The Arctic Event

by James Cobb

  The night before, Smith had been careful in the way he had arranged their gear to make sleeping room on the deck. He’d propped his loaded packframe in the hatchway between the compartments, stacking his snowshoes atop them, rendering a silent access to the radar-observer space impossible. The necessity of that action and the angular feel of his sidearm under the wadded bulk of his parka pillow pushed his momentary nonprofessional musing about Valentina Metrace into abeyance.

  “What is it, Val?” he said under his breath. “What are the Russians hiding? You have some ideas, don’t you?”

  She hesitated; then he felt the shake of her head, her soft hair brushing his chin. “Not that I’m prepared to say, Jon. The historian in me is appalled by the concept of providing poor history, and the spy, of giving poor intelligence. But we’ve got to find the survival camp. If there are any absolute answers to be found, we’ll find them there.”

  “I can understand that. But that’s only one set of answers. The Russians are only one factor of what I’m coming to see as a three-point equation. The other two points are who is on the island now and who may be coming for the anthrax. I left Randi hanging back there as bait for whoever may be here now.”

  “Shouldn’t worry, Jon. Anyone who endeavors to gulp down our Ms. Russell is going to find himself gagging on her…and I mean that in the best of possible connotations.”

  “I know. She can take care of herself.”

  “But you’ll still blame yourself if anything happens to her. As you still do for the deaths of her sister and her fiancé.”

  Smith scowled down at the top of her head. “How the hell did you know about that?”

  “Randi and I discussed you rather intensively one evening,” Valentina replied. “A species of girl talk. I’ve also studied you for a bit, and I’ve come to certain conclusions of my own. You’re one of those poor bastards stuck in the middle-tough enough to make the blood decisions, but with enough humanity left for it to gnaw at you. It’s a difficult balance to maintain. That makes you rare and worth keeping. That’s why, in due course, we’re going to become lovers.”

  Smith couldn’t prevent the soft bark of laughter that escaped him. He had wondered, and he had been given an answer. “I see. Don’t I have any say in the matter?”

  Valentina nestled contentedly again, tucking her head in under his chin. “No, not really. Don’t bother yourself about it now, Jon. I’ll handle all the details.”

  She had to be joking in her usual quirky manner. But there was something about the calm woman’s surety in her voice that didn’t seem to apply to that scenario. He couldn’t help but recall the last lingering warmth of her lips on his yesterday, and he had a sudden urge to experience that warmth again.

  Then the muzzy grumble and stirring of Major Smyslov in the next compartment broke the fragile bubble and returned them to the bleak reality of Wednesday Island.

  It was a pale gray world atop the saddleback glacier. The dully luminous cloud cover hid the tops of the peaks and faded the horizons to the north and south into a vague nonvisibility. The surface snow and ice had been infected by the grayness as well, losing their luster. Only the dark exposed rock of the mountain flanks stood out, extruding from the dingy-paper whiteness with an exaggerated three-dimensionality. The immediate visibility around the downed bomber and the three human flyspecks standing beside it was good, yet it was difficult to truly see. Amid the blanched contrasts it was hard to gauge sizes and distances, and something akin to vertigo intermittently tugged at the consciousness.

  Jon Smith felt the effect as he panned his binoculars in their instinctive slow circle, seeing nothing either desired or unwanted.

  “All right, lady and gentleman, where are they?” he asked. “Where did they go after the crash?”

  “I would say down the coast, Colonel,” Smyslov replied swiftly. “They would need food, and there is nothing to be had here. Along the coast there would be seals and bears. There would also be better opportunities for shelter. The weather up here on the glacier would be too bad.”

  Valentina shook her hooded head. “No, I disagree, Gregori. They made their survival camp up here, probably within sight of this aircraft.”

  “If they did, it’s pretty well hidden.” Smith returned his binoculars to their case. “And the major makes a pretty good case about the food. What brings you to your conclusion, Val?”

