Beneath the Ice (22 page)

“I have something new,” Jannot said when
Shomer had finished. “NSA picked up on it. A plane went down in the
Ross Sea yesterday with its crew and passengers. Presumably it
sank, but a certain Coast Guard captain is throwing a fit. He
thinks the whole thing is wacky.”

“Ross Sea?” the president said. “In
Antarctica?”

“Yes,” Jannot said. “The National Security
Administration monitors radio transmissions around the world. One
of their listening posts picked up radio communication between the
skipper of a Coast Guard cutter and his peers at McMurdo. Someone
reported the plane missing, and there is an eyewitness that says he
saw it hit the water.”

“So what’s the captain’s beef?” Belanger
asked.

“I haven’t read the transcripts, but the
reports say he thinks it’s impossible for a pilot to overshoot
McMurdo and crash into the sea and only have one witness. His ship
was in the vicinity, and they saw nothing.”

“Who was on the plane?” the president
wondered. “Anyone we should know about?”

“There are many flights in the area,” Jeter
said. He thought un-comfortably of his phone conversation with
Henry Sachs. “Probably some college professors.”

“I wouldn’t dismiss it so lightly,” Larry
Shomer interjected.

“It was an American plane?” the president
wanted to know.

“NSA thinks so,” Jannot
replied. “I’ve asked them to narrow it
down. It seems no one knows much about the flight. Some kind
of secret.”

“Secret flights over Antarctica?” the
president said. “That’s a multinational place. Such things aren’t
supposed to happen. Wait a minute.” He looked at Jeter. “Didn’t we
get a briefing from Defense on a possible problem in that
area?”

Jeter swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. About two
months ago, maybe longer.” Jeter watched the president’s eyes dart
back and forth as he recalled the meeting.

“I want more information,
and I want it right away. The last thing we need is the
Washington Post
saying I
don’t care about Americans lost overseas. Learn what you
can.”

Jeter left the meeting feeling far more depressed
than when he had arrived. He closed the door to his office behind
him, set his notepad on the desk, and picked up his phone, dialing
for an outside line.

Nearly two thousand miles away and
thirty-five thousand feet above the earth, Eric Enkian took a
call.

Perry watched
helplessly as Tia’s four men pried open crate after crate,
container after container. They scattered wood chips, dropped
nails, and spread packing material like children opening Christmas
presents. They worked with the finesse of a nearsighted
bull. Since he could do nothing else, he tested
the nylon tie that bound his wrists. He felt fortunate that it
wasn’t so tight that it cut off his circulation, but it was clear
that he wasn’t going to work his way free. The thick ties were the
kind used to bind electronic cable. He had also seen police use
them as auxiliary handcuffs. They were light, strong, and
impossible to break, and any effort to try would only cut deep into
his flesh.

He glanced toward the others. Griffin was
near catatonic, frightened, no doubt, beyond any of his nightmares;
Dr. Curtis was stoic and appeared more irritated than frightened.
Jack was studying the men as they worked, and Perry knew he was
sizing them up. While Jack did not seem happy, he showed no fear.
Gleason cringed each time a box was opened roughly. Larimore
worried Perry. He looked furious, ready to spring into action at
the slightest opportunity. That, he knew, would be the end of the
commander’s life.

Then there were Sarah and Gwen. He was
certain they were hiding in the empty cryobot box, but Tia had
given no indication that she’d seen them when she cracked open the
lid.

“I’m impressed,” Tia said. “Come here, Mr.
Sachs.”

Perry walked from his place near the ice
hole toward the packing area, where the equipment had been set. He
said nothing when he came close.

“These two items intrigue me,” she said,
pointing at the contents of a just-opened crate. “Are these what I
think they are?”

“That depends on what you think they
are.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Sachs. You’ve seen
how patient I am. These are dive suits, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Perry replied.

“Deep-sea diving suits, right?”

