Thermals Page 9

  “Jacob…” He started to say, trying to puzzle it out, but was cut off.

  “Amir has told me to do you a great favor, Kamir.” Jacob said, smiling for the first time since Kamir had met the man. “And so I am here to do so.”

  The smile sent another chill down Kamir’s spine as the huge man that was Mr. Jacob stepped forward, then patted him surprisingly gently on the shoulder.

  “Go with God, Kamir.” Jacob smiled again, showing teeth this time.

  Kamir had time to look confused before Jacob jerked his hand down, yanking the chord attached to the harness Kamir now wore. He looked down at the familiar harness, then up in shock at Mr. Jacob as the memory plastic surged from its compressed state and began to flutter open in the wind.

  “No…” He had time to say, more of a shocked whisper than anything else, and then the air foil snapped open and jerked him off his feet.

  The foil followed the wind current, snapping Kamir off the ground in an instant, yanking him up the tower as he struggled with the snaps to his harness, his scream of terror echoing for a few moments as he went up the thermal chimney, right into the blades of the power turbines that began two hundred meters above.

  *****

  “Nothing,” Gwendolyn said as she and Anselm watched the deputies carry equipment out of the disaster zone that was Mr. Kamir’s home.

  She’d contacted all the people she knew who kept in contact with the Thermies, knowing that asking around herself would do little good. She had some friends in the community, but as a whole the thermies saw her as a cop and wouldn’t talk. Those that would, didn’t know anything about Kamir.

  “Alright. Call it a night,” Anselm told her. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I still want to see that box you say you found out in the desert.”

  She nodded, not bothering to correct him on who had found it.

  “Alright. Good Night Agent Gunnar.”

  “Good Night, Inspector Dougal.”

  *****

  Anselm had set his wakeup call for ten am, though he woke a half hour earlier as the lights in his room slowly brightened in a simulation of the rising sun. He lay there for a few minutes, just trying to relax and wake up slowly, but it was of little use. He was awake, and he had to get up and get moving.

  He rose quickly, stretching to work out the sleep in his body, then grabbed a shower. When that was done he palmed the swipe card Inspector Dougal had given him and walked over to the room’s phone and passed the card over the receiver strip.

  “Inspector Dougal…Oh, hello Anselm.” The red head greeted him, her eyebrows twitching in amusement as she looked out of the screen at him.

  Anselm looked down and realized that he’d only thrown on his pants and was still damp from the waist up. “Just got out of the shower.”

  “I can see that.” She smiled, looking away for a moment. “My chief tells me that we’ve been formally instructed to show you all possible cooperation…spirit of international brotherhood and all that.”

  Anselm snorted lightly, but nodded. “Tell him I appreciate it. Are you at the office?”

  “That’s right,” She nodded. “I woke up and took my shower hours ago.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He smiled, “I’m going to grab something to eat, then I’ll take a Mag-Lev in to see you.”

  “I’ll be here,” she told him, shrugging with a painful look on her face. “I’m filling out paperwork on the Eliica.”

  “Ouch,” Anselm winced in sympathy, and then smiled at her. “Better you than me, Gwen.”

  She scowled at him and reached for the disconnect button, “Don’t forget to dress before you go out.”

  Anselm was about to retort, but the connection went black, so he just chuckled and shook his head.

  Alright, He decided, first breakfast, then work.

  *****

  An hour later Anselm walked into a station house that was considerably different than the one he saw the day before. There were three other inspectors gathered in the main room, chatting back and forth over something or other while three of the part-time deputies that Anselm had met the day before, lugged stuff back toward the evidence room.

  “That the stuff from the raid last night?” He asked, walking up casually.

  One of the inspectors looked over at him, frowning. “We know you, mate?”

  “Anselm Gunnar,” he said, flipping open his identification. “Interpol.”

  “Oh, hell. You’re the guy that’s got everyone buzzing round here then!” The man said in surprise.

  “Well I don’t know how much to blame for it I am,” he said with a smile. “But things do seem to be turning since I got here. I guess that’s not how it normally goes, huh?”

  “Not hardly,” the man shook his head, then blinked. “Oh hell, I’m Angus Keller. This here is Montgomery Koons and the short black guy there is Pete.”

  “Pete? That’s it?”

  The remarkably black man smiled and for a moment, Anselm had the foolish image of being blinded by the flash of white enamel. “Don’t need nothing more, mate. Pete’s who I am.”

  “I can…uh…see that,” Anselm said, then gestured to the evidence room. “Was that the stuff from last night?”

  “Too bloody right. We got our tech out of bed this morning to mirror it for ya,” Angus said. “And I hope that you’re properly grateful, cause that boy, he don’t like being woken up before noon.”

  “He’s a bloody vampire, I’m telling you,” Pete grinned.

  “You’re daft,” Montgomery grinned in response. “No vampire would hide out in a solar power plant.”

  The men chuckled, but Anselm only smiled. “Look, I’ve got to go check in with Gwen.”

  “Gwen is it?” they grinned, all of them. “Took us four months to be allowed to call her that. Inspector Dougal likes her title.”

  Anselm just smiled and shrugged as he headed for the office.

  “Seems like an okay guy,” Angus shrugged.

  “He’s bringing lots of trouble with him, boys. Trust me,” Pete replied.

  “Don’t you start that Aborigine voodoo, Petey boy,” Montgomery smirked. “Ain’t none of us here can’t see that.”

  *****

  A pair of soft knocks at the door brought Gwendolyn Dougal out of her focused fugue, and she smiled as she recognized Anselm at the door.

  “Come on in,” she said, motioning to the chair that was propped up against her desk. “I’m just checking out this box from the crash.”

  Anselm slid into the chair and rolled it across the floor until he could look over to see what she was looking at. “You figure it out?”

  Gwen nodded, “Yeah…it looks like it’s a pretty standard weather package.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s a sensor package,” She explained, “They throw them up all the time, usually tied to big balloons. It reads the airflow and currents, temperatures, things like that. Meteorologists use them to predict the weather.”

  Anselm frowned, “Are you sure this came down with Ron?”

  She shook her head, “No…though it would be quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”

  He had to agree, “Yeah…I guess.”

  “Besides, we found six more of them in Kamir’s home last night.”

  Anselm let out a long, low, whistle as he frowned and shook his head. “What the hell is going on? Kamir doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who would be interested in meteorology.”

  Gwen snorted, chuffing slightly in laughter, “probably not, but you never know. He is a thermie.”

  “Huh?”

  “The thermies are big into weather systems,” she told him. “They follow the weather networks religiously, and most of them run their own local weather stations.”

  “Alright…I guess I get that makes sense…” Anselm grudgingly allowed, “But still…this is a little extreme…isn’t it?”

  “Like using a twelve pound sledge to put in a finishing nail.” Gwen confirmed, nodding.

 
; “Alright, so what have we got?” Anselm asked, shaking his head. “A nuclear terrorist…maybe connected with a small time thrill seeker turned murderer, who appears to have an extremely odd fascination with weather patterns.”

  “Specifically the Jetstream,” Gwen said, frowning. “He seems to have geared this little box specifically to record wind data and other things from that.”

  “Alright, the Jet stream…” Anselm blinked, then lifted his hands in supplication, “I’ll bite…what the hell is the jet stream? I mean, I know of it, I kinda think I know what it is…but…what is it?”

  Gwen laughed, “The Jetstream is a wind current that runs west to east, between ten and twenty kilometers up. Wind speed reaches speeds in excess of four hundred kilometers per hour. It’s a major cause of many weather systems around the world.”

  “Alright…so it circumnavigates the planet?”

  “More or less, yeah,” Gwen said. “I did some research when the first Thermie caught a ride in it…Got curious. It snakes around a bit, branches off sometimes, joins back up other times. There are actually four major Jetstream currents…Two in each hemisphere.”

  Anselm nodded, frowning. “Ok…Here’s a stretch, what about a dirty bomb?”

  “What?”

  “Abdallah was trying that in the States, a few years back, but the Americans tracked him down with overhead radiation sweeps…What if he started pumping radiation up the tower?” Anselm asked, “Would it ride the Jetstream across the pacific?”

  Gwen stared at him in a dazed kind of shock, slowly shaking her head, “You just blew way past my research…I don’t know. Could radiation travel like that? On the thermal pillar I mean?”

  Anselm shrugged, “Don’t see why not. Oh, he couldn’t send actual radiation…that’s energy after all, but radioactive particles…Sure, why not? There are bound to be some particles light enough to use…Make the jet stream rain it down on the States?”

  “No,” Gwen held up her hand. “No, that wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Wrong hemisphere,” Gwen told him simply. “If it worked, he’d irradiate South America…and maybe Africa…The Jetstream doesn’t climb that high. If the tower were in China or India maybe…That’s if your idea works, and I don’t know for sure that it would. Would Abdallah want to irradiate South America?”

  “He doesn’t like the Americans much, but I think it’s mostly the States,” Anselm said dryly, shaking his head.

  “Then I doubt that he’s trying that.”

  Anselm frowned, shaking his head. “Well he’s up to something.”

  Gwen didn’t know what to say to that, but was prevented from saying anything when Inspector ‘Pete’ rushed in.

  “Christ, Gwen! What is this guy you picked up yesterday? Some kind of bad luck charm!?”

  Gwen frowned, “What are you talking about, Pete?”

  “We just found Kamir,” Pete said, shaking his head. “He’s had an ‘accident’.”

  *****

  “I’m going to be sick,” Gwen groaned, turning away from the mess that was all around them.

  Anselm sympathized, but his own stomach had long ago reached the point where he could manage almost anything the darker side of humanity could throw at him. He had to admit that this was pretty bad, though. The blood mist had coated a section of the tower interior, and the pools of blood on the floor were already beginning to stink up the area, despite the constant wind.

  “Can we stop this damn wind!?” Anselm growled, turning around.

  “It doesn’t work like that.” A man in a white coat said, coming up to him.

  “And who are you, Sir?”

  “Director Jacob.” The large man said evenly. “I’m in charge of the Tower Project.”

  “Alright, what doesn’t work like that?”

  “The tower,” Jacob told him. “It doesn’t just ‘shut down’. The entire process is fueled by the sun, and we can’t just shut that off, because you want it to happen. Besides, even if we did, it would take several days for the airflow to stop.”

  Anselm looked around in irritation, “this wind is screwing up the scene.”

  “That is out of our hands, I’m afraid, Inspector,” Jacob said.

  “Agent,” Anselm corrected, flashing his ID. “Agent Gunnar, Interpol. Does anyone know what happened here?”

  Jacob snorted, “Obviously one of those foolish ‘Thermies’ decided to try and ride the tower from the ‘ground floor’.”

  Anselm looked at him as if he were insane, but Gwen broke in, nodding.

  “It’s possible, Anselm,” she said, still a little green. “They talk about it a lot…joking mostly…”

  She looked around, covering her mouth. “I don’t think anyone will be joking about it anymore.”

  Anselm shook his head, he really didn’t like coincidences.

  “Hey!” He snapped, pointing to one of the green-faced deputies, “Don’t be sick in here! Go outside!”

  He shook his head, growling. “Where’s his rig?”

  “What?” Gwen asked.

  “The air-foil? Where is it?” Anselm asked, gesturing around the immense inner chamber of the tower.

  “I expect,” Jacob said dryly, “that his ‘rig’, as you call it, made it.”

  Anselm looked up, way up, and frowned. “Or it’s still hung up on one of your turbines up there.”

  “Sir…ah…” One of them held up a hand.

  “Yes? What?”

  “Do you want all the body parts in the same bag?” The man asked helplessly, “Cause we’ll need to call for some more if you want them separate…”

  *****

  Anselm Gunnar wiped the moisture from his forehead as the last bits of the body were finally transported out of the central base of the tower. The warm air that was constantly rushing past him didn’t do anything at all to cool him off, and the moist muggy feel of it just seemed to sap his energy.

