Ice Hunt (60 page)

Matt had tired of the admiral’s defeatism, but it was beginning to spread to him, too. What could they do?

Jenny slipped her hand from his. “Hold on.” She eyed the pair of Delta Force guards. They stood by the prison-wing door, one watching out, one in. They were sharing a smoke, passing it between them, ignoring them.

With no one watching, Jenny crossed the cell and reached out to Maki. The boy was half asleep in Washburn’s arms, exhausted and shell-shocked. Jenny parted the child’s parka, and with her back to the guards, she removed a black walkie-talkie.

She tucked the radio in her own jacket and crossed back.

“Who do you think you’re going to call with that?” Matt asked.

“The
Polar Sentinel
…I hope.”

Washburn heard her. “Captain Perry’s here?” she hissed, stirring from the bed.

Jenny waved her back down. “He’s been monitoring everything here, seeking a way to rescue us.” She shook her head. “If what this guy says is true, rescuing us is impossible—but maybe they can do something about this Polaris Array.”

Matt nodded. It was a long shot, but they had no other option. “Try to raise them.”

Washburn helped shield Jenny. The lieutenant carried Maki, singing a lullaby to cover her attempt to communicate.

Matt stepped toward the Russian. “If we are to have any hope for this to work, we need the exact coordinates of the secondary amplifiers.”

Petkov shook his head, not so much in refusal as hopelessness.

Matt resisted the urge the throttle the man. He spoke rapidly, sensing the press of time, the falling ax. “Admiral, please. We are all going to die. Everything your father sought to hide will be destroyed. You’ve won there. His research will be forever lost. But the revenge you seek upon the world…because of an atrocity you thought was committed upon your father by your government or mine…it’s over. We both know what truly happened. The tragedy here was your father’s own doing. He cooperated in the research, and only at the end found his humanity.”

Petkov’s expression was tired, his head sagging a bit.

Matt continued, pointing over to the boy. “Maki saved your father. And your father attempted to save him, preserving the boy in ice. Even at the end, your father died with hope for the future. And right there lies that hope.” Matt stabbed a finger toward Maki. “The children of the world. You have no right to take that from them.”

Petkov stared over at the boy. Maki lay in Washburn’s arms, head cradled against her neck. She sang softly. “He is a beautiful boy,” Petkov conceded. His gaze flicked to Matt, then a nod. “I’ll give you the coordinates, but the sub will never make it there in time.”

“He’s right,” Jenny said this as she stepped back to the bars, covering the radio with her jacket. “I’ve raised the
Sentinel
. Perry doesn’t think he could even run to one of the amplifiers, let alone two. But he’s heading away at full steam. He needs the exact positions.”

Matt rolled his eyes. He’d give his right arm for one optimist in the damn group. He waved for the radio. “Pass it here.”

Jenny slipped the walkie-talkie through the bars. Matt pressed the transmitter and held the radio toward Petkov’s lips. The admiral’s hands were still bound behind his back. “Tell them.”

Before the man could speak, a loud thud sounded by the door. All eyes turned back to the entrance. One of the guards was on the floor. A dagger hilt protruded from his left eye socket. The other fell back, someone on top of him. An attempt to shout an alarm was cut from the soldier’s throat by a wicked long knife. Blood shot across the floor.

As the soldier gurgled, grabbing at his own bloody throat, his attacker shoved up. He was a true gorilla of a man.

Jenny rushed to the front of the cell. “Kowalski!”

The man wiped the blood from his meaty hands on his jacket. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“How…I thought…the rocket attack?”

He worked rapidly, searching the guard. “I was blown into a snowbank. I burrowed down deep when I saw the situation out there. Then I found another ventilation shaft. Way the fuck out there.”

“How?”

Kowalski jabbed a thumb toward the door. “With a little help from my friends.”

Another man entered the room, a bandage around his head and a rifle in his hands. He covered the door.

“Tom!” Jenny called out. She clearly knew the pair.

But the fellow was not alone. At the man’s knee, a shaggy form loped into the room, tongue lolling, eyes bright.

“My God!” Matt said, dropping to the floor. “Bane.” His voice caught in his throat. The dog leaped on the cell door, pushing his nose through the bars, trying to squeeze through, whining, squirming.

