Clive Cussler - Arctic Drift

“Very well. Keep me apprised.”

“There is something you should be aware of,” Zak replied, dropping the bombshell. “We have the American crew of the Polar Dawn in our captivity.”

“You what? ” Goyette howled, forcing Zak to pull the receiver away from his ear. The industrialist’s temper burned white-hot, even after Zak described the circumstances of the abduction.

“No wonder the politicians are going ballistic,” he hissed. “You’re about to set off World War Three.”

“It makes it a sure thing that the Americans won’t have access to this region for a long time,” Zak argued.

“That may be true, but I won’t enjoy profiting from their absence if I’m sitting in a jail cell. Dispose of the matter, and without incident,” he barked. “Whatever you do, there had better be no link to me.”

Zak hung up the phone as the line went dead. Just another unimaginative thug who had bullied his way to billions, Zak thought. Then he slipped his parka back on and went ashore.

A brown ring of rock and gravel encircled the island’s cove, melding into a white sheet of ice as one moved inland. The exception was a large rectangular rut that ran several hundred feet into the hillside, ending in a flat, vertical wall clearly cut by machine. The zinc-mining operation was simply cutting straight into the landscape, where the mineral-rich ore was readily accessible. In the distance, Zak noticed a few of the geologists poking around the tailings of the most recent diggings.

The interior of the cove was protected from the worst of the westerly winds, but Zak still moved quickly down the dock, not wishing to prolong his exposure to the cold. He quickly sized up the mining operation before him, which was simple and low-tech. The larger of two buildings was a warehouse that housed the mining equipment — bulldozers, backhoes, and a dump truck — which dug up the island soil and transferred it onto a small conveyor system for shipboard loading. A smaller building next door would be the crew’s bunkhouse and administrative office.

Zak made his way to the smaller building first, curiously finding that the door had been locked. Pulling a Glock automatic from his pocket, he fired twice at the deadbolt, then kicked the door open. The interior was like an expansive house, with two large bedrooms filled with bunk beds, plus an oversize kitchen, a dining room, and a living area. Zak walked directly to the kitchen and looked at the stove, which trailed a gas line to a storage closet containing a large tank of propane. Digging into his satchel, he removed a charge of dynamite and placed it beneath the tank, then affixed a blasting cap with a timed fuse. Checking his watch, he set the fuse to ignite in ninety minutes, then exited the building.

He walked to the equipment-storage building, studying its exterior for some time before hiking around to the back side. Towering over the building was a small bluff, which was strewn with ice-covered rocks and boulders. He struggled up the steep slope to a slight ledge that ran horizontally across the upper face of the hill. Kicking a divot in the frozen ground beneath a car-sized boulder, he removed his gloves and placed another charge of dynamite under the rock. With his fingers freezing, he quickly set the fuse to the blasting cap. Moving a few yards away, he set a second charge beneath a similar clump of large boulders.

Scampering down the hillside, he returned to the front of the building and set one more charge by the hinge of a large swinging door. After setting the fuse, he quickly stepped back to the dock and headed for the icebreaker. As he approached the ship, he could see the captain peering down at him from the bridge. Zak pumped his arm, motioning for him to blow the ship’s horn. A second later, two deafening blasts echoed off the hills, signaling the geologists to return to the ship.

Zak turned to see that the geologists took note of the message, then he walked to the barge at the end of the pier. The dock just reached to the bow of the barge, and Zak waited until the current nudged the vessel against the pylons before jumping onto an embedded steel ladder that rose to the vessel’s deck. Climbing up, he made his way astern, passing the number 4 hold on the way to an indented well on the aft side. Kneeling against an exterior bulkhead, he packed his remaining explosives, this time affixing a radio-controlled detonator. It wasn’t positioned beneath the waterline as he would have liked, but he knew it would do the job in the rolling seas that they had been encountering. Ignoring the lives of the men huddled a few feet away, Zak stepped off the barge with a wry sense of satisfaction. Goyette wasn’t going to be happy losing a newly built barge, but what could he say? Zak’s instructions were to leave no evidence, and disposing of the barge where nobody could find it was the perfect solution.

The last of the geologists and security guards were climbing aboard the icebreaker when Zak reached the gangplank. He headed straight to the bridge, thankful to enter its warm interior.

“Everyone is back aboard,” the captain reported. “Are you ready to leave or did you wish to speak to the geologists first?”

“They can brief me on the way. I’m anxious to investigate the north shore.” He looked at his watch. “Though we might want to enjoy the show before shoving off.”

Two minutes later, the bunkhouse kitchen blew up, leveling the walls of the entire structure. The propane tank, which was nearly full of gas, exploded in a massive fireball that sent waves of orange flame skyward, its concussion rattling the windows on the ship. A few seconds later, the storage-building charge went off, blowing off the front door and crumbling the roof. The hillside charges were next, creating a tumbling landslide of rocks and boulders that poured onto the mangled roof. When a thick cloud of airborne dust finally settled, Zak could see that the entire building was pulverized under a layer of rock and rubble.

“Very effective,” mumbled the captain. “I guess we don’t need to worry about an American presence in the vicinity now.”

“Quite,” Zak replied in a tone of arrogant certainty.

The westerly winds whipped across Victoria Strait, kicking up whitecaps that washed over the sporadic chunks of floating ice. Forging through the dark waters, the bright turquoise NUMA ship appeared like a beacon in a colorless world. With the Royal Geographical Society Islands visible off its bow, the ship steamed slowly south into the first of Pitt’s search grids.

“Looks to be a vessel rounding the northwest coast,” the helmsman reported, eyeing the radarscope.

Captain Stenseth picked up a pair of binoculars and viewed a tandem pair of dots on the horizon.

“Probably an Asian freighter making an escorted attempt through the passage,” he said. He turned to Pitt, who was seated at the chart table studying a blueprint of the Franklin ships. “We’ll be approaching the finish line shortly. Any idea when your torpedo will pop up?”

Pitt glanced at his orange-faced Doxa dive watch. “She ought to surface within the next half hour.”

It proved to be twenty minutes later when one of the crewmen spotted the yellow AUV bobbing to the surface. Stenseth maneuvered the ship alongside, and the AUV was quickly hoisted aboard. Giordino removed its one-terabyte hard drive and hustled the data to a small viewing room, where a computer and projection system awaited.

“You headed to the movies?” Stenseth asked as Pitt stood up and stretched.

“Yes, the first of two rather long double features. You have a fix on the transponders?”

Stenseth nodded. “We’ll go grab them next. They’ve actually been pushed quite far along, due to the strong southerly current here. We will have to make a bit of a dash for them before they pile up on the island rocks.”