Dry Ice (32 page)

She beckoned to a man who’d been sitting quietly at the edge of the room, out of the line of sight from the computer-mounted camera she’d just shut off. He stood up and saluted.

“Ms. President, I’d like to introduce Admiral Teke Curtis. He was with the Office of Ionospheric Monitoring and recently began working for the Secretary of the Navy. He also worked at HAARP while Greg Simpson was there. Gianni Barone was Admiral Curtis’s direct report.”

The president nodded at the officer, who completed his salute with a sharp snap of his wrist. “Please join us at the table, admiral. What is your take on this situation?”

The man stepped forward and took a seat several places away from Candy.

“I agree with Ms. Freeman, ma’am. The Internet is full of outlandish rumors about HAARP, but some contain shreds of truth. The HAARP array does transmit massive amounts of energy into the atmosphere, primarily the ionosphere. Fully ramped up, it could knock satellites out of orbit and planes out of the sky and disrupt communications worldwide. It could make people crazy on a big scale. We don’t do any of those things, but the capability is there.” He paused minutely. “TESLA is different. It has numerous arrays that transmit at a wide variety of frequencies. Its capabilities are far greater than HAARP’s. Our intelligence indicates that TESLA is capable of causing wide-scale atmospheric events with significant terrestrial consequences on a global scale.”

Without looking away or letting her expression change, Helena let the officer’s words sink into her brain for a moment before replying. “Do you think TESLA has been compromised?”

Admiral Curtis was silent for a long moment. “I do, ma’am.”

“By whom?”

“That’s hard to say. Our surveillance satellites haven’t recorded any unusual occurrences. A plane landed there approximately twenty-four hours ago and departed an hour later. There has been a sharp uptick in electromagnetic activity since then. Very strong activity.”

“Could any of that recent activity have caused the storms we’re discussing?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ms. President, would it be possible for the three of us to have a private conversation?” Candy asked smoothly.

“Certainly.”

Helena stood up and so did everyone in the room. She walked toward an unobtrusive door near her chair. An aide materialized to open it and Helena, Candy Freeman, and the admiral walked into a small, informal sitting area. Helena ignored the seats, turning to face Candy and Admiral Curtis the moment the door was closed.

“Teke, please describe what you discovered about the relationship between Admiral Medev and Flint,” Candy said, her voice warmer than it had been in the larger room.

Teke Curtis looked at Helena, his dark eyes grave. “The office had a long-standing relationship with Flint, Ms. President. The program was highly classified and for a long time things were handled personally between Croyden Flint and Admiral Bonner, now Secretary of Defense Bonner.”

Helena felt her irritation level rise at the mention of her Cabinet secretary’s name.

“The results were very effective but deliberately low-key, ma’am. When Admiral Bonner retired, Admiral Medev became responsible for liaising with Flint, and Croyden Flint installed Gianni Barone on the Flint side. Barone took a tougher stance on our requests than Croyden Flint ever did, possibly because he and Medev never got along, not even back in their days at HAARP. It appears that, in response, Medev began dealing directly with Greg Simpson. Covertly.”

Mother of God.
Helena was silent for a moment, looking at her hands as his words sunk in.

“Where did Medev’s requests originate?”

“Some came from higher offices, ma’am. But some appear to have no official origin.”

“So he may have been acting alone?”

The admiral nodded.

“Have there been incidents … orchestrated by him since I took office?”

“We’ve confirmed one. The floods in Afghanistan in late winter.”

It wasn’t easy for Helena to keep her cool in the face of his admission. “You know this for a fact?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Treason is such an ugly word.
“Anything else, Admiral Curtis?” Helena asked, eager to get out of the room and into planning mode. She had a Cabinet to clean out.

“Yes, ma’am. Gianni Barone was in Malta during a recent NATO conference, and met with a scientist named Tess Beauchamp. She’s a weather researcher who also used to work at HAARP. Immediately after the conference, she left her job in France and returned stateside. According to the state department, she flew to South Africa about a week ago and left there for Antarctica on a Flint plane late Thursday. We believe it was her plane that landed at TESLA yesterday.”

