The Arctic Event (14 page)
The USS
Alex Haley
Randi Russell nudged a scarlet plastic disk an inch forward with a fingernail. “King me,” she said, staring across the game board with the focused intensity of a cougar preparing to pounce.
Muttering under his breath in Russian, Gregori Smyslov took a counter from his minimal pile of trophies and clapped it down where indicated.
“You’re in trouble, Gregori,” Valentina Metrace said, munching a chip from the bowl resting beside the tabletop battlefield.
“Draughts is a child’s game,” Smyslov said through gritted teeth. “A child’s game, and I am not in difficulty!”
“We call it checkers, Major.” Smith chuckled from where he sat beside Randi. “And yes, you are in trouble.”
“Even the great Morphy would find it impossible to concentrate with certain people incessantly crunching crackers in his ear!”
“They’re tortilla chips, to be precise,” Valentina said, enjoying another savory crunch. “But your real problem is, you’re trying to logic the game as you would chess. Checkers are more like fencing: a matter of finely-honed instinct.”
“Indeed.” Smyslov pounced, jumping one of Randi’s red checkers with a black. “I told you I was in no difficulty.”
The riposte was lethal, Randi’s freshly minted king clearing the board of black counters in a swift, final tic-tic-tic triple assault. “Best four out of six?” she queried with just the faintest hint of a smile.
Smyslov’s palm thumped into his forehead. “Shit, and for this I left Siberia!”
Smith grinned at the Russian. “Don’t feel too bad, Major; I’ve never beaten Randi at checkers, either. I don’t think it can be done. Now, who’s for bridge?”
Smyslov lifted his head and started to collect his dead soldiers. “Why not? Being tortured with hot irons can’t be worse than having one’s fingernails torn out.”
The ice cutter was four days out of Sitka. After rounding Point Barrow she was now driving hard for the northeast and the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago. Only a certain portion of those days could be filled with briefings and brainstorming sessions about what they might find on Wednesday Island. Many hours were left to kill, and as outsiders to the tight seaborne community aboard the
Haley,
Smith and his people had been thrown together on their own resources.
Smith was pleased with this mechanism. Team building was not purely an aspect of training and discipline. It was a matter of the components learning one other. How they thought. How they acted and reacted. Minutiae down to how they liked a cup of coffee. It all accumulated into a projection of how this individual might react in a given crisis. Precious information.
Fragment by fragment, he was expanding his mental files.
Randi Russell: She was one he had known before. He had a base to build on with her. She was solid, inevitably solid. But out on the edge of perception there was always that faint, frightening whiff of don’t-give-a-damn. Never about the mission, but only about herself.
Gregori Smyslov: Clearly a good soldier, but also a man thinking a great deal. And from the moods Smith caught on occasion, he wasn’t happy with his thoughts. The Russian was working toward a decision. What that decision might be was something for Smith to think about.
Valentina Metrace: She was something else to think about. Specifically, just what lurked inside the history professor’s vivacious, smoothly polished shell. There was some other entity in there. In his lengthening conversations with her he had caught only the slightest flavor of this alternate being. It wasn’t the slipping of a mask so much as the tracing of the camouflaged gun ports of a Q-ship. “Weapons expert” could mean any number of things.
Not that her overt personality wasn’t interesting in its own right.
The cabin’s overhead speaker clicked on. “Wardroom, this is the bridge. Pick up, please.”
Smith rose and crossed to the interphone beside the hatchway. “Wardroom here. This is Colonel Smith.”
“Colonel Smith, this is Captain Jorganson. You and your people might want to come on deck and have a look to port. We’re passing what you might call a local landmark.”
“Will do.” Smith returned the interphone to its cradle. The others looked up at him from their places at the mess table. “The captain suggests we have some sights to see, people.”
