by James Cobb
“Thanks, Seaman.” The sealing tag was still in place on the carrier’s zipper. The camouflage labeling had done its job well: no one had been inclined to fool with the carrier’s contents.
Stepping over to the bag, Smith broke the seal and ran the zip open. As the hangar bay crew looked on soberly, Smith began to pass out the carrier’s true contents, the equipment that a routine crash identification and body recovery team wouldn’t have needed.
White camouflage snow smocks and overtrousers. Fanny packs containing Army MOPP III biochemical warfare suits and filter masks. And the weapons.
“I see you’re an aficionado of the great spray-and-pray school,” Professor Metrace murmured as Randi checked out a Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun.
“It works for me,” Randi replied briefly, clearing the breach and snapping out the stumpy little weapon’s folding stock. “Ammunition?”
“Six magazines,” Smith replied, handing her the loaded clip pouches. Lifting the next padded case out of the bag, he unzipped it and grunted in satisfaction. They’d gotten him the SR-25 tactical sniper he’d asked for. Protective lens caps were clipped over the rifle’s telescopic sights, and white camo tape had been lapped around the composite stock and foregrip.
There was something oddly familiar about the feel of this particular weapon, and Smith checked its serial number. He wasn’t mistaken; it was the same SR-25 he’d dialed in with and carried through his mountain warfare course. Fred Klein’s meticulousness had struck again.
Valentina Metrace’s brows lifted in a connoisseur’s appreciation. “Great minds work alike, Jon. I suspected it would be mountain work as well.”
The last weapon out of the carrier was a civilian sporting rifle, and a study in contrasts. The powerful optics mounted on it were new, state-of-the-art, in fact, and the rifle itself showed meticulous care, but the scarred walnut stock also bore the patina of use and age.
“What is that?” Smith inquired as Valentina drew the weapon from its soft case.
“Something from my own collection,” she replied, flipping open the bolt in a practiced safety check. “It’s a Winchester model 70, a genuine pre-64 action mated with one of the first of the Douglas stainless steel barrels.”
Smoothly she lifted the elegant old rifle to her shoulder, test-sighting at the sunrise out of the open hangar doors. “The scope is a Schmidt and Bender three-to-twelve-power, and the chambering is for.220 Swift. The muzzle velocity with a sixty-five-grain hollowpoint is over four thousand feet per second, the accuracy can only be described as supernatural, and bullet drop is simply something that happens to somebody else. As the saying goes, they don’t make them like this anymore.”
“A varmint gun,” Randi sniffed.
“It all depends on how you define ‘varmint,’ darling,” Valentina replied darkly. “Put a round of Swift in a man’s chest and you might as well be hitting him with a lightning bolt. Put one in his shoulder and you don’t get a hole; you get a sloppy amputation. I’ve put a full-patch slug cleanly through the brain case of a bull crocodile at three hundred yards with this old girl, and crocodiles have very thick skulls and very small brains.”
It was Smith’s turn to lift an eyebrow. “You do have some very interesting hobbies, Professor.”
Valentina smiled enigmatically as she fed sharp-tipped cartridges into the shell carrier strapped around the Winchester’s stock. “You can’t even begin to guess, my dear Colonel.”
“Would you have something in there for me?” Smyslov inquired, eyeing the growing array of armament.
“We didn’t pack anything, Major,” Smith said. “But I agree, you’re likely going to need teeth.” He glanced at Valentina. “In fact, I asked the professor to look into that.”
She nodded back and slung her rifle over her shoulder. Stepping to the open door of the helicopter, she produced a pistol belt, holster, and clip carrier from the pilot’s seat. “Nothing particularly sexy or exotic, Major, just Coast Guard standard issue, but it should do for you.”
Smyslov slid the Beretta 92F out of its holster. Balancing the big automatic in his hand he cycled the slide experimentally. “Yes, this will do,” he replied, his voice thoughtful.
A conformal foam pharmaceuticals box was the last item in the carrier, a dozen large white-capped pill bottles fitting into its niches.
