Ice Hunt (26 page)

Jenny’s heart clenched. “Out!” she choked, reaching for a door handle—but it was already too late.

Like a glacier calving from a coastline, the section of ice under them fell away. The Sno-Cat followed, rockabilly blaring, and toppled end over end into the icy ocean.

10:38 A.M.
USS
POLAR SENTINEL

Perry stood in the control bridge. The entire crew held their breaths. All eyes were on the monitors and equipment. Perry leaned beside one screen. The image was a digital feed from one of the exterior cameras. Half a mile away, the shadow of the
Drakon
floated, limned within a pillar of light shining through the open polynya. The enemy sub showed no indication that it sensed its smaller shadow.

“Captain.” Commander Bratt spoke from the fire control station, whispering. He wore a pair of headphones. “We’re picking up weapon fire on the hydrophones.”

“Damn it!” Perry grumbled under his breath. A fist formed.

Bratt made eye contact with Perry. “Orders?”

From first sonar contact, the
Polar Sentinel
had followed the Akula-class submarine as it bore down upon Omega, running silent and fast. Without armaments, they had no way of defending themselves or mounting an offense against the larger, armed vessel. And without surfacing, they had no way to warn the drift station. So they had played ghost with the other boat.

“I’m detecting a missile launch!” the sonar supervisor hissed.

On the screen, a section of the ice roof suddenly blew downward with a bright flash, as if a meteor had punched through from above. They didn’t need the hydrophones to hear the blast echo through the waters.

A moment of stunned silence followed.

“I think that was the satellite shack,” Bratt whispered, one finger resting on a vectored map of the Omega station.

They’re isolating the station,
Perry realized. The station’s satellite transmitters and receivers were its only link to the outside world—except for the
Polar Sentinel
.

“What do we do?” Bratt asked.

“We need to get our mouths above water,” Perry answered, raising his voice. “Commander, order the boat back to the Russian ice station. We’ll broadcast the situation from there while we evacuate the civilians. That will surely be the Russians’ next target.”

“Aye, sir.”

Bratt began issuing hushed orders to the diving crew. The helmsman and planesman trimmed the boat and brought it about. They glided the sub silently away.

Explosions still echoed, ringing down through the ice. The noise helped cover their retreat. Though, in truth, they could’ve escaped even if it had been dead quiet. Designed with the newest silent propulsion system and a thicker sonar-absorbing anechoic coating, the
Sentinel
was all but invisible to most means of detection. She slid away without any outward sign that the
Drakon
even knew she was there.

As they left, Perry watched the video screen. The column of light faded behind them until there was just darkness.

Bratt called over to him from the boat’s diving station. “ETA to the Russian base is thirty-two minutes.”

Perry nodded and stared around the bridge. Every face was grim, angry. They were running away from a fight, but it was a battle they couldn’t win. The
Polar Sentinel
was the only means to evacuate the station.

Still, as he stood in the center of the sub’s control bridge, an overriding fear turned his insides to ice.
Amanda…
She had left yesterday for the ice station, to settle some dispute between the geologists and biologists, but she had been scheduled to return to Omega this morning. Had she already returned? Or was she still at the ice station?

Bratt stepped over to him. “The Russians aren’t going to need much time to lock Omega down, especially considering the lack of defenses there. After that, they’ll be hauling ass over to their station.”

His XO was right. It wouldn’t leave them much of a window in which to evacuate the civilians. He cleared his throat. “Commander, assemble a quick-response team. Under your lead. Have them suited up and ready to offload as soon as we surface. We need everyone out of there ASAP.”

“Will do, Captain. Do you have a timetable for the evac?”

Perry considered the question, judging the speed of the other sub and the meager defenses of Omega. He needed as much time as possible, but he couldn’t risk having his boat caught on the surface.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “I want us diving again in exactly fifteen minutes.”

“That’s not much time.”

“I don’t care if you have to yank folks naked from the showers. Get their asses into the
Sentinel
. Don’t worry about equipment, supplies, nothing. Just get everyone on board.”

