Текст книги "Ice Hunt"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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At the end of the dock, the Twin Otter’s engine coughed once, then died. Come on, Jen…

The Cessna dropped its flaps and dove along the river’s length, aiming for the foundering floatplane.

Matt aimed for the cockpit window and fired again. He missed. Un-deterred, the plane continued its dive. “Damn it!” He pulled the rifle’s bolt and shouldered the weapon, widening his stance.

Nearby, the Otter’s engine’s finally choked and caught. The rumble drowned out the barking dogs.

“Matt!” Jenny called out the side window. “Get in!”

The Cessna now glided no more than thirty feet above the river. A figure dressed in a white parka leaned out an open side door. The length of a black grenade launcher was balanced on his shoulder. They were coming in fast, going for a point-blank shot. There was no way the Otter could accelerate out of the way in time.

Their only chance was for Matt to get them to blow this shot, make them come around again, buying them time to get airborne themselves.

Biting his lower lip, he eyed through the sights and focused on the man with the launcher. He would swear the guy stared right back at him. Matt squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the rifle made him blink. The man on the Cessna ducked under one of the plane’s struts. Matt had missed, glancing only the wing, but the close call had rattled the man.

Unfortunately, that was not enough. The grenade launcher quickly swung back into position. The Cessna was now only seventy yards away and coming in savage and low.

He readied the Winchester.

“Matt!” Jenny yelled. “Now!”

He glanced over. Jenny’s father held open the plane’s door. The man beckoned to him. “We’re still tethered to the dock!” he bellowed, pointing to the rope.

Matt swore under his breath and ran to the plane, clutching the rifle in one hand. With his free hand, he tugged off the plane’s rope tether and hopped onto the nearest pontoon.

At his heels, Bane leaped into the cabin in one graceful bound. From their years together, the dog was familiar with this mode of travel.

“Go,” Matt yelled through the open door.

The Otter’s engine roared. The twin props, one on each wing, chewed up the air. The plane swiveled away from the docks.

Jenny’s father reached to help Matt inside as he balanced on the float. “No, John,” Matt said, and met the elder Inuit’s eyes. He flipped the rope tether around his own waist, then tossed the end to Jenny’s father. “Tie me in!”

John’s brows crinkled.

“Belay me!” Matt explained, pointing to a steel stanchion by the door.

The elder’s eyes widened with understanding. He wrapped the rope loosely around the support. In the past, the pair had done some glacier climbing together.

As the Otter began to accelerate along the river, Matt worked down the port-side pontoon, leaning against the rope like a rappeller, using the loop as a brace. Jenny’s father fed the rope, keeping the line taut through the stanchion.

Matt clambered out from under the wing’s shadow.

The Cessna chased thirty yards behind their plane’s tail, almost directly overhead, closing swiftly down on them. The Otter would not escape in time.

Matt raised his rifle and leaned far out, held only by the rope’s loop, legs braced wide on the pontoon. Ignoring the commando with the grenade launcher, he aimed for the cockpit window.

As he pulled the trigger, a matching flash of fire exploded from the launcher. Matt cried out. He was too late.

But then the Cessna bobbled in the air: dropping suddenly, tilting on one wing.

With a gut-punching whoosh,a geyser of water and rock jetted high over the far side of the Twin Otter.

Matt craned around, twisting in his rope, as they passed the spot. Debris rained down into the river and shoreline.

The grenade had missed. The launcher’s aim must’ve been jolted just as he fired.

The Cessna, unable to stop its momentum, roared past overhead, now chased by the Otter on the river. The other plane managed to steady its flight, but Matt had spotted the spiderweb of cracks on the cockpit window.

His aim had been true.

He danced back up the pontoon, the river racing past his heels. The winds buffeted against him as John reeled him back to the door. Matt reached the opening just as the pontoons lifted free of the water. The rattle under his soles ceased in one heartbeat.

As the plane tilted, Matt lost his balance, falling backward. His arms flailed. He dropped the rifle as he snatched for a handhold. The Winchester tumbled into the river below.

Then a hand grabbed his belt.

He stared into his former father-in-law’s black eyes. The Inuit, secure and snugged in his seat belt, held him tight. They matched gazes as the winds howled past the plane. Then something broke in the older man’s face, and he yanked Matt inside.

He fell into the cabin and twisted to close the door. Bane nosed him from the third row of seats, tongue lolling as he greeted him. Matt roughed him away and slammed the door.

