Frozen Fire (52 page)

If she didn’t, she’d be vilified, investigated, and most likely indicted for crimes yet to be determined.

If she did, she might be granted immunity, but the press would still brand her as untrustworthy and a traitor to two countries. She’d never work on this planet again.

Brilliant set of options
.

Victoria took a deep breath and looked up to find a senior officer walking toward her looking less than happy. Sam was by his side.

“Ms. Clark, you’re with the Taino government, aren’t you?” the officer asked.

Depends on who you talk to, but there’s no need to bore you with the details
. “Yes, sir, I am,” she replied.

“Ma’am, would you be willing to speak to a Captain Maggy Patterson, who appears to be the senior officer on site? She’s failing to cooperate with our team. We need to get sensors in the water. We’re behind schedule.”

She blinked and looked at Sam. “I’m sorry. What sensors?”

“We need to place some sensors at various points around the rupture zone. We’ll fire beams of light through the degraded water column to receptors
on the far side of it. The data will provide reasonably good estimates of the volume of methane passing through, as well as information on the density of the water column, among a lot of other things. We need that data in order to figure out if what we’re about to do will work.”

Despite all her familiarity with electronics and surveillance equipment, this still seemed a little bit like voodoo to her. Things done at those depths always had. Victoria nodded, then paused. “Did you say Maggy Patterson is the senior officer on the site?”

The officer nodded.

Maggy was a good captain, but not nearly experienced enough to be running an operation like this. Victoria had left Simon Broadhurst in command, and he would never have relinquished that duty. Not voluntarily.

“I’m glad to assist however I can,” she said.

Moments later Victoria was on the phone with a very distraught and understandably exhausted Maggy Patterson. The woman sounded like she had little patience and little rationality left.

“Ambassador Deen told me not to speak with you. He said you’re not working for Taino any more.” Maggy’s voice was higher than usual and shaky.

“Maggy,” Victoria said in as calm and soothing a tone as she could manage. “A lot of things have happened since I last spoke with Charlie Deen. I’m not working against Taino, but I am working with the Americans to resolve this situation. Maggy, things are very bad. What’s bubbling up on the other side of the island is methane. It’s drifting toward the Florida coast and killing everything in its path, just like it did on the south tip of the island. It doesn’t matter any more who stops it, Maggy, it just needs to be stopped. The Americans are the only ones who can do it.” She paused, but the other woman said nothing. “They need to place some sensors around the rupture.”

“I can’t let them in, Ms. Clark.” The young woman’s voice was breaking.

Well trained. By me
. Victoria took a breath. “I’m on the
Eutaw Springs
with the scientists who are going to get this situation under control, Maggy. Will you allow me and one member of the American team to come aboard the
Marjory
to explain what we’re trying to do? Would that ease your mind?”

Another small silence, then, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll allow you on board. You and one other person. No weapons.”

“Of course, Maggy. I—” Victoria stopped as she glanced at a wall clock. “Is there anything you need? Any supplies? You haven’t been able to get back to shore, have you?”

The next sound Victoria heard sounded enough like a sob to make a chill skitter down her spine.

“I’m low on everything, Ms. Clark. We came out here expecting to do a ten-hour shift. We’ve been here for more than forty-eight hours and between the three boats, we’ve got every member of the security staff aboard and as many of the topside personnel as we could save. And the survivor from the clipper. We can’t get back onto the island.” She hiccupped a breath. “We’re out of food and drinking water and we’re low on fuel. Simon led a team onto the north end of the island yesterday afternoon and we haven’t had any contact from them since they radioed that they’d arrived and could breathe without their tanks. Until I hear from him again, I won’t let anyone else try going onto the island,” the young woman finished, her voice breaking.

“We’ll bring some supplies with us, Maggy. I’ll be there shortly,” Victoria replied briskly. She ended the call, then looked at the man standing a few feet away from her. “Commander Duffy, that survivor that Captain Patterson mentioned is an injured American citizen, a tourist. I’d like permission to have her brought aboard this ship when we return. She might be able to give us some information about what happened out there.”

