Fast Ice

by Clive Cussler

“We need an off-ramp,” Joe said calmly. “What have you got?”

  “Exit 101 coming up,” Kurt said.

  He tapped the location on his touch screen and Joe entered it into his navigation computer.

  Joe took a quick look and changed course. He cut the power and began to descend. Lower and slower, they experienced less turbulence, but the tension rose.

  “We’re getting a local headwind here,” Joe said. “Air currents getting deflected off the peaks to the east of us.”

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Definitely,” Joe said. “We’re going to run out of fuel fast.”

  Kurt could see from the GPS indicator that their ground speed had fallen substantially while the fuel consumption was the same.

  Joe was forced to add power. The moment he did, a whole panel of warning lights came on one after the other. An audible alarm began overhead. The engines were cutting out, rpm dropping.

  “Definitely not like your Mazda,” Joe said.

  He aimed the nose of the helicopter downward, adjusting the pitch of the blades to keep them spinning, the helicopter’s method for gliding called autorotation.

  Kurt was thankful that they weren’t dropping out of the sky like a brick, yet they seemed at the mercy of the wind. He gazed at the needle on the altimeter. It crossed below five thousand feet and then, after another quick lap, dropped below four thousand.

  Kurt looked at the computer tablet with the ground information. The elevation was listed as 2,134.

  Joe banked the helicopter just as a furious gust hit. It threatened to roll them over, but Joe countered it.

  “Terrain, pull up,” the computer warned. “Terrain, pull up.”

  Kurt noticed they were below three thousand feet now.

  “Do me a favor,” Joe said. “When we go below twenty-five hundred feet, turn on the landing lights so we can see what’s below us.”

  “What if it doesn’t look good?” Kurt asked.

  “Then you turn the lights off again.”

  Kurt put his finger on the switch. They’d been flying in blackout mode with all the exterior lights off, but Joe would need a brief glimpse of the ground to land them safely. It offered a minuscule risk of detection, but Kurt doubted anyone would be watching the sky in the middle of a blizzard. Not ten miles from the pumping station.

  The altimeter dropped below twenty-five hundred. Kurt flipped the switch.

  A pair of high-intensity lights came on underneath the nose. They blazed into the night, but all that could be seen was storm-driven snow whipping past the helicopter. Joe slowed the craft further and turned directly into the flow of the wind.

  According to the computer, the ground was coming up fast. Kurt could see nothing. “Two hundred feet to the ground,” he called out. “One hundred and fifty.”

  It felt like a sped-up version of feeling for the bottom on a deep-sea dive. Where you could see nothing yet knew it was coming up fast.

  The helicopter continued to drop, swinging wildly in the gusts.

  “One hundred feet,” Kurt said.

  A field of volcanic rock emerged from the gloom, dark brown against the white background. It helped with the depth perception. Joe still had to change course to avoid hitting the upward-thrusting formations.

  He dodged them and aimed the helicopter toward a field of snow. The ground seemed to rush up at them. Joe flared the helicopter at the last moment, bringing the nose up like a regular airplane just above the runway.

  Kurt noticed that Joe hadn’t put the landing gear down. He kept that to himself.

  The ground turned blindingly bright as they approached. It darkened suddenly as the Jayhawk plowed into the snow and the lights were buried beneath it. The impact was jarring but not disastrous. The flat bottom of the helicopter took the shock and spread it out like the underside of a boat. They slid forward, losing speed quickly and coming to a stop.

  Kurt was leaning forward, his shoulders held tight in the straps of the safety harness. The only sound he heard was the wind whipping past and a strange ticking that came from somewhere above them as the rotors continued churning with built-up inertia.

  Incredibly, the landing lights under the nose of the helicopter continued to function. Though they were now buried, they managed to spread a soft glow through the translucent snow around its base.

  Joe shut everything down except the lights. That done, he removed his helmet. “You’re now free to move about Antarctica.”

