“Can you describe anything else about the submarine?” Commander Pullman asked. After landing in Greenland, word had reached the military jet about a submarine being spotted in the area. The commander had insisted on joining Maria and Joe aboard the helicopter that ferried them to the village. The rest of his crew had remained behind to secure the aircraft as gale-force winds pounded down from the mountains. “Did you spot any insignias on the conning tower? See any letters or numbers painted on it?”
Jørgen shook his head. “Like I said, I only reached the glacier’s fjord in time to see the explosion. My patrol boat was still three kilometers off. I was lucky to pick out the sub through my binoculars before it submerged.”
Maria squeezed her mug. “And you’re sure you saw Dr. Cargill being taken aboard.”
He nodded. “She was easy to pick out in her bright blue parka. The rest of the sub’s crew wore black neoprene.”
She turned to Pullman. “Is there any way to track that sub’s path?”
He cast an accusing glance toward Joe, who sat with a cigar smoldering between his teeth. “Not much I can do from the ground. Still, we’re monitoring the sonobuoys we dropped. Luckily, our Poseidon was outfitted with the newest Multistatic Active Coherent buoys. They can generate sonar pulses for days and have a long-range capability. The buoys alone may offer some guidance. But if we could get airborne . . .”
He shrugged at the obvious.
That’s not happening anytime soon.
The short helicopter ride here had been like flying inside a paint shaker. The winds had picked up steadily, growing wilder by the minute. During the flight, the pilot had gripped his controls with white knuckles, his lips moving in a silent prayer. By the time they landed, his hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat.
We’re not going anywhere.
Someone called out from the gallery of locals. “And what about the others?” he shouted. “The three who went with that woman?”
“Aap!” someone joined in, pressing the same inquiry in Inuit.
Jørgen turned to the crowd. “Utoqqatserpunga,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know. I only saw Dr. Cargill.”
Joe puffed out a cloud of smoke. “Either they’re dead,” he said bluntly, “or the blast trapped them inside that hunk of ice.”
Pullman leaned closer to the table and lowered his voice. “If they’re alive, they might know what happened and tell us who took Dr. Cargill.”
“That’s a big if,” Kowalski said.
Jørgen nodded. “Alive or not, there’s no way anyone can reach them.”
“I can,” someone said from the crowd. A skinny figure dressed in a hide jacket and boots pushed forward. He looked to be no more than fourteen. His thick black hair was cut in a firm line over a smooth forehead.
Jørgen swung around. “Nuka, the channel is collapsed. There’s no way to get back inside.”
“Yes, there is,” the young kid insisted with a defiant confidence.
Jørgen looked ready to object, but Joe cut him off. “How?”
“I’ll show you.” He thumbed toward the exit, where the winds howled and rattled the door in its frame.
“Forget it,” Jørgen warned. “No one is going out into the teeth of this piteraq.”
“Naa. I’m going.” Nuka turned toward the door. “It’s my grandfather out there.”
Maria now understood the teenager’s obstinance, reading the fear and determination in the young man’s face. His grandfather was the Inuit elder—John Okalik—who guided Elena’s party into the glacier.
Joe stood up and stamped out his half-smoked cigar, which he only did in the direst circumstance. “Kid, I’m going with you.”
Maria turned to him. “Joe—”
He waved away the rest of her words. “Damned if I’m gonna sit around and do nothing but listen to the wind try to rip the roof off this place.” He faced her. “If there’s even the tiniest of a chance those guys are alive, I’ll dig them out with a backhoe if I have to. They’re the only ones who know what happened to your friend.”
She reached out and touched his arm. “I know. I was about to say that I’m coming with you.”
He stiffened. “Wait. That’s not what I meant. Maybe it’s best if—”
She cut him off and stood. “Nope. Your reasoning was very convincing.”
Joe stared hard at her, clearly judging how far to push it. He came to the right decision and simply shrugged.
