Ice Hunt

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 Karamazov by 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.