James Rollins - Ice Hunt

To escape here meant certain death.

This grim thought plagued Jenny as she watched the pair of sweating sailors labor overhead. They worked within the gap in the fiberglass insulation, unscrewing an exterior plate in the hut’s roof. It was difficult work with only plastic utensils, but they were managing.

A screw fell to the floor from above.

Sewell pointed up. “Normally there’s a skylight installed there. One of three. But in the Arctic, where it’s dark half the year and continually sunny the other, windows were found to be more of a nuisance, especially as a source of heat loss. So they were plated and sealed.”

“One more to go,” one of the men grunted overhead.

“Dim the lights.” Sewell signaled. The lamps around the immediate area were extinguished.

Jenny pulled a spare blanket around her shