Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

benefits. They hadn’t questioned the eventual ramifications. The earth couldn’t support its current load of parasites. Natural resources were vanishing at an alarming rate. The giant oxygen-producing rainforests of the Amazon were being cut down and plowed under at a rate of twenty-thousand square miles per year, and predicted to be completely gone by 2050—with disastrous consequences to earth’s climate. With the water table shrinking by the month, and the ice packs melting, and dozens of species forced into extinction thanks to mankind’s unabated appetites, someone needed to step up and make the hard decisions.
    Eventually, when the aquifers went dry, and previously lush landscapes descended into arid deserts, and irrigation was no longer available, disease and starvation would step in again, and the human race would face a massive die-off. Only, by then it would be too late. The planet would be in its final death throes.
    None of these imminent threats could be fixed by energy for all. Indeed, the new energy paradigm would accelerate planet earth’s decay.
    People were simply too selfish and blind and disinclined to change their behavior. They were incapable of making hard choices and standing by them during difficult times. And governments were no better. Not when they had to answer to the lowest common denominator within their populations.
    Something had to be done on behalf of the planet, someone had to make the tough choices and cull the human population—but nobody was interested in stepping up and shouldering the thankless task.
    The New Ruling Order had been born of that realization. Born to make sure that earth survived and the human race prospered, albeit at massively reduced numbers and beneath benevolent guidance so the current crisis never happened again.
    The council would have moved on the new energy paradigm anyway, as soon as reports of it hit their table—just as the parents and grandparents of various council members had moved on similar projects during the past seventy years. Only this time, stifling the new technology wasn’t about conserving their share of the energy pie. It was about saving the planet.
    But then James Link had joined them and opened their eyes to an entirely new application for Embray’s pet project. One that offered a complete reboot of the planet, with minimal loss to vegetation, soil, or water. Embray, the idealistic fool, hadn’t seen the possibilities they’d offered him. The chance to mold the planet into a sustainable ecosystem.
    “What of Embray?” Coulson asked, as though he’d read Eric’s mind. “Has his condition deteriorated?” He frowned and ran the Gurkha Black that Link had passed to him beneath his beak of a nose. “It’s a shame we can’t accelerate his condition. It’s dangerous to have such a threat looming over our heads.”
    Link was quiet for a moment before offering a shrug. “He’s stable, at the moment, but the damage to his brain was extensive and permanent. He exists in a vegetative state, with no possibility of recovery.”
    Which served their purposes well.
    If Embray had survived the stroke with his mental faculties intact, Dynamic Solutions would have been beyond the council’s reach, and Embray would have taken the assembly’s proposal public. However, if he died, with no heirs or next of kin, the company would pass into the public’s keeping in accordance with the dictates of his will. Embray’s death would have severely limited James Link’s role in the company’s stewardship. Link would have been one of many executives with limited power. His usefulness would have been critically handicapped.
    The trick had been destroying the man’s mental faculties without killing him outright. It had been the only way to keep the company beneath their umbrella. If the CEO of Dynamic Solutions were incapacitated for any reason, the vice president of operations, in this case James Link, would step into the chief executive