Deep Fire Rising Page 17

  It took Mercer a second too long to digest what C.W. had just said. He’d been looking at the tower one way, ignoring the implications of another point of view. As he realized his mistake, his eyes widened, and yet when he spoke his voice carried a steel edge. “C.W., secure yourself to something. Grab on to the tower. Jim, can you hear me up there?”

  “I’m here, Mercer, what’s going on?”

  “We’re sitting on top of a methane hydrate deposit. That’s what sank the Smithback. You guys have got to get out of there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Methane hydrate. The last great source of fossil fuel on the planet. It’s a gas kept locked in ice by the temperature and pressure on the seafloor. It’s normally stable, but I think this tower’s designed to cause the hydrates to melt. The gas is about one hundred fifty times the volume of its solid state. If the deposit is big enough, that much methane is going to cause the ocean to bubble up like champagne. If it’s bad enough, it will reduce the water density and the Surveyor ’s going to lose buoyancy. She’ll sink like a stone.”

  “Is it erupting now?” McKenzie asked, understanding the danger.

  “It’s going to.” Mercer’s first assumption about the tower being a heat pump had been correct. Only now he realized it wasn’t forcing cold brine into the soil to keep the hydrate stable, it was designed to draw it up in order to dissipate the chill in the warmer shallower water and trigger a gas burst.

  The Smithback must have sailed through an eruption and struck an enormous chunk of hydrate ice that hadn’t dissolved on its journey to the surface. But that damage hadn’t caused her to sink. It was the change in water density. Ships stay afloat because they weigh less than the volume of water their hulls displace. In the case of the Smithback, the frothing mix of gas and water wasn’t dense enough or didn’t weigh enough to support the vessel’s mass. She began to weigh more than the water she displaced and lost buoyancy. At some critical point she would have dropped from the surface so suddenly that no one could have saved themselves. The Smithback would have careened toward the seafloor much faster than normal. The ship could have been doing fifty or more miles per hour when she hit bottom. No wonder there wasn’t much air escaping the hulk. It had blown from her when she impacted.

  And the fire reported just before she sank? Methane hydrate, even in its ice form, was extremely flammable. The air around the ship would have been saturated with gas, and even the smallest spark would have set off a catastrophic explosion. Mercer purged the horrifying image from his mind, that of a vessel engulfed in flames while her crew vainly tried to understand why the small amount of damage from the impact was causing their ship to sink. He refocused his mind on his own impending predicament.

  Over the comm link, Mercer could hear hurried orders being shouted in the topside control van. “We have to haul C.W. back aboard,” McKenzie protested.

  “I don’t think you have time.”

  Mercer pointed to where he wanted Jervis to guide the sub, away from where he suspected the next gas eruption would take place. On a CRT screen, the bottom-profiling sonar had drawn a digital picture of the surrounding seafloor, and it looked as though the tower had been erected in the middle of a series of hills. One of the hills had already vanished in a gas explosion, leaving the deep crater in its wake.

  “C.W., what’s your status?” McKenzie asked.

  “Stand by,” the young Californian called back. “Ah, I think I’m okay. I can do an emergency cut on my tether as long as Alan knows to come pick me up.”

  “Temperature’s up three degrees,” Jervis warned.

  Mercer keyed his mike. “C.W., when this deposit erupts, you’re going to be right above it. Are you sure you can hold on?”

  “Yeah, I’ve locked the arms around a strut. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Outside Bob’s cocoon of steel and composite materials, the water began to vibrate, and what little visibility they had vanished in a storm of fine silt. At first there was no sound, but quickly a bass tone built into a steady roar.

  “Temp’s up another three.”

  “Stay up-current of the tower and bring us to seven hundred feet,” Mercer ordered, banking that the plume of gas about to explode from the seafloor would drift away from them.

  “Affirmative.”

