Darkness falls, p.9
Darkness Falls, page 9
"So your thirty percent number is a worst-case scenario?" Jack Reynolds interrupted.
Erin chewed his lower lip for a moment. In truth, thirteen months was more than enough time to hit all the reserves listed and then some, but it seemed like a good idea to get them thinking about something more productive than revenge. "That's right. Definitely worst-case." He paused, then added, "But if it did happen, I think you can expect all that production to go off-line over the next two years. You should probably try to be ready for that."
"Ready for that?" the president said, his face looking a little red in the glow of the screen. "And how the hell would you suggest we 'get ready for that,' Dr. Neal? We're talking about an entire world economy that revolves around the availability of oil -- an economy that amplifies the slightest constriction in supply or increase in price. Your scenario simply isn't acceptable. What can we do to stop it?"
"If you mean in the sense of reversing the effects to date, nothing. Whatever the bacteria have eaten is gone. And we have no capacity to stop the spread -- it's too large a problem."
"I don't accept that," the president said.
"There's always a solution."
"You're talking about finding something that kills this bug, delivering millions of gallons of it into these wells, and then figuring out how to get it to spread through the infestation in a way that would completely eradicate it. And again, that wouldn't reverse the effects to date, it would just keep it from getting worse. But I have no idea how you would do that and, in all modesty, if I don't know, no one does. So if I were you, I'd think about securing the water injectors on the remaining wells. But mostly, I'd start preparing the world for a new energy reality."
Silence. This time, it just went on and on.
"Everything I know is on this computer," Erin said finally. "You should probably get in touch with the Society of Petroleum Engineers -- I did a lot of this from memory and they can help you fill in the blanks."
The president seemed lost in his own thoughts and no one was eager to disturb him.
"Okay, then. I'll leave you to it," Erin said. "Good luck and give me a call if you have any questions."
He was surprised when no one tried to stop him from leaving. Even Beamon just watched him with that enigmatic expression he always seemed to wear.
Erin made it almost fifty feet down the hallway and nearly to freedom when two men in dark suits pulled up alongside him.
"If you could just come with us, please, Dr. Neal."
Chapter 14.
Ignoring as best he could the unintelligible roar from the conference table, Mark Beamon looked longingly at the door Erin Neal had just disappeared through. When the president stood up and the room went quiet, Beamon began inching toward the exit.
"How could this have happened?" President Dunn demanded, staring directly at the director of Homeland Security -- theoretically Beamon's boss, but a man who had always made a Herculean effort to pretend he didn't exist.
"Sir . . ." he began slowly, giving the excuses time to form in his mind. "The fields we're talking about are under either foreign or private control. We have focused successfully -- on attacks targeting refinery capacity and interruptions in transportation. Like Dr. Neal said, no one ever considered a bioterrorist attack."
"No one," the president repeated, the volume of his voice rising. "Why is it we're always fighting the last war? We spend billions on intelligence and every time some semiliterate Arab fanatic comes up with a half-baked plan to blow something up, I have to hear that we never thought of it."
He looked around the table as everyone pressed themselves back into their chairs, trying to move as far from the table as possible without being obvious. Except Jack Reynolds. He leaned forward.
"Mr. President, when ANWR started having problems, I asked Mark Beamon to look into the possibility that it wasn't a natural occurrence."
Beamon's eyes widened as the president looked directly at him. That backstabbing son of a bitch. He'd given specific orders not to pursue the terrorism angle.
"Why wasn't I told about this?" the president asked.
"Because it seemed almost laughably farfetched," Reynolds replied smoothly. "We consulted the top people in the world and there wasn't so much as a suggestion that this was a purposeful act. But it seemed to make sense to have Mark do some general legwork. Just in case."
There was a quiet rustle as everyone in the room turned toward him.
"Well?" the president said.
"Iran seems unlikely to me," Beamon said slowly, trying to give himself time to come up with something coherent to say. "They probably do have access to people with this kind of know-how, but there would be a lot of blowback. It has the potential to collapse the entire Middle East politically."
"What about al Qaeda?"
"I honestly doubt they have anyone who could pull it off. Besides, it seems like an overly complicated solution to a simple problem. Much more likely they'd create something easy like anthrax and then walk it over the border."
"So who?" the president said.
"If I had to put my money somewhere, I'd put it on an environmentalist group. Probably an American one. Notice how ANWR doesn't fit Erin's pattern? It's not that significant in capacity and it doesn't have a water-injection system. I'd be willing to bet those were the first wells hit and then, when it worked, the people involved decided to go after bigger fish. The FBI has a fair amount of data on the most radical groups, but I haven't dug into any of them specifically yet." He looked directly at Reynolds. "Jack was concerned about publicity and didn't want me to do anything that could cause a potential leak and upset the markets."
"I want everyone the FBI thinks might be responsible for this picked up and interrogated," the president said. "And I want it done today."
Beamon stared at the carpet.
"Is there a problem?"
