Ice Hunt (29 page)

Men unmounted. All dressed in white parkas. Rifles were leveled.

Jenny heard Russian being spoken, but the world remained blurry, lit only by the headlamps of the personal hovercraft.

The soldiers wore face masks, storm troopers. They approached with caution, then with a bit of urgency. Some checked the blasted ice pit. Others came forward. One knelt before Jenny. He barked something in Russian.

All she could manage was a groan.

He reached for her. She blacked out a moment. It had taken all her strength to utter even that small sound. When next she awoke, she found herself strapped into a bucket seat, harnessed in place with shoulder and belt straps. The world was a blur around her. She was flying.

Then enough awareness cut through the haze for her to recognize that she rode behind a soldier. He didn’t wear a parka, only a thick gray sweater. She realized she was wearing his coat. The fur-lined hood pulled almost over her head.

They were heading back to the drift station. A fire burned from the cratered ruins of an outbuilding.

It made no sense, so she simply passed out again.

She woke next to a world of pain. It flared over every inch of her body. It was as if someone were flaying her alive, as if acid streamed over every inch of her body, agonizing, stripping away her skin. She screamed, but no sound came out. She thrashed against the arms that held her.

“It’s all right, Miss Aratuk,” a gruff voice said behind her. “You’re safe.” The same voice spoke to someone else holding her. “Turn the water slightly warmer.”

Jenny snapped a bit more fully into awareness. She was naked in a shower, being held under the stream. She managed to free her tongue. “It…it burns.”

“The water’s only lukewarm. Blood is just returning to your skin. You have some patches of mild frostbite.” Something jabbed her arm. “We’ve given you a bit of morphine to dull the pain.”

She finally glanced back to the speaker. It was Lieutenant Commander Sewell. She sat on the fiberglass floor of a communal shower. A handful of Navy men were in the room, busy. Other showers steamed.

After a few moments, her agony dulled to simple torture. Tears flowed down her face, mixing with the shower’s water. Slowly her temperature rose. Her body began to shiver uncontrollably.

“M…mm…my father,” she chattered out.

“He’s being taken care of,” Sewell said. “He’s actually faring better than you. Already into towels. Tough old bastard, that one. Only a little frostbite on his nose. He must be made of ice.”

This raised a smile.
Papa…

She allowed her body to shake and quake. Her core body temperature slowly struggled to normalcy. Sensory feeling awakened with a million pinpricks in her hands and feet. It was slow crucifixion.

Finally she was allowed to stand. She even warmed up enough to feel slightly ashamed by her nakedness. There were uniformed men all around. She was led out of the showers, passing by Kowalski, bare-assed and shivering under his own stream of water.

As hot towels were wrapped around her, she asked, “Fernandez?”

Sewell shook his head. “He was dead by the time the Russians reached you.”

Her heart heavy, she was walked over to chairs in front of space heaters. Her father was already there. He sipped from a mug of hot coffee. The morphine wobbled her feet, but she managed to reach the chairs.

“Jen,” her father said. “Welcome back to the living.”

“You call this living?” she asked dourly. As she sat there, she pictured Fernandez’s quirked smile. It was hard to believe someone so alive was now dead. Still, a dull buzz of relief seeped through her, perhaps partly due to the morphine, but mostly rising from her own heart.

She was alive.

As the space heater blew humid air in her face, a mug of coffee was pushed into her trembling hands.

“Drink it,” Sewell said. “We have to warm up your insides as much as your outsides. And caffeine’s a good stimulant, too.”

“You don’t have to sell me on the coffee, Commander.” She took a burning sip. She felt it slide all the way down. A shudder—half pleasure, half pain—shook through her.

With coffee warming her hands and belly, she glanced around. She was in some large dormitory room. Cots lined both walls. Tables and chairs in the center. Most here were civilians, scientists…but a few Navy personnel were mixed in.

She turned back to Sewell. “Tell me what happened.”

He eyed her. “The Russians. They commandeered the base.”

“I sort of figured that on my own. Why?”

He shook his head. “It has something to do with that Russian ice station we found. Something hidden over there. They’ve been systematically interviewing key personnel to see what we know. It was why you were rescued from the ice. They thought you might be escaping with something or someone, so they had you hauled back. I informed them of your noncom status.”

“What are they searching for?”

“I don’t know. Whatever is over at that other base is being kept under wraps. NTK only.”

“NTK?”

“Need-to-know.” His voice hardened. “And apparently I’m not one of those who needs to know.”

“So what now?”

“There’s not much we can do. We only had a small security force.” He waved an arm around the room. “The bastards killed five of my men. We were quickly subdued and corralled in here. So were the civilian personnel. They’re keeping us all under guard. We were told as long as we didn’t make any trouble that we’d be freed in forty-eight hours.”

Her father spoke from his wrap of blankets. “What about the other Sno-Cat? The one with Matt and Craig?”

Jenny found herself tensing, fearing the worst.

“As far as I know, they’re okay. I was able to contact them before being caught. I told them when they reached the ice station to raise the alarm.”

Jenny sipped from her coffee. Her hands trembled worse. For some reason, she had to fight back tears. “Everyone else is here?”

“Everyone still living.”

She glanced around the room, searching for a specific face. She didn’t find him. “Where’s Ensign Pomautuk?”

Sewell shook his head. “Not here. He’s among the missing, along with a handful of civilians. But I can’t say for sure. The Russians took some of the critically injured to the hospital wing. Maybe he’s over there. Details are still sketchy.”

Jenny stared over to her father. The tip of his nose was ashen, frost-nipped. His eyes read her fear. One hand slipped from his wrap and sought her own. She took his fingers. They were rough with old calluses, but still strong. He had faced so many hardships in his life and survived. Absorbing his strength, she faced Sewell again. “This forty-eight-hour deadline? Do you believe they’ll let us go?”

“I don’t know.”

Jenny sighed. “In other words,
no
.”

He shrugged. “At the moment, it doesn’t matter whether we believe them or not. The occupying force outnumbers us two to one. And they’ve got all the guns.”

“What about your captain and your submarine?”

“The
Polar Sentinel
might be out there somewhere, but they have no armaments. Hopefully they’re hauling ass out of here, heading for help. That is, if they’re still alive.”

“What now? Do we simply wait? Trust the Russians’ word about our safety?”

By now, Kowalski had joined them, wrapped head to toe in towels. He plopped down heavily into a chair. “Fuck no,” he answered her question.

Silence followed his assertion. No one argued.

“Then we need a plan,” Jenny said finally.

11:45 A.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Hadn’t they gone this way already?

Lieutenant Commander Roberto Bratt was lost, which didn’t help his temper. He always blamed his short fuse on his heritage: his mother was Mexican, his father Cuban. Both had been loud and volatile, always fighting. But these damn tunnels would have confounded even Gandhi’s patience. Everything looked the same: ice and more ice.

Ahead, his junior lieutenant hurried down another tunnel. He followed, his boots grinding on the sand-covered floors. “Washburn!” he called out. “Do you know where the hell you’re going?”

Lieutenant Serina Washburn slowed her steady trot and pointed her flashlight back to a purple blaze spray-painted on the wall. “Sir, this marks the only place we haven’t searched yet. After this, we’ll need a paint can to trail our way into the unmarked areas.”

He waved her on.
Great…just great…

During the chaos of the evacuation, Bratt’s team had used bullhorns to sound the alarm through the tunnels. Word had spread quickly. People had poured out of the ice tunnels. But with the Russians breathing down their necks, they didn’t have time to do a complete sweep of the Crawl Space on foot.

As such, when the dust settled, people turned up missing—including the head of Omega, Dr. Amanda Reynolds.

With folks unaccounted for, Bratt had felt compelled to stay behind, but he had been surprised when Lieutenant Washburn had
insisted
on joining him. The station had been under her guardianship. She wasn’t about to abandon it until every damn one of her charges was cleared out of here.

As they continued deeper, Bratt appraised his partner. Washburn was actually a couple of inches taller than him, tall for a woman, but lean and muscular. She looked like a track runner. Her hair was worn in a crew cut, giving her a stark look that somehow didn’t lessen her femininity. Her skin was smooth coffee, her eyes large and deep. But for the moment, she was all business.

