Текст книги "Arctic Drift"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Dirk Cussler,Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

16

It was after six P.M. when Loren and Pitt arrived at Georgetown University Hospital and were allowed into Lisa Lane’s room. Given her brush with death earlier in the day, she looked remarkably robust. A mammoth bandage covered her left shoulder, and her broken leg had been set in a cast and elevated. Beyond a pallor from loss of blood, she appeared fully lucid, and perked up at the sight of her visitors.

Loren rushed over and gave her a peck on the cheek while Pitt set a large vase of pink lilies next to the bed.

“Looks like the good folks of Georgetown patched you up nicely,” Pitt observed with a grin.

“My dear, how are you feeling?” Loren asked, pulling a chair up alongside the bed.

“Pretty good, under the circumstances,” Lisa replied with a forced smile. “The pain medication isn’t quite keeping up with my throbbing leg, but the doctors tell me it will heal as good as new. Just remind me to cancel my aerobics class for the next few weeks.”

She turned to Pitt with a serious look. “They’ve given me six units of red blood cells since I arrived. The doctor said I was lucky. I would have died from blood loss if you hadn’t found me when you did. Thank you for saving my life.”

Pitt winked at her. “You are much too important to lose now,” he said, brushing off his actions.

“It was a miracle,” Loren said. “Dirk told me how devastated the lab was. It is amazing that no one in the building was killed.”

“Dr. Maxwell stopped by earlier. He promised to buy me a new lab.” She smiled. “Though he was a little disappointed that I didn’t know what happened.”

“You don’t know what caused the explosion?” Loren asked.

“No. I thought it came from a neighboring lab.”

“From what I saw of the damage, it appeared that the blast was centered in the room where I found you,” Pitt said.

“Yes, that’s what Dr. Maxwell told me. I’m not sure he believed me when I told him that there was nothing in my lab that could have caused that large of an explosion.”

“It was a pretty powerful bang,” Pitt agreed.

Lisa nodded. “I’ve sat here and pictured every element and piece of equipment in that lab. All of the materials we have been working with are inert. We have a number of gas tanks for the experiments, but Dr. Maxwell indicated that they were all found intact. The equipment is basically benevolent. There was simply nothing volatile I can think of that would have caused such a thing.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Loren said. “Maybe it was something with the building, an old gas line or something.”

They were interrupted by a stern-faced nurse who came in and propped up Lisa’s bed, then slid a tray of dinner in front of her.

“Guess we better be on our way so that you can enjoy the hospital’s epicurean delights,” Pitt said.

“I’m sure it won’t compare to last night’s crabs,” Lisa said, struggling to laugh. Then her face turned to a frown. “By the way, Dr. Maxwell mentioned that an old car parked in front of the building was severely damaged by the explosion. The Auburn?”

Pitt nodded with a hurt look. “Afraid so,” he said. “But don’t worry. Like you, she can be rebuilt to as good as new.”

There was a knock on the door behind them, then a lean man with a ragged beard entered the room.

“Bob,” Lisa greeted. “I’m glad you’re here. Come meet my friends,” she said, introducing Loren and Pitt to her lab assistant Bob Hamilton.

“I still can’t believe you made it out without a scratch,” Lisa kidded him.

“Lucky for me I was in the cafeteria having lunch when the lab went boom,” he said, eyeing Loren and Pitt with uncertainty.

“A fortunate thing,” Loren agreed. “Are you as stumped as Lisa by what happened?”

“Completely. There could have been a leak in one of our pressure canisters that somehow ignited, but I think it was something in the building. A freak accident, whatever the source, and now all of Lisa’s research is destroyed.”

“Is that true?” Pitt asked.

“All the computers were destroyed, which contained the research databases,” Bob replied.

“We should be able to piece it together once I get back to the lab… if I still have a lab,” Lisa said.

“I’ll demand that the president of GWU ensure that it is safe before you step into that building again,” Loren said.

She turned to Bob. “We were just leaving. Very nice to meet you, Bob.” Then she leaned over and kissed Lisa again. “Take care, honey. I’ll visit again tomorrow.”

“What a terrible ordeal,” Loren said to Pitt as they left the room and walked down the brightly lit hospital corridor to the elevator. “I’m so glad she is going to be all right.”

When all she got from Pitt was a slight nod in reply, she looked into his green eyes. They had a faraway look, one she had seen on many occasions, usually when Pitt was struggling to track down a lost shipwreck or decipher the mystery of some ancient documents.

“Where are you?” she finally prodded him.

“Lunch,” he replied cryptically.

“Lunch? ”

“What time do most people eat lunch?” he asked.

She looked at him oddly. “Eleven-thirty to one, I suppose, for whatever that is worth.”

“I walked into the building just prior to the explosion. The time was ten-fifteen, and our friend Bob was already having lunch,” he said with a skeptical tone. “And I’m pretty sure I saw him standing across the street looking like a spectator after the ambulance left with Lisa. He didn’t seem to show much concern that his coworker might be dead.”

“He was probably in a state of shock. You were probably in a state of shock, for that matter. And maybe he’s one of those guys that goes to work at five in the morning, so he’d hungry for lunch by ten.” She gave him a skeptical look. “You’ll have to do better than that,” she added, shaking her head.

“I suppose you are right,” he said, grabbing her hand as they walked out of the hospital’s front door. “Who am I to argue with a politician?”

17

Arthur Jameson was tidying up his mahogany desk when an aide knocked on the open door and walked in. The spacious but conservatively decorated office of the natural resources minister commanded an impressive view of Ottawa from its twenty-first-floor perch in the Sir William Logan Building, and the aide couldn’t help but peek out the window as he approached the minister’s desk. Seated in a high-back leather chair, Jameson peered from the aide to an antique grandfather clock that was ticking toward four o’clock. Hopes of escaping the bureaucracy early vanished with the aide’s approaching footsteps.

“Yes, Steven,” the minister said, welcoming the twenty-something aide who faintly resembled Jim Carrey. “What do you have to sour my weekend?”

“Don’t worry, sir, no environmental disasters of note,” the aide smiled. “Just a brief report from the Pacific Forestry Centre in British Columbia that I thought you should take a look at. One of our field ecologists has reported unusually high levels of acidity in the waters off Kitimat.”

“Kitimat, you say?” the minister asked, suddenly stiffening.

“Yes. You were just there visiting a carbon waste facility, weren’t you?”

Jameson nodded as he grabbed the file and quickly scanned the report. He visibly relaxed after studying a small map of the area. “The results were found some sixty miles from Kitimat, along the Inside Passage. There are no industrial facilities anywhere near that area. It was probably an error in the sampling. You know how we get false reports all the time,” he said with a reassuring look. He calmly closed the file and slid it to the side of his desk without interest.

“Shouldn’t we call the B.C. office and have them resample the water? ”

Jameson exhaled slowly. “Yes, that would be the prudent thing to do,” he said quietly. “Call them on Monday and request another test. No sense in getting excited unless they can duplicate the results.”

The aide nodded in consent but stood rooted in front of the desk. Jameson gave him a fatherly look.

“Why don’t you clear out of here, Steven? Go take that fiancée of yours out to dinner. I hear there’s a great new bistro that just opened on the riverfront.”

“You don’t pay me enough to dine there,” the aide grinned. “But I’ll take you up on the early exit. Have a great weekend, sir, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

Jameson watched the aide leave his office and waited as the sound of his footsteps faded down the hallway. Then he grabbed the file and read through the report details. The acidity results didn’t appear to have any correlation to Goyette’s facility, but a feeling in Jameson’s stomach told him otherwise. He was in too deep to get crossways with Goyette now, he thought, as the instinct for self-preservation took over. He picked up the telephone and quickly punched a number by memory, grinding his teeth in anxiety as the line rang three times. A woman’s voice finally answered, her tone feminine but efficient.

“Terra Green Industries. May I help you?”

“Resources Minister Jameson,” he replied brusquely. “Calling for Mitchell Goyette.”

18

Dirk and Summer quietly shoved their boat away from the municipal dock and drifted into the harbor. When the current had pushed them out of view of the dock, Dirk started the engine and guided them slowly down the channel. The sky overhead had partially cleared, allowing a splash of starlight to strike the water as the midnight hour was consumed. The bellow from a bay-front honky-tonk provided the only competing sound as they motored slowly away from town.

Dirk kept the boat in the center of the channel, following the mast light of a distant troll boat heading out early in search of some prize coho salmon. Easing away from the lights of Kitimat, they sailed in darkness for several miles until navigating a wide bend in the channel. Ahead, the water glistened like polished chrome, reflecting the bright lights of the Terra Green sequestration plant.

As the boat moved downstream, Dirk could see that the facility grounds were dotted with brilliant overhead floodlights, which cast abstract shadows against the surrounding pines. Only the huge covered dock was kept muted by the spotlights, shading the presence of the LNG tanker that lay moored inside.

Summer retrieved a pair of night vision binoculars and scrutinized the shoreline as they cruised past at a benign distance.

