Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6 (9 page)

Alex could feel the familiar tingling over the trauma site, as the bullet wound began to heal, the skin around the meaty hole bubbling, and then pulling closed before the seaman’s eyes.

“That … musta hurt,” Anderson said, swallowing, with an attempted smile that was more of a grimace.

“Every time,” Alex said, and rolled his shoulder. He turned away; there was no time for conversation. “You have a package for me.” It wasn’t a question.

Anderson nodded. “Your kit and the skidder is juiced and ready. We also have a medic waiting to see you, if …”

“Don’t need him. Commander Carmack on the bridge?”

“Sir.” Anderson pointed. “Follow me.”

“I know my way.” Alex headed for the bridge and Carmack, feeling impatience rising in his gut. Time was moving against him, the race was on, and he was already playing catch-up. He moved fast down the steel corridor, Anderson jogging in pursuit.

Captain Wu Yang held the shard of super-hard steel in his hand, his mind working. The metal had been flattened, impossibly compressed. He felt his frustration welling up. “Just like the elevator cage.” He turned, holding it out, and looked along the faces of the assembled engineers and scientists. They stood, shuffling their feet, refusing to return his gaze.

“What happened?
Well?”
His booming voice made many of them flinch back.

“The cutter has been dragged away … maybe taken into another tunnel,” Soong Chin Ling said softly.

“Dragged away;
that’s
what you think?” He glared. Soong dropped her eyes, and only one of the group met his gaze now – Shenjung Xing.

Yang flung the piece of steel down the tunnel and the fragment bounced away, clanging off into the darkness.

“This machine” – Yang waved his arm over the debris littering the tunnel – “weighed over a thousand tons and its drill head is solid tungsten.” He tilted his head, looking up at the ceiling and then down and around the edges of the huge tunnel. “It is so large that the device should have fully plugged the end of the pipe.” He scoffed. “But it’s not gone, and it hasn’t been dragged away into another tunnel.”

Yang walked to one of the walls, lifting his flashlight, illuminating a similar shards of steel embedded deep into the rock. “It’s still here. Except now, what remains of it is crushed into the walls, floor, and ceiling.”

No one said anything, avoiding his gaze.

“Just like the elevator cage,” he repeated. “What could do that?” Yang placed his hands on his hips and turned slowly, finding Shenjung. “Firedamp again,
hmm
?”

The lead scientist remained mute.

Yang walked towards them. “And if so, then where are they?” He leaned closer to the scientist, becoming infuriated with his calm. “Where is the team, their burned up bodies, blood traces, bones, anything?” He turned again to one of the shards sticking out from the wall, frowned, and leaned in closer. He sniffed.

Yang straightened, and beckoned to Shenjung and Soong, clicking his fingers and waving them closer.

“Smell it.”

Soong bent to wipe one of her gloved hands along a shard of twisted steel. She sniffed at it, and then held her hand up to Shenjung.

“The same as in the base, and on the boot.”

Shenjung nodded and placed a hand against the rock wall, looking around at the obliterated interior. “If whatever came through here could do that to the cutter, there would be nothing left of flesh and bone, Captain. But, maybe they are not dead, but instead further inside, trapped maybe.”

Yang grunted, just as the scouts came running back in from down the tunnel. He turned to them. “Report.”

“Sir, we found something, two hundred feet further in. Another tunnel. But it’s not one cut by the machines. It seems far older.”

“
Ahh.”
Yang waggled a finger in the air. “Perhaps our missing base members
did
descend lower. One of Comrade Zhang Li’s last communications talked of opening
a void,
yes?”

“A void,” Shenjung repeated softly. “Then yes, perhaps they
were
able to descend lower, and avoid whatever catastrophe occurred here.”

“There is something else, Captain Yang.”

Yang slowly turned. The soldier stood so rod-straight, it was if he were on a parade ground and not deep below the earth.

“Writing. There seems to be some sort of writing on the walls.” The soldier stared straight ahead.

“Good, they also left us a message.” Yang clicked his fingers. The soldiers fell in around him, and the scientists and engineers were pushed to the rear, their smaller frames eclipsed by the larger men at the front.

