“Well, not just yet.”
“Okay, I’ll be there.”
Hayes had been taken off-guard by the sight of her bare shoulders, and seemed almost boyishly nervous. “I… I was looking for Gibbs, too, but he’s not in his room. If you see him, would you tell him about the briefing?”
She smiled. “Sure. He’s probably with his dog. Somewhere.”
The general smiled back, and went away.
When Sarah and Henry reached the private mess it was already crowded. A good number of high-ranking officers mil ed about, talking and drinking coffee. Kai Grimes was standing just inside the door, watching the brass like a vulture. He tugged at Henry’s shirt sleeve as the two entered the room.
“Hey, hero,” he said. Then he winked at Sarah. “Mrs Hero.”
She scowled at him.
“What’s going on, Grimes?” asked Henry.
“You tell me,” the SEAL replied. “Another fuckin’ meeting, is my guess.”
Henry and Sarah pushed their way to a table loaded with doughnuts and pastry. He took a cup of coffee and gave one to her.
Grimes leaned towards him, then sniffed the air gently, like a predator. He gave a knowing look and a dirty smile. “That’s not dog I smell.”
Thankful y, with all the commotion and conversation around them, Sarah didn’t notice the insinuations.
Henry gave the SEAL a dirty look. “You real y are bored, aren’t you, Grimes?”
“ ’Kin’ A I am.”
“Why don’t you just go kill something?”
“Like you or that dog of yours?”
The general’s voice rang out above the crowd.
“Gentlemen, will you find a seat?”
When everyone had sat down Henry could see the front of the room. Hayes stood in front of a wall map of Antarctica. Henry was surprised it was the general and not the admiral there. Noticing how quickly the room had come to order, he wondered if the grim look on the general’s face was caused by more than just stagefright.
Hayes turned to the map behind him and pointed to a large dimple in the coastline of Antarctica. Then he faced the room again.
“You all know something of our situation, but I’ll bring everyone up to speed.” He took out one of his inevitable cigars and lit it. Glancing up at the group, he raised an eyebrow when he saw surprise registered on some of the faces before him. “This isn’t a formal meeting, people. The admiral is talking to Washington right now. Up there in the Pentagon some of the best minds are trying to sort this one out, just like us. So this is just a bull session. We want ideas.”
He sat down on a stool next to the map and relaxed. “The smoking lamp is lit, gentlemen. And ladies, of course.” He nodded to Sarah.
He paused to clear his throat. “Some sonofabitch punched a big radioactive hole in the Ross Ice Shelf, about fifty miles out of McMurdo.” He pointed to the map again. “The hole measures well over a mile wide and a thousand feet deep. I’m sure you know what happens when you shove a red-hot poker into a block of ice. You get a cloud of steam and a cracked block of ice.
“Of course, this cloud of steam, drifting inland from the blast site, is full of radioactive fall out. Most of it has settled out inland. It won’t drift around the world, though we did have to evacuate the south polar station.
Everyone from McMurdo has been evacuated, too, and they’re moving north in the Glomar Explorer as fast as the ship will go. Other boats are meeting them at sea to take the people home. Most of you know we ourselves are sailing towards the coast of Chile. We’ll reach our destination in about three days. But I’ll get back to that.
“Anyway” — he turned as if to examine the map –
“we’re putting some distance between us and the Ross Shelf, because the ice is cracked and might break off. In deep water the tsunami wouldn’t do us much harm — that’s not what we’re worried about. The ice hasn’t broken yet, but a big piece is hanging loose at the bottom. The people who did this have claimed to have two devices. That means there’s still one in the ice… Who knows? Maybe more than one.” He shook his head. “Thanks to a suggestion from Ms French, we have some ideas about where to look for them. Sites that would figure to cause the most breakage. But we don’t have a clue as to how to locate them exactly. There’s only a little wire to give the spot away, and if we try to find it with detectors it might blow by itself.”
Hayes looked to the rear of the room and pointed.
“That guy back there, Henry Gibbs. He’s the only one who’s seen the bastards who did this. They apparently slipped into and out of Antarctica posing as a Norwegian expedition in case anyone, like Gibbs did, ran into them. Now they’ve vanished.”
Heads turned to examine Henry. He looked around the room, embarrassed by the sudden attention, and noticed Grimes leaning against the wall with his arms folded, smirking at him.
Hayes continued. “Our intel has concluded that the terrorists dumped their drilling rig and materials into the sea and took off in choppers specially equipped to refuel in midair. Meanwhile, we’ve been wasting our time looking for boats. The terrorists…”
“Extortionists, sir!” called Grimes.
Everyone now turned to look at the SEAL.
Grimes didn’t seem to care at all if eyes were on him. “Begging your pardon, General Hayes, but these extortionists shouldn’t be dignified by the term ‘terrorists’. They don’t care about politics. All they care about is that four billion dollars.”
Hayes smiled and nodded. “In case some of you don’t know him, gentlemen, that outspoken fell ow is eager to be the first to wring the goose’s neck.”
Laughter rippled through the room.
“He’s Lieutenant-Commander Kai Grimes of the SEALs. He’s a…”
“… a bored sonofabitch, sir,” interrupted Grimes.
The general smiled at him. “Damned right. That’s why we’re here. Right now in the Pentagon they’re holding bul sessions like this, full of people itching to do something. At stake here is the possibility that a fifth of the world’s population could soon be living on the ocean floor.”
No one laughed at the general’s dark humour. They knew he wasn’t joking.
“If the ice shelf goes,” continued Hayes, “so does the world as we know it.”
“You think they — the terror… er, the extortionists went to Chile, sir?” asked an officer.
“Yes. We think they would avoid New Zealand as the obvious first choice. Our guess is they would have chosen a mountain site somewhere in the Andes. From there they could broadcast a signal and explode the…”
“Not if we find ’em first,” interposed Grimes.
The room began to fill with conversation. Instead of calling for order, the general sat calmly, gazing around him. He seemed happy to be letting the audience vent their steam.
Henry touched Sarah’s arm. “I don’t see why you’ve got to sit through this.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides, who knows? I might get a bright idea that’s helpful.”
At last the general raised his hand. The room fell silent. “Any questions?”
An officer raised his hand and asked about the size of the ice shelf.
“It’s roughly a circle of ice, about four hundred miles across and maybe two thousand feet deep in places. A piece of ice has popped off the bottom, but it’s not too big; a fraction of a per cent of the total mass of what we expect to break off if the whole thing goes. But, I have to tell you, our satellite data shows the world sea- levels have already risen an eighth of a centimetre.” Hayes smiled ruefully. “I feel like Ted Koppel here. I may as well fill you in on all the facts. Already there’s a crack in the ice — a few, actually, that are above a hundred miles long. In one place the fissure is over two hundred yards wide. Easy to see from space. And here’s the tough part. The cracks seem to be widening, but the ice tremors — the quakes in the ice — have all but stopped. We don’t know why this should be so. Some think the ice is just settling.”