Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller

by Jeremy Robinson

  The Fusion Center I head up is known as Fusion Center – P. The P is for "paranormal". Seriously. The supernatural paranoid who added the rider believed the end of the world was nigh and that it would be a supernatural event. That's also why we're located in Beverly, Mass, next door neighbor to Salem, Mass. Salem being the apparent gateway to hell and home to the gruesome Salem witch trials, as well as scores of modern witches like Susan Beacon, who claimed she caused the "perfect storm" with a curse. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't praise the good Lord she made that claim before my stint at the FC-P began or I would have had to investigate it as a threat against the United States.

  FC-P is the seventy-first Fusion Center and it doesn't technically exist. You won't find us in any public documentation. Despite its creation, the FC-P is pretty much an embarrassment. That's why the 'Paranormal' on our IDs was reduced to the letter P.

  The deadbolt unlocks smoothly, barely making a sound. I push the door open and step in. The dim room holds two comfortable looking rocking chairs, a dining room table, a wood stove and what appears to be a large, black bean bag. I try the lights, but nothing happens.

  The breakers, I think, vaguely remembering Ted saying something about them being shut off. I move to take a step into the cabin, and freeze before I leave the doorframe.

  The bean bag moved.

  I reach for my gun, but find it missing. It's in the truck. Haven't worn it in two years. Imaginary creatures and specters don't normally pose a threat.

  Before I can think of what to do next, the screen door finally decides to slam shut behind me. The bean bag explodes with motion, rearing up a round head the size of a large pumpkin. Two large black eyes fix on me with unwavering focus.

  Moving with slow, measured movements, the bear stands. It's just about the same height as me, but is probably upwards of seven hundred pounds. I raise my hand in an "its okay" posture, like the bear will understand it, and I back away, but I don't get far. My back smacks into the closed screen door, which makes a loud snapping sound.

  The spooked bear huffs angrily, throws itself forward and charges.

  ###

  FROZEN

  COMING SOON!

  ABANDONED

  May 7th, 978 AD

  Eastern Coast of the Unnamed Lands, West of Iceland

  It is not all ice, however. The short summer is hectic,

  exploding in a riot of colors—so much

  has to be accomplished in so short a time.

  —Erik Erngaard

  Snøbjørn Galte Holmsteinsson looked in horror across the rugged coastline to the flames he saw clawing for the sky. The Norseman began to run back toward the camp, his fur-lined hide boots slapping at the gray rocks along the stony shore. He had wanted only a small break from the bickering between his clansmen on how best to settle this new land. A short walk in silence along the sea. Was that too much to ask?

  Almost sixty years after mighty Gunnbjörn Ulfsson’s voyage had inadvertently stumbled upon this unknown land, the politicians at the Althing back in the Icelandic Commonwealth finally decided to send men to explore this place and carve out a life in it, if such a thing was possible. Galte, as his men called him, was the first to volunteer for the trip.

  Two years of preparations and dealing with politicians trying to second-guess his choices, had nearly driven him insane. Then, at last, armed and provisioned, they had set out from home, the red and white sails slapping in the cold wind. They had spent an insufferable amount of time on the water in the longboats, making their way from Hornstrandir. Two men had grown sick and died, then were buried on the stony shore after they arrived, as was the custom.

  After the ceremonies were complete, men had set up small shelters from the wind and begun unloading their supplies. Almost immediately, fights had broken out. Eventually hot tempers were extinguished with food and drink. But the next day, the bickering had resumed.

  Now as Galte ran across the small boulders and rocks that made a belt of stone around the edge of the sea before the wildly colorful vegetation took over the lower slopes of the mountains, he knew that the time at sea had been far too long. Tensions had flared more than one time between the Red Beards and the Sons of the Mountain, even while still at sea. Erik Thorvaldsson had been rabble rousing—attempting to undermine Galte’s role as expedition leader almost since the beginning of the planning stages. The man had a questionable honor and was thought to have committed some murders back in Iceland. Galte had objected to the committee members at the Althing, but they had insisted that Erik the Red, as his Red Beards called him, accompany Galte on the trip.

  The flames were dying in the distance now, but a long thin stream of rich, black smoke made its way straight up into the gray sky. Galte, an older man of eight and sixty years, was still strong enough to heft an ax and throw a man after downing a flagon of mead. His calf muscles barely noticed the exertion as he sprinted along the edge of the black sea, his massive hammer in hand. His legs carried him to where the boats had run ashore and the divided group of men had made their camp.

  “No,” he shouted, shaking with rage.

  As he got closer to the camp, he could see immediately what must have happened. Three of the boats were leaving. The other three were on fire on the shore. His men were trying to douse the flames with seawater, and frantically attempting to salvage whatever bits of sail and wood were not yet aflame. But it was already too late.

  Galte halted his run, knowing there was no point in it. He looked to the ships rowing away, each oar manned by one of Erik’s Red Beards. Then the man himself was standing at the stern, looking back at Galte.