Yang looked down along the line. “Comrade Shenjung.” He motioned impatiently, and saw the man lean in closer to the small woman beside him.

“You come too,” Shenjung tried to whisper. “I think I get a front row seat.”

“I’m sure it is whether you like it or not,” she returned softly.

Yang walked briskly, Shenjung and Soong jogging to keep up, and not be trampled by the larger men behind them. They stopped at a collapsed wall, where the drilling ended when it had broken through into exactly what the missing Zhang Li had described – a dark void. Yang and several of his men lifted flashlights and panned them around slowly. Though the interior of the new cave was huge, it looked like it primarily sloped downwards, and its structure was vastly different from the tunnels they had been traveling along so far. The drilled tunnel had smelled primarily of cut stone and diesel fuel. But inside the new cavern, it smelled old, ancient, the rocks timeworn. There was a greenish tinge on several, indicating there was still moisture in the air.

Yang stepped lightly up onto the tumbled boulders, some the size of bread loaves, others the size of small cars. He let his eyes move over the broken debris. Shenjung went to climb up beside him, but the rocks shifted, and started to slide underneath him.

“
Watch it
.” Yang grabbed at him, but missed. The table-sized boulder that Shenjung stood atop began to skate down the pile and Soong screamed. Yang knew the rock would flip soon, and the scientist would be crushed.

People scattered … all but one. Mungoi planted trunk-like legs as the huge boulder came towards him. It caught on the edge of another stone and lifted. Shenjung was thrown to the ground, as the eight-foot slab rose up like the lid of a trap about to close on top of him.

Shenjung rolled and ended up at Mungoi’s feet, and the huge man lifted his arms, and leaned forward. The immense rock came down, and was stopped by the giant’s hands. Mungoi’s feet sunk into the debris to the ankles, and he grunted from the strain. The scientist stared up at him with his mouth open.

Yang smiled and nodded. “Good work, Mungoi.” He looked down at Shenjung. “I suggest you watch where you walk, comrade. We cannot be holding your hand every second.”

He watched as the scientist got to his feet and dusted himself off. The scientist turned to thank Mungoi, who looked down at him with disinterest, and then simply flipped the huge rock to the side.

Shenjung carefully clambered back up the debris pile, sucking in huge breaths.

“Okay?” Yang raised an eyebrow.

Shenjung nodded, calming himself. “Your man is strong.”

Yang turned away. “You have no idea.”

Shenjung then pointed. “It is clear that the drill broke through here.”

“Maybe.” Yang sniffed deeply. “I smell salt.” He lifted his flashlight a little higher. “Maybe the ocean. But we are miles from the shoreline.” He turned. “What is your opinion?”

Shenjung inhaled deeply. “Maybe mineral salts?”

“No, I know seawater when I smell it.” Yang panned his flashlight around at the debris and then behind them. He noticed that the rubble was inside their tunnel, and not the old cave.

“Strange, the wall was pushed inwards. If I was to make an educated guess as to what occurred here, I would say that the miners didn’t break through into this cave, but instead, something broke through in on
them
.”

Shenjung pointed down at the debris. “Maybe when they retracted the cutter head, they drew the entire wall down on top of themselves.”

“Once again, where are the bodies?” Yang climbed inside, and lifted his flashlight.“
Zha-aaaang
!”

Zhang – zhang – zhang – zhan – zha …
The echo receded to a whisper and then vanished.

Shenjung grimaced. “It’s big.” He turned his face towards the darkness. “And deep, but there is a breeze – I can feel it.” He carefully stepped in and down along the debris, and then walked a few paces into the new cave. He stopped suddenly, lurching. “Careful, a drop off.”

Yang quickly joined him, grabbing Shenjung’s shoulder and pulling him back. He too peered over the edge. They were standing on a shelf of stone, and his light refused to penetrate the dark more than fifty feet into the pit. He picked up a fist-sized rock and let it drop. There was nothing for a few seconds before it struck a wall – once, twice, three times, and again, this time far away.

Shenjung exhaled. “We do not have enough rope.”

“Neither did they,” Yang responded and turned to several of his men. “Go, scout around. Find how Comrade Zhang Li descended.”