“We found him in the ice peaks.” Kowalski spoke rapidly as he keyed open the cell doors “Or rather,
he
found us. The Russians left Tom as dead meat in the snow, but he was only knocked out. I dragged him off.”

“You survived,” Jenny said, still sounding incredulous.

Kowalski straightened with a handful of keys. “No thanks to you guys…running off and leaving us for dead. Next time check a goddamn pulse, for God’s sake.”

As Matt’s cell was unlocked, he pushed open the door and worked fast. Time was against them. He removed the dagger from the corpse and sliced the admiral’s hands free, then searched the guards for further weapons, taking everything he could find. He passed weapons around as the other cells were opened. “We’d better haul ass.”

“This way,” Tom said, rushing the line of prisoners out and around to the curving exterior hallway. The group hurried to the same service duct through which Matt and the others had fled hours ago.

As they were ducking away, a commotion sounded from across the level. Yelling. Matt straightened, listening as he waved the biology group into the tunnels. It was Craig. He must have realized the abort code was a ruse. Matt didn’t want to be here when Craig found out they had escaped.

Matt dove through the vent, following Bane and Jenny.

Kowalski led them into the service shafts. “We’ve been rats in the walls ever since the attack started. Tom knows this station like the back of his hand. We were waiting for a chance to break you free.”

“Where’s this ventilation shaft?” Washburn asked as the group piled into one of the service huts. She still held Maki in her arms. The boy was silent, eyes wide.

“About half a mile,” Tom said. “But we’re safer down here.”

Matt turned to the admiral. “What’s the blast range of the Polaris bomb?”

Kowalski swung toward them, eyes wide. “Bomb? What bomb?”

Petkov ignored the man. “The danger is not so much the
blast
as the
shock wave
. It’ll shatter the entire island and the ice for miles around. There’s no escape.”

“What
fucking
bomb?” Kowalski yelled.

Jenny told him.

He shook his head as if trying to deny the truth. “Fucking fantastic, that’s the last time I rescue you guys.”

“How much time do we have left?” Tom asked.

Matt checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes. Not nearly enough time to get clear.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

Matt removed one of the confiscated weapons. One of the black pineapples. “I may have an idea.”

“Buddy, that grenade’s not strong enough to blast a hole to the surface,” Kowalski said.

“We’re not going up.”

“Then where?”

Matt answered, then led them off in a mad dash as time was running out.

Kowalski pounded after him. “No
fucking
way.”

9:10 P.M.

Craig stared at the empty row of cells, the pair of dead guards. Everything was unraveling. He spun on the pair of soldiers at his side. “Find them!”

Another soldier rushed through the door. “Sir, it looks like they fled into the service shafts.”

Craig clenched a fist. “Of course they did,” he mumbled. But what were they trying to do? Where could they go? His mind spun. “Send two men in there. The Russian admiral must not—”

A muffled blast cut him off. The floor under his feet rattled.

The guards stiffened.

Craig stared down between his toes. “Shit!”

9:11 P.M.

A floor below, Matt tested the docking bay’s hatch. The others were lined up along the wall on Level Five. A moment ago, he had opened the hatch and tossed in a pair of the incendiary grenades, one collected from each of the two dead guards.

Matt touched the metal door with his bare fingers. It had gone from ice cold to burning hot. The blast of the V-class incendiaries continued to impress him. But were they strong enough to do the job here?

There was only one way to find out.

As the blast echoed away, Matt swung open the door. It led to the docking lake for the Russian transport sub, an old I series. A moment ago, the room had been half filled with ice, completely encasing the docked conning tower. Matt remembered Vladimir’s final confession. Petkov’s father had scuttled the sub, blowing all ballast, driving the sub up and jamming it in place. Over the years, the room had flooded and frozen.

Matt stared into the room. The pair of grenades had transformed the frozen tomb into a fiery hell. Water bubbled on the surface. Pools of flame dotted the new lake formed around the sub. The smell of phosphor and steam rolled out.

As Matt studied the chamber, his eyes and face burned. It was still too hot to enter.

“Next time,” Kowalski groused, shielding his face, “let’s try just
one
grenade.

