Deep Fire Rising

HONOLULU, HAWAII

A light drizzle fell across the tarmac as Mercer stepped from the air force cargo jet with two dozen rowdy marines ready for their first night on American soil in six months. They’d been part of a counterterrorism team assigned to the Philippine Islands. Mercer had gotten a lift on their flight to Hawaii with a little help from Ira Lasko.

Standing at the bottom of the ramp, Mercer paused as the men filed past, a few he’d spoken with on the plane wishing him well, the rest eager to use up everything in their wallets. A flight-line technician wearing a shiny rain slicker and commercial-quality ear protectors approached.

“Dr. Mercer?”

“Yes.”

“Could you come with me, please? Admiral Lasko is waiting for you.”

Mercer was led to an open-topped utility tractor. The technician hopped behind the wheel, leaving Mercer a tiny perch on the back of the vehicle. He held his bag on his lap as the tractor lurched across the parking apron. Hangars and a control tower lined one side of the vast expanse, while the rest was lost in the darkness.

Twisting so he could see where they were headed, he spotted a Gulfstream jet like the one Ira had procured to fetch him to Area 51. Sheets of rain poured from the aircraft’s swept wing, but the boarding hatch was open and inviting light spilled onto the asphalt. The tractor shuddered to a stop next to the jet. Over the whine of the idling engines, Mercer heard the line worker tell him this was his plane. Mercer jumped from the tractor, gave the man a wave and hauled himself up the boarding steps. Ira was waiting for him just inside the luxury cabin.

Mercer had expected to meet with the admiral for a debrief in Washington. He was grateful for the private plane after eleven hours cooped up with a bunch of rambunctious marines, but he would have preferred to sleep through the flight. He’d spent an additional three days on the Sea Surveyor while Jim McKenzie and his team tried to repair the submersible. Mercer had gotten some instruction on the Advanced Diving Suit from C.W., but in the end they decided that it wasn’t the optimal platform to study the mysterious tower and abandoned the idea of a tandem dive. It would be a week or more before Bob was functional again and a team could continue their investigation.

“Almost a week at sea and no tan?” the admiral teased.

Mercer was pale, drawn and exhausted. “Damn ship was dry. I’ve lost my alcohol flush.”

“I made sure this bird’s stocked. First round’s on me.” They shook hands and Ira became serious. “How’d it go? Really?”

Mercer tossed his bag into an overhead and dropped into a plush leather captain’s chair. Ira had the ingredients for a vodka gimlet waiting on the table between them. Mercer mixed them each a drink, took a quick appreciative sip, then downed it. “The more I think about this situation, the worse it gets. I can’t figure out exactly who we’re up against. In Vegas they were a handful of armed goons and a woman with a strange story to tell. Now I see them as a damned army with some serious funding. There was a naval architect on board the Surveyor. He and I went over the video we’d managed to shoot. He estimates that tower cost at least a hundred million dollars.”

“Any ideas about what it’s designed to do?”

The aircraft commander came over the intercom to tell his two passengers to strap in, they had clearance to take off. The jet engines’ pitch became a shriek as they rolled across the taxiways. Mercer waited until the sleek aircraft had lifted from the ground before answering Ira’s question.

“Obviously it was sited over a previously undiscovered methane hydrate deposit.”

“You were rather circumspect when you called me from the ship,” Lasko interrupted. “What is this stuff? I’ve never heard of it.”

“First, the reason I couldn’t give you any details is that I think that someone was monitoring the Sea Surveyor’s communications. That’s how they knew when to turn the tower on.”

“I can check with the navy. They might have had that area under surveillance by then. If there was a ship close enough to eavesdrop, maybe they have a few pictures of it.”

“Good. Now methane hydrate is nothing less than the future of fossil fuel energy on the planet. It’s basically ice that has trapped methane gas within its crystal lattice. I’m not an expert, but I’ve read there’s more than enough energy locked in these benthic hydrocarbon deposits to fuel our power needs for centuries. In fact, hydrate reserves are larger than coal, oil, and natural gas combined. The best part is the lion’s share is found right off our own coastlines. The major oil companies are scrambling to develop the technology to tap these reserves, but it’s still years away.

“The problem is that these deposits can be unstable. An undersea landslide or an earthquake can cause billions of tons of methane hydrate to vaporize and erupt. That’s what makes exploiting it so difficult. A drill rig could upset the hydrates’ equilibrium and cause an eruption that destroys the rig and releases tons of greenhouse gas. Environmentalists are currently doing everything in their power to prevent further exploration.”

“Figures,” Ira muttered.

“The danger’s real. About eight thousand years ago, a massive deposit off the coast of Norway was released by an undersea avalanche. The three hundred fifty billion tons of hydrates that reached the atmosphere raised temperatures about twelve degrees all over the world and helped bring a swift end to the last ice age.

“I don’t know how this group found a deposit of hydrates so far out in the ocean. As far as I know no one’s ever looked there before. As for the tower itself? It’s either designed to keep the hydrates chilled by pumping cold brine solution into the seafloor or it was built to heat the hydrates and cause a catastrophic eruption.”

“But why? Why would someone do either?”

“No clue. If they wanted to sink ships, it would be cheaper just to blow them out of the water, so I don’t think that’s it. My money’s on it being built to keep the hydrates stable. When she got the distress call from the Smithback, the Sea Surveyor was performing research on deep-ocean currents. I interviewed a few of the scientists. It appears they were tracking a jet of warm water that hugged the ocean bottom. It runs from the Philippine Sea toward the Aleutian Islands. This stream wasn’t there a decade ago according to data from a previous NOAA expedition. They hypothesize that global warming is what’s caused this current to develop. I believe that Tisa Nguyen’s group discovered it years ago, knew about the hydrate deposit and realized that if they didn’t do something to prevent the heat from melting the deposit we’d have a potential environmental catastrophe.”

