“Not if we bomb them to rubble,” Admiral Deming said.
“Of late, we’ve looked at that as well, Admiral,” Besserman replied, “and that kind of response would be almost as dangerous as a bomb landing on the WAIS. We’d be cutting off our nose to spite our face because, first of all, we may never be able to conclusively prove their role. No smoking gun. And, even more painful to accept, maybe, is that we, along with the rest of the world, would become highly dependent on Russian aid. Without it, billions would starve. Every year they have more arable land stretching up into Siberia because of the warming. Their vast agricultural base is expanding. And I’m sure you realize the radioactivity released from a massive bombing of Russia would soon sweep over the rest of the world, including America. And of course they’d respond in kind.”
“So you’re saying they’re going to have us coming or going?” Lana asked, unable to keep the outrage from her voice.
Besserman nodded.
Lana didn’t accept that pinning it on the Russians — if they were indeed the hackers — would be impossible. Identifying hackers was what she did for a living, but the other part, the radioactive blowback and depending on them for aid, well, that was truly “mind-boggling,” to borrow Besserman’s own words.
And humiliating.
“But the Russians are being ordered out of the Arctic, too,” Tenon said.
“They’re giving themselves cover,” Besserman replied. “Nobody’s actually leaving, are they? Which was the result the hackers no doubt expected. If and when the WAIS gets hit, Russia will probably pull out of the Arctic, too, but only for a little while. They’ll argue that the gas and oil will be needed to help save the world. And the most galling fact is, they’ll be right because with much of the fossil-fuel economy shut down everywhere else, Arctic resources will become very valuable. We certainly won’t have the means to begin massive extraction up there. Every possible vessel and all our human resources will be dedicated to simple survival. That’s going to be true for all the Arctic nations, and most of the rest of the world as well. Holland, for one, will disappear. If the Russians retreat from the Arctic at all, it will be purely a performance. They believe the Arctic belongs to them. They always have.”
“Is it coincidence, then, that Professor Ahearn and his wife were murdered and his prototype likely stolen just before this happened?” Lana asked.
Besserman paused. “Outside my purview, okay? But I don’t think it was a coincidence. If Ahearn had the breakthrough with AAC that we’ve come to believe, and the Russians took it, they’ll have the means to use it on a wide scale while the rest of us are tripping over ourselves trying to recover from the collapse of that one very fragile part of the planet.”
A messenger entered and handed Holmes a slip of paper. In the silence before the woman passed back through the door, Lana watched Holmes crumple the paper and drop it on the table.
He lifted his eyes to them. “They’ve announced the threat publicly. While we’ve been hoping they’d keep it secret for as long as possible, they were planning a worldwide communications takeover to say that at any moment a Trident II will strike the ice sheet.”
Holmes, perhaps thinking better of himself, leaned forward and retrieved the balled-up paper and unfolded it. “They even wrote the headline.”
Lana had no trouble reading it: “The Oceans Rise. Billions Die.”
CHAPTER 8
America woke up to the momentous announcement. Montevideo, Oleg’s favorite hippie city, woke up to it. Moscow went to sleep knowing about it. And everybody everywhere was shocked. The whole world was quaking to Oleg’s threat. He sat watching reports on his big flat screen from all over the Big Blue Ball, which was about to get a lot bluer.
“A great flood is coming,” a reporter with a gravelly voice announced over video of an endless sea on NBC TV in New York City. Then the same newsman intoned, “This clip from the movie Noah is what a huge flood might have looked like the first time.”
Okay, Oleg got it now. The reporter who sounded like a three-pack-a-day smoker was mixing a little entertainment with the news by dragging that flick back off the shelf to make the most of the crisis. How purely American.
But the WAIS flood would be real, and people knew it. Boat prices were going through the roof. In fact, prices for anything that could float — rafts, dinghies, inner tubes, bathtubs — were getting priced right out of reach of most people. Bologna — the city, not the sausage — was putting up barriers to prevent coastal dwellers from the Adriatic and Ligurian Seas from overrunning its ancient streets.
There were boat people in Kiribati, the Maldives, Bangladesh, La Jolla. And in Florida, street gangs were “boatjacking” yachts, according to a reporter down there. The term caught on fast, but not as fast as the gangbangers in speedboats could catch up to cabin cruisers. Those banger boys were like cheetahs pouncing on lumbering wildebeests.
Oleg gawked at video of tattooed guys who looked like linebackers storming a sixty-foot boat. Two of the biggest grabbed a hefty woman in a muumuu by her ankles and wrists and swung her back and forth—“Uno, dos, trés.” He could read their lips — before they tossed her into the sea.
At least the gringa could float. Not all of them could.
He sat there stunned by what he was seeing. For reasons he could not fathom, “Itchycoo Park” started playing in his head. The worst earworm of all time.
PP’s third wife used to sing it to Oleg when he was a teen: “It’s all too beautiful, It’s all too…”
He hated it, but loved the way her dangly earrings caught the sunlight. Finally, one day he grabbed both of them and jerked her close, head-butting the hippie. Fourteen years old and so sick of hearing “It’s all too beautiful” bullshit that he couldn’t stand another second of it. But he did like her earrings. He walked away with one in each hand.
Look, look at that! Big news. And it was beautiful. New York Stock Exchange — collapsed. NASDAQ — collapsed. Dow Jones — collapsed. The Nikkei — collapsed. London Stock Exchange — collapsed. Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges — collapsed. The Moscow Stock Exchange — through the roof. Huge profit taking, and then even higher, like Trident IIs, up-up-up. Just like the Russian spirit when the President assured his people that their country would not leave the Arctic and succumb to a terrorist threat, saying, “Destiny is on our side.” So was geography.
When the camera zoomed in on the Russian President, Oleg could almost glimpse another wink and a blink just for him. The President was a great man. He could ride race cars, race horses, racy women. All man.
Oleg clicked his remote, bringing in news from America. A white weather guy was talking to a black anchorwoman on a New York morning show. The weather guy was so funny. He actually said sinking the WAIS would be like raising the floor of a basketball court so that anyone could dunk.
Dunk? And they say Russians have a dark sense of humor.
Numero Uno called. Oleg muted the TV.
“Yes,” he said in his most amused voice.
“Best bet for first Trident is the big ice shelves, like dams, near the Weddell or Ross Seas.” The north or south part of the WAIS, close to the Transantarctic Mountains, which ran roughly north and south along the eastern edge of the massive ice sheet. “You choose, you can’t lose, Oleg.” The Ukrainian laughed.