Jenny called from the front, “They’re coming back around!”

Matt hauled himself up and crawled toward the copilot’s seat. Ahead, the Cessna banked sharply on a wingtip.

As Matt settled to the seat, he noticed his empty hands. He silently cursed himself for losing the rifle. “Do you have another gun?”

Jenny spoke as she worked the throttle. The plane fought for height. “I have my Browning, and there’s my service shotgun bolted to the rear cabin wall. But you’ll never hit anything in the air.”

He sighed. She was right. Neither weapon was accurate at long range, especially in these winds.

Jenny climbed the plane. “Our only chance is to make for Prudhoe Bay.”

Matt understood. It was the closest military base. Whatever was going on was beyond their ability to handle. But Prudhoe was four hundred miles away.

Jenny stared at the Cessna diving toward them. “This is going to get ugly.”

2:25 P.M.

UNDER THE POLAR ICE CAP

“Message for you, Admiral.”

Viktor Petkov ignored the young lieutenant at the stateroom door and continued to read the passage from the book on his desk: The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He had often found this book by the dead Russian writer a comfort. In moments when his own soul was tested, he could relate to Ivan Karamasov’s struggle with himself and his spirituality.

But it had never been a struggle for Viktor’s father. He had always been Russian Orthodox, most devoutly so. Even after the rise of Stalin, when it became untenable to practice one’s faith, his father had not abandoned his beliefs. It may have been for this reason, more than any other, that one of the most decorated scientists of the time had been exiled – stolen away from his family at gunpoint – and sent to an isolated ice station out in the Arctic Ocean.

Viktor finished reading the section titled “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” where Ivan dramatically repudiates God. It stirred him. Ivan’s anger spoke to his own heart, his own frustration. Like Ivan, Viktor’s own father had been murdered – not by the hands of one of his sons, as in the novel, but by treachery nonetheless.

And the misery had not ended there. After the base’s disappearance in 1948, his mother had slipped into a black depression that lasted a full decade and ended one morning within the noose of a knotted bedsheet. Viktor had been eighteen years old when he walked in and discovered his mother hanging from a rafter in their apartment.

Without any other relatives, he had been recruited into the Russian military. It became his new family. Seeking answers to or some type of resolution for the fate of his father, Viktor’s interest in the Arctic grew. This obsession and a deep-seated fury guided his career, leading to his ruthless rise within the Russian submarine forces and eventually into the command staff of the Severomorsk Naval Complex.

Despite this success, he never forgot how his father was torn from his family. He could still picture his mother hanging from her handmade noose, her toes just brushing the bare plank floors.

“Sir?” The lieutenant’s feet shifted on the deck plating, drawing him back to the present. His voice stuttered, clearly fearful of disturbing Beliy Prizrak,the White Ghost. “We…we’ve a coded message marked urgent and for your eyes only.”

Viktor closed the book and ran a finger along the leather-bound cover. He then held out a hand to the lieutenant. He had been expecting the message. The Drakonhad risen to periscope depth half an hour ago and raised its communication array through a crack in the ice, sending out reports and receiving incoming messages.

The man gratefully held out a metal binder. Viktor signed for it and accepted it.

“That’ll be all, Lieutenant. If I need to send out a reply, I’ll ring the bridge.”

“Yes, sir.” The man turned sharply on a heel and left.

Viktor opened the binder. Stamped across the top was PERSONAL FOR THE FLEET COMMANDER. The rest was encrypted. He sighed and began the decryption. It was from Colonel General Yergen Chenko, directorate of the FSB, the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, what the Americans called the Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the old KGB. New name, same game, he thought sourly. The message came from their headquarters in Lubyanka.

URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT

FM

FEDERAL’NAYA SLUZHBA BEZOPASNOSTI (FSB)

TO

DRAKON

//BT//

REF

LUBYANKA 76-453A DATED 8 APR

SUBJ

DEPLOYMENT/RENDEZVOUS COORDINATES

TOP SECRET TOP SECRET TOP SECRET

PERSONAL FOR FLEET COMMANDER

RMKS/

(1) NEW INTELLIGENCE HAS CONFIRMED US COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATION IS UNDER WAY. US DELTA FORCE MOBILIZED. OPERATION CONTROLLER IDENTIFIED AND CONFIRMED. COUNTERMEASURES HAVE BEEN ACCELERATED AND COORDINATED WITH LEOPARD OPS.

