Ice Hunt (12 page)

“Do they know you’re here?”

Matt spotted motion by one of the plane’s windows. Someone leaned out, waving an arm at them. Then his eyes widened. Not an arm…a grenade launcher, a
rocket-propelled
grenade launcher.

He shoved Jenny back inside as a spat of flame spouted from the weapon.

“What—” she cried out.

The explosion cut off her words. A window on the south side of the cabin shattered inward. Glass sprayed the room.

As the blast echoed away, Matt dove to the ruined window. Just outside, the remains of the tiny
lagyaq
storehouse smoldered around a cratered ruin. The roof still sailed high in the air.

In the sky, the Cessna sped past, low over the trees, tilting on a wing for another pass.

Matt swung around and met Jenny’s gaze. “I’d say they know we’re here.”

Jenny’s expression remained hard. She already had the Winchester rifle in hand again. She stalked toward the open door, followed by everyone else.

Matt hurried after her. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

Outside, Jenny had to yell to be heard above the racket of barking dogs and the whine of the Cessna. “We’re getting out of here.” She raised the rifle and tracked the plane as it arced around. “Everyone get to the Twin Otter.”

“What about running back into the woods?” Craig asked, staring doubtfully at the small sheriff’s plane resting on its floats in the river.

“We escaped once that way,” Matt said, shoving the reporter toward the dock. “We can’t count on that kind of luck again. Not on such a clear day. And there’s no telling if they dropped other commandos out there somewhere.”

Together, the group fled across the yard toward the dock. Jenny helped her father, one hand on his elbow. Dogs ran all around, leaping, barking.

Suddenly Bane appeared at Matt’s side and raced with his master as they hit the docks. Matt had no time to warn the wolf away.

Instead Matt held out a hand for Jenny’s rifle. “Get the engine started. I’ll try to keep them busy.”

Jenny nodded to him. Matt was surprised by the lack of fear in her eyes. She passed the rifle into his palms.

Matt backed down the dock. Bane followed him.

The Cessna banked into another glide toward the homestead. Matt raised the rifle and followed its course. He squeezed off a shot to no effect. He yanked on the rifle’s bolt to crank another round in place.

At the end of the dock, the Twin Otter’s engine coughed once, then died.
Come on, Jen…

The Cessna dropped its flaps and dove along the river’s length, aiming for the foundering floatplane.

Matt aimed for the cockpit window and fired again. He missed. Un-deterred, the plane continued its dive. “Damn it!” He pulled the rifle’s bolt and shouldered the weapon, widening his stance.

Nearby, the Otter’s engine’s finally choked and caught. The rumble drowned out the barking dogs.

“Matt!” Jenny called out the side window. “Get in!”

The Cessna now glided no more than thirty feet above the river. A figure dressed in a white parka leaned out an open side door. The length of a black grenade launcher was balanced on his shoulder. They were coming in fast, going for a point-blank shot. There was no way the Otter could accelerate out of the way in time.

Their only chance was for Matt to get them to blow this shot, make them come around again, buying them time to get airborne themselves.

Biting his lower lip, he eyed through the sights and focused on the man with the launcher. He would swear the guy stared right back at him. Matt squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the rifle made him blink. The man on the Cessna ducked under one of the plane’s struts. Matt had missed, glancing only the wing, but the close call had rattled the man.

Unfortunately, that was not enough. The grenade launcher quickly swung back into position. The Cessna was now only seventy yards away and coming in savage and low.

He readied the Winchester.

“Matt!” Jenny yelled. “Now!”

He glanced over. Jenny’s father held open the plane’s door. The man beckoned to him. “We’re still tethered to the dock!” he bellowed, pointing to the rope.

Matt swore under his breath and ran to the plane, clutching the rifle in one hand. With his free hand, he tugged off the plane’s rope tether and hopped onto the nearest pontoon.

