Breakthrough Read online

  “Go.”

  “There is something big on the ocean floor.” Caesare said. “Something really big.”

  Clay looked at Emerson while he listened. “What is it?”

  “We don’t know. It looks like a giant ring. Borger puts it at about twenty-five kilometers across.”

  Clay’s eyes widened. “Did you say two five?”

  “Yes, two five kilometers across,” Caesare confirmed.

  “Good god!”

  “And you’re sitting right on top of it. You need to get out of there!”

  “We’re working on that.” Clay tossed the handset back to the communication officer and turned to Emerson. “We need to leave right now!”

  Two decks down the sailors stumbled back and forth trying to keep the torch focused on the chain. The bow rose up again and both grasped at the giant windlass wheel to keep their footing. Tiny pieces of steel fell to the floor as the white hot torch slowly ate its way through the giant section of metal. Suddenly the ship rolled to port and both the crewmen fell and tumbled into the giant metal wall, smashing the head of the torch and extinguishing the flame.

  Officer Harris turned to Emerson again. “Sir, we lost the torch.”

  Emerson stared at him thinking. “How far are we through that chain?”

  Harris was not sure what the captain meant but then realized. “Far enough!”

  “Do it!”

  Harris turned to the other men on the bridge. “Engines up gentlemen!”

  “They’re here!” Lee interrupted. “Dirk and Sally are back!”

  Alison lunged to his table and checked the screen. She immediately turned back to Emerson. “Wait! Wait!”

  Emerson gave her a hard look and held up his index finger. “One minute!”

  Alison typed as quickly as she could. “Sally are you and Dirk okay?”

  Yes, answered Sally.

  We have trouble. We have to leave. Follow us! Alison clicked the Translate button and looked around the bridge. Everyone was holding on to a piece of the room and watching her.

  An error message appeared on the screen. “Unable to Translate.”

  “Oh god,” she groaned.

  Lee looked over her shoulder. “Take out the exclamation mark.”

  Alison typed it again.

  After a long wait both dolphins finally responded with Okay.

  “Go!” shouted Alison to the crew.

  The Pathfinder’s giant engines roared to life and the ship pushed forward. The chain became taut as the Pathfinder pulled hard against it. A shudder ran through the entire hull. Both crew and passengers held tight as the ship strained under the pull of the chain and anchor.

  “Full power!” barked Emerson.

  The engines roared louder. The chain scraped loudly on the side of the ship. Very slowly and below deck, the half-cut link near the windlass began to twist under the stress. Inch by inch it continued to stretch and pull until the chain finally exploded sending the broken end smashing through the hull as the ship lurched forward.

  Nearly everyone on the bridge lost their hold and fell to the floor. The Pathfinder sailed across the giant swell and smashed bow first into the next wave. In the lounge, passengers bounced off the bulkhead and over tables grasping for each other as they fell.

  17

  The President’s VH-3 helicopter, Marine One, slowly approached the back lawn of the White House and stopped in a hover just a few feet above the grass. It gently touched down with little more than a bump as the giant shocks absorbed the weight of the heavy craft. The marine on board waited for the rotors to begin winding down before opening the door and deploying the step ladder. He held Kathryn Lokke’s hand and helped her down the first steps and into the hand of a second marine waiting at the bottom.

  She instinctively clutched her satchel tight as she reached the ground and was quickly escorted away from the helicopter. An older man with gray hair approached with a quick short stride that almost made it look as though he were stumbling. Bill Mason was the White House Chief of Staff and known for his no-nonsense approach to all things security. Kathryn had only met him a few times before and noted he always seemed impatient and in a hurry, though relatively polite.

  “Nice to see you again Ms. Lokke,” he said, motioning up a small manicured path that headed toward the back entrance of the White House. “Please follow me.”

  They reached a set of thick double doors and stepped inside where Kathryn was asked to put her things on a conveyor belt to be scanned. She was then patted down by a female Secret Service agent and escorted forward. Kathryn quickly grabbed her bag from the far end of the belt and continued following Mason.

  “Your flight was a few minutes late, so the President should be waiting.” Mason turned a corner and led her down a flight of stairs into the basement. Two additional turns left them at the doors to the infamous Situation Room. “Is there anything you need?”

  Kathryn shook her head. She had gone over the material and the presentation several times.

  President John Carr was standing when she entered the room. He turned to meet them as Mason stepped in behind her. “Mr. President, may I introduce Dr. Kathryn Lokke from the USGS.”

  President Carr seemed to tower over her with his six foot, four inch frame. “Pleased to meet you Ms. Lokke.”

  She smiled nervously. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. President. Thank you for meeting with me.”

  “Not at all,” he replied, as he stepped back and grabbed a chair. “Please forgive me for being curt, I have a call with Israel in about twenty minutes. Shall we get started?”

  “Yes, yes of course,” Kathryn answered and quickly fumbled to get her laptop out of her bag. Several other men were already sitting around the table. She recognized the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor. Most of the others wore decorated uniforms and looked to be high ranking officers from the military.

