Polar Quest

by Alex Archer

  She moved through the night and headed back to her shelter. Sleep would be a welcome relief for her. She dreaded telling Dave about his satellite phone, however. If she got out of this alive, she’d buy him a replacement as soon as they managed to get home.

  If she got home.

  The thought that someone was so actively seeking to kill her made her feel awful. It couldn’t be the two guys back from Gallagher’s, could it? Why would they expose themselves so early on? The best way to kill someone was to not announce your intentions and then simply erase the target one day out of the blue. No one would ever see it coming.

  Yet there’d been at least two very clear attempts made on her life.

  She passed the entrance to the dig site and paused. I wonder if the research team really did wait to blow that wall.

  She smiled. She would have heard the explosion, wouldn’t she?

  Why not just peek down there and see if it was still wired and ready to go?

  She looked around but could make out no one watching her in the darkness. The snow blew hard, blinding her as it flew in horizontally.

  Annja ducked into the shelter.

  The guards who had been stationed there were absent. Annja shook her head. Once the commanding officer is gone, discipline apparently starts to slip in this unit, she thought.

  Poor Thomson would be disappointed.

  Annja unzipped her hood and parka and walked down the long sloping tunnel toward the fork. The lights overhead seemed to move of their own accord, probably from the ambient breeze that Annja had let into the shelter when she entered.

  The light was fair and she could make out more pockets of coal in the dirt and rock of the mountain base. She picked up a lump and smiled. Some day this might even turn into a diamond, she thought. If I could just crush these all up by hand, I’d be a rich girl.

  Her boots skidded along the path as loose gravel plagued her steps. She stumbled once and had to caution herself to slow down or risk repeating the concussion she’d given herself the other day.

  At the fork in the tunnel, Annja turned left and headed down into the darkness. There still weren’t any lights strung up in this part of the dig site and it bothered her. Why hadn’t the other team arranged for lights? Wouldn’t they want to be able to see as they made their way down to the cavern?

  Like a lot of other things going on here, that didn’t make sense, either.

  So what else is new? she thought.

  Annja picked her way carefully down the path. Ahead of her, she could make out ambient light coming out of the second dig site cavern. She could start to make out the features of the tunnel and it helped her avoid a nasty depression in the ground.

  That’s probably where I stumbled and fell yesterday, she thought.

  Annja reached the entrance to the cavern and stopped.

  Was someone there?

  She waited, squinting to try to make out anyone who might be moving around. The cavern was large but not nearly large enough that she wouldn’t be able to see someone sneaking about.

  And yet something felt weird.

  In front of her, she could see the massive wall of granite. It would take a lot of explosive to blow that apart, she thought. And it was strange that she could only make out a few of the bored holes that she’d seen them putting explosives into yesterday.

  Had they changed the wiring since then?

  Annja stepped into the cavern, her feet grinding a bit of loose rock underfoot. The sound of it echoed throughout the chamber.

  So much for staying quiet, she thought.

  But did she need to? There was no one here in the cavern.

  Annja took a quick glance around to reassure herself she was alone. Then she closed her eyes and saw the sword hovering, ready for use. Annja opened her eyes again, already feeling much better. Peace of mind was a precious commodity lately.

  She walked around the cavern to the boxes of high explosives. Opening one of the crates, she was surprised to find it empty.

  Where was the rest of it?

  She glanced at the granite wall. It seemed utterly impenetrable. How in the world would they blow that in such a way that they could gain access to the other side? Wouldn’t they have to dig out all the rubble before they could do so?

  Annja walked over to the granite and stared at it. Nooks and crannies of the tough rock stared back at her. Annja could feel the weightiness of the wall looming before her, a giant block in the way of progress.

  She ran her hands over the cool rock.

  She froze.

  Annja felt the rock in other places. Her heart rate kicked up a notch.

  She placed both her hands on it and what she felt on her skin didn’t feel like rock at all.

  She pushed. Part of the granite wall gave in.

  Annja pushed harder and the wall gave in more. It felt like a combination of papier mache and cardboard.

  The granite wall was fake.

  Annja moved closer to where the wall seemed to vanish into the side of the cavern. Find the edge, she told herself. Find the place where the wall meets the real rock and dirt of the mountain.

  She ran her hands over the surface of the wall quickly. What was behind this? What was it that someone was trying so hard to hide from view?

  And even more concerning, how many people were involved in this from the start? She’d seen at least four people in here yesterday. All of them were busy planting explosives.

  Was the entire camp planning to steal the nuclear generator? Was it an entire team of traitors?

  Annja thought she found the end point of the fake wall. She felt farther down toward the ground and found a little bit of purchase. She tried crushing the wall inward, but it held, so instead she pulled back on the bit she had and a large piece came away in her hands.

  Annja got down on her hands and knees and looked through to the other side.

  What she saw scared her.

  Piles of explosives sat from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern.

  Whoever had planted them wasn’t trying to take out a wall. They were trying to demolish an entire mountain.

  And everything around it.

  35

  She had to get out and tell Garin, she thought.

