He glanced at the GPS, a little bit of anticipation making him strain to see ahead. After another minute, the habitat bloomed on the horizon. “Well, ain’t that a sight.” The wide sloping, dome-shaped structure had to be the length of a football field at least. Wider, he thought as he flew closer.
“Looks like a golf ball cut in half,” Max said.
The rising sun blinded, and he pulled down his goggles, then positioned for landing. He peered left, aiming for the circle of blue strobe lights. He lowered the craft.
“The welcome mat is out,” Max said. “Lowering skids.” He flipped a switch.
Sebastian felt the hum as the skids unfolded and he lowered till metal touched smooth ice. Wind and fresh powder buffeted the doors, blinding till the rotors slowed. He shut down the aircraft, and radioed Sam.
“I’ll get the cables,” Max said, pushing open the door. The gust of wind made him fight for it.
The landing zone lights flickered neon blue and as he shut down, his gaze followed the cable lines running to a building far from the habitat. It was white and large enough for an eighteen-wheeler. A power station, wind, solar and combustion fuel, he realized, impressed. He looked back at the facility built over an archaeology dig, his mood lightening.
He pulled on the gray ski cap, thinking it was completely dorky, but it kept his ears warmer than a hood. He opened the door, hopping down, turned back for his pack and duffel, then locked it up. He went to the rear cargo for the stakes. He wasn’t taking a chance on the winds kicking up, and with a sledgehammer drove the two-foot iron divot into the ice. Max cabled the chopper to the divot. At the fourth one, he was overheated and stripped off this parka, then tapped the stake and stepped back to slam it home.
“Put your jacket back on,” he heard and looked at Olivia running across the ice.
“Even I know not to run up here, woman.”
She stopped short, smiling. “Put your parka back on.” She grabbed it off the ice. “It’s not wise to chill and warm over and over up here. At least till you’re used to it.”
He lifted his goggles to his forehead. “Hang on to it. I’ll be a second.” Sebastian turned to the stakes, sent the last into the ice, then with Max, roped the chopper, testing the slip line so one yank would release it, then secured the knot with a carabiner clip. He grabbed his gear and crossed to her. She offered the jacket with a “you’re a stubborn ass” look and he slid it on.
“Hey Max, how’s your head?” The wind pushed at her fur headband.
“Frozen.” He pulled up his hood, gestured between him and Sebastian. “We were going for a matching set.”
She tipped to look at his two-day-old wound. It was no more than a scratch now.
Sebastian hitched his duffel. “Let the crews know, four barrels are yours, the others, for the chopper.”
“I bought more food.” She wiggled her brows. “Any chance of you cooking? We have a full kitchen.”
He looked at the habitat. “You’re kidding. No MREs?”
“Not on my dig. We even have a cappuccino maker.”
“Your tax dollars at work,” Max muttered as they walked to the figure standing near a door facing away from the wind gusts.
“Hello Ross, nice to meet you,” Sebastian said, biting off his glove to shake his hand. He offered his ID and Sebastian introduced Max.
“It’s a pleasure. Your team comes highly recommended by the director.” The agent seemed a little too relieved to meet him. Maybe twenty-eight, Ross looked completely out of sorts in about thirty pounds of down. His cheeks and nose were chapped and red.
“Appreciate that.” Sebastian’s gaze rose up the curved wall at least forty feet tall. “Amazing. How long did it take to build this out here?”
“A few weeks,” Olivia said. “It breaks down into sections for transport. The weather cooperated, but it won’t for long. The temps hover around forty now, but in a couple weeks, they’ll plummet and we have to be gone.”
“With all this equipment and people on the ice, doesn’t it melt faster?” Max asked and they started walking.
“It’s a couple hundred feet thick,” Olivia said. “And yes, it melts, but not enough to be significant to the dig yet. However, we’re close to the water, and glaciers break off in massive chunks there. I wanted a helicopter, just in case.”
“Your way or the highway?” he said, then regretted it when she went still and met his gaze. Ultimatums broke them apart.