“These are our just-in-case, ladies and gentlemen,” Smith said, passing a bottle of antibiotic capsules to each of his teammates before securing the remainder in his medical kit. “Take three now as your loading dose, then two every twelve hours, without food. They’ll be good for what might ail you.”
“May I have some of those as well, Colonel?”
Parka clad, Dr. Trowbridge had been standing back with the others in the hangar bay, watching Smith’s team arm up. Now he stood forward.
“I’m going…” he started, then caught himself. “I would like to go with you to the island.”
“Under the circumstances I don’t think that’s feasible, Doctor,” Smith replied cautiously. “We don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there. The situation could be hazardous.”
The academic’s face tightened in resolve. “I don’t know what you’re going to find, either. That’s why I have to go. I don’t know why this is happening or why all of this was allowed to happen, but I have responsibilities. Those are my people on that island! I helped to organize and fund this expedition. I picked the membership. Whatever has happened, I’m responsible!”
My people. Smith was coming to understand those words quite well. He was opening his mouth to reply when a crewman entered the hangar bay and double-timed across to the helicopter.
“Begging the colonel’s pardon, sir, But Captain Jorganson wishes to advise you that Wednesday Island Station has missed its last radio check.”
Smith whipped up his wrist and shoved back his parka sleeve, checking his watch. “How long ago?”
“Ten minutes, sir. The radio shack’s been calling continuously, but there’s no answer.”
Some of the arctic cold pierced into Smith’s guts. Damn it! Kayla Brown had almost made it to a new day.
“Thank you. You may inform Captain Jorganson we will be launching immediately.” Smith turned back to Dr. Trowbridge. “Three capsules now,” he said, opening his medical kit, “then two every twelve hours, without food.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Over the Arctic Ocean
The sky now flamed behind the Long Ranger, a gold and scarlet ribbon across the southern horizon. It served as a vivid contrast wedged between the stark black water and white ice of the fissured pack and the lowering gray of the cloud cover. The sunrise in the south was subtly perturbing, a disruption in the natural order of things that emphasized the alienness of the world they were penetrating.
“Red sky at morning…” Valentina Metrace murmured the first half of the old weather rhyme. With the helicopter’s passenger seats pulled, she, Smith, and Trowbridge did as well as they could hunkered in among the gear lashed to the deck.
Smyslov gave up on the overhead radio panel. “Nothing from the station. We should be within the reach of their short-range sets by now.”
“What about auroral interference?” Smith inquired.
“Building again, but the ship is still receiving us. And if the ship can hear us, we should be able to hear Wednesday.”
“Why weren’t we told?” Dr. Trowbridge spoke up suddenly. “This was criminal! Leaving our expedition members exposed to biological weapons without a word of warning! This can be nothing but criminal!”
“Your people were warned,” Smith replied, “repeatedly, as the communications logs will show, to stay well away from the crash site. And we were assured, repeatedly, by your office, that they were doing so. Besides, whatever’s hit your people, it wasn’t anthrax.”
“Can you be so sure of that, Colonel?” Trowbridge challenged.
“Yes, I can,” Smith replied patiently. “Let me remind you, Doct
or, that I am a physician, one with a particular expertise in this field. I’ve established a very close working relationship with Bacillus anthracis in recent years, and whatever has happened, that isn’t it.”
Smith turned and stared into Trowbridge’s eyes from an eighteen-inch range, going on the offensive. “Doctor, if you and your people are concealing anything about what’s happening on that island, now would be an excellent time to come clean about it.”
The academic’s jaw flapped silently for a moment. “Me? What could we possibly have to conceal?”
“I’m not sure. That’s the problem. Could your expedition members have paid an under-the-table visit to that downed bomber? Could they have learned about its possible cargo of bioagent? Could they have passed that discovery on to somebody off island?”