Jørgen looked between the two of them. “You’re both crazy.”
“I’ve been called far worse.” Joe waved to Nuka. “Show us what you got, kid.”
Nuka headed toward the door. “Let’s go. I know my grandfather is still alive. But not for long if we don’t hurry.”
“You’d better be right.” Joe clapped the boy’s thin shoulder. “I’m not freezing my ass off for nothing.”
12:22 P.M.
“We have to risk it,” Mac said.
Standing waist-deep in frigid water, he slid the bronze bar away from the door of the captain’s cabin. He turned to John, who nodded.
Better to die on our own terms.
Half an hour ago, a massive explosion had rocked through the glacier. Mac had expected to be crushed under tons of ice. But as echoes of the blast died away, he and John found themselves still alive. Then the waters began to flood into the cabin, indicating the meltwater river had been dammed up by a collapse of ice from the blast.
Mac could guess what had happened. The bastards must’ve blown the entrance into the glacier, slamming the door on their way out.
Rather than allowing them to drown, like two trapped rats, Mac took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It took effort due to the rising waters. He cringed, expecting to be ambushed by hordes of fiery crabs. Instead, his flashlight revealed half of the stern was gone. The remaining hold was a smoldering ruin lit by a few fiery timbers. Flames also pooled in rafts atop the water.
Through the dense smoke, handfuls of crabs glowed ruddily in the darkness. They crouched on blazing bits of flotsam or sat atop boulders of ice. A pair even rode a corpse floating in the water. Most appeared not to be moving, their fires ebbing. A few scrabbled feebly.
Whatever volatile compound it was that fueled the creatures, it seemed to be losing its potency. Mac searched for the rest of the mass of crabs, but they were nowhere to be seen. Maybe the sudden flooding was too much for them to handle, and they all drowned away.
Still, as he led the way slowly into the hold, he warily kept his distance from those he could see.
John tapped Mac’s shoulder and pointed to where a section of the hull had broken open. He then pointed up. Mac nodded.
We need to get out of this water.
Both of them wore dry suits under their outerwear, but it didn’t stop the cold from penetrating down to their bones. Mac clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. His legs and feet were already numb, making it hard to traverse the uneven floor hidden under the black water.
Finally, they reached the breach in the hull and climbed the ship’s broken ribs, steering clear of any timbers that still burned. Once up top, they found that the forward half of the deck was still intact, the nose of the ship still solidly imbedded in ice.
From this high vantage, Mac surveyed his surroundings. As he did, a slab of ice broke off the roof and crashed into the water. A huge wave sloshed against the side of the ship, stirring the flaming pools and washing more bodies into view.
Mac tried not to think about his friend Nelson.
Now’s not the time for mourning.
The icefall was a reminder of a more immediate danger.
While holed up in the cabin, secondary quakes and thunderous cracking had continued sporadically as the weight of the glacier pressed down upon this fragile pocket. Mac knew the truth. After a decade working up here, he could read ice like a book.
This place won’t hold out much longer. It could collapse at any time.
Still, it might n
ot matter in the end. Ahead of them, the meltwater river had transformed into a lake. And with more and more water flowing in here, the level climbed steadily toward their position. The rising waters also squeezed the thick smoke into an ever-shrinking pocket of air, making it hard to breathe.
John coughed hoarsely.
Unfortunately, something heard him.
An angry bellow rose out of the smoky pall on the ship’s starboard side. With his heart in his throat, Mac shifted to the deck rail. He remembered the crabs hadn’t been the only creature to emerge from those oil-filled pots.
He stared down. Large sections of the roof had collapsed, littering the shoreline and building a breakwater pile of ice and rock between the ship and the cascade flooding the chamber.
Something moved down in that maze.
Flames lit its path through the smoke, offering glimpses of a hulking form. Drawn by John’s cough, it pounded toward their position, then vanished into the thicker pall surrounding the ship.
