Beneath the Ice (23 page)

“You should have been a detective, Mr.
Sachs. Your deductive skills are wasted in engineering.”

“Someone else put the bomb on the plane
then,” Perry said. “Someone here or back at McMurdo?”

“McMurdo,” Tia admitted. “It was
regrettable, but necessary.”

Jack turned to the same
gunman he had been egging on. “Kinda strips away that sense of job
security, doesn’t it? One killed after doing his job, and one
killed today doing his job. Tell me, pal . . .
is your life insurance paid up?”

“Please don’t make me kill you, Mr. Dyson,”
Tia said. “I’m not opposed to it, you understand, but someone wants
to meet all of you. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“Enkian?” Perry said the name again.

Tia fell silent again.

“So what can be so important that you’d
‘sacrifice’ your henchmen?” Perry pressed.

“Something you can’t imagine.”

“Try me.”

“I won’t try you, Mr. Sachs, but I will warn
you one last time.”

Perry looked up and saw a small movement
near the open crates. He lowered his head but raised his eyes in
the direction of the movement. Something was staring back at him
from the crate Tia had opened a few moments before. His stomach
twisted. He couldn’t see enough detail to identify which one, but
he knew it had to be Sarah or Gwen. Maybe both. The wood container
was large enough to hold them both. He had no idea how Tia missed
seeing them, but he thanked God for it.

“Okay, no more questions, but I’m back to my
original point. My crew needs food and rest. They’re no good to you
otherwise. Leave one of us behind to monitor Hairy’s progress and
let the others go back to the Dome.”

“Why is it I think you’re up to something?”
Tia asked.

“What do you think a bunch of scientists and
engineers are going to do against automatic weapons?”

Tia looked around the Chamber again. “This
one stays,” she said, pointing to Jack.

“He’s already been on shift for twelve
hours,” Perry argued. “I was due up next. I’ve slept more recently
than the rest.”

Tia looked as if she were considering it.
“No. Dyson stays, and one of my men stays with him. There’s nothing
to do but watch the computer monitor. Someone can relieve him in a
few hours.”

“At least untie my hands,” Jack said. “It’s
difficult to enter computer commands this way.” He held up his
bound wrists.

Tia nodded at one of her men, who removed a
large knife from its leather sheath on his belt. He bounded to Jack
and made a vicious slice with the blade. The nylon tie fell at
Jack’s feet.

“Ow!” Jack jumped back, clutching his thumb.
“You cut me.”

“Sorry,” the man said with a smile.

Perry started toward his friend but stopped
when every MP-5 pointed his way.

“It’s okay,” Jack said, waving Perry off.
“It’s not deep.”

“You stay with him,” Tia told the man with
the knife. “Every-one else into the other dome.”

Perry turned and took a
step, then glanced over his shoulder at Jack, who had already taken
a seat behind the monitor. This was not how he had expected it to
go. He had hoped to be the one left
behind, to have more time to figure out some useful
plan.
What
now,
Lord? I’m running out of ideas
.

Robert Jeter paced his plush office. His stomach was
a vat of heated acid, and his jaw ached from clenching it. Small
droplets of sweat dotted his brow. This is crazy, he said to
himself. Pure, unadulterated lunacy.

In precisely three and a half minutes, he
would have to walk through the door into the Oval Office and meet
with the same people he had seen that morning and one additional
person: General Brian McDivett. It wasn’t going to be pleasant. The
president was in a mood . . . more than a mood; he was on the verge
of smashing furniture. The NSA had verified its previous belief
that a C-5 had gone down and may have gone down in a place other
than was being searched.

That was bad enough, but now the president
had learned—thanks to General McDivett—who had been on the
aircraft. If that was all there was to it, then things would not be
so bad. But the president was facing an uphill reelection battle,
and Jeter wanted the chief executive’s image to be clear as
crystal.

