Ice Hunt Read online

  Amanda pointed, leaning forward so she could be understood. “I need the sail to break, but not tear away. We still need to power the boat. To do that, you must chop through some of the ties, get the sail to flutter. Once it’s loosened, I’ll be able to work the ropes. At least, I hope.” She indicated which ties she wanted Jenny to ax.

  The first were easy. They were where the sail was secured to the boom. Jenny simply had to lie on her back and hack at them. As each rope was cut, the ties snapped away, popping from the tension. The sail shuddered, but held tight.

  The next were trickier. Jenny had to crawl up to her knees, then lean into the wind. With one hand clutched to the mast, she swung up with the ax and sliced ropes that secured the sail to the mast. She worked her way up the pole, holding her breath. One lash point exploded, whipping out, striking her cheek.

  She fell back, losing her grip on the mast. She headed overboard.

  But Craig caught her by the waistband, pulling her back to the mast.

  Jenny regained her grip. Blood trickled hotly down her chin.

  Rather than succumbing to fear, Jenny got angry. She pulled herself closer and hacked determinedly.

  “Careful!” Amanda yelled to her.

  The sail flapped as its conformation suddenly altered. The boom quaked.

  Amanda fought a rigged line. Suddenly the capstan spun loose, ropes lashed out. “Down!” she yelled.

  Jenny turned to obey, but it was too late. The boom sprang around in a deadly arc. She could not get out of its way in time. Instead of dropping, she leaped up.

  The boom missed her, but the loose sail slammed into her. She snatched an edge, grabbing what she could. Fingers found a few lash points near the mast to cling to as the boom carried her beyond the boat’s hull.

  Ice raced under her toes as she hung from the rigging.

  Then the sail caught the wind again and punched out at her, swelling full. She was torn from her perch, flying through the air. A scream blew from her lips.

  Then she hit—not the ice, but the boat.

  Amanda had expertly maneuvered the shell under Jenny, catching her as she fell.

  “Are you okay?” Craig asked.

  Jenny couldn’t speak, unsure of the answer anyway. She panted where she lay, knowing how close she had come to dying.

  “I’ve got control of the sail!” Amanda called to her. “I’m slowing us down.”

  Thank God.

  Jenny remained where she fell, but she sensed the boat decelerating. The winds didn’t seem as fierce, and the hiss of the runners gentled.

  She sighed with relief.

  Then a new noise intruded: a deep, sonorous whump-whump.

  Jenny rolled around and peered beyond the prow. From out of the low storm clouds, a white helicopter appeared. She spotted the American flag emblazoned on it.

  “The Delta Force team,” Craig said from across the way.

  Only now did Jenny allow tears to rise to her eyes.

  They had made it.

  Craig spoke into his throat mike. “Osprey, here. We’re safe. Heading to home base now. Someone put on a big pot of coffee for us.”

  6:04 P.M.

  ICE STATION GRENDEL

  Matt sat in a cell, groggy. He wore a set of dry Russian underway clothes: pants, a green hooded sweatshirt, and boots a size too large. He vaguely remembered putting them on. Still he shivered and tremored from the recent dunking in the Arctic Ocean. His wet clothes were piled in the corner of the guardroom outside the cell. Every piece and pocket had been thoroughly searched.

  One guard stood by the exit door. The pair of men who had stripped him, roughly searched him, and tossed the dry clothes to him had already left, vanishing with his identification papers. But before leaving, they had emptied his wallet and pocketed the soggy bills themselves. So much for their old Communist ideals.

  He stared over to the neighboring cells. Though he had been dazed when brought down here, he knew where he was. He had glimpsed the line of cells when fleeing from the Russians earlier. He was back on Level Four, in the containment cells that must have once housed the poor folk frozen in the tanks.

  Each cell was a cage of bars. The only solid wall was the one at the back of the cell. No privacy. No toilets. Just a rusted bucket in the corner. The only other furniture in the room was a steel cot. No mattress.