Perry nodded. He watched his captor study
the hard-shell suits. Each of them hung on a metal rack, its arms
extended slightly as if reaching for a hug. The “head” was a
bulbous affair with a half sphere of clear plastic.

She looked at the suits for a moment then
turned toward the ice hole. “You were planning on going down
through the ice?”

“We tried to plan for everything. Being
where we are, it’s hard to run down to the hardware store to pick
up something we need.”

She looked back at the ice shaft. “These are
too big for that hole.”

“I know,” Perry said.

“Are you going to make me beat this out of
you?”

“I’m not much of a conversationalist.”

“Learn. Or someone, maybe your big friend
over there, will get more of our hospitality.”

“They’re dive suits, yes.
An advancement of the JIM suit, de-signed for additional mobility
while being smaller than any suit ever
developed. They are a hybrid of two suits—one from NASA
and
another from the navy. These suits
allow us to work at depths beyond
what a
scuba diver can endure. They’re heated, self-propelled, and carry
advanced communication gear. They’re designed to be used around
offshore drilling rigs and in rescue situations. We had a few
projects that required underwater construction. We call them
Atmospheric Diving Suits: ADS I and ADS II. The designers
dubbed them the Addy twins.”

“I’ve seen JIM suits.”

“Basically, that’s what they are.”

“You still haven’t explained how you’re
going to get down a hole that small.”

Perry nodded toward a long, wide box that
Tia’s men had pried open. Tia walked to it. “Another cryobot?”

“Yes.” Perry watched her study the
device.

“It has to be six feet in diameter.”

“A little over,” Perry said.

“Why not start with this one?” Tia asked.
“It would have saved time.”

“The larger the surface
area of the heated head, the more ener
gy
it takes to move through the ice. Our plan was to open a smaller
hole first, explore with Hairy, and—”

“Hairy?”

“The cryobot that’s working its way toward
the lake. If need be—and if it’s safe—we could core out a larger
hole with the bigger cryobot.”

“Which should go faster and take less energy
since two-thirds of the ice has been removed.”

“Exactly.”

Tia stared off in the distance. “The suit
provides more than heat and comfort. Correct?”

“Yes. One of the problems is that we are two
miles above the lake. In addition, we are at twelve thousand feet
above sea level. To send a man down from this altitude, through a
couple miles of ice into a pressured lake would be unwise—actually,
it would be murder. Even if we could do that, bringing the person
back to the surface would be fatal. The pressure change would cause
the air in his blood to bubble.”

“Decompression sickness. The bends.”

“The world’s worst case.”

Tia looked at the suit
again. Perry could tell she was studying the white armorlike skin.
“From what I know about JIM suits,” she
said, “is that they’re huge, more submersible with arms and
legs than
a dive suit. This is what—half
the size?”

“Forty percent.” She was intelligent, Perry
decided, and that chilled his blood. Intelligent psychopaths were
unnerving.

“
You can maintain a stable atmospheric pressure in such a
small suit?”

He nodded. “It’s based on a design that NASA
was considering a decade ago. They examined the feasibility of a
ridged-skin space suit. Materials technology has advanced
considerably in the last few years, as has machine miniaturization.
We were able to strip away the bulk and make articulated joints
that moved in a far more natural way.”

“Depth rating?”

Perry was growing weary of answering
questions at gunpoint.

“I asked you a question,” she snapped.

“Three hundred meters,” Perry replied.

“Nearly a thousand feet,” she murmured.
“Didn’t the older JIM suits go deeper?”

“This isn’t a true JIM
suit. It’s based on the same principle, but the design is unique.
The bulkier suits had greater depth poten
tial—six hundred meters to be exact—but they were, well . . .
bulki
er. We’d never get a hole in the ice
large enough to accommodate one of those.”

“And the diver breathes normal gases?”

“That’s the real advantage.”

“That and not being crushed,” Tia said.

“And movement is fully
three-dimensional?”

“As far as the tether will allow.”

“So air and power come from topside.”

