Ice Hunt Page 14

  Bennie straightened, drew one last drag on his cigar, then dropped and stubbed it into the snow. “Jen, I know what you think of Matt.”

  “Bennie…” Warning entered her tone.

  “Hear me out. I know how much you lost…both of you.” He took off his oil-stained cap and swiped his thinning hair. “But you gotta remember. You’re both young. Another child could—”

  “Don’t.” The single word was a bark, a knee-jerk reaction. As soon as she said it, she remembered Matt cutting her off just as abruptly. But she could not hold back her anger. How dare Bennie presume to know how it felt to lose a child? To think another child could replace a lost one!

  Bennie stared at her, one eye squinted, judging her. When he spoke next, it was in a calm, measured voice. “Jen, we lost a child, too…a baby girl.”

  The simple statement stunned her. Her anger blew out like a snuffed candle. “My God, Bennie, when?”

  “A year ago…miscarriage.” He stared out into the dark snowy plains. In the distance the few lights of the seaside village flickered. A heavy sigh escaped him. “It nearly crushed Belinda.”

  Jenny saw it had done the same to the man in front of her.

  He cleared his throat. “Afterward we found out she would never be able to bear a child. Something to do with scarring. Docs said it was secondary to—” His voice cracked. He shook his head. “Let’s just say, it was secondary to complications from her old job.”

  “Bennie, I’m so sorry.”

  He waved away her sympathy. “We move on. That’s life.”

  Through the window, Jenny watched Belinda laughing as she refilled Matt’s coffee. Not a sound was heard but the whistle of wind across the tundra.

  “But you and Matt,” Bennie resumed, “you’re both young.”

  She heard his unspoken words: You two could still have another child.

  “You were good together,” he continued, kicking snow off his boots. “It’s high time one of you remembered that.”

  She stared through the window. Her words were a whisper, more to her own heart than to her companion. “I do remember.”

  She had met Matt during an investigation of poaching in the Brooks Range. A conflict had arisen between native rights and the federal government over hunting for food in parklands. He had been there representing the state, but after learning of the subsistence level of existence of the local tribes, he became one of their most vocal advocates. Jenny had been impressed by his ability to look beyond the law and see the people involved, a rarity among government types.

  While working together to settle the matter and make new law, the two had grown closer. At first, they simply sought work-related reasons to get together. Then, after running out of fabricated excuses, they simply started dating. And within a year, they were married. It took a while for her family to accept a white man into their fold, but Matt’s charm, easygoing nature, and dogged patience won them over. Even her father.

  Benny cleared his throat. “Then it’s not too late, Jen.”

  She watched a moment longer, then turned from the window. “Sometimes it is. Some things can’t be forgiven.”

  Bennie met her gaze, standing in front of her. “It was an accident, Jen. Somewhere in there you know that.”

  Her anger, never far from the surface, flared again. She clenched her fingers. “He was drinking.”

  “But he wasn’t drunk, was he?”

  “What the hell does that matter! Even a single drop of alcohol…” She began to shake. “He was supposed to be watching Tyler. Not drinking! If he hadn’t been—”

  Bennie cut her off. “Jen, I know what you think of alcohol. Hell, I worked with you long enough in Fairbanks. I know what it’s done to your people…to your father.”

  His words were like a punch to the belly. “You’re crossing the line, Bennie.”

  “Someone has to. I was there when your father was hauled in, goddamn it! I know! Your mother died in a car accident because your father was drunk.”

  She turned away, but she couldn’t escape his words. She had been only sixteen at the time. Epidemic alcoholism was the coined term. It was devastating the Inuit, a curse winding its way down the generations, killing and maiming along the way—through violence, suicides, drownings, spousal abuse, birth defects, and fetal alcohol syndrome. As a native sheriff, she had seen entire villages emptied from no other cause than alcohol. And her own family had not escaped.

  First her mother, then her son.

  “Your father spent a year in jail,” Bennie continued. “He went to AA. He’s been on the wagon and found peace by returning to the old ways.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I…I can’t forgive him.”

  “Who?” His voice sharpened. “Matt or your father?”

  Jenny swung around, fists clenched, ready to swing at him.

  Bennie kept his position before the door. “Whether Matt had been stone-cold sober or not, Tyler would still be dead.”

  The bluntness of his words tore at the thick scarring that had formed in her own body. It wasn’t just around her heart, but strung in tight cords through her belly, in her neck, down her legs. The scarring was all that allowed her to survive. It was what the body did when it couldn’t heal completely. It scarred. Tears arose from the pain.

  Bennie stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. She sagged in his grip. She wanted to dismiss Bennie’s words, to lash out, but in her heart, she knew better. Had she ever forgiven her father? How much of that anger had become a part of who she was? She had entered law enforcement in an attempt to find some order in the tragedies and vagaries of life, finding solace in rules, regulations, and procedures, where punishment was meted out in blocks of time—one, five, or ten years—where time could be served and sins forgiven. But matters of the heart were not so easily quantified.

  “It’s not too late,” Bennie repeated in her ear.

  She mumbled her answer to his chest, repeating her earlier words. “Sometimes it is.” And in her heart, she knew this to be true. Whatever she and Matt had once shared was shattered beyond repair.

  The door swung open again, bringing with it the warmth of the diner, the smells of frying oil, and a bit of bright laughter. Matt stood at the threshold. “You two really should get a room.”

  Jenny pulled out of the embrace and ran a hand through her hair. She hoped the tears were gone from her cheeks. “The plane’s all refueled. We can head out as soon as we’re done eating.”

  “And where again were you all going?” Bennie asked, clearing his throat.

  Matt scowled at him. For everyone’s sake, they had decided it best to keep their destination a secret. “Good try, Bennie.”

  The man shrugged. “Okay, can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “Actually I can,” Matt said, swinging around. “Hey, Belinda, did you know your husband was making out with my ex-wife on the porch?”

  “Tell Jenny she can keep him!”

  Matt turned back and gave them a thumbs-up. “You two kids are in the clear.” He closed the door on them. “Have fun!”

  Standing in the dark, Jenny shook her head. “And you want me to make up with him?”

  Bennie shrugged again. “I’m just a mechanic. What the hell do I know?”

  11:56 P.M.

  ABOARD THE DRAKON

  Admiral Viktor Petkov watched through the video monitors in the control station. The solid plane of ice spread in a black blanket overhead, lit from below by the Drakon’s exterior lights. The four thermal-suited divers had spent the last half hour securing a titanium sphere in place. The procedure involved screwing meter-long anchoring bolts into the underside of the ice cap, then positioning the device’s clamps to the bolts so the titanium sphere hung below the ice.

  It was the last of five identical devices. Each titanium sphere was positioned a hundred kilometers from the ice island, encircling the lost Russian ice station, marking the points of a star. The sites of insertion were pinpointed to exact coordinates. All that
remained was to establish the master trigger. It had to be positioned in the exact center of the star.

  Viktor gazed past the divers to the dark waters beyond. He pictured the huge ice island and the station inside it. He couldn’t have asked for a better place to trigger the device.

  Moscow had ordered him to retrieve his father’s work and lay waste to all behind it. But Viktor had larger plans.

  Out in the water, one of the divers thumbed the pressure button on the bottom of the device and a line of blue lights flared along the equator of the sphere, drawing Viktor’s attention. The last of the five devices was now activated. In the soft blue glow, the Cyrillic lettering could be seen clearly across the sphere’s surface, marking the initials for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.

  “And these are just scientific sensors?” Captain Mikovsky asked, standing at the admiral’s side. The doubt was plain in his voice.

  Viktor answered softly. “The latest in bathymetry technology, designed to measure sea-level changes, currents, salinity, and ice densities.”

  The Drakon’s captain shook his head. He was no naive recruit. Upon leaving the docks of the Severomorsk Naval Complex, Mikovsky had been given their mission parameters: to escort the admiral on a diplomatic mission out to the site of a lost Russian ice station. But the captain had to know that more was planned. He had seen the equipment and weapons brought aboard back at Severomorsk. And he surely knew of the coded message from FSB, if not the content.

  “These underwater devices have no military application?” Mikovsky pressed. “Like listening in on the Americans?”

  Viktor simply glanced over and shrugged. He allowed the captain to misread his silence. It was sometimes best to allow someone’s suspicions to run to the most obvious conclusion.

  “Ah…” Mikovsky nodded, eyeing the sphere with more respect, believing he understood the intrigues here.

  Viktor turned his own attention back to the monitors. Over the years, the young captain might learn that there were deeper levels to the games played by those in power.

  A decade ago, Viktor had employed a handpicked team of scientists from AARI and began a covert project out of Severomorsk Naval Complex. Such a venture was not unique. Many polar research projects were run out of Severomorsk. But what was unusual about this particular project, titled Shockwave, was that it was under the direct supervision of then-captain Viktor Petkov. The researchers answered directly to him. And in the hinterlands of the northern coastlands, far from prying eyes, it was easy to bury one project among the many others. No one questioned this work, not even when the six researchers on the project had all died in an airplane crash. With their deaths two years ago, so had died Project Shockwave.

  Or so it appeared.

  No one but Viktor knew the research had already been completed. He stared out as the divers retreated from the sphere of titanium.

  It had all started with a simple research paper published in 1979, tying carbon dioxide to the gradual warming of the globe. Fears of melting polar ice caps created horrible scenarios of rising ocean levels and devastating worldwide flooding. Of course, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg was the central agency in Russia assigned to investigate such threats. It accumulated one of the world’s largest databases on global ice. It was eventually discerned that while the melting of the ice found atop Greenland and the continent of Antarctica could potentially raise the world’s oceans by a dramatic two hundred feet, the northern polar ice cap did not pose such a risk. Since its ice was already floating atop an ocean, it displaced as much water as it would produce if it melted. Like cubes of ice in a full glass of water, the melt of the polar cap would not lead to a rise in ocean levels. It was simply no threat.

  But in 1989, one of the AARI researchers realized a greater danger posed if the polar ice cap should suddenly vanish from the top of the world. The ice cap, if gone, would no longer act as an insulator for the Arctic Ocean. Without its ability to reflect the sun’s energy, the ocean would evaporate more rapidly, pouring vast amounts of new water into the atmosphere, which would lead in turn to massive amounts of precipitation in the form of rain, snow, and sleet. The AARI report concluded that such a change in world climate would wreak havoc on weather systems and ocean currents, resulting in flooding, agricultural destruction, ecosystem disintegration, and worldwide environmental collapse. It would devastate countries and world economies.

  The hard truth of this prediction was seen in 1997 when a simple shift in currents in the Pacific Ocean, known as El Niño, occurred. According to UN agencies, the cost to the world was over $90 billion and led to the death of over fifty thousand people—and this was a single shift in currents over the course of one year. The loss of the northern polar ice cap would stretch over decades and reverberate over all oceans, not just the Pacific. It would be a disaster unlike any seen during mankind’s history.

  So, of course, such a report led to the investigation of any possible military applications. Could one destroy the polar ice cap? Studies quickly showed that the power needed to melt the vast ice sheet was beyond the grasp of even current nuclear technology. It seemed such a possibility would remain theoretical.

  But one of the scientists at AARI had come up with an intriguing theory. One didn’t need to melt the cap—only to destabilize it. If the cap were partially melted and the rest of the solid ice sheet shattered, a single Arctic summer could do the rest. With the cap turned into an Arctic slush pile, the sun’s energy would have greater access to a larger surface area of the Arctic Ocean, warming the waters around the fragmented ice, thus leading to the meltdown of the remaining ice pack. One didn’t need man-made nuclear energy to destroy the cap—not when the sun itself was available. If the polar ice cap could be shattered in the late spring, by the end of summer it would be gone.

  But how did one destabilize the ice cap? That answer came in 1998 when another scientist from AARI, studying the crystallization of ice in the Arctic ice pack and the relation of ocean currents to pressure ridge formation, came up with his theory of harmonics. That ice was like any other crystalline structure, especially under extreme pressure, and at the right pitch in vibration, its structure could be shattered like a crystal goblet.

  It was this study that became the basis for Project Shockwave: to artificially create the right set of harmonic waves and heat signatures to blast apart the polar ice cap.

  On the monitor, the titanium sphere glowed out in the dark waters as the sub’s exterior lights dimmed. Viktor checked his thick wrist monitor. The plasma screen depicted a five-pointed star. Each point glowed. In the center, the master trigger awaited deployment.

  It wouldn’t be long.

  Victor stared at the glowing points on the wrist monitor.

  The dead scientists had named this configuration the Polaris Array, after the Polyarnaya Zvezda, the North Star. But the nuclear-powered master trigger went by a more technical designation: a subsonic disrupter engine. When it was activated, its effect was twofold. First, it would act as a conventional weapon, blasting a crater a mile wide. But next, rather than sending out an EM pulse like a regular nuclear weapon, this engine would transmit a harmonic wave through the ice. The wave front would strike the five spheres simultaneously and trigger them to explode, propagating and amplifying the harmonics in all directions with enough energy and force to shatter the entire polar ice cap.

  Viktor cleaned a smudge off the screen of the monitor. Tucked away in the corner of the screen was a small red heart that flashed in sync with his pulse.

  Soon…

  For now, he would spend the rest of the night running diagnostics on the project, making sure all was in order.

  He had waited sixty years…he could wait another day.

  In fact, after the completion of Project Shockwave, he had held off implementing his plan for two years. He had found a certain peace of mind in simply having Polaris at his command. Now he believed it had been fate that held his hand. Ice Statio
n Grendel had been rediscovered, the very tomb of his father. Surely this was a sign. He would retrieve his father’s body, collect the prize buried within the heart of the station, and then detonate Polaris, changing the world forever.

  Viktor stared as the exterior lights of the Drakon were extinguished. The titanium sphere of Polaris glowed in the dark, becoming a true North Star in the Arctic night.

  There was a reason he had started Project Shockwave a decade ago, picked this particular project to exact his retribution. It was in the final words of the 1989 report, a cautionary warning. The scientist had predicted another danger posed by the destruction of the polar ice cap, more than just the short-term effect of flooding and climatic upheaval.

  There was a more ominous long-term threat.

  As the Arctic Ocean evaporated, its waters would pour over land-masses in the form of precipitation—in the northern lands, as snow and sleet. As the years marched on, this snow and sleet would turn into ice, building into huge glaciers, expanding those already present and forming new ones. Over the succeeding years, glaciers would spread and pile in vast sheets, driving south across all the northern lands.

  After fifty thousand years, a new ice age would begin!

  Viktor appreciated the symmetry as he stared at the glow of Polaris in the midnight waters of the Arctic.

  His father had died, frozen in ice—now so would the world.

  6

  Icebound

  APRIL 9, 5:43 A.M.

  AIRBORNE OVER THE POLAR ICE CAP

  From the Twin Otter’s copilot seat, Matt watched the sun climb over the top of the world. Light glanced achingly over the curve of ice, searing the back of his eyeballs. Jenny wore aviator sunglasses, but Matt simply stared at the beauty of dawn in the polar region. At this latitude, there were only another ten or so sunrises, then the cold orb would stay in the sky for four solid months. So, up here, one learned to appreciate each sunrise and sunset.