Ice Hunt (44 page)

The reporter stared, wide-eyed, unblinking at them. He sheltered by the door to the neighboring generator room.

“Watch through this window,” Matt said. “If anything goes wrong, you haul ass back to the others. Get them running.”

Craig opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. He hurried over. Something fell out of his coat and clattered against the floor.

Bratt scowled at the noise, but the rumbling generators more than covered it. Matt retrieved the object. A book. He recognized it as one of the journals from down in the lab. He lifted an eyebrow and handed it back to Craig.

“For the story,” the reporter said hurriedly, tucking it back away. “If I ever get out of this mess…”

Matt had to give the guy credit. He stuck to his guns.

“Ready,” Bratt said.

Nods all around.

Bratt reached for the handle. He waited for a flare-up of shouting from the levels above, then tugged the door open. The four of them ran through, splitting into two teams to cross toward the guards, whose backs still remained toward them.

Matt raced, oblivious to the ache in his feet. He carried the ax in both hands. Washburn flew beside him, outdistancing him in five steps.

But with her speed, she failed to spot the abandoned dinner tray on the floor.

Her foot hit it and skidded out from under her, turning her efficient sprint into a headlong tumble. She tried to catch herself on a table, but only succeeded in taking it down with her at the heels of the two guards.

The crashing noise drew both men around, weapons raised.

Bratt and Greer were close enough. With a flash of silver, Bratt whipped a scalpel at the man. It flew with frightening accuracy, impaling the man’s left eye. He fell backward, mouth open, but before he could scream, Greer dove on top of him.

Matt faced his own target, leaping over Washburn’s struggling form. “Stay down!”

Still in midair, he swung his ax in a wide arc—but he was too slow, too far away.

Gunfire spat from the end of the Russian’s AK-47. It chewed a path over his shoulder, then oddly continued up toward the ceiling.

Only then did Matt notice Washburn below him. She had lashed out with one her meat hooks, impaling the soldier through the calf and ripping him off balance.

Matt landed as the guard fell back, hitting the floor hard. With the detachment that could only come from years of Special Forces training, Matt brought his ax down upon the head of the soldier. The skull gave way like a ripe watermelon.

Matt quickly let go of the handle, rolling away on his knees, as his target convulsed under the embedded ax.

Matt’s hands shook. Too many years had passed since he’d been a soldier. He had made the mistake of looking into the eyes of the man he killed—rather,
boy
he had killed. No older than nineteen. He had seen the pain and terror in his victim’s eyes.

Bratt was at their side. “Let’s go. Someone surely heard that shooting. We can’t count on the confusion buying us much time.”

Matt choked back bile and climbed to his feet. Sorrow or not, he had to keep moving. He remembered Jenny’s Sno-Cat vanishing into the blizzard’s gloom amid sounds of gunfire and explosions.

They had not started this war.

A step away, Greer stripped his target’s camouflage gear: parka and snow pants. “With all the noise, we’ll need someone to act as lookout.” He rubbed the bloodstains off the waterproof coat and began to pull it on, ready to stand in for the fallen soldier.

“Let me,” Matt said. “You know better what we’ll need from the armory.”

Greer nodded and tossed the gear at him.

Sitting in a chair, Matt yanked the pants on over his boots. The man had a larger frame, making it easier. Once suited, he pulled the oversized parka over his own Army jacket and retrieved the AK-47 from the floor.

Meanwhile, Washburn and Bratt had dragged the bodies behind two overturned tables while Greer had used the butt of his weapon to shatter a few overhead bulbs, creating deeper shadows.

“Okay, let’s move out,” Bratt said, and led Washburn and Greer at a dead run toward the armory.

They vanished through the doorway.

Alone now, Matt pulled the parka’s hood over his head, hiding his features. He stared down at himself.

If nothing else, at least I’ll die with pants on
.

He stepped closer to the stairway, placing himself between the stairs and the smeared pools of blood. So far no one had come to investigate the short spate of gunfire—but they would. Bratt was right. The confusion would last only so long.