(2) OMEGA DRIFT STATION HAS BEEN APPROVED AS TARGET ONE. COORDINATE ALPHA FOUR TWO DECIMAL SIX TACK THREE ONE DECIMAL TWO, CHART Z-SUBONE.

(3) DRAKONORDERED TO RUN SILENT FROM HERE UNTIL MOLNIYA GO-CODE IS TRANSMITTED.

(4) DEPLOYMENT GO-CODE SET FOR 0800.

(5) INTELLIGENCE UPDATE WILL BE RELAYED ALONG WITH GO-CODE.

(6) COL. GEN. Y. CHENKO SENDS.

BT

NNNN

Viktor frowned as he finished decrypting the message.

What had been stated in the missive was plain enough and no surprise. The target and time of attack were established and confirmed: Omega Drift station, tomorrow morning. And clearly Washington was now aware of the stakes surrounding the old ice base.

But as usual with Chenko, there were layers of information hidden between the lines of his encryption.

U.S. Delta Forces mobilized.

It was a simple statement that left as much unspoken as was written. The United States Delta Force was one of the most covert groups of the U.S. Special Forces and, when deployed, operated with immunity from the law. Once out in the field, a Delta Force team functioned with nearly complete autonomy, overseen only by an “operational controller,” who could be either a high-ranking military official or someone in significant power in government.

By the deployment of U.S. Delta Forces, the rules of the coming engagement were clear to both sides. The war about to be waged would never be played out in the press. This was a covert war. No matter the outcome, the greater world would never know what happened out here. Both sides understood this and had silently agreed to it by their actions.

Out on the polar ice cap, there was a vital treasure to be won, but also a secret to be buried. Both governments intended to be the victor.

Pity those who came between them.

Such covert conflicts were not new. Despite the outward appearance of cooperation between the United States and Russia, the politics behind closed doors was as rabid and retaliatory as ever. In today’s new world, one clasped hands in greeting while palming a dagger in the other.

Viktor knew this game only too well. He was an expert at its stratagems and deceptions. Otherwise he wouldn’t be where he was today.

He closed the metal binder and stood up. He crossed to the six titanium cases resting on the floor. Each was half a meter square. Stamped on the top were a set of Cyrillic letters, the initials for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, located in St. Petersburg, Russia. No one, not even Moscow, knew what was in these crates.

Vikor’s gaze narrowed and settled on the symbol emblazoned below the institute’s initials, a trifoil icon known throughout the world.

Nuclear danger…

Viktor touched the symbol.

Here was a game he intended to win.

4. Airborne

APRIL 8, 2:42 P.M.

EN ROUTE OVER BROOKS RANGE

Jennifer Aratuk checked her airspeed and heading. She tried her best to ignore the Cessna banking through the skies toward her. It was difficult with Matt leaning forward in his seat, his nose all but pressed against the cockpit glass.

“They’re coming around!” he yelled.

No kidding. She put the plane over on a wingtip and spun the Twin Otter away. As they turned, she saw her home below. The blasted storehouse still smoked and her dogs ran in circles, soundlessly barking. Her heart went out to her friends. They would have to fend for themselves until she could return or send someone to take care of them.

First, though, she and the others had to survive.

As she skimmed the Otter over the snow-tipped tops of trees, it sounded for a moment like the plane had run through a spate of hail. A pinging rattle vibrated through the cabin.

Bane barked from the row of backseats.

“They’re shooting at us!” Craig cried, buckled beside her father.

Jenny checked her right wing. Holes peppered its surface. Damn them!She pulled back hard on the throttle, driving the nose of the plane up. The agile plane shot skyward, gaining height rapidly.

Beside her, Matt grabbed his chair arms to hold himself in place.

“Buckle in,” she griped at him.

He hurriedly snapped his seat belt in place while he craned his neck around to search the skies for the Cessna. The other plane was pulling out of its dive and chasing after them.

“Hang on!” she warned as they crossed the top of the valley rise. She couldn’t let the other plane get above them again, but she also knew her craft was not as fast at the Cessna behind her. It would take some artful flying.

She dropped her flaps and pushed the wheel in, shoving the nose of the plane down into the neighboring valley. Its sides were steep, more a gorge than valley. The plane dropped sickeningly. She used gravity to increase her speed. The Twin Otter swooped down, slicing toward the wide river that carved through the center of the canyon. She followed it downstream.

The Cessna appeared behind her. It stayed high, arcing over the river valley. It again tried to get above her.

