Steve Alten - Vostok

“This exercise served its purpose, I believe, for it made you realize that our Nordic friend here can’t be trusted. And now I realize that if a come-to-Jesus moment arises in Lake Vostok that requires you to trust me to do the right thing, you no longer value Ms. McWhite’s life enough to persuade you. So then, we’ll need to up the ante. Question five: What do you value above even your own welfare?”

The Colonel signaled to the glass.

A moment later a hidden door pushed open along a sidewall, and another guard entered the room with a ten-year-old boy.

His hair was raven-dark like his mother’s, and when William saw me, he ran to me and hugged me, curling himself in my lap. “Da, I don’t like this place. Mum blames ye fer us bein’ here.”

I stared venom into Colonel Vacendak’s eyes. “Where’s the boy’s mother?”

“She’s safe. She’s a handful, that one. Your son and ex-wife will spend the next few weeks with us here at Dreamland. Once you complete the mission, they’ll be released unharmed.”

“Why should I believe you?”

The Colonel signaled for the guard to remove Willy from my lap. He waited until the two had left the room and the door clicked shut before nodding to the guard aiming the gun at Susan’s head.

“No!”

The muffled blast splattered a Rorschach pattern of blood, brain, and bone across the white tile.

I turned my head and puked up my breakfast.

“Trust is all we have, Dr. Wallace. Susan McWhite was a valued ally and friend. She was also my lover. If I was willing to sacrifice her life for the greater good, you have to trust that I won’t hesitate to kill you and your family should you attempt to deceive me in Lake Vostok.”

He turned to the guard who had shot Susan. “Have her remains taken to the seventeenth floor for dissection, then clean him up and get him aboard the transport.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thirty minutes later I rode the elevator up to ground level with my armed escort. A wave of early-morning Nevada heat greeted me as we entered a “scoot and hide” hangar the size of six football fields. Beneath the high roof I could see a slice of red rock, the mountains concealing the rising sun. To the west rose a cluster of radar antennas. To the north a building meant to resemble a mess hall was flanked by several antiquated housing facilities, and farther down the road, by a perimeter fence, stood a guard house.

The surface facilities were there for window dressing because Area 51 conducted most of its business deep underground.

Two long tarmac runways, constructed on a dry lake bed, ran parallel to the hangar. My escort led me to a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, an immense military transport that dwarfed everything else under the roof. Painted in green camouflage, the plane — nicknamed FRED (Fucking Ridiculous Environmental Disaster) by its crew — had twelve internal wing tanks and was equipped for aerial refueling. The T-shaped tail towered three stories overhead, its nose and aft loading docks lowered open to receive its payload.

The payload was a thirty-seven-foot submarine named the Tethys , the very ship described to me seven years earlier by Ben Hintzmann. She had been named after the Titan goddess of freshwater rivers and streams, and the ancient sea that harbored prehistoric life 200 million years ago. The vessel had been designed for one purpose: to access Lake Vostok by traveling beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet through a network of subglacial rivers.

To accomplish this, the sub housed two ice-melting elements in its reinforced, chisel-shaped bow. The first was a Europa-class Valkyrie laser. Like the two Valkyries that had been mounted on the Barracuda , it was designed specifically for Jupiter’s frozen moon. The E-class, however, was three times the diameter of its predecessor and was powered by a nuclear reactor.

To help the sixty-three-ton ship’s twin engines propel the Tethys through the ice, the sub had been equipped with a bow and flat bottom composed of a calcium isotope, the plates of which could be superheated to temperatures exceeding fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The end result was a dagger-shaped vessel that melted ice like a hot knife through butter, keeping the submarine hydroplaning toward its target.

Technicians loaded the ship aboard the transport and secured it in chains. I boarded through the open nose to the forward passenger section, where seventy-two business-class seats were set in eighteen rows facing the rear of the aircraft. The plane was empty, the sub’s crew still finishing breakfast. The guard stopped me at the third row and motioned for me to occupy a window seat while he took the aisle. Reclining the chair, I closed my eyes and tried to settle my nerves.

But the thought of William and Brandy held captive, along with the image of Susan’s skull splattering across the white tile floor, wouldn’t leave me. The guard’s presence only added to my anxiety.

Unable to take it anymore, I stood and confronted the armed man. “I need something to put me out. Drugs, booze, a bottle of cough syrup — I don’t care what it is, but I need it now!”

“How about I just punch you in the face?”

“Do it, arse. Then you can explain to the Colonel why his lead scientist can’t function when we get to Antarctica.”

Realizing he needed to deal with my issue, the guard radioed for a physician.

Ten minutes later Dr. Stewart was rigging an I.V. drip to service me in the first-row window seat. “This will put you in La La Land for a good fifteen hours. When you wake up, you can take these pills, one every four hours. Just make sure you eat something first.” He slid the needle into a vein in my left forearm, securing it in place with medical tape. “By the way, I’m sorry about Susan. To waste a life like that… It’s not why I joined MJ-12. All life is sacred. No matter the species, we’re all God’s creatures. Even the bloody Irish.”

He winked, started the drip, and left.

I reclined my seat, pulled the blind down over my window, and closed my eyes, allowing the liquid elixir to float me away.

Susan’s soul came to me, only it was harbored in the physicality of another .

As was mine .

We were on a mountain bluff overlooking a tempest sea. The sky was violet, but not by dusk’s cool touch, for the sun was still high in the sky. She was picking purple flowers that grew from vines twisted around branches of a scarlet oak, and the wind kept catching her tunic, causing the sheer fabric to bloom above her hips, revealing her naked torso to me .

“You’re using the wind to tempt my loins.” I said aloud .

“And why would I do such a thing? This is my fertile time, and the Council has placed yet another moratorium on conception. Or perhaps you’ve spent so much time in your cave that you haven’t heard?”

“I am a scientist, Lehanna. The decree is in response to the latest Miketz update. The magma chamber’s internal pressure has risen higher than our geologists predicted.”

“How much longer do we have?”

“It’s best not to dwell on predictions.”

“Avi Socha, as your senior wife I need to prepare our home for every eventuality.”

“The Miketz is a probability, not a certainty. It could still subside.”

“How long?”

“Two solar orbits, with the pyroclastic blast most likely occurring before the spring harvest.”

The new doomsday timetable hit her hard. “And how many escape ships has the Council commissioned for Charon’s lower rungs?”

“So far, only sixteen — just about enough for a single tribe.”