“All quiet on the Western Front,” she said. “I only got a quick glimpse under the big top but saw no signs of life around the dock or the ship.”

“Security at this hour can’t be more than a couple of goons in a box staring at some video camera feeds.”

“Let’s hope they’re watching a wrestling match on TV instead, so we can grab our water samples and get out.”

Dirk held the boat at a steady pace until they had traveled two miles past the facility. Safely lost from view behind several bends in the channel, he spun the wheel to starboard and brought the boat up tight along the shoreline, then cut the running lights. The patchy starlight provided enough visibility to distinguish the tree-lined bank, but he still eased off the throttle while keeping one eye glued to the depth readings on an Odom fathometer. Summer stood alongside, scanning for obstructions with the night vision binoculars and whispering course changes to her brother.

Moving barely over idle, they crept to within three-quarters of a mile of the Terra Green facility, staying out of direct view. A small cove provided the last point of concealment before the floodlights scorched the channel surface. Summer quietly released an anchor off the bow, then Dirk killed the engine. A slight whisper of wind through some nearby pines rattled an otherwise eerie nighttime silence. The wind shifted, bringing with it the whine of pumps and the humming of electrical generators from the nearby facility, the noise easily concealing their movements.

Dirk glanced at his Doxa dive watch before joining Summer in slipping into a dark-colored dry suit.

“We’re approaching slack tide,” he said quietly. “We’ll have a little head current going in, but that will give us a push at our backs on the return swim.”

He had calculated as such earlier in the evening, knowing that they didn’t want to be fighting the current to return to the boat. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Both Dirk and Summer were excellent swimmers, often engaging in marathon ocean swims whenever they were near warm water.

Summer adjusted the straps on her BC, which held a single dive tank, then clipped on a small dive bag containing several empty vials. She waited until Dirk had his tank on before slipping on a pair of fins.

“A midnight swim in the great Pacific Northwest,” she said, eyeing the stars overhead. “Almost sounds romantic.”

“There is nothing romantic about a swim in forty-two-degree water,” Dirk replied, then clamped a snorkel between his teeth.

With a quiet nod, they both slipped over the side and into the chilly black water. Adjusting their buoyancy, they took their bearings and began kicking their way out of the cove and toward the facility. They swam near the surface, their heads just breaking the water like a pair of a prowling alligators. Conserving their dive tanks, they used snorkels to breathe, sucking in the brisk night air through their silicone breathing tubes.

The current was slightly stronger than Dirk had anticipated, led by the runoff from the Kitimat River at the head of the channel. They easily overpowered the headwaters, but the extra exertion built up body heat. Despite the frigid water, Dirk could feel himself sweating inside the thermal dry suit.

A half mile from the plant, Dirk felt Summer tap his shoulder and turned to see her pointing toward the shore. In the shadows of a jagged ridge of pine trees, he could make out a boat moored close to land. It was darkened like their own vessel, and, in the dim night light, he was unable to ascertain its dimensions.

Dirk nodded at Summer and swam deeper into the channel, putting a wide berth between them and the boat. They continued swimming at a measured pace until they closed within two hundred yards of the facility. Stopping to rest, Dirk tried to get a lay of the land beneath the blaring spotlights.

A large L-shaped building stretched across the grounds, its base next to the covered dock. The whine of pumps and generators emanated from the structure, which processed the liquid carbon dioxide. A separate windowed building adjacent to a helicopter pad stood a few yards away and appeared to contain offices. Dirk guessed that the housing accommodations for the workers were located up the road, in the direction of Kitimat. Off to his right, a sturdy pier jutted into the channel, hosting a single boat. It was the same dark speedboat that had chased them away earlier in the day.

Summer swam alongside, then reached down to her dive bag. Uncorking an empty vial, she collected a water sample while they drifted.

“I gathered two additional samples on the way in,” she whispered. “If we can collect another one or two around the dock, then we should have the bases covered.”

“Next stop,” he replied. “Let’s take it underwater from here.”

Dirk took a bearing with a compass on his wrist, then slipped his regulator between his teeth and expelled a burst of air from his BC. Sinking a few feet below the surface, he gently began kicking toward the massive covered dock. The corrugated tin structure was relatively narrow, offering just a few feet of leeway for the ship occupying the lone berth. Yet the dock was well over a football field long, easily accommodating the ninety-meter tanker.

