Frozen Fire (25 page)

“Yeah, but the first offshore rig ever built didn’t operate remotely. It had people on it twenty-four/seven,” Sam interjected.

“True, but the first few generations of spacecraft did. And now there are spacecraft flying millions of miles away from earth, functioning just fine, and they’re controlled remotely. I can’t see why it would have to be any different with an operation on the seafloor. Theoretically, anyway.”

“Except that oil rigs and spacecraft rely on radio signals to communicate, Marty. Once you go underwater like that, you’re relyin’ on cables,” Sam pointed out.

“Well, yeah, cables. Not always, though. Anyway, so what? If something needs to be fixed, just send someone down in a submersible, or in one of those one-atmosphere diving suits. Hell, it can’t be that much different than sending an astronaut out on a space walk to do repairs. I think undersea and outer space projects have a lot of similarities. Similar challenges anyway.”

Sam stopped pacing. “You’ve thought about this, Marty. Either that or you know something you’re not tellin’ me.”

“I don’t know anything,” he protested. “I get paid to come up with theories.”

“Not about underwater mining operations, you don’t. Tell me what else you think that dude is up to.”

“I don’t know anything. Look, everything I’ve just said is pure speculation, okay? If this crash had happened two weeks from now, I might have
been able to answer more questions because I’d already be back from the island,” Marty said, stifling a yawn. “And I don’t even know for sure that the man is actually doing anything with all that methane. But it just seems kinda odd that he’d be sitting on top of it and not messing around with it, not trying to get it out of there. We’ve both met him. He’s half genius and half lunatic. And he owns the island.”

“Well, I can’t argue with the genius-lunatic idea,” Sam drawled. “He’s an original.”

“Have you heard from Her Highness?” Marty asked after a moment.

“Yeah. Almost wish I hadn’t,” Sam muttered. “She’s hell-bent on turnin’ into an investigative reporter and pokin’ around that crash.”

“Bad move.”

“No damned kiddin’, Methane Man.” Sam sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Listen, buddy, thanks for the information. For a crazy man, you’re okay.”

“I aim to please,” Marty replied with a grin in his voice. “Later, Sam.”

After he ended the call, Sam remained at the door for a few minutes, then wandered back to his office. Sitting down in front of his computer, he logged on to his favorite search engine and typed in the words “methane hydrate.”

5:10
A.M.
, Sunday, October 26, Annaba, Algeria

Garner Blaylock wasn’t sure what awakened him, but knew that jet lag being what it was, he was unlikely to fall back to sleep any time soon. He rolled over and let his eyes adjust to the shades of darkness in the unfamiliar room. The darkest shapes were furniture. The filigreed striations on the walls had to be moonlight coming through the carved shutters. There was no artificial light brightening the sky this far outside of Annaba’s French-influenced city center. No man-made sound polluted the dawn, either. He heard only the soft susurrus of the trees and shrubs moving in the early-morning breeze, and the grunts and cries of animals following their instincts.

He’d leased the remote villa set in the slowly rising uplands beyond Annaba a few months ago, after being assured it came with all the amenities a wealthy European businessman—as Garner had described himself—could possibly want: privacy, luxury, armed security guards, and the woman in his bed.

He gave the warm, slick, female body next to him an almost gentle
shove. The summer’s heat hadn’t completely disappeared and the autumn rains weren’t in full force yet, which left the weather overly warm and humid for this late in the year. That environment was compounded inside the room, making it too easy to remain in the sex-and-jet-lag-induced torpor in which he found himself.

Get up
.

Despite his determination to become fully awake, he felt his eyes drift shut.

Seconds later, they opened again. Tired as he was, it was too damned hot to be this close to anything that sweated or smelled so heavily of sandalwood. The woman—he hadn’t bothered to ask her name—was too cloying by half.

“There you go, love. Over a bit more.” With a feminine but unladylike noise, she rolled away, leaving him more room to spread out on the low bed.