  “Curse you, Erik the Red! A pox on you and your damned Red Beards!” Galte shouted into the wind.

  On the ship, Erik, a broad man in his fortieth winter, grim-faced as always, merely nodded his red-bearded head to indicate that he had heard the curse and he accepted the consequences for stranding Galte and his men. Then he turned and strode away from the rail.

  Galte stood for a time, watching the three boats recede toward the horizon. He spat into the sea and then turned to face the distant mountains of his new home, ignoring his men as they struggled to put out the fires that would not be put out. Galte understood that the time for preventing the deaths of the boats was past. He had seen ships burn before.

  It was summer now, and the plants beyond the stony beach were frolicking as if they had not a care in the world. But Galte knew that all too soon, those plants would go to sleep or die, and the snows and ice would come from the North, as they always did. The frost giants of Jötunheimr would blast this land, so far across the sea from Iceland. And if Iceland was cold in the winter, this place would be brutal.

  Galte let his eyes drift down the slopes of the mountains to the brilliant fauna, and then to the rocks at his feet. His mind ran through what equipment they had unloaded from the boats before the fight must have started. He heard Cristian running up to him and shouting about the treacherous betrayal, as if Galte hadn’t seen the results and figured it out for himself.

  “I know, Cristian” he said softly. “I know.”

  Cristian, a younger man of thirty and three with blonde hair and eyes so blue they looked like tunnels of ice that run though his skull, exhaled loudly. He waited, catching his breath after his own short run to inform Galte of the disaster. His face was a mask of terror. He couldn’t wait for an answer any longer.

  “Galte, what will we do?” Cristian’s eyes were wild.

  Galte let his gaze drift to the foothills of the dark gray and black mountains that ringed the coast of the land, wearing helmets of snow and ice. There might be caves up there. There might be none. There would almost certainly be death. Still, some of his people might be able to survive the winter if they could find shelter.

  His face hard, his gaze still on the mountains, which were strangely close to the ocean, Galte ground his teeth and spoke with determination. “We dig.”

  EXPERIMENTAL

  Sep
tember 4, 1972

  Over the Inland Glacier near Scoresby Sund, Eastern Greenland

  Russia craves a true victory over the Arctic Ocean even more

  than any other country, for none else owns a

  greater length of shoreline in the Arctic.

  —Dmitri Mendeleyev

  The MiG 25RB single-seat reconnaissance bomber crossed over the edge of the Scoresby Sund fjord from the Greenland Sea, cruising at 600 mph. The plane was covered with a series of black-painted prototype plates that were supposed to reflect radar and make the plane practically invisible. Still, the pilot, Major Anatoli Veselov, had been instructed to keep the plane low, and travel slower than the plane’s top speed. He followed those instructions carefully. Veselov was told the technology was new and designed by patriotic Russian scientists in a secret bunker in the Ural Mountains, but he had heard the rumors and knew, just as most pilots did, that many of the developments from these so-called mysterious scientists in the Urals were actually instances of technology stolen from the decadent West. He also knew that his countrymen often managed to get their hands on the equipment, but not the instruction manuals. He would never say so aloud, but he had little faith in the efficiency of his comrades when it came to new technologies.

  Veselov banked the plane and glanced down at the blue-green ice fields below him. It was unnerving how the ice looked in winter. In the summer, the ice would be fifty shades of blinding, dazzling white. Now, though, the colors almost mimicked the sea he had just spent hours flying over. Brilliant sweeps of arctic blue slashed with streaks of murky emerald green. Almost 80 percent of the place is covered by it, he thought. This place is worse than Siberia. He brought the plane level again and increased speed now that he was over the land. The Foxbat, as the Americans called the plane, would run up to 740 mph at this altitude, and visibility was fine. Flying so fast, so close to the ground might not have been safe in many places, but there were no obstacles over the ice, and no mountains for miles, now that he was away from the coastline. Veselov rolled his shoulders in the chair and keyed his radio microphone to contact his controllers back at Arkhangelsk.

  “Bright Falcon to Maryushka,” Veselov was certain that his commander was still steamed about the codenames the Kremlin had sent for this mission. Maryushka was a girl from a fairy tale.

  “Maryushka here. Is it time for hot tears?” Colonel Grigoriy Denisov’s voice was gruff.

  “Nearly. So far, the scientific experiments have gone very well.” Veselov’s code meant that he had not been discovered in his covert flight from the Soviet Union to the coast of Greenland.

  “Things proceed nicely at the laboratory as well.” The Colonel’s reply indicated that the MiG was not showing up on radar listenening stations in the Motherland.

  Veselov was silent for five more minutes until he had almost reached the designated drop site. “About to let the hot tear fall. It is time for Fenist to wake up. Please confirm.” Veselov made the formal request to drop his payload on foreign soil. Well, foreign ice, he told himself.

  “Sell I will not,” replied Colonel Denisov, “but you may let the tears fall free if you let me see Fenist the Bright Falcon.”

  Veselov knew the fairy tale and he knew that even in regional variants of it, that line was never spoken. It was a mash up of elements in the tale, but the message was clear: drop the payload.