Matt prayed it lasted long enough.

His prayer was not answered. Footsteps suddenly sounded on the stairs, echoing from above, pounding down toward this level.

Damn it
…

Matt moved closer, but he kept his head tilted to keep his features hooded. A line of soldiers appeared, bristling with weapons, ready for combat. They barked at him in Russian.

Too bad he didn’t understand a word of it.

Instead he hurried forward, feigning panic. He kept his weapon lowered, but his finger remained on the trigger. He pointed his other arm down, frantically motioning toward the lower levels. With all the shouting and noise, the soldiers probably couldn’t tell for sure from which level the gunfire had originated. He tried to indicate it came from farther below.

To reinforce the act, Matt took a step forward, like he meant to follow the others down.

The leader of the squad waved him to hold his position, then motioned his squad down the stairs. They continued their dash into the depths of the station.

Matt backed away as the last man spiraled away into the ice. He let out a loud sigh. His ruse would not last long—but luckily it didn’t have to.

Bratt appeared at the armory door, both shoulders loaded with weapons. “Quick thinking there.” He nodded to the staircase. He must have been watching from the doorway.

Behind Bratt, Washburn and Greer exited, similarly loaded, lugging a wooden crate between them.

“Grenades,” Greer said as he passed, his words bitter. “Now it’s our turn for a surprise or two.”

Together the group fled back to the electrical suite, then into the generator room. Craig was no longer there. He must have retreated back to the others.

With a bit of manhandling, they crawled through the vent, hauling their arsenal, dragging the box of grenades behind them.

Matt led them, carrying the pilfered AK-47 and two additional rifles on his back. His parka pockets were full of ammunition.

Reaching the end, he rolled out of the duct and into the service cubbyhole. He stood up, his eyes darting around the room.

The place was empty. The others were gone.

Washburn came next. Her expression soured. “The reporter must have been spooked by the gunfire. He did what we told him and bugged out with the others.”

Matt shook his head as the others crawled inside.

Greer scowled as he eyed the empty room. “I hate this. We go to all the trouble to bring in the party supplies and everyone’s already left.”

“But where did they go?” Matt asked.

Bratt had been searching the floor. “I don’t know, but they took the station schematics with them. Our only map to this damn place.”

3:38 P.M.

Admiral Petkov followed the young ensign down the hall. He kept his attention away from the frosted tanks with their frozen sentinels inside. He felt the eyes of the dead upon him, sensing the accusations of those unwilling participants in his father’s experiments.

But those were not the only ghosts who laid claim to the lost base. All the researchers stationed here, including his father, had died—entombed in ice as surely as the poor unfortunates in this hall.

Among so many ghosts, it was only fitting that the
Beliy Prizrak,
the White Ghost of the Northern Fleet, should stride these halls now, too.

Ensign Lausevic led him onward, half stumbling as he tried to hurry but did not want to rush his superior. “I’m not sure what it means, but we thought you should see it for yourself.”

Viktor waved the man on. “Show me.”

The curved hall followed the exterior wall of this level. They were almost halfway around when laughter from up ahead trailed back to Viktor. They rounded the curve and spotted a cluster of five soldiers. They had been lounging, one smoking, until the admiral appeared.

Laughter strangled away, and the group straightened. The cigarette was hastily stamped out.

The group parted for the admiral. They had been clustered around one of the tanks. Unlike the other dark, frosted vessels, this one glowed from within. The frost had melted and wept down the glass front.

Victor crossed to it. He felt the heat coming from its surface. A small motor could be heard chugging and wheezing behind it, along with a faint gurgling.

“We didn’t know what to do,” Lausevic said, running a hand through his black hair.

Inside the tank, what was once solid ice was now a bath of warm water, gently bubbling, its ice melted by a triple-layered heating mesh that covered the entire back half of the chamber. The mesh was the source of the light. The outer layers glowed with a ruddy warmth, while the deeper levels shone more intensely, brighter.

“Why wasn’t I alerted to this earlier?” Victor intoned.

