Ice Hunt (61 page)

“We need more power,” he said.

“Engineering says—”

“I know what the engineers said,” he snapped, tense. He would risk the entire boat if they pushed her any harder. There were limits that carbon plate and titanium could withstand. And he didn’t have the time to surface and get instructions from Admiral Reynolds. The decision was his.

“Chief, tell engineering we need to press the engines another ten percent.”

“Aye, sir.” His orders were relayed.

After a few more moments, the shuddering in the boat set clipboards and pens to rattling. It felt as if they were riding over train tracks.

Everyone sat tensely at their stations.

Perry climbed the periscope stand and paced its length. Earlier he had consulted with Amanda. As an expert in ice dynamics, she had confirmed at least the
theory
behind the Polaris Array. Such a global threat was possible.

The sub’s speed was called out as it climbed. “Sixty knots, sir.”

He glanced to the ensign at the map table. The young officer shook his head. “Still ten miles out from the first set of coordinates.”

He had to push the boat harder.

“Get me engineering,” he ordered.

9:15 P.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Matt stood in water up to his armpits. Pools of flaming oil lit the room but failed to reveal the grendel hidden in the dark waters around them. Occasional ripples marked its passage as it stalked among them.

They were trapped as time pressed down on them.

Ten minutes
.

They were doomed if they fled, doomed if they stayed.

A voice suddenly called from beyond the smoky, blasted doorway. “Don’t move!”

“Great,” Kowalski growled. “Just great.”

“We have you covered!” Craig yelled. “Any aggression and we’ll start shooting.”

Emphasizing this threat, razor-sharp lines of laser sights crisscrossed the hazy room and settled on their chests. “Don’t move,” Craig repeated.

No one dared disobey him—but it wasn’t the guns that held them all frozen in place.

The waters continued to remain dark and quiet.

“Like I’m going to move,” Kowalski grumbled.

Beyond the doorway, figures shifted within the smoke.

Craig called out to them. “I want the admiral over here now!”

Ten feet from Matt, the waters welled with movement.

Matt met Jenny’s eyes, urging her not to move. It was death to do so.

He checked his watch.
Nine minutes…

The choices were not great: guns, grendels, or nuclear bombs.

Take your pick.

Matt glanced to Jenny one more time. There was only one chance for the others.
I’m sorry,
he wanted to say—then turned and stepped toward the doorway.

9:16 P.M.

Viktor knew what the American was attempting.
A sacrifice
. He intended to draw the grendel to him, allowing the others to break free and make for the sub. His eyes lingered on the boy in the woman’s arms.

His father had adopted the boy as his son, and at the end, sacrificed so much to keep him safe. Anger flared in him, some of it selfish, a bit of jealousy at the affection given the boy and denied him. But mostly, he felt a connection to his father through the small child. One forms a family where one can. His father had lost so much up here, but at the end, not his humanity.

Viktor turned away. He had brought this ruin upon them all.

Like his father before him, Viktor knew what he had to do.

He yelled over to the blasted doorway. “I’m coming out!” he bellowed, stopping the American in mid-stride.

“What are you—” the other began.

“Here,” Viktor said, and tossed the walkie-talkie toward Pike.

He caught it easily.

“Take care of the boy,” Viktor called, and began splashing toward the exit, pushing through the water. “I’m coming out!” he yelled again, placing his now empty hands atop his head. “Don’t shoot.”

“Admiral,” Pike warned.

His gaze flicked to the man. “One minute,” he said under his breath, tapping a finger atop his wrist monitor. “You have one minute.”

9:17 P.M.

One minute?
Matt frowned and glanced to his own wrist. According to his watch, they still had a full
eight
minutes before the bomb went—

Then it dawned on him.

He spotted the wake that appeared in the water. It began in a lazy S, then focused and tracked in on the wading admiral.

Matt’s gaze fell back to Petkov’s wrist monitor. Once his heart stopped beating, the bomb’s timer would drop immediately to one minute.

The wake in the water sped toward Petkov’s splashing form.

He was taking the bullet for Matt—but it would shorten the time before the bomb exploded.

Matt swung to face Jenny. Her eyes were confused, terrified.

“Be ready to run,” he warned Jenny and Kowalski.

Craig appeared at the doorway, flanked by two guards. They were on higher ground. The flooding water had barely reached their knees. Rifles followed the admiral. All attention was on Petkov.

He was only four yards from Craig when the grendel struck. It surged out of the water, jaws wide, striking him from behind.

The admiral’s head snapped back from the impact at the same time as his body was rammed forward. Propelled by the grendel, he flew high, lifted out of the water. Then the monster rolled, its prey caught in its jaws. Petkov was slammed back into the water.

Craig and his men fell back in horror.

“Run!” Matt yelled.

Jenny was closest, but she was also in the deepest water, up to her neck. She swam with Maki in her arms, kicking with her legs. Once she was within reach of the conning tower, Tom lunged out, snatched the boy from her and pulled him to safety.

Her arms free, Jenny grabbed the outside rungs of the ladder and clambered upward.

Matt retreated with Kowalski.

By the door, the waters thrashed as the grendel whipped its prey, bashing it through the water. A stain of blood pooled around the creature’s white bulk. An arm flailed weakly.

Craig and his guards sheltered back from the savage attack, forgetting about the others for the moment.

Kowalski reached the sub first. Matt waved him up.

The seaman mounted the ladder, scrambling. He glanced back, then stumbled a step. One arm shot out. “Behind you!”

Matt twisted in the water. Another white shape surfaced. Then another. The blood was drawing more of the pod.

Matt weighed caution versus speed. He opted instead for panic. He kicked and paddled, fighting his way toward the sub.

Kowalski reached the top of the tower. He began to fire into the lake, offering some defense.

Matt finally reached the sub and grabbed the lower rung of the ladder. Pulling himself up, he struggled to get his legs under him.

His toes slipped, numb from the cold and slippery from the water.

Kowalski leaned down, grabbed him, half hauling him up the ladder

Beneath Matt, something struck the tower, clanging into it. Jarred, Matt lost his footing and fell free of the wet ladder. But Kowalski still had a fist wrapped in the hood of Matt’s sweatshirt, holding him from a plunge into the waters below.

Matt sought to plant his feet on the rungs. Between his toes, a large white shape surged out of the water.

A grendel, jaws wide, lunged up at him.

With a groan of effort, Kowalski heaved Matt higher. Jaws snapped, catching Matt’s boot heel. The weight of the falling beast yanked the boot clean off. The beast disappeared with its prize.

Matt snatched the ladder and climbed the rest of the way up. “Damn bastard!”

Kowalski was already rolling into the hatch. “What?”

Matt glanced back to the waters below. He had recognized the grendel who had just attacked him. He had noted the pocked and macerated bullet holes. It was the same creature that had hunted Amanda and him in the Crawl Space, the one that had stolen his pants.

“Now the greedy bastard’s got my goddamn boot, too!”

Kowalski shook his head and dropped down the hatch.

Following him, Matt twisted to climb down the ladder when bullets ricocheted off the plate near his head. He ducked lower, crab-crawling down into the hatch.

He looked back to the docking-bay doorway, spotting Craig. A rifle was leveled at Matt. Between them swam a small pod of grendels.

There was no trace of the admiral’s body.

How much time until—

The answer came a moment later. The grendels suddenly went crazy. The waters churned as the monsters thrashed, rolling, leaping, snapping at the air.

Matt understood what had upset the beasts, driving them to a frenzy. He felt it, too. From his head to his toes. A vibration through the station, like a tuning fork struck by a sledgehammer.

A sonic pulse.

Matt knew what it meant.

Polaris had activated
.

Just as the admiral had described, the device would generate a sonic pulse. And according to Petkov, the pulse would last sixty seconds, then the nuclear trigger would blow, destroying the island and concussing out in a deadly shock wave.

Across the churning lake, Craig had backed a step away, his rifle still in his hands, his head cocked, listening.

Matt pushed up higher. “One minute!” he called over to Craig, tapping his empty wrist, repeating Petkov’s earlier warning.

Craig’s gun dropped as the realization stuck him.

The admiral was dead…the sonic pulse…

Time had just run out for all of them.

Satisfied by Craig’s look of horror, Matt dropped through the hatch, clanging it shut behind him. He dogged it tight and climbed down to the others.

Kowalski sealed the inner hatch, locking it tight. Tom and Washburn held flashlights. No one spoke. Bane sensed the tension, whining at the back of his throat.

There was no stopping Polaris now.

9:17 P.M.
USS
POLAR SENTINEL

“We have less than a minute?” Perry asked, incredulous.

Scratchy static came over the phone as he listened.
“Yes,”
the man confirmed.
“…can’t say…only seconds left!”

Perry glanced over to Amanda. She had read his lips, saw his expression. She mirrored his reaction. The race was over before it began. They were defeated.

“…nuclear trigger…”
the man continued.
“Get clear…”

Before Perry could answer, Amanda’s fingers dug into his arm. Her voice slurred at her sudden anxiety. “Get us deep! Now!”

“What?” he asked.

But she was already running. “As deep as the boat will go!” she yelled back at him.

Perry responded, trusting the woman’s urgency. “Emergency dive!” he yelled to the crew. “Flood negative! Now!

Klaxons rang throughout the sub.

9:17 P.M.
ICE STATION GRENDEL

Craig pounded down the hall of Level Four. He knew his destination, but did he have time? There was no telling. He patted his parka’s pocket, hearing a satisfying clink.

He ran past one of the Delta Force team members. The sergeant major called to him as he fled past. “Sir…?”

He didn’t slow, running headlong around the curving hall. His goal came in sight. He needed a secure place to hide, somewhere to ride out the blast wave, someplace waterproof. He knew only one sure place.

The door to the solitary tank was still open, empty of its recent occupant, the Inuit boy. Craig dove inside. He twisted around and yanked the glass door closed. Still powered on the generators, it automatically locked down and was sealed, closing him in.

But was it secure enough? He touched the glass. It vibrated from the sonic pulse of Polaris.

Craig sank to the bottom of the cylinder, bracing himself.

How much time was left?

9:17 P.M.
RUSSIAN I-SERIES SUB

Matt lay with Jenny. In each other’s arms, the pair was nestled between two mattresses, crammed and sandwiched in one of the bunks. The others were similarly padded, limited two to a bunk. Washburn watched over Maki. Even Bane had been penned in a padded cell of mattresses.

After boarding the sub, there had been no time for niceties or plans. They had all fled to the sub’s berths and found ways to secure themselves from the coming explosion.

And now the waiting.

Matt buried himself into Jenny. The admiral must have survived longer than he’d guessed. Or perhaps the lag time on the device was a bit longer than one minute.

He clutched Jenny, and she him. Hands sought each other, moving from memory, reflexively. His mouth found hers. Soft lips parted under him. They murmured to each other, no words, merely a way to share their breath, reaching out to each other in all ways, a promise unspoken but heartfelt.

He wanted more time with her.

But time had run out.

9:17 P.M.
OUT ON THE ICE…

Under the twilight sky, Command Sergeant Major Edwin Wilson, currently designated Delta One, stood on the ice. The Sikorsky Seahawk rested five paces behind him. Its rotors slowly spun, engines kept hot, ready for immediate action. As ordered, he had retreated thirty miles from the submerged ice island. With the discovery of the bomb at the station, it was up to him to protect the stolen journals. He was only to return if an all clear was dispatched by the mission’s operational controller.

Until then, he waited. No further updates had been transmitted.

Under his feet, the ice had begun to vibrate. At first he thought it was his imagination, but now he was not so certain. The trembling persisted.

What was happening?

He faced northeast, staring through high-powered binoculars, equipped with night vision. The terrain was so flat and featureless that he was able to make out the tall line of pressure ridges near the horizon.

Nothing. No answers there.

He checked his watch. According to the timetable of the original report, there were only a few more minutes to spare.