Again Perry nodded. “The
suits can operate autonomously for
close
to ninety minutes using onboard air and battery power.
Longer
dives require outside
support.”

“Impressive.”

“How about undoing my hands?” Perry said.
“I’ve been a good boy and told you what you wanted to know.”

“You haven’t told me where the women
are.”

“I believe Commander Larimore gave you that
information.”

“He’s lying. I can smell it on him.”

Perry frowned. “What is it you want?”

“I don’t want anything, Mr. Sachs,” Tia
said, her face a mask of dissatisfaction. “I have it already, don’t
I?”

“Only you would know that.”

She looked back at the suits, the large
cryobot, and the other gear scattered about. “I’m very impressed.
Enkian will be, too.”

“Who?”

“The man who will be killing you.”

Chapter
20

“
Everything is
normal,”
Gleason said. His words caught in his throat.
Tia was standing behind him, the barrel of the gun pressed to the
back of his skull. Perry’s heart broke for his friend. He knew that
Gleason’s mind must be racing to his wife and children, who might
become a widow and orphans at any moment.

“You said twenty-six hours before the probe
breaks through the ice,” Tia said.

“At the current rate, yes,” Gleason said.
“It’s impossible to be more specific since ice density changes with
depth. It could be more; it could be a little less.”

“It must be monitored?”

“It should. There’s nothing to do now but
watch, but yes, someone should monitor it.”

“And that’s you?”

“I can do it,” Perry said.

“So can I,” Jack interjected.

Tia pulled the barrel from Gleason’s neck,
and Perry watched his good friend take a deep breath.

“You’re to stay with it until it breaks
through,” Tia ordered.

“Not wise,” Perry said.

“Oh, really,” Tia said. “And why is
that?”

“Gleason has already been on duty for too
long. He needs rest, as does the rest of my crew. If they don’t eat
and rest, they’ll make mistakes, and this operation is too
sensitive for that.”

“If anyone makes a mistake, it will be their
last one.”

“Nice a thought as that is,” Perry said, “if
the cryobot freezes in place, then we’ll be left with a very deep
hole and a half-million-dollar cork.”

“We have the other, larger cryobot,” Tia
countered.

“As I told you, it’s designed to follow the
smaller one down the hole. It’s not made to move much ice, only to
widen the shaft. It’s like drilling a pilot hole in wood to make
room for a screw—no pilot hole and the wood splits.”

“I get the idea,” Tia snapped.

Jack looked at the nearest of the four
gunmen. “And you said she was dumb.” The guard started toward
Jack.

“Stand down,” Tia commanded. “We have our
orders.”

“Who gives you your orders?” Perry asked.
“Enkian? You mentioned someone named Enkian.”

“That doesn’t concern you.”

Perry laughed. “Let’s see,
I’m tied up, held against my will while
five automatic weapons point in my general direction, and I
watched you kill one of your own men. I’m afraid I have to
disagree—it
does concern me.”

Tia didn’t respond. She turned her attention
back to the computer monitor.

“Surely you can’t be afraid that I’ll pick
up the phone and call 911,” Perry said. “I assume you know our
radios have been sabotaged.”

Tia didn’t rise to the bait.

“What about the C-5?” Perry asked. “Are you
responsible for that?”

“Not personally.”

“But it was one of your people, right? What
about your man—the guy who planted the bomb? It was a bomb, wasn’t
it?”

“It was.”

“Your man left a bomb to destroy the Dome,
the place we live, then he carried a similar device onto the plane.
Correct?”

“Close,” Tia smiled.

“So what about your man? Unless he blew
himself up, he must be one of us.”

Tia turned to face Perry. “He sacrificed
himself for a greater cause.”

“He committed suicide?” Larimore asked.

“No, Commander,” Perry said. “That isn’t
what she said. She said he ‘sacrificed himself’ for what he
believed in. The guy who planted the C-4 in the bathroom didn’t
know there was a bomb on the plane, right?”