The wind on deck was piercing now, numbing exposed flesh in only a matter of seconds. Piercing also was the gunmetal blue of the sea and sky, the latter marred by only a few streaming wisps of cirrus cloud. It made a vivid contrast to the stark white castle shape drifting slowly past the cutter’s quarter, the bulk of the iceberg showing as a wavering green mass below the ocean’s surface. This was only the first outrider of the pack. To the north, off the bow, the horizon shimmered with a hazy metallic luster, what the arctic hands called “ice blink.”
Smith felt someone brush lightly against his elbow. Valentina Metrace was standing close by at his side, and he could feel her shiver. Dr. Trowbridge had emerged from the deckhouse as well and stood at the rail a few feet away, not speaking or looking at Smith and his team. Other members of the cutter’s crew were also coming topside, watching the passage of the pallid sea specter.
The first enemy was in sight. Soon the battle would begin.
Wednesday Island
“Core water samples, series M?”
“Check.”
“Core water samples, series R?”
“Check.”
“Core water samples, series RA?”
Kayla Brown looked up from where she knelt beside the open plastic specimen case. “They’re all here, Doctor Creston,” she replied patiently, “just like yesterday.”
Dr. Brian Creston chuckled and flipped his notebook shut. “Have patience with an old man, child. I’ve seen Mr. Cock-up drop in on many an expedition at the last minute. There’s no sense in getting sloppy in the home stretch.”
Kayla snapped the latches on the case and tightened the nylon safety strap around it. “I hear you, Doctor. I don’t want anything to come between me and that beautiful, beautiful helicopter tomorrow.”
“Really?” Creston reclaimed his pipe from the cracked chemistry retort he’d been using for an ashtray, and bent down slightly to peer through one of the laboratory hut’s small, low-set windows. “Actually, I’ll rather miss the place. I’ve found it...restful.”
For the moment there was a hole in the weather over the island, and the low-riding sun struck white fire off the drifted snow outside. The Wednesday Island Science Station consisted of three small, green prefabricated buildings: the laboratory, the bunkroom, and the utility/generator shack, set side by side in a row and spaced some thirty yards apart to eliminate the risk of a spreading fire.
Established near the shore of the small frozen bay at Wednesday’s western end, the station was protected from the blast of the prevailing northerlies by a shoulder of the Island’s central ridge. Thus, each flat-roofed hut had been only half-buried in drift.
Kayla Brown stood up and brushed off the knees of her ski pants. “It’s been a great experience, Doctor, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but like we say back home, ‘Can we please stop having fun now?’”
Creston laughed. “Understood, Kayla. But aren’t you going up with the crash investigation team when they arrive? After all, you were the one to first spot the wreck.”
The young woman’s face fell. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve thought about it, and it would probably be interesting, but...the men aboard that plane might still be up there. I’m willing to give that a pass.”
Creston nodded. Leaning back against the big worktable in the center of the laboratory, he began to lightly fill his pipe from the dwindling stock in his tobacco pouch. “I quite understand. It might not be the most pleasant of experiences. But I must confess, I’m getting bloody curious about that old bomber, especially given how they keep ordering us to stay away from it. It makes a person suspect there might be a bit more to this story than’s being let out.”
Kayla Brown braced her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes in feminine practicality. “Oh, come on, Doctor! You know how historians and archeologists are. They hate to have amateurs fumbling around a dig, jumbling things up. You wouldn’t want someone messing with your core samples or radiosonde balloons, would you?”
“Point taken.” Creston struck a wooden kitchen match. Holding it to the bowl of his pipe, he puffed experimentally. “But trust a woman to squeeze all the mystery out of things.”
At that moment Ian Rutherford slid open the accordion door in the partition that separated the main laboratory from the little radio room that took up one end of the hut. “Got the latest met gen, Doctor,” he said, holding up a sheet of hard copy.
“How’s it look, Ian?”
The young Englishman grimaced theatrically. “I suppose you could say mixed. We’ve got a mild front moving in. It might hold off through tomorrow, but for a day or so after that we’re going to be spotty.”
“How big a spot, lad?”
“Variable northerly winds up to force five. Low overcast. Intermittent snow squalls.”
