Ice Hunt (53 page)

The man was tall, six-foot-five, broad of shoulder, wearing a black uniform. But his most striking features were his pale white hair and storm-gray eyes. Those eyes pierced through him now.

“Please take a seat,” the man said in perfect English.

Matt found himself rising, obeying reflexively. But once up, he refused to sit. He knew who stood behind the desk. The leader of the Russian forces.

The door to the office clicked shut behind him, but one guard remained in the room. Matt also spotted the pistol holstered at the leader’s hip.

Hard gray eyes stared back at him. “My name is Admiral Viktor Petkov. And you are?”

Matt spotted his wallet resting atop the desk. There was no reason to lie. It would get him nowhere. “Matthew Pike.”

“Fish and Game?” This was spoken with thick doubt.

Matt kept his voice firm. “That’s what my papers say, don’t they?”

One eye twitched. Clearly the Russian admiral was not someone who was faced with insolence very often. His voice steeled. “Mr. Pike, we can do this civilly or—”

“What do you want?” He was too tired to play the cordial adversary. He was no James Bond.

The admiral’s pale face colored, his lips thinning.

Before anything more could be said, the child rose from his seat on the rug and wandered over to the older man. The admiral’s eyes tracked the Inuit lad. The boy touched his hand.

“That’s the child from the ice tanks,” Matt said, unable to keep the true amazement from his voice.

The admiral’s hand curled around the tiny fingers, protective. “The miracle of my father’s research here.”

“Your father?”

Petkov nodded. “He was a great man, one of Russian’s leading Arctic scientists. As the head of this research station here, he was delving into the possibility of suspended animation and cryogenic freezing.”

“He experimented on human subjects,” Matt accused.

Petkov glanced down to the boy. “It is easy to judge now. But it was a different time. What is considered
myerzost,
or an ‘abomination,’ today was science back then.” His words grew softer, half ashamed, half proud. “Back in my father’s time, between the two World Wars, the dynamics of the world were tenser. Every country was trying to discover the next innovation, the next bit of technology to revolutionize their economies. With war pending, world tensions high, the ability to preserve life on the battlefield could make a difference between victory and defeat. Soldiers could be frozen until their wounds could be attended to, organs could be preserved, entire armies could be put into cold storage. The possibilities for medical uses and military innovations were endless.”

“So your government forced some of your own native peoples into servitude here. To be experimental guinea pigs.”

Petkov’s eyes narrowed. “You
truly
don’t know what was going on here, do you?”

“I don’t know a goddamn thing,” Matt admitted.

“So you don’t know where my father’s stolen journals are? Who has taken them?”

Matt thought about lying, but he was not feeling particularly protective of Craig Teague. “They’re gone.”

“In the iceboat that escaped.”

Escaped?
Dare he hope? Jenny was supposedly on that boat. He struggled to find his voice. “They got away?”

Petkov stared tightly at him, as if trying to weigh the risk of telling the truth, too. Perhaps he heard the pleading in Matt’s voice or maybe he simply considered Matt no threat. Either way, he answered the question. “They outran my men and reached Omega.”

Matt stepped back and sank into the seat he had refused a moment ago. Relief washed through him. “Thank God. Jen…my ex-wife was on that boat.”

“Then she’s in more danger than you.”

Matt’s brow pinched, tensing again. “What do you mean?”

“This isn’t over. Not for any of us.” Petkov’s gaze flicked to the boy. “This ice station. It’s not a Russian research base.”

Matt felt a heavy weight settle in his gut.

Petkov’s eyes returned to Matt. “It’s American.”

6:16 P.M.
OMEGA DRIFT STATION

Jenny climbed from the skate boat, her feet settling to the ice. She stared over at the ruin of the nearby polynya. It was blasted, stained with black soot and rusty trails of oil. Fires still burned within the wreckage of two helicopters crumpled on the ice. The air reeked of smoke and fuel.

The thunderous
whump
of the lone remaining helicopter echoed over the frozen terrain as it circled to land near the iceboat. Amanda busied herself with securing the boat, tying down the sails and finding a spare set of wooden chocks to brace the runners. She glanced over her shoulder as the Sikorsky Seahawk glided out of the blowing winds and settled to the ice.

Craig crossed toward the helicopter, leaning against the rotor wash. He held his throat mike under his chin as he spoke to the Delta Force leader inside the craft.

From out of the cluster of Jamesway huts, a group of soldiers in white snow gear ambled out, weapons in hand, but not raised. They were taking no chances with the Russians so near.

One of the men approached the two women by the boat. “Ma’am, if you’ll follow me, I’ll get you inside with the others. The Russians planted a slew of incendiary devices throughout the base. We don’t know if any of them are booby-trapped.”

Jenny nodded, glad to follow, but fearful to discover the fate of her father. Was he okay?

They wound back through the nest of buildings. The snowfall had stopped, but the winds continued to gust fiercely through the Jamesway huts. Jenny almost lost her footing, too worried with her goal so close. As they walked, she knew where they were being taken. To the same barracks from which she and Kowalski had escaped.

This thought generated more tears. She had thought herself done crying on the boat ride here, relieved, but at the same time full of grief. Kowalski was missing. Tom was most likely dead. Bane, too. And Matt…

Now all were gone.

She needed someone to still be alive.

Her pace hurried as the guard opened the door to the hut. Jenny crossed through, followed by Amanda. The soldier walked them down the hall to the double doors leading to the barracks.

Jenny noted the two armed soldiers posted by the doorway.

“For your protection,” their escort said as he led them past. “We’re trying to keep everyone in one place until we know the base is safe. And with the Russians entrenched only thirty miles away, nowhere else is safe.”