The man nodded once and gave an order. Twenty minutes later, Victoria, an American officer, and several cases of food and bottled water were on a small launch heading inside the boundaries of Taino’s waters.

When Victoria laid eyes on Maggy Patterson, she could hardly believe the difference two days could make. Ordinarily brisk and businesslike but with an air of ease about her, the young woman was clearly stressed to her limits. Her uniform was wrinkled, obviously slept in, but the dark circles under her eyes and her pallor showed that she had gotten little rest. Lines had etched themselves into her forehead and around her mouth, and her movements were rapid and abrupt. She might be in command of the operation, but she was barely in command of herself.

She greeted Victoria and the U.S. naval officer stiffly, then directed her equally exhausted-looking crew to unload and distribute the supplies. Then she led her guests into the small space she was using as her command center and burst into tears.

Not knowing quite what to do, Victoria gave a quick glance at the
American who’d accompanied her. He was standing by impassively, staring at the wall and trying very hard to keep his contempt from showing. Victoria sighed. She stepped closer to Maggy and gave the woman a brief, awkward hug, and was rewarded with a surprisingly fierce, tight embrace.

Slowly, she eased away from the sobbing woman and suggested they all sit down at the small table. Maggy seemed to be gathering some of her wits already, but Victoria knew there was no time to let her indulge in hysterics.

“So Simon is presumed dead, then?” Victoria said calmly and was pleased by the sharp intake of breath from Maggy, who instantly stopped sobbing and looked at her with wide, outraged eyes.

“I didn’t say that. I said we haven’t had any contact with him.”

“Or with anyone in his party,” Victoria added.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is there any reason the radios wouldn’t work?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Were they armed?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then we’ll presume they’re incapacitated at the very least,” Victoria replied tautly. “But we’ll discuss that in a moment.” She turned to her companion. “This is Lieutenant Gray. He’ll explain what his team needs to do.”

As the lieutenant spoke, Victoria carefully watched Maggy. She seemed to be regaining some of her usual good sense, but not all of it. Which could come in handy.

By the time they were shaking hands and saying their goodbyes, Victoria’s mind was made up.

“Maggy, would you have the survivor of the clipper brought to us?” she asked, then turned to the lieutenant. “Did Commander Duffy tell you that you’d be bringing back an injured—”

He nodded and Victoria smiled. “Excellent. If you would let Dr. Briscoe know when she’s aboard, I would appreciate it. We have reason to believe the woman is his fiancée.”

The lieutenant’s brows drew together in a frown. “I’m happy to, ma’am, but wouldn’t it be just as easy for you—”

“I’m not returning to the
Eutaw Springs
, Lieutenant. At least not immediately. I have work to do here with my staff. Thank you so much for escorting me. Please tell Commander Duffy that I’ll be in contact with him shortly,” she replied, and turned to face a surprised Maggy Patterson.

“Ma’am—” the officer began.

“But—Ambassador Deen—” Maggy sputtered.

Victoria cut off both of them with a cool smile. “Lieutenant, as I said, I’ll be in touch with Commander Duffy soon. As for Ambassador Deen, he isn’t here, Maggy, and I am. And I will take full responsibility for everything that happens while I am. Ah, there’s the passenger,” she said, turning to look at a bedraggled and somewhat stoned young woman with a makeshift sling cradling one arm.

“Ms. Davison? I’m Victoria Clark. I’m so sorry for all of your troubles,” she said gently. “This is Lieutenant Gray. He will take you to the U.S. Navy ship over there.” She waved toward the horizon, which the
Eutaw Springs
dominated like a disapproving giant. “You will get better medical treatment there.”

The woman gave her a wan smile. “Thanks.”

“Ma’am, Ms. Clark, I really—”

“Lieutenant,” Victoria interrupted with a glare, “I’m staying aboard the
Marjory
, which is part of the Taino security force, which I command. Please tell Commander Duffy that I will return to his ship after the operation has been executed. Until then, I must remain here if for no other reason than to be certain no one and nothing interferes with the operation from this end. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?”

