James Rollins - Ice Hunt

Perry glanced from the periscope.

A gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard stooped through the hatch to enter the control room from the forward research decks. It was Dr. Oskar Willig, the Swedish oceanographer. He was accompanied by an ensign. The aging but wiry and hard-eyed Swede waved a dismissive hand toward the video monitor and nodded to Captain Perry. “It’s a much more spectacular view from Cyclops. In fact, Dr. Reynolds asked to see if you’d join us there. We’ve discovered something intriguing.”

After a long moment, Perry nodded and folded up the periscope grips. He twisted the hydraulic control ring, and the stainless-steel pole with its optic module descended into the housing below. “Commander Bratt, you have the conn.” He stepped down from the periscope stand to join Dr. Willig.

Commander Bratt raised one bushy eyebrow as he passed by. “You’re going to Cyclops? With all this ice around? You’re a braver man than I am, Captain. True balls of brass.”

“Not brass.” Perry tapped a knuckle on a wall plate. “Titanium.”

This earned a chuckle from his second-in-command.

The Swedish oceanographer’s eyes were bright with excitement as Perry joined him. “In all my years, I’ve never seen such a spectacular example of an ice island.”

Perry ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair, then motioned the older doctor ahead of him.

The doctor nodded, turning, but he continued to speak rapidly, lecturing as if still in his classroom at the University of Stockholm. “These islands are rare. They originate when giant icebergs calve off the mainland glaciers. Then ocean currents drive these floating mountains into the polar ice cap, where they’re frozen in place. Eventually, during the years of thawing and refreezing, they become incorporated into the cap itself.” Dr. Willig glanced back at the captain as he climbed through the forward hatch. “Somewhat like almonds in a chocolate bar, you might say.”

Perry followed, bending his own six-foot frame through the opening. “But what’s so exciting about such a discovery? Why did Dr. Reynolds insist upon us mapping around this embedded almond?”

Dr. Willig bobbed his head, leading the way down the main passage and through the research section of the sub. “Besides the rarity of these ice islands, because they have been calved from glaciers, they contain very old ice and many even hold boulders and sections of terra firma. They’re frozen glimpses of the distant past. Can you just imagine?”

Perry followed, urging the doctor onward.

“We dare not lose this chance. We may never find such an example again. The polar ice cap covers an area twice the size of your United States. And with the cap’s surface worn featureless by winter winds and summer melts, such islands are impossible to discern. Not even NASA satellites could pinpoint such discoveries. Stumbling upon this mountain is a scientific gift from God.”

“I don’t know about God, but it is intriguing,” Perry conceded. He had been granted command of the Sentinel because of his background and interest in the Arctic region. His own father had served aboard the USS Nautilus, the first submarine to cross the Arctic Ocean and pass under the North Pole back in 1958. It was an honor to be adding to his father’s legacy up here, to captain the Navy’s newest research vessel.

Dr. Willig pointed to a sealed hatch at the end of the corridor. “Come. You need to see this with your own eyes.”

Perry waved him on, glancing over his shoulder. The Polar Sentinel was divided into two sections. Aft of the control station were the crew’s living quarters and the engineering levels. Forward of the bridge lay the research labs. But ahead, in the nose of the boat, where normally the torpedo room and sonar boom would be on a Virginia-class submarine, was the strangest modification of a naval sub.

“After you,” Dr. Willig offered as they reached the sealed door.

Perry opened the hatch and pushed his way into the room. The muted lighting of the Sentinel ill prepared him for the blinding brilliance of the next chamber. He shielded his eyes as he entered.

The upper shell of the former torpedo room had been replaced with a canopy of foot-thick Lexan polycarbonate. The clear plastic shell arched overhead and in front, allowing an uninterrupted view of the seas around the Sentinel, a window upon the watery world. Viewed from outside, the Lexan canopy looked like a single glass eye, hence its nickname: Cyclops .

Perry ignored the handful of scientists off to the sides, bent over equipment and monitors. The Navy men stood straighter and nodded to their captain. He returned their acknowledgment, but it was impossible to truly break his gaze from the view out Cyclops.

Ahead, a voice spoke from the heart of the glare: “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Perry blinked away his blindness and spotted a slender figure in the room’s center, limned in aquamarine light. “Dr. Reynolds?”

“I couldn’t resist watching from here.” He heard the warm smile in the woman’s voice. Dr. Amanda Reynolds was the nominal head of Omega Drift Station. Her father was Admiral Kent Reynolds, commander of the Pacific submarine fleet. Raised a Navy brat, the doctor was as comfortable aboard a submarine as any sailor wearing the double dolphins of the fleet.

Perry crossed to her. He had first met Amanda two years ago when he was granted his captain’s bars. It had been at a social function given by her father. In that one evening, he had inadvertently insulted her potato salad, almost broken her toe during a short dance, and made the mistake of insisting that the Cubs would beat the San Francisco Giants in an upcoming game, losing ten dollars in the bargain. Overall it had been a great evening.

Perry cleared his throat and made sure Amanda was looking at him. “So what do you think of Cyclops?” he asked, speaking crisply so she could read his lips. She had lost her hearing at the age of thirteen as a result of a car accident.

Amanda Reynolds glanced overhead, turning slightly forward. “It’s everything my father dreamed it would be.”

She stood under the arch, surrounded on all sides by the Arctic Ocean. She appeared to be floating in the sea itself. Presently she leaned on one hip, half turned. Her sweep of ebony hair was snugged into an efficient ponytail. She wore one of the Navy’s blue underway uniforms, crisply pressed.

Perry joined her, stepping out under the open ocean. Being a career submariner, he understood his crew’s discomfort with this room. Although fire was the main fear on any submarine, no one completely trusted the foot-thick plastic shell as an alternative for a double hull of titanium and carbon plate — especially with so much ice around.

He had to resist the urge to hunch away from the plastic canopy. The weight of the entire Arctic Ocean seemed to hang overhead.

“Why did you call me up here?” he asked, touching her arm to draw her eyes.

“For this…something amazing.” Amanda’s voice tremored with excitement. She waved an arm forward. Beyond Cyclops, the sub’s lamps illuminated the wall of ice slowly passing by the front of the vessel. Standing here, it felt as if they were motionless, and it was the ice island instead that was turning, revolving like a giant’s toy top in front of them. This close, the entire cliff face glowed under the illumination of the sub’s xenon spotlights. The ice seemed to stretch infinitely up and down.

Without a doubt, it was both a humbling and starkly chilling sight, but Perry still did not understand why his presence had been requested.

“We’ve been testing the new DeepEye sonar system,” Amanda began to explain.

Perry nodded. He was familiar with her research project. The Polar Sentinel was the first submarine to be equipped with her experimental ice-surveying system, a penetrating sonar, a type of X ray for ice. The device had been based on Dr. Reynolds’s own design. Her background was in geosciences engineering, specializing in the polar regions.