Hellfire

by Richard Turner

  With a wave back, the pilot gently applied more power to the engines. Slowly, the helicopter edged forward and began to climb up into the sky. The deafening sound of the rotor blades cutting through the air quickly disappeared, replaced with silence.

  Mitchell watched the helicopter as it disappeared from sight behind the tall ice-covered peak before heading back out to sea. He took comfort from the fact that it would be on standby on the Southern Star’s helipad, ready to come pick them up should they need an emergency extraction. Help was only fifteen minutes away.

  “Here,” said Jackson as he handed Mitchell a pair of metal crampons for his boots.

  Mitchell sat down on his rucksack and attached the crampons to the bottom of his boots. With their sharp metal teeth, the crampons were essential for walking about on the glacier. Mitchell stood up and stomped his feet into the ice. It was like being glued in place.

  Mitchell looked over at Jackson and said, “Okay. Nate, you and McMasters can set up camp while Maria and I get the radar up and running.”

  “Sounds fair,” replied Jackson as he zipped up his dark-blue, down-filled parka.

  Unlike Jackson, Mitchell had already undone his heavy down parka and pulled off his fleece toque. He had grown up on a farm in Minnesota, where it got cold in the winter and stayed that way for months at a time. Even without the sun shining down on the glacier, the temperature was hovering around freezing. As far as Mitchell was concerned, it wasn’t cold, not even close. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that McMasters had also removed some of his clothing. Only Jackson and Maria thought that it was cold outside.

  Mitchell helped Maria set up and then calibrate the ground-penetrating radar. It took an hour. In that time, Jackson and McMasters erected their bright-orange, four-person tent and packed away all the unnecessary stores under a red plastic tarp, secured by long metal pegs to the ice. With everything set, Mitchell suggested that Jackson put some rations on to cook while he and Maria took the radar for a test drive over the closest metal debris buried under the ice. Jackson didn’t have to be told twice. He eagerly grabbed a box of military rations, selected four meals, and soon had them cooking.

  Mitchell and Maria dragged the sled over to a long flat stretch of ice about fifty meters from their camp. Maria reached down and switched on the GPR. It instantly came to life. An image of rocks ten meters below the surface of the ice came up on the radar’s view screen.

  “How far into the ice can this model penetrate?” Mitchell asked Maria as he looked down at the image on the screen.

  “Up to fifteen meters,” she replied. “I’m hoping that the recovery vehicle isn’t that deep, or we’re going to be digging for days.”

  Mitchell cringed. “Well, let’s hope that it’s resting just below the surface. I’m in no mood to spend days digging through the ice only to find that we’ve found an old stove or a pile of rusted food cans.”

  “It shouldn’t come to that. When we find something, I can take a picture of it, and using the software on my laptop, I can make a 3-D image of it for us to study. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot what we’re looking for once we find it.”

  “I like your optimism,” said Mitchell.

  Maria said, “I don’t want to be out here a minute longer than I have to. You gentlemen may like crawling about and getting dirty. I, however, think that staying in a four-star hotel is roughing it.”

  Mitchell chuckled. “Come on, let’s give this thing a try before lunch.”

  With that, they plugged a route into the GPS mounted on the sled and gently began to push the sled over the ice. At first, nothing interesting appeared on the screen, but then, one after another, long, jagged pieces of metal began to appear. Maria took a picture of each and recorded its location with the GPS, in case they wanted to come back later and dig up what they had found.

  “What do you think those are?” Mitchell asked as he studied the images on the screen.

  “Hard to tell; could be pieces of the heat shield,” said Maria as she studied the image on the screen. “I won’t know until I take a better look at the pictures on my laptop.”

  “Lunch is served,” called out Jackson.

  “Come on,” said Mitchell. “Let’s grab a bite to eat and take a look at what we’ve found on your computer.”

