Ice Hunt Read online

  “On your word, we’re ready to head out,” Delta One said gruffly.

  “Let’s get it done,” Craig said. “We can’t give the Russians time to find the sample.”

  Delta One barked orders to his two flanking men, heading away.

  “I’ll join the team in a moment,” Craig called to him. “Ready the bird.” He continued to study the books, then turned to Jenny, wearing a pained expression. “I can’t leave the journals here. They must be protected. But I also need them reviewed in more detail. In case we’re missing any obvious clues.”

  “What are you asking?” Jenny said.

  “I need someone to come with us who can read the Inuktitut.” His gaze flicked between her and her father. “We must know if there are any directions or hints in the books.”

  “You want one of us to go with you?” Jenny stepped in front. “Don’t you think we’ve put our necks out far enough in this matter? Sacrificed enough?”

  “And your knowledge could still save lives. Dr. Ogden, his students, and anyone else holed up over there. I won’t force you to come, but I do need you.”

  Jenny glanced to her father, then back to Craig. Her eyes were full of suspicion, but she was clearly a woman of strong reserves. “I’ll go under one condition.”

  Craig looked relieved.

  Jenny patted her empty holster. “I want my goddamn pistol back.”

  Craig nodded. “Don’t worry. This time around, we’re all going armed.”

  This seemed to relieve her.

  Amanda stood to the side as final preparations were made. Through a window, she watched Craig hunch next to Delta One out in the snow. The storm was kicking up again, but she could almost make out their lips. She turned to Lieutenant Commander Sewell. He was overseeing his own men. They would defend the base until the Delta team returned. The entire team was leaving on this last mission.

  “Commander Sewell,” she said. “Could I borrow your field binoculars?”

  He frowned but passed her his pair from a pocket of his parka.

  Amanda focused on Craig and Delta One as they conversed under one of the lamp poles.

  “Is everything ready here?” Craig asked.

  A curt nod. Amanda read the tension at the corner of Delta One’s eyes. She also read his lips. “All is ready. The Russians will be blamed.”

  A figure stepped to her side, startling her. She turned. It was John Aratuk.

  “What are you watching?” he asked.

  Amanda prepared to answer, ready to voice her fear and suspicions. But as terror iced through her, a new sensation arose—a familiar one.

  No…it wasn’t possible.

  The tiniest hairs vibrated on her arms. She felt the telltale tingle behind her deafened ears. But it sounded like alarm bells to her now.

  Could the grendels have traveled all the way here?

  “What’s wrong?” John asked, sensing her panic.

  She turned to him, rubbing the tingling hairs on her arms. “Sonar…”

  7:31 P.M.

  ICE STATION GRENDEL

  Matt held the boy’s hand and followed him down the hall, back through the prison wing, and around to the outer circular hall.

  “Malinnga!” the boy repeated. Follow me!

  Behind Matt, the Russian admiral followed. Viktor Petkov was accompanied by the two armed guards. There was no chance of a quick escape. Matt feared for little Maki’s safety. He would not abandon the boy.

  While they passed through the prison section, his fellow captives cast questioning glances toward him. Dr. Ogden’s gaze traveled to the boy. Matt saw the shock of surprise on his face.

  Matt clutched the tiny fingers, so warm in his palm. It seemed impossible that this was the same child who’d been frozen in ice only hours ago. He flashed back on his own son, Tyler, walking with him hand in hand. Both boys had died in ice, but now one had returned.

  As the two entered the curving wall of tanks, the boy stared at the hazy figures inside. Did he know what they held? Were his own parents inside one of these tanks?

  Maki pushed a thumb in his mouth, eyes round and wide. He hurried past, scared.

  Petkov spoke behind them. “Does he know where he’s going?”

  Matt relayed the question in Inuktitut.

  “Ii,” Maki answered around his thumb, nodding his head.

  The hall curved to its end. A wall appeared ahead, blocking the way. They had circled the entire level. There was no way forward. No door.