“I’ve learned to compromise,” she said with a sassy look. “But I can still throw a mean tantrum when the situation calls for it. You’d be proud.” Her grin was toothy, totally fake, and he chuckled. “Let’s get out of the wind.” She headed to the entrance. “Watch the electrical cords.”
Sebastian followed her into the crooked wind tunnel and felt the breeze vanish at the last turn. He came to a dead stop inside. There weren’t many things that impressed him, but this certainly topped the list. It was a high-tech lab on the ice and surprisingly quiet with the hum of computers and equipment, sections with tables, a centrifuge, microscopes, and large hi-def screens. About thirty technicians manned them, voices low, and it was cold enough inside that your breath frosted a bit, but he already felt overdressed in his cold-weather thermal gear. One-half of the dome was shielded by a white tarp, but he could see a wood boardwalk and metal framework under the silky canvas. The dig. Tubing and hoses ran in tied bundles across the ice that was covered in rubber mats to the wall and somewhere beyond. Noble planned to be here, and he felt compelled to take it all in at once. Just how the legend of the Maguire’s princess ended in the arctic, he was anxious to know. The diary gave him a hint, but he’d only glanced at it. Olivia promised a dive into the dig.
Then very softly he heard, “Welcome to Ice Harvest, Sebastian.”
He looked at her, smiling. “Thanks. I’m still getting used to the idea that you’re up here digging and then this…”
“It does have that wow factor.”
The dome was an engineering marvel. He’d half expect it to be jiggling, yet wide sloping walls allowed the wind to slide unimpeded over the shell. Like a missile, he thought as he lifted his gaze to the ceiling, and instantly saw a disadvantage in the venting above. A drop right through it would put an assault team in prime position to take out everyone. About thirty yards away, he counted two squads outfitted in white and gray cold weather gear. Hell, we could stage a coup with that many.
He looked at Ross. “Those troops should be on the outside to cover territory this size.”
“Really.” She swiveled to stare at Ross, then arched a brow.
“The teams make regular rounds and a night watch,” Ross explained. “It’s never completely dark here.”
The viperous look she leveled at Ross didn’t escape him. “I said we needed to be better prepared,” came through gritted teeth.
“You still aren’t.” He didn’t wait for a response, dropped his duffel, and with Max, strode across the rubber flooring toward the men. Agent Ross wasn’t telling the troops the whole story or they’d be patrolling instead of sitting on their asses.
Olivia remained a few yards behind Sebastian as he addressed the troops, thinking she liked that dust of whiskers. When they were married, he was always clean shaven. Right now, he was a specter in gray and white, like the troops, but it was the way he handled himself around the equipment and tubing, with an easy grace, that fascinated her. Her brothers were that tall and not nearly as agile as Sebastian.
Agent Ross moved up beside her. “He’s not what I expected.”
She turned her head to look at him. “You will give him the reports on the other section tracking that call to Noble’s phone.” She hadn’t forgiven him for that. She’d swear he was raised in the NSA, he was so miserly with information. Especially when he was supposed to report everything to her. “Your neglect was instrumental in Noble’s kidnapping.”
He flushed even redder. “McGill has said as much. He’s looking into that personally.�
� Ross sighed hard. “Look, Olivia, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye lately.”
She scoffed, watching Sebastian. The squad was standing at attention in a line in front of him. Ross couldn’t get them off the chairs. “You don’t believe, that’s your problem. It makes you a bad choice because a love of history, most especially the obscure, has to be a requirement. They have it, you don’t.” She waved at her team working over delicate equipment with the expertise they were hired for. Them, she trusted. Ross, about as far as she could throw his skinny butt.
She looked at the papers, the official seals, and thought, Sebastian’s been damn busy and she needed that expertise now. “He’s got an Alpha One clearance, and has more than enough skills.” She met his gaze. “If he says we need more protection—”
“I’ll get it, I swear.”
“I know you will.” She smiled brightly. “Or you could end up right back here.” He’d stick around for a couple days till Sebastian understood the ropes.
Ross rolled his eyes. “God forbid. How can you stand the cold?”
