Dry Ice (36 page)

“That won’t do a damned thing to help us, Tess. Flint will scramble an extraction team, but we don’t need a plane full of guys with guns coming through the door. We need hackers, Tess. Or somebody to meet Greg at the gate in Westchester with a syringe of sodium pentothal.”

She stopped pacing to look at him. “Nik, if we don’t stop the signal, all we can do is cross our fingers and hope that the governments of the countries we’re trashing don’t decide that turnabout is fair play.”

“Yeah, or keep trying to get into the system and take back control of it,” he snapped.

She let out a hard breath and was about to reply when the lights flickered for just a fraction of a second. The three of them stared at one another through a suddenly dense silence. Instantly, Tess unclipped the walkie-talkie at her waist and asked everyone to meet in the dining room. By the time she walked in with the gang from the sandbox behind her, the rest of the staff was waiting for them.

“I don’t have a lot of news, and none of it is what I’d call good,” she began, giving the assembled group a tight smile. “But you need to know what’s going on. In a nutshell, the control system for the arrays has been completely hijacked and a series of commands has been locked in. We don’t know what those commands will do, we can’t change them, and we can’t get access to the system.”

She paused and let her blunt words sink in as she looked around at the faces in front of her. They were a pretty stoic bunch, but she could see fear in some of their eyes.

Here goes.

“Some of you know and some of you may not fully know what we do here at TESLA, so I’m going to tell you. We manipulate the weather and induce some geological activity.” She paused as she saw the admin staff register varying degrees of surprise, shock, and unease. “We can make things happen, and prevent some things from happening, anywhere in the world. The whole reason this installation came into existence was to use the weather for benign and beneficial purposes—mostly to improve Flint’s bottom line by sending good weather to areas where the company has agricultural interests. That mission was changed. The arrays are now beyond our control and TESLA is doing things to punish—” She shrugged, palms up in front of her. “Flint? The world? We don’t quite know. We do know that our arrays, operating under code embedded by Greg before he left, are responsible for the big storms that have happened across America and the Mediterranean, and the earthquake in Mexico.”

The expressions on the faces before her now reflected disbelief mingled with dread.

“I want you all to know that I—we—are now operating under the following assumptions: that the outside world has probably realized it’s under attack from our arrays and that there will be a response. I don’t know what kind of response.” She ignored the few soft gasps that followed her words. “I am also assuming that the people at Flint HQ are working very hard on our behalf. There may be Flint people on their way to us already,” she added hurriedly as she saw a few pairs of eyes start to shine with tears.

“We’re running diagnostics on the power system to determine what caused the blip we just experienced. I’m concerned, but there’s no reason to panic. That being said, we must prepare to face our worst-case scenario: a full power failure. I want everyone to review emergency and survival procedures in case we need to initiate them.”

One of the women toward the back of the small crowd let out a sob that she quickly stifled.

“I know this is nerve-wracking. I know you have questions. But I’ve just given you all the information I have. You need to stay focused on what
is
happening and don’t speculate about what may never happen.” Tess paused. “Okay, that’s all I have. We’ll reconvene at noon for an update. If you need me before then, I’ll be in C4. Thanks.” Tess turned to Nik and Ron. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER
29

The installation became a small, buzzing hive feeding off its own fury at Greg’s betrayal and everyone’s fear of the possibilities. Then, shortly after Tess concluded her talk, the arrays re-awakened and sent out their first set of simultaneous bursts. The pulses they emitted caused the atmosphere to bend and writhe with energy it could barely contain. And when it stopped, chaos erupted around the globe.

*   *   *

Lightning strikes were not uncommon in the vast, wet highlands of Roraima, the northernmost and least populated state in Brazil. The region was home to little more than dense tropical rain forest; the strikes were of negligible concern to anyone. Heavy, year-round rains generally eliminated most fires before they could pose serious risk.

That morning in late April proved different.

