Welcome to the Greenhouse (9 page)

Or so the theory went. The Arctic Council had agreed to this series of large-scale experiments, run by the USA since they had the in-flight refuelers that could spread the tiny molecules to form the SkyShield. Small-scale experiments—opposed, of course, by many enviros—had seemed to work. Now came the big push, trying to reverse the retreat of sea ice and warming of the tundra.

Anchorage lay slightly farther north than Oslo, Helsinki, and Stockholm, but not as far north as Reykjavik or Murmansk. Flights from Anchorage to Murmansk would let them refuel and reload hydrogen sulfide at each end, then follow their paths back over the pole. Deploying hydrogen sulfide along their flight paths at 45,000 feet, they would spread a protective layer to reflect summer sunlight. In a few months, the sulfuric droplets would ease down into the lower atmosphere, mix with moist clouds, and come down as rain or snow, a minute, undetectable addition to the acidity already added by industrial pollutants. Experiment over.

The total mass delivered was far less than that from volcanoes like Pinatubo, which had cooled the whole planet in 1991-92. But volcanoes do messy work, belching most of their vomit into the lower atmosphere. This was to be a designer volcano, a thin skin of aerosols skating high across the stratosphere.

It might stop the loss of the remaining sea ice, the habitat of the polar bear. Only ten percent of the vast original cooling sheets remained. Temperature increases were now so high that crops were failing in tropical regions and billions of people were threatened with starvation.

But many felt such geoengineered tinkerings would also slow cutbacks in carbon dioxide emissions. People loved convenience, their air-conditioning and winter heating and big lumbering cars. So fossil fuel reductions were still barely getting started. Humanity had already driven the air’s CO
₂
content to twice that before 1800, and with every developing country burning fossil fuels—oil and coal—as fast as they could extract them, only immediate, dire emergency could drive them to abstain. To do what was right.

The greatest threat to humanity arose not from terror, but error. Time to take the gloves off.

She put the binocs away and headed north. The city’s seacoast was mostly rimmed by treacherous mudflats, even after the sea kept rising. Still, there were coves and sandbars of great beauty. Elinor drove off Glenn Highway to the west, onto progressively smaller, rougher roads, working their way backcountry by Bureau of Land Management roads to a sagging, long-unused access gate for loggers. Bolt cutters made quick work of the lock securing its rusty chain closure. After she pulled through, Gene carefully replaced the chain and linked it with an equally rusty padlock, brought for this purpose. Not even a thorough check would show it had been opened, till the next time BLM tried to unlock it. They were now on Elmendorf, miles north of the airfield, far from the main base’s bustle and security precautions. Thousands of acres of mudflats, woods, lakes, and inlet shoreline lay almost untouched, used for military exercises and not much else. Nobody came here except for infrequent hardy bands of off-duty soldiers or pilots, hiking with maps red-marked UXO for “Unexploded Ordnance.” Lost live explosives, remnant of past field maneuvers, tended to discourage casual sightseers and trespassers, and the Inuit villagers wouldn’t be berry-picking till July and August. She consulted her satellite map, then took them on a side road, running up the coast. They passed above a cove of dark blue waters.

Beauty. Pure and serene.

The sea level rise had inundated many of the mudflats and islands, but a small rocky platform lay near shore, thick with trees. Driving by, she spotted a bald eagle perched at the top of a towering spruce tree. She had started birdwatching as a Girl Scout and they had time; she stopped.

She left the men in the Ford and took out her long-range binocs. The eagle was grooming its feathers and eyeing the fish rippling the waters offshore. Gulls wheeled and squawked, and she could see sea lions knifing through fleeing shoals of herring, transient dark islands breaking the sheen of waves. Crows joined in onshore, hopping on the rocks and pecking at the predators’ leftovers.

She inhaled the vibrant scent of ripe wet salty air, alive with what she had always loved more than any mere human. This might be the last time she would see such abundant, glowing life, and she sucked it in, trying to lodge it in her heart for times to come.

She was something of an eagle herself, she saw now, as she stood looking at the elegant predator. She kept to herself, loved the vibrant natural world around her, and lived by making others pay the price of their own foolishness. An eagle caught hapless fish. She struck down those who would do evil to the important world, the natural one.