  With a suddenness no one expected, the ocean bottom vanished in a billowing smog that grew like the mushroom cloud of a nuclear detonation. The methane hydrate deposit, a massive pocket of frozen hydrocarbons, vaporized in a swelling cascade as warm water pumped from the top of the tower raised it to its boiling point. The leading edge of the gas raced for the surface, spinning in a maddened burst of energy like a giant tornado.

  The sub was caught at the outer limit of the diffused eruption. Jervis had dumped ballast for the ascent and had the thrusters tilted down to help propel the craft toward the surface. Her rate of climb dropped once the frothy water engulfed the little sub.

  “Damn,” Alan spat and increased thrust, mindful of the electrical charge remaining in the batteries.

  “C.W., you’ve got to cut your tether,” Mercer shouted. “Jim, the deposit’s erupting. Get the Surveyor away as fast as you can. Head west against the current, otherwise you’ll be engulfed like the Smithback . Alan and I are trying to get into position if C.W. gets into trouble.”

  “Once I’m off the tether, I lose communications.”

  “I understand,” Mercer said. “We’re pushing Bob to reach your depth.” Outside the sub’s dome, the water surged and fizzed as though boiling.

  “Rate of ascent down to fifty feet a minute and slowing,” Alan said.

  “Can you dump more ballast?” asked Mercer, hating that for the duration of the dive he was nothing more than a passenger.

  “Not if we want to hover at seven hundred to help C.W.”

  “What about getting us farther from the main part of the gas plume?”

  “If I change the vector on the thrusters, we’ll probably start falling. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait it out. Shit, we’re at neutral buoyancy.”

  As hellish as the view from the sub was, what C.W. saw from inside the ADS was worse. The sub had been caught at the periphery of the eruption. He was right in the middle of it. So much methane had been released that at times he was engulfed in enormous sacs of the deadly gas. Stranded inside the bubbles, he could see water sluicing from his helmet like rain from a windshield. Then the bubble would pass and he’d be slammed again by the tremendous pressure of the sea. Several times he lost his footing and the suit’s metal claws that were his hands scraped against the tower strut.

  At the surface, the scene was no better. McKenzie had relayed Mercer’s orders to the bridge with no time to spare. The helmsman had slammed the throttle handles to full ahead and twisted the ship with her dynamic positioning thrusters so she was pointed to the west, upstream from the tower. No sooner had she begun to move than the first hint of the gas reached the surface. It was just a mild disturbance of dirty water, a localized phenomenon that would have been overlooked as a downburst of wind disturbing the sea.

  But then more and more methane broached. Seething geysers of water shot thirty, forty, fifty feet in the air. It was as though the sea was dissolving. A dive buoy that hadn’t been retrieved during the emergency maneuver sank away as the water lost density. The Surveyor became sluggish. Gas pockets were displacing the seawater she needed to remain afloat. She squatted low, with swells running just a few feet from her gleaming rails. More and more gas appeared. And then the steady eastward current began to carry it away. The ship found clean water and floated higher, the red stripe of her Plimsoll line clearly showing along her flanks.

  Mercer’s quick warning had saved them from the same fate as the USS Smithback. For he and Alan, the dice were still rolling. And the plucky little submersible was falling deeper into the abyss.

  NEW YORK CITY

  The SoHo loft was on an upper story that allowed golden light to stream
through the tall, arched, cast iron framed windows. The bright rays made the wooden floor look aflame. The walls were exposed brick and the furniture was kept to a minimum—a futon couch, a low table, several large pillows strewn haphazardly about. The loft was one large room. The bathroom, with its stand-up shower, was screened by swatches of fabric hanging from the high ceiling. The kitchen was little more than a nook smaller than the galley on a modest sailboat.

