Текст книги "Ice Hunt"

Автор книги: James Rollins

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

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 reversethis 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 oneof 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 twoof the five to break the array’s full effect. That could never be done. It is over.”

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, hefound 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 blastas the shock wave. It’ll shatter the entire island and the ice for miles around. There’s no escape.”

“What fuckingbomb?” 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 fuckingway.”

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 onegrenade.

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 toogood. 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 oneof 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.

“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 theorybehind 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 eightminutes 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.

Frowning, he lifted the binoculars again.

Just as he raised them to his face, the world ignited to the north. The flash of green through the scopes whited out the view, blinding him. Stumbling back, he let the scopes drop around his neck.

He blinked away the glare and stared to the north. Something was wrong with the horizon. It was no longer a smooth arc. It now bowed up, rising like a wave.

He snatched the binoculars and stared again. A deep green glow marked the center of the cresting wave, like a signal buoy riding a wave.

Then it was gone.

A roar like the end of the world rumbled over the ice.

He continued to stare. The bomb had clearly gone off, but what was happening? He couldn’t understand what he was seeing through the scopes.