  The boy continued toward the passage’s end. To the right, the tanks finally ended. Maki led Matt toward the blank section of wall. It appeared seamless and solid, but the boy’s tiny fingers found a small hidden panel. It swung in, revealing a foot-wide brass control wheel.

  Maki played with the panel, swinging it back and forth. He spoke in Inuktitut. Matt translated for Petkov. “He says past here is your secret room.”

  The admiral gently moved the boy’s arm out of the way and stared at the brass wheel. He stepped back and waved Matt forward. “Open it.”

  Matt bent to the hole and grabbed the wheel. It wouldn’t budge, frozen solid. “I need a crowbar,” he gasped as he struggled.

  The boy reached under the wheel and flipped a hidden catch. The wheel immediately spun in his hand, well oiled and preserved.

  As the wide handle revolved to a stop, seals popped with a slight hiss. A full section of the wall cracked open. A secret door.

  Matt was guided back at gunpoint. Another of the guards stepped forward and pulled the door open.

  The cold flowed out as if from an open freezer. Lights flickered on, revealing that it was indeed an icebox inside. Similar to the service huts, it was another room cut directly out of the island. But it was no maintenance closet, but a lab sculpted from the blue ice.

  Abutting the three walls were worktables carved from the ice. Shelves of slab ice rose above them, covered with an assortment of stainless-steel equipment: crude centrifuges, measuring pipettes, graduated cyclinders. But the shelves of the back wall, lit by a row of bare lightbulbs, had cored receptacles drilled into them. Inserted into each of the holes were glass syringes, their plungers sticking up. The ice was glassy enough to see through to the amber-colored liquid filling each of the syringe’s chambers. There had to be over fifty of the loaded doses.

  Matt stared around as he stepped into the ice lab. Work must have been done in a totally frozen state.

  The boy entered, still sucking his thumb. His eyes grew wider. He stared into the room, then back out toward the Russian admiral.

  Matt understood his confused expression.

  “Papa,” the boy said in Inuktitut, then repeated it in Russian.

  Upon the floor slumped a figure, seated, legs out, head lolled. Even through the frost on the features, there could be no doubt who it was. The family’s snow-white hair was unmistakable.

  A gasp from Petkov confirmed the identity. He shoved forward, dropping to his knees before the body and reaching out.

  The elder Petkov’s face was tinged blue, the clothes frosted with rime and ice. One sleeve had been rolled up. A cracked syringe lay on the floor. Blood trailed from a puncture on the inside of the arm to the needle.

  Matt crossed to the wall of syringes. He pulled one free. The liquid was unfrozen, impervious to the subzero cold. He glanced down to the figure. “He dosed himself,” he muttered.

  Petkov glanced between the boy and his father. Then to Matt. From his expression, his thoughts were easy to read. Like the boy, could my father still be alive?

  Matt spotted a journal, like all the others, on the table under the shelves. He flipped open the brittle cover to find line after line of Inuktitut script scrawled across the pages, until the notes ceased. Taught by Jenny and her father to read the language, Matt could make it out, but it made no sense. He mumbled aloud, trying to determine the meaning.

  Petkov glanced up to him. “You speak Russian.”

  Matt frowned and indicated the book. “I’m just re
ading what’s written here.”

  Still on his knees beside his father’s remains, Petkov gestured for the journal. He flipped through what was clearly the last of the journals. Petkov passed it to him. “Read it…” His voice cracked. “Please.”

  Maki wandered to the admiral’s side and leaned into him, tired and needing reassurance. Petkov put an arm around the boy.

  Matt was in no position to argue with two pistols pointed at him. Plus he was curious. He read as Petkov translated aloud. The admiral paused every now and then to question and to ask Matt to reread a section.

  Slowly the truth came out.

  The journal was the final testament of Vladimir Petkov. It seemed that in the decade he’d spent here, Viktor’s father had slowly grown a conscience. Mostly because of the boy Maki. The child was born here, orphaned when his parents died during the tests. Missing his own son back in Mother Russia, Vladimir had developed an attachment and affection for the boy, which was always a mistake in research. Never name your test animals. Through this lapse of judgment, however, Vladimir inadvertently rediscovered his humanity, losing his professional detachment.