  “I wish I knew what was going on around here,” he said after a moment, glancing to one side as Inspector Dougal appeared at his side.

  “You?” She snorted. “This is my town, Interpol. Yesterday I saw the first attempted murder ever committed here, and today…today I’m pretty sure I saw the first successful one.”

  “Abdallah has to be here. Something is going on,” Anselm said grimly. “I don’t know what yet, but something.”

  “I’m not going to argue, Anselm,” she said after a moment, sighing. “But I don’t know what to do about it right now either.”

  “You have a team processing the scene?”

  She nodded, “The chief assigned it to Inspector Koons. He’s a good man. Thorough.”

  Anselm nodded, “Alright. We’ll wait for his report…You think we can find the airfoil?”

  She shrugged, shaking her head uncertainly. “I’ll put out a word with the Thermies and the local off road club. We’ve got a couple game wardens who track through the desert a lot too, so if it came down around here we might have a shot at finding it.”

  Anselm nodded, “See if you can’t get Koons to send someone up the tower too…They have to service the turbines, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Try to get someone to check them, we might have got lucky and had it snag on one.”

  Gwen nodded, “Alright. I’ll pass the word.”

  Anselm sighed, “Meanwhile I have a report to make. I’ll see you back at the station, ok?”

  Gwen nodded, “Alright.”

  She frowned after him as he walked off, then abruptly shook herself and turned to find Inspector Koons.

  *****

  “Agent Gunnar.”

  Anselm nodded at the face on the semi-circular screen of his portable. “Madam Director.”

  He had managed to secure an empty Mag-Lev car and was riding it back toward his hotel, but he’d place the call on the move just in case someone had planted a device in his room. It wasn’t likely, but it had happened to him before and Anselm despised making
the same mistake twice.

  “Have you located the target?” The Director of Interpol asked him sternly, her face pinched as she seemed tired.

  “Not yet, Ma’am.” Anselm replied, “We have a second confirmed photograph…”

  “I saw it. It was taken before Inspector Somer’s photograph.”

  He nodded.

  “So you don’t know if he’s still there.”

  “He’s here, Ma’am.” Gunnar said confidently. “I may not be able to prove it, but I know it. Abdallah is here.”

  “Be that as it may, I can’t authorize a full scale operation without sufficient evidence,” she reminded him. “The Australian government would hardly thank us for sending fifty agents and inspectors, as well as a Special Tactical Response Team into the country’s most famous landmark, and I can’t get them to sign off on the joint operation without evidence.”

  “I know Ma’am,” Anselm nodded grudgingly. “I’ll just have to find it for you.”

  “Indeed you will, Agent Gunnar,” she told him, “and soon.”

  He nodded, face a little grim, but determined.

  “One thing,” she said then, causing Anselm to look up sharply.

  “What?”

  “The American CIA may be aware of our operation now,” she told him. “As you know, they’ve been after Abdallah slightly longer then we have.”

  Anselm grimaced, “Do you know for sure?”

  “I’m afraid not. They haven’t been forthcoming with the status of their current operations. Not even those we already know about,” she said, shaking her head. “As you’re aware, when our cases cross paths with theirs, we normally wind up in a right serious piece of trouble.”

  Anselm grimaced as he nodded. He knew that, painfully so. The CIA had their own bureaucracy and set way of doing things and, as an intelligence directorate rather than a police one, they tended to hold secrecy above all else.

  He supposed that it was impossible to hold it against them exactly, it was undoubtedly a survival trait in the majority of their affairs.

  When they started doing police work, however, they got entirely too fancy and meddlesome for Anselm’s liking. Police work, worked best when everyone involved communicated regularly and well. Certainly that was an ideal that didn’t always happen, even under the best of circumstances, but it was the goal. When you mixed in a bunch of professional paranoiacs into the equation, everything went to hell in short order.