It didn’t matter. Less than a minute later he was on his feet, prowling the cool tile floor of the unfamiliar room as sure-footed as a cat, forcing himself into full wakefulness. There was too much to do.

A few members of Garner’s inner circle had arrived at the villa weeks ago to finish their work undisturbed by the annoyances of Western Europe. Police, politics, prudery—none of those had any relevance here. Here in the northeastern corner of Algeria, where the Mediterranean Sea hugged North Africa’s coast, locals were extremely amenable to looking the other way, if ensuring that became necessary. And, lately, it had become quite necessary.

Phase one had gone off almost exactly as planned. Micki’s e-mail had confirmed the turmoil, although Garner wasn’t entirely sure if he should be surprised that weak-minded Wendy had not come through for him as thoroughly as she ought. The deed was done, however, so it scarcely mattered. The exact coordinates had been hit at the right time and altitude and the small but effective bombs had detonated precisely in sequence, sending several of humanity’s foremost perpetrators of crimes against Nature to a terrifying, fiery death, which had been caught on tape and in vivid color.

Garner stopped pacing for a moment and let a quiet laugh slither through the silence. The visuals had been lovely. Utterly, fucking lovely, with elegant streams of smoke and flames brilliant against a pristine sky, and the light rain of the remains of the sinners falling like macabre confetti to feed the fish.

This manifestation of his drive and his genius had stunned the world,
perhaps even more than had the World Trade Center’s demise. Such a small number of people had died yesterday, yet those few deaths were having an enormous effect.

He felt his smile fade as the taste behind it became bitter. It was triumph, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, even though the aftermath was unfolding exactly as he’d planned. Cavendish’s people had been prompt in issuing their first information-free press release—he’d been delighted at the quixotic touch of irony as he watched Micki so calmly deliver her lies.

Without additional encouragement, the babble issuing from the world’s news organizations worked in ceaseless synchronicity to create rumors and foment panic even as their talking heads sat in their studios urging calm against the backdrop of somber riffs, which had temporarily replaced the programs’ usual, inane theme music. As entertaining as all of that was, Garner knew the real humor was to be found in the Oval Office, 10 Downing Street, the Élysée Palace, and the Kremlin, and in the halls of their respective legislative bodies.

Garner pushed open the louvered doors at one end of the long room and walked onto the balcony. Leaning his naked body against the cool iron of the curved railing, he breathed deeply, taking into his lungs the hot, acrid breath of North Africa.

All around the globe, heads of state and their high-ranking underlings were rushing to avail themselves of a new opportunity to flaunt their gravitas and dust off their tired, bombastic remarks about terrorism being a fact of life, security being at the top of the international agenda, and the need for constant vigilance on the part of Everyman.

The problem with the politicians’ favorite argument was that Everyman wasn’t the target, and they knew it. And that’s why Everyman was fucking clueless about what terrorism was and how it worked and why it worked. And why governments were impotent against it.

At some point, Everyman would have to cop to the fact that the self-proclaimed warriors leading their nations with chest-thumping abandon were like eunuchs pointing out the size of their biceps to anyone who would listen. At some point, Everyman would tire of the rhetoric and demand to see the size of their balls, and then the game would be over. And the truly righteous, the potent, the change-makers would have won.

Refreshed by the thought, Garner stalked back to the low bed and flipped the woman over, ignoring her startled shriek.

To the victors go the spoils of war.

7:30
A.M.
, Sunday, October 26, Taino

Dennis sat as his desk after a mostly sleepless night and watched the morning breeze flirt with a short stack of papers that were held in place by a large chunk of volcanic glass. The sun was well up and it was going to be another sultry day in paradise.

My shattered paradise
.

In the time since he’d spoken to Victoria, Dennis had been regaining his senses. And his sense of anger was building faster than anything else.

The connection the Americans had made to that prick Blaylock made sense, and it pissed Dennis off to no end that it hadn’t occurred to him first. Blaylock had been a thorn in Dennis’s side on many occasions over the years by trying to block development and acquisition deals, and by engaging in negative publicity over how “green” the institute’s research really was—or wasn’t.