  “A number of things,” she replied. “For one, the stripped state of the aircraft. It would take a lot of work and a lot of trips to move all of that material out of the wreck. They wouldn’t have carried it far. For another, they wouldn’t be immediately concerned about food. They would have had emergency rations for at least a couple of weeks, and they weren’t planning to stay around for that long.”

  “Would they have had much choice?”

  “They thought so, Jon. These people were not planning on setting up housekeeping. They intended to go home. Remember how they pulled the radio and radar systems out of the plane, as well as the auxiliary power unit? They had all of the components and expertise they needed to build one hellaciously powerful radio transmitter, one that could reach halfway around the world, and certainly back to Russia. That’s another reason they’d want to stay up here. The higher elevation would increase their broadcast and reception range.”

  “Then why didn’t they use it?” Smith asked.

  “I don’t know.” Smith could feel the words the historian didn’t want to speak aloud. He turned toward Smyslov. “What do you think, Major?”

  The Russian shook his head. “I must disagree, Colonel. If they had built such a radio, they would have called for rescue. Obviously they did not.”

  Whoever had chosen Gregori Smyslov had made one critical error with the man. He could lie well with his mouth, but not with his eyes or body language. The Russian’s words only emphasized a subtle change that had crept into the team’s dynamics overnight. Once more it had become an us-versus-them scenario, with Smyslov standing alone.

  And yet, Smith pondered, if it was an us-versus-them, why hadn’t Smyslov simply allowed him to suffocate in the bomb bay the previous afternoon? He’d had a blank check to kill.

  “We’ve got to find out which one of you is right, and fast,” Smith continued. “We know the anthrax is in the wreck. We know that someone else positively knows about it. We must assume these individuals are en route to collect it. Given that the hostiles have gone active on the island, we must also assume that we may have only hours before their main body arrives.”

  Smyslov spoke up sharply. “Colonel, given the situation, should not we immediately return to the base camp? Our priority must be to resume contact with our superiors.”

  There could be no doubt about it. Smyslov wanted not to find that survival camp as urgently as Valentina wanted to locate it, and probably for the same reason.

  “A valid point, Major, but we will still make a sweep up here for the aircrew’s survival camp.” Smith extended his hand and swept it from north to south, covering the eastern edge of the glacier. “Granted that Professor Metrace is correct, the crew’s best bet for finding shelter should be along there, the base of East Peak.”

  “The camp may have been well drifted over during the last fifty years,” Valentina added, slinging the model 70 over her shoulder. “So I’d suggest watching for shapes, especially straight linear ones, under the surface of the snow.”

  “Got it. Any other questions? Okay, let’s move out.” Smith kept his own rifle cradled in his arms as they started the trudge across the ice.

  Smith worked to the north, angling across the saddleback to the point where the glacier broke into a wicked blocky tumble of shattered ice, a miniature Beardmore that slumped down the front face of the island to the narrow coastal strip. From that point, according to the plan, they swept back across the gap. Advancing line abreast at twenty-yard intervals, they scouted the broken stone and ice interface along the base of the eastern peak.

  Valentina kept to t
he inside slot, ranging along the bottom of the slope with the eager intensity of a hunting bird dog. Smith took the center point in the line while Smyslov stayed on the outer flank. In addition to watching the glacial surface, Smith found himself covering Val as she worked and eyeing the mountain slopes above for a variety of potential threats: snow cornices, avalanche chutes, and the possibility of camouflaged observers.

  He also found himself intermittently watching Gregori Smyslov out of the corner of his eye. Was the Russian looking for something else beyond the remains of the lost aircrew? Who was he waiting for, and what would be the key that would trigger him into action? And what would that action be?

  They passed the crash site and climbed the last hundred gently sloping yards to the central ridge of the saddleback. Smith paused for a moment in his trudging advance to survey the greater world.

  The sea smoke was closing in around Wednesday once more, the mists lapping at the island’s flanks, killing the horizons and enhancing the unworldly sense of isolation. For a moment the saddleback was a literal island in the sky, sandwiched in a layer of clarity between the fog and the overcast. How long it would last was questionable.