Mac held his breath, afraid even his exhalation would be heard. His eyes strained to pierce the darkness.
Where is—
Something crashed into the side of the dhow, hard enough to shake the entire ship. Mac fell to one knee. John kept upright, his shotgun fixed to his shoulder, the double barrels pointing down into the darkness.
The creature roared its frustration below, casting flames from its maw, revealing jaws lined with fiery razors. Curved bronze horns mounted its brutish head. As it bellowed, it had lifted onto its hind legs, kicking the air with its front legs, which displayed a row of curved blades along their backsides.
Then it crashed back down to all fours and vanished into the smoky darkness.
Mac listened as the killing machine—half bull, half bear—paced back and forth below.
Another section of ice cracked from the roof and splashed into the rising lake. Mac shared a frightened look with John.
We can’t stay here.
If that thing didn’t kill them, the cold, the water, or the ice would. They needed another way out, a way past that fiery bull.
But how?
12:55 P.M.
“No way!” Kowalski screamed into the gale-force winds.
The rescue party huddled on the lee side of a row of three red snowmobiles. They shared the space with a sled and its team of dogs, thick-furred husky mixes. The dogs had scraped little nests in the glacier’s ice and curled there, breaths steaming the air, oblivious to the cold.
Nuka had used the team to guide the trio of snowmobiles across the glacier. He had explained his choice of transportation: The dogs know the safest path across the ice. Too easy to fall through a hidden hole. You learn to trust their eyes, their noses.
After leaving the hotel at Tasiilaq, the group had boarded a Ram 2500 truck with giant knobby tires and traveled a treacherous gravel road to reach the top of Helheim Glacier. The storm pounded them continually, battering the truck with gusts that threatened to tip it over. Once at the glacier’s edge, they parked next to a huddle of small blue-painted shacks and a dozen parked snowmobiles. It seemed Nuka’s family operated a tour company, offering trips across the glacier.
Maria had asked where the kid’s parents were. He told them that his mother and father were members of Tasiilaq’s search-and-rescue unit. They were gone, dealing with an emergency inland, which had also pulled most of the experienced crew from the village.
Kowalski looked at who they were left with.
The second string . . .
Despite his previous misgivings, Jørgen had come along. So had a pair of natives: two stocky older men, said to be relatives of the family, which probably could be said of everyone in the village. The two were rigging a rope to the back of one of the snowmobiles.
Nuka coiled the loose length over one shoulder. He pointed past the rubber track of the snowmobile. “That’s the only way into the heart of the glacier. Down through the moulin.”
“No way,” Kowalski repeated.
He leaned out from the shelter of the snowmobiles. The wind came close to tearing the set of goggles from his face. Nuka had lent them to him, along with a helmet and a thick parka that was too small for his large frame. The sleeves didn’t even reach his wrists.
Ten yards off, the white surface of the glacier had been cut deeply by a blue stream. The water wended down from the higher elevations and vanished down a ten-foot-wide hole, spiraling away into the depths of the glacier.
A moulin, the kid had called it.
Kowalski shook his head.
More like a half-frozen whirlpool.
“You’re going down that hole on a rope?” Kowalski scoffed.
Nuka had already donned a dry suit that covered his entire body, even a mask for his face. “I’ve made such climbs before.”
Maria shifted closer. “How do you know this moulin connects to the same river that had been flowing out of Helheim?”
“Dr. MacNab told me,” Nuka said. “When I’m not running tourists, I sometimes help Mac chart the flows and channels up here. It’s a job that never really ends, with everything melting and moving all the time.”
Kowalski straightened. “If you’re right about it leading down there, then I should go with you.”
Nuka crinkled his nose with disdain. “You’re too fat.”
Kowalski stared down at his stomach, both insulted and shocked at the kid’s bluntness, which made him almost like the kid. “It’s all muscle.”
“Uh-huh. Even if you could fit through any tight squeezes down there”—he pointed to Kowalski’s exposed wrists—“my spare suit will never fit you.”
