Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

Howell picked up the telephone and made two quick calls. After the second, he replaced the phone, face ashen. "It's the holding tank," he said, "the one with the meteorite. There's been a serious accident."

"What kind of accident?" Glinn asked.

"A discharge from the rock."

Glinn turned to McFarlane and Amira. "Get on it. Find out what happened and why. And Dr. Brambell, you better get to —"

But Brambell had already disappeared from the bridge.

Almirante Ramirez ,

8:30 A.M.

VALLENAR STARED hard into the murk, as if the act of staring itself would bring the elusive tanker into view.

"Status," he murmured again to the conning officer.

"With the jamming, sir, it's hard to tell. My best estimate is that the target is heading zero nine zero at approximately sixteen knots."

"Range?"

"Sir, I can't tell exactly. Somewhere around thirty nautical miles. We wouldn't even have that close a fix, except their jamming seemed to drop briefly a few minutes ago."

Vallenar could feel a rhythmic surge to his ship: a sickening lifting and dropping of the deck. He had only felt this motion once before, when he had been caught in a storm south of Diego Ramirez during a training mission. He knew what this odd motion meant: the distance between the wave crests had begun to exceed twice the length of the Almirante Ramirez . He could see the following sea from the aft windows: long muscular swells, topped with a breaking line of water, coming at his stern and foaming along the hull before disappearing forward into the darkness. Once in a while a giant wave, a tigre , would come up from behind, the water piling up against the rudder, giving the helmsman a loose wheel and threatening to shove the destroyer around, causing it to broach to. It would only get worse when they turned south and took the sea on their beam.

Reaching thoughtfully into his pocket, he withdrew a puro and examined its soiled outer leaves absently. He thought of the two dead divers, their cold stiff bodies wrapped in tarps and stored in sea lockers aft. He thought of the three others, who never resurfaced, and a fourth, shivering now in the last stages of hypothermia. They had done their duty — no more, and no less. The ship was seaworthy. True, they could make only twenty knots with their damaged propellers. But the tanker was only making sixteen. And the long eastward run toward international waters was giving him the time he needed to achieve his strategy.

He glanced back at the conning officer. The crew was frightened: of this storm, of this chase. That fear was good. Frightened men worked faster. But Timmer had been worth any ten of them.

He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it away. Timmer had been worth the entire complement...

Vallenar mastered himself, taking the time to light the cigar carefully, methodically. The glowing red tip reflected back from the inky windows. By now they surely knew he was coming after them once again. This time he would be more careful. He had fallen into their trap once, and he would not allow it to happen again. Initially, his plan had been to cripple the ship. But now it was clear that Timmer was dead. The time for mere crippling was long past.

Five hours, maybe less, would bring them into range of his four-inch guns. In the meantime, if there was even a short respite from jamming, the Exocets were ready to fire at a moment's notice.

This time, there would be no mistake.

Rolvaag ,

9:20 A.M.

AS MCFARLANE ran down the center corridor of the medical suite, Rachel on his heels, he almost collided with Brambell, stepping through the operating room door. He was a very different Brambell than the wry, dry man of the dinner table: this Brambell was grim, his movements brusque, his wiry frame tense.

"We're here to see —" McFarlane began, but Brambell was stalking down the hall and disappearing behind another door, paying them not the slightest bit of attention. McFarlane glanced at Rachel.

Following Brambell's path, they entered a brightly lit room. The doctor, who was still wearing a pair of surgical gloves, stood over a gurney, examining a motionless patient. The man's head was swathed in bandages, and the surrounding sheets were soaked in blood. As McFarlane watched, Brambell jerked a sheet over the man's head with a sharp, angry motion. Then he turned to a nearby sink.

McFarlane swallowed hard. "We need to speak with Manuel Garza," he said.

"Absolutely not," Brambell said as he broke scrub, ripping off the pair of bloody gloves and dashing his hands under hot water.

"Doctor, we must question Garza about what happened. The safety of the ship depends on it."

Brambell stopped in his tracks, looking at McFarlane for the first time. His face was somber but controlled. He said nothing for a moment, and McFarlane could see behind the mask the racing mind of a doctor making a decision under extreme pressure.

"Room Three," he said as he pulled on a fresh pair of surgical gloves. "Five minutes."

They found Garza in a small room, wide awake. His face was bruised, his eyes blackened, and his head heavily bandaged. When the door opened, he swiveled his dark gaze at them, then looked away immediately. "They're all dead, aren't they?" he whispered, eyes on the bulkhead.

McFarlane hesitated. "All but one."

"But he's also going to die." It was a statement, not a question.

Rachel came over and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Manuel, I know how hard this must be for you. But we need to know what happened in the holding tank."

Garza did not look at her. He pursed his lips, blinked his blackened eyes. "What happened? What do you think happened? That goddamn meteorite went off again."

"Went off?" McFarlane repeated.

"Yeah. It exploded. Just like it did with that guy Timmer." McFarlane and Rachel exchanged glances.

"Which one of your men touched it?" Rachel asked.

Garza suddenly turned to stare at her. McFarlane wasn't sure if his look was one of surprise, anger, or disbelief, the wide purple moon-holes of his eyes seemed to draw all expression from the rest of his face.

"Nobody touched it."

"Somebody must have."

"I said nobody. I was watching every minute."

"Manuel —" Rachel began.

He rose angrily. "You think my men were crazy? They hated being near that thing, they were scared to death of it Rachel, I'm telling you, nobody got within five feet."

He winced and lay back.

After a moment, McFarlane spoke again. "We need to know exactly what you saw. Can you tell us what you remember, right before it happened? What was going on? Did you notice anything unusual?"

"No. The men were almost finished with the welding. Some of them had finished. The job was virtually done. Everyone was still wearing their protective gear. The ship was heeling. It seemed to be taking a pretty big wave."

"I remember that wave," Rachel said. "Are you sure nobody lost his balance, nobody put out an involuntary hand to steady —"

"You don't believe me, do you?" he asked. "Tough shit, because it's true. Nobody touched the rock. Check the tapes yourself if you want."

"Was there anything unusual about the meteorite?" McFarlane asked. "Anything funny?"

Garza thought for a moment. Then he shook his head.

McFarlane leaned closer. "That freak wave that heeled the ship. Do you think tilting the meteorite could have caused the explosion?"

"Why? It was tilted, banged, and shoved all the way from the impact site to the holding tank. Nothing like this happened."

There was a silence.

"It's the rock," Garza murmured.

McFarlane blinked, not sure he had heard correctly.

"What?" he asked.

"I said, it's the goddamn rock. It wants us dead. All of us."