  It didn’t really matter. Soon they must break off the search and head back for the station. And maybe just as well. If Val was right, locating the camp of the downed aircrew might be the activation point of the Russian alternate agenda. Maybe it would be wiser to eat this apple one bite at a time, keeping Smyslov as an ally. Deal with the anthrax question first; then force the confrontation.

  Smith turned and then stumbled as his right crampon snagged momentarily. Automatically he glanced down at the obstruction.

  The spiked toe of his arctic boot had kicked up and exposed a short length of wire, its black insulation crumbling with age and cold.

  Smith hesitated for one moment more. It would be easy enough to scrape a boot edge of snow over it and just keep going. But then, not knowing had been at the heart of this crisis from the beginning. Deliberately courting ignorance now simply didn’t make sense. Smith shifted his rifle to his left hand and lifted the right over his head, the fist clinched in the rally signal.

  “It’s Soviet,” Smyslov confirmed, kneeling beside the exposed wire. “A trailing antenna. The kind that could be streamed behind an aircraft for long-range communications.”

  “Laying an insulated aerial across the ice has been a communications expedient used in polar environments before,” Valentina confirmed.

  “But where is the radio set?” Smyslov asked, getting back to his feet. “Where is the camp? There is nothing, only the wire.”

  “The easiest way to resolve that question is to follow it.” Smith pointed toward the base of east peak. “Thataway.”

  The antenna had melted into the frozen surface like a thread across an ice cube, but the incessant scouring of the winds had kept it buried only a few inches deep. Exposing the antenna as they went, they found that it swept in a shallow curve, having drifted with the flow of the glacier. At one point stress had snapped the thin wire, but the broken end was located only a few feet away. Surprisingly it led toward an almost sheer blank-faced wall of basalt rock, vanishing into the shoulder-high drift of hard-packed snow at its base.

  “What the hell?”

  Undaunted, Valentina Metrace unslung her pack and rifle and drew her belt knife. Dropping to her knees, she began to tunnel into the drift like an industrious badger. After a moment Smith and Smyslov joined her.

  It swiftly became apparent that the drifted snow was packed into an overhang in the black rock, a groove rasped into the side of the mountain by the incessant sawing drag of the glacier. And then Smith noticed the texture of the snow changing. It was growing more solid, and it was as if a pattern had been worked into it.

  “These are snow blocks!” Valentina exclaimed.

  It was true. Someone had used building blocks of compacted snow, igloolike, to build a wall within the overhang. Over the decades, the blocks had cold-welded together into a solid glassy mass that resisted the stabbing knife blades, but their resistance couldn’t prevent them from eventually yielding.

  “Canvas! This is it! It’s a cave!”

  The snow wall and the ancient canvas windscreen behind it collapsed into darkness. And the icy dankness of long unstirred air flowed out.

  Smith retrieved the big electric lantern from his pack and played the beam into the mouth of the cavern. The tunnel was perhaps six feet wide and low enough so that even Valentina would be forced to stoop to enter. Small, jagged stalactites of black rock studded the cave roof.

  “A lava tube,” Smith commented.

  “To be expected on a volcanic island,” Valentina agreed. “Look, on the floor.”

  The antenna wire and what looked like a hose extended from beneath the small avalanche of snow and ice they had created, to loop around a bend in the tunnel perhaps ten feet ahead.

  “This must be it,” Valentina repeated. Hunching down, she started along the tunnel.

  “Just a second.” Smith passed the historian her rifle, then caught up his own SR-25. “Let’s get the gear inside and out of sight, just in case.”

  “I will take care of it, Colonel,” Smyslov spoke up.

  “All right, we’ll wait for you if we find anything interesting.” Smith removed a couple of hand flares from his pack and moved into the cave after Valentina.

  Smyslov lugged the packs inside the cave, then paused for a moment outside its mouth, taking a last long look around.