“What about me?” Maria asked. She stood up next to Nuka. “You and I are about the same size.”
He eyed her up and down, then shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
“Like hell.” Kowalski literally put his foot down, blocking her.
She ignored him. “Grab me a suit,” she ordered the kid. She then turned to Kowalski. “My sister and I caved for years, as part of our research. My rope work and rappelling skills are more than up for this task.”
Kowalski pointed to the moulin. “Does that look like solid rock to you?”
“Joe, I’m not letting Nuka go down there by himself.”
He understood her concern, but he wasn’t happy about it.
Nuka passed Maria an insulated dry suit. She lifted it up and stared across the men huddled in the shelter. “And it’s not like any of you are fitting in this thing.”
Recognizing a battle he could not win, he held out a hand. “Fine. Let me help you into the damned thing.”
Maria danced a bit in the cold as she stripped her outerwear and snuggled into the thick suit. She combed back her hair and pulled the hood over her head. “How do I look? And be honest.” She waved to Nuka, who was hunkered against the wind, feeding a rope into the moulin, letting the current carry the weighted end down its throat. “Who’s wearing it best?”
Kowalski pulled her into a hug. “You both look like stranded seals.”
He felt her shiver in his arms and knew it wasn’t all due to the frigid winds. For the millionth time, he couldn’t believe this woman gave him a second look, let alone two years of her time.
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll never get to save anyone.”
He held her at arm’s length. “Don’t be a hero.”
She smiled. “Add a cape to this spandex, and I bet I’d look like Wonder Woman.”
“You’re always Wonder Woman to me.”
“That’s swee—”
“Especially in bed.”
“Okay, now you ruined it.” She stepped away. “Hold the fort until I’m back. We’ll radio our progress.”
Kowalski watched her cross out of the shelter of snowmobiles and walk awkwardly toward Nuka, her boots locked into steel crampons for the climb down. When she reached the moulin, she glanced back.
He and Maria were fluent in sign language. Knowing he wouldn’t be heard over the wind, he raised a hand
with his pinkie and thumb outstretched, then pointed at her.
[I love you]
She turned away, clearly missing his message. Nuka had already rigged a second line. He hooked the new rope’s belay to her hip harness. He then double-checked all the knots and gear. Once satisfied, he lowered himself down into the moulin on his line, bracing his legs and spiked feet against the walls.
Maria followed, vanishing after him.
Kowalski stared at that frozen whirlpool. He hoped this wasn’t a waste of time, and a risky one at that. While he certainly wanted the others to be rescued, he held fast to one prayer.
Just come back to me.
7
June 21, 1:18 P.M. WGST
Helheim Glacier, Greenland
Maria’s foot slipped off the slick side of the moulin. As she fell, the belay and rope caught her. She swung wildly until her hip hit the ice.
“You okay?” Nuka called from five yards below, hanging on his own line, his words muffled by his face mask.
She reestablished her foothold. “Yep,” she said with more confidence than she truly felt.
She realized she might have exaggerated her skill to Joe. She hadn’t rappelled in years, and apparently it wasn’t like riding a bike. She was rusty. Or maybe it was the unusual nature of this descent. She did her best to avoid the thin stream corkscrewing around her. Still, water constantly sprayed her mask, making it hard to see. Also, the ice proved to be both rock-hard and slippery. To her, the descent was less like rappelling and more like ice-skating.
“Tunnel angles away from here,” Nuka called up. “Should make it easier.”
She wiped the spray from her mask and looked down. The first section of the descent had been nearly vertical, but the light attached to Nuka’s mask revealed the shaft heading off at a thirty-degree angle.
Thank god . . .
She happily dropped to that section, closing the distance to join Nuka. The tunnel ahead squeezed to half its size, but it was still manageable if they stayed single file.
But for how long? And would their ropes even reach the bottom?
The Last Odyssey: A Thriller Page 7