Kayla rolled her eyes once more. “Oh, nice! Perfect flying weather!”
“And that’s just the start,” the youthful Englishman went on. “We’ve been put on a solar flare warning. Commo’s going to be dicky as well.”
“Dear me.” Doctor Creston sighed a cloud of aromatic smoke. “Someone put the kettle on. I think I hear Mr. Cock-up coming up the walk.”
“Oh, come on, Doc,” Rutherford grinned. “It won’t be that bad. Ops should only be bitched for a day or two at the most.”
“I know, Ian, but just remember who’ll be waiting for us on the ship. Dear old Count-the-Pennies Trowbridge will be certain I deliberately brewed up a storm during extraction just to put him over budget.”
There was a shout from somewhere outside the lab building, muffled by the thickly insulated walls. Boots pounded in the snow lock entryway, the inner door crashed open, and Stefan Kropodkin pushed through into the laboratory, crumbs of compacted snow spraying off his Arctic gear. “Did Doctor Hasegawa and Professor Gupta get in?” he gasped, tearing back the hood of his parka.
Creston straightened from the edge of the worktable, setting his pipe back into the retort ashtray. “No, they haven’t. What’s wrong?”
The Slovakian gulped air. “I don’t know. They’ve disappeared.”
Creston frowned, “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“I don’t know! They’re just gone! We were on the south beach, about three kilometers out. Professor Gupta wanted a last look at the ice buildup rates along the shore, and we were assisting him. The professor told me to photograph some of the formations, and he and Dr. Hasegawa went on ahead, around the point. I lost sight of them.” Kropodkin took another shuddering breath. “When I followed after them, they were gone.”
“Damn it! If I’ve told Adaran once I’ve told him a hundred times. Keep your group together! Did they have a two-way?”
Kropodkin nodded. “The professor had a radio.”
Creston looked to Rutherford. “Did you hear anything on the local channel?”
The Englishman shook his head.
“Then get on the set. Call them.”
“Right-oh!” The Englishman disappeared through the door of the radio shack.
Kropodkin sank down on a stool, dragging off his heavy overmittens and gloves. Kayla Brown anxiously passed him a bottle of water. “I went on for about another kilometer,” he continued after taking a drink. “I called for them but there was no answer. No sign. I began to worry and I hurried back here. I thought maybe they had gotten past me somehow.”
“They must have gone inland or out onto the shore drift for some reason.” Creston scowled.
“There’s no answer on the local channel, Doc!” Rutherford yelled from the radio room.
Kropodkin looked from Dr. Creston to Kayla, a mix of concern and fear crossing his features. “There was one other thing, beyond where they disappeared. A half-eaten seal on the beach. A polar bear kill. Fresh.”
“Are you sure it was a seal?” Kayla asked, a tremor in her voice.
He nodded. “This time.”
“Steady on, everyone. Likely we’re all making a fuss over nothing,” Creston said crisply. “Still, it’s coming on dark soon. Ian, you bring the other portable transceiver, and I’ll get the medical kit. We’ll take one of the hand sleds, a tent, and a survival pack with us. Kayla, I want you to stand by the radio in case we have to tell the
Haley
we have a problem.”
“But...” The girl caught herself. This was no time to make a fuss. “Yes, sir.”
Kropodkin pulled his gloves on once more. “I will get the shotgun from the bunkhouse.”
The USS
Alex Haley
Jon Smith stared up drowsily at the springs of the overhead bunk, the lilting folk rock of Al Stewart’s “Sand in Your Shoes” flowing from the iPOD’s earphones. With tomorrow’s mission launch looming, sleep had been hard to come by. Now, finally, after an hour of assiduous courting, it was almost within reach.
The urgent knock at the cabin door snapped him back to full wakefulness. He sat up, tearing off the headset. “Yes?”
Valentina Metrace’s voice issued through the glowing louvers in the door. “We’ve trouble on Wednesday Island, Jon. It looks serious.”