Beyond politics and ideals, this was her reality.

Then she remembered what else she had stopped for. She took out the comm and pinged the call number.

A buzz, then a blurred woman’s voice. “Able Baker.”

“Confirmed. Get a GPS fix on us now. We’ll be here, same spot, for pickup in two to three hours. Assume two hours.”

Buzz buzz. “Got you fixed. Timing’s okay. Need a Zodiac?”

“Yes, definite, and we’ll be moving fast.”

“You bet. Out.”

Back in the cab, Bruckner said, “What was that for?

” “Making the pickup contact. It’s solid.” “Good. But I meant, what took so long.”

She eyed him levelly. “A moment spent with what we’re fighting for.”

Bruckner snorted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Elinor looked at Bruckner and wondered if he wanted to turn this into a spitting contest just before the shoot.

“Great place,” Gene said diplomatically.

That broke the tension and she started the Ford.

They rose further up the hills northeast of Anchorage, and at a small clearing, she pulled off to look over the landscape. To the east, mountains towered in lofty gray majesty, flanks thick with snow. They all got out and surveyed the terrain and sight angles toward Anchorage. The lowlands were already thick with summer grasses, and the winds sighed southward through the tall evergreens.

Gene said, “Boy, the warming’s brought a lot of growth.”

Bruckner was fidgeting, but said, “Sure, ‘cause nobody’ll stop burning fossil fuels. Unless we force them to.”

“Look there.” Elinor pointed, walking down to a pond.

They stopped at the edge, where bubbles popped on the scummy surface. “Damn,” Gene said. “The land’s warming, so—”

“Gas’s released,” Bruckner said. “Read about that. Coming out of the tundra and all.”

Bruckner knelt and popped open a cigarette lighter. He flicked it and blue flames flared above the water, pale flickers in the sunlight. “Better it turns into carbon dioxide than staying methane,” he said. “Worse greenhouse gas there is, methane.”

They watched the flames die out, and turned away.

Elinor glanced at her watch and pointed. “The KCs will come from that direction, into the wind. Let’s set up on that hillside.”

They worked around to a heavily wooded hillside with a commanding view toward Elmendorf Air Force Base. “This looks good,” Bruckner said, and Elinor agreed.

“Damn—a bear!” Gene cried.

They looked down into a narrow canyon with tall spruce. A large brown bear was wandering along a stream about a hundred meters away.

Elinor saw Bruckner haul out a.45 automatic. He cocked it.

When she looked back the bear was looking toward them. It turned and started up the hill with lumbering energy.

“Back to the car,” she said.

The bear broke into a lope.

Bruckner said, “Hell, I could just shoot it. This is a good place to see the takeoff and—”

“No. We move to the next hill.” Bruckner said, “I want—”

“Go!”

They ran.

One hill farther south, Elinor braced herself against a tree for stability and scanned the Elmendorf landing strips. The image wobbled as the air warmed across hills and marshes.

Lots of activity. Three KC-10 Extenders ready to go. One tanker was lined up on the center lane and the other two were moving into position.

“Hurry!” she called to Gene, who was checking the final setup menu and settings on the Dart launcher.

He carefully inserted the missile itself in the launcher. He checked, nodded and lifted it to Bruckner. They fitted the shoulder straps to Bruckner, secured it, and Gene turned on the full arming function. “Set!” he called.

Elinor saw a slight stirring of the center Extender and it began to accelerate. She checked: right on time, oh-nine-hundred hours. Hard-core military like Bruckner, who had been a Marine in the Middle East, called Air Force the “saluting Civil Service,” but they did hit their markers. The Extenders were not military now, just surplus, but flying giant tanks of sloshing liquid around the stratosphere demands tight standards.

“I make the range maybe twenty kilometers,” she said. “Let it pass over us, hit it close as it goes away.”

Bruckner grunted, hefted the launcher. Gene helped him hold it steady, taking some of the weight. Loaded, it weighed nearly fifty pounds. The Extender lifted off, with a hollow, distant roar that reached them a few seconds later, and Elinor could see media coverage was high. Two choppers paralleled the takeoff for footage, then got left behind.