“Why is that significant?”

“We believe she replaced Simpson,” Candy said. “The same plane took off about an hour later to return to Capetown and we have an unconfirmed report that Simpson was on it.” She paused and looked directly at the president. “We think TESLA has gone rogue, Ms. President. Either Greg Simpson is still running the show remotely or Tess Beauchamp is working with him.”

“What makes you think he’s ‘gone rogue,’ Candy?”

Teke Curtis cleared his throat. “If I may, Ms. President. Greg Simpson is a classic narcissist. He thinks he’s infallible. When he runs a project, he goes through staff like water through a sieve until he has a team that follows him blindly. I’ve seen how he operates.”

Candy leaned forward. “Greg Simpson is like Dr. Evil without the laugh track. He’s buttoned down, smart, OCD, sociopathic—and mightily pissed off, ma’am. Mightily pissed off.”

“Let’s bring in the others on this conversation,” Helena said coolly, and walked back toward the door.

CHAPTER
25

Park City residents and guests alike were awakened before dawn on Saturday by the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder—and the sound of hard, vicious rain beating against the slate roofs and redwood siding of the town’s multi-million-dollar structures. Incredulous faces stared through windows, watching the powder they’d skied on the day before turn into slush and then into puddles. Streams rushed along the sides of the roads.

The combination of rain and warmth began to drill holes in the snowpack throughout the mountainsides that surrounded the village. Layers of months-old snow, some coarse and some fine, some dry and some wetter, absorbed or gave way or deflected the rainwater. The water moved through the hardened pack; in some places it slid over impermeable ice lenses and in others found narrow pathways through which it percolated to the base.

Hours of this wet barrage fomented a result that was cataclysmic, though not immediately visible. Huge sections of the mountain’s snowfield went isothermal: enough water had penetrated to the base of the snowpack so that the layers upon layers of dense, compacted snow now rested atop a thin film of meltwater. Encouraged by wind and gravity, the season’s solid mass of many feet of snow began to lurch, then slip, then glide down the sides of the hills.

By noon in Park City, the road to the airport was crammed bumper to bull bars with mud-spattered shuttle buses, sports cars, and luxury sport vehicles bearing irritated, petulant vacationers. Every car sported rooftop carriers full of now-pointless skis. The thwarted travelers sat in the stalled traffic and telephoned, texted, and Tweeted their frustration, but their actions did nothing to speed their departure. They remained, oblivious, in harm’s way.

The avalanche descended on the town without warning. Thunder from the storm masked its roar; the rain- and warmth-spawned fog conspired to hide the rushing gray wall of wet, heavy death as it slid into and over the town at hundreds of miles per hour. Timbers cracked and walls crashed onto people sitting indoors in front of blazing fires or glowing screens, onto families lingering over lunch or partiers recovering from the night before. Screams were smothered by the choking weight of the gushing slush. Buildings collapsed, their stones and snapped beams and shattered roofs tumbling and bouncing in the streets’ filthy torrents. Cars were thrown, buried, or crushed; the luckier occupants died instantly.

In less than half an hour, the catastrophe was complete. The storm front had moved on, its fierce power spent. The sun came out. The tiny, once-wealthy town had been completely destroyed, and lay buried now under many feet of heavy snow and grisly debris. The playground of millionaires had been transformed into a deep, sucking sea of mud and carnage. All was silent except for the rhythmic thudding of news helicopters and the distant wails of approaching emergency vehicles.

Croyden Flint lay pinned in the back of the stretch Hummer he’d hired to take his family to the airport. His daughters, their husbands, and his grandchildren lay around him, some screaming, some moaning, some ominously silent. The stench of death was in the air, mingling with the metallic smell of blood and the must of wet wool.

The limo was on its side, tipped nearly upside down. The temperature inside the cabin was dropping. Filthy, slushy water flowed steadily through the gaping hole where the windshield had been. The water cascaded over the upended steering console and flowed around the heads and shoulders of broken bodies that lay on what had moments before been the interior roof of the car. Croyden watched helplessly as his family drowned around him, as their bodies thrashed and then grew still. He was next.