Shenjung saw that the soldiers and now his own team of engineers and scientists had crowded into the ancient cave. Yang took him by the arm and walked him several paces away.

“Well, Comrade Shenjung, with the cutter destroyed, it looks like one of our tasks is already at an end. There can be no repair, only replacement – and this will not happen easily.” He lifted his chin towards his engineering team crowding into the new cavern. “And so, their usefulness has expired. We don’t need to bring them any further on our mission.” He paused. “But you must stay.”

“Our mission?” Shenjung Xing paled, and then shook his head. “I don’t think …”

Yang held up a hand, and the smaller man wilted under his gaze. “We only need one geological specialist … and that will be you. That is an order.”

“You can’t order me.”

Yang snorted. “Comrade, the engineering part of the mission is finished – the part
you
were in charge of. The priority remaining now, is finding the source of the signal from below the ground – the military mission –
my mission
. This is where I take the lead, and you follow. And
that
is an order you will obey.”

*

“
The part you were in charge of” –
Shenjung Xing could have laughed; he never felt
in charge
. He held up a hand. “I am an engineer, geologist, and mining specialist, not a cave expert.”

Wu Yang’s eyes closed, and Shenjung waited, but after a few seconds he exhaled, knowing further protest would be wasted on the man.

“I will tell them.”

He carefully picked his way around the fallen boulders, and gathered his small team. He felt their eyes on him, and spoke slowly.

“There is no machine to repair, recover, or restart. Our work here has completed early.”  Their faces were blank, waiting. Shenjung cleared his throat. “Until we receive further instructions, we will head back to the surface.” He smiled. “Drink tea, relax, and stay warm.”

There were murmurs about work, pay, departure, but he ignored them. There was only one person’s face he sought out. “There is one more thing; I will accompany Captain Yang a little further into the caves … alone.”

Soong came closer. Her lips held a fragile smile. “Calling for volunteers?”

He shook his head. “Not this time, my Soong. You take them back up.”

“I’m not a good babysitter.” Her smile fell away. “I would prefer to be down here with you.”

“I’m sorry, this is not a request. These are Captain Yang’s orders, and this time I agree with them. The less people we have down here the less chance more will get injured, or disappear. If we find anything significant, then we can return and decide what we need to do.”

“And if you find Zhang Li or his team? What if they are hurt, and need to be carried out?” Soong asked. “We can be extra hands.”

Shenjung shook his head. “And what if there is another rockfall, and more are hurt? All we do is create more people needing to be carried out, or more people vanished. We have twenty strong soldiers.” He gave her a weary smile, and leaned in a little closer. “I would also like you with me, but maybe in other circumstances.” He reached out to take her hand. “Get a message home, and tell them that the rock cutter cannot be repaired. Take our team back to the surface; wait for us there.”

“No,” she said softly. “I will wait for just
you
there.” She turned away and seemed to shiver. “My grandfather used to say: Heaven has a road, yet no one travels it; Hell has no gate but men will dig to get there.” She looked up at him. “And Yang is digging you deep now.”

His weary smile lifted into something stronger. “We must
learn
what happened to our lost colleagues.” He held up a finger. “And my grandfather also had a saying:
learning
is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” He grinned. “You see, two wise old men gave good advice to their grandchildren.”  He squeezed her hand. “I’ll be fine. But only if I know that you are safe.”

Soong looked at her feet momentarily, before the words rushed out. “Shenjung, I did not come here because of the project.” She squeezed his hand hard in return. “I will be waiting for you.” She paused, looking like she wanted to say more, or lean in close to him. In the end, she clicked on her flashlight, stepped back, and then turned to the dark tunnel, following the others.

He watched her go, her small light getting smaller and smaller until it vanished completely.
And one joy scatters a hundred griefs
, he whispered. Despite the gloom of the dark passages, and the knot he felt in his belly at the thought of scaling down any further in the dark caves, the idea that this young woman would be waiting for him suddenly filled him with lightness and hope.