He rolled out of the bunk and hit the light switch. “Right. We’re coming.”
Smyslov had already swung down from the upper birth and was hastily dressing. Smith pulled on a set of cold-weather BDUs and his boots, and in a few moments the two men were climbing the ladder to the radio room.
Apparently the mission launch wasn’t going to wait for tomorrow.
Beyond the rumble and susurrus of the ship’s routine internal white noise, an intermittent rasping and squealing reverberated through the
Haley
’s frames as chunks of growler ice brushed past the hull. There was also an occasional jolting shudder beyond the beat of the propellers as the cutter’s bow sheered into a thin pan of frozen seawater—sounds and sensations that had been occurring with growing frequency.
For the past three days the
Alex Haley
had been chewing her way deeper into the thickening pack ice of the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago, keeping to the open-water leads when she could, battering through the floating drift when possible, and sidestepping the looming bergs and bleak, cliff-cragged islands when necessary.
Captain Jorganson had put all his arctic seaman’s savvy into gaining ground toward their objective, but their rate of advance had slowed for every mile northward gained. The leads had been growing narrower and the berg clusters denser. Twice during the past forty-eight hours, Randi had launched in the Long Ranger, carrying one of the
Haley
’s officers on an ice survey flight, hunting for cracks in the pack for the cutter to wriggle through.
Winter was winning.
The cutter’s small radio room was already crowded by the time Smith and Smyslov squeezed their way in amid the gray steel equipment chassis. The duty operator sat hunched in front of the powerful sideband transceiver, nursing the frequency and squelch dials while Captain Jorganson leaned over his shoulder. Randi Russell and Valentina Metrace were both present as well, showing signs of their own hasty awakening. Professor Metrace hadn’t taken the time to pin up her hair, and a detached fragment of Smith’s awareness noted that her glossy black ponytail flowed almost to the small of her back. That was one question answered.
Dr. Trowbridge had been shouldered back into an odd corner of the compartment. As did everyone else, he looked worried, but also incensed, as if this cause for concern were something that should not be happening to him.
“What do we have?” Smith demanded.
“We’re not exactly sure,” Jorganson replied. “Two members of a science party apparently turned up missing shortly before nightfall. The expedition leader advised us a search was being organized but that he was not yet declaring an emergency. Then the station was knocked completely off the air for about five hours.”
“Did something happen to their communications gear?”
“In a manner of speaking, Colonel.” Jorganson glanced toward the overhead. “If it weren’t for the cloud cover, we’d be seeing a magnificent aurora borealis tonight. A solar flare is making a hash out of everything. Even the satellite phones are going down.”
“And?”
“And when we reacquired, the science station’s radio guard was calling mayday,” the Coast Guardsman continued. “The search party has not returned, nor has she been able to contact them.”
“She?”
“It’s the female grad student, Kayla Brown. Apparently she’s the only one left.”
The radioman pressed his headset closer and spoke into his lip mike. “KGWI, this is CGAH. We read you. I say again, we read you. Stand by.” The enlisted operator looked up. “We’ve got another hole opening, Captain. We got her again.”
“Put it on the speaker,” Jorganson commanded.
“Aye aye.”
Interference roared and crashed from the overhead, a thin, lonely woman’s voice sounding through it.
“
Haley, Haley,
this is Wednesday Island Station. They still haven’t come back! None of them! Something’s got to be wrong. When can we get help? Over.”
Captain Jorganson lifted the console hand mike from its clip. “This is the captain of the
Haley,
Miss Brown. We understand your situation and we are coming to your assistance with all possible speed.”
Jorganson lifted his thumb from the mike trigger. “The problem is that it might take us several days to work the ship through this last hundred miles of pack to Wednesday. We might never make it at all, given the way the freeze-up is coming on. We’ll have to rely on your helicopter to render any kind of immediate assistance, Colonel.”
Smith, in turn, looked to his pilot. “Randi, could we launch now?”