Jenny was not about to object to a little protective custody. After what she had just gone through, the more, the merrier.

The warmth of the barracks struck her like a wet blanket to the face. The heat was stifling from both the heaters and the number of bodies. Jenny quickly glanced through the crowds.

She spotted Commander Sewell immediately. He sat in front. Half his face was bandaged. His arm was in a sling. She stepped in front of him, her eyes wide.

He stared at her with the one good eye that peeked from the bandages. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?”

“What happened?” Her gaze traveled over his beaten form.

“You ordered me to protect your father.” He shrugged. “I take orders seriously.”

The crowd parted and a familiar figure pushed through. Tired-eyed, but unharmed.

She hurried into his arms. “Papa!”

He hugged her tight. “Jen…honey.”

She could not say anything more. Something broke inside her. She began to sob. Not simply tears, but racks of pain and gulping breath. It was uncontrollable, rising from a well deep inside her. It hurt so much. She had survived. So many others had not. “M-Matt,” she managed to sob out.

Arms tightened.

She continued to cry while her father drew her back to a bed and pulled her down beside him. He didn’t try to console her with words. Words would come later. Right now she simply needed someone to hold and someone to hold her.

Her father gently rocked her.

After a period of time, she became aware of her surroundings again, emptied and numb. She slowly lifted her face. At some point, Craig had joined them. He was seated with Amanda, Commander Sewell, and a man in a storm suit.

This last fellow carried a helmet under one arm. His hair was black, short, slicked back. He appeared to be in his midthirties, but a
hard
midthirties. His skin was ruddy with a wicked scar that trailed under his ear to the his neckline. He fingered the scar as he leaned beside Craig, studying something on a table that had been dragged over. “I don’t see that any of this matters,” the soldier said. “We should strike now before the Russians can entrench any further.”

Jenny extracted herself, concerned about what they were discussing. She patted her father’s hand.

“Jen…?”

“I’m better.”
At least for the moment,
she added silently. She stood and walked over toward the group. Her father followed.

Craig glanced up at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected.”

He turned back to his discussion with the others. “These are the journals I was assigned to acquire. But they’re coded. I can’t make any headway deciphering them.”

Amanda glanced over to Jenny. “He can’t be sure he has the right ones.”

“What does it matter?” the storm-suited newcomer asked. “My team can take the station in under two hours. Then you can send in as many encryption experts as you’d like.”

Jenny eyed him. He must be the head of the Delta Force team.

Craig answered, “The Russian admiral is no fool. He’ll blow the station before letting us commandeer it. Before we go in shooting blindly, we need more intelligence.”

Jenny agreed.
Intelligence
was definitely in short supply here. She stared down at the open book resting atop two others. The stolen journals. She glanced to line after line of symbolic markings, her eyes settling on the title line:

She leaned over and picked up the book. Craig frowned at her. She ran a finger over the lines. “This last word is
Grendel
.”

Craig swung around in his seat. “You can read the code?”

Jenny shook her head. “No. It makes no sense to me.” She turned and showed it to her father.

He shook his head. “I can’t read it.”

Craig stared between them. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” Jenny said, flipping through the book. “This is all written in Inuktitut—or rather the Inuit script, but it’s not the Inuit
language
. This last word,
Grendel,
I can read because it’s a proper name, spelled phonetically in Inuit symbols.”

Craig stood up next to her. “Phonetically?”

She nodded.

“Can you read the opening line? How it would sound spoken aloud?”

Jenny shrugged. “I’ll try.” She pointed to the title line and read it, slowly and haltingly. “ ‘Ee—stor—eeya—led—yan—noy—stan—zee Grendel.’ ”

Craig jerked straighter, listening with a bent ear. “That’s Russian! You’re speaking Russian.” He repeated her words more clearly.
“Istoriya ledyanoi stantsii Grendel.
It translates ‘History of the Ice Station Grendel.’ ”

Jenny stared up at him, her eyes widening.

Craig hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course, the doctor who ran the station would know Inuit. They were his test subjects. He would need to communicate with them. So he used their symbolic code to record his own Russian notes.” He turned to Jenny. “I need you to translate the books for me.”

“All of them?” she asked, daunted.

“Just some key sections. I must know if we have the right books.”

Amanda had been following their discussion intently. “To ensure the research data is secure.”

Craig nodded, barely hearing her, glancing down at the book in Jenny’s hands.

Edgy from all that had happened, Jenny risked a glance toward Amanda, unsure she understood all that was going on here. Over Craig’s shoulder, she mouthed words at Amanda. Not speaking, merely moving her lips:
Do you trust him
?

Amanda remained still, then gave the tiniest shake of her head.

No
.

6:35 P.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Viktor Petkov enjoyed the look of surprise on the prisoner’s face. He was so sick of Americans blithely ignoring their own histories, their own atrocities, while vilifying the same actions among other governments. The hypocrisy sickened him.

“Bullshit. There’s no way this is an American base,” the man insisted. “I’ve crawled all through here. Everything’s written in Russian.”

“That’s because, Mr. Pike, the discovery here in the Arctic was our own. The Russian government refused to allow you Americans to steal what we found. To claim all the glory.” He waved a hand. “But we did allow the United States to fund and oversee the research.”

“This was a joint project?”

A nod.

“We put up the dough, and you spent it.”

“Your government supplied more than just money.” Viktor pulled the small boy onto his knee. The boy leaned into him, sleepy, seeking the solace of the familiar. Viktor stared over to the American. “You supplied the research subjects.”