Sergeant Bill Monroe stood in his snowmobile and looked out over the bluff. Below was a plain of blinding white, with a few swirling flurries, looking like small ghosts racing each other across the freezing landscape. The wind was only around twenty miles per hour with gusts of thirty – mild. Down here katabatic blasts got up to 250, easy. Still, the chill factor made the wind feel like needle sharp teeth trying to get at his flesh.

Monroe wore standard extreme weather kit, with goggles fitted into a full-face covering. The face plate was padded with insulation on the inside and externally was of a tough polymer that had shielded him from far worse temperatures than these. And he knew well what the cold could do – freeze burn gave black blisters on the skin, the same as if you touched a red-hot stovetop. Extremities exposed for longer periods were lost. Fingers, toes, ears, noses – once the meat was frozen, the cells got ice crystals in them, and the flesh died. Removal was the only option –
lose a bit to save the rest –
it was as simple as that.

His comm. link pinged. “
Captain, come in
.”

It was Jennifer Hartigan, his onsite medical officer. She was smart, wholesomely attractive, and could hold her own in field exercises, stitching a wound, or on the dance floor. He smiled, and guessed this message was going to be about the fancy dress party they were organizing this Saturday night to farewell the day-trippers. He squeezed the comm. link at his neck to connect.

“Monroe. Go ahead, Hartigan.”

“Bill, got a message coming in from HQ, high priority. You need to take it.”

“Can you patch it?” He frowned at her tone.

“No can do, sir, coded squirt. Not to be delivered over this frequency, or any frequency. You’re going to have to be in the chair for this one.”

What the hell?
he wondered. “Okay, coming back in. See you in twenty.”

He took one last look over the snow plain. The shadows were long, the sun just a weak orb sitting on the horizon.
Winter coming, party’s over
, he thought. He threw a leg back over the snowmobile and turned it around, quickly lifting the machine to eighty miles per hour, and shooting a rooster tail of white into the air behind him.

Within thirty minutes, Monroe had taken the urgent call from a Colonel Jack Hammerson, acting on executive orders. He was told to expect a Special Forces soldier – no name, no rank – but he was to do everything the guy said without question. Bottom line, he was to link up the soldier with the British scientific team over at the Ellsworth project base.

Cate Canning and her team of Brits were under Monroe’s support umbrella, but to date they had pretty much kept to themselves – fine with him – no noise, no trouble. Until now.

As if I don’t have enough to damn well do
, he thought, as he waited out in the cold for the soldier, getting more pissed off by the minute. He was told to wait, but he forgot to ask,
how long?

“Who is this guy?” Ben Jackson stamped huge boots beside him, trying to get circulation into his long legs.

Monroe was a fair sized man, but the big soldier trying to stay warm beside him looked down on everyone. He liked Jackson, and if some hardass was going to show up, who better to have standing with him than the local giant? Monroe grinned confidently.

“No idea who he is. But we’ve been ordered to meet him, get him sorted out, and then push him towards the Brits.” He turned. “And now you know as much as I do.” He looked up at the leaden sky. “He’s too late anyway. With the storm coming in, we won’t be going anywhere till it passes on.”

Jackson grunted, and lifted huge arms to hold a pair of fieldglasses to his eyes. “Bill, incoming; one o’clock.”

Monroe lifted his own glasses, seeing the snow plume kicking in the air.
Where could he have come from?
he wondered.

Then it hit him –
shit
, he thought, as the soldier powered up to them on a high-speed military snowmobile that was more like a torpedo. He wore some sort of armored wetsuit, with full-face shielding … and he was frozen, really frozen, with an ice crust over his shoulders and arms. The lunatic must have come from the water – how was that even possible? It was an unbelievable 120 miles of exposed granite, loose snow, and ice crevasses.

“Holy shit.” Ben Jackson scoffed. “The ice man cometh.”

The soldier stepped off the sled and rolled his shoulders, cracking ice that fell from him in large flakes. He flipped his faceplate up. Any thoughts Bill Monroe had about chewing the soldier out vanished immediately. Though the guy had sort-of handsome features, there was something about him that set alarm bells ringing. Perhaps it was the iron-hard physique, or the sense of menace behind those gray-green eyes, that hint of explosive violence barely held in check. Every time that stare alighted on Monroe, it seemed to cut right through him. Frankly, Monroe thought, he’d be happy when this guy, and his secret mission, was just a memory.