The strikes were abundant and huge, searing the air as they hurtled between earth and sky. The sounds that followed by mere seconds would have made any listener certain that the atmosphere itself was splintering. Each forked sword held tens of thousands degrees of heat; within minutes of the storm’s conception, the ever damp floor of the tropical forest was dry enough to combust.

And combust it did. Massive balls of fire erupted as trees exploded, the dense moisture in their tissue converting instantly to steam as the bolts of lightning blasted them with temperatures that existed nowhere on earth other than in the deepest pools of subterranean magma.

Few noticed or cared that the rain forest was burning, sending up billows of heavy black smoke, enough to block out the midday sun, because the eyes of the Americas were turned to places more populated, and more devastated.

*   *   *

It was morning in Los Angeles. The sun was up, and the major arteries snaking through the city and around it were already becoming clogged with cars, trucks, and buses heading in every direction. Although it was a weekend, elevators and escalators across the vast metropolis nevertheless carried workers to their offices in the myriad towers that punctured the skyline at all points of the compass. Beaches were filling with tourists. Malls were coming to life. No one was thinking of the stresses and strains that had been building along the San Andreas Fault since its last really big release just over 150 years ago. The Big One had become little more than a myth to residents and a joke to outsiders.

But when the precarious balance that kept the Pacific and North American plates pressed against each other shifted, no one was laughing.

When the first wave, the compression wave, hit the region, the sound was thunderous and heard by everyone who was outdoors and by most who were not. The transverse waves followed almost immediately, making buildings sway and the ground roll. And roll.

The tallest buildings had no chance of survival; their height overpowered the ability of any stabilizers to counteract the sideways slide of the earth on which they stood. Even bridges built to withstand severe torsion were not built to withstand what hit them that morning. They twisted and buckled like cheap toys, crumbling onto the pancaking layers of roadways below. Planes roaring along the runways of the area’s many airports lurched into drunken skids as the tarmac moved beneath them. Others flipped as brand-new gaps in the pavement caught their landing gear. People stampeded out of buildings only to become unwitting targets for the rubble that fell from shattered buildings and billboards and utility poles.

The shaking went on for what seemed like a small eternity, while across the world other horrors awaited other peoples as one of the planet’s most complex and extensive tectonic plate margins began to roar.

*   *   *

Along the Makran coast of Pakistan and Iran, underneath the northern Arabian Sea, continental plates began to rub against each other. It only took a nudge to the huge transform fault that bordered the world’s largest accretionary prism to set them in motion. Waves of intense energy moved easily through the deep, thick layers of sediment, rocking the seafloor and the land and the cities that bordered that sea, and giving birth to a giant wave.

Along the entire coast, residents had settled into their late evening routines. No one was prepared for the unspeakable havoc that erupted when the shifting earth pushed the massive wall of water toward land. The wave rushed the steep continental shelf with a speed that left those who saw it awestruck in their final moments. The sea-born monster rose above the cities and broke, slamming buildings to the ground, snapping the hulls of thousands of docked ships waiting to be loaded with the region’s liquid black gold. Water inundated huge petroleum tank farms and luxury high-rises, washing away the dreams and lives of countless souls, sucking every remnant of their existence into its dark depths.

Farther out, the earth’s motion awakened long-dormant hot spots and ignited substances locked away by Nature for millennia. Fire shot skyward from the waves and lit the night as submarine mud volcanoes erupted with a violence reserved for apocalyptic legends. Newly released plumes of methane and other gases shook the very air with their explosions and sent flames to towering heights.

Aftershocks continued to rock the region and the complicated shifting of the underwater landscape triggered submarine landslides that, in turn, created tsunamis that raced in all directions.

As the seafloor beneath them heaved and shifted, drilling platforms collapsed, their spindly open towers swaying in dizzy arcs before falling artlessly through the air. With screams of tortured steel, the mighty superstructures were torn apart and crashed into water already patchy with thick, growing islands of heavy crude.