Randi Russell bit her lower lip, projecting and assessing. “We’re just barely coming into fly-and-return range of Wednesday,” she said after a few seconds. “But we have extremely low air temperatures and potential icing conditions, and the radios are bad. I’ve got to say it’s very marginal out there. I don’t like it, but we’ve got to wait for daylight.”
Smith accepted her judgment without question. “Can I have the mike, Captain?”
Jorganson handed it over.
“Ms. Brown, my name is Colonel Jon Smith. I’m the leader of the team being sent to investigate the downed bomber. We should be able to get to you shortly after first light tomorrow morning. I’m afraid you’re going to have to ride it out until then. Can you give us more on your situation? Over.”
“I’m here in camp and I’m fine,” she replied. “It’s everybody else who must be in trouble—bad trouble, or Dr. Creston would have sent some kind of word back and...and I can’t do anything! Over!”
“At the moment, you’re doing everything that can be done, Ms. Brown. We’ll take care of the rest when we get there. Now, I need for you to answer some questions. Over.”
“Go ahead, Colonel...Uh, over.”
“Have you or the other members of your party seen any indication of anyone else on the island? Lights, smoke, footprints, anything like that?”
The responding voice sounded startled. “Anyone else? No way! Other than you guys there’s nobody around for a thousand miles!”
“Are you certain, Ms. Brown? There’s been no sign of anybody at all?”
“What’s he talking about?” Dr. Trowbridge blurted from his corner of the radio room. “If he’s trying to blame the Inuit—”
“Hush,” Valentina Metrace snapped.
“No,” the staticky voice replied. “Nobody’s mentioned anything. Over.”
“Have you seen anything else out of the ordinary?” Smith probed. “A plane? A ship? Anything?”
“No. We see the contrail of an airliner going over the Pole now and again, but we haven’t seen anything else all summer. Why? Over.”
Trowbridge tried to crowd closer to the radio. “I’d like to know the same thing, Colonel. What is the meaning of...”
Damn it, he didn’t have time for asides! The last rags of his mission cover were shredding away, and it was time to make the transition from totally clandestine to merely covert. Smith aimed a finger at Trowbridge, then jerked his thumb toward the radio room door. “Captain, get him out of here.”
Stunned, Trowbridge gobbled for breath. “What! You have no right to—”
“Yes, he does,” Captain Jorganson said quietly. “Please leave the radio room, Doctor. I hope it won’t be necessary to have you escorted out.”
Trowbridge was a man accustomed to debate. He started to formulate his first wave of verbal protest, but the cold gazes encircling him strangled his self-righteousness. Once more he sensed that he was out of his depth. Contenting himself with a muttered “This is not acceptable,” he sidled his way to the radio shack entry.
Smith returned his attention to the radio. “Ms. Brown, this is Colonel Smith back. I have one more question. You won’t be getting anyone in trouble over the answer, but it’s very important we get a straight answer. Have any of the members of your expedition visited the crash site? Anyone at all, for any reason? Over.”
“No!...At least not that I know of. Dr. Creston wouldn’t allow it. Why? Does that old plane have something to do with my friends disappearing? Over.”
Smith hesitated over his reply. “We’re not sure, Ms. Brown. Please stand by.”
“What about it, Jon?” Randi asked, her voice soft. “Could the containment vessel have failed on the bomber? Could it be the anthrax?”
Smith braced a hand against the console and vehemently shook his head. “No! It doesn’t work like that! Anthrax just doesn’t mow people down without an incubation period and a progressive symptomology.”
Abruptly he straightened and turned to face Smyslov. “Gregori, for the sake of this girl and for the people on that island, now is the time to come to Jesus! Was there anything else aboard that bomber other than the anthrax?”
Smyslov felt those chill steel blue eyes drilling into him. “Jon, I swear to you, as far as I know, the only biowar munition carried aboard the Misha 124 was the anthrax. If there was anything else, I was not briefed about it!”
Smyslov was grateful that he could fall back behind that partial shield of truth, for he suspected that he did know what was happening on Wednesday.
