Ice Hunt

Matt crossed to the wall of syringes. He pulled one free. The liquid was unfrozen, impervious to the subzero cold. He glanced down to the figure. “He dosed himself,” he muttered.

Petkov glanced between the boy and his father. Then to Matt. From his expression, his thoughts were easy to read. Like the boy, could my father still be alive?

Matt spotted a journal, like all the others, on the table under the shelves. He flipped open the brittle cover to find line after line of Inuktitut script scrawled across the pages, until the notes ceased. Taught by Jenny and her father to read the language, Matt could make it out, but it made no sense. He mumbled aloud, trying to determine the meaning.

Petkov glanced up to him. “You speak Russian.”

Matt frowned and indicated the book. “I’m just reading what’s written here.”

Still on his knees beside his father’s remains, Petkov gestured for the journal. He flipped through what was clearly the last of the journals. Petkov passed it to him. “Read it…” His voice cracked. “Please.”

Maki wandered to the admiral’s side and leaned into him, tired and needing reassurance. Petkov put an arm around the boy.

Matt was in no position to argue with two pistols pointed at him. Plus he was curious. He read as Petkov translated aloud. The admiral paused every now and then to question and to ask Matt to reread a section.

Slowly the truth came out.

The journal was the final testament of Vladimir Petkov. It seemed that in the decade he’d spent here, Viktor’s father had slowly grown a conscience. Mostly because of the boy Maki. The child was born here, orphaned when his parents died during the tests. Missing his own son back in Mother Russia, Vladimir had developed an attachment and affection for the boy, which was always a mistake in research. Never name your test animals. Through this lapse of judgment, however, Vladimir inadvertently rediscovered his humanity, losing his professional detachment.

This occurred about the same time he answered the puzzle of activating the grendel hormone. The hormone had to be collected from living specimens, thawed and unfrozen. If collected from dead specimens or frozen ones, it would be rendered inert. Furthermore, once a sample had been drawn by syringe directly from a living grendel, it had to be treated carefully, maintained at a constant temperature.

The temperature of the ice caverns.

Matt glanced around the special lab, understanding its necessity now.

The answer to the puzzle was fire and ice again: the fire of a living grendel and the ice of the island. Nowhere else could such a discovery be made.

It was this realization that had finally broken Vladimir Petkov. Sickened by his own complicity in what went on here, in the lives lost, he had refused to allow his discovery to reach the outside world, especially after hearing about the Holocaust in Germany.

“We have Russian Jews in our own family,” Petkov quietly added.

Matt understood. When it was your people being persecuted, it opened your eyes to the inhumanity of your actions. But understanding wasn’t enough. Vladimir needed a final act of contrition. The world could never benefit from what had been done here. So he and a handful of others made the ultimate sacrifice. They sabotaged their own base: damaging the radios and scuttling the station’s transport sub. Cut off and adrift on currents, they would allow themselves to disappear into the silent Arctic. Several base members attempted an overland escape, but clearly they never made it.

To protect the innocent prisoners here, Vladimir sent them into a frozen sleep.

Matt glanced out to the hall, weighing whether such an act was mercy or further abuse. Still, from the syringe in the scientist’s arm, it was clear that Vladimir took the same medicine. But had it worked?

Petkov mumbled, aghast. “My father destroyed this station. It wasn’t treachery.”

“He had no choice, not if he was to live with himself,” Matt answered. “He had to bury what had been gained so foully.”

Petkov stared down at his father. “What have I done?” he mumbled, and fingered a thick wristwatch on his right arm. Tiny lights blinked on its face. Some form of radio device. “I’ve brought everyone here. Fought to thwart my own father’s sacrifice. To bring his discovery back to light.”

A commotion at the door drew their attention around. A Russian soldier pushed inside, then stood stiffly before the admiral. He spoke rapidly in Russian, clearly agitated.

The admiral answered, climbing to his feet. The soldier fled away.

Petkov turned to Matt. “We’ve just confirmed hearing the bell beat of an approaching helicopter over the UQC hydrophone. It just left the vicinity of the Omega base.”

The Delta Force team, Matt guessed silently. The cavalry was finally en route. But did that mean Jenny was safe? He could only hope.

Petkov motioned to the guards to move Matt out. “My father gave his life to hide his discovery here. I won’t let it be stolen now. I will finish what my father started.” He shoved his coat sleeve over his large wrist radio. “This is not over yet.”

7:48 P.M.

EN ROUTE OVER ICE…

Jenny rode in the back of the Sikorsky Seahawk. She stared outside the window. Not that there was much to see. The rotor wash from the helicopter’s blades whirled snow about the rising craft. They lifted from the ice in a whiteout cloud.

But as they cleared from the surface, the snow fell away. Winds buffeted the Seahawk, but the pilot was skilled, compensating, holding the craft steady.

Craig spoke to Jenny from the front. She couldn’t see him, but his voice reached her through the radio built inside her sound-dampening earphones. “We should be at the station in twenty minutes. If you could continue to read from the last journal, I’ve set your microphone to record. I’ll also listen as we ride. Any clue could mean the difference between success and failure.”

Jenny touched the journal in her lap and glanced across the crew bay. Delta One was strapped in the jump seat, ready to respond with the rest of his twelve-man team at a moment’s notice. The stern man stared dully out at the snowfields.

Jenny followed his thousand-mile gaze. The red buildings of Omega were now a hazy smear on the ice. The sun was near the horizon, still up as the days grew longer, heading toward the round-the-clock sunlight of midsummer.

Would this long day ever end?

She returned to the journal in her lap, ready to continue the translation, but a flash of fire drew her eyes back to the window.

The horizon flared up in a rose of flame and swirling snow.

Then the concussion hit her. Even through the earphones, she heard the low boom. It thudded against her chest, a mule kick.