  Maria saved what she had on her flash drive, switched off the GPR and followed Mitchell back over to their tent. She crawled inside, found her laptop, and turned it on. She grabbed a folding chair, opened it, and sat down. While she waited for her laptop to boot up, she gladly accepted her boil-in-the-bag meal from Jackson. Maria smiled when she saw that it was her favorite, Mediterranean chicken.

  “What have you got?” Mitchell asked Jackson as he checked out his meal of chicken fajitas.

  Jackson grinned and then said, “Chili and beans.”

  “Well, ain’t that special. I know how your stomach reacts to spicy food. So my man, you’re definitely sleeping out under the stars tonight,” said Mitchell.

  “How come I got stew?” grumbled McMasters, looking unenthusiastically down at his meal.

  “Luck of the draw,” replied Jackson.

  “Okay, I see how this is going. I’m making supper tonight and we’ll see what you get,” said McMasters, eyeing Jackson.

  Maria opened the file on her flash drive. She grabbed her glasses, set them on her nose, and enlarged the images taken of the debris under the ice, studying each one in detail, trying to see if there was anything recognizable about the objects. She sat there with a scrunched-up face, scrutinizing the pictures, when it hit her. Something else had crashed on the island. Looking over at Mitchell, she said, “Ryan, I hate to say it, but we may have a problem here.”

  Mitchell placed his meal down, walked over beside Maria, and looked down at the images on her laptop screen. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Maria pointed at the screen and said, “These pieces of metal are too deep in the ice to have landed here forty-five years ago. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that whatever is down there crashed on the island sometime in the 1920s or early 1930s.”

  “I don’t remember Jen saying anything about a plane crashing on the island,” said Jackson.

  “Neither do I,” replied Mitchell.

  “It’s a nuisance that we could do without,” said Maria. “However, I’m confident that I will be able to tell the difference between the probe and the plane’s debris by the depth at which it’s found in the ice. Unfortunately, with two objects buried under the ice, it’s going to slow us down somewhat.”

  “By how much?” asked Mitchell.

  “At least two, maybe three days more than anticipated,” said Maria, wishing it wasn’t so.

  “Wonderful,” muttered Jackson as he shoveled a spoon full of chili into his mouth.

  Mitchell grabbed their satellite phone and called Captain Serrano to let him know that they had set up their camp and that they might need a little more time on the glacier than originally envisioned. After that, he got in touch with Jen and told her the same thing. Before he ended the call, he asked her to look into any reports from the twenties and thirties relating to airplanes that had been reported missing in the area around Bouvet Island.

  Mitchell set the phone down, looked over at Jackson and said, “Well, I guess we had best get back to work. Hopefully, Jen comes up with something; if not, we may have a chance to solve an eighty-year-old mystery as well as find a missing Soviet space probe.”

  “Lucky us,” replied Jackson.

  “In order to speed things up, I suggest that you gentlemen work the GPR while I tag along with my laptop and check the findings as you make them,” said Maria.

  “What’s the life of your laptop battery?” asked Mitchell.

  “Six hours, max,” replied Maria.

  “Okay then, for now we’ll work in four-hour shifts to allow sufficient time to recharge Maria’s computer battery. I’ll push the sled for the first couple of hours. Nate and Eric mark the debris
we find with these,” said Mitchell as he dug into a box and pulled out a handful of bright pink flags.

  “I quit the army for this?” moaned Jackson. Mitchell knew that it was all an act; Jackson just loved busting his chops around new people.

  “Here, have fun,” said Mitchell, handing the flags to Jackson.

  Maria walked back over to the sled, turned the GPR on, and walked beside Mitchell while he gently pushed the lightweight toboggan along the path they had selected earlier. Behind them, Jackson and McMasters traded quips about how their lives had turned out since leaving the military.

  Four hours later, with close to one hundred flags spread out behind them, Mitchell decided that they’d done enough for one day.

  It was already getting dark. Fog soon crept up over the cliffs, blanketing the island. It was going to be a cold and damp night.

