Frozen Fire (3 page)

Embraced by the primordial darkness of the abyss, Micki closed her eyes as something close to an orgasmic rush tightened every muscle, electrified every nerve. Her gasp echoed in the tight space and it took more than a moment for her to catch her breath, to bring her mind back to the task at hand.

Hands shaking from both excitement and a sliver of fear, she set the controls to pick up speed as she resumed her dark descent, moving past the craggy outcropping of the abyssal walls. Turning on the external flood-lights was an option that she refused to exercise. Part of the thrill, part of
the delicious risk was slicing through the silent, lethal, dimensionless darkness guided only by the ghostly glow of the head-up display in front of her.

As she approached a depth of eighteen hundred feet, the small sonar screen at the left of her field of view showed her first destination coming into range. Now she flipped on the vessel’s powerful outside lights and the stark, forbidding face wall became clearly visible as she continued to descend parallel to it.

Moments later, she brought the vehicle to a stop opposite a small cave two thousand vertical feet above the habitat and approximately two hundred feet north of it. Setting the auto station keeping thrusters to stabilize her position and maintain pitch and attitude, Micki began initiating the sequences needed to extend the small robotic arm from its sheltered tube at the front of the pod.

Carefully, she maneuvered the arm to allow one of its pincers to open and slide beneath the handle at the top of the first ceramic box. The pincer firmly locked in place, Micki released the clamps that had held the box secure for the descent, and delicately negotiated the box out of its “nest” on the platform. Once the box was clear of the diving unit’s structure, she gently rotated the arm holding the deadly, precious cargo and extended its reach deep into the stygian depths beyond the cave’s narrow opening.

Her gaze glued to the real-time video playing on the other small screen on the dashboard, Micki worked as hard at keeping her breathing even and her hands dry and steady on the controls as she did at maneuvering the bomb past the random outcroppings and occasional creatures in the cave. She was operating practically blind. Her only guidance came from the small but powerful light mounted on the end of the arm and the live video feed from the even smaller camera next to it. She moved the box forward at a painstakingly slow pace.

Fully extended, the mechanical arm had a range of twelve feet. When it had reached that distance into the cave, Micki set the ceramic box carefully onto a clear space on the floor, released it from the pincers, and began retracting the arm as slowly and carefully as she’d inserted it. Its placement so far into the cave would preclude the box from being seen by anyone who might be sent to these coordinates to investigate her actions—which would only happen if Simon disobeyed her orders and began tracking her movements. Not that it really mattered. Even if Simon could convince Victoria to send an investigative team to find out what she’d been doing, it would be too late. Investigators would not be facing an abyssal wall. They would
be facing a blank expanse of ocean, still turbid with the debris of a catastrophic submarine landslide.

The arm fully retracted, Micki moved forward three hundred feet along the wall and repeated the procedure with the second box. Her mission accomplished, she aimed the pod upward and moved in a slow arc back toward the tender ship. When she broke the surface, Micki reactivated the communications channel and announced to the dive master that she was ready to be retrieved.

It wasn’t easy keeping the triumph out of her voice.

4:30
A.M.
, Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida

Dennis Cavendish became aware that he was drifting toward consciousness and forced himself to open his eyes, demanded his brain kick into high gear. Too much was going to happen today for him to allow himself the luxury of a slow awakening, or even another round with the pair of warm, lush redheads flanking him. He pulled himself to a sitting position, then gave the woman on his left a light slap on her well-shaped behind.

“Time to go.”

He shook the other woman’s shoulder, and both began to make small murmurs, indicating that waking them would not be an easy task. He climbed over one of them, took a moment to stretch his pleasantly aching muscles, then ripped the covers off both women. The chill in the air-conditioned room sent them into fetal crouches.

He flipped on one of the lamps next to the bed. “I said it’s time to go.”

One of the women pushed herself upright on one elbow, brushing hair out of her eyes with her other hand. “Is something wrong? What time is it?” She looked at him blearily, her eye makeup smudged.

“It’s four-thirty and you have to go. I’ve got work to do,” Dennis lied
smoothly. “Get your friend to wake up. You have to be out of here in five minutes. There will be a car waiting for you when you get downstairs.”