  This occurred about the same time he answered the puzzle of activating the grendel hormone. The hormone had to be collected from living specimens, thawed and unfrozen. If collected from dead specimens or frozen ones, it would be rendered inert. Furthermore, once a sample had been drawn by syringe directly from a living grendel, it had to be treated carefully, maintained at a constant temperature.

  The temperature of the ice caverns.

  Matt glanced around the special lab, understanding its necessity now.

  The answer to the puzzle was fire and ice again: the fire of a living grendel and the ice of the island. Nowhere else could such a discovery be made.

  It was this realization that had finally broken Vladimir Petkov. Sickened by his own complicity in what went on here, in the lives lost, he had refused to allow his discovery to reach the outside world, especially after hearing about the Holocaust in Germany.

  “We have Russian Jews in our own family,” Petkov quietly added.

  Matt understood. When it was your people being persecuted, it opened your eyes to the inhumanity of your actions. But understanding wasn’t enough. Vladimir needed a final act of contrition. The world could never benefit from what had been done here. So he and a handful of others made the ultimate sacrifice. They sabotaged their own base: damaging the radios and scuttling the station’s transport sub. Cut off and adrift on currents, they would allow themselves to disappear into the silent Arctic. Several base members attempted an overland escape, but clearly they never made it.

  To protect the innocent prisoners here, Vladimir sent them into a frozen sleep.

  Matt glanced out to the hall, weighing whether such an act was mercy or further abuse. Still, from the syringe in the scientist’s arm, it was clear that Vladimir took the same medicine. But had it worked?

  Petkov mumbled, aghast. “My father destroyed this station. It wasn’t treachery.”

  “He had no choice, not if he was to live with himself,” Matt answered. “He had to bury what had been gained so foully.”

  Petkov stared down at his father. “What have I done?” he mumbled, and fingered a thick wristwatch on his right arm. Tiny lights blinked on its face. Some form of radio device. “I’ve brought everyone here. Fought to thwart my own father’s sacrifice. To bring his discovery back to light.”

  A commotion at the door drew their attention around. A Russian soldier pushed inside, then stood stiffly before the admiral. He spoke rapidly in Russian, clearly agitated.

  The admiral answered, climbing to his feet. The soldier fled away.

  Petkov turned to Matt. “We’ve just confirmed hearing the bell beat of an approaching helicopter over the UQC hydrophone. It just left the vicinity of the Omega base.”

  The Delta Force team, Matt guessed silently. The cavalry was finally en route. But did that mean Jenny was safe? He could only hope.

  Petkov motioned to the guards to move Matt out. “My father gave his life to hide his discovery here. I won’t let it be stolen now. I will finish what my father started.” He shoved his coat sleeve over his large wrist radio. “This is not over yet.”

  7:48 P.M.

  EN ROUTE OVER ICE…

  Jenny rode in the back of the Sikorsky Seahawk. She stared outside the window. Not that there was much to see. The rotor wash from the helicopter’s blades whirled snow about the rising craft. They lifted from the ice in a whiteout cloud.

  But as they cleared from the surface, the snow fell away. Winds buffeted the Seahawk, but the pilot was skilled, compensating, holding the craft steady.

  Craig spoke to Jenny from the front. She couldn’t see him, but his voice reached her through the radio built inside her sound-dampening earphones. “We should be at the station in twenty minutes. If you could continue to read from the last journal, I’ve set your microphone to record. I’ll also listen as we ride. Any clue could mean the difference between success and failure.”

  Jenny touched the journal in her lap and glanced across the crew bay. Delta One was strapped in the jump seat, ready to respond with the rest of his twelve-man team at a moment’s notice. The stern man stared dully out at the snowfields.

  Jenny followed his thousand-mile gaze. The red buildings of Omega were now a hazy smear on the ice. The sun was near the horizon, still up as the days grew longer, heading toward the round-the-clock sunlight of midsummer.

  Would this long day ever end?

  She returned to the journal in her lap, ready to continue the translation, but a flash of fire drew her eyes back to the window.