“I grew up in Minnesota, Ross. Don’t you read the dossiers?”
“I read his, or rather the parts that weren’t blacked out.”
Her gaze snapped to him. “Excuse me?” She glanced briefly at Sebastian as he gestured to the vent in the roof that was about twenty feet wide. Max was inspecting equipment, ordering the table and chairs collapsed and stored. Two pairs split off, jogging east and west, while another climbed the scaffolding to the roof.
“Blacked out as in Black Ops. Don’t get too comfortable around him, Olivia. That”—he nodded to Sebastian—“is a very dangerous man.”
To her heart, yeah, she thought and almost laughed. Almost. Ross didn’t need to know their past, and since joining NSA, she had a fair idea just how hazardous some of Sebastian’s tours of duties were and why they were covert. Noble captive, people dead, and yet no one else thought there was a darker threat except Sebastian? Dangerous was good.
“I feel safer already,” she said when he was within earshot.
He smiled gently, hitching the pack and scooping up his duffel. “Outstanding.” He winked. “We aim to please.” His gaze slid to Ross. “They’re used to taking orders, not suggestions.”
Ross reddened, and Olivia hid her smile, moving between them toward the living quarters. “Let me assign you two a cube.” She inclined her head. Sebastian spoke to Max over the PRR. Ross rushed ahead to find warmth somewhere.
“Excellent, gonna give me a look at your hole in the ice?”
She met his gaze for a long moment, then said, “It’ll blow your mind.”
“Baby, you’ve already done that.”
She blinked, then smiled, her laugh infectious as they walked to a walled section, then down a corridor fashioned from tarps. Sebastian pulled off his glove and touched the flexible wall. Lightweight, sturdy, and taut. It was easily collapsible, he realized, in sections about fifteen feet long and just as tall. The corridor was wide enough for them to walk abreast.
“We get to be test cases for a lot from R&D,” she said, noticing. “That’s a metal alloy fabric, like Kevlar. It’s heavy enough not to snap with the wind, which can get irritating.”
And the reason it shielded from satellite, he thought, glancing as Agent Ross dropped off. He followed Olivia around a corner and his brows shot up at the accommodations. A good thirty white boxes probably ten by ten lined a portion of the habitat walls. They were the type the military used for satellite surveillance and air traffic control on deployments. Push it out of a C-30 with a parachute and it could be up and running in minutes.
“Home sweet home, for a while,” she said, stopping at the last three. She punched a key pad and the door sprang. She leaned against the frame, and inclined her head. “Yours.”
He looked inside. It was a friggin’ bedroom, with storage, climate controls, and thermal bedding. Even a microwave. “That’s some pricey equipment. Who pays for all this?”
She gave him a cheesy grin. “Think of us as the pork in bills.”
He laughed shortly, tossed in his duffel, and she gave him the code, another for Max, labeled the units with their names, then led him back to the center of the dig. She pulled off the fur headband, and fluffed hair the color of toasted nutmeg. For a second, he saw her naked, that hair hiding some of her best parts.
She smacked his arm, blushing. “Stop that.”
He chuckled under his breath, and said, “How does the U.S. fund a dig on Danish territory?”
“They can’t afford to excavate and don’t want to. This kind of digging is expensive, more than a land excavation. We want to do it, and most of the team are Danish nationals.”
“How’d you get a gig like this, Livi?”
“I was on my first dig after earning my doctorate. In Iraq of all places, before the last invasion. I’d uncovered a relic thought to be the Spear of Longinus.”
“The Roman staff that pieced Christ’s side. It wasn’t?”
“No. Right time period, but not Roman. It was stolen from the dig and well…I recovered it. It turned out to be a ritual sword of the Hashashin so it wasn’t a total loss. NSA paid me a visit and brought me in.” She stepped over massive tubing piped to the center of the habitat. “What’d you think I’d be doing?”
He shrugged. “Digging, just not at this magnitude, but I shouldn’t be surprised.” She looked at him. “Your curiosity is a dangerous thing.” She’d needed to know his secrets, his missions, and at the time, she couldn’t understand then that knowledge would make her a target. He’d bet she did now.