  He sat on the bed now, holding his head in his hands. The concussion of the grenade still throbbed behind his ears. His jaw ached from the strike of a rifle butt to his face. His nose still leaked blood. But he wasn’t sure if it was from the blast or the pistol whipping.

  “Are you all right?” his neighbor asked from the adjacent cell.

  He tried to remember the boy’s name. One of the biologists. He couldn’t think straight yet. “…mm fine,” he mumbled.

  Sharing the boy’s cell were the other two biologists: Dr. Ogden and the girl. He vaguely wondered where the other student was. Hadn’t there been a third? He groaned. What did it matter?

  “Pike,” a firmer voice said behind him. He twisted around.

  In the other cell, Washburn stood by the front bars. Her lower lip was split, her left eye swollen shut.

  “What happened to Commander Bratt?” she asked.

  He simply shook his head. His brain rattled inside. Nausea washed over him. He swallowed back bile.

  “Shit…” Washburn murmured.

  They were the only survivors.

  Ogden stepped to the bars that separated their two cells. “Mr. Pike…Matt…there’s something you should know. Your wife…”

  Frowning, Matt’s head sprang up. “What…what about her?”

  “She was with us,” Ogden said. “I saw her, that CIA guy, and Dr. Reynolds fleeing in a boat.”

  Matt heard the bitterness in the other’s voice, but he could not comprehend what the biologist was saying. There were too many things that made no sense. He recalled seeing the ice racer chased by two hover-cycles. “Jenny…”

  Ogden told him his story.

  Matt did not want to believe the man, but he remembered Bane’s sudden appearance…and end. His fingers crept over his face both to hide his grief and hold it back. Jenny…she had been so close. What had happened to her?

  Ogden continued, his voice dropping to a whisper, “I speak some Russian. I overheard what the guards were saying when they were searching us. They’re looking for some books. Books that the CIA guy took with him.”

  “I heard the same,” Washburn said, edging closer, keeping her words low.

  Matt frowned. “What CIA guy?”

  One of the students answered. Matt finally remembered his name. Zane. The boy mumbled, “He said his name was Craig Teague.”

  Stunned, Matt felt a surge of heat flow through him. He blustered for a moment, trying to find his tongue. “Craig…Teague is CIA?”

  Ogden nodded. “Sent here to secure the Russian data on suspended animation and escape.”

  Matt thought back on all his dealings with the supposed reporter. All along, he had sensed some deeper strength in the man, some hidden well of resourcefulness that would shine through occasionally. But he had never even suspected…

  Matt clenched a fist. He had saved the jackass’s life and this is how he repaid him. “Goddamn bastard…”

  “What do we do now?” Washburn asked.

  Matt had a hard time concentrating, balanced between fury and fear for Jenny.

  “Why are they keeping us here?” Washburn continued.

  Before anyone could answer, the guardroom door swung open. It was the pair of guards who had left with their identification papers. They pointed and spoke to the lone armed guard. The group approached Matt’s cell. “You come with us,” one said in halting English.

  The guard keyed open the lock and pulled the door wide. The other two bore pistols in their hands. Matt judged what it would take to make a grab for one of the weapons. He stood. His legs wobbled under him. He almost fell. So much for a full frontal attack.
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  He was waved out at the point of a pistol.

  I guess this answers Washburn’s question. They were going to be interrogated. And after that? Matt eyed the pistol. The prisoners’ usefulness would surely be at an end. They had seen too much. There was no way they would be allowed to live.

  Flanked by the two guards, Matt was led deeper into the heart of Level Four. Rather than going out to the encircling hall with their dreaded tanks, Matt was led to an inner hall. The passage ended at a solitary room.

  He was waved inside.

  Matt stepped through the door into a small office, exquisitely appointed in mahogany furniture: wide desk, open shelves, cabinets. There was even a thick bearskin rug on the floor. Polar bear. Its head still attached.

  The first sight that drew his eye was of a small boy, dressed in a baggy shirt. It fit him like a full-length robe. He knelt on the rug and was petting the polar bear’s head, whispering in its ear.

  The boy glanced up to him.

  Matt gasped and tripped on the edge of the rug, going down on one knee. He could not mistake that face.

  One of the guards barked at him in Russian, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck.

  Matt was too stunned to respond.

  A new voice spoke, cold and commanding. Matt raised his eyes, focusing on the room’s other occupant. He stood up from the leather chair he had been sitting on and waved the guard away.

  The man was tall, six-foot-five, broad of shoulder, wearing a black uniform. But his most striking features were his pale white hair and storm-gray eyes. Those eyes pierced through him now.

  “Please take a seat,” the man said in perfect English.

  Matt found himself rising, obeying reflexively. But once up, he refused to sit. He knew who stood behind the desk. The leader of the Russian forces.

  The door to the office clicked shut behind him, but one guard remained in the room. Matt also spotted the pistol holstered at the leader’s hip.

  Hard gray eyes stared back at him. “My name is Admiral Viktor Petkov. And you are?”

  Matt spotted his wallet resting atop the desk. There was no reason to lie. It would get him nowhere. “Matthew Pike.”

  “Fish and Game?” This was spoken with thick doubt.

  Matt kept his voice firm. “That’s what my papers say, don’t they?”

  One eye twitched. Clearly the Russian admiral was not someone who was faced with insolence very often. His voice steeled. “Mr. Pike, we can do this civilly or—”

  “What do you want?” He was too tired to play the cordial adversary. He was no James Bond.

  The admiral’s pale face colored, his lips thinning.

  Before anything more could be said, the child rose from his seat on the rug and wandered over to the older man. The admiral’s eyes tracked the Inuit lad. The boy touched his hand.

  “That’s the child from the ice tanks,” Matt said, unable to keep the true amazement from his voice.

  The admiral’s hand curled around the tiny fingers, protective. “The miracle of my father’s research here.”

  “Your father?”

  Petkov nodded. “He was a great man, one of Russian’s leading Arctic scientists. As the head of this research station here, he was delving into the possibility of suspended animation and cryogenic freezing.”

  “He experimented on human subjects,” Matt accused.

  Petkov glanced down to the boy. “It is easy to judge now. But it was a different time. What is considered myerzost, or an ‘abomination,’ today was science back then.” His words grew softer, half ashamed, half proud. “Back in my father’s time, between the two World Wars, the dynamics of the world were tenser. Every country was trying to discover the next innovation, the next bit of technology to revolutionize their economies. With war pending, world tensions high, the ability to preserve life on the battlefield could make a difference between victory and defeat. Soldiers could be frozen until their wounds could be attended to, organs could be preserved, entire armies could be put into cold storage. The possibilities for medical uses and military innovations were endless.”

  “So your government forced some of your own native peoples into servitude here. To be experimental guinea pigs.”

  Petkov’s eyes narrowed. “You truly don’t know what was going on here, do you?”

  “I don’t know a goddamn thing,” Matt admitted.

  “So you don’t know where my father’s stolen journals are? Who has taken them?”

  Matt thought about lying, but he was not feeling particularly protective of Craig Teague. “They’re gone.”

  “In the iceboat that escaped.”

  Escaped? Dare he hope? Jenny was supposedly on that boat. He struggled to find his voice. “They got away?”

  Petkov stared tightly at him, as if trying to weigh the risk of telling the truth, too. Perhaps he heard the pleading in Matt’s voice or maybe he simply considered Matt no threat. Either way, he answered the question. “They outran my men and reached Omega.”

  Matt stepped back and sank into the seat he had refused a moment ago. Relief washed through him. “Thank God. Jen…my ex-wife was on that boat.”

  “Then she’s in more danger than you.”

  Matt’s brow pinched, tensing again. “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t over. Not for any of us.” Petkov’s gaze flicked to the boy. “This ice station. It’s not a Russian research base.”

  Matt felt a heavy weight settle in his gut.

  Petkov’s eyes returned to Matt. “It’s American.”

  6:16 P.M.

  OMEGA DRIFT STATION

  Jenny climbed from the skate boat, her feet settling to the ice. She stared over at the ruin of the nearby polynya. It was blasted, stained with black soot and rusty trails of oil. Fires still burned within the wreckage of two helicopters crumpled on the ice. The air reeked of smoke and fuel.

  The thunderous whump of the lone remaining helicopter echoed over the frozen terrain as it circled to land near the iceboat. Amanda busied herself with securing the boat, tying down the sails and finding a spare set of wooden chocks to brace the runners. She glanced over her shoulder as the Sikorsky Seahawk glided out of the blowing winds and settled to the ice.

  Craig crossed toward the helicopter, leaning against the rotor wash. He held his throat mike under his chin as he spoke to the Delta Force leader inside the craft.

  From out of the cluster of Jamesway huts, a group of soldiers in white snow gear ambled out, weapons in hand, but not raised. They were taking no chances with the Russians so near.

  One of the men approached the two women by the boat. “Ma’am, if you’ll follow me, I’ll get you inside with the others. The Russians planted a slew of incendiary devices throughout the base. We don’t know if any of them are booby-trapped.”

  Jenny nodded, glad to follow, but fearful to discover the fate of her father. Was he okay?

  They wound back through the nest of buildings. The snowfall had stopped, but the winds continued to gust fiercely through the Jamesway huts. Jenny almost lost her footing, too worried with her goal so close. As they walked, she knew where they were being taken. To the same barracks from which she and Kowalski had escaped.

  This thought generated more tears. She had thought herself done crying on the boat ride here, relieved, but at the same time full of grief. Kowalski was missing. Tom was most likely dead. Bane, too. And Matt…

  Now all were gone.

  She needed someone to still be alive.

  Her pace hurried as the guard opened the door to the hut. Jenny crossed through, followed by Amanda. The soldier walked them down the hall to the double doors leading to the barracks.

  Jenny noted the two armed soldiers posted by the doorway.

  “For your protection,” their escort said as he led them past. “We’re trying to keep everyone in one place until we know the base is safe. And with the Russians entrenched only thirty miles away, nowhere else is safe.”

  Jenny was not about
to object to a little protective custody. After what she had just gone through, the more, the merrier.

  The warmth of the barracks struck her like a wet blanket to the face. The heat was stifling from both the heaters and the number of bodies. Jenny quickly glanced through the crowds.

  She spotted Commander Sewell immediately. He sat in front. Half his face was bandaged. His arm was in a sling. She stepped in front of him, her eyes wide.

  He stared at her with the one good eye that peeked from the bandages. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”

  “What happened?” Her gaze traveled over his beaten form.

  “You ordered me to protect your father.” He shrugged. “I take orders seriously.”

  The crowd parted and a familiar figure pushed through. Tired-eyed, but unharmed.

  She hurried into his arms. “Papa!”

  He hugged her tight. “Jen…honey.”

  She could not say anything more. Something broke inside her. She began to sob. Not simply tears, but racks of pain and gulping breath. It was uncontrollable, rising from a well deep inside her. It hurt so much. She had survived. So many others had not. “M-Matt,” she managed to sob out.

  Arms tightened.

  She continued to cry while her father drew her back to a bed and pulled her down beside him. He didn’t try to console her with words. Words would come later. Right now she simply needed someone to hold and someone to hold her.

  Her father gently rocked her.

  After a period of time, she became aware of her surroundings again, emptied and numb. She slowly lifted her face. At some point, Craig had joined them. He was seated with Amanda, Commander Sewell, and a man in a storm suit.

  This last fellow carried a helmet under one arm. His hair was black, short, slicked back. He appeared to be in his midthirties, but a hard midthirties. His skin was ruddy with a wicked scar that trailed under his ear to the his neckline. He fingered the scar as he leaned beside Craig, studying something on a table that had been dragged over. “I don’t see that any of this matters,” the soldier said. “We should strike now before the Russians can entrench any further.”

  Jenny extracted herself, concerned about what they were discussing. She patted her father’s hand.