  The horizon flared up in a rose of flame and swirling snow.

  Then the concussion hit her. Even through the earphones, she heard the low boom. It thudded against her chest, a mule kick.

  God…no…no…

  Jenny leaned against the straps, pressing toward the window, her eyes open with raw shock. It was too horrible to believe. Her hearing stretched, all sounds hollowing out as something inside her wailed.

  The helicopter banked, swinging around.

  For a moment the view was gone. Jenny prayed it was not what she feared. Then the fiery tornado reappeared out in the ice fields, a swirling column of flame, twisting on thermals. Where Omega had once stood, flames leaped as high as the retreating helicopter.

  Slowly, the blazing cascade fell back earthward, consumed by the winds and snow.

  Jenny’s hearing returned. Cries of surprise and dismay spread through the cabin. Men shifted for better views, wearing masks of anger and pain.

  Across the frozen wasteland, lit by the smoldering flames, a huge hole smoked like some Arctic volcano. The surrounding ice was covered in burning pools.

  There was no sign of Omega. It was obliterated, blasted off the face of the world.

  Jenny could not breathe. Her father…all the others…

  Craig yelled over the radio on a general channel. “Goddamn it! I thought you said all the Russian booby traps had been disabled!”

  A sergeant answered, “They were, sir! Unless…unless I missed one…”

  Jenny still could not breathe. Tears welled but remained trapped in her eyelashes. She read the honest surprise in everyone’s face—all except one person.

  The Delta Force team leader still stared out at the flaming landscape. His expression had not changed, still stoic, unaffected…not surprised.

  He glanced to her.

  With dawning horror, Jenny understood the true situation here.

  She listened to Craig yell at the sergeant. She heard the lie in his voice. It had all been a setup. The team leaders here were operating under the same guise as the Russians: grab the prize and leave no one to tell the tale. A clean-sweep operation.

  No witnesses.

  Jenny maintained the fixed look of shock on her face, hiding her comprehension. She stared over at Delta One. He faced her now, trying to read her. She would live on
ly as long as she was useful. Her immediate knowledge of the Inuktitut script was all that stood between her and a bullet in the head.

  Craig whispered condolences in her ears, but she remained deaf to him. Instead, she stared down at the book.

  From the corner of her eye, flames danced. Tears rolled down her cheek—born of both grief and anger. Papa…

  One hand crept to her belt holster. Another promise not kept.

  It was still empty.

  17

  Trial by Fire

  APRIL 9, 7:55 P.M.

  ICE STATION GRENDEL

  Matt sat in his cell, having been returned at gunpoint. Oddly the boy had been left with him. The child, Maki, lay curled on the bed, in a cocoon of blankets. Perhaps the admiral had wanted the boy and his translator close by. Matt had not objected to his role as baby-sitter. At the foot of the bed, he kept vigil on the lad, watching the boy sleep, his tiny fingers curled by his lips as if in prayer.

  Maki’s features were clearly Inuit: the olive complexion, the ebony hair, the brown almond eyes. As Matt watched over him, he was struck by memories of Tyler, the same dark hair and eyes, like his mother. His heart ached, beyond terror and fear, only a deep sense of loss.

  “It’s hard to believe…” Dr. Ogden murmured from the neighboring cell, looking on. Matt had related the findings in Vladimir Petkov’s journal.

  Matt merely nodded, unable to take his eyes from the boy.

  “What I wouldn’t give to study the boy…maybe a sample of his blood.”

  Matt sighed and closed his eyes. Scientists. They never lifted their noses from their research to see who was affected.

  “A hormone from the grendels,” Ogden continued. “That makes sense at least. To produce the cryosuspension, it would require an immediate enzymatic cascade of the gene sequence. And skin glands would be perfect vehicles to initiate the event. The skin ices up, it triggers a hormonal release, the genes are activated through the body’s cells, glucose pours into cells to preserve them, then the body freezes. And with the grendels being mammals, their hormonal chemicals would be compatible with other mammalian species. Like insulin from cows and pigs that’s been used to treat human diabetes. The work here was ahead of its time. Brilliant, in fact.”