Jenny banked tightly and followed the river’s course as it wound through the gorge. “Come on, baby,” she whispered to her craft. She had flown the Otter since joining the sheriff’s department. It had gotten her out of many a jam.

“They’re diving on us again!” Matt said.

“I hear you.”

“That’s good,” he said.

She glanced to him, but he was staring out the window.

The plane sped over the river, arcing around a sharp bend where the river chattered over the series of rapids. Close…She stared ahead. A thick mist wafted over the river ahead, obscuring the way.

“Jen…?” Matt was now staring ahead.

“I know.” She brought the plane lower. The floats now glided three feet above the churn of boulders and frothing water. A rumble echoed into the cabin.

Then a new noise intruded. It sounded like firecrackers going off. A spray of bullets chewed across the rocky bank of the river and splattered into the water, slicing toward them. The Cessna flew overhead, slightly behind them.

“Machine gun,” Matt mumbled.

A slug ricocheted off a boulder in the river and struck the plane’s side window. Cracks spiderwebbed over its surface.

Craig gasped, ducking away.

Jenny ground her teeth. She had no choice but to stay her course. She had committed to this. The walls of the gorge had grown into cliffs and drawn inward on either side like vise grips.

Bullets again struck the wing, tugging the plane down on that side. Jenny fought her controls. The float on the same side hit the water, but bounced back. A single slug pinged through the cabin.

Then they were into the thick mists.

A sigh burst from Jenny. The world vanished around them, and a roar filled the cabin, drowning out the engines. The windshield ran with droplets. She didn’t bother with the wipers. She was momentarily blind. It didn’t matter.

She shoved the wheel forward, nosing the plane in a stomach-dropping dive.

Craig cried out, thinking they were crashing.

He needn’t have worried. Their airspeed rocketed up as they plunged almost straight down, following the waterfall as the river tumbled over a two-hundred-foot drop. The mists parted and the ground came hurtling up toward them.

Jenny again put the plane over on a wing and shot away to the right, following the cliff face on her left.

Matt stared at the monstrous wall. Craig gaped, white-knuckled in his seat. “The Continental Divide,” Matt said, turning to Craig. “If you’re visiting the Brooks Range, it’s something you really don’t want to miss.”

Jenny eyed the cliff face. The Continental Divide split the country into its watersheds, driving up from the Rocky Mountains in the south, through Canada, and down along the Brooks Range, ending eventually at the Seward Peninsula. In the Brooks Range, it split the flows between those that traveled north and east into the Arctic Ocean and those that drained south and west into the Bering Sea.

Right now, she prayed it split the course of her plane from her pursuers. She spotted the Cessna as it shot high over the falls, aiming straight out. A grim smile tightened her lips. By the time they spotted her and circled, she would have a significant lead.

But was it enough?

The Cessna was now a speck behind them, but she noted it swinging around.

Jenny made a course correction, aiming away from the cliff face and toward a wide valley that sloped out of the mountain range toward the lower foothills. It was the Alatna Valley. They were soon over the river that drained south out of the mountains. She continued straight ahead, leaving the Alatna River behind.

“Where are we going?” Matt asked, craning back. “We’re heading west. I thought you wanted to head to Prudhoe Bay.”

“I do.”

“Then why aren’t we heading straight north up the Alatna and over the Antigun Pass?” He pointed back to the river. “It’s the safest way through the mountains.”

“We’d never make it that far. They’d catch up with us again. After we clear the Antigun Pass, there is nothing beyond that but the open tundra. We’d be picked off.”

“But—?”

She glared over at him. “Do you want to fly this thing?”

He held up a hand. “No, babe. This is all your game.”

Jenny gripped the plane’s wheel tighter. Babe?She had to fight the urge to elbow him in his face. Matt knew how to fly. She had taught him herself, but he was no risk taker. In some ways, he was too cautious a flier to ever truly excel. One had sometimes to give oneself over to the wind, to simply trust one’s craft and the power of the slipstream. Matt never could do that. Instead he always fought and tried to control every aspect of flight, like he was trying to break a horse.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful,” she said, “and try the radio. We need to let someone know what’s going on up here.”

Matt nodded and pulled on a set of earphones with a microphone attached. He switched on SATCOM to bounce their signal off a polar-orbiting communication satellite. It was the only way to communicate in the mountains around here. “I’m just getting static.”