“It’ll be done.” Bratt turned sharply, already shouting orders.

Perry stared after him. Around the bridge, everyone busied themselves at their stations. Alone with his own thoughts, his worries for Amanda grew.
Where was she?

10:44 A.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Deep in the Crawl Space of the station, Amanda followed Connor MacFerran’s broad back. After arranging for the transfer of the reporter and his group to the station, Amanda had found herself full of nervous energy. By bringing these newcomers out here, she knew she was violating the intent of the Navy’s gag order, if not the letter. Word of the discovery on Level Four was not to be broadcast to the outside world—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t reveal it to folks already here. The sheriff, the reporter, and the others…as long as they were at the station, they were under the umbrella of the gag order, not outside it.

Still, Amanda knew she was skating on thin ice. Greg…Captain Perry…would not be pleased. He was Navy, like her father. Bending rules was not something they tolerated easily. But Amanda had to be true to her own heart. The facts had to get out. They needed an impartial party to document it all, like the reporter.

With her decision made, she was too edgy to sit for the two or so hours it would take to make the transfer. So after getting confirmation from Washburn, she had headed down to the Crawl Space to see if there was any news on Lacy Devlin.

It was lucky she had decided to check.

She had found Connor MacFerran stamping a set of ice crampons onto the bottom of his boots. They were spiked like golf shoes, meant to keep one’s footing stable on the slick surface. Clearly he had been about to head out on his own, ignoring her order to take others with him. “Everyone is busy,” he had complained, then patted his down vest. “Besides I have a walkie-talkie.”

Of course, Amanda refused to let him go alone, and since she was still wearing her thermal racing suit, she had only to don a pair of crampons herself.

Ahead of her now, Connor halted at a crisscrossing of ice tunnels. He wore a mining helmet and shone its light down the various chutes. He cupped his mouth. His chest heaved. His lips were hidden, but Amanda knew he was yelling out Lacy’s name.

Amanda waited, deaf to any response. She carried a flashlight in one hand and a coil of poly-line over one shoulder. They were in an un-mapped section of the Crawl Space. It was a maze of tunnels, cracks, and caves.

Connor touched an orange spray-painted arrow on the wall. Amanda had been told it marked the skating course Lacy followed. But Amanda didn’t need the markers to track the woman. The floor was scored with old runner marks, a cryptic script of steel across ice.

Connor continued down the marked tunnel, raising his hand to his lips, calling out. But from his steady pace, there seemed no response.

They continued for another twenty minutes, winding down and around a long looping ice chute, then back into the tangle of cracks and tunnels. Connor continued to call out and follow the orange markers.

He was so intent on listening, searching for the next marker, that he missed the scoring of ice that led off the main track and headed down a long crack.

“Connor!” Amanda called to him.

He jumped at her yell. Maybe it had been too loud.

He turned to her. “What?”

She pointed to the one set of tracks leading away. “She went this way.” She bent and rubbed the scored ice. It was hard to say how old the marks were. But it was something worth investigating. She glanced up to the geologist.

He nodded and moved into the crack.

She followed with her flashlight.

They moved down the chute, digging in their crampons to keep traction. The tunnel narrowed, but the track kept going.

Connor stopped ahead of her, glancing back—not at her, but back down the tunnel. His brow was crinkled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I thought I heard something.” He stood and listened for another few breaths, then shrugged heavily. He turned and continued down the tunnel.

After another ten steps, the path plunged over an ice cliff.

Connor reached the edge first, bending over to shine his helmet light down. He suddenly stiffened and dropped to his knees.

Amanda squeezed up next to him. It was tight. The pit ended about fifteen feet down. The splash of red on the ice was a raw slash. One boot lay in the middle of the stain. Also a mining helmet, the lamp smashed.

Connor turned to her. “Lacy’s.”

There was no sign of a body, but the bloody track led off to the side. Out of their line of vision.