  The figure posing in the middle of the room was covered in sweat. The thermostat was at maximum. She stood on a thin mat, her back arched until her fingertips brushed the floor behind her. She was completely nude, and her small breasts shifted as she stretched. She bent farther and could press her knuckles to the mat. She flexed the supple muscles in one leg and slowly raised it, shifting her weight to her hands. She balanced on her fingers, her body completely still, not a tremor or any other outward sign of exertion. After holding there for several seconds, she continued to slowly ease her leg around until it slid between her arms and she settled on the mat in a gymnast’s split. She bent forward, resting her head on her slick thigh.

  Her next move was to scissor her legs together, arch herself once again and slowly somersault back to her feet, her cheek pressed to her knees. She’d been practicing for an hour, yet her sweat smelled clean and sweet.

  She dropped back to a split, rotated her leg around so both were in front of her, then lifted her backside from the floor with her knuckles. When she had enough clearance, she tucked her legs against her chest and used the flat muscles of her stomach to rotate around her arms and press herself into another handstand. And then she scissored her legs in a violent maneuver at the same time she allowed her pose to collapse. She landed flat on the floor, both heels touching the back of her head, her body as taut as a finely drawn bow.

  “I would almost think you were doing this for my benefit, Tisa.”

  She dropped with a start and quickly reached for the silk robe thrown over the futon. She hadn’t heard him enter the apartment. She recognized the voice immediately, the softly affectionate tone. Her cheeks burned with shame. She stood facing away from him and pulled the robe tighter around her body She slipped her glasses from the pocket before turning to him. The man at the door was three years older than she but looked like her twin. Yet where her mouth was sensual, his looked petulant. Her wide eyes were inviting; on him they held an insolent cast. Where she was demure, he looked emboldened and arrogant. She would have preferred being spied on by a stranger rather than her half brother, Luc.

  “I remember watching you practice when you were a child. The things you could make your little body do.”

  The way he spoke made Tisa’s flesh crawl. His voice lacked the fraternal pride of an older brother. Instead it was tainted with the wistful lament of a former lover. In his eyes she saw he wasn’t remembering her hours of yoga and contortion practice. Another memory lurked there, one that he brought up with disturbing frequency. Despite herself, her glance drifted down. His black slacks were made of thin material and did nothing to hide his arousal. He must have been watching her for some time.

  When her eyes returned to his face, his smile was lupine. He took a cautious step toward her. “You think about it too, don’t you?”

  Tisa shuddered with disgust but refused to step back. “We were children, Luc.”

  “I knew what I was doing,” he said tenderly. “I was fifteen. I compare every woman I’ve been with since to you. Just that one time together has spoiled them all for me.”

  They were living in Paris with her mother when it happened. Tisa’s father hadn’t protested the end of his second marriage or that she was taking their daughter and his teenage son. He had become obsessed with his work and wouldn’t see his family for months at a time, even though they lived in the same isolated village in the Himalayas. Tisa’s mother had come to the village of Rinpoche-La, Jewel Pass, from France, where she’d been recruited into the Order as a young woman. Though ostracized in Tibet for abandoning her husband, whom many saw as divine, she had enough family and friends in Paris to help support her return. They had settled in an airy apartment above a yoga studio on the Left Bank. The owner knew of Tisa and Luc’s father and refused to accept payment for the apartment.

  Tisa had always known of her father’s importance in their village and in the ancient monastery that dominated the head of the isolated valley, but the landlord’s donation had been the first time she knew of his influence so far from home. And it was her first taste of the scope of the organization she had been born to.

  Looking back, Tisa realized her older brother had had a better understanding of the Order. He had quickly adjusted to their life in France, enjoying the entree his father’s name gave within certain circles. In just a year he’d learned colloquial French, and begun to avail himself to some of the younger female disciples who’d taken to using the yoga studio as a meeting place. Although Luc had yet to be schooled in the full scope and intent of the Order, he knew enough to impress the naïve.

  Tisa had been home alone one afternoon following school. Her mother was working as a translator at the time. Her children had inherited their ear for language from her. Tisa spoke three languages by then, Luc five and their mother seven. She’d been in her bedroom. It was summer and there was no breeze. In the sweltering heat, she wore panties and an overly large T-shirt emblazoned with the image of the latest teen pop sensation.

