Ice Hunt Read online

  The hovercraft adjusted course under him. Flanking the lead bike, the other two craft matched the maneuver like a squadron of MiG fighters in formation. The trio raced toward the light.

  Details emerged through the blowing snow. A mountain range of ice, a black pool, square, man-made, and at the base of one peak, a shaft of light shone like a beacon in the storm.

  They rounded the polynya and swept toward the opening to the base. Engines throttled down. The three hovercraft lowered to their titanium skis, touching down again, skidding across the ice. They slid to a stop near the entrance, parking in the lee of a ridge to protect the vehicles from the worst of the storm.

  The driver hopped off while Viktor struggled with his harness’s buckle. Bound as he was in mittens, his dexterity was compromised, but even bare-knuckled, he would still have had difficulty. His hands shook. His eyes were fixed to the ragged shaft—blasted, hacked, and melted down to the tomb below. He had seen ancient burial sites ripped into like this by grave robbers in Egypt. That is what they all were—the Americans and the Russians—filthy grave robbers, fighting over bones and shiny artifacts.

  He stared, unblinking.

  I am the only one who belongs here.

  “Sir?” The driver offered to help, reaching toward his harness.

  Viktor snapped back to the moment, unbuckled on his own, and dismounted. On his feet now, he yanked off and pocketed the heated mittens. The cold immediately burned his exposed flesh, like Death’s handshake, welcoming him to his father’s crypt.

  He stalked past his men, heading toward the entrance. He found a lone guard inside the shaft. The fellow snapped out of his shivering hunch.

  “Admiral!” he said.

  Viktor recognized the man as one of the senior officers of the Drakon. What was he doing standing guard duty? He was instantly alert. “What’s wrong, Lieutenant?”

  The man fought his tongue. He seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “Sir, we’ve run into a couple of problems. One here, one back at Omega. Captain Mikovsky is awaiting your call on the UQC.”

  Viktor frowned, glancing back at the empty polynya. A black line, almost buried in the snow, trailed from the lake and disappeared down the shaft. It was a UQC line, an underwater telephone, a type of active sonar that transmitted voices instead of pings. Such communication spanned only short distances, so the Drakon had to still be patrolling the local waters.

  He waved the guard to proceed.

  The half-frozen party headed down the tunnels, slipping past the blasted ruin of a Sno-Cat near the door. The guard continued to speak rapidly. “The problem here, sir, is that a handful of military men and civilians have barricaded themselves on Level Four. We couldn’t get to them because of some strange beasts that attacked our men.”

  “Beasts?”

  “White-skinned. Massive. The size of bulls. I didn’t see them myself. The creatures disappeared back into the ice caves by the time reinforcements arrived. We lost one man, dragged away by one of the creatures. The hall is under guard now.”

  Viktor’s legs grew numb under him at the description. Before leaving, he had read his father’s secret reports in Moscow.

  Grendels…could it be them? Could a few still be alive?

  They were soon inside the main station. The black vulcanized line ended at a small radio unit. The radioman stood rapidly at the appearance of the admiral.

  “Sir! Captain Mikovsky is holding for—”

  “I heard.” He strode to the UQC phone, picked up the handset, and spoke into the receiver. “Admiral Petkov here.”

  “Admiral, I have an urgent report from our forces at Omega.” The words echoed hollowly, like someone was speaking through a long pipe, but it was clearly Captain Mikovsky. “I wanted you updated immediately.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “There’s been a security breach. A female prisoner and a U.S. seaman escaped the barracks internment and reached a small aircraft.”

  A fist tightened. How could this happen?

  “They escaped, sir. With the storm, we have no way of tracking them. Most likely they’re heading to the Alaskan coast to raise the alarm.”

  Fury built inside Viktor’s chest. Such a mistake should never have been allowed to happen. The mission called for no eyewitnesses to the war here. It had all been carefully timed. Under the cover of both blizzard and solar storm, the United States’ reconnaissance satellites would have been able to discern only vague infrared signatures at best. And while echoes of the prior battles would be recorded by patrolling subs and ships, without living eyewitnesses, there was a level of plausible deniability on the part of the Russian government. Even the U.S. research sub, the Polar Sentinel, had been allowed to leave unmolested with its evacuees. While the sub might have spotted the Drakon in these waters, they couldn’t visually verify what happened above the ice.

  Plausible deniability. It was the new catchphrase of modern battle.

  But now two prisoners had escaped, two eyewitnesses who could place him, a Russian admiral, on-site.

  Viktor forced himself to take a deep calming breath. He stanched his anger, snuffing it out. His initial reaction had been reflexive, purely military. Ultimately it didn’t matter. He placed a hand over the Polaris wrist monitor, reminding himself of the larger picture.

  Viktor found his calm center again. Besides, both governments had authorized this secret war, what was coyly termed in political circles as a skirmish. Such clandestine battles occurred regularly between foreign powers, including the United States. They were waged in hidden corners of the world: the waters off North Korea, the deserts of Iraq, the hinterlands of China, and more than once even here in the lonely wilds of the polar seas. The chains of command understood these skirmishes, but the details never reached the radar screens of the public at large.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  “Admiral,” Mikovsky continued, “what are your orders?”

  Viktor reviewed the current situation. It was unfortunate but salvageable—yet he could take no further chances. Omega and its prisoners were no longer an asset. The prize was plainly not over there. He kept his voice stoic and firm. “Captain, take the Drakon to Omega.”

  “Sir?”

  “Once there, draw back our men from the base and retreat.”

  “And Omega…the prisoners?”

  “Once our men are clear, ignite the buried charges. Melt the entire base into the ocean.”

  A long pause. It was a death sentence for those innocents left behind. The captain’s words returned faintly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Afterward, return here. Our mission is almost complete.” Viktor replaced the handset to its cradle. He turned to the men gathered around him. “Now to the other problem at hand.”

  1:55 P.M.

  ICE STATION GRENDEL

  Matt gaped, horrified, along with the others. A long curving hall stretched out from the main lab room. Lit by bare bulbs, the passage followed the outer wall of this level, circling and vanishing around the curve of this tier. Inset into the back wall every couple of feet were steel tanks standing on end, taller than Matt by a foot. Thick rubber hoses and twisted conduits ran along both floor and ceilings, connecting tank to tank. Though the fronts of the tanks were windowed in thick glass, the details inside remained murky because of the thick frost over the clear surface.

  But a dozen of the closest tanks had the frost recently scraped from them. The glow of the overhead bulbs shone plainly upon the sight inside. The interior of each tank was filled with solid ice, a perfect blue clarity.

  And like an insect trapped in amber, a shape was embedded in the heart of each tank. Naked. Human. Each face contorted in a rictus of agony. Palms pressed against the glass, fingers blue and clawing. Men. Women. Even children.

  Matt stared down the long tunnel. Tank after tank. How many were there? He turned his back on the macabre sight. He saw the shocked looks on the others’ faces.

  Two members of the group, though, looked
more embarrassed than horrified.

  He walked back to the main room and faced them: Lieutenant Bratt and Amanda Reynolds. “What is all this?” He waved an arm down the hall.

  Craig appeared at his side. Washburn and the civilian scientists gathered with him.

  “It’s what the Russians are trying to cover up,” Amanda said. “A secret lab dating back to World War Two. Used for human experimentation.”

  Matt studied the barred door. Greer and Pearlson stood guard there. For the moment, the Russians had given up on trying to get the door open. They were probably wary of the return of the grendels after chasing them back into the Crawl Space with gunfire. But that fear wouldn’t keep them out forever.

  “What were the bastards trying to do here?” Washburn asked, looking the most shaken, her stoic demeanor shattered.

  Amanda shook her head. “We don’t know. We locked down the lab as soon as we discovered what was hidden here.” She pointed to a glass cabinet that contained a neat row of journals, covering two shelves. “The answers are probably there. But they’re all coded in some strange script. We couldn’t read them.”

  Craig approached and cracked the door open. He leaned over, studying the bindings. “There are numbers here. Dates, it looks like. He ran a finger down the journals. “If I’m reading this right, from January 1933…to May 1945.” He pulled the last one out and flipped through it.

  “Twelve years,” Bratt said. “It’s hard to believe this operation ran for so long without anyone knowing.”

  Amanda answered, “Back then, communication up here was scant. Travel rare. It wouldn’t be hard to hide such a place.”

  “Or lose it when you wanted to,” Matt added. “What the hell happened here?”

  The biologist, Dr. Ogden, spoke from the hallway. He straightened from one tank. “I may have an idea.”

  Everyone turned to him.

  “What?” Bratt asked brusquely.

  “The grendels,” he said to the lieutenant commander. “You saw what happened. The specimens came to life after being frozen for centuries.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “That’s impossible.”

  Bratt turned to her. “No, ma’am. Dr. Ogden is right. I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

  Dr. Ogden continued: “Such a miraculous resurrection is not unheard of in the natural world. Certain turtles hibernate in frozen mud over an entire winter, then rise again with the spring thaw.”

  “But frozen solid?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes. Arctic wood frogs freeze as hard as stone during the winter. Their hearts don’t beat. When frozen, you can cut them in half, and they don’t bleed. All EEG activity ceases. In fact, there’s no cellular activity at all. For all intents and purposes, they’re dead. But come spring, they thaw, and within fifteen minutes, their hearts are beating, blood pumping, and they’re jumping around.”

  Matt nodded when Amanda glanced at him. “It’s true. I’ve read about those frogs.”

  “How can that be?” Amanda argued. “When a body freezes, ice expands in the cells and destroys them. Like frostbite. How do the frogs survive that?”

  “The answer is quite simple,” Ogden said.

  Amanda raised an eyebrow.

  “Sugar.”

  “What?”

  “Glucose specifically. There’s a Canadian researcher, Dr. Ken Storey, who has been studying Arctic wood frogs for the past decade. What he’s discovered is that when ice starts forming on a frog’s rubbery skin, its body starts filling each cell with sugary glucose. Increasing the osmalality of the cell to the point that life-killing ice can’t form inside it.”

  “But you said the frogs do freeze?”

  “Exactly, but it is only the water outside the cells that ices up. The glucose inside the cell acts as a cryoprotectant, a type of antifreeze, preserving the cell until thawed. Dr. Storey determined that this evolutionary process is governed by a set of twenty genes that convert glycogen to glucose. The trigger for what suddenly turns these specific genes on or off is still unknown, but a hormonal theory is most advocated, something released by the frog’s glandular skin. The odd thing, though, is that these twenty genes are found in all vertebrate species.”

  Amanda took a deep breath. “Including the Ambulocetus…the grendels.”

  He nodded. “Remember I told you that I would classify this new species as Ambulocetus natans arctos. An Arctic-adapted subspecies of the original amphibious whale. The gigantism, the depigmentation…are all common Arctic adaptations. So why not this one, too? If it made its home here—in a land ruled not by the sun, but by cycles of freezing and thawing—then its body might adapt to this rhythm, too.”

  Bratt added. “Besides, we saw it happen with the monsters. We know they can do this.”

  Ogden nodded and continued: “It’s a form of suspended animation. Can you imagine its potential uses? Even now university researchers are using the Arctic frogs as a model to attempt freezing human organs. This would be a boon to the world. Donated organs could be frozen and preserved until needed.”

  Matt’s gaze had returned to the line of tanks. “What about these folk? Do you think that’s what’s going on here? Some type of sick organ bank? A massive storage facility for spare parts?”

  Ogden turned to him. “Oh, no, I don’t think that at all.”

  Matt faced him. “Then what?”

  “I wager the Russians were attempting something grander here. Remember when I said the twenty genes that orchestrate the wood frog’s suspended animation are found in all vertebrate species. Well, that includes humans.”

  Matt’s eyes widened.

  “I believe that these people were guinea pigs in a suspended animation program. That the Russians were trying to instill the grendels’ ability to survive freezing into humans, seeking a means of practical suspended animation. They sought the Holy Grail of all sciences.” Ogden faced the questioning looks around him. “Immortality.”

  Matt swung to face the contorted, pained figures in the ice. “Are you saying that these people are still alive?”

  Before anyone could answer, a pounding sounded from the door, determined, stolid. Everyone went silent.

  A hard voice called out to them. “Open the door immediately…if we have to cut our way through, you will suffer for our troubles.”

  From the dead tone of the other’s voice, it was no idle threat.

  The wolf was at their door.

  2:04 P.M.

  AIRBORNE OVER THE POLAR CAP

  Jenny fought the gale pounding at her windshield. It blew steady, but sudden gusts and churning winds kept her fingers tight on her controls, eyes glued to her instruments. She had not even bothered to glance out the windshield for the past ten minutes. What was the use?

  Though she couldn’t see anything, she still wore her snow goggles. Even with the blizzard, the midday glare shot through the windshield. It made her want to close her eyes. How long had it been since she’d slept?

  She pushed these thoughts away and watched her airspeed. Too slow. The headwind was eating her speed. She tried to ignore the fuel gauge. The needle pointed to a large red E. A yellow warning light glowed. Empty. They were flying on fumes into a blizzard.

  “Are we sure about this?” Kowalski said. The seaman had given up trying to raise anyone on the radio.

  “I don’t see we have much other choice,” Jenny said. “We don’t have enough fuel to reach the coast. We’d be forced to land anyway. I’d rather land somewhere where we had some chance of living.”

  “How far out are we?” Tom asked from the backseat. Bane lay curled on the seat beside him, tail tucked around his body.

  “If the coordinates you gave me are correct, we’ve another ten miles.”

  Kowalski stared out the windshield. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

  Jenny ignored him. They had already debated it. It was their only choice. She struggled to eke out a bit more speed, taking every lull in the wind to surge ahead, lunging in spurts towar
d their goal. The controls had grown more sluggish as ice built on the wings and crusted on the windshield. They were slowly becoming a flying ice cube.

  They traveled in silence for another five minutes. Jenny barely breathed, waiting for the props to choke out as her greedy engines consumed the last of her fuel.

  “There!” Tom suddenly blurted, jamming an arm between Jenny and Kowalski. Bane lifted his head.

  Jenny tried to follow where the ensign pointed. “I don’t see—”

  “Ten degrees to starboard! Wait for the wind to let up!”

  Jenny concentrated on where he indicated. Then, as the snow eddied out in a wild twist, she spotted a light ahead, glowing up at them. “Are you sure that’s the place?”

  Tom nodded.

  “Ice Station Grendel,” Kowalski moaned.

  Jenny began her descent, studying her altimeter. Without fuel, they needed a place to land. They couldn’t go back to Omega and to touch down in the wasteland of the polar cap was certain death. There was only one other place that offered adequate shelter. The ice station.

  It was risky, but not totally foolhardy. The Russians would not be expecting them. If they could land out of direct sight, Tom Pomautuk knew the layout of the station well enough to possibly get them into one of the exterior ventilation shafts that brought fresh air down to the buried station. They could hole up there until the Russians left.

  And besides, their dwindling fuel situation left them little other choice.

  The Otter lurched as the portside engine coughed. The prop skipped a beat, fluttering. In a heartbeat, the Twin Otter became a Single Otter. Flying on one engine, Jenny fought to hold the plane even while dropping her flaps. She dove steeply. “Hold tight!”

  Kowalski had a death grip on both armrests. “I got that covered.”

  There was no sight line to the ice fields below. Jenny watched her altimeter wheel down. The winds continued to fight, grabbing the plane, trying to hold it aloft.

  Jenny bit her lower lip, concentrating. She tried to fix the position of the station’s beacon light, now gone again, in her mind’s eye. A map formed in her head, fed by data from her instruments and her own instinct.