Despite the residual heat, at least the mound of ice covering the conning tower had melted away. The sub’s hatch was uncovered.

Now if only they could get to it.

Matt checked his watch.
Thirteen minutes
. With his face sweating, he turned to the others. They didn’t have time to spare. “Everyone inside!”

Washburn splashed into the room first, followed by the biology group. The water was knee-deep. Tom went with them. “Get that hatch open!” Matt called to the Navy pair.

Kowalski and Matt covered the door, keeping their weapons fixed toward the stairs. Despite the thick insulation of the docking bay, everyone had to have heard the grenade explosion.

Matt motioned Jenny. “Get everybody into the sub!”

Jenny nodded, starting across with Bane at her side and Maki in her arms. Beside her, Petkov still spoke into the walkie-talkie, passing the coordinates to the
Polar Sentinel
.

Jenny called back to him: “Matt!” He heard the distress in her voice and turned. “The water’s getting deeper! It’s filling up!”

She was right. The level had risen to her thighs. Suddenly a geyser of water shot up from the half-frozen lake, exploding up with a soft
whoosh
.

“Damn it,” Matt swore, understanding what was happening. The Russian incendiaries had been
too
good. They had melted spots down to the open ocean, weakened others. The outside water pressure, held back by thick ice, was breaking through. Another geyser erupted. Water flooded into the room.

Jenny and the admiral stood halfway across the burning lake. The level had already climbed waist-high.

“Hurry,” she called back to him.

Gunfire erupted at Matt’s side. Kowalski had his rifle raised to his cheek, the barrel smoking. “They’re coming after us!” he hissed.

No surprise there.

Matt retreated a step with Kowalski.

Behind them, Washburn and Tom had gotten the sub’s hatch open. The biology group was already clambering down inside. The sub was dead, defunct. Their only hope of survival was to hole up in the old vessel, trusting its thick hide to insulate them as the ice shattered from the device’s shock wave. The chance of survival was slim, but Matt still had a stubborn streak.

Until he was dead, he’d keep fighting.

A metallic pinging drew his full attention back to the outer corridor. A grenade bounced down the stairwell.

“Crap!” Kowalski yelled. He reached out, grabbed the hatch handle, and yanked the door shut. “Jump!”

Matt leaped to one side, Kowalski to the other.

The grenade blew the door off its hinges. The bay’s hatch flew up, hit the sea cave’s ice ceiling, and rebounded into the water with a crash.

Matt scrambled away from the open door.

Kowalski waved an arm, firing with the other. “Everybody! Inside!”

Matt trudged across the rapidly flooding chamber, half dog-paddling, half kicking. Kowalski retreated with him.

Jenny and the admiral had almost reached the sub. Bane was already being hauled up and in by Tom and Washburn.

Then a geyser blew, throwing Jenny and Petkov apart.

Jenny landed in the water, cradling the boy. She came up sputtering. Maki wailed.

The admiral slogged toward her.

Then a large white hummock surfaced between them. At first Matt thought it was a chunk of ice. Then it thrashed and vanished under the dark water. Everyone knew what it was, freezing in place in terror.

A grendel.

The predator must have slipped through the opening water channels, coming to search the new territory.

Jenny clutched Maki higher in her arms.

Matt stared around. There was no way of knowing where the beast was. They feared moving, attracting it. But it was also death to stay where they were.

Matt glanced to his watch.
Twelve minutes
.

He stared back out. Across the deepening lake, the water remained dark and still. The grendel could be anywhere, lurking in wait.

Fearing to attract it, they dared not move.

9:12 P.M.
USS
POLAR SENTINEL

Perry studied the computer navigation and mapping. “Are you certain those are the coordinates of the closest amplifier?” he asked the ensign.

“Yes, sir.”

Damn
. He recalculated in his head what the computers confirmed. He checked his watch, a Rolex Submariner, wishing for once that it weren’t so accurate.
Twelve minutes…

They’d never make it. Even at their top-rated speed of fifty-two knots, they’d barely reach
one
of the Polaris amplifiers, not the necessary two. At their current speed, the entire sub vibrated as the nuclear engines generated steam at ten percent above design pressure. There was no need to run silent now. It was a brutal race to the finish.