Ice Hunt (6 page)

Captain Perry crunched across the ice and snow toward Omega Drift Station. The wind whistled around him, a haunted sound that spoke to the hollowness in his heart. Here, at the end of the world, the wind was a living creature, always blowing, scouring the surface like a starving beast. It was the ultimate predator: merciless, constant, inescapable. As an old Inuit proverb says, “It’s not the cold that kills, it’s the wind.”

Perry marched steadily forward into the teeth of the blustery gale. Behind him, the
Polar Sentinel
floated inside a polynya, a large open lake within the ice. The Omega Drift Station was constructed on its shoreline, the site having been chosen for the stability of the nearby polynya, allowing easy ingress and egress of a Navy sub. The polynya owed its permanence to the ring of thick pressure ridges that surrounded the lake, climbing two stories high and delving four times as deep below the surface. These battlements of packed ice held the lake open against the constant crush of the surrounding floes. The research station was built on a relatively level ice plain a quarter mile away, a long hike in the subzero cold.

He marched with a small party of his men, the first of four rotations to be allowed shore leave. The sailors chattered among themselves, but Perry remained hunched in his Navy parka, the edge of his fur-lined hood pulled tightly over his face. He stared off to the northeast, to where the Russian ice base had been discovered two months ago, only thirty miles from here. A shiver trembled through him, but it had nothing to do with the cold.

So many dead…
He pictured the Russian bodies, the old inhabitants of the ice base, stacked like cordwood after being chopped or thawed out of their icy tomb. Thirty-two men, twelve women. It had taken them two weeks to clear all the bodies. Some had looked starved to death, while others looked as if they had met more violent ends. They found one body hung in a room, the rope so frozen it shattered with their touch.
But that wasn’t the worst…

Perry pushed this thought away.

As he climbed a ridge of ice, made easier by the steps chopped into it, the drift station came into view. It was a small hamlet of red Jamesway huts. The assembly of fifteen red buildings appeared like a bloody rash on the ice. Steam smoked from each hut, misting over the base, giving it a deceptively sultry appearance. The rumble of twenty-four generators seemed to vibrate the mists. The smell of diesel fuel and kerosene hung over the site. A single lone American flag hung from a pole, snapping in the occasional fiercer gusts.

Scattered around the semipermanent settlement, a handful of Ski-Doos and two sealed Sno-Cats stood ready to service the scientists and personnel of the base. There was even an iceboat, a catamaran resting on stainless-steel runners.

From the top of the ridge, Perry stared out toward the horizon. He saw the worn trail snaking across the ice, heading from Omega out to the old Russian base. Ever since the discovery, the personnel here had been shuttling back and forth across the ice cap, using whatever vehicles were on hand. Currently a quarter of the drift station’s manpower had shifted over to the buried Russian base and was encamped inside the inverted mountain of ice.

Perry stared another long moment. The path to the Russian base was easy to see. This area of the ice cap was covered with a layer of scalloped snow, what was called
sastrugi,
little curled waves of frozen snow formed by winds and erosion. “Like the top of a lemon meringue,” his XO had commented. But the path made by the Sno-Cats and Ski-Doos had ground the lemon meringue
sastrugi
flat, leaving a worn track through the crisp waves.

Perry understood the interest of the men and women here. They were scientists with an avid curiosity. But none of them had been the first to enter the base as he had been, crossing the thirty miles overland from Omega to the defunct station. None knew what he and a small group of his men had found in the heart of the station. He had immediately ordered his men silent and stationed a complement of armed guards to keep that one section of the base off-limits to the Omega personnel. Only one member of the drift station knew of Perry’s find: Dr. Amanda Reynolds. She had been with Perry when he had entered the base. For the first time, the strong and independent woman had been shaken to her core.