And there was a greater
problem hovering over Jeter like an engorged thunderhead. His call
to Enkian had gone south in the first thirty seconds. He made it
clear that Jeter was to “take care of the matter.”
How?
Jeter wanted to
know. There was no sane way to take care of the matter. Now Jeter
was stuck, as his mother used to say, between the devil and the
deep blue sea.

He looked at his watch.
Thirty seconds before the meeting, and he had no idea what to do.
Normally a decisive man, quick on his feet
and quicker in speech, he suddenly felt mired in fear.
Something was
n’t right, and he suspected
it was going to get worse.

Jeter dried his palms on his trousers,
pulled on his suit coat, ran a hand through his brown hair, and
took a deep breath. He told himself he was ready, but he knew
otherwise. A few steps later he was in the Oval Office, looking at
a very angry president and four very uncomfortable men, one wearing
an army uniform. “Again, it appears I’m last in,” Jeter said. He
looked at his watch. He was ten seconds early.

The president was standing behind his desk,
and Jeter knew what that meant. Normally, President Richard Calvert
was the kind of leader who offered you a comfortable seat and
something to drink, then sat next to you and chatted about sports
for a few minutes. When angry, though, he used the full force of
his office to get his point across. He stood behind the wide desk
and made his guests sit in less comfortable chairs opposite
him.

“Let’s get to it,” the president snapped. “I
want to hear from you, General, because I know what I’m hearing
from CIA can’t be right.”

“I’m not certain what the CIA has been
telling you, Mr. President—”

“Tell me about the C-5 in Antarctica,” he
snapped.

“Yes, sir. As you know, the Pentagon became
aware that something unusual was going on over an under-ice lake
called Vostok. It’s about the size of Lake Ontario, and the
Russians have a couple of research stations in the area. Some years
back, the Russians drilled very close to the lake then stopped. Or
so we were told.”

“You think they were doing something
else?”

Jeter stood to one side of the desk and
watched the general squirm. He understood what the man was going
through.

“We couldn’t be sure,” General McDivett
said, “but it crossed our minds. With all their economic problems,
the Vostok research facility was supposed to be very nearly closed
down. So when recent surveys over the area showed that Lake Vostok
was expanding, we thought we should take a look. Ostensibly, we
teamed with the National Science Foundation and sent a team of
scientists and engineers to investigate.”

“What could the Russians do to make a lake
under a few hundred feet of ice grow?”

“Actually, sir, it’s two miles below the
ice, and the answer is, we don’t know. There has been suggestion of
under-ice nuclear disposal or testing.”

“That sounds far-fetched,” the president
said.

“I agree, sir, but we have our share of
paranoids.”

“You’re not one of them?”

The jab pained the general, who frowned.
“No, sir, I am not. It might be a natural occurrence, but it
demanded investigation. A melting of the ice cap would be
disastrous, to say the least.”

“You said you partnered
with the NSF. Who else was down
there?”

McDivett filled his lungs. “We sent three
scientists with needed specialties, a crew of engineers and workers
from Sachs Engineering—government-approved contractors—and six navy
Seabees with their commander.”

Jeter watched as the president’s face turned
crimson. “You’re telling me that we lost military people on this
mission?”

“Yes, sir. The six Seabees were due to be on
that plane. For security reasons, we wanted to limit the number of
people on the site to essential personnel. Only the commander
remained behind. However, we’ve been trying to raise the base by
satellite phone and radio, but there’s no answer. We think
something may have gone wrong and the team abandoned the site.”

“Why would they do that?” the president
wondered.

“We don’t know, sir. All we know is that
they’re no longer responding, and that the C-5 is lost over the
ocean.”

“Is it?” the president said. “Our friends
from CIA seem to disagree. Fill the general in, David.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure the
general knows some of this, but compil
ing
information from the NSA and other sources, we know there is a
disparity between radio traffic from the Coast Guard, the airport
at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and what we have recently
discovered.” He removed some photos from a file he held on his lap.
“These photos were taken by satellite two hours ago.”

“This isn’t over water,” McDevitt said.

