting awfully dangerous.”

“Hmm,
” Clay said to himself.  “How much trouble would someone be in for that?”

“Are you kidding?  This is the Navy.”  She gave him a sarcastic look.  “You know the military!  You guys are pretty obsessive about things.”

“That’s true.” He nodded, still thinking to himself.  He reached into his pocket and took out the small rectangular object he retrieved from the man’s clothing.  “Do you have any idea what this is?”

She looked at it.  “A camera?”

“That’s what I thought too.”  He turned it over and showed her the various sides of it.  “But there’s no lens or screen, or even lines for that matter.”

Alison reached out and took it.  She examined it closer and bobbed it up and down in her hand.  “It’s not heavy though.  If it was solid metal it would be heavy right?”

“It depends on the metal, but yes, generally it would be much heavier.”