Her frown deepened. “Solar storms kicking in again. Switch to radio. Channel eleven. Try to reach Bettles. Someone may still receive us. Signals cut in and out all the time.”

He did as instructed. His words were terse, giving their location and direction. Once done, he repeated it again. There didn’t seem to be any response.

“Where are we headed?” Craig asked behind her, his voice shaky. He stared out the cracked side window at the passing meadows and forests far below. Jenny could only imagine his terror. He had already crashed once this week.

“Do you know the area?” she answered, drawing his attention to her.

He shook his head.

“If we mean to lose our tail, then we’re going to need some cover. We’re too open here. Too exposed.”

Matt overheard her. He glanced to her, then at her heading. Understanding suddenly dawned in his face. “You can’t be serious?”

Her father spoke one word, knowing her goal, too. “Arrigetch.”

“Dear God,” Matt exhaled, cinching his seat belt tighter. “You do have parachutes somewhere in here, right?”

3:17 P.M.

POLAR ICE CAP

Amanda Reynolds flew across the ice. There was no other term for this mode of transportation. Though it was properly called ice sailing, such a description was a far cry from the experience itself.

Winds filled the twelve-foot sail, spreading in a bright blue billow before her. With her body crouched, but comfortable, in the fiberglass molded seat, her feet worked the two floor pedals. She kept one hand on the jib line’s crank. Under her, the boat raced across the ice at breathtaking speeds, slicing through the frozen waves of snow.

Despite her speed, she glanced around her. There was no place more starkly empty and barren. It was a frozen desert, one even more formidable and inhospitable than the Sahara. Yet at the same time, there was a distinct spiritual beauty to the place: the continual winds, the dance of blowing snow, the subtle shades of ice. Even the jagged peaks of pressure ridges were sculptures of force given form.

She worked the pedals to arc around one of these ridges with a skill honed from a decade of practice. From a long line of sailors and shipbuilders, she was in her element here. Far though she was from the family-owned shop in Port Richardson, south of San Francisco.

With her brother’s help, she had built the iceboat she rode now. Its sixteen-foot hull had been constructed from handpicked Sitka spruce. Its runners were a titanium alloy. She had clocked the boat at sixty miles per hour on Lake Ottachi in Canada, but she had been limited by a run of only a thousand feet.

She stared out at the endless expanse around her and smiled.

One of these days…

But for now, she settled into her seat and appreciated this time alone, away from the cramped and humid station. Overhead, the sun was sharp and the day still subzero. Though the flow of winds continually chafed against her, she was oblivious to the cold. She wore a form-hugging thermal dry suit and hood, used by divers in the Arctic waters. Her entire face was covered by a custom-molded polypropylene mask, the eyeholes fitted with polarized lenses. Only as she inhaled was she reminded of the Arctic freeze, but even that could be warmed by breathing through a battery-generated air heater that hung from the suit. But she preferred to taste the air.

And to savor the experience.

Out here, she had no disability. She did not need to hear the wind or the knife-sharp hiss of her runners over the ice. She sensed the vibrations through the wood, felt the wind’s press, saw the dance of snow over the ice’s surface. The world sang to her out here.

She could almost forget the car accident. A drunk driver…a basal skull fracture…and the world went silent and more empty. Since then, she had struggled against pity, both from others and her own heart. But it was hard. A full decade had passed since the accident, and she was beginning to lose her ability to speak clearly. She read the confusion in others’ eyes that required her to repeat herself or to sign. Frustrated, she had channeled her energies into her studies and research. A part of her knew she was isolating herself. But where was the distinction between isolation and independence?

After the loss of her mother, her father had hovered over her, kept her close, seldom out of his sight. And she suspected it wasn’t all because of her deafness. He feared simply losing her. Concern turned into smothering. Her struggle for freedom wasn’t so much to prove that she could live as a deaf woman in the larger world, but that she could simply live independent. Period.

Then Greg…Captain Perry…came into her life. His smiles, the clear lack of pity, his bumbling attempts at flirtation, all had worn her down. Now they were at the threshold of a deeper relationship, and she was not sure how she felt about it. Her mother had been a captain’s wife. It was not a world of isolation or independence. She knew this. It was parties, formal naval dinners, weekly social events with other wives. But did she want that life?

She shook her head, pushing such thoughts aside for now. There was no need to make any decisions right now. Who knew where any of this would lead?