Trowbridge gave a very good impression of a man totally stunned by a concept. “No! Of course not! Had we had any idea that anything like that was present on the island, we would have…we would have…”
“Started looking for a buyer on eBay?” Valentina Metrace neatly double-teamed Trowbridge. As the academic twisted to face her, it was her turn to lock him up with a chill gaze. “Doctor, I can name you half a dozen rogue states that would cheerfully empty their national treasuries to possess a bioweapons arsenal to call their very own, and it’s amazing the effect a seven-figure Swiss bank account can have on ethics and morals.”
“That’s why the United States and the Russian Federation didn’t want word of that downed aircraft’s possible payload to become public knowledge,” Smith added.
“Unfortunately, Doctor, it’s apparent the word has gotten out,” Valentina slashed in once more. “Maybe it was one of the Russians, maybe it was one of ours, or maybe it was one of yours. Be that as it may, somebody nasty knows about the filth loaded aboard that bomber, and they are out to get their hands on it. My associates and I were nearly killed because of it. Your people on Wednesday Island may have died because of it. For certain, millions of innocent lives have been placed at risk because of it!”
Valentina Metrace smiled. If the historian had possessed fangs, they would have gleamed. “You may count on this, my dear Dr. Trowbridge. We are going to find out just who has the big mouth. And when we do, he or she is going to be very, very thoroughly chastised.”
Trowbridge had no response, but a shudder ran through the man’s body.
“After Hades and Lazarus and a number of similar ugly events, the world’s governments take these matters very seriously,” Smith added. “So do I, and so do the other members of this team. And now that we’ve taken you into our confidence, Doctor, it is expected-no, cancel that; it is required-that you do so as well. Is this understood?”
“Yes.”
Abruptly the helicopter swayed, trying to weathervane in a gust of wind. “It’s kicking up a little,” Randi commented into the interphone. “I think we’ve got a squall line out ahead of us.”
“Can we make it to the island?” Smith inquired.
“I think so. In fact…” She paused for a moment, peering ahead through the frost-spangled windscreen. “We’re there.”
Beyond the Long Ranger’s bow, a craggy outline materialized along a sea-smoked horizon, vaster than the bergs they had been overflying, the white of its ice streaked by the gray of stone, the tips of its two distinctive peaks lost in the brooding overcast.
Wednesday Island. They had arrived.
Professor Metrace leaned forward intently. “Can we land directly at the crash site? All it would take is five minutes on the ground to verify the presence of the warload.”
Smyslov looked back over his shoulder. “I’m not sure about that, Colonel. That is an ugly sky north of the island. Miss Russell is correct. We have a front coming down on us. Maybe snow. For certain, wind. Here, there will always be wind!”
“He’s right, Jon,” Randi interjected. “That saddleback would be a very poor place to park a helicopter in this kind of deteriorating weather.”
Smith could see that for himself; the darkening clouds beyond the island were drawing closer even as he watched. They were in a race to touch home before the arctic environment tagged them out.
“Okay, Randi. Advise the Haley that we’ll be landing at the science station. We’ll go up to the crash site on foot.”
Valentina moaned softly. “And, my, isn’t that going to be fun!”
Five minutes later they were orbiting the Wednesday Island expedition base. The wisdom in landing here was already becoming apparent. The Long Ranger was beginning to wallow in the turbulence boiling over the ridgeline, and the twin peaks were becoming shadows in the snow haze.
No one emerged from the buildings at the beat of the helicopter’s rotors.
The camp helipad lay some eighty yards north of the huts. There the snow had been freshly compacted and marked with an “H” of orange spray paint. A V-shaped windbreak of snow blocks had also been built to partially shelter a grounded aircraft. Aligning the Long Ranger, Randi eased into the landing site. There was a final swirling flurry of snow, and the pontoons thudded down.
Instantly Smith bailed out of the helicopter’s passenger door, the SR-25 at port arms. Hunching low to stay under the blade sweep, he hastened to the end of the windbreak that overlooked the hut site. Pulling up the hood of his snow smock, he dropped to one knee and merged with the end of the snow wall, his rifle lifted and leveled.
Nothing moved, and there was no sound save for the whine of the wind and the slowing whicka-whicka of the rotors.
