Black Ice

by Brad Thor

  CHAPTER 58

  As Harvath dragged Pavel up onto the beach, the Russian was still unconscious. Oleg was so exhausted and riddled with cold, he could barely stand. Crawling out of the water, he collapsed on the ground, shivering violently. It was imperative that Harvath get them out of the storm and figure out a way to get all of them warm.

  Through the curtains of wind-driven sleet, he spotted a small cavern. It wasn’t much, but it would provide some shelter, which was a start.

  Helping Oleg to his feet, he pointed to it and said, “Go. Don’t stop until you get there.”

  While the man stumbled down the beach, Harvath took off his life vest, grabbed Pavel under the arms, and began pulling him to safety.

  The swim had taken almost every ounce of strength he had. Battling the waves had required a herculean effort. But they had made it. And if they could make it this far, they could make it the rest of the way. No one was dying on his watch.

  The seals, unaccustomed to human beings, barked and moved off as the men approached.

  Just getting inside the shelter of the cavern, out of the storm, made a huge difference.

  Oleg’s hands and fingers were so numb, he couldn’t remove his life jacket. Harvath helped him and then did the same for Pavel.

  He propped the two life jackets against the wall and had Oleg sit with his back to them, like cushions. He then maneuvered Pavel over and told the Russian to draw his colleague in tight, wrapping his arms and legs around him.

  Now it was time to make a fire.

  Harvath knew the signs well enough to see that hypothermia had set in. What he did in the next several minutes would be the difference between life and death for all three of them.

  Ignoring his own shivering and pushing through his exhaustion, he patted his pockets. He was trying to remember in which one he had placed the lighter Mercer had picked out for him at the sporting goods store in Kirkenes.

  No matter how many times he felt each pocket, he couldn’t find it. Then he remembered. He hadn’t purchased a lighter—he had purchased a set of stormproof matches. They were in his backpack, along with all of his other supplies, which he had set down when he took off his life jacket. Confusion was another dangerous hallmark of hypothermia.

  He hated going back into the storm, but he had no choice. Without the matches, they wouldn’t be able to start a fire.

  Even with them, they might still have a problem. Not only were his hands and fingers almost completely numb, but Svalbard was devoid of trees. Birds here nested on the ground, using moss and grasses. Harvath didn’t know what, if anything, he would be able to find to burn.

  Then, ten yards farther up the beach, beyond his backpack, he saw it—a seal carcass.

  It had been mauled pretty good, likely by a polar bear, but was only partially eaten. Something must have frightened the predator off. A meal like this wasn’t something a bear walked away from. He wondered if their out-of-control helicopter, roaring through the sky overhead, might have spooked it.

  Whatever the reason, the kill was fresh, which meant the bear might still be close. And if it was close, that meant that it could come back. Harvath made a mental note to unsheathe the rifle and have it ready.

  Dragging the seal down the beach proved to be too much. He was just too cold and too wiped out.

  Returning to the cavern, he removed the space blanket from his pack and covered the Russians with it, taking care to tuck it in around them.

  Next, he pulled the rifle from the dry bag. After inspecting it and making sure a round was chambered, he leaned it against the wall where Oleg could get to it if he needed to.

  Then, retrieving the knife from Mercer’s capabilities kit, he went back out to do a fast and ugly field dressing of the seal.

  As he did, even in the driving storm, his body shaking from the cold, he said a silent prayer of thanks.

  It took him two trips to finally get everything back to the cavern. Moving along the beach, he kept his eyes peeled for anything he could use for tinder. Without it, there wasn’t going to be a fire. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen any—no moss, no grasses, nothing.

  He knew there had to be something. The cold was messing with his brain. He wasn’t thinking straight. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a moment. That’s when it came to him.

  Opening his eyes, he reached for his pack. He had plenty of tinder. Ten thousand dollars’ worth, to be exact.

  Removing the currency, he set it aside along with the case of stormproof matches and used the rocks to quickly build a fire pit.

  When everything was ready, he removed a small plastic spoon that came with one of the snacks he had bought in Kirkenes, struck a match, and lit it on fire.

  It was one of the survival tricks he had learned a long time ago. A normal-size plastic spoon would burn for about ten minutes. From this little one, he figured he could get three or four minutes at best, but that was all he needed.

  Placing the burning spoon into the fire pit, he carefully placed crinkled dollars and kroner, building up the flame.

  When he got it where he wanted it, he used the bones he had removed from the seal as a grate and placed pieces of fat on top of it.

  Seal blubber, he had learned years ago in his winter survival training, spoiled rapidly but made excellent fuel.

  With the fire going and beginning to give off respectable heat, he needed to focus on getting warmth into their bodies. Everything he had been taught called for hot liquids. But what did he have that they could warm up?

  A voice in the back of his mind encouraged him to look in his pack, and there it was—the bottle of water Oleg had given him during the “beverage services” portion of their inaugural flight.

  Setting it close enough to the fire to get the temperature they needed, however, was a no-go. There was too great a chance the bottle would rupture or melt, and then they’d lose all of their water. But that wasn’t their only option. He also had a bottle of vodka.