*   *   *

Along the northern coast of Western Australia, a sky that was clear and shining one minute shivered in the next and conjured a massive cyclone that roared onto the unsuspecting populace like a wild dog. Residents of the territory fled the onslaught of water and wind, seeking futile sanctuary indoors. Its winds as dangerous as razor-sharp teeth, the storm set its grip on the sleepy coastal cities and shook them until their fight was gone.

Rain poured from the sky as though from a faucet. Winds circled and slashed and shrieked with Hell’s own fury. The white sands of the incomparable Cable Beach were sucked away as waves assaulted the shore, stealing whatever they chose. Rising flood waters swallowed coastal cities and towns. Farther inland, sewers and natural waterways alike filled beyond their capacity and spilled over, wreaking their own havoc.

Things not securely anchored to the earth—cars, palm trees, foolhardy humans—became unwitting missiles thrust along erratic trajectories. And when the storm passed, almost as quickly as it had come, survivors emerged, dazed and shocked, and wondering what unholy nightmare had befallen them.

CHAPTER
30

“Okay, I feel like I’m playing a game of Risk. Or chess,” Nik muttered, breaking the tense silence in the sandbox.

They were the first words—make that the first non-profane words—that Tess had heard him say in hours. Since the blip early that morning, he’d been either cursing under his breath or roaring invective while staring at computer monitors and tapping at keyboards. Tess wasn’t much for swearing, but she was tempted. She hadn’t come all the way to Antarctica to spend her time hacking her way into a cache of definitions for a whole bunch of gibberish commands that would be deadly once they executed.

The last set of bursts from the array had made everyone in the control center go pale. The power emitted was beyond awesome and the lights that had appeared all around them in the sky were psychedelic—and terrifying.

But what truly frightened the Teslans was watching their power flicker again.

Tess had immediately gotten on her walkie-talkie to reassure the staff that there was no damage to the installation. It was the truth. What she didn’t broadcast was that the diagnostics revealed that the flickers were just deliberate scale-downs in power output: pranks placed in the code courtesy of Greg. She couldn’t discern any purpose behind them other than to instill fear.

Now, though hours had passed, the room still hummed with tension. Someone had finally turned off the streaming video link to the news shows after the images of the latest round of catastrophes were shown—and burned into their brains.

Banter was no longer tolerated by anyone. Instead, the air in the control room was filled with the clatter of keystrokes as the scientists and software developers worked side by side to wrest system dominance from Greg. Each of the would-be hackers had taken a different line of attack as they tried to get into the core systems, but although everyone was eager to crack Greg’s code, they’d come to realize that blunt force would only cause more trouble. Every keystroke had to be considered. A premature power grab would be foolhardy—they had no way of knowing what security traps were embedded in the software, or what they might do. It was like trying to navigate a minefield. Blindfolded.

Tess broke the silence with an “Oh boy,” and abruptly sat back in her chair as she stared wide-eyed at her screen.

Ron swiveled to face her. Nik stood up and walked the few steps to where she was working. “What?”

Tess glanced up at them, then pointed to the screen. “Anyone secretly entertaining doubts about whether Greg is a genocidal maniac can stop now,” she said, her voice shaky. “That’s the command queue. And if what you all figured out about the system timing for the array is right, then that line of code”—she tapped the screen—“is going to execute not several hours from now—local time—as it appears. It’s going to happen much sooner and it’s going to be big. Really, really big.”

Both men leaned over her shoulders and squinted at the screen.

“What is that?” Ron asked.

Tess looked up at him. “I don’t know exactly, but the bursts are sequential. Just like last time, there are four command sequences all timed to execute nearly simultaneously, then there are four more set to happen
x
time after that. I haven’t figured out what
x
is yet, but the timing is, again, nearly simultaneous. Step back, fellas. I need some air.” She stood up and wrapped her arms tightly around her waist in a move that was both protective and designed to press against the stabbing pains in her stomach. “The geographical coordinates just reshuffled again, too. We’ll have to figure out the methodology of the new notations. You know, is north south now, or is it east or west? If we can’t figure it out ahead of time, we’ll have to piece it together as things start to happen.”