Ice Hunt

Once done, he hit the “enter” button.

Nothing happened.

He hit it again with the same result.

“Is this hooked properly?” he asked Sergeant Conrad, the demolition expert.

“Yes, sir. I’m registering that the device has accepted the code, but it’s not responding.”

“Maybe I typed it in wrong,” he mumbled. If there was any mistake, it was probably when he typed the sequence in backward. He looked at those letters more closely. Then he saw his mistake.

“Goddamn it!” he swore, clenching a fist.

The reversed letters separated into Russian words: V grobu ya tebya videl. The translation was a common Russian curse. I will see you in your grave.

“Nothing appears wrong,” Conrad said, bent half under the device, misinterpreting his outburst.

“Everything’s wrong!” Craig snapped back, leaping off the platform. “We’ve got the wrong code.”

He pounded back down the steps. He knew one way to make the bastard talk.

The boy.

8:53 P.M.

Matt listened as Admiral Petkov finished his description of Polaris. The sonic bomb on Level One was only one of the devices. There were another five amplifiers out on the ice, ready to spread the destruction in all directions. The pure ambition struck him dumb—to destroy the entire polar ice cap, to bring ruin down upon the globe, and potentially trigger the next great ice age.

He finally found his tongue. “Are you nuts?” It wasn’t the most diplomatic response, but he was way beyond diplomacy at this point.

Petkov merely glanced toward him. “After all you’ve seen, is this truly a world you want to protect?”

“Hell, yes. I’m in it.” He reached between the bars and took Jenny’s hand. “Everything I love is in it. It’s f**ked up. No question there, but hell, you don’t throw the damn baby out with the bathwater.”

“No matter,” Petkov said. “Polaris cannot be stopped. The detonation will commence in twenty minutes. Even if we could escape here, the secondary amplifiers are planted fifty kilometers away, all around the island. You’d have to disable and remove at least two of the five to break the array’s full effect. That could never be done. It is over.”

Matt had tired of the admiral’s defeatism, but it was beginning to spread to him, too. What could they do?

Jenny slipped her hand from his. “Hold on.” She eyed the pair of Delta Force guards. They stood by the prison-wing door, one watching out, one in. They were sharing a smoke, passing it between them, ignoring them.

With no one watching, Jenny crossed the cell and reached out to Maki. The boy was half asleep in Washburn’s arms, exhausted and shell-shocked. Jenny parted the child’s parka, and with her back to the guards, she removed a black walkie-talkie.

She tucked the radio in her own jacket and crossed back.

“Who do you think you’re going to call with that?” Matt asked.

“The Polar Sentinel…I hope.”

Washburn heard her. “Captain Perry’s here?” she hissed, stirring from the bed.

Jenny waved her back down. “He’s been monitoring everything here, seeking a way to rescue us.” She shook her head. “If what this guy says is true, rescuing us is impossible—but maybe they can do something about this Polaris Array.”

Matt nodded. It was a long shot, but they had no other option. “Try to raise them.”

Washburn helped shield Jenny. The lieutenant carried Maki, singing a lullaby to cover her attempt to communicate.

Matt stepped toward the Russian. “If we are to have any hope for this to work, we need the exact coordinates of the secondary amplifiers.”

Petkov shook his head, not so much in refusal as hopelessness.

Matt resisted the urge the throttle the man. He spoke rapidly, sensing the press of time, the falling ax. “Admiral, please. We are all going to die. Everything your father sought to hide will be destroyed. You’ve won there. His research will be forever lost. But the revenge you seek upon the world…because of an atrocity you thought was committed upon your father by your government or mine…it’s over. We both know what truly happened. The tragedy here was your father’s own doing. He cooperated in the research, and only at the end found his humanity.”

Petkov’s expression was tired, his head sagging a bit.

Matt continued, pointing over to the boy. “Maki saved your father. And your father attempted to save him, preserving the boy in ice. Even at the end, your father died with hope for the future. And right there lies that hope.” Matt stabbed a finger toward Maki. “The children of the world. You have no right to take that from them.”

Petkov stared over at the boy. Maki lay in Washburn’s arms, head cradled against her neck. She sang softly. “He is a beautiful boy,” Petkov conceded. His gaze flicked to Matt, then a nod. “I’ll give you the coordinates, but the sub will never make it there in time.”

“He’s right,” Jenny said this as she stepped back to the bars, covering the radio with her jacket. “I’ve raised the Sentinel. Perry doesn’t think he could even run to one of the amplifiers, let alone two. But he’s heading away at full steam. He needs the exact positions.”

Matt rolled his eyes. He’d give his right arm for one optimist in the damn group. He waved for the radio. “Pass it here.”

Jenny slipped the walkie-talkie through the bars. Matt pressed the transmitter and held the radio toward Petkov’s lips. The admiral’s hands were still bound behind his back. “Tell them.”

Before the man could speak, a loud thud sounded by the door. All eyes turned back to the entrance. One of the guards was on the floor. A dagger hilt protruded from his left eye socket. The other fell back, someone on top of him. An attempt to shout an alarm was cut from the soldier’s throat by a wicked long knife. Blood shot across the floor.

As the soldier gurgled, grabbing at his own bloody throat, his attacker shoved up. He was a true gorilla of a man.

Jenny rushed to the front of the cell. “Kowalski!”

The man wiped the blood from his meaty hands on his jacket. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“How…I thought…the rocket attack?”

He worked rapidly, searching the guard. “I was blown into a snowbank. I burrowed down deep when I saw the situation out there. Then I found another ventilation shaft. Way the f**k out there.”

“How?”