Wedged in the twisted wreckage, unable to move, Croyden Flint could only close his eyes in horror as he felt the icy water wend its wet fingers through his hair and drive its slow needle-pricks of cold into his scalp, his forehead, his eye sockets, and, finally, his nostrils.

CHAPTER
26

Greg relaxed in the plush seat of the Gulfstream jet, ignoring his unwelcome entourage of Flint flunkies while flipping through the latest issue of
Greenwich
magazine. Its slick, glossy photos of slick, glossy people made him want to laugh. He’d rocked their cloistered world; he’d given those smugly smiling people, who lived pointless lives in ostentatious houses, a wake-up call. And it had been nothing more than a by-product of his interest in Croyden Flint. Croyden’s homes had all been targets: the mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut; the huge clifftop estate in Mexico; the getaway “cabin” in Park City; and the big house in California’s Central Valley. He’d known Croyden Flint would be at one of them during this northern spring weekend. And if he hadn’t been, if he was still alive, then he’d be around to watch the rest of his empire crumble. Literally.

This widespread destruction was Greg’s magnum opus. Flint, the Pentagon, even other governments probably already knew that he was behind the destruction and were scrambling to figure out what would happen next and how to prevent it.

They can try all they like. It won’t do any good.

Greg smiled, stretching his cramped muscles as he leaned back in his chair. The next event would be unparalleled if it happened as it was supposed to. Given his previous success, Greg had no reason to consider that it might miss its mark. But then, the target was so much larger this time—not some rural hick town, small ski resort, or suburban retreat. His next creation would affect an entire region, an area that bridged two continents and spanned innumerable warring histories. And the nation that would bear the brunt of it had a troubled past and a manic present; thanks to Greg, soon—very soon—Israel would face a devastated future.

The timing would be perfect. The storm would flatten one of Flint’s most prized projects and some of its most productive agricultural lands and would coincide with a visit by America’s new defense secretary—and Croyden Flint’s lapdog—Frederick Bonner.

With any luck, the storm will flatten Freddy, too.

*   *   *

“Where are you headed, Teke?” Candy asked casually as they left the White House.

He glanced down at her. “My office.”

“Can I give you a lift?”

“Crystal City isn’t exactly on the way to Bolling Air Force Base.”

“I feel like taking the scenic route.”

He laughed and climbed into the back of the town car that was waiting under the portico.

“We’re taking the admiral to the Pentagon, Jimmy,” she said pleasantly, then depressed a button to raise the divider and flipped a switch to turn on the white noise.

“How did you manage to get an office outside of the West Wing?” Teke asked.

“I told them I didn’t like the commute,” she said breezily. “I live in Alexandria and have been heading out to Langley all these years, so I didn’t really like the idea of coming all the way into the District and dealing with that traffic. So we settled on Bolling. It’s secure enough for them, and close enough to the Wilson Bridge for me.”

“So what did you want to talk about?”

“I need the low-down on TESLA. All the stuff you didn’t want to tell the president.”

“Simpson’s a nutbar,” he said bluntly. “His file ought to be about a foot thick by now.”

Candy smiled.
Slightly larger, but who’s measuring?
“I’m told the station is inaccessible until their summer, which is six months away.”

“That’s correct, except in emergencies.”

“Like Tess Beauchamp?”

“If Simpson wasn’t on that outbound flight, it will be a cage match. They hate each other.”

There was a brief pause. “I’d like to watch what’s going on down there a little more closely.”

“Do you mean that metaphorically or literally? With eyes in the sky or on the ground?”

Candy turned to look out the window. The Potomac was sparkling in the waning moonlight. “Whatever will get me more information and put us in a position to assist.”

“Fuck.”

“Gesundheit,” she replied silkily.

“If you’re thinking of deploying a team, Candy—” Teke stopped and shook his head. “TESLA is a thousand miles past nowhere. There’s no possibility of surprising them. There’s no way to set up a base camp anywhere near it.”

“I know all that. Darlin’, I need a solution. I think we need someone in there. Maybe a few someones. And we might need them right quick. Lord knows what else our little friend is planning. How can we get people there if we need to?”