  She started speaking as she opened up her laptop and connected the cable to the giant monitor behind her. “Mr. President,” she looked at the others, “gentlemen, the USGS has been closely tracking some accelerating changes in the Earth’s north and south poles for the last couple of decades, and more specifically the last several years.” She pressed a button and the large screen lit up with the map she was displaying on her laptop screen.

  “These are four pictures, two of the Arctic and two of the Antarctic. The pictures in each set are separated by two years.” She turned around to point to the screen. “From this high a level you can easily see the changes occurring, and in fact these changes are accelerating. You may have heard a few years ago that a huge section of the Ronne Ice Shelf separated and fell into the ocean, floating north. The separation of the shelf happened due to the growing weight and pressure of the ice pack as measured over the years, at which point the pressure surpasses the strength of the frozen ice and a collapse occurs.” Kathryn hit a button on her laptop and a larger screen of the Antarctic was displayed. It was a satellite image from earlier in the year and showed the giant Ronne shelf piece which had broken off. It could already be seen a few hundred miles away in the photo. “This break was a surprise but fortunately the impact was not serious.” She paused and looked around the room again. “The reason I am here is because a few days ago we received a very large wake up call.”

  “An earthquake, or more specifically a geological shift, has occurred along the shelf and this time not in the ice.” She advanced to the next slide which showed the large ice portion of the shelf. Further south a red line traced the shift that just occurred. It was clear the recent shift was on land and near the first large mountain range heading into the heart of the continent. “When the huge part of that ice shelf broke off years ago, it floated away. It floated because it was ice and its overall mass was less dense than the water below it.” The screen now zoomed in on the red line. “This latest shift occurred at the base of a glacier which is a far heavier section of land mass than just ice. This land mass has
now dropped by almost fifteen feet.”

  President Carr looked around the table and back at Lokke. “What does this mean?”

  Kathryn paused. Her heart was beating fast but she wanted to be careful how she phrased this. “It means a high level of risk for an impending natural disaster.”

  Mason spoke up from the left side of the table. “How high a risk are we talking about?”

  “We don’t know exactly,” Kathryn sighed. She noticed a couple of the men frown. “We cannot determine how high without a more accurate timeline. Measured in likelihood and impact, the risk is…very high.”

  One of the men started to speak but the President held up a hand. “Ms. Lokke, when you say impact what do you mean?”

  “Well,” she started, “there are a number of scenarios escalating in severity. The scenario we must consider is a massive slide of that glacial base into the ocean which would send a giant tsunami up through the Atlantic, and of a size like modern history has never seen.”

  “As big as the one in Indonesia?” asked Mason.

  “Bigger. Much bigger. This could have the energy to destroy every major city or seaport on either side of the Atlantic all the way up to London. The surge could reach many miles inland which means several orders of magnitude larger than Indonesia.”

  There was a long silence in the room.

  “So,” the National Security Advisor took off his glasses and held them between his two fingers, “what do we do?”

  Hank Stevas was a highly political figure. Short and in his late sixties, he had attracted criticism from both sides of the aisle for being confrontational and overly brash, or rude as others would politely call him. Someone Kathryn was hoping would not be in this meeting.

  Kathryn took a deep breath. “Well, the best step would be to take a proactive approach and try to avoid what could turn out to be a global panic. This would mean purposely finding a way to relieve some of the strain being created. There are few possibilities that require a certain amount of time and resource-”

  “I see,” replied Stevas cutting her off. “And does everyone at the USGS agree with your assessment?”

  Kathryn was expecting this. Hank Stevas had not so subtly attacked her a year earlier during one of her environmental reports. She was amazed at his total disregard for empirical facts, even his lack of interest in learning the facts. Instead he attacked politically by going after a person’s character or reputation. After her run in with him last year, she later learned that he was friends with her predecessor. It seemed he was not going to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Kathryn hesitated only because of the satisfaction he was about to get, even though the answer was far from simple. “No.”

  “No,” Stevas repeated nodding his head and frowning. “So how many other scientists do agree with you?”

  His accusing tone lingered in the air as she stared at him. How convenient that he said ‘agree with you’ instead of ‘this conclusion’. “It’s not that easy-”

  Stevas spread his hands in a mocking gesture. “How many agree with you, half? Less than half? Does anyone agree with your view? Being the head of the largest scientific department on the planet, I would hope that at least some of your subordinates would agree.”

  Kathryn had to force herself not to glare at the man. “Some, yes.”

  “Some,” he nodded sarcastically. “Some.” Stevas looked around the room addressing everyone at the table. “So we have a minority scientific opinion here regarding a geological event that may or may not be a serious risk, and that could cost who knows how much. Might I remind everyone that last year you gave a presentation claiming that the ocean levels worldwide were actually falling in contradiction to everyone else in the scientific community suggesting the exact opposite, even in fact calculating the opposite.”

  Kathryn did not want to respond but would not let it go unaddressed in front of everyone in the room. “My suggestion was that the widely accepted calculations were flawed based on failure to account for a number of variables such as lunar gravitational patterns, the Earth’s equatorial bulge, and-”

  “You claimed,” Stevas cut her off again, “that the water level was falling but could not explain where the disappearing water was supposedly going! Tell me Ms. Lokke, does anyone agree with your claim now, a full year later?”

