Ice Hunt (59 page)

Jenny stood up, pulling the boy in her arms. As she paced with Maki, softly humming, she edged closer to the body. Once near enough, she waited until the guards’ backs were turned. Then she darted down, snatched the walkie-talkie, and sprang back up.

She hid the radio where no one would think to look.

But what now?

Across the room, the titanium sphere continued its deadly countdown. There could be no rescue until that threat was addressed.

It was all up to the man she loved.

8:36 P.M.

Matt led the way down the long curving hall of frozen tanks.

Craig followed with his two men. Other members of Delta Force manned key positions throughout this level. With all the remaining Russians executed, the base was once again an American station…all except for one Russian admiral.

Matt reached the end of the hall, where the line of tanks stopped. He crossed to the secret panel. Pausing, he weighed the evils here: Craig versus the Russian admiral. But he also pictured Jenny and the little boy. He took strength from her heart, her will to protect the innocent. Before any other matters could be decided, the bomb had to be deactivated.

His fingers tightened on the rifle in his hand.

“There’s nothing here,” Craig said suspiciously.

“Nothing?” Matt reached and swung open the hidden panel, revealing the wheeled latch to the ice lab’s door. He glanced over to Craig with one eyebrow raised. “Then you go in first, because I doubt we’re going to get a very warm welcome.”

Craig waved Matt aside and had one of the Delta Force guards work the wheel. Matt allowed him to struggle a moment, remembering his own frustration. But time was critical. He leaned forward and hit the secret switch that unlocked the wheel. It spun free. The door cracked open.

No one moved to open it farther.

Craig stepped closer. “Admiral Petkov!” he called. “You asked for us to meet, to parley a solution. I’m still willing to talk if you are.”

There was no answer.

“Maybe he killed himself,” one of the guards mumbled.

This theory was quickly disproven as Petkov called out, “Come in.”

Craig frowned, unsettled by the admiral’s yielding. He glanced to Matt.

“I’m not going in there first. This is
your
goddamn game.”

Craig motioned everyone to either side, then pulled the door open himself, shielding his body behind the door. There was no gunfire.

One of the soldiers, a sergeant, extended a small spy mirror around the corner. He studied the room for a few moments. “All clear,” he said, not hiding his surprise. “He’s just sitting in there. Unarmed.”

Making the soldier prove his words, Craig waved him in first. Raising his rifle, the sergeant slid from his vantage point and ducked low through the doorway. Dropping to a knee, he swept his weapon around, ready for any threat. None arose.

“Clear!” he yelled.

Craig cautiously stepped around the door, his pistol pointing forward. He crossed into the room. Matt followed, while the other guard remained posted in the hall.

Little had changed inside the ice lab. Nothing had been moved or destroyed. Matt had at least expected Petkov to have smashed the samples, but the glass syringes were still secured across the back shelves.

Instead, the admiral sat on the ice floor beside his father. The two could have been brothers, rather than father and son.

“Vladimir Petkov,” Craig said.

There was no need to confirm the obvious.

Craig’s eyes took in the wall of syringed samples. He kept his gun pointed at the admiral. “It doesn’t have to end this way. Give us the abort code to the bomb upstairs and you can still live.”

“Like you allowed my men to live, like you allowed your own people at Omega to live.” Petkov scowled. He lifted an arm and shook back his sleeve, revealing the hidden wrist monitor. “The bomb upstairs is a sonic charge, set to go off in another forty-two minutes.”

Craig no longer even tried to lie. “I can turn those forty-two minutes into a lifetime of pain.”

Petkov laughed bitterly at the threat. “You can teach me nothing about pain,
huyok
.”

Craig bristled at the clear insult.

“What do you mean a
sonic
charge?” Matt interrupted. “I thought it was a nuclear bomb?”

Petkov’s gaze flicked to him, then back to Craig. The Russian admiral knew the true enemy here. “The device has a nuclear
trigger
. After a sixty-second sonic pulse, the main reactor will go critical and blow. It’ll take out the entire island.”

Craig shoved his pistol closer, threatening. The hammer cocked back.

Unfazed, Petkov simply tapped his exposed wrist monitor. “The trigger is also tied to my own heartbeat. A fail-safe. Kill me and the time before detonation will drop to one minute.”

“Then maybe something else will persuade you.” He shifted his pistol and pointed it at Petkov’s father’s head. “Matt told me your story. Your father took the elixir along with the Eskimos. If he did that, then a part of him wanted to live.”

Petkov remained unreadable, stone. But there was no response this time.

“Like the boy, he may still be alive even now. Would you take that chance at rebirth from him? I understand the shame and grief that drove your father to his decision, but there can be no redemption in death, only in life. Would you deny your father that?” Craig stepped forward and crushed the glass syringe Vladimir had used decades ago. “He
injected
himself. He
wanted
to live.”

Petkov glanced to his father. One hand twitched up, then down, plainly wavering.

Matt pressed, “And what about little Maki? Your father put him to the final test himself, the boy he took as his foster son. He wanted the boy to live. So if not for yourself or your father, consider the boy.”

Petkov sighed. His eyes closed. The silence became a physical weight on them all. Finally, tired words flowed from the admiral. “The abort code is a series of letters. They must be entered forward, then reentered backward.”

“Tell me,” Craig urged. “Please.”

Petkov opened his eyes. “If I do, I want one promise from you.”

“What is that?”

“Do with me what you will, but protect the boy.”

Craig narrowed one eye. “Of course.”

“No research labs. You mentioned using him again as an
issledovatelskiy subyekt
, a research subject.” He indicated the wall of syringes. “You have more than enough here. Just let the boy live a normal life.”