Whatever had shown up on the DeepEye sonar—the flicker of movement seen on the recording—was never discovered. Maybe it had been just a sonar ghost, a mirage created by the sub’s own motion, or maybe it was some scavenger that had vacated the station, like a polar bear. Though this last was unlikely, not unless the beast had found an entrance that they had yet to discover. Two months ago, they had been forced to use thermite charges to melt a way down into the buried station. Since then, extra heat charges and C4 explosives had been used to open an artificial polynya nearby for the
Polar Sentinel
to service the newly reoccupied base.

As Perry climbed down the ice ridge, he wished they had simply sunk the entire Russian station. No good would come of it. He was certain of that. But he had orders to follow. He shivered as the winds kicked up.

A shout drew his attention back to the assembly of Jamesway huts. A figure dressed in a blue parka waved an arm in their direction, encouraging them forward. Perry crossed down the ridge toward the figure. The man hurried forward to meet him, hunched against the cold.

“Captain.” The figure was Erik Gustof, the Canadian meteorologist. He was a strapping fellow of Norwegian descent, characterized by whitish-blond hair and tall build, though at the moment, all that could be discerned were the man’s two eyes, goggled against the snow’s glare, and a frosted white mustache. “There’s a satellite call holding for you.”

“Who—?”

“Admiral Reynolds.” The man glanced to the skies. “You’d best be quick. There’s a big storm headed our way, and that last bevy of solar flares is still wreaking havoc with the systems.”

Perry nodded and turned to his junior officer. “Dismiss the men. They’re on their own until twenty hundred. Then the next team gets their turn ashore.”

This was met with general whoops from the men. They scattered in various directions, some to the station’s mess hall, others to the recreation hut, and others still to the living quarters for more personal dalliances. Captain Perry followed Erik to an assembly of three joined huts, the main base of operations.

“Dr. Reynolds sent me out to hurry you along,” Erik explained. “She’s speaking with her father right now. We don’t know how long communication will hold.”

They reached the door to the operations hut, kicked off snow and ice from their boots, then ducked through the doorway. The heat of the interior was painful after the frigid cold. Perry shook off his gloves, then unzipped his parka and threw back his hood. He rubbed the tip of his nose to make sure it was still there.

“Nippy out, eh?” Erik said, remaining in his parka.

“It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity,” he grumbled sarcastically. Perry hung up his parka among the many others already there. He still wore his blue jumpsuit with his name stenciled on a pocket. He folded his cap and tucked it into his belt.

Erik stepped back to the door. “You know the way to the NAVSAT station. I’m going to check on some instruments outside before the storm hits tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Erik grinned and yanked the door open. Even in such a short time, the wind had kicked up outside. A gust whipped inside and struck Perry like a slap to the face. Erik hurried out, shoving the door shut.

Perry shivered a moment, rubbing his hands.
Who the hell would volunteer to stay in this godforsaken land for two years?

He crossed the anteroom and went through another set of doors into the main operations room. It held all the various offices of the administration, along with several labs. The main purpose of the research in this building was to measure the seasonal rate of growth and erosion of the ice pack, measuring the heat budget of the Arctic. But other labs in other huts varied greatly, from a full mining operation that sampled cores of the ocean floor to a hydrolab that studied the health of the phyto-and zooplankton under the ice. The research was continuous, running around the clock as the station drifted along, floating with the polar current and traveling almost two miles every day.

He nodded to various familiar faces behind desks or bent over computer screens. He crossed through a set of airlock-type doors that led into one of the adjoining huts.

This hut was extra insulated and had two backup generators. It was Omega’s lifeline to the outside world. It contained all their radio and communication equipment: shortwave for maintaining contact with teams on the ice, VLF and ULF for communication with the subs assigned here, and NAVSAT, the military satellite communication system. The hut was empty, except for the lone figure of Amanda Reynolds.

Perry crossed to her. She glanced up from where she leaned over a TTY, a text telephone unit. The portable keyboard device allowed her to communicate over the satellite. She could speak into the microphone and answers would come out on the LCD screen.

Amanda nodded to him, but spoke to her father, Admiral Reynolds. “I know, Dad. I know you didn’t want me out here in the first place. But—”

She was cut off and leaned closer to read the TTY. Her face reddened; obviously an argument had been under way. And it was an old argument from the looks of it. Her father hadn’t wanted Amanda to take this assignment in the first place, worried about her, about her disability. Amanda had defied him, coming anyway, asserting her independence.