  During supper, Jen called Mitchell back and said that she could only find references to two missing aircraft. The first was a Dornier Do J flying boat reported missing in November, 1923. The second was a British Royal Navy non-rigid airship that vanished without a trace in 1932. A shiver ran up his spine. Mitchell couldn’t imagine being marooned on such a bleak and cold world. It would have been an awfully sad and lonely way to perish. He thanked Jen for the information and then stepped outside of their tent to a switch on their portable, gas-powered generator. A second later, the camp’s lights lit up like a bright beacon on a desolate dark sea of ice.

  11

  Prime Minister’s office

  Moscow, Russia

  Vasily Muratov stared down at the open file on his desk. He pursed his lips and reread the one-page memorandum, line by line, digesting every word. As the former head of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the dreaded KGB, Muratov had once been privy to the many secrets that Russia didn’t want the world to know. Most of his time in the FSS had been spent cracking down on organized crime, which, like so many bad weeds, had begun to flourish the instant the Communist state fell. However, what he saw before him was a secret from the past, one that until today had been kept locked away in the darkened vaults of an old KGB warehouse.

  In his mid-fifties, Muratov was a handsome man, with cognac-brown eyes and a warm smile. He wore five-thousand-dollar suits flown in from Paris, and shoes handmade in Italy. An astute politician, he was one step from becoming the President of the Russian Federation. He had been personally selected by the current president to fill the position of Prime Minister, an administrative role in which he oversaw the administration of the Russian government in accordance with the wishes of the president. The last thing Muratov needed was a scandal occurring on his watch; not with the next presidential election looming around the corner.

  In the corner of the room, a clock chimed.

  Standing patiently in front of Muratov was the man who had delivered the bad news. Pavel Zharov was Muratov’s chief of staff and loyal friend from his days in the FSS. A thin man with a nervous disposition, Zharov was known for his loyalty to his boss, and his analytical mind, which bordered on genius.

  “Are you absolutely positive about this information?” Muratov asked Zharov, praying that a horrible mistake had been made.

  “Sir, I personally went to the head of Directorate X and demanded to see his notes before I came to you with this information,” said Zharov. Directorate X was part of the FSS, responsible for the gathering of scientific and technical intelligence, internal and external, to the Russian Federation.

  “And?”

  “Sir, the evidence is irrefutable. Luna 15 did not burn up in the atmosphere as had been officially reported to the Central Committee of the old Soviet Union in 1969. Instead, it landed on Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic.”

  “Pavel, we both know that in the intelligence community nothing is irrefutable. How can Directorate X be sure of their findings?”

  Zharov cleared his throat. “Sir, a poor choice of words perhaps; the facts are as follows. When Luna 15 was on its return flight back to Earth, carrying a small amount of soil from the Moon’s surface, a decision was made at the highest levels to terminate the mission. The return vehicle was hastily reprogrammed to burn up on reentry. However, the calculations were off and the probe survived. It was last tracked by one of our radar installations in Cuba, coming down in the South Atlantic somewhere around Bouvet Island.”

  “Interesting. However, not still definitive. Pavel, as a betting man, you should know that the chances of a probe landing on an island in the South Atlantic would be astronomical. Why do you believe that it is there?”

  “One of our men at the embassy in Buenos Aires recently learned of an expedition to the island financed by David Houston.”

  Muratov thought about the name for a second and then said, “I’ve read about him. He’s an American multi-billionaire who made a fortune from his company’s oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and now has a burgeoning interest in space exploration and mining.”

  “Correct, sir. One of his company’s rockets recently delivered supplies to the ISS.”

  “It could all be coincidence. The man probably has more money than brains. He could be looking for oil in the South Atlantic.”

  “Sir, our man said that the ship sailed with absolutely no oil exploration equipment on it. In fact, it only had four passengers on board.”