“No activity inside the hut windows,” a voice reported from a few feet away. Lithe as a snow leopard, Valentina Metrace lay in a prone firing position, her rifle muzzle swinging in delicate arcs as she scanned for targets through the Winchester’s powerful optics.
“No activity anywhere,” Randi Russell commented from beside him, resting the forestock of her MP-5 on the snow wall.
“So it seems.” Smith got to his feet. Slinging his rifle, he removed his binoculars from their case and panned them slowly around the frozen cove to the west and across the ridgeline above the station. To the limit of his vision there were no other skid or float marks from a helicopter landing, no human movement. Nothing alive at all.
Around his eyes Smith felt the sting of the first hard-driven snowflakes of the oncoming squall. “Major Smyslov,” he said recasing his field glasses, “remain here with Doctor Trowbridge and secure the helicopter. Set your intervals, ladies. Let’s see if anyone’s at home.”
Their boots crunched and squeaked on the corn snow of the trail as they moved on to the station.
According to the site map they had been given, the northernmost of the three huts was the storage and utility building, shorter trails radiating out from it to the camp’s flammable coal, gasoline, and kerosene dumps.
Outside the hut’s door there was no need for Smith to give orders or to speak at all. He only took a covering station beside the door. Valentina twisted a knurled knob on the model 70’s Pachmayr optics mounts, tipping the scope aside to clear the rifle’s close-range iron sights, and Randi drew back the bolt on the MP-5. Carrying the “short gun,” she would have the point going in. With Smith and Valentina covering from either side of the snow lock, Randi pushed through the outer and inner doors into the hut.
A moment of silence followed, then, “Clear.”
Smith took his own fast look around inside the unheated building. There was only the camp’s auxiliary gasoline generator and ranked shelves packed with equipment and stores. The reserves were somewhat depleted after a season in the field, but a sizable emergency stock remained. It was an old just-in-case for polar exploration. For a one-season stay, you supplied for two.
The central hut was the combination laboratory and radio shack. A wind turbine mounted on a short, heavily guylined mast purred nearby, pumping out electric power. A second, taller steel girder mast, carrying the communications antenna, stood atop a low ice-covered knoll some hundred yards beyond the camp area.
The last word from Kayla Brown had come from the radio shack.
Again the team repeated the entry drill.
Again, “Clear!”
Rifles lowered, Smith and Valentina followed Randi into the hut. A smoky warmth struck Smith’s face as he pushed through the inner snow lock door. This building still held life. Laboratory implements gleamed untouched on the workbenches and central table. Sample and equipment cases lay on the floor, some closed and secure, ready to load. Others were open and in the process of being filled.
The heat in the cabin issued from a small coal stove centered on the north wall. Crossing to it, Metrace lifted the stove lid, revealing glowing orange ash. “I wonder how long one of these things can hold a fire,” she mused, adding a few chunks of glossy black anthracite from the scuttle.
“Probably for some time,” Smith commented, looking around the lab. “There’s no sign of a struggle, and there are plenty of delicate things in here to smash.”
“Um-hm,” Valentina agreed, pointing toward a row of empty hooks near the exterior doorway. “Miss Brown must have had the chance to put on her snow gear. Apparently she left under controlled circumstances.”
Smith went on into the radio room. With her gloves off and her hood thrown back, Randi was sitting in the sidebands operator’s chair, a frown on her face. The radios were still switched on. Check lights glowed green, and the thin hiss of a carrier wave issued from the speakers. As Smith looked on she pressed the transmit key at the base of the desk mike. “CGAH Haley CGAH Haley, this is KGWI Wednesday Island. This is a check call. This is a check call. Do you copy? Over.”
The carrier hissed back emptily.
“What do you think, Randi?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “We’re on frequency, and the transmitter gain indicates we’re putting out.” She adjusted the receiver squelch and transmitter power and repeated the test call, to no effect. “Either they’re not hearing us or we’re not hearing them.”
There was a sat phone and data link at the far end of the console. Smith stepped around Randi and lifted the receiver, punching in the Haley’s address code. “No joy here, either,” he reported after a moment. “It’s not accessing the satellite.”