  Annja turned and found herself staring into the barrel of a gun. Behind the gun, she saw a face she hadn’t seen since her first night at Gallagher’s bar. He wore a broad smile across his face. “Remember me?”

  Annja brought her hands up. “Yeah. I remember you. You’re the jerk who hassled Zach. And then later on you tried to kill me.”

  He shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”

  “You got a name?”

  He smirked. “You can call me Mitch. That’ll do for now. You know, at least until you die.”

  Annja looked around. “Where’s your partner in crime? The smaller guy you were with.”

  “Right here.”

  Annja turned and saw the second guy from the bar entering the cavern. “Nice to see you again, Annja. Sorry about that elbow blast to your ribs that night. I hope they’ve been causing you a great deal of pain.”

  “Not too much, actually,” Annja said. “I guess you just aren’t the man you thought you were.”

  He scowled and then looked at Mitch. “Coast is clear. No one saw us come in after her. We should be good to go. Let’s get this finished up and then get the hell out of here. Things that go bang make me nervous.”

  Annja frowned. “And what’s your name?”

  “Chuck,” he said.

  “Mitch and Chuck. The two chaos brothers. Is that it?” Annja smiled. “And you guys are behind this whole operation? Somehow I just can’t see that.”

  Mitch glared at her. “Shut up, Annja.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, this was far too well planned to be orchestrated by you clowns. Someone else has to be pulling the strings.”

  Chuck frowned. “Can’t we just kill her now?”

  Mitch shook his head. “You know what the orders are. It ha
s to look like an accident.”

  Annja smirked. “Uh, yeah. You guys might want to rethink subtlety when it comes to wiring my laptop to explode. That wasn’t going to look like an accident.”

  Mitch smiled. “Nice piece of work, huh?”

  “Oh, that was you, Einstein? Yeah, real nice the way it was shaped to blow in only one direction,” Annja said.

  “Had to make sure we got the target.”

  Annja shook her head. “Well, you missed, didn’t you? I’m still here.”

  Chuck laughed. “She thinks we wanted to take her out. She doesn’t know a damned thing, does she? And here we were, concerned that she’d be able to figure it out and ruin the whole thing. Waste of worry.”

  Annja couldn’t conceal her surprise. “You wanted Colonel Thomson dead? Why?”

  Mitch sighed. “Because you’d be out of the way, that’s why. If it looked like you’d rigged your own laptop to explode, then we hoped that fool Major Braden would have you locked up for murdering Thomson.”

  “But he didn’t,” Chuck said. “Not that it matters anymore.” He busied himself with positioning a small black box in the center of the explosive bundles. “He’ll die soon enough, anyway.”

  That’s what you think, Annja thought. She knew Garin might be able to survive the explosion, but she wouldn’t. She had to get out and she had to warn Zach.

  But Dave?

  Annja knew now. He had to be behind this whole thing. She thought back to Gallagher’s and how quiet he was when Mitch and Chuck came to the table to harass Zach. Dave hadn’t done much of anything. He was content to let them rile up Zach and Annja.

  Mitch hadn’t moved the gun barrel and he was far enough away that making a move on him would have been extremely dangerous. She had to find some way to close the space or she’d be shot several times before she could reach him.

  “So where’s Dave, then?” she asked.

  Mitch shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Dave, the guy behind this whole thing. Where is he now? If he’s hurting Zach, I’ll kill you all.”

  Mitch laughed. “I don’t know what’s funnier—the fact that she has no clue or that she thinks she’s going to be able to kill us.”

  Chuck joined in. “You’ve really been in the dark here, huh? I almost feel sorry for you. Almost, but not quite.”

  Annja saw some movement from somewhere behind Mitch. Someone was coming. All she had to do was keep Mitch and Chuck occupied and then they’d be surprised when they saw the new person show up. Annja could use that to her advantage and jump Mitch and his gun.

  Annja’s heart sank.

  “Hey, Annja,” Dave said.

  She couldn’t figure out what was happening. None of it made any sense. Someone was pushing Dave into the cavern.

  “Zach?” she whispered.

  He poked Dave in the back with another gun. “Get over there next to her and don’t try anything.”

  Annja shook her head. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked angrily.

  Mitch greeted Zach. “You were right—she doesn’t have a clue. She’s been spouting off her theories and none of them have been close to correct so far.”

  Zach nodded. “It’s a shame, really. I so hate for this to have to end this way, but that’s how it comes down sometimes, huh?”

  “Wait a minute,” Annja said. “How did you get mixed up in all of this? I thought these guys hated you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the way we wanted it to look,” Zach said. “We figured if you were so preoccupied with the thought of Mitch and Chuck here gunning for you, you’d miss seeing what was really going on right in front of you. Apparently, it worked like a charm.”

  Annja felt herself getting angry. “Why did you bring me down here? I mean, if you’re just going to kill me, then what’s the point of asking for me in the first place?”

  Zach shrugged. “I never thought they’d actually go and get you, to be honest. The winter was coming down and when I made my request, I figured it was a given they’d tell me no. Instead, they got you down here in record time and I suddenly had a big problem. I needed you out of the way, Annja. There’s too much at stake here to let you interfere with it.”

