Frozen Fire by Bill Evans, Marianna Jameson Read Free Book Online

primarily an extensive sensor array. And from what we’ve been able to determine, it does encircle the island from close to the sea surface to the seafloor,” she said, explaining as if she hadn’t just said the same thing seconds before.
    Another brief silence filled the room.
    “Lucy, Taino is a volcanic island on the edge of a Caribbean abyss. The water around that island is thousands of feet deep—” Katy Wirth began.
    Lucy refused to react to the patronizing tone. “Yes, Madam Secretary, you’re right. The island does sit at the edge of an abyss. The deepest part that’s been mapped sits at approximately four thousand feet.” She shifted her attention back to the president, who didn’t seem convinced. “This barrier is extraordinary in the extreme, sir. The arrays took years, perhaps a decade, to build and deploy, and the project was probably under development long before the U.S. became interested in what Dennis Cavendish was doing on his little island. For years after he bought that island and declared sovereignty, he was written off as another eccentric billionaire with some eco-issues. There have been enough of them.” She shrugged. “Even when he built a deepwater port and began bringing in people and equipment, our services took note of it but never bothered to do the math, so to speak.”
    “Why can’t we get in there? We’ve got people everywhere else on the planet. Why not there?” President Benson demanded.
    “Because his secretary of national security, Victoria Clark, is damned close to a genius when it comes to security, sir, if you’ll pardon my language. While we haven’t been able to penetrate the organization, we’ve been able to determine who he has working for him on the island and at his embassy here in Washington. We’ve collected background data on them and tried to piece it together with the satellite and environmental data we’ve collected to figure out what he’s up to. The personnel list of Cavendish’s Climate Research Institute reads like a Who’s Who of academic and industrial brain power. Marine architects, engineers from every discipline, informatics and computer geeks, physicists, hydrogeologists, marine biologists—you name it. Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Oxford. They’re from everywhere. It’s an international brain trust.” Lucy paused and looked the president straight in the eyes. “They’re also all single, and nearly everyone of them fits the clinical definition of having Asperger’s syndrome.”
    The president frowned at her. “What’s that?”
    Lucy let the faintest hint of a smile appear on her face. “Generally speaking, it’s a variation of autism that’s broadly characterized by low emotional involvement, poor social skills, rigid, repetitive behaviors, and a propensity to develop an intense, narrow focus on specific subjects. It’s a pretty good set of traits to have in a group of geniuses whom you want to work nonstop for a few years on a small island where there’s nothing much to do but work. Itpresents an extra challenge for us, though. We’ll eventually infiltrate Cavendish’s organization, but these individuals will be difficult to turn. What we consider social norms aren’t typically normal for them. They operate on different wavelengths, so to speak, and each person’s wavelength will be different from the next.”
    The silence in the room was only broken by the gradually louder noise of
Marine One
’s rotors slicing the air as it came to a rest on the lawn beyond the walls of the White House.
    “Okay, we’re done,” the president announced and stood up, causing everyone else in the room to get to their feet. “See you next week.”
    Lucy blinked as she watched the president walk through the doors and wondered if she was the only person in the room who thought what she’d just said was important.

 
     
     
     
 
CHAPTER
2
 
     
     
     
    8:00 A.M. , Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida
    Garner Blaylock watched Wendy walk