At his heels, Bane leaped into the cabin in one graceful bound. From their years together, the dog was familiar with this mode of travel.

“Go,” Matt yelled through the open door.

The Otter’s engine roared. The twin props, one on each wing, chewed up the air. The plane swiveled away from the docks.

Jenny’s father reached to help Matt inside as he balanced on the float. “No, John,” Matt said, and met the elder Inuit’s eyes. He flipped the rope tether around his own waist, then tossed the end to Jenny’s father. “Tie me in!”

John’s brows crinkled.

“Belay me!” Matt explained, pointing to a steel stanchion by the door.

The elder’s eyes widened with understanding. He wrapped the rope loosely around the support. In the past, the pair had done some glacier climbing together.

As the Otter began to accelerate along the river, Matt worked down the port-side pontoon, leaning against the rope like a rappeller, using the loop as a brace. Jenny’s father fed the rope, keeping the line taut through the stanchion.

Matt clambered out from under the wing’s shadow.

The Cessna chased thirty yards behind their plane’s tail, almost directly overhead, closing swiftly down on them. The Otter would not escape in time.

Matt raised his rifle and leaned far out, held only by the rope’s loop, legs braced wide on the pontoon. Ignoring the commando with the grenade launcher, he aimed for the cockpit window.

As he pulled the trigger, a matching flash of fire exploded from the launcher. Matt cried out. He was too late.

But then the Cessna bobbled in the air: dropping suddenly, tilting on one wing.

With a gut-punching
whoosh,
a geyser of water and rock jetted high over the far side of the Twin Otter.

Matt craned around, twisting in his rope, as they passed the spot. Debris rained down into the river and shoreline.

The grenade had missed. The launcher’s aim must’ve been jolted just as he fired.

The Cessna, unable to stop its momentum, roared past overhead, now chased by the Otter on the river. The other plane managed to steady its flight, but Matt had spotted the spiderweb of cracks on the cockpit window.

His aim had been true.

He danced back up the pontoon, the river racing past his heels. The winds buffeted against him as John reeled him back to the door. Matt reached the opening just as the pontoons lifted free of the water. The rattle under his soles ceased in one heartbeat.

As the plane tilted, Matt lost his balance, falling backward. His arms flailed. He dropped the rifle as he snatched for a handhold. The Winchester tumbled into the river below.

Then a hand grabbed his belt.

He stared into his former father-in-law’s black eyes. The Inuit, secure and snugged in his seat belt, held him tight. They matched gazes as the winds howled past the plane. Then something broke in the older man’s face, and he yanked Matt inside.

He fell into the cabin and twisted to close the door. Bane nosed him from the third row of seats, tongue lolling as he greeted him. Matt roughed him away and slammed the door.

Jenny called from the front, “They’re coming back around!”

Matt hauled himself up and crawled toward the copilot’s seat. Ahead, the Cessna banked sharply on a wingtip.

As Matt settled to the seat, he noticed his empty hands. He silently cursed himself for losing the rifle. “Do you have another gun?”

Jenny spoke as she worked the throttle. The plane fought for height. “I have my Browning, and there’s my service shotgun bolted to the rear cabin wall. But you’ll never hit anything in the air.”

He sighed. She was right. Neither weapon was accurate at long range, especially in these winds.

Jenny climbed the plane. “Our only chance is to make for Prudhoe Bay.”

Matt understood. It was the closest military base. Whatever was going on was beyond their ability to handle. But Prudhoe was four hundred miles away.

Jenny stared at the Cessna diving toward them. “This is going to get ugly.”

2:25 P.M.
UNDER THE POLAR ICE CAP

“Message for you, Admiral.”

Viktor Petkov ignored the young lieutenant at the stateroom door and continued to read the passage from the book on his desk:
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He had often found this book by the dead Russian writer a comfort. In moments when his own soul was tested, he could relate to Ivan Karamasov’s struggle with himself and his spirituality.