“Ready to see where it took me this time?” She flicked a hand toward the giant hole in the ice. “We’re all about the theatrics here.” She crossed to a metal shelf filled with equipment and gathered gloves, boot spikes, harness, and a keel of rope. She tossed half at Sebastian and started rigging up. He buckled the harness and tied the belay line as she walked to the boardwalk, hooking herself to the anchor.
He peered over the edge. Strings of lights glowed deep inside the pit. “That’s got to be a hundred feet.”
“One thirty-three, so far. The platforms will be used for bring up the artifacts. We avoid using them to get them frozen in place. Stay close to the south wall.” She went over the edge. “But this will be fun, for me at least. Even though the legend is there for anyone to find, I haven’t been able to show this part of it to anyone except SSU.”
“Well, rappelling into an ice cave is a first for me.” He swung around and pushed off, taking short hops. A curl of icy air swept up from the spiral of ice. Sebastian zipped his parka. “Like crawling inside an ice cube.”
“When we get down there, if you feel light-headed, there are those.” She pointed to the row of small oxygen tanks no larger than an aerosol can anchored to the ice wall about ten feet down. “Take a hit, it will clear the fog. With the ancient ice melting, the sulfur dioxide is dangerous at this level.” She adjusted her footing. “That”—she pointed to a focus heater—“melts the ice and the tubes draw out the water. Another for exchanging the air. While we try to filter, it’s not possible to purify it with each level. The techs take a sample reading every foot. That’s what the climatologists are playing with up there.” She poked the air above her head.
“You’d rather be sitting down there with an ice pick.”
“Oh, yeah, and I will be soon.”
Sebastian checked his watch. “Tango three, report,” he said, adjusting the PRR for second.
“All clear, sir. No movement for two miles.”
“Roger that. Drac?”
“Got them in four-hour shifts right now. A second squad was at the power station. That cush gig is o-vah!”
“Roger that, buddy, make ’em wish for boot camp.” He signed off, smiling. Max was a drill instructor and could kick troop ass in gear, A-sap. Olivia stared, not frowning, just sort of studying. “You’re never that quiet.”
She blinked, then smiled. “It’s intere
sting to see you this way.” She waved at the PRR. “In case you haven’t guessed, I’ve had an awakening in the last decade or so.”
He winked. “I gathered that.”
“I’m glad you’re here and in control of security.”
“I don’t want to be anyplace else, and bossing you around, well, that’s just an added benefit.” Noble’s kidnapping was over far more than a diary and something stuck in the ice, but he kept that to himself. The Russian tattoos and smokes were just a little too close to Mills’s rescue to ignore. The sonar case was the kicker. “Show me your playground.”
“Just keep an open mind, okay?” Olivia inched lower, and he noticed the air change a little. “The legend says that a thousand years ago a child was stolen from the shores of Ireland by Vikings. She was taken as payment for the loss of the Viking’s son, who’d died in battle. She lived in his household as a slave, yet the Viking grew to love her and adopted her into his family. In Iceland, I believe. We’ve found Celtic markings there, but can’t confirm the origins.”
She shifted a step carefully, and he was aware of the depth below them. He didn’t trust the strength of the wood platforms or the ice.
“Now, as the child grew, the Viking understood he’d taken something precious from Ireland, a princess.”
He smiled slowly, working the rope. “How romantic. But then, women ruled in Ireland a thousand years ago.”
“I don’t think the title was warranted by that, but because she had some unusual skills. She was a shaman, a sorceress, for lack of a better word. His village grew afraid of her and she asked to return home. He took the long way. I guess he didn’t want to let her go.” She shrugged, and lowered a few more inches. “With two ships he sailed, but not to Ireland. He took his trade route to China.”
“Vikings in China, what’s your proof?”
“Oh there’s plenty.” Her smile was full of anticipation. “In Tarim Basin in Xingjiang, they discovered mummies dating 1800 BC, blond and blue eyed.”
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