“Could this have been as bad as the one in Norway?”

“Don’t know yet. When I left, they were hanging a magnetometer off the stern of Sea Surveyor to determine the extent of pipework buried under the mud. So far they’ve found that three square miles of the bottom are rigged with cooling pipes. The ROVs on the Sea Surveyor can’t accurately measure the depth of the hydrate layer, but it’s pretty clear the field is extensive and only a fraction of the gas was released when they hit the Smithback and the Surveyor. Jim McKenzie, who heads the submersible team on the ship, plans to stay in the area until they can get their sub running again.

“I hope you take care of the people on that ship. They’re performing above and beyond the call for us.”

“The navy can’t get their own research submersible to the site for at least three more weeks so the folks out there now are getting whatever they want in return. Don’t worry.” Ira paused. “You said a minute ago that you thought someone was monitoring communications on the Surveyor. Is that your theory for why the gas erupted when you were down at the tower?”

Mercer told him about the acoustical signal Jim McKenzie detected. “I think Tisa’s group has been using the tower to keep the hydrate deposit stable for years. Then there was some kind of schism within the organization. She wasn’t too specific, but I bet the splinter group co-opted the tower for themselves and decided to reverse the machinery. Please don’t ask why. I have no idea. All I know is that after Vegas, I don’t think their agenda matches ours.”

“Speaking of Vegas.” Ira retrieved a briefcase from a nearby seat and snapped open the lid. The manila report he handed to Mercer was stamped TOP SECRET. “A lot of the science is beyond me. I don’t think Briana Marie knows the meaning of layman’s terms, but she explained the gist.”

“What is this?” Mercer opened the folder and thumbed through pages of text and graphs.

“Evidence that Tisa Nguyen lied to you.”

That startled Mercer. For the past few days he’d focused on her as his only source of credible information. “Come again?”

“She lied to you about how her group discovered we ran a secret test at Area 51.”

She’d lied? Mercer downed his second drink and fixed another. Had he fallen for the oldest trick in the intelligence game, believing her because she was exotic and beautiful?

Anger flared behind his eyes. How could he have been so stupid? True, he’d just come a breath away from being killed, and it was understandable that his guard was down, but he’d done nothing in the days since to verify her story. Thank God Ira wasn’t thinking with his glands.

The anger he felt toward her intensified the anger he directed at himself. Now more than ever he was anxious to get to Greece. He took a sip. “Okay, tell me what you found.”

Ira recognized the recrimination written on Mercer’s face. He’d expected no less from his friend. “According to what you said, they knew about the test because of a seismic disturbance inside Area 51, right?”

“That’s what she told me, an anomalous earthquake.”

“Dr. Marie pulled USGS records for the day the submarine materialized under the mountain. There were dozens of earthquakes in the west, but none of them close to Area 51. The biggest was a four-point-two near Barstow, California, which they said was an aftershock of the quake that hit Bakersfield a few months back. There were two three-point-fours in Washington State and a three-oh near Reno. The sub didn’t cause any detectable disturbances when it came back.”

Mercer sat quietly for a second, searching for and finding the flaw in Lasko’s statement. “How did they know you were doing something out there? She knew the date, time, everything.”

“Randall,” Lasko answered. “They must have gotten to him, or maybe he was already part of their group. Either way, he must have told them something was up even if he didn’t know what it was.”

Again, Mercer pondered the logic, wondering if he wanted to exonerate Tisa because she was right or because he wanted her to be right. He hated the doubt. “Obviously no one at the excavation site knew the nature of the experiment you’d run, but did any of them even know the date it happened?”

“They weren’t supposed to,” Ira replied. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t slip somehow. I know what you’re trying to do, Mercer, but you have to look at this reasonably. The only way she could know the timing of our test is through a security breach at the mine site. Someone talked and Donny Randall passed on the information. Later, he must have received orders to sabotage the job — the cave-in that brought you on board and later the explosion.”

“And when he failed they tried to gun me down in Vegas.”

Could it be that easy? Mercer asked himself. It made sense. At least more sense than Tisa’s group detecting the emergence of the submarine through some other, unknown way. Yet a doubt lingered at the back of his mind. What was it? What were they missing?

Tisa’s group had found a hydrate deposit where no one had ever thought to look and secretly built an enormous machine to protect it. Either feat was incredible and showed a tremendous level of sophistication. Why couldn’t they have the capability to discover Ira’s secret project through some extraordinary means?

“So where does that leave us?” he finally asked.

“That’s up to what you learn in Greece.”

“Tisa told me about some unusual phenomena in the Pacific to get my attention. Well, she got it. Now I hate thinking what’s going to happen in Santorini.”

“By the way, do you want backup?”

Mercer shook his head. “That’ll spook her. Don’t ask me how or why, but I know she’s on our side and that’s why we’re meeting in such an out-of-the-way place. She probably could have told me whatever she needs to back in Vegas or anywhere else. She must feel comfortable on Santorini, like it’s out of reach of the splinter faction she’s trying to protect me from. If I show up with a bunch of men with earphones shadowing me, she may bolt.”

Ira nodded. “I can buy that. A driver will be waiting for you at the airport. He’ll be holding a sign saying Harry White.”

“Nice touch.” Mercer smiled.

“You’ll have to take the ferry to Santorini because the package he’ll have for you won’t pass an airport security scan, if you know what I mean.”

“Gun?”

“Beretta 92, as you seem to favor.”

“Now that’s backup I do appreciate.”