  “Thank God, we’re on the ground,” Gamay said. Her first words in three hours. “I am never flying with you again.”

  “Great landing,” Kurt said. “Now all we have to do is cross ten miles of forbidding terrain while fighting through a blizzard.”

  From the back of the helicopter, Paul laughed. “At least the hard part is over.”

  After pulling on their cold-weather gear, including insulated versions of the expedition jackets, they stepped from the helicopter and unloaded the snowmobiles.

  Kurt, Joe and Gamay donned heated gloves, triple-insulated ski caps, neck gaiters that pulled up and covered their faces and insulated goggles to protect their eyes.

  Paul had chosen a balaclava, ski goggles and an oversize fur hat with earflaps. He pulled it down tight and secured it with a strap under his chin.

  Gamay shook her head at his fashion choice. “I thought you said those hats were Communist propaganda?”

  “This one is Canadian,” Paul said. “And it’s incredibly warm.”

  Kurt glanced at Paul, who looked ridiculous. But considering the cold was already biting at Kurt’s ears despite the modern material of his own hat, he guessed Paul would have the last laugh on that one. “Let’s get the explosives loaded and get moving.”

  45

  BASE ZERO, HOLTZMAN GLACIER

  Yvonne Lloyd sat on a folding canvas chair in the dimly lit control dome of Base Zero. A pair of ruggedized laptop computers sat on a table in front of her. They were field units, with protective rubber cases, waterproof keyboards and heavy battery packs that could power them for several days if need be.

  Low levels of red light streamed through the keys, illuminating each letter, while screens set to minimum brightness showed the condition of the high-pressure turbine her team had recently installed.

  Everything in front of Yvonne suggested the turbine was operating flawlessly, but she preferred a hands-on report to the opinion of a computer. She picked a radio off the charger and spoke into it.

  “All markers showing nominal,” she said. “What do your eyes and ears tell you?”

  Yvonne’s foreman was three hundred yards away and a hundred feet beneath the surface. A relay system connected his radio to the world aboveground. “No signs of vibration,” he said. “Pressure holding. We can begin drawing the lake water whenever you’re ready.”

  She was more than ready. Eleven weeks of constructing an underground tunnel to the sea had felt like torture. Cora’s betrayal and the sudden interference of NUMA had become a major last-minute threat. All that was about to become irrelevant.

  She tapped a key on the control computer. “Valves opening . . . Water flowing . . . Keep an eye on everything and let me know if you spot any problems. If everything continues looking good, make your way back to the compound.”

  The foreman didn’t hesitate long before replying. “If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather stay put,” he replied. “Just in case something goes wrong, I’d rather be here where I might be able to do something about it.”

  Yvonne understood. Her foreman wanted to remain at his post, like a master chief in the engine room of a great vessel. That didn’t surprise her. All of them knew that the crucial moment had arrived and each seemed to deal with it in a different way.

  For some, it would mean celebration. For others, a deeply spiritual moment of communio
n with the environment that they were trying to save.

  Yvonne didn’t know what to feel. At least the work would be done. The future course altered. Years of struggle at last paying its dividend. Instead of euphoria, she found exhaustion creeping in.

  She glanced around the room. In addition to herself and the foreman, nine others remained at Base Zero, eight of them members of the tactical team, the same team that had stormed the Grishka almost three months before.

  Ryland had insisted they transfer to the base to protect the turbine that would pump the lake water through the ice tunnel.

  After helping deliver and install the high-pressure turbine, these men had had little to do. To Yvonne’s surprise, this level of inactivity had affected the group, particularly a man they called High Point. He was the team leader and the man who’d shot Cora and the others on the deck of the Grishka.

  Perhaps his unease made sense. As a sniper, he was used to being camouflaged in a hiding place where he could watch over large swaths of territory. Being cooped up inside a target as obvious as a building made him feel vulnerable.