  The bomb was yet another prototype. Veselov did not know exactly what was in it, only that it was nuclear of some sort, and Moscow had chosen to test it in the barren wastes of Greenland, where no one would be likely to see it at first. It was a small weapon, so the blast would be minimal, but the hated Americans would, of course, know that it was a nuclear detonation—they had the technology to discover blasts. All Veselov knew was he was to drop the bomb and return to Russia immediately, staying low the whole time.

  He triggered the release mechanism, and banked hard, heading back the way he had come. His plane had been equipped with a small screen and a rear-facing camera that recorded video and showed him the descent of the bomb as it plunged down toward the ice. He expected the screen to go white with glare when the weapon detonated. Instead, he watched the bomb slip into a crevasse in the ice and disappear. He wondered if maybe it would explode under the ice. But still no explosion came.

  “Maryushka, unfortunately, Fenist refuses to wake up,” he informed the Colonel, dreading a possible outburst of screaming and threats. Denisov was known to be quite volatile at times.

  “Please repeat, Bright Falcon.”

  “Fenist still sleeps,” Veselov said into his microphone.

  There was silence for a full minute. Veselov steered the MiG for the coast.

  “Understood, Bright Falcon. Not your fault. We were told to expect this. Fly home to the nest. Maryushka out.”

  Veselov was surprised to receive resigned understanding instead of scorn, but he was well relieved just the same. As he crossed over the fjords and over the water, he wondered idly if anyone would come back to retrieve the unexploded nuclear weapon or if it would rot in the bottom of a frozen crevice for all eternity.

  Cold, hard gray eyes watched the MiG streak away after dropping its payload. The prototype stealth plane had been visually observed and identified near the coast, and a message had been communicated to the man with the gray eyes out on the glacier. He was certain he would die when he saw the plane drop its payload less than a mile from his current location. But as he watched in horror, the bomb—or whatever it was—simply dropped into the ice, and the plane turned tail and fled. The man was already formulating a plan for how to retrieve the undetonated device as he keyed his radio to report it back to headquarters.

  CHAPTER ONE

  On the Ice, West of the Ammassalik District, Eastern Greenland

  The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our

  dispositions and not on our circumstances.

  —Martha Washington

  The Earth swallowed the First Lady of the United States and two of her Secret Service agents with her.

  Agent-in-charge Dale Carsten heard the noise first, as the ice crevasse of the glacier split with an ear-rending crack that made him think, at first, of a gunshot. He had been about to scream out a warning. A sniper could easily have concealed himself anywhere in the bluish-white fragments of ice erupting upward along the horizon, across the desolate fields of central Greenland. He had been concerned about just such a thing all morning.

  He was even pulling his 9 mm Glock from the black leather holster strapped tightly across his bright blue parka before his mind registered that it wasn’t actually a shot. His hand stopped moving when he didn’t see any blood as he had expected, but instead he saw the First Lady sinking into the snow. Before he could have cleared the holster, the woman was gone from view. It was as if the ice had yanked her down into the frozen underworld.

  His athletic body was in motion before the groaning of the ice stuttered to a stop. He slid across the frozen ground on his stomach, his left hand grabbing for a hold near the edge of the yawning chasm, while his right arm darted into the abyss, hoping beyond all hope to snatch his protectee from the jaws of death. But his gloved fingers found only glistening flakes of newly fallen snow.

  Carsten peered into the depths of the newly opened ice crevasse, but his sky blue eyes could not make out the bottom, nor any sign of the three human beings that had disappeared into its maw.

  “Mrs. Gaffin!” Carsten called out to the First Lady, but only echoes answered him in return. Then he tried his radio ear transceiver. “Devlin? Crakes? Respond if you hear me.”

  The silence in Agent Carsten’s ear was deafening. It was only then that he began to take in the sounds of the others around him. Agent Pearcy was swearing softly. Mrs. Petersen, the Inuit tour guide with the Danish name—most of the native Greenlanders he’d met had Danish names—that had led them onto the glacier was sobbing in great heaving gulps. The other two Secret Service agents, Westhall and Moore, were scanni
ng the horizon, in case this freakish event of nature was somehow human-induced and malicious, but Carsten knew better. Only their helicopter pilot, a former sailor named Tyne was doing the right thing. The older man was pulling ice axes and rope out of a huge red and white pack, which he had lugged across the glacier from the helicopter.

  “Quickly,” the old man called.

  Carsten ran over to him and the two frantically set up a makeshift anchor on the edge of the crevasse using the ice axes. The old man donned a harness, and helped Agent Moore into one as well. Then they both quickly rapelled over the edge of the break in the ice and down into the darkness. Carsten peered over the edge and watched as Agent Moore’s light disappeared into gloom.

  “Moore, you stay in constant contact. I want to know everything you see.” Carsten shouted into the microphone, even though the device was sensitive enough to pick up a mumbled whisper. He was shocked to hear how poor the reception was when Moore replied.