Obviously furious, the officer nodded. Maggy looked from one to the other, then directed two of her crew to assist Cynthia into the navy boat tied up to the side of the
Marjory
.

Less than twenty minutes later, Victoria and a grim, silent Taino security officer cautiously berthed the
Marjory
’s inflatable above the high-water mark on the island’s southern beach. Wearing face masks and air tanks, they made their way carefully along the sand. There was no life, no sound but the pounding of the waves against the shore.

Bodies of gulls and other seabirds lay strewn across the black beach. The odd angles of their crumpled wings and necks told of their fast, plummeting deaths. Crabs and insects were frozen in their places. Not even flies had landed on any of the carcasses.

It didn’t take long for Victoria and her companion to reach the first human corpse. Forty-eight hours in the tropical heat had caused it to burst and now it lay simultaneously rotting and desiccating in the sun. Victoria was glad she couldn’t smell anything through her mask. The sight was more than enough to make the bile rise dangerously in her throat. The only thing that kept her from vomiting was the sure knowledge that removing the
regulator from her mouth would guarantee she would rapidly end up in the same condition as the corpse.

Willing her mind to ignore the horrors surrounding her, Victoria stepped past the bodies as she continued making her way up the path and finally pushed open the door to the communications center.

More of her fellow islanders lay sprawled in chairs and slumped over keyboards. She went directly to the workstation of her network guru. Pulling on one of the sets of latex gloves she’d brought with her, Victoria pushed the chair, with the dead man still in it, away from the desk. Body fluids had leaked into the upholstery and the liquefaction of the soft tissue had made the chair as gruesome as the body it held.

Solar panels had kept the generator, located on the other side of the island, alive. The computer was still humming, seeming as loud as a jet engine in this otherwise silent tomb, and the monitors, although dark, were only in sleep mode. She reached out a hand, then hesitated. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

A methane-enriched atmosphere was highly combustible. One spark—

The humidity in here is too high to allow static. Get moving
.

Gritting her teeth, Victoria let her fingers touch the edge of the keyboard, half expecting to see a flash.

Nothing.

Letting out a mea sured breath, Victoria tapped a key and brought one of the screens in front of her to life. The bright blue glow of the background and the flashing cursor were eerily cheerful in this stinking place of death.

Her eyes focused on the screen as her fingers began to fly over the keys. Her surroundings seemed to fade as she quickly lost herself in the maze of commands and code that she knew so intimately. In just a few minutes, she reached the root of the system and carefully tapped in her emergency password.

The system began to rapidly delete directories.

God damn you, Micki. I’ll personally put you in Hell if you’re not already there
.

She slammed a fist onto the desk and spun around, racing to the far side of the room and the door that led to the room housing the backup system. Running into the room, she began yanking plugs out of the walls, knowing that would probably not do much. The commands had been sent and received and all the machines were on battery backups. All the data for the
island, for the systems, the research, everything she’d worked to protect for years, would be gone in minutes, if not sooner.

Sliding to a kneeling stop in front of the tower that held all the backup hard drives, she began tearing out cables and power cords, bringing the buzzing drives to a chaotic stop.

As she dropped the last cable, she rocked back on her heels, aware that she was breathing too fast and would run out of air too soon if she didn’t calm down. She turned to motion to the guard she’d brought with her, then reached for the set of tools that was always kept near the rack. Together, they began loosening the clamps and screws holding the hard drives in place. They carefully placed the units in the empty backpacks they carried. The drives might or might not contain any salvageable data, but whatever was there, she was going to be the one to decide what happened to it, not the Americans, who were undoubtedly furious that she hadn’t returned to their ship. She had no doubt that Commander Duffy had a reconnaissance team on the way to the island right now.

When the last hard drive had been harvested, Victoria went into the room housing the command encoder and decoder units and placed them in her backpack. The balpeen hammer lay in wait on the table near the units. She turned away from it abruptly and left the building, then she and the guard headed inland on the rugged path that led to the bunker.