Craig nodded. “I swear.”

Petkov sighed again. “I suggest you write the code down.”

Craig pulled a small handheld device from his pocket. “A digital recorder.”

Petkov shrugged. “The code is L-E-D-I-V-A-Y-B-E-T-A-Y-U-B-O-RG-V.”

Craig played it back to make sure he got it right.

The admiral nodded. “That’s it.”

“Very good.” Craig lifted his pistol and pulled the trigger.

The noise in the small space sounded like a grenade. Several of the syringes shattered.

Again, Matt was startled from the sudden violence. He stumbled back. The guard at the door, obeying some hidden signal, snatched the rifle from his fingers. The other soldier’s weapon pointed at his face.

Petkov remained on the floor. His father’s body had fallen over his legs, headless now. The frozen skull had shattered half away from the point-blank shot.

Matt gaped at Craig.

The man shrugged. “This time I did it because I was pissed off.”

8:49 P.M.

Victor held his father’s body. Parts of his skull littered his lap, the floor, the shelves. A shard had sliced his own cheek, deeply, but he barely felt the sting. He clutched the cold flesh.

A moment ago, there had been hope that some part of his father yet lived, suspended in time. But now all such hopes had been shattered away as thoroughly as the frozen skull.

Dead
.

Again.

How could the pain be so fresh after so many years?

Though his heart thudded painfully in his chest, no tears came. He had shed his tears for his father when he was a boy. He had no more.

Craig spoke by the door to one of his guards. “Take them both to the cells to join the others. Bring the woman and boy down, too.”

The boy…

Viktor stirred, finding purpose. “You swore,” he called out hoarsely.

Craig paused at the door. “I will keep my promise as long as you haven’t lied.”

8:50 P.M.

Matt watched the admiral struggle to his feet and noted there was still a strength to him. Petkov’s hands were bound so that he couldn’t access the wrist monitor, and in short order, he and Petkov were escorted at gunpoint from the room.

It was over. Craig had won.

With the bomb deactivated, the bastard had plenty of time to recall the remainder of the Delta team and dig himself free. And with the notes and samples, he had all he needed from the ice station.

All that was left was to clean up the mess.

Returned to their cell, Matt and Petkov drew stunned gazes from the other prisoners, Ogden and the two biology students in one cell, Washburn alone in the other.

It didn’t take long for Jenny and Maki to be herded down as well. They were thrust into the cell with Washburn.

Matt met Jenny at the bars. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. Her face was ashen, but her eyes were twin sparks of hellfire. Washburn took Maki from Jenny and sat with the boy on the bed. He seemed fascinated by the lieutenant’s dark skin.

“What happened?” Jenny asked.

“Craig got the samples, the books, and the abort code.”

Petkov stirred behind Matt, speaking for the first time. “The
huyok
got nothing,” he spat out thickly.

Matt turned to the man. His face was pure ice. “What do you mean?”

“There is no abort code for the Polaris Array.”

It took half a second for Matt to assimilate the information. The admiral had tricked Craig, outfoxed him at his own game. And while Matt might have appreciated it in other circumstances, the outcome was bleak for all of them.

“In twenty-nine minutes,” Petkov said, “the world ends.”

18

North Star

APRIL 9, 8:52 P.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Perched on the elevator platform, Craig typed in the code on the electronic keyboard wired to the titanium sphere. He hurried. They had wasted a precious ten minutes hooking up the connection.

Still, despite the urgency, Craig carefully listened to the digital recording. He typed in each letter as dictated. Then, as directed by the admiral, he retyped the same sequence in
reverse
this time. His fingers moved quickly and surely.

V-G-R-O-B-U-Y-A-T-E-B-Y-A-V-I-D-E-L

Once done, he hit the “enter” button.

Nothing happened.

He hit it again with the same result.

“Is this hooked properly?” he asked Sergeant Conrad, the demolition expert.

“Yes, sir. I’m registering that the device has accepted the code, but it’s not responding.”

“Maybe I typed it in wrong,” he mumbled. If there was any mistake, it was probably when he typed the sequence in backward. He looked at those letters more closely. Then he saw his mistake.

“Goddamn it!” he swore, clenching a fist.

The reversed letters separated into Russian words:
V grobu ya tebya videl
. The translation was a common Russian curse.
I will see you in your grave
.

“Nothing appears wrong,” Conrad said, bent half under the device, misinterpreting his outburst.

“Everything’s wrong!” Craig snapped back, leaping off the platform. “We’ve got the wrong code.”

He pounded back down the steps. He knew one way to make the bastard talk.

The boy.

8:53 P.M.

Matt listened as Admiral Petkov finished his description of Polaris. The sonic bomb on Level One was only
one
of the devices. There were another five amplifiers out on the ice, ready to spread the destruction in all directions. The pure ambition struck him dumb—to destroy the entire polar ice cap, to bring ruin down upon the globe, and potentially trigger the next great ice age.

He finally found his tongue. “Are you nuts?” It wasn’t the most diplomatic response, but he was way beyond diplomacy at this point.

Petkov merely glanced toward him. “After all you’ve seen, is this truly a world you want to protect?”

“Hell, yes. I’m in it.” He reached between the bars and took Jenny’s hand. “Everything I love is in it. It’s fucked up. No question there, but hell, you don’t throw the damn baby out with the bathwater.”

“No matter,” Petkov said. “Polaris cannot be stopped. The detonation will commence in twenty minutes. Even if we could escape here, the secondary amplifiers are planted fifty kilometers away, all around the island. You’d have to disable and remove at least
two
of the five to break the array’s full effect. That could never be done. It is over.”