Nick Carter
Killmaster
Earthfire North
Dedicated to the men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
Prologue
Dr. Lydia Coalsworth strode into her small office in the geology lab at the University of Iceland carrying a large pile of photographs. She cleared the coffee cups, files, and other paraphernalia from the desk top and arranged the glossy prints in rows, starting in the upper left-hand corner and working her way down.
The photos were bizarre: the same shot over and over of a craggy finger of rock protruding from what looked to be the mouth of the River Styx, a roiling section of seawater from which mist and vapor poured like steam from a kettle. Occasionally, as she dealt them out, she'd squint down at one of them under the light, tap her finger making note of it, then go on. The experiment was almost completed, she told herself, the last piece of evidence about to fall into place. The conclusion inevitable but impossible, not to be believed.
When she finished, she had six rows of photos, sixty to a row, two complete time-lapse sequences taken one-a-second for three minutes, each sequence twenty-four hours apart. She took a set of calipers from the drawer and, with the deliberate slowness of an experienced scientist, began to take measurements of images in each photo, noting her results in a thick notebook.
The roiling water and steam were the surface phenomena of a volcanic fissure that had opened up in the ocean floor several hundred yards off the coast. It had been discovered only a week earlier, the captain of the passing trawler reporting the incident to the Department of Fisheries, which in turn passed it on to the university for further study.
Dr. Coatsworth had leaped at the opportunity to study this new activity. She was a visitor to Iceland, part of a faculty exchange program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and saw in the new volcano a chance to familiarize herself with the unique structure of Icelandic geology. She made it her pet project from the beginning, attacking it with characteristic thoroughness. She took hourly temperature readings at various depths to build heat gradient charts, took seismographic readings to determine the size of the opening and the amount and direction of the lava flow, and chemical analyses of the steam to see if it compared with other volcanic hot spots in and around Iceland.
It was this last series of tests that began to point to something wrong, terribly wrong: so wrong it sent a tremor through the terra firma of her geological knowledge.
Among the trace chemicals mentioned in the lab report was a polymer — di-chloridepolyethanol — a man-made constituent of certain types of anticorrosive plastic pipe joints used in oil production and occasionally to transport live steam. It was never known to occur in nature.
The results were rechecked, of course. There was no mistake. The dcp was definitely in the steam, not in the testing equipment. And Lydia Coatsworth was forced to wonder what the true source of this fissure was.
Then other evidence surfaced. The fissure had a dormant period during which the eruption ceased altogether. It lasted roughly eight hours, from 2340 until 0815, and was so exact she could set her watch by it. Too exact. It was almost as though someone were turning a switch off and on.
Two nights ago she had guided a small rowboat through the churning water, steam, and mist to a tiny rock in the center of the activity, where she set up a camera. She pointed the lens at another rock a dozen yards away, then set the time-lapse trigger for one shot every second for a total of three minutes bracketed around 2340 and again around 0815. Then she'd returned to her car to wait. In the morning she rowed out, collected the film, then rushed back to the lab to develop and analyze it.
By measuring the fluctuations of the height of the water on certain areas of the rock, she was able to determine when the eruption began and ended. From this, two facts emerged. First, the entire cycle was not a gradual process, such as usually occurred in nature; the eruption stopped precisely at 2341:23 and began again at 0815:56. And second, the startup was not accompanied by a constant surge; there was a hesitation in the water flow, such as when a hydraulic pump clears itself, then reprimes.
The conclusion was being forced on her, yet it seemed too fantastic to believe. Better to wait, she thought. Better to corroborate the evidence.
The previous night she'd once again dared the dangers of froth and mist aboard the small boat. She'd taken her photographs and returned, spending an hour in the darkroom. Now, as she pored over them, she tried very hard to be objective about what she was seeing, not letting the weight of past evidence influence her findings. But as she took her measurements and made her tables of differences in water level, her heart beat faster and her tongue clicked noisily in the dryness of her mouth.
The hesitation at the beginning of the cycle was still there. Just as it had been the night before. There was no mistaking it. The eruption ceased at exactly the same time both nights, then started again as if on cue, to the very second. The chances of something like this happening naturally were trillions to one. There was no way to escape the conclusion this time. The fissure was being operated mechanically. But by whom? And why?
She stepped to the window and stared out at the treeless landscape of southern Iceland. In all respects except one — the timing — the fissure and the volcanic release of steam could have been natural. All but the timing, that is, she corrected herself, and the evidence of the polymer.
Her hands were shaking. She lit a cigarette, the action calming her somewhat. A large portion of the population of Iceland, which numbered almost a quarter of a million, were dependent for their heat and hot water on geothermal sources. Years ago, natural steam jets had been tapped in a lava field south of Reykjavik, the capital city. Since then, the island had enjoyed abundant, pollution-free energy at a very cheap rate. But in the last week, since this new fissure had opened, the level and intensity of the steam had decreased dramatically. Petur Tomasson, a colleague in her department at the university, had been asked by the government to investigate this latest fluctuation. There had been no official announcement, of course; such fluctuations, although not common, were certainly not rare. So far, all they had were theories. Except now for this…
The exactness with which the eruption occurred, the existence of the polymer — which strongly suggested a man-made pipeline — and the sudden decrease in the steam jets outside Reykjavik were all too much of a mysterious coincidence for her. Obviously someone was diverting water and steam from the city's supply and sending it through the fissure in the ocean. But who? And why?
Whoever it was had vast resources. Pipelines had to be dug, a pumping station erected. It had to have taken extensive planning and engineering as well as the cooperation of hundreds of people. How had something like this been kept under wraps in a country as barren and sparsely populated as Iceland? How was it that the authorities did not know?
She had to make certain, absolutely certain she was right. She went back to the desk and pulled a thick sheaf of maps from the top drawer. These were survey maps, the most detailed cartography available up here. They depicted the land formations and water tables for several hundred square kilometers of the Reykjanes Peninsula south of Reykjavik.
She found the map she wanted, men took out a pad and made some hasty calculations. Given the maximum diameter of a pipe, and the amount of water and steam to be moved, a pumping relay had to be located somewhere along an arc about six miles south of the city. She drew the arc on the map, men she folded it, stuffed it into her pocket, pulled her coat off the hook by the door, and left.