But Perry wondered how much of her fight was not so much to convince her father as herself. He had never met a woman so fiercely determined to prove herself in all things, in all ways.

And it was taking its toll.

Perry studied the worn look in her eyes, the bruised shadows beneath them. She appeared to have aged a decade over the past two months. Secrets did that to you.

She continued, speaking into the phone, heat entering her voice. “We’ll discuss this later. Captain Perry is here.”

As she read her father’s response, she held her breath, biting her lower lip. “Fine!” she finally snapped, and ripped off the headset. She shoved it at him. “Here.”

He took the headset, noting the tremble in her fingers. Fury, frustration, or both? He palmed the microphone to keep his next words private with her. “Is he still keeping the information under lock and key?”

Amanda snorted and stood. “And electronic padlock and voiceprint recognition and retinal scan identification. Fort Knox couldn’t be more secure.”

Perry smiled at her. “He’s doing his best. The bureaucratic machinery under him grinds slowly. With such sensitive matters, diplomatic channels have to be handled with delicacy.”

“But I don’t know why. This goes back to World War Two. After so long, the world has a right to know.”

“It’s waited for fifty years. It can wait another month or so. With the already strained relations between the U.S. and Russia, the way has to be greased before letting the information out.”

Amanda sighed, stared into his eyes, then shook her head. “You sound just like my father.”

Perry leaned in. “In that case, this would be very Freudian.” He kissed her.

She smiled under his lips and mumbled, “You kiss like him, too.”

He choked a laugh, pulling back.

She pointed to the headset. “You’d best not keep the admiral waiting.”

He slipped the headset in place and pulled up the microphone. “Captain Perry here.”

“Captain, I trust you’re taking good care of my daughter.” His voice cut in and out a bit.

“Yes, sir…very good care.” One hand reached over and squeezed Amanda’s hand. Their affection for each other was no secret, but it had grown deeper over the past two months, slipping past fondness to something more meaningful. For propriety’s sake, they restricted any outward displays to private moments. Not even the admiral, Amanda’s father, knew of the escalation of their affections.

“Captain, I’ll keep this brief,” the admiral continued. “The Russian ambassador was contacted yesterday and given a copy of your report.”

“But I thought we weren’t going to contact them until—”

Now it was Perry’s turn to be cut off. “We had no choice,” the admiral interrupted. “Word had somehow reached Moscow about the rediscovery of the old ice station.”

“Yes, sir. But what does this mean for those of us out here?”

There was a long pause. Perry was momentarily unsure if the solar storm had cut off communication—then the admiral spoke again, “Greg…”

The informal use of his first name instantly drew him to full alert.

“Greg, I need you to be aware of something else. While I may be out here on the West Coast, I’ve been in this business long enough to know when the hive back in D.C. is buzzing. Something is going on over there. Midnight meetings between the NSA and the CIA over the matter. The secretary of the Navy has been recalled from a junket in the Middle East. The entire cabinet was recalled early from their Easter break.”

“What’s it all about?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. Something broke high in command, higher than my station. Word has yet to reach me…if it ever will. Some political shit storm is brewing over this. D.C. is locking up hatches and battening down. I’ve never seen its like before.”

A cold finger of dread ran up Perry’s spine. “I don’t understand. Why?”

Again his words stuttered in the electronic chop. “I’m not sure. But I wanted to give you heads-up about the escalation down here.”

Perry frowned. It all sounded like the usual politics to him. He would note the admiral’s concern, but what else could he do?

“Captain, there’s one other thing. A strange tidbit that has trickled down to me; actually it was passed by an aide to the undersecretary. It’s a single word that seems to be the center of the shit storm.”

“What’s the word?”

“Grendel.”

Perry’s breath went out of him.

“Perhaps a code name, a name of a ship, I don’t know,” the admiral continued. “Does it mean anything to you?”