Ice Hunt

“And she reads Russian,” Greer said. “My sort of woman.”

“The main switch is corroded in place,” she said. “I’ll have to pull the fuses.”

“Wait.” Bratt crossed and posted himself at the door that led to the main room. A small window in the door allowed him to spy into the central open space. He pointed to his eyes with two fingers, then splayed four fingers up in the air.

He spotted four guards.

Bratt turned to them. “Mr. Teague,” he whispered tersely, pointing to Craig. “Close the generator door. We don’t want the noise to alert the guards when we open the main door.”

The reporter nodded, closing the door and keeping guard in front of it.

Bratt turned to the others. “On my count,” he whispered tersely. “Pull the fuses, then be ready to bolt.” He lifted his hand, all fingers up. He counted down, lowering one finger at a time.

Five…four…three…

3:28 P.M.

Admiral Viktor Petkov stood in the entrance room to Level Four’s research labs. The steel door lay on the floor behind him, the hinges and security bar cut away. Across the door’s surface, letters were scored in Russian Cyrillic:

It was the name of the laboratory, the name of the base, the name of the monsters that nested in the neighboring ice caves.

Grendel.

His father’s project.

Viktor stood in front of an open cabinet. It contained dated journals, coded and stored, written in his father’s own handwriting. Viktor didn’t touch anything. He simply noted the missing volumes. Three of them. Whoever had been here knew what they had been looking for. A fist clenched. He could guess the identity of the thief—especially considering the news just related to him.

The young lieutenant who had relayed the update still stood stiffly at his shoulder, awaiting his response. Viktor had yet to acknowledge the man’s hurried report.

A moment ago, the lieutenant had rushed in, insisting on speaking to the admiral immediately. The radio operator manning the UQC underwater phone had picked up some disturbing noises over the unit’s hydrophone. He reported hearing distant blasts echoing under the ice shelf: multiple explosions.

“Depth charges,” the lieutenant had related. “The radioman believes he was hearing the concussion of depth charges.”

But that wasn’t the worst of the news. Amid the explosions, a weak static-chewed message had been transmitted on shortwave. A Mayday from the Drakon. Their submarine was under attack.

It had to be the U.S. Delta Force team, finally having arrived on the playing field. Late, but making up for its tardiness with deadly efficiency.

The lieutenant had then finished his message, barely keeping the panic from his voice. “The radioman reported definite bubbling, marking a sub implosion.”

Viktor fixed his gaze on the gaps in the shelf of journals. There was no doubt who had stolen the volumes: the same person who called the attack down upon the Drakon, the Delta Force controller, the leader sent in advance to covertly obtain his father’s research, to secure it before calling in the clean-up crew. Now with the prize in hand, the Delta Forces had been mobilized.

“Sir?” the lieutenant mumbled.

Viktor turned. “No one else must know about the Drakon.”

“Sir…?” There was a long pause as the admiral fixed the man with his steel-gray eyes, then a strained response: “Yes, sir.”

“We will hold this station, Lieutenant. We will find the Americans who were here earlier.” He continued to clench a fist. “We will not fail in this mission.”

“No, sir.”

“I have new orders to pass on to the men.”

The lieutenant stood straighter, ready to accept his assignment. Viktor told him what he wanted done. The Polaris engine had been unpacked and bolted to the floor on Level Five. By now, all the crew had been briefed with the mission assignment: to retrieve the research here, then erase all signs of the base. And while the crew certainly knew the destructive nature of the explosive device on Level Five—believing it to be a mere Z-class nuclear incendiary device—none knew its true purpose.

The lieutenant paled as Viktor gave him the code to prime the Polaris device. “We will not let the Americans steal the prize here,” he finished. “Even if it costs all our lives, that must not happen.”

“Yes, sir…no, sir,” the young man stammered. “My men will find them, Admiral.”

“Don’t fail, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

The lieutenant fled away. There was no threat like one’s own death to motivate a crew. The Americans would be found, and the prize recaptured, or no one would be leaving this base alive—not the Americans, not the Russians, not even himself.

Viktor studied his wrist monitor as he listened to the lieutenant’s footsteps retreating below. On the monitor, the Polaris star glowed brightly, marking his continued contact with the array. The center trigger remained dark.

He waited.

Before detonating Polaris, he had first hoped to return to Russia with his father’s research in hand, to clear his family name. But now matters had changed.

Viktor had risen through the ranks to become admiral of the Northern Fleet because of his ability to mold strategies to circumstances, to keep the larger picture in mind at all times. He did so now as he stared at the tiny red heart-shaped icon in the lower corner of the wrist monitor, slipping back to another time.

He was eighteen, entering his apartment, full of pride, clutching his admission papers to the Russian Naval Academy. He smelled the urine first. Then the gusty breeze through the open door set his mother’s body to swinging from her broken neck. He rushed forward, the admission papers fluttering from his fingers and landing under his mother’s heels.

He closed his eyes. He had come full circle now, leaving his mother’s body and ending here at his father’s crypt.

From one death to another.

It was now time to complete the cycle.

Vengeance weighed far heavier on his heart than honor.

That was the bigger picture.

He opened his eyes and found the monitor had changed—subtly but significantly. The five points of the star continued their sequential flashing, winding around the dial, and the small heart icon still blinked with each pulse beat in his wrist. But now a new glow lit the monitor, a crimson diamond in the center of the star.

The lieutenant had followed orders.

The Polaris engine had been primed.

All was in readiness, requiring only one last act.