The Extender was a full extension DC-10 airframe and it came nearly straight toward them, growling through the chilly air. She wondered if the chatty guy from the bar, Ted, was one of the pilots. Certainly, on a maiden flight the scientists who ran this experiment would be on board, monitoring performance. Very well.

“Let it get past us,” she called to Bruckner.

He took his head from the eyepiece to look at her.

“Huh? Why—”

“Do it. I’ll call the shot.” “

But I’m—”

“Do it.”

The airplane was rising slowly and flew by them a few kilometers away.

“Hold, hold…” she called. “Fire.”

Bruckner squeezed the trigger and the missile popped out—
whuff!—
seemed to pause, then lit. It roared away, startling in its speed—straight for the exhausts of the engines, then correcting its vectors, turning, and rushing for the main body. Darting.

It hit with a flash and the blast came rolling over them. A plume erupted from the airplane, dirty black.

“Bruckner! Resight—the second plane is taking off.”

She pointed. Gene had the second missile and he chunked it into the Dart tube. Bruckner swiveled with Gene’s help. The second Extender was moving much too fast, and far too heavy, to abort takeoff.

The first airplane was coming apart, rupturing. A dark cloud belched across the sky.

Elinor said clearly, calmly, “The Dart’s got a max range about right so…
shoot”

Bruckner let fly and the Dart rushed off into the sky, turned slightly as it sighted, accelerated so they could hardly follow it. The sky was full of noise.

“Drop the launcher!” she cried.

“What?” Bruckner said, eyes on the sky.

She yanked it off him. He backed away and she opened the gas can as the men watched the Dart slashing toward the airplane. She did not watch the sky as she doused the launcher and splashed gas on the surrounding brush.

“Got that lighter?” she asked Bruckner.

He could not take his eyes off the sky. She reached into his right pocket and took out the lighter. Shooters had to watch, she knew, and Bruckner did not seem to notice her hands.

She lit the gasoline and it went up with a
whump.

“Hey! Let’s go!” She dragged the men toward the car.

They saw the second hit as they ran for the Ford. The sound got buried in the thunder that rolled over them as the first Extender hit the ground kilometers away, across the inlet. The hard clap shook the air, made Gene trip then stagger forward.

She started the Ford and turned away from the thick column of smoke rising from the launcher. It might erase any fingerprints or DNA they’d left, but it had another purpose too.

She took the run back toward the coast at top speed. The men were excited, already reliving the experience, full of words. She said nothing, focused on the road that led them down to the shore. To the north, a spreading dark pall showed where the first plane went down.

One glance back at the hill told her the gasoline had served as a lure. A chopper was hammering toward the column of oily smoke, buying them some time.

The men were hooting with joy, telling each other how great it had been. She said nothing.

She was happy in a jangling way. Glad she’d gotten through without the friction with Bruckner coming to a point, too. Once she’d been dropped off, well up the inlet, she would hike around a bit, spend some time birdwatching with the binocs, exchange horrified words with anyone she met about that awful plane crash—No, I didn’t actually
see
it, did you?—and work her way back to the freighter after noon, slipping by Elmendorf in the chaos that would be at crescendo by then. Get some sleep, if she could.

They stopped above the inlet, leaving the Ford parked under the thickest cover they could find. She looked for the eagle, but didn’t see it. Frightened skyward by the bewildering explosions and noises, no doubt. They ran down the incline. She thumbed on her comm, got a crackle of talk, handed it to Bruckner. He barked their code phrase, got confirmation.

A Zodiac was cutting a V of white, homing in on the shore. The air rumbled with the distant beat and roar of choppers and jets, the search still concentrated around the airfield. She sniffed the rotten egg smell, already here from the first Extender. It would kill everything near the crash, but this far off should be safe, she thought, unless the wind shifted. The second Extender had gone down closer to Anchorage, so it would be worse there.

Elinor and the men hurried down toward the shore to meet the Zodiac. Bruckner and Gene emerged ahead of her as they pushed through a stand of evergreens, running hard. If they got out to the pickup craft, suitably disguised among the fishing boats, they might well get away.

But on the path down, a stocky Inuit man stood. Elinor stopped, dodged behind a tree.