  Muratov sat back in his green leather high-backed chair and locked his eyes on Zharov. His voice became somber. “Is he positive that it sailed with only four passengers?”

  “Yes sir, he is adamant that only four people boarded the ship before it sailed. He even managed to take a picture of one of the men. He has been identified as Ryan Mitchell. The man is a former American soldier who is currently employed by a private security company that operates worldwide,” explained Zharov as he handed over a picture of Mitchell chatting with the ship’s captain. “Sir, you should also know that a couple of years ago, Houston bought the rights to Luna 15 from our government. It’s his to do with as he pleases. As far as our bureaucrats and the world are concerned, Luna 15 is still on the Moon.”

  “Now that is interesting,” said Muratov as leaned forward and placed his hands together on his desk. “If Houston is looking for the probe, the question is, why? The American Apollo missions brought back kilograms of rock and dirt from the Moon’s surface. What is so special about Luna 15’s sample?”

  “Sir, the files do not say. All I could find were some photocopied pages. The original file was marked Red Banner–Chairman’s Eyes Only.”

  Muratov’s eyes widened. His heart began to race. “My God, Pavel, what could be so secret that only Leonid Brezhnev himself could read the file?”

  Zharov shrugged his shoulders. “Sir, I have no idea. Whatever they wanted to keep a state secret in 1969 is about to fall into the hands of an American who, according to his file, is very ambitious and is not afraid to speak openly about his disdain for this country.”

  “Pavel, we must get our hands on the probe,” said Muratov resolutely.

  “Yes sir, we could have a detachment from the Special Operations Group on their way to Buenos Aires within a matter of hours. They could board the ship when it docks and seize the probe before anyone knew what was going on.”

  Muratov shook his head. “No, my old friend, this will take a little more discretion than the boys in the Special Operations Group are capable of displaying. If you need something broken, they are the men to use; however, I want this done quietly, very quietly. With an election next year, this cannot come back on me. I want you to look outside of the normal channels and find me someone who is able to carry out this assignment with the utmost secrecy. Do you still have connections in the Black Ops world?”

  Zharov smiled. “Sir, I know of one or two organizations that, for the right price, will be able to pull this off.”

  “Pavel, price is of no interest to me. Pay them whatever they ask. I want that probe brought back to Russia; barring that, I want it and the soil sample destroyed.”

>   “Yes, sir, I understand fully.” With that, Zharov left the room to make a few discreet calls to connections he still maintained with several mercenary team leaders in Europe and North America.

  Muratov suddenly felt tired and drained. He sat back in his chair and stared over at the far wall, at a painting of Marshal Kutuzov, the man who had saved Russia from Napoleon in winter of 1812. Muratov wondered if he was facing the same threat to his country’s existence now and if was strong enough to rise up and face the coming challenge. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then let out a deep sigh. He trusted Zharov to sort things out. There isn’t a better man in Russia to have at one’s side, thought Muratov. Opening his eyes, Muratov quickly scribbled a note for his executive assistant to pass to the president saying that he was taking a couple of weeks leave in the Crimea. No matter what happened next, Muratov didn’t want it sticking to him, not when the power of the presidency was so close that he could taste it.

  12

  Bouvet Island

  South Atlantic

  After three days painstakingly reviewing each find, Maria had come to the conclusion that the debris under the ice could not have come from the missing Royal Navy airship. It had to be the destroyed remains of the Dornier Do J. Everyone was beginning to wonder if the Soviet probe had actually landed safely on the island. So far, they had not found a single piece of the return vehicle. If they didn’t come across something soon, Mitchell knew that they would have to abandon the project and let Houston know that it had all been a wild-goose chase.

  “Anyone for lunch?” asked Jackson, as he stretched out his tired and aching back. Sleeping on a cot was far from his favorite thing to do. However, the other option, sleeping on the ice, was even less appealing to him.

  “Sure, why not,” replied McMasters as he looked up at Olav’s Peak, just visible through the swirling fog still gripping the island.