Authors: James Rollins
Ice Hunt (36 page)
As Matt’s gaze circled the room, another chain of lights flickered into existence. Each bulb flared, one after the other, illuminating a curving concourse that arced away into the distance. The corridor seemed to follow the outer wall, probably circled the entire level.
Matt bore witness to what each bulb illuminated. “Oh, dear God…”
APRIL 9, 1:42 P.M.
OUT ON THE ICE…
Bundled in a white parka, Viktor Petkov rode through the heart of a blizzard. His hands were encased in heated mittens, his face protected from the winds by the furred edge of his hood, a thick wool scarf, and a pair of polarized goggles.
But no amount of clothing could keep the cold from his heart. He was heading to the gravestone of his father, a frozen crypt buried in the ice.
He straddled the backseat of the hovercraft bike, harnessed in place. The skilled driver, a young officer under Mikovsky, handled the vehicle with a reckless confidence that could only come from youth. The craft flew over the ice, no more than a handspan above the surface, a rocket against the wind.
The storm continued its attempt to blow them off course, but the driver compensated, maintaining a direct line toward the lost station using the bike’s gyroscopic guidance system.
Viktor stared out at the snow-blasted landscape. Around him lay nothing but a wasteland, a desert of ice. With the sun blanketed by clouds and snow, the world had dissolved into a wan twilight. It sapped one’s will and strength. Here, hopelessness and despair took on physical dimensions. With winds wailing in his ears, the eternal desolation sank into his bones.
Here is where my father spent his last days, alone, exiled, forgotten.
The craft swung in a slow arc, following the shadow of a pressure ridge, the spines of a sleeping dragon. Then, out of the continual gloom, a misty light grew.
“Destination ahead, Admiral!” the driver called back to him.
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.”