And so was he. He switched his focus to the ice tunnels. He had a mission: find any civilian strays and keep them safe.

Lifting the bullhorn to his lips, he squeezed the trigger. His words blasted from the horn, echoing down the tunnels. “This is Lieutenant Commander Bratt! If anyone can hear this, please sound off!”

He lowered the bullhorn. His ears rang. It took a moment for him to be able to listen for any response. He expected no answer. They had been searching and shouting for a half hour without even a whisper of a response. So when someone finally did call out, he wasn’t sure if it was real or not.

Washburn glanced back to him, one eyebrow cocked.

Then the shout repeated, faint, but ringing clear through the ice tunnels: “Over here!”

It came from ahead of them.

Together, they hurried forward. Bratt shrugged his rifle higher on his shoulder. His field jacket and parka were heavy with ammunition, gleaned from his own men as they evacuated back to the sub. Washburn was similarly loaded down, but she sped ahead of him.

The tunnel emptied into a large ice cavern, full of idling generators, lamp poles, and equipment. The air here was noticeably warmer, humid. The back half of the cavern was a wall of pocked volcanic rock.

“Christ,” he swore under his breath.

A short, bald man, bundled in an unzippered parka, came slipping across the ice lake that floored the room. It was one of the base scientists. He was flanked by two younger men.

“Dr. Ogden?” Washburn said, identifying the lead man. “What are you still doing here? Didn’t you hear the call to evacuate?”

“Yes, yes,” he said as he reached them, out of breath, “but my work has nothing to do with politics. This is science. I don’t care who controls the station as long as my specimens are protected. Danger or not, I could not leave them. Especially at this critical juncture. The thawing is near completion.”

“Specimens?” Bratt asked. “Thawing? What the hell are you talking about?”

“They must be protected,” the scientist insisted. “You have to understand. I could not risk the data’s corruption.”

Bratt noted the shifting feet and wringing hands of the man’s younger associates—postgrads by the look of them. They were not so convinced.

“You have to see!” Dr. Ogden said. “We’re picking up EEG activity!” He hurried back the way he had come, back to the volcanic cliff face.

Washburn followed. “Is Dr. Reynolds here, too?”

Bratt dogged after them to hear the answer.
If all the missing personnel were here…

But the doctor’s response dashed such hopes. “Amanda? No, I don’t know where she is.” He glanced back, eyebrows tucked together. “Why?”

“She’s here somewhere,” Washburn answered. “Supposedly off with Dr. MacFerran, looking for a missing colleague.”

Ogden rubbed at his frozen mustache. “I don’t know anything about it. I’ve been here all night with the biology team.”

As they reached the wall, Bratt noted water splashing underfoot, flowing from a crevice in the cliff face. The biologist led the way into the cavern. But after a few steps, a new form came splashing from deeper inside, running headlong into them.

It was another student, a young woman in her early twenties. Bratt caught her as she slipped in her panic.
How many fools were down here still?

“Professor! S-something’s happening!” she stammered.

“What?”

She pointed back down the cleft. She tried to speak, but her eyes were wild.

Ogden fled forward. “Is something wrong?”

They all followed after him. In another ten steps, the way opened into a space the size of a two-car garage. It was a bubble in the rock. More lamp poles glowed. Equipment was stacked all around.

Bratt gasped at both the sight and the smell. He had worked one summer at a fish plant in Monterey. The heat, the reek of rotting fish guts, the stench of blood. It was the same here—but it was not fish that caused this smell.

Rolled to one side was the flayed and gutted body of some pale white creature. It looked like it might be a beluga whale, but this thing had legs. This creature was not the only one here. Another six specimens, fresher and intact, lay curled on the floor. Crusts and chunks of ice still clung to their pale flesh. Two had colored leads taped to their forms, running to machines with video screens. Small sine waves flowed across the tiny monitors.

Ogden searched around the room. “I don’t understand.” He turned to the panicked postgrad student. “What’s the matter?”

She pointed to one of the curled specimens, the one closest to its gutted brethren. “It…it moved…”