  Despite the warming sensation it gave, alcohol consumption was considered the mother of all no-no’s at the height of a survival situation.

  Using the empty rifle scabbard as a bladder, Harvath opened the bottle and poured it all in. The vodka had plenty of other uses and there was no point in wasting it. Now, thanks to the glass bottle, he had a melt-proof reservoir in which to heat their water.

  Filling the bottle with the water, he placed it near the fire. While he waited for it to warm, he dug into Mercer’s trauma kit and found another mylar space blanket, which he removed from its pouch and wrapped around himself as he placed more seal blubber on the fire. If they could successfully rewarm themselves, everything else was possible.

  He didn’t like the fact that Pavel was still unconscious. That was very bad. Despite his frozen hands and fingers, Harvath had given him a cursory examination but had failed to ascertain what was wrong with him. The longer the pilot remained out of it, the more Harvath’s concern grew.

  When the water had been sufficiently heated, Harvath poured in a couple of oral rehydration packets from the trauma kit, swirled the bottle around, and sipped at it for a moment before moving over and helping Oleg take a few drinks.

  Slowly, they shared the bottle back and forth. As Pavel was unconscious, giving him anything to eat or drink was out of the question.

  Lemon-flavored water Harvath never would have given much thought to tasted like liquid gold. As wonderful as the fire was, it didn’t feel nearly as good as that hot beverage, the warmth suffusing his core and radiating outward through his body.

  Laying even more blubber on the fire, he was grateful for the heat. The sky hadn’t killed them. The ocean hadn’t killed them. The cold wasn’t going to kill them. There was no question in his mind. They were going to make it. Now, he needed to think about what came next.

  Unzipping his coat, he pulled out his cell phone and fumbled with the power button. He had no idea where they were or if he could even get service.

  Nothing happen
ed. The phone was dead, killed by seawater. There was, however, something else worth trying.

  Reaching into his pack, he removed the GPS device that he had resuscitated at lunch. Powering it up, he placed it at the edge of the cavern and waited.

  There were a bunch of reasons GPS units ran into problems in the Arctic. From ionospheric interference to the limits of orbital inclinations, getting a decent reading this far north could be a real roll of the dice.

  With the storm raging, Harvath was fully prepared for the device to fail to link up with enough satellites to produce a result, but that wasn’t the case. It did. And it did so almost immediately.

  They were about five miles south of Ny-Ålesund, along the eastern coast of the Bøgger Peninsula. If he followed the beach, he could be there in less than an hour.

  That meant, of course, that he would have to leave Oleg and Pavel behind. But if he didn’t go, there was no way that any help was going to come.

  Stacking the blubber where Oleg could reach it and place it on the fire, Harvath said, “We’re not far from Ny-Ålesund. It’s very close.”

  Oleg smiled. “That’s what you said about swim to beach. You were lying then, or now?”

  Harvath smiled back. “Now I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Truth is good.”

  “Truth is good,” Harvath agreed, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I will go get help. You need to stay here, keep getting warm, and protect Pavel. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” the Russian replied. “I can do that.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Harvath took off his mountaineering jacket, wrapped his core with the mylar blanket, and then put the coat back on.

  Saying goodbye to Oleg, he shouldered his pack and headed out into the storm.

  Hood up, head down, Harvath was resolute. Despite the lashing sleet and the clawing wind, he would not be beaten. Determination over distance, he told himself, adopting Hilde’s phrase to suit his current circumstances.

  But as he trudged on, he felt a chill rolling down his spine. It wasn’t the weather, however. Something else was happening. Something wasn’t right.

  He stopped and looked behind. Visibility was poor. What little he could see was nothing but empty beach. The hypothermia continued to play tricks with his mind. He was becoming paranoid.

  Nevertheless, the Beretta pistol, which had stayed miraculously dry in his pack, now sat in his outer coat pocket. He was taking nothing for granted.

  He kept moving. So much time had been lost. It was critical that he get to the Black Ice device before the Spetsnaz team did.

  To shake the frozen fog from his brain, he tried to anticipate where, and how, the Russian Special Forces soldiers would make landfall. Would they come in via a minisub? Or would it be via a rigid inflatable boat?

  The storm would provide only a certain amount of cover. The best thing about it was that it would keep most people indoors.

  Other than that, there was no full cover of darkness coming. Not this time of year and not this far north. It was, after all, the “land of the midnight sun.”

  Spetsnaz soldiers were very well trained. The only limits imposed on them were financial. Often their missions were cut short or curtailed because of budget constraints. The cheapest way for them to land was by boat—and it posed the greatest risk of them being detected. A minisub posed the least amount of risk of exposure, but minisubs didn’t grow on trees. They were very expensive, both to operate and maintain.

  That said, with the Northern Fleet headquartered so close, Harvath figured they could lay their hands on one. In fact, they probably already had, attaching it to one of the submarines they had launched during the Black Ice test and the blinding of the GLOBUS system.