Frowning, she manipulated her pedals to glide the boat in a gentle swing toward her destination two miles ahead: the buried Russian ice station. Earlier in the morning, the head of the biology team, Dr. Henry Ogden, had radioed her, claiming some discovery at the station that had led to a clash with the geology team. He insisted she come out and settle matters.

As head of Omega, Amanda was often called in to arbitrate interdisciplinary disputes. At times, it was like wrangling with a bunch of spoiled children. Though she could have easily sidestepped such a demand on her time, it was a perfect excuse for her to escape the drift station for a day.

So she had agreed, setting out just after lunch.

Ahead, red flags were staked atop the giant peaks of a huge pressure ridge system that extended for miles in all directions. The flags fluttered in the wind, marking the opening down into the ice base. Not that the signal flags were necessary any longer. Parked in the shelter of the ridgeline were four Ski-Doos and two larger Sno-Cats, all painted red. And beyond the vehicles, a scar split the smooth terrain where the Navy had blown a hole through the ice for the Polar Sentinelto surface.

As she stared at the opening that led down into the Russian base, a sense of foreboding grew in her. From the mouth of the excavated ice tunnel, billows of steam misted as if from the throat of a sleeping dragon. As of last week, the new occupants of the station had succeeded in overhauling the old generators. Fifty-two of them, all preserved. Surprisingly the lights were found to be working – as were the space heaters. The well-insulated station was said to be quite balmy.

But Amanda remembered her first steps into the icy tomb below. Using metal detectors and portable sonar devices, they were able to find the main entrance and use melt charges and explosives to tunnel down to the sealed doors of the base. The entrance was locked both by ice and a thick steel bar. They had been forced to use an acetylene torch to cut their way into the dead base.

Amanda now wondered if all their effort was worth it. She slipped her sail and gently began to brake as she neared the mountainous line of pressure ridges. In a sheltered valley between two of the ice peaks, a temporary morgue had been set up. The orange storm tents hid the frozen bodies. According to her father, a Russian delegation was already en route from Moscow to retrieve their lost comrades. They would be arriving next week.

Still no one was talking about what else was found down below.

She worked the foot pedals and expertly brought her iceboat around and braked the craft the makeshift parking lot.

There was no one to greet her.

Glancing around, she searched the mountains. They were valleyed in shadows. Beyond them, the terrain was a maze of bridges, overhangs, crevices, and pinnacles. She again remembered the strange few seconds of movement that registered on the DeepEye sonar. Maybe it wasjust a sonar ghost, but the supposition that maybe it was some scavenger, like a polar bear, made her edgy. She stared at the impassable territory beyond the entrance and shivered.

Amanda quickly cranked down her sails, tied them off, and used a hammer to pound in a snow anchor. Once everything was secured, she grabbed her overnight bag from the boat and set off the short distance to the misty tunnel opening.

The entrance looked like any other ice cave that pocked the glaciers of the polar region. It had been widened since she had last been here and was now expansive enough to accommodate an SUV. She reached the threshold and climbed down the chopped steps to the steel door, which hung crooked on its hinges after being forced open. The mist grew thicker here, where the warm air from the base seeped out into the cold. Over the entrance was the sign Captain Perry had described. It must have been discovered when the ice tunnel had been widened.

She studied it. Bold Cyrillic lettering marched across the thick riveted plate, naming the facility:

Ice Station Grendel.

Why had the Russians named it so oddly? Amanda was versed enough in literature to recognize the reference to the monster in the Beowulf legend, but the knowledge brought no further understanding.

With a shake of her head, she turned her attention back to the door and had to shoulder her way through. Ice constantly re-formed around the hinges and edges of the door. With a popping of steel and ice, she stumbled across the threshold.

A young researcher down the hall glanced over to her. He was kneeling beside an open electrical panel. It was Lee Bentley, a NASA researcher specializing in material sciences. He wore only a T-shirt and jeans.

Was it that warm in the base?

Spotting her, the scientist lifted his arms in mock terror. “Don’t shoot!”

Amanda frowned, then realized how she must look with her polypropylene mask in place. She unsnapped and tugged it off, hooking it to her belt.

“Welcome to Ice SaunaGrendel.” Lee chuckled, standing. He was short, only an inch over five feet. He had once explained how he always wanted to be an astronaut, but missed the height requirement by a mere two inches, hence his assignment to NASA’s material sciences lab. He was up here to test new composites in the extremes of temperature and weather in the Arctic.

Amanda crossed to him, tugging her hood back. “I can’t believe how hot it is in here.”