  “The relics are fakes,” Annja said.

  “Obviously,” Zach replied. “We planted them.”

  “You did?”

  He sighed. “Absolutely.”

  “But you’ve been digging your heart out. Every day. For what? Just to sell the appearance of being obsessed with this?”

  Zach smiled. “Pretty good, huh? I never knew I had it in me. I’d give myself an Oscar for it, but I suppose I’m a bit biased.”

  Annja shook her head. “What about the divorce? And the kids?”

  “Oh, hell, they left me a long time ago.” Zach smiled. “Annja, it’s been years since we last spoke. That little bit of trickery was easy to pull off. It’s the truth, after all, just with the time line altered. I’ve been dead to them for years.”

  “So you staged all this?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Sure. This payoff is huge.”

  “What payoff?”

  Zach sat down on a nearby cluster of rocks. “It’s twofold, really. We take the nuke generator and sell it to the highest bidder on the black market. Should fetch us a cool two billion, at the very least. At the same time, when we blow the mountain, the assumption will be that this is an environmental-disaster area. They’ll send in a cleanup crew that will discover that this mountain is actually filled with tons upon tons of valuable minerals and chemical deposits. Navstar will come in as the contractor to clean it up and when they ‘discover’ the deposits, they’ll remove them, as well.”

  “Meaning even more money,” Annja said.

  Zach smiled. “Lots more, in fact. Easily enough to make the three of us set for life.”

  Annja stared at him. She felt sick. “What happened to you? I would never have thought you could dream of doing something like this.”

  He frowned. “I grew up, Annja. I got tired of life handing me the short end of the stick. I was sick of hearing about how everyone I knew was getting success handed to them without any work to speak of. You know what that’s like? Day after day of getting news about so-and-so buying a new vacation home or investing in the next great dot-com? Meanwhile, your family hates you and you’ve got a crummy two-bedroom bungalow outside Tampa where you spend the majority of time praying there’s not a bad hurricane season. Day after day of that is enough to make anyone a bit twisted.”

  “But to go so far as murder?”

  Zach shrugged. “I recognized early on I wasn’t necessarily cut out to be the triggerman. But finding capable talent is never that hard. You just have to know where to look. Mitch and Chuck here are experts. Former military with combat under their belts. Not to mention the all-important explosives work.”

  Annja looked at Dave. “And where does he come into play?”

  Zach sighed. “Well, Dave here is a bona fide special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Annja stared at Dave and he shrugged. “You thought I was the bad guy. Sorry about that,” he said.

  She shrugged. She’d gotten everything so wrong. She looked back at Zach. “So what, he was sent to dismantle your operation?”

  “We had a tough time figuring him out. He played the geologist part well. But when you went and used his satellite phone, that kind of made us a little nervous. You see, he’s not the only one with a sat phone. I’ve got one, too.”

  Annja frowned. “You’re full of surprises.”

  Zach nodded. “You bet.”

  Mitch still hadn’t done much in the way of moving closer to her. And Zach seemed perfectly at ease. Chuck was still rigging the explosives.

  “And now you’re going to kill us?” Annja asked.

  Zach got up from his seat. “Definitely. I’m afraid your deaths are necessary to ensure that our plan comes off without another hitch.”

  “An
d the three of you will be the only survivors? How suspicious is that going to look?”

  “Not suspicious at all. You see, we’re bringing the colonel’s body back to McMurdo. We’re on a mission of mercy. How could we ever know that this entire camp and its inhabitants were about to die?”

  “Poor you,” Annja said.

  “Money is a perfect grief counselor,” Zach said. Chuck laughed and Mitch smiled.

  Annja frowned. “Wait a minute, there’s one thing I don’t understand—”

  “Just one thing?” Zach said mockingly.

  “Yesterday, I saw members of the other research team planting explosives in here. But that wall is fake. Anyone would be able to see that if they felt it. Why didn’t they know?”

  Zach nodded at Chuck. “Show her.”

  Chuck walked over to a section of the cavern she hadn’t explored. She heard him switch a button on, and instantly the area was filled with people. And they were doing the exact same actions Annja had witnessed yesterday.

  “A hologram?” The whole scene was getting crazier.

  Zach smiled. “Tripped by a motion sensor at the entrance to the cavern as you came in and snooped yesterday. Nice, huh?”

  “And what about the real team? Where are they?”

  Mitch smiled. “Buried farther down another tunnel that we dug and covered up.”

  “I saw them in the chow hall the other night,” Annja said.

  Mitch nodded. “And then the next day they had a tragic accident.”

  “You’re sick. All of you.”

  Zach sighed. “I wish you’d try to understand that I don’t want to kill you. But unfortunately, it’s just one of the things that has to be dealt with. And I’ve suffered far too long to have anyone interrupt my plans now.”

  Zach looked at Chuck. “How much longer?”

  “Two minutes.”

  Zach nodded and then looked back at Annja. “So this is it, then. Goodbye. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “No chance in hell of that,” Annja said.

  Zach shrugged. “Fair enough. All right, let’s see your hands. I’ve got to tie you up so we can get out of here.” Zach spoke to Mitch. “Keep them covered.”