Blaylock was smart, but he was also a cocky son of a bitch with vicious streak that he neatly covered up with that House of Lords accent and a heart that bled freely and on cue every time there was a camera nearby.

Animal testing. Foxhunting. Factory farming. Overfishing. Pesticide development.

Blaylock had pushed his sticky fingers into every hot-button environmental issue that could generate both publicity and cash flow. Dennis had always found it somewhat surprising that Blaylock also targeted alternative energy, since it didn’t directly affect his precious fauna. That Blaylock might know about the mining operation was more than surprising; it was God-damned frightening—primarily because he would have had to find out about it from an insider.

And the timing of Blaylock’s actions, if he indeed had been the one to order the destruction of Dennis’s plane, could only point to either Micki or Victoria.

Micki’s recklessness was counterbalanced by Victoria’s extreme caution; where Micki dared, Victoria planned. From that perspective, either could have been Blaylock’s mole. But Dennis knew Micki wasn’t smart enough to pull off something like that, and Victoria had always struck him as less capable of being bought.

Not knowing which woman had betrayed him was maddening. It made him feel impotent.

Dennis stood and walked to the window, seeing and not seeing the palms moving languorously in the early heat. There were two things he knew for sure: Whoever had done this was clearly insane, and that person would not stop until some additional goal—Dennis’s death, the destruction of the mining operation, maybe both—had been accomplished. All he could do now was to keep pushing both women until one of them revealed herself to be both an accomplished liar and a cold-blooded killer.

A quiet tap at his door preceded the entrance of his assistant, Leanne, bearing a full, steaming cup of coffee.

“I thought you might be ready for a fresh one,” she said with a hesitant smile.

“You read my mind, as usual,” he replied, forcing a smile. “Thank you.”

She came to stop at the edge of his desk and picked up the nearly empty mug that sat there, replacing it with the new one.

“May I just say how very sorry I am, sir? Everything was so crazy yesterday that I never took a moment to say it.” Her voice was a near-whisper and her eyes were watery when he met her gaze.

She’d worked for him for nearly two decades and knew him almost as well as he knew himself. Dennis picked up her free hand and kissed the back of it; it was an unlikely gesture, but one that felt right. “Thank you, Leanne. It’s a hard time for all of us. And this may only be the beginning.”

Her eyes widened and her fingers curled around his in a snug grip. “The beginning of what?”

He returned a slight squeeze of her hand before releasing it. “I don’t know. But enough people, including me, think that I was the real target of that plane crash, and that whoever did it may not stop there.”

“Oh—”

He stopped her alarmed exclamation with a hand raised slowly. “There’s no point in speculating. We just have to be more vigilant. Thanks for the coffee, Leanne. Right now I have to get back to work.”

With a perfunctory smile, she left his office as quietly as she’d come in and Dennis was once again alone with his thoughts, and his demons.

In direct rebellion against Victoria’s strong, and in his opinion, ridiculous—possibly treasonous—desire to have him sequestered like some warty has-been who needed protection, Dennis had returned to his office almost immediately after she’d left the island the previous evening. He’d remained there for much of the night, resuming the command that was rightfully his. He’d been surprised that Micki had hung around after delivering her bomb of an accusation, but little more had been said about it. No doubt she’d been waiting for him to make the next move. He had, by calling Charlie, but he hadn’t informed Micki of that.

He’d also decided not to tell Micki what had transpired during the call with Victoria, but he’d summoned her immediately after he hung up, curious to see if she’d been monitoring his conversation. If she had, she’d given no indication of it and had simply done everything he’d asked her to do. He’d finally managed to catch a few hours of sleep, only to be up and at his desk again long before dawn.

Micki had appeared not long after he’d set foot in his office. He’d given a cold reception to her annoyingly casual and unproductive report on the overnight progress of the search-and-recovery operations. She’d taken the hint and absented herself to the low cluster of buildings nearer the beach to check up on some communications issues that had erupted on the secure network in the last few hours.