Ice Hunt

Kowalski sighed. “Then, as long as they don’t find what they’re looking for, we live. Once they do, we die.”

Sewell didn’t even bother responding to the man’s statement. He turned instead to Jenny. “Our plan. Still think you can pull off your end?”

Jenny’s father placed a hand on her shoulder. She covered it with her own. He didn’t want her to go. “I’ll make it.”

Sewell stared at her a moment, clearly trying to weigh her resolve. She met his hard gaze. He finally nodded. “Let’s go.”

Kowalski stepped to her side. He towered over her, a gorilla with only slightly less body hair. “You’ll need to keep up with me.”

She rolled her eyes.

Sewell led them both over to where a pair of sailors had pulled away a section of ceiling and cut through the insulation of the Jamesway hut with plastic knives. Their work was hidden out of direct sight of the guarded doorway. Luckily the Russians mostly kept out of the room, confident about their imprisonment—and rightly so. Where could the captives escape to even if they could get out of the barracks? The prison hut was well patrolled, and beyond the camp lay only a prolonged freezing death.

Their parkas had been confiscated. Only a fool would risk the freezing storm with nothing but the shirt on his back.

To escape here meant certain death.

This grim thought plagued Jenny as she watched the pair of sweating sailors labor overhead. They worked within the gap in the fiberglass insulation, unscrewing an exterior plate in the hut’s roof. It was difficult work with only plastic utensils, but they were managing.

A screw fell to the floor from above.

Sewell pointed up. “Normally there’s a skylight installed there. One of three. But in the Arctic, where it’s dark half the year and continually sunny the other, windows were found to be more of a nuisance, especially as a source of heat loss. So they were plated and sealed.”

“One more to go,” one of the men grunted overhead.

“Dim the lights.” Sewell signaled. The lamps around the immediate area were extinguished.

Jenny pulled a spare blanket around her shoulders and knotted it to form a crude hooded poncho. It was too large for her slight frame, but it was better than nothing. Anything to cut the wind.

The last screw fell. A plate dropped next into the waiting hands of one of the workers. It was followed by a blast of cold air.

Wind whistled inside. Much too noisy. Sewell pointed to a petty officer, who turned up his CD player. The band U2 wailed over the howl of the blizzard outside.

“You’ll have to hurry,” Sewell said to Kowalski and Jenny. “If anyone chances in here, we’ll be discovered. We’ll have to reseal the opening ASAP.”

Jenny nodded. A bunk bed had been shoved under the opening to use as a makeshift ladder. Jenny scrambled up. She met her father’s eyes for a moment, read the worry in them. But he remained silent. They had no choice. She was the best pilot here.

Standing atop the bunk, Jenny reached up through the hole in the ceiling. She gripped the icy edge of the roof. Without gloves, her fingertips immediately froze to the metal, burning. She ignored the cold.

Helped by the two sailors shoving her hips, she pulled up and poked her head into the blizzard. She was immediately blinded by the winds and blowing ice.

She donned her goggles and dropped belly first to the curved roof of the hut and slithered out. She moved carefully, her nose inches from the corrugated exterior. The winds threatened to kite her off the roof. Worse, the Jamesway huts had barrel-shaped roofs, like the older Quonset huts. The roof sloped steeply to the snowy ground on either side.

Jenny straddled the top, clinging as best she could to the ice-coated surface. She carefully crabbed around to see Kowalski miraculously squeeze his bulk through the dimly lit hole, like Jonah squeezing from the blowhole of a metal whale.

He grunted a bit, then signaled her, jabbing a finger toward the windward side of the hut. The pair shimmied and slid on their butts to where the sloping roof went straight down toward the ground. The ice threatened to take them over the edge against their will.

On this side of the Jamesway, snow had built up into a large bank, a frozen wave permanently breaking against the hut, reaching almost to the roof. Kowalski searched from his perch for any Russian guards. Jenny joined him. It looked clear for the moment, but visibility was mere feet in the ground blizzard.

He glanced over to her.

She nodded.

Kowalski led the way. Sliding feetfirst over the edge, he dropped down onto the snowbank, then rolled skillfully down its icy slope. He vanished out of view.

Readying herself, Jenny glanced back to the hole. It had already been closed. There was no turning back. She slid on her cold rear over the icy edge of the roof and fell to the snow.

Now to escape.

She rolled artlessly down the snowbank, losing control of her tumble and landing atop Kowalski. It was like hitting a buried boulder. The collision knocked the wind out of her.

She gasped silently.

Rather than helping her, Kowalski pushed her farther down into the snow. He pointed with his arm.

Beyond the edge of a neighboring hut, a group of shadowy figures hunched against the wind. They were only discernible because of the pool of light cast about them from idling hovercraft bikes.

The pair stayed hidden.

The shadowy group soon mounted their hovercraft. The engines must have been idling because the headlamps immediately rose, swaying in the gusts, then turned away. The wail of winds covered the sound of the engines, giving an eerie quality to the sight.

The vehicles vanished into the empty ice plains. The two remaining guards stalked away and disappeared into the next building.

Jenny watched the glow of the last hovercraft fade out. They could be going to only one place: the Russian ice station. Her thoughts turned to the other Sno-Cat that had vanished, heading in the same direction, carrying Matt and the Seattle reporter.

For the first time in years, Jenny prayed for Matt’s safety. She wished she could have spoken the words that bitterness and anger had locked inside her all this time. It seemed so pointless now, so many years wasted in despair.

She whispered soft words into the wind.

I’m sorry…Matt, I’m so sorry…

Gunfire erupted behind them, loud and near.

“Up!” Kowalski yelled in her ear, yanking her to her feet. “Run!”

1:12 P.M.

ICE STATION GRENDEL

Amanda fled alongside the tall stranger. The grendel still remained out of sight farther up the maze of passages, but the buzz of its echolocation filled the back of her head with a fuzzy, scratchy feeling.