  At the moment, he sat nearby, tapping away at another laptop, cycling through the views from a bank of cameras he’d deployed. Some of them visual wavelength, most operating on infrared.

  With little to see but darkness, he got up and walked over to the windows. They were covered on the inside with condensation. He wiped the window down only to find the outside caked with snow and ice.

  “We’re too passive here,” he said, turning to Yvonne. “We’re easy targets, should anyone attack.”

  Yvonne was not concerned. “The only people who even know about us are those fools from NUMA. My brother has an eye on them. Their nearest ship is a thousand miles away, struggling in the storm and heading directly back to where the Grishka sank. They’re lost and grasping at straws.”

  “We should have set up a portable radar,” he said.

  Yvonne shook her head. “A radar beam would lead them right to us. They could follow it down like a homing beacon.”

  “Lookouts, then.”

  She motioned toward the window and the blowing snow. “Be my guest.”

  He glanced toward the window, said nothing.

  “It’s twenty below out there,” she pointed out. “That storm is going to get worse before it gets better. Until then, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  He turned without a word and went back to his desk. Slumping into his own canvas chair, he began cycling through the cameras once again.

  He’d placed a ring of them around the habitat and others farther out on the rocky ridge above the valley. The most distant unit was three miles off and its signal had been lost in the storm. While closer cameras were still downloading images, half their lenses were now covered over in snow.

  And yet, one of them had picked up something that wasn’t cold and dark.

  He leaned closer, froze the image and then called Yvonne over. “Look at this.”

  She got up and walked to his side. Studying the screen, she saw a thermal image that was blurred and flickering. It looked like a blob of orange and blue on a field of black but became more distinct as High Point tapped at the keyboard.

  “It’s moving,” he said.

  “Track it,” she ordered, suddenly concerned. “Zoom in.”

  High Point locked the thermal camera and tightened the focus. It resolved into a discernible picture. Four human-shaped targets riding on a pair of machines.

  “Snowmobiles?”

  “Hard to tell,” he said. “They’re not making a lot of heat. Based on the speed, though, I’d say yes.”

  Her heart began to pound. A sense of embarrassment at her earlier bravado hit, combined with the fury of dealing with more outside interference. “Where are they?”

  “They’re on the high side of the valley,” he said. “Must be trying to stay out of the wind by hugging the ridgeline. But they’re headed right for us.”

  The images began to fade as they pulled out of range.

  “We’re losing them.”

  “They should show up on the next camera any moment.”

  He tapped a key and the image switched. It was dark at first, and then the glowing shapes emerged out of the darkness.

  “Send three of your men out to the drilling rig,” she ordered. “You and the rest of them come with me. We’re going to spring a trap and deal with this annoyance once and for all.”

  46

  Kurt was at the controls of one snowmobile, with Joe seated behind him and two backpacks filled with explosive charges strapped to the sides. Paul and Gamay rode an identically loaded machine a few feet to their right and ten feet back.

  The trip from the helicopter had been strenuous, as they fought the wind, the snowdrifts and the darkness. Of the three, the dark was the worst.

  The snowmobiles had a night vision system built in. It linked to a heads-up display projected on the windshield in front of the driver. So far, it had proved itself to be almost useless.

  Like most night vision systems, it worked by amplifying visible light. Yet amid a storm, in the middle of the Antarctic night, almost no light at all was reaching the ground. What it did pick up were millions of chaotically swirling snowflakes.

  Switching to infrared mode proved slightly more effective. Kurt was able to see a difference between the landforms and the sky, the difference between rocks and snow. Ironically, the snow was warmer. But deep drifts and drop-offs were hard to spot. And despite riding at a reduced speed, they still had occasion to take urgent evasive action.

  With little choice in the matter, they’d been forced to turn on the headlight that was tucked underneath each snowmobile’s chin. Like fog lights on a sports car, it was supposed to illuminate the ground but not the falling snow. They offered, at best, fifty feet of visibility. Even that was an improvement.

