“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.”