The soldier held out a hand, and Monroe grabbed it, shook it, and quickly introduced himself and then Ben.

“Thank you for meeting me, Sergeant.” The soldier turned and nodded briefly to Ben, but then immediately turned back to Monroe. “I’ll need a chopper and a pilot.”

Monroe nodded. “I can fly you,” he said, while watching him carefully. “Is there anything else you need? Hot coffee, a few minutes to gather your shit together? If you’ve …”

“No. Just to get going.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea. There’s a storm coming in, and I strongly …”

“Now.” The man’s eyes never seemed to blink.

Ben Jackson held up a hand. “Sir, Sergeant Monroe is right, down here the storms can …”

The soldier turned to Ben, and the big man’s mouth snapped shut.

So much for my big scary backup
, Monroe thought.
Fine,
you want to go to hell, well then, be my guest
.

Monroe thumbed over his shoulder. “This way.”

*

The helicopter descended towards the five figures standing on the snow. All were wearing thick clothing with hoods up and goggles over their faces, making them look like chubby clones of one another. Alex saw that the Ellsworth base wasn’t large – one fair sized silo-shaped building and then mostly a temporary set of shelters designed to accommodate the scientific staff while they went about their technical work. Just off to one side stood a structure that looked like a round elevator shaft, rising several dozen feet into the air.

“You know about the
Kunming
?” Alex asked.

Monroe nodded.

“I knocked out their communications. Sooner or later they’ll figure out how to get it back online. Once they do, they may decide to pay you or the British team a visit.” Alex turned to Monroe. “An unpleasant one.”

Monroe nodded. “We don’t have the manpower or ordnance to repel a coordinated attack.”  He smiled grimly. “But we don’t intend to surrender the base, or anyone under our protection.”

“I know you won’t. But you’ve got the USS
Texas
in your front yard, and they’ve got a squad of SEALs onboard. Just try not to start a war until I get back.” Alex grinned, and then looked to the figures on the snow. “Good luck, Sergeant Monroe.”

Alex grabbed his kit bag and leapt free before the chopper had settled on the ground. He jogged to the figures sheltering from the swirling snow. One of them, slightly shorter than the rest, stuck out a hand.

“Mr. Hawk?” The voice was authoritative and female.

Alex grabbed the hand and shook it. “That’s right. And you must be Professor Cate Canning.”

She nodded and waved him towards one of the small shacks. Inside it was warm, but the floor was wet. Cate and the men started to peel off clothing and boots. One by one they stopped and stared at Alex.

He wore his armored caving suit that would also be his diving gear. It was compression fitted over his frame, from fingertips to feet, the Kevlar thread worked through a polychloroprene material. There were also thin molded sheets of a mottled biological looking material over the biceps, thighs, and chest plate. It made him look like a cross between an assembled robot, and some type of superhero. It also had shielding over the hands and knuckles, and tight against his back was a flattened air tank that contained compressed oxygen.

“That’s some suit you got there. You planning on diving or bloody cage fighting?” said one of the youngest bearded men, brows raised.

“That’s enough, Sulley.” Cate Canning smiled tightly, and then pointed at each of the assembled men in turn. “Doctors Bentley, Timms, Schmidt, and the one with the sense of humor is Sulley.”  Each nodded, their bearded faces far from humorous. Alex guessed none were happy to see him.

That was fine, he didn’t expect a welcoming committee, and in fact was already expecting some sort of passive resistance. He didn’t blame them; no one likes to have a huge boot stuck right into the middle of their project, especially one that the scientists had been working on for five years, that he could potentially sabotage. Hammerson would have had to pull a helluva lot of strings, and fast.

Cate walked down a small hallway in the shack and into a larger room, where one entire wall was covered in banks of equipment. “Sulley, get the kettle on. You’re on tea duty.” She turned. “Or is it coffee for our American friend?”

“Neither.” Alex could feel the tension in the room. “Just a briefing, and then I’m ready to go. Time is extremely short.”

Cate stared for a moment, her jaws clenching.