Hell yes, there was a problem. Sure, this had the potential to be an incredible case something that he would have killed to be involved in when he was younger and less wise. But now he had other things in his life, and he knew himself well enough to recognize how easy it would be to backslide. Before Carrie, his career had taken everything and given virtually nothing in return. Erin was right. This wasn't their problem.
"Sir, I really don't think I'm qualified to lead an investigation like this. I wouldn't know a bacteria from a hole in the ground, and I've been pretty much sitting behind a desk doing nothing for the past few years. There are some people at the FBI I could recom--"
"I think most of us here are familiar with your reputation, Mark. That, and the fact that we don't exactly have a lot of time to bring someone else up to speed leaves you at the top of the list, doesn't it? No one here has even considered the ramifications of something like this, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say we could be talking about a massive worldwide depression. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but it seems your country needs you."
"Again," Beamon said quietly.
"Excuse me?"
"I said 'again.' Your country needs you again."
"Mark . . ." Reynolds cautioned.
Beamon ignored him. "With all due respect, sir, you don't need an investigator, you need a cruise director. On something like this, I'd spend ninety percent of my time fielding pointless questions and stupid suggestions from politicians with backgrounds in tax law and acting. And because I wouldn't have any time to do my job, I'd probably fail and Congress would set up a commission to crucify me."
Jack Reynolds's head sunk into his hands.
"Am I to understand that you're offering your resignation?" the president said.
Yes, Beamon thought. Hell, yes. Things were going so well for him right now. Better than they ever had. He'd have to be a complete moron to screw that up.
So why was he just standing there? Was it because he believed deep down that he really was the man for the job? Because he understood what was at stake? Or maybe it was just that he missed the feeling of doing something he was good at.
Despite having political instincts sufficient to get him into the White House, the president mistook Beamon's silence for resolve. "Personally, I'm having a hard time believing Dr. Neal's analysis, but if it is true, I don't think anyone would want to do anything to stand in the way of the progress of your investigation. So I'm going to tell everyone involved that all inquiries go through Jack Reynolds's office and that Jack, you have the responsibility of filtering and responding to those inquiries. Does that satisfy, Mr. Beamon?"
Beamon remained silent.
"I'll take that as a yes."
Chapter 15.
Michael Teague stepped out of the van and shielded his eyes against the glare coming off the metal warehouse in front of him. In the distance, he could see ancient oil derricks jutting from the open land. They dated back to the early days of Texas oil exploration and their presence created a historical symmetry that he found eminently satisfying.
With the price of gas approaching five dollars a gallon, the ANWR infestation was the focus of virtually every news program in the country. But they could do little more than speculate stupidly about why gas lines continued to lengthen while trying to top their competitors' increasingly theatrical displays of outrage.
The Arabs had always kept their export numbers confidential, and that constriction on the flow of information had tightened as the region continued to destabilize. According to Saudi Aramco and the others, the output from their reserves was on the upswing as they compensated for the destruction of the Alaska fields. An obvious and desperate lie. Teague had little doubt that the shortages in the United States and around the world were the direct result of his attacks on Ghawar and the other major Middle Eastern fields.
Soon, the problem would grow to a point that it could no longer be kept from the public. When the supergiant fields finally collapsed, the economic impact would be beyond anything that had ever occurred in recorded history. It would be the first necessary step toward the end of human civilization as the world had come to know it.
He glanced at his phone -- something he did more and more often these days -- but there was no message from Jonas. He was still in the desert waiting for Jenna, perhaps futilely. Erin Neal was still gone, once again showing his true colors by working for the very men whose zeal for giving their constituents more and more unnecessary things had created this situation.
A smile spread slowly across Teague's face at the thought of the desert shack where Neal had spent the last year and a half in hiding. Wallowing in his loneliness and dreaming of his beloved Jenna.
It hadn't been that difficult to ostracize and isolate Erin Neal after the publication of his book, which attempted to destroy everything the environmental movement had achieved. With a little prompting, even his closest friends and colleagues had turned against him. But Teague considered his greatest triumph to be stripping Jenna from him. Not in the way he'd hoped, perhaps -- she saw something in the disgraced scientist that Teague couldn't understand -- but the end result was the same. Erin Neal was a broken man.
Jonas's idea of killing him was admittedly tempting, and might eventually become necessary, but for now seemed so unsatisfying. He had to survive to see what was coming and fail to stop it. He had to understand that he and people like him were ultimately responsible. And finally, he had to succumb, just like everyone else.
Teague grabbed the supplies he'd purchased from the van and pushed through the door to the utilitarian warehouse, weaving through the microscopes, incubators, and a host of other equipment he didn't really understand.
It was a far cry from the environmental protection organization he'd built with the millions he'd made selling his computer company to Google. At its apex, he'd employed more than fifty full-time operatives biologists, lobbyists, marketing people, protest organizers -- and had occupied three floors of a skyscraper in Seattle. But it had quickly become apparent that being more efficient at doing what had failed so many times before was a dead end. How ironic that, with only two people, he would finally win a war that had been lost by so many.