  Luc came into the room and silently draped a damp towel across the back of Tisa’s legs as she lay on the bed doing her homework. Startled at first, she allowed him to remain, grateful for the towel’s cooling effect. This had been a week of record heat in the city, the highest temperatures either had ever experienced. His hand rested on her hip.

  At first they talked about nothing in particular, but soon they returned to the topic that had fascinated them since her mother had taken them away: their father. They had spent hours speculating about the real nature of his work. They suspected he was some kind of freedom fighter who had come from Vietnam to Tibet to liberate the people from the Chinese. To spice their hypothesis were rumors about mystical powers he controlled. Neither knew where the tales had come from, but there had always been whispers about the things he could do.

  So on that boiling afternoon, they talked again, embellishing stories they’d told each other a hundred times before, both secretly thrilled to be part of the legend they’d built around their father. After all, they were part of whatever destiny awaited him. Luc spoke about how they were different from the fringe members of the Order who gathered at the studio, and how everyone could sense it. People who visited often talked about how special they were. He asked if Tisa could sense it too. Ever since arriving in France she had felt people treated her with deference and respect she hadn’t earned but had rather been born to. She and Luc were set apart from the rest, placed higher in a hierarchy no one really understood. His hand moved farther up her hip, almost to her buttocks.

  They’d shared so much together, he’d said, recalling the one night they’d sneaked into the huge monastery rising from the cliffs above the ancient Tibetan town. There they’d seen the vault of old books with their embossed wax seals and overheard two monks talking about something they called the Navel of the World. He talked about how they’d swum as kids in the hot springs below the village, enveloped in fragrant steam with snowcapped mountains looming over them like gods. He reminded her how they’d named the mountains for animals. And he reminded her about the time she had come into his bed one night when a freak storm had settled in their secluded valley and thunder echoed so loudly she was sure the mountains were going to explode. He’d held her for hours, he said, drying her tears with the hem of his nightshirt.

  He said he’d always been there for her, no matter what. Hadn’t he made their move to France so much easier? His fingers were kneading her flesh by now. Tisa had remained still during the entire talk, aware of his hand, but so lonely for their village that his touch was a reminder o
f home. He seemed to know what she was thinking. He bent close. “I miss it too,” he whispered in her ear, and allowed his mouth to linger near her neck.

  The rest of the memory had been expunged from Tisa’s mind. It had taken years, but she truly didn’t remember how far they had gone that sultry afternoon. That deep and dangerous form of denial was the only way she saw she could get around the shame without telling anyone. And that was something she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do.

  “What are you doing here, Luc?” Tisa stepped away from him.

  His smile faded. “I should ask you the same question.”

  “I’ve got every right to use this apartment. It belongs to the Order.”

  “I’m not talking about the apartment. I’m talking about why you’re even in the United States. I thought you were home.”

  “I haven’t been there in months.” Tisa moved behind the bathroom screen to slide into a pair of baggy sweatpants. She left the robe around her torso because the only top she had handy was a sports bra.

  “In New York the whole time?” Luc asked. It sounded like he’d moved into the kitchen.

  “I came through Los Angeles. I met with some of our people there to talk about the San Bernardino earthquake.”

  “That quake was months ago. What more could you possibly have to talk about?”

  Tisa stepped out of the bathroom. Her body felt sticky with sweat and her muscles protested because she hadn’t had a proper cooldown. “I wanted the revised fault slippage numbers. Our estimates were off by almost a meter, and if you paid attention to our real mission you’d know that the oracle’s time retrogression has grown another eleven minutes across all of North America.”

  Luc acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “And you came straight here? Didn’t stop along the way?” He was roaming around the apartment like a caged animal, a sleek predatory cat. He moved lightly, possessing the effortlessness of a dancer.