James Rollins - Ice Hunt

Matt slumped in his seat. Snoring echoed throughout the cabin of the Twin Otter. It came not from the sleeping reporter nor from Jenny’s dozing father, but from the wolf sprawled on his back across the third row of seats. A particularly loud snort raised a ghost of a smile on Matt’s face.

Jenny spoke from beside him. “I thought you were going to get his deviated septum fixed.”

The ghost became a true smile. Bane had snored since he was a pup curled on the foot of their bed. It had been a source of amusement to both of them. Matt sat straighter. “The plastic surgeon out of Nome said it would require too extensive a nasal job. Too much trimming. He would end up looking like a bulldog.”

Jenny didn’t respond, so Matt risked a glance her way. She stared straight out, but he noted the small crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Sad amusement.

Crossing his arms, Matt wondered if that was the best he could manage with her. For the moment, it was enough.

He gazed out the window. The moon was near to full, casting a silvery brilliance across the snowy plains. This far north, winter still gripped the land, but some signs of the spring thaw were visible: a trickle of misty stream, a sprinkling of meltwater lakes. A few caribou herds speckled the tundra, moving slowly through the night, following the snowmelt waterways, feeding on reindeer moss, sprigs of lingonberry, and munching through muskeg, the ubiquitous tussocks of balled-up grass, each the size of a ripe pumpkin, rooted in the thawing muck.

“We were lucky to have radioed Deadhorse when we did,” Jenny mumbled beside him, drawing his eye.

“What do you mean?”

After clearing Arrigetch, they had managed to raise the airstrip at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope. They had alerted civil and military authorities to their chase through the Brooks Range. Helicopters would be dispatched in the morning to search for the debris of the Cessna. They should have answers on their pursuers shortly after that. Matt had also been able to reach Carol Jeffries, the bear researcher over in Bettles. She knew Jenny’s cabin and would send some folks to take care of the animals left behind. Craig had also relayed word to his own contact at Prudhoe. Once questioned and debriefed, the reporter would have one hell of a tale to tell. After making contact, and with the story of their ordeal now passed to the outside world, they had all relaxed.

But now what was wrong? Matt pulled himself up in his seat.

Jenny pointed out the Otter’s windshield — not to the tundra below, but to the clear skies.

Matt leaned forward. At first, he saw nothing unusual. The constellation Orion hung brightly. Polaris, the North Star, lay directly ahead. Then he spotted the shimmering bands and streamers rising from the horizon, flickers of greens, reds, and blues. The borealis was rising.

“According to the forecast,” Jenny said, “we’re due for a brilliant display.”

Matt leaned back, watching the spectacle spread in colored fans and dancing flames across the night sky. Such a natural show went by many names: the aurora borealis, the northern lights. Among the native Athapascan Indians, it was called koyukon or yoyakkyh, while the Inuit simply named them spirit lights.

As he watched, the wave of colors flowed over the arch of the sky, shimmering in a luminous corona and rolling in clouds of azures and deep crimsons.

“We won’t be able to reach anyone for a while,” Jenny said.

Matt nodded. Such a dazzling display, created as solar winds struck the upper atmosphere of the earth, would frazzle most communications. But they didn’t have very far to go. Another half hour at most. Already the northern horizon had begun to brighten with the lights of the oil fields and distant Prudhoe Bay.

They flew in silence for several minutes more, simply enjoying the light show in the sky, accompanied by Bane’s snoring in the back. For these few moments, it felt like home. Maybe it was simply the aftereffects of their harrowing day, an endorphin-induced sense of ease and comfort. But Matt feared wounding it with speech.

It was Jenny who finally broke the silence. “Matt…” The timbre of her voice was soft.

“Don’t,” he said. It had taken them three years and today’s life-and-death struggle to bring them into one space together. He did not want to threaten this small start.

Jenny sighed. He did not fail to note her tone of exasperation.

Her fingers tightened on the wheel, moving with a squeak of leather on vinyl. “Never mind,” she whispered.

The moment’s peace was gone — and it had not even taken words. Tension filled the cabin, raising a wall between them. The remainder of the journey was made in total silence, strained now, bitter.

The first few oil derricks came into view, decorated in lights like a Christmas tree. Off to the left, a jagged silver line marred the perfect tundra, rising and falling over the landscape like a giant metal snake. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It ran from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s north coast to Valdez on Prince William Sound, a river of black gold.

They were closing in on their destination. The pipeline led the way. Jenny followed it now, paralleling its run. She tried the radio, attempting to reach the airport tower at Deadhorse. Her frown was answer enough. The skies still danced and flashed.

She banked in a slow arc. Ahead, the township of Prudhoe Bay — if you could call it a town — glowed in the night like some oilman’s Oz. It was mostly a company town, built for the sole purpose of oil production, transportation, and supporting services. Its average population was under a hundred, but the number of transient oil workers caused this number to vary, depending on the workload. There was also a small military presence here, protecting the heart of the entire North Slope oil production.

Beyond the town’s border stretched the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean, but it was hard to tell where land ended and ocean began. Spreading from the shore were vast rafts of fast ice extending for miles into the ocean, fusing eventually with the pack ice of the polar cap. As summer warmed the region, the cap would shrink by half, retreating from shorelines, but for now, the world was solid ice.

Jenny headed out toward the sea, circling Prudhoe Bay and positioning herself for landing at the single airstrip. “Something’s going on down there,” she said, tipping up on one wing.

Matt spotted it, too: a flurry of activity at the edge of town. A score of vehicles were racing across the snowy fields from the military installation, hurrying out of town in their general direction. He glanced to the other side of their plane.

Below lay the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The giant buildings of Gathering Station 1 and Pump Station 1 were lit up behind Cyclone fencing. Here the North Slope oil was cooled, water removed, gas bled off, and the oil began its six-day, eight-hundred-mile journey to the tankers on Prince William Sound.

As they crossed near Pump Station 1, Matt noted a section of the Cyclone fencing had been knocked down. He glanced back to the racing military vehicles. Foreboding lanced through him.

“Get us out of here!” Matt snapped.

“What—?”

The explosion ripped away any further words. The building that housed Gathering Station 1 burst apart in a fiery blast. A ball of flame rolled skyward. The sudden hot thermals and blast wave threw their plane up on end. Jenny fought the controls, struggling to keep them from flipping completely over.