“This is crazy,” Bentley said, pulling at his long thin nose and then folding his arms. “Even though this position has the thinnest ice coverage for fifty miles, it’s still a mile-and-a-half thick layer of super compressed ice, over a skin of solid granite.” He turned to Cate, his palms up. “We know,
we know
, there’s a gap between the ceiling and the water below, but what we don’t know is just how big a gap. The drill
will
end up falling into space, and the impact on soft tissue alone could …”

“
Flipper
made it.
Orca
will too,” Cate said, clicking her fingers and pointing Sulley to the kettle.

“Damnit, Cate, that’s just it.
Flipper
was in a titanium and steel armored sleeve. We designed the shielding to protect the submersible and its electronics – not flesh and blood.”  He thumbed at Alex. “He wants to hitch a ride? Fine, but he’ll be dead even before
Orca
is launched.” Bentley’s face was growing red. “This is crazy.
Crazy!
”

“Might be possible for someone to survive.
Orca
’s gyros will stabilize it, and it’s padded to kingdom come,” Timms said, looking to Bentley who now glared at him and shook his head. He grinned. “I mean not someone like you, Bent. You’re basically ninety percent tea and crumpet, but look at this guy.” He thumbed towards Alex. “He looks like he’s made of iron.”

Sulley snorted. “Nah, the cold, the heat, the pressure; it’ll be suicide.” He handed Cate a small mug of steaming tea. “But Yanks love that sort of stuff, right?” He shrugged. “His body will give
Orca
some more padding.”

“Happy to assist,” Alex said without humor.

Cate looked from her team to Alex. He noticed her features were attractive but severe, and her eyes were like shards of diamond. Alex could tell she was weighing something up in her mind.

Bentley exhaled through clenched teeth. “If he damages the probe, we’ll end up with nothing. This is a one-off, one-way deal. We can’t even recover the probe to repair it, and it’s supposed to explore the lake for the full ten months of its powerpack life. If he buggers it up, it’s over, and we’ll never get more funding for another try.”

“Arkson.” Cate smiled at Bentley. “I’ve devoted my life to this glimpse of another world, I think …”

“Yes, you
do
need to think. If he damages
Orca
, it’ll be a forty million dollar piece of junk sitting on the bottom of a sunken sea.” The nostrils of his long nose flared, looking like tiny wings. “Cate,
you know
what’s at stake here.”

Cate bared her gritted teeth. ‘Don’t get all self-righteous with me, Arkson. The project’s funders basically ordered us to assist. They could shut us down a lot quicker than this guy.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Alex.

Bentley straightened. “Unlikely. Cate, I know there’s more at stake than …”

Alex had heard enough. “
You
know what’s at stake?
I
know what’s at stake;
it’s you people who don’t
.”

The room quietened as if a switch had been thrown. Alex looked at each of their faces. “You don’t know a lot.” He tried to keep the menace out of his voice, but knew his stare was already making some of the men ease back. “I’m not here to ask or to apologize. But you need to know a few things,
fast
.”

The group waited, and Cate nodded at him to continue. Alex placed his hands on his hips. “Did you know the Chinese have lost contact with their Xuě Lóng Base? Did you know we have a Chinese warship off the coast because they probably think we had something to do with it? Right now, there’s an American sub keeping it at bay. But soon there’ll be more ships, and then one false move, and there could be a nuclear war. I can potentially stop it, but I need to be down below the ice,
fast
.”

“Did you?” Bentley asked, lifting his gaze to Alex’s face. “Did you have something to do with them losing contact?”

“No,” Alex said.

“Would you tell us if you had?” Sulley asked from behind Bentley.

“What’s down there that’s so interesting to you?” Cate asked, tilting her head.

“That’s classified,” Alex responded.

“Of course it is.” Bentley snorted his disdain.

“Something else I don’t understand,” Cate said. “Since when did your relationship with the Chinese government get so bad? When did you stop talking and start deploying warships?” She frowned. “Something’s not right here.”

Alex felt his frustration start to coil inside him. “Look, there are …
other
factors in play. I’m not authorized to tell you, and you’re not authorized to know.”