  The others, the members of the Spetsnaz covering force, were here. He had seen no sign of their presence, but that wasn’t surprising. The men chosen for this task would be snow devils, invisible in this white world, leaving no hint of their presence or passage.

  But they were present. He could feel them. They had been ordered to keep the crash site and its environs under strict observation. They would be watching him now, waiting for the one order Smyslov was authorized to give. The one command that would bring them in to kill.

  If only the bloody political officer had done his bloody job!

  Maybe then this all could be mended somehow. Maybe then he could regain control of the situation and stop any further escalation. But he must also be prepared to invoke the alternative. He must be ready to perform his duty.

  Smyslov unzipped his parka and moved the stainless steel cigarette lighter to an outside pocket. Then he pulled the Velcro retaining tab on his belt holster and drew the model 92 Beretta he had been issued by the Americans. Ignoring the irony of readying a weapon for use against its owners, he checked the clip seating with a pop of his palm against the bottom of the handgrip. Drawing back the slide, he manually jacked a shell into the pistol’s chamber.

  Snapping off the safety, he returned the Beretta to its holster. Soon he would know if he would need it.

  “Quite the setup,” Valentina murmured.

  Around the bend in the tunnel they had found the auxiliary power unit that had been taken from the bomber. The length of hose led from the mouth of the cave to the exhaust outlet of the engine. Just beyond the generator set and connected to it via a set of batteries and power leads was a patched-together but impressive-looking radio rig.

  The ever-present frost covered its exposed banks of old-fashioned vacuum tubes and control dials. Tools and unused electronics components were stacked around the set, and a transmitter key lay on a scrap-wood table positioned in front of the set, along with a set of earphones removed by an operator half a century before.

  “I knew it,” she went on in a whisper. “I knew it the minute I saw the stripped chassis in the bomber!”

  The duralumin radio operator’s stool had been taken from the plane, and Valentina sank onto it. Her hands lifted, but she acted as if she were afraid to touch anything. “There’s a pencil here, Jon. There’s a pencil but no paper. This is a communications desk. There should be paper! A log, notes, something!”

  Smith panned the wide beam of the lantern around the gut of th
e passage. “Wait a minute…” The light fell on a blackened bucket set against the rocky wall. “Here we go.”

  He took up the bucket by its bail and set it beside the stool.

  “What is it?” Valentina asked, looking down.

  “It’s a fire can,” Smith replied, hunkering beside the bucket. “It’s been half-filled with crushed pumice. It acts like a wick, like sand. Slosh a little gasoline in there and light it, and you’d have a steady flame for heat and cooking.”

  Valentina nodded. “And they would have a few thousand gallons of aviation fuel lying about.”

  “But something else has been burned in this one.” Smith drew his knife and probed amid the charred rock. “See that? That’s paper ash, a lot of it. I’ll bet that’s your radio log and maybe a set of code books, too.”

  “Somebody cleaned house.”

  In the lantern light their eyes met, and they communicated without words for a moment. There was no reason that this radio set shouldn’t have worked. There was no reason for this castaway aircrew not to have communicated with the world. There was no reason they shouldn’t have summoned help.

  Gregori Smyslov shuffled around the corner of the tunnel from the outside, snapping on his own flashlight. “All is secure, Colonel.”

  Smith kept his face poker-neutral. “Okay, let’s keep going.”

  He turned and continued down the tunnel. A few yards farther on, the lava tube they were in broke through into a second larger, lower chamber. Slabs of basalt had been crudely aligned to create a set of uneven steps down a jagged collapsed facing. The porous black volcanic rock simply drank up the flashlight beams, and the darkness continued to predominate. It was not until Smith and his team had made the cautious descent to the floor of the chamber that they realized they were not alone.

  Smith heard Valentina gasp from close by at his side, and Smyslov swore under his breath in Russian. The lantern beam panned across scattered items of survival gear, the bits of random trash produced around a lived-in camp, and finally, against the rear cavern wall, a row of huddled unmoving forms in canvas-skinned sleeping bags.