Still confused and squinting, the woman nevertheless pushed her companion until she woke up. With barely a word spoken between them, the women threw on most of their clothes, and Dennis escorted them to the elevator door in the living room of his condo. They departed with wary, friendly waves. The moment the door slid shut, Dennis went to the shower to brace himself for the day ahead.

Forty-five minutes later Dennis was airborne, the engines of his Lear jet screaming as his pilot executed a steep takeoff from Miami International Airport. He would be on the ground on his island, Taino, in twenty minutes. Not long after that he would be in a small submarine headed four thousand feet to the bottom of his slice of the Caribbean. It wouldn’t be a joy ride; it would be the last trip to see the dream of his lifetime while it still belonged just to him:
Atlantis
, the first fully staffed habitat ever built at that depth—and the operations center for the newest and best means of changing the way the world worked.

In a few hours,
Atlantis
would begin to retrieve methane hydrate crystals from beneath the seafloor and introduce the world to the next, arguably the only, clean fuel that the planet had to offer.

From entertaining the first glimmer of a thought to watching the last beams being sunk into place, Dennis had known that this was what life was about. This was the brass ring, the golden goose; attaining this kind of power was what every hackneyed cliché referred to, what every fairy tale was about, what every emperor and despot had ever dreamed of—the power to make the world change at one person’s command. He was that person.

He picked up his phone and punched a single number. Less than a minute later, he heard a sleepy female voice, that of Victoria Clark, his secretary of national security and chief paranoiac. The woman whose job it was to keep him safe and happy.

“Hi, Dennis.”

“Hi, Vic. I’m on my way to the island. Meet me at my office in half an hour.”

“Is something wrong? Is everyone with you?”

The thought of dragging the senior executives of some of the world’s major corporations out of bed and onto a plane before dawn made him smile. “No, I’m alone. I want to get the day going. It’s going to be unforgettable, Vic. Let’s get ’em, tiger. See you in thirty.”

“Wait. Don’t hang up.”

Dennis could tell by the soft noises in the background that she was pushing herself to sitting position, getting focused. It rarely took Vic this long to focus on anything, but then, he didn’t usually get her up in the middle of the night.

Vic was his workhorse, his closest confidante, and the person who knew more of his secrets than anyone. She was the person he trusted the most—at least that’s what he told people. The reality was that Dennis trusted no one but himself.

He had to let people into his circle, but he knew the closer he let them get, the more they had on him, the more he was worth to them. The market price of betrayal was something that never lost value, and Vic was the one person who could command the highest fee for betraying him.

Betrayal was a lesson he’d learned the hard way and, as such lessons do, it had altered his thinking in an instant. Since the first time Dennis had been stabbed in the back by someone he trusted, the degree of closeness and his level of real trust in a person had moved along opposing axes. As one went up, the other went down. Treating betrayal as a “when” rather than an “if” made life much easier.

It was his only gospel, and it worked.

“Dennis, you need to fly with your guests. You need to be there with them—”

“I’ve been with them for two days nonstop. I’ll see them when they get in, in a few hours. Look, I want to go straight down to the habitat when I get there, okay? With you.”

“I—”

“Not interested in all the many reasons you can’t or won’t go there, Vic,” he interrupted. “You’re going.”

Dennis disconnected before she could reply and sat back to sip his coffee.

In less than twenty-four hours, the world would be a different place. Victoria Clark was one of the few people who knew just how different it would be, and she was going to be at his side today. All day. Today of all days the risk was inordinately high.

4:30
A.M.
, Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida

Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Watson lay naked on the rough sheets, staring at the shifting patterns of light playing on the cheap popcorn ceiling of an
apartment that wasn’t hers. Being there, next to a man she’d only met three months ago, a man who had changed her life and its purpose, was an atypical move for her. And that was a word she’d rarely—make that never—known to be applied to herself. If there was one word that she’d heard used to describe her more than any other, despite all the obstacles she’d overcome in her life, despite everything she’d accomplished, that word was “typical.”