  Because Kurt had to concentrate so intently on the actual driving, he was relying on Joe for directions. Joe had the GPS tablet locked in a stand. He was using the map that Rudi and Hiram had created from the reconnaissance flight to help them avoid areas of rough terrain or fissures in the ice waiting to swallow them up.

  “We’re getting a little low on the slope,” Joe said. “Bear right five degrees. And try to keep us in tight to the ridge, there’s a boulder field approaching on the left.”

  Kurt eased to the right and rode up the slope, continuing forward and fighting against gravity like a car on a banked racetrack. He slowed a little as a series of volcanic outcroppings appeared in the dim light.

  The rocks were covered in piles of snow on one side but stripped bare by the wind on the other. Their reddish brown color was a stark contrast to the achromatic black sky and white ground.

  They passed through a gap between two of the larger boulders and the track widened once again. As they reached the other side, a flare shot off into the sky.

  It curled upward and then tailed off into the storm, vanishing as it was carried away on the wind. Kurt knew they’d tripped some type of alarm.

  He cut the throttle and killed the headlight, but it was already too late. As the machine slid to a halt, the snowfield came alive with the glare of high-intensity halogens. Four lights blinded them from directly ahead, a warm, incandescent hue suggesting older bulbs.

  At the same time, a pair of stark white lights shone in from the left, with additional illumination from behind.

  Before they could back up or turn, Kurt, Joe, Paul and Gamay were surrounded.

  47

  Shielding his eyes from the glare, Kurt saw that the vehicle ahead of them was a snowcat, while off to the side and behind was a trio of snowmobiles. He counted four automatic weapons pointed their way, led by a man with a long rifle who stood in front of the snowcat.

  The man stepped forward, never once taking his rifle off Kurt. He stopped a few y
ards out of reach. “You blink and I’ll kill you.”

  Kurt was honestly surprised he hadn’t pulled the trigger already. He raised his hands and nodded to Paul and Gamay to do the same.

  The door of the snowcat opened. A thinner, sleeker person stepped out. Kurt could tell this was a woman, he saw the blond hair streaming from under her wool cap. She stepped forward and walked right up to Kurt.

  “NUMA,” she said, pointing at the logo on the snowmobiles. “I might have guessed.”

  Kurt nodded.

  “Take off your balaclava,” she ordered.

  Slowly, so as not to provoke her, Kurt slid it down.

  “Goggles,” she demanded.

  Kurt propped them up on his helmet.

  “Of course,” she said. “Kurt Austin. It would have to be you.”

  “Yvonne Lloyd,” Kurt said.

  “However did you guess?”

  “We figured out your double life a while ago,” he said. “Or, should I say, your brother’s double life. You might as well lay down your weapons. There are squads of Arctic-trained soldiers no more than a mile behind us.”

  She didn’t seem impressed. She turned to the man with the long rifle. He adjusted his stance for a second to look at an electronic tablet strapped to his arm. As he did, Kurt noticed the notches in the wooden stock of his rifle. Each group of four lines was crossed through with a fifth mark, like a prisoner counting off the days on the wall of his jail cell. If the marks were what Kurt assumed them to be, the man claimed at least sixteen victims.

  The man looked up from the tablet and shook his head. “He’s lying. They’re alone.”

  Yvonne turned back to Kurt. “Lies won’t help you at this point. You’ve snared yourself in my web. You’ll soon be buried here and never heard from again.”

  Kurt held her stare. He noticed her words were clear and precise, as were the words of the man with the rifle. His own speech was muffled and dull, the effect of lips too numb to form proper syllables.

  He studied their machines, starting with the snowmobiles to his left and then looking over to the snowcat directly ahead. They were coated, as the fluffy white flakes stuck to the metal skin, where they melted slightly and then created a perfect surface for more snow to adhere to. The wipers on the snowcat ran back and forth, clearing a wide enough area to see through, leaving the rest of the windshield caked over.