“The big ears of NSA picked up radio
communication from the Coast Guard cutter conducting the search.
The skipper thinks he’s on a wild goose chase and the plane had to
go down over ice.”

A set of pictures was passed to Jeter. He
studied them for a moment. The image was clear enough. He didn’t
need photo analysis training to recognize the scattered and burned
remains of an airplane or to see the smoldering crater.

“That’s it?” Homeland Security Secretary
Larry Shomer asked.

“Not much left,” Jannot said. “No one could
have survived that, and if they did, the cold would have killed
them soon after.”

“So it didn’t go down over
the ocean,” President Calvert said. “The Coast Guard skipper was
right. But why would anyone think the craft was over the ocean to
begin with? It was a direct flight to . . .
to . . . where does one go when they leave
Antarctica?”

“Usually Christchurch, New Zealand,” the
general answered. “Our team was to spend a few hours at McMurdo
then fly to Christchurch.”

“So I ask again,” Calvert pressed. “If they
weren’t scheduled to be over the ocean, then why search it?”

“I made some calls to the Coast Guard
commandant,” Jannot said. “He checked things out and tells me there
was an eyewitness who saw it hit the water.”

“An eyewitness?” Calvert looked at the
picture. “Two crashes?”

Jannot shook his head. “I doubt it.”

Jeter watched his boss
drop deep into thought. “Wait a minute.” The president turned to
McDevitt. “General, you said there were navy Seabees and a crew
from an engineering company. What
company
did you say?”

“Sachs Engineering,” the general replied.
“They’ve done a great deal of work for the military all around the
world. Always on time and always under budget. They have some
expertise that—”

“Henry Sachs?”

“Yes, sir,” the general
answered. Jeter saw the puzzlement on his
face.

“Henry Sachs has been a longtime supporter,”
Jeter explained. “He and the president are acquaintances.”

“You’re telling me Sachs lost some of his
employees in that crash?”

“Yes, sir,” McDevitt said. “And worse than
that. I checked the roster of workers. His son Perry was leading
the mission.”

Curses erupted from the president’s mouth.
He began to pace back and forth behind his desk.

Jeter felt his heart flutter. He knew what
was coming next. He had to speak. “Mr. President, you should know
that Mr. Sachs called earlier today. Word has reached him.”

“And you didn’t tell me!” Calvert bellowed.
His words reverberated in the round room.

“I was planning on telling you in this
meeting—”

Another volcanic eruption spewed from the
president. “All right, here’s what I want. David, I want the CIA on
this. I want more and better photos. I want to know everything. Got
it?”

“Yes, sir,” Jannot replied.

“Tell NSA to step up their monitoring of the
communications down there. If a penguin burps, I want to know about
it. General, I want to know if those folks truly abandoned the site
and died in that crash.”

“Sir, communications are broken and—”

“Fix them! I don’t care if you have to
hitchhike down there yourself. I want information. I want answers,
and I want them now.”

Jeter took a step back when the president
snapped his head around to face him. “We’ll talk later. In the
meantime, this is a high-priority situation. I want this on top of
everyone’s to-do list. The rest of you, get me what you can.”

Everyone stood.

“Now get out.”

“What are you going to do?” Jeter asked.

“I’m going to call a friend who just lost
his son. Now give me some privacy.”

Jeter shambled from the room, feeling
scalded by the president’s anger. He closed himself in his office,
dropped into his chair, and began to think. Hard.

Chapter
21

Jack studied the
dials
displayed on the computer monitor. He preferred
real dials and readouts, not pictures of them produced by a
computer. Gleason loved this stuff, but give him the real thing any
day. He harbored no ill will toward computers. He could use them
better than most, but he had a predilection for things that left
grease or dirt under his fingernails. Computers, while useful, were
also sterile. Still, he was stuck with this one, and he made sure
he was familiar with the readings and the computer commands. It
wouldn’t do to upset the gunman who could cut him in half before he
could speak a word.