  If the Spetsnaz team did intend to come in via minisub, the only remaining question was where they would land. To figure that out, he was going to need more information—information he intended to extract from Wen Ying the moment he got his hands on him.

  He was just beginning to formulate his plan for hitting the Chinese research station when he felt another chill race down his spine.

  Spinning, he pulled the pistol, expecting someone or something to be right behind him. There was nothing there but the storm. At least, that’s what his eyes and ears told him. His instincts, however, told him something completely different. He was being stalked.

  He stood there straining his ears above the roar of the wind and the crash of the surf. The sleet raking his hood was all but deafening and he pulled it back so he could listen even more intently. It was useless.

  Keeping his hand gripped tightly around the butt of the Beretta, he returned the pistol to his pocket and continued walking—looking over his shoulder every few moments.

  Adding to his problems, the storm was becoming more intense. The wind, sleet, and cold were all getting worse. With each step, the numbness and pain in his body was mounting.

  He couldn’t stop. He had to keep going. He needed to get help for Pavel and Oleg. He also needed to get help for himself. That was becoming more apparent with each passing second. Without dry clothes and more warm liquids, he wouldn’t be able to help anyone, much less successfully complete his mission.

  He made it a good thirty yards before he felt the chill race down his spine once more. This time it was accompanied by a noise—and the noise wasn’t human.

  It was guttural, a grunt of some sort, and came from what sounded like an enormous creature.

  Harvath spun to see a massive polar bear—twice the size of the one outside Barentsburg—barreling toward him. Its snout was covered in blood, which Harvath prayed was seal and not human.

  He went for his pistol, knowing full well that even under perfect conditions it would be extremely difficult to bring down an animal this big with a nine-millimeter. Suffering the effects of hypothermia wasn’t going to do much to help his marksmanship.

  The bear let out a throaty roar as it closed the gap and Harvath began to draw his weapon. But before he could get it all the way out of his pocket, there was a blinding flash of light.

  The polar bear skidded to a halt, sending rocks and sand in all directions. It flared its nostrils in the storm as if trying to decide what to do.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it turned and receded up the beach, disappearing from view.

  Harvath looked at the woman who had fired the flare.

  “Are you okay?” she shouted over the wind.

  Next to her, a man held a rifle at the ready, just in case the monster of a bear should return.

  The patches on their jackets identified them as members of the joint German-French research project AWIPEV.

  “There was a helicopter crash,” Harvath replied. “The pilots are in a cavern up the beach. They’re suffering from hypothermia. One is unconscious.”

  “Do they have a rifle?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I will go to town and organize a rescue party. You need to get dry and warm. Our station is close. Emele can accompany you.”

  The woman nodded and, putting away her flare pistol, unslung her rifle, and motioned for Harvath to follow.

  CHAPTER 60

  A quick walk from the beach, there was a collection of huts that formed the Jean Corbel research station.

  As soon as they stepped inside the residence structure, Emele helped Harvath begin peeling off his wet clothes.

  He made sure not to allow her to see the key hanging from his neck or feel the weight of his coat with the pistol in its pocket.

  Wrapping him in blankets, she brought him a large mug of tea and asked him a series of questions about his condition.

  She was quiet and professional. She found a container of broth, poured it into a pan, and placed it on the stove to warm.

  “Thank you,” Harvath replied to each kindness.

  “You are very lucky that we found you when we did,” she said. “All of us who operate outside of town must have polar bear training.
You have no idea what that creature could have done. I am glad that the flare worked. We are always supposed to use the flare first. It would be a pity to shoot such a beautiful animal.”

  Harvath had also had polar bear training and was well aware of what that animal could have done. He agreed with her—it would have been a pity to shoot the bear; but he would have done it anyway.

  Although the soup was a simple consommé, it was one of the most delicious things he had ever eaten. The warmth from it, coupled with the heating inside the hut, spread throughout his body. Soon enough, he could begin to feel his fingers and toes again.

  While he worked on a second cup of soup, Emele found him something to wear—weatherproof, insulated coveralls like those she and her colleague were wearing, complete with AWIPEV markings.

  There was a name tag on his, which read Badeaux. He ran his finger along it.

  “Georges is in Paris, delivering a paper,” she said. “I don’t think he would mind you borrowing some of his clothes. His boots will probably fit you as well.”

  Once again Harvath thanked her, then posed a question, “How far is it to town?”

  “It’s not far. About five kilometers.”

  He did the math. It was roughly three miles. “I need to get going.”

  “Now?” she asked as he began to get dressed. “You want to go back out into that storm? The only reason Pascal and I were out there was because a piece of our equipment, a sensor, down at the beach was malfunctioning. At least wait until it passes.”

  Harvath shook his head. “I need to be there when they bring the pilots back.”

  “Are you sure you are up to it physically?”

  “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

  The Frenchwoman looked at her watch. “Well, you can’t go alone, especially not without a rifle. I’ll go with you. I have a couple of things I need to do in Ny-Ålesund anyway.”

  He nodded and looked at his own watch, which, because of the cracked crystal and having been submerged in water, was no longer working.

  There was a clock on the stove.