But it had never been a struggle for Viktor’s father. He had always been Russian Orthodox, most devoutly so. Even after the rise of Stalin, when it became untenable to practice one’s faith, his father had not abandoned his beliefs. It may have been for this reason, more than any other, that one of the most decorated scientists of the time had been exiled—stolen away from his family at gunpoint—and sent to an isolated ice station out in the Arctic Ocean.

Viktor finished reading the section titled “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” where Ivan dramatically repudiates God. It stirred him. Ivan’s anger spoke to his own heart, his own frustration. Like Ivan, Viktor’s own father had been murdered—not by the hands of one of his sons, as in the novel, but by treachery nonetheless.

And the misery had not ended there. After the base’s disappearance in 1948, his mother had slipped into a black depression that lasted a full decade and ended one morning within the noose of a knotted bedsheet. Viktor had been eighteen years old when he walked in and discovered his mother hanging from a rafter in their apartment.

Without any other relatives, he had been recruited into the Russian military. It became his new family. Seeking answers to or some type of resolution for the fate of his father, Viktor’s interest in the Arctic grew. This obsession and a deep-seated fury guided his career, leading to his ruthless rise within the Russian submarine forces and eventually into the command staff of the Severomorsk Naval Complex.

Despite this success, he never forgot how his father was torn from his family. He could still picture his mother hanging from her handmade noose, her toes just brushing the bare plank floors.

“Sir?” The lieutenant’s feet shifted on the deck plating, drawing him back to the present. His voice stuttered, clearly fearful of disturbing
Beliy Prizrak,
the White Ghost. “We…we’ve a coded message marked urgent and for your eyes only.”

Viktor closed the book and ran a finger along the leather-bound cover. He then held out a hand to the lieutenant. He had been expecting the message. The
Drakon
had risen to periscope depth half an hour ago and raised its communication array through a crack in the ice, sending out reports and receiving incoming messages.

The man gratefully held out a metal binder. Viktor signed for it and accepted it.

“That’ll be all, Lieutenant. If I need to send out a reply, I’ll ring the bridge.”

“Yes, sir.” The man turned sharply on a heel and left.

Viktor opened the binder. Stamped across the top was
PERSONAL FOR THE FLEET COMMANDER
. The rest was encrypted. He sighed and began the decryption. It was from Colonel General Yergen Chenko, directorate of the FSB, the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, what the Americans called the Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the old KGB.
New name, same game
, he thought sourly. The message came from their headquarters in Lubyanka.

URGENT  URGENT  URGENT  URGENT

TOP SECRET   TOP SECRET   TOP SECRET

PERSONAL FOR FLEET COMMANDER

RMKS/

(1) NEW INTELLIGENCE HAS CONFIRMED US COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATION IS UNDER WAY. US DELTA FORCE MOBILIZED. OPERATION CONTROLLER IDENTIFIED AND CONFIRMED. COUNTERMEASURES HAVE BEEN ACCELERATED AND COORDINATED WITH LEOPARD OPS.

(2) OMEGA DRIFT STATION HAS BEEN APPROVED AS TARGET ONE. COORDINATE ALPHA FOUR TWO DECIMAL SIX TACK THREE ONE DECIMAL TWO, CHART Z-SUBONE.

(3)
DRAKON
ORDERED TO RUN SILENT FROM HERE UNTIL MOLNIYA GO-CODE IS TRANSMITTED.

(4) DEPLOYMENT GO-CODE SET FOR 0800.

(5) INTELLIGENCE UPDATE WILL BE RELAYED ALONG WITH GO-CODE.

(6) COL. GEN. Y. CHENKO SENDS.

   
BT

   
NNNN

Viktor frowned as he finished decrypting the message.

What had been stated in the missive was plain enough and no surprise. The target and time of attack were established and confirmed:
Omega Drift station, tomorrow morning
. And clearly Washington was now aware of the stakes surrounding the old ice base.