"Michael!"
Udo's face was twisted into a rare display of emotion as he ran across the room and grabbed Teague's arm.
"Udo, what --"
"Michael, come! There is something you must see."
A jolt of adrenaline caused sweat to break across Teague's back as the German pulled him through the building's crowded interior.
It was true that the bacteria Jenna had developed performed beyond their expectations, but its very design resulted in significant limitations. Udo had spent nearly two years working to correct those limitations to create something beyond anything Jenna or anyone else had ever imagined.
His work had started well enough and he was able to make the bacteria more broadly destructive and prolific with little difficulty. Then the delays and excuses had begun. Although insanely committed, Udo simply wasn't as talented as Jenna, who had gone to great lengths to ensure that her creation would never get out of control. Reversing the safeguards she'd built into the bacteria's genetic structure had proved more difficult than anyone expected.
The large Plexiglas tube that they stopped in front of was one of the few pieces of equipment in the lab that Teague was intimately familiar with. More than twenty feet long and a foot in diameter, it was surrounded with sunlamps and connected to various cooling hoses. It expanded at both ends into a bulb the size of a beach ball, each filled halfway with oil.
Udo pointed to the right side of the tube. "There. Look at it, Michael."
Teague took a hesitant step forward and reached out, brushing the cold glass with his fingertips.
He'd seen this experiment fail so many times before. At first, when Udo contaminated the oil on the left side of the tube with bacteria, it would almost immediately die from solar radiation, ambient temperatures, and overabundant oxygen -- just as Jenna had designed it to do. Eventually, the German managed to improve it to the point that it could survive long enough to destroy the oil it was in contact with, but it died the moment it lost its food supply.
Now, though, just inches beyond his fingers, Teague could see the telltale reddish slick on top of the oil -- twenty feet from the initial contamination.
"It survived," he said quietly. "It spread."
Udo reached for one of the cooling hoses and then withdrew his hand, leaving a well-defined print in the frost. "It's below freezing in there, with extremely low humidity and UV more powerful than it would ever encounter in nature. And despite all that, it crossed a sterile seven-meter gap."
"Is this it, then? It's ready?"
"I need to perform a few more tests, but I'm hopeful. With luck, we'll be able to start breeding it within a week."
Teague turned and walked unsteadily back out into the hot Texas sun. He had begun to wonder whether this day would ever come -- whether Udo would be able to deliver what he had promised.
But now everything had changed. They were standing on the precipice of a completely new world. With a sufficient initial release, this new strain had the ability to spread through the air without the involvement of human hands. While the governments of the world panicked over the reserves that were already infected, a new kind of bacteria would silently infiltrate petroleum in all its forms, no matter where it was hidden. The brief aberration that was industrialized society, made possible by abundant energy, would collapse.
That collapse, though, was inevitable whether he acted or not. No matter how carefully people blinded themselves to the reality that the oil was running out, it was a geological fact that would eventually devastate the world in ways few had even imagined.
At first, people would compensate by stripping the earth of what few resources it had left, abandoning any pretense and environmentalism in a futile attempt to maintain the unsustainable living standard of billions of people. Then, as the dense, readily available energy dwindled, the wars to control what was left would begin. Eventually, though, governments and militaries would disintegrate and chaos would descend as neighbor turned on neighbor in a desperate bid to stay warm and keep their bellies full. Animals worldwide would be hunted to extinction as the forests were burned and the air filled with greenhouse gases. Finally, when everything was destroyed, the light would go out on the miracle of life.
His plan, though almost certain to cause a die-off of at least two-thirds of the world's human population, would ensure a future for his species and the other wondrous forms of life that had spread across the earth. Brutality and chaos would still flare, but it would be mercifully brief. There would be no time for sophisticated war machines to go on genocidal rampages, no time for humanity to burn or irradiate the surface of the earth, no time to cause the global climate to spin out of control and turn his home into just another lifeless rock circling the sun.
He would return the world to a sustainable balance. Plant and animal species would once again thrive, the climate would stabilize, and humans would return to being nothing more than another widely scattered cog in the wheel of life.
Chapter 16.
"That was great, Mark. Just fucking great," Jack Reynolds said as he burst through the door. "Ever think that maybe telling the president of the United States to screw off isn't the smartest thing to do?"
Erin leapt from the chair he'd been sulking in as Beamon slammed the door.
"I'm always the one who gets stepped on in the end, Jack. And maybe I'm stupid and desperate enough to live with that, but I sure as shit don't have to take it with a smile."
"Hey!" Erin shouted. Both men looked at him as though they'd just realized he was there. "Who the hell do you think you are, having your thugs lock me in here? I told you everything I know. You don't have any right to hold me."
"I have the right to do whatever I goddamn well want," Reynolds said.
Erin watched Beamon slide a chair up next to him, unable to ignore the change in the man. The skin seemed to hang a little looser from his face, creating a tired worldliness that hadn't been there before. Suddenly, it was possible to see the man Mohammed Asli had described.