The luminescent dial of the compass was barely visible in the inky water as Dirk followed his set bearing. The water grew lighter from the shoreside lights as he approached the dock entrance. He continued swimming until the dark shape of the tanker’s hull loomed before him. Slowly ascending, he broke the surface almost directly beneath the tanker’s stern rail. He quickly scanned the nearby dock, finding it deserted at the late hour. Pulling his hood away from one ear, he listened for voices, but the drone of the pump house would have made a shout difficult to detect. Gently kicking away from the side of the ship, he tried to get a better look at the vessel.

Though a large ship from Dirk’s perspective, she was tiny as far as LNG carriers go. Designed with a streamlined deck, she could carry twenty-five hundred cubic meters of liquefied natural gas in two horizontal metallic tanks belowdecks. Built for coastal transport duty, she was dwarfed by the large oceangoing carriers that could hold more than fifty times the amount of liquefied natural gas.

The ship was probably ten or twelve years old, Dirk gauged, showing wear at the seams but judiciously maintained. He didn’t know what modifications had been made for the ship to carry liquid CO ₂but presumed they were minor. Though CO ₂was somewhat denser than LNG, it required less temperature and pressure extremes to reach a liquid state. He peered up at the name Chichuyaa, beaded in gold lettering across the stern, noting the home registry of Panama City painted in white lettering below.

A rise of bubbles rippled the water a few yards away, then Summer’s head popped through the surface. She glanced at the ship and dock, then nodded at her brother as she pulled out a vial and collected a water sample. When she finished, Dirk pointed toward the bow and dropped back beneath the surface. Summer followed suit, tracking her brother as he swam forward. Following the dark outline of the tanker’s hull, they swam down the length of the ship, quietly surfacing off the ship’s bow. Dirk eyed the tanker’s Plimsoll line a few feet overhead, noting that the vessel was just a foot or two shy of its fully loaded displacement.

Summer turned her attention to a series of overhead feeder tubes that dangled like thick tentacles over the ship from an adjacent dockside pumping station. Called “Chiksan arms,” the large articulated pipes jimmied and swayed from the surge of the liquid CO ₂flowing through inside. Small wisps of white smoke spewed from the pump building roof, condensation from the cooled and pressurized gas. Summer reached down and retrieved the last empty vial from her dive bag, wondering whether the water around her was contaminated with pollutants as she took the final sample. Zipping the full vial into her dive bag, she kicked toward her brother, who had drifted near the dock.

As she approached, Dirk pointed toward the dock entrance and whispered, “Let’s go.”

Summer nodded and started to turn, then suddenly hesitated in the water. Her eyes fixated on the Chiksan arms above Dirk’s head. With a quizzical look on her face, she raised a finger and pointed at the pipes far overhead. Dirk cocked his head and gazed up at the pipes for a minute but didn’t notice anything amiss.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“There’s something about the movement of the pipes,” she replied, staring at the arms. “I think the carbon dioxide is being pumped onto the ship.”

Dirk stared up at the wiggling arms. There was a rhythmic movement through the pipes, but it was hardly sufficient to tell which way the liquefied gas was flowing. He looked at his sister and nodded. Her occasional hunches or intuitions were usually right. It was enough for him to want to check it out.

“Do you think it means anything?” Summer asked, looking up at the ship’s bow.

“Hard to say if it has any relevance,” Dirk replied quietly. “It doesn’t make any sense that they would be pumping CO ₂onto the ship. Maybe there is an LNG pipeline from Athabasca running through here.”

“Trevor said there was only a small oil pipeline and the CO ₂line.”

“Did you notice if the ship was sitting higher in the water this morning? ”

“I couldn’t say,” Summer replied. “Though she ought to be a lot higher in the water now if she’s been off-loading gas for any amount of time.”

Dirk looked up at the hulking vessel. “What I know about LNG ships, and it ain’t much, is that pumps on shore move the liquid onto the ships, and they have pumps on board to move it off at the destination. From the sound of it, the pump house on shore is clearly operating.”

“That could be to pump the gas underground or into temporary storage tanks.”

“True. But it is too noisy to tell if the shipboard pumps are running.” He kicked a few yards over to the dock, then poked his head up and looked around. The dock and visible portions of the ship were still deserted. Dirk slipped off his tank and weight belt and hung them from a nearby cleat.

“You’re not going aboard?” Summer whispered as if her brother were insane.

Dirk’s white teeth flashed in a grin. “How else will we solve the mystery, my dear Watson?”

Summer knew that waiting in the water for her brother would be too nerve-racking, so she reluctantly hung her dive gear next to his and climbed onto the dock. Following him quietly toward the ship, she couldn’t help muttering, “Thanks, Sherlock,” under her breath.