“We thought it was a ploy by the Americans to distract us,” one of the other men said. “It’s right by the duct they fled through.” He pointed to a nearby vent. A bit of smoke from the incendiary grenade still wafted through its opening.

“We weren’t sure it was important,” Lausevic added.

Not important?
Victor stared at the tank. He was unable to take his eyes from the sight.

Within the tank, a small boy floated, suspended within the bubbling water. His eyes were closed as if in slumber. His face looked so peaceful, smooth, olive-skinned, framed in a halo of shoulder-length black hair. His limbs floated at his side, angelic and perfect.

Then his left arm twitched, jerking as if pulled by the strings of an invisible puppeteer.

The young ensign pointed. “It’s been doing that for the past few minutes. Starting with just a finger twitch.”

The boy’s leg kicked, spasming up.

Viktor stepped closer.
Could he still be alive?
He remembered the missing journals. That was the quest here. To retrieve his father’s notes. To see if the last report made by his father was true. He had read this final report himself, hearing his father’s voice in his head, as if he were speaking directly to his son.

He remembered the final line:
On this day, we’ve defeated death
.

He watched the boy.
Could it be true?
If so, the stolen notebooks wouldn’t matter. Here was proof of his father’s success. Viktor glanced to the soldiers. He had witnesses to verify it. Though the exact mechanism and procedure were locked in his father’s coded notes, the boy would be living and breathing proof.

“Is there a way to open the tank?” Viktor asked.

Ensign Lausevic pointed to a large lever on one side of the tank. It was locked at the upper end marked
CLOSED
in Russian. The lower end of the levered slot was lettered in Cyrillic:
OPEN
.

Viktor nodded to the ensign.

He stepped forward, gripped the heavy handle with both hands, and tugged. It resisted the ensign’s efforts for a moment. Then, with a loud
crack,
the lever snapped out. Lausevic used his shoulders to pull the lever and slam it down into the “open” slot.

Immediately a rush of water sounded, not unlike a toilet flushing. From his position, Viktor saw the grated bottom of the tank open. Water flowed down a drain.

Caught in the swirling force of the draining water, the boy’s body spun, arms flailed out. His body seemed boneless, limp. He bumped against the glass, the back mesh. Then, as the water drained fully away, he settled in a loose pile on the bottom of the tank, as lifeless as some deep-sea denizen washed up on a beach.

Then with a soft, damp
pop,
the seal on the glass released. The entire front of the tank swung open like a door, blowing out compressed air from within. There was a faint hint of ammonia that came with it.

Lausevic pulled the door aside for the admiral.

Viktor found himself stepping forward, dropping to his knees beside the naked boy. He reached to the boy’s arm, draped half out the door.

It was warm, heated by the bubbling bath.

But there appeared to be no life.

His hand slipped from wrist to the small fingers. He tried to will the boy back to life. What stories could he tell? Had he known his father? Did he know what had happened here? Why the base had gone dead quiet so suddenly?

It had been the last years of World War II. The Germans were marching into Russia, laying siege to city after city. Then a remote research station in the Arctic went quiet, late reporting in…first one month, then another. But with the war heating up at home, no one had time to investigate. With communication being what it was and travel through the polar region so difficult, there were no resources for a full investigation.

Another full year passed. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed. Nuclear weaponry became the grand technology, hunted and sought by all. Ice Station Grendel and its research project were now antiquated, not worth the cost or manpower to discover its fate. The currents could have taken the station anywhere. The ice island that berthed it might even have broken apart and sunk, something not uncommon with such floating giants.

So more years passed.

The last report of his father, with its wild claims of breaching the barrier between life and death, was dismissed as exaggerated rants and shelved. The only bit of proof was supposedly locked in his journals, lost with the base and its head researcher.

The secret of life and death.

Viktor stared down at the slack face of the boy, so peaceful in slumber. Lips a faint blue, face gray and wet. Viktor wiped the face dry with one hand.

Then small fingers clamped onto his other palm, harder and stronger than Viktor could have imagined.