It wasn’t a fair description nor was it an accurate one. That didn’t matter to the many people who had uttered it, under their breath derisively or more loudly with intimations of expectations met, upon hearing what Wendy Watson had done, was doing, or was intending to do. She’d heard it when she’d graduated at the top of her class from the most prestigious public high school in Connecticut. When she’d graduated at the top of her class from the United States Air Force Academy. When she’d been selected to train for the elite Combat Search and Rescue force. When it was announced she’d received enough commendations to make her the most highly decorated female air force officer serving in Afghanistan.

She
hadn’t
heard it when she refused the offer to become a flight instructor in favor of resigning from the military. But the hated word had quickly resumed its place as a staple in her life when she became the chief pilot for the Climate Research Institute.

The institute was a small, quiet, privately funded think tank and the plaything of the occasionally flamboyant and perpetually eccentric Dennis Cavendish, a telecommunications wunderkind who had retired at forty to take on the challenges of climate change. In his spare time, he served as president for life of The Paradise of Taino, his own private tropical nation-state snugly situated between the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.

Wendy loved her job; it paid well, provided her with lots of perks, and allowed her to have her say in what sort of planes Dennis bought. That had been enough when she’d been hired and for the four years that had passed since then. It had been enough until she’d met Garner Blaylock, a beautiful, earthy man who was lit from within with passions and understanding Wendy could only marvel at. He’d swept her into a world she’d never known existed and had reframed her life, banishing from it forever the association with anything remotely “typical.”

And in a few hours from now, to cement her commitment to Garner, to her new way of thinking, to the cause he had introduced her to and which they now shared, Wendy would do something that was anything but typical
by anyone’s standards. The event was going to be spectacular and meaningful; if her actions were ever to become public knowledge, they would be called crazy by many, but adjudged heroic by the people she cared about most. By the person she cared about most. By Garner.

“What are you thinking about?”

Wendy rolled over and looked into the deep brown, soulful eyes of her lover, her mentor, the man for whom she was about to make the biggest sacrifice in her life.

She reached up and smoothed his tousled golden curls, threaded her fingers through them. “What do you think I’m thinking about?”

He cupped her cheek as he eased his thumb along her bottom lip. “Well, I hope you’re thinking about how we spent the last few hours, but I imagine you’re thinking of what you’ll be doing in the next few.” His deep, cultured British voice was husky with sleep and sex.

She didn’t allow herself to respond with anything other than a smile.

“Are you afraid?” he asked gently.

“Yes.”

Garner watched her, peering into her soul with eyes that were soft and loving. “Were you afraid every time you flew into a battle zone? Or is it just this task that has you worried?” he asked, his voice low.

She hesitated, not wanting him to mistake her fear for doubt. “I was afraid every time, every mission. We all were. The fear helped us keep our edge. If you weren’t scared, you weren’t focused. But you had to subdue the fear by keeping foremost in your mind the knowledge that you’d be coming back.” She paused. “This time, that knowledge, that assurance isn’t there, Garner. It’s an odd feeling to know I won’t be coming back.”

“When you flew for them—” He never uttered the name of any of the groups he fought, so deep was his loathing of all things political.

“When you flew for them, you would have died for them, wouldn’t you? It’s what they expected you to do, if necessary. Am I right?”

“Yes, but—”

He drew his thumb across her lips again, silencing her. “The oath you lived by then was an oath to a political body, Wendy, a myopic, human-centric organization that survives by cannibalizing its allies if they don’t support its warped economic ideals.” His hand slid to hers, brought her palm to his lips. “You’re different now, darling. You operate at a different level of understanding, at a different harmonic frequency as it were. You’ve learned how badly the Earth needs us. It’s left to us—to you—to send the
rest of humanity a wake-up call. There’s no other way to save Her and all Her creatures from senseless destruction at the hands of shortsighted, parasitic mercenaries.” His grip tightened slightly as his voice became more intense. “You’re no longer bound to the empty words they made you believe in, Wendy, nor to the desperate actions they made you carry out. You’re bound to the true reality now, my love. To the tangible. To the eternal.” He looked into her eyes with a passion that stopped just short of ferocity.