  If Kathryn did not want to respond to his last question, she really did not want to respond to this one. Stevas had clearly known what the subject of this meeting was about and decided to dig up some dirt. Reluctantly she answered. “Not to my knowledge. But you have to understand this isn’t like walking down to the nearest beach with a measuring stick. There are many calculations involved.”

  “Not to your knowledge,” he repeated.

  “Look,” she said ignoring Stevas and addressing the others, “this is a grave situation. If we don’t do something, and soon, to release some of the pressure along that shelf, we may be talking about the greatest disaster we have ever seen. If that piece of the continent collapses, we could have just a matter of hours to evacuate 50 million people.” Now she glared at Stevas. “How smoothly do you think a last minute evacuation plan would go?”

  Kathryn looked to the President who had been watching the rest of the table with his hands folded in front of his mouth. “Ms. Lokke, do we have actual proof that this collapse is imminent?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Stevas putting his glasses back on. “No,” she answered.

  “Well I’m afraid I’m not ready to go around warning half the countries on the planet, and potentially starting a panic, over something that we cannot provide real proof of.” He stood up and the rest of the table abruptly followed. “I’d like you to have your team conduct more research and return when you have something more concrete.” He shook her hand. “Thank you for coming in.”

  Kathryn watched in stunned silence as all of the men shuffled out of the room, some shaking her hand on the way out. Stevas was not one of them.

  She slowly gathered up her things and put them back into her bag while Mason waited for her in the hall. She could not believe what had just happened. The President sat there and completely bought Stevas’ argument, which in the end was that she was incompetent.

  She began to feel slightly sick to her stomach. She had been completely dismissed for nothing more than some political strutting. If she was right, then Stevas and the President of the United States had just condemned millions of people to death.

  She walked out of the conference room and followed Mason back upstairs. Knowing they would do nothing until it was too late made her now hope that she was wrong, really wrong.

  18

  After nearly an hour of twenty foot swells the conditions slowly calmed and the Pathfinder continued plowing north. The ship’s crew and guests, thoroughly battered, began nursing their wounds. Several of the journalists had sustained injuries after being flung around the lounge, requiring treatment and some bandaging by the ship’s medical staff.

  On the bridge Alison had made her way out to the side of the ship to make sure Dirk and Sally were still with them. The two dolphins remained near the bow swimming and jumping effortlessly through the waves. Alison turned and stepped back inside just as Emerson returned to the bridge from the other side.

  “Alright Clay, I’ve got a ship full of sick and injured people and my lounge has been turned into a clinic. We’ve damn near run out of bandages and splints. What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know Rudy. I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”

  Emerson shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. A storm out of nowhere with perfect skies, nearly sinking my ship, something awfully strange is happening here.”

  “I wish I knew,” Clay replied.

  “Well, what the hell was that call about? Sounds like you learned something.”

  Clay turned toward Alison and her team. “I don’t suppose you have a security clearance?”

  They
all shook their heads in unison.

  He sighed. Clay turned back to Emerson. “They’re all going to need to be read on. Caesare and one of our experts at the Pentagon seem to have found something on the Triton video recorded by your team.”

  Emerson looked at him expectantly.

  “It looks like there may be an unidentified object on the ocean floor, something very big.”

  “How big?” Emerson asked.

  “Upwards of twenty five kilometers.”

  “Jesus Christ!” choked Emerson. “Are they kidding?”

  “I don’t think so. They said it was in the shape of a ring.”

  Emerson furrowed his brow. “A twenty five kilometer ring. What the does that mean?”

  Clay shrugged helplessly. “You know as much as I do. I’ll call him back and see if we can get more information. In the meantime, Ms. Shaw shall we find out what your dolphins have to say?”

  Alison nodded. “We’ll need to shut down the engines first.”

  Emerson looked at his first officer. “Give them a rest.”

  “Yes sir,” Harris responded and gradually reduced the engines, finally shutting them down. The ship slowly coasted to a stop.

  Lee sat down at the table and typed Hello Sally Hello Dirk and clicked the translate button.

  Hello Lee.

  Are you okay? Lee asked.

  Yes.

  Did you find the metal bubble?

  Yes. Very far. Follow us.

  Wait. Lee frowned at the captain. “I’m guessing you are not interested in going back.”

  “I think I’d rather chew broken glass,” Emerson scoffed.

  “I think we should-” Clay suddenly stopped and stared over Chris Ramirez’s shoulder. A person was watching them from outside the window. Alison and the others turned around as Clay took a step between them to get a better look when the person suddenly raised something up and pointed in their direction. “Get down!” Clay shouted and stepped in front of Alison.

  Alison grabbed Clay and peered around his shoulder. She instantly recognized the person in the window; it was the journalist she saw earlier with the dumb hat. The man was focused, not on them but on Lee Kenwood’s monitor screen. When he realized the others were looking at him, he quickly put the object down and darted away.