“I have to go down there,” Connor insisted. “There might be another way out that we can’t see. If Lacy tried to drag herself…”

Amanda stared at the amount of blood on the floor. It seemed hopeless, but she shrugged the coil of poly-line to the floor. “I’m lighter. You brace me, and I’ll go down and look.”

Connor looked like he was going to leap down there himself. But he only nodded.

Amanda tossed a length of rope to the bottom. Connor braced himself, seated on the ice a couple feet from the edge, legs apart, crampons dug into the walls. He passed a loop of poly-line around his back, under his armpits. He shook it, testing it.

“You ready?” she asked.

“I won’t drop a little slip of a girl like you,” he groused. “Just find Lacy.”

Amanda nodded. She pocketed her flashlight, grabbed the rope, and began to rappel down into the ice pit. She lowered herself, hand over hand, spiked feet against the wall. She quickly reached the bottom.

“Off rope!” she called up as her toes hit the floor.

The line jiggled as the large man unbraced himself and crawled over to the edge. He still wore the loop of poly-line around his chest. He stared anxiously down at her and mouthed something, but with his thick beard and the glare of his helmet lamp, she could not make out what he was saying.

Rather than admit her ignorance, she simply waved to him. She pulled out her flashlight.

As she swung her light, her nose curled. The smell was rank. It seemed to hover at the bottom of the pit like bad air in a cavern, heavy, thick, suffocating. She swallowed hard. One summer, while going to Stanford, she had worked in the kennel of an animal research facility. The stench here brought her back: blood, feces, and urine. It was a smell that she had come to equate with fear.

She followed the blood trail with her flashlight. It led past the cliff to an opening in the ice wall. It was a horizontal slot, even with the floor, similar to a street drain that led into a city’s underground sewers. It was no higher than her knee, but almost as long as the length of her body.

A
big
sewer drain.

She crossed toward it and called out, “Lacy!”

Deaf, she glanced up to Connor to see if he registered any response. He still knelt up at the cliff’s edge, but he was staring back down the tunnel rather than into the pit.

Her toe hit something on the floor, drawing her gaze back down. It was Lacy’s boot. It spun from her kick. She instinctively followed it with her flashlight. It hit the wall and stopped. From this angle, her light shone down into the boot.

It wasn’t empty. Bright bone, splintered at the end, stuck out of the boot.

She screamed. But no noise came out. Or maybe it did. She had no way of telling. She scrambled backward on the ice, crampons now acting like ice skates.

She craned up to the cliff’s edge.

No one was there.

“Connor!”

She could see his light up there, deeper in the tunnel. But it jittered all around, like he was doing some Scottish jig up there. Even the rope snaking down the cliff wall whipped and flailed.

“Connor!”

Then the light stopped its dance, as if hearing her. It settled still, pointing toward the top of the tunnel. The dancing rope went slack.

Amanda backed across the ice, trying to get some distance, trying to see farther down the mouth of the tunnel. She pointed her flashlight up. Her throat constricted into a knot, and blood pounded in her useless ears. She didn’t bother calling out again.

Something moved over the geologist’s headlamp, casting a shadow over the ceiling. Something large, hunched…

She now held her flashlight with both hands, pointing it like a weapon. It was surely just Connor. But being deaf, she had no way of knowing for sure. Maybe he was calling out to her…

Terror tightened her belly.

The shadow drew closer.

Amanda didn’t wait.

She bolted across the ice, fleeing along Lacy’s bloody track, aiming for the only means of escape. She dove belly first onto the ice. The wind was knocked out of her. She didn’t care. She slid toward the dark sewer drain, flashlight pointed forward.

Then she was gone.

The slot swallowed her away.

The momentum of her slide carried her several feet down the drain. Illuminated by her flashlight, the low ceiling drew upward. She scrambled up to her knees as she slowed, spinning slightly on the ice.

The sloped floor dumped into a hollow space. She sat up. The roof here was high enough to stand if she ducked her head, but she remained seated. Her flashlight waved around the room.

It was a dead end…in
every
sense of the word.