Those damn Spetsnaz! Could it be they had failed to stay out of sight? What if some member of the expedition had the bad luck to stumble over their encampment? If the platoon leader was some kind of bloody-minded cowboy, he might view that as justification to “sterilize” the expedition in the name of security.
Unfortunately, a bloody-minded cowboy would be exactly the kind of commander the Federation High Command would send on a job like this!
They hadn’t even set foot on the island yet, and things were already spinning out of control! If the science expedition had been wiped out, then it would follow that Smith’s team would be eliminated as well. His team! People he liked and respected.
Madness!
“What’s your assessment of the situation, Major?” Smith asked, his voice emotionless.
Smyslov shoved emotion aside as well. “We must assume that some hostile force has succeeded in landing on Wednesday, presumably the same group that attempted to prevent us from reaching the island. We must also assume that they assume the anthrax store is still aboard the Misha 124 and they are intent on capturing it.”
Smith studied the Russian for a further moment before answering. “That’s likely a fair call.” He widened his attention to include the others in the radio shack. “Now, what are we going to do about it?”
“It seems to me that the most immediate problem is, what do we do about her?” Captain Jorganson nodded toward the radio.
It was an excellent point. What do you do about one frightened young woman alone in the dark and as isolated as anyone on the planet could be?
Smith keyed the mike again. “Ms. Brown, a twelve-gauge shotgun is listed as part of your camp equipment. What’s happened to it? Over.”
“The bear gun? The search party took it with them. Why? Over.”
“Are there any other weapons in camp? Over.”
“No. Why?
“We’re...assessing the situation, Ms. Brown. Stand by.”
Smith lifted the mike key and waited for someone, anyone, to say something.
“Get her out of there, Jon!” Randi blurted. “Tell her to grab a sleeping bag and get out! Tell her what’s going on and tell her to hide somewhere until we can get to her!”
“No,” Valentina cut in sharply. “Tell her to stay put beside that radio.”
“Those buildings are meant to keep out weather, not people!” Randi protested. “If we have hostiles on that island and they come for her...”
“If we have hostiles on that island, Miss Russell, then they’ve got her whenever they want her.” The historian’s reply was as bleak and gray as her eyes. “It’s a safe assumption they have the science station covered by now. If they see her trying to run for it, she won’t make it ten yards. But if we keep her by the radio, she might serve as an intelligence source. There’s a chance she can get off a call when they come for her. She might be able to give us some idea of what we’re facing.”
“So you’re considering her expendable,” Randi said bitterly.
Valentina shook her head. “No,” she replied softly. “I consider Ms. Brown already expended.”
Randi fell silent.
Throughout this last exchange, Smith had been studying the Russian member of his team from the corner of his eye. “How about you, Major? Anything more to add?”
Smyslov fumbled a Chesterfield from a crumpled pack and flicked fire from his butane lighter. “No, Colonel,” he said, hissing out his first jet of smoke. “I have no suggestions.”
“CGAH, this is KGWI,” the static-riven voice called plaintively from out in the dark. “I am still standing by.”
Smith keyed the radio mike. “Ms. Brown, this is Colonel Smith again. As I said, we’ll be joining you shortly after first light tomorrow morning. We’d like for you to stand by the radio until we can get there. We’ll be guarding this frequency continuously, and we’ll be making check calls every fifteen minutes through the night. If you hear from the other members of your expedition, or if you hear or see anything unusual, you are to call us immediately. I say again, call us immediately. Do you understand? Over.”
“Yes, Colonel. I understand...Colonel, there’s something more going on, isn’t there? They aren’t just lost, are they?”
What could he tell her that could provide the least little bit of help or comfort? “We’ll explain everything when we get there, Ms. Brown. We’ll find your people and we’ll get this sorted out. You aren’t alone. We will get to you. This is CGAH, standing by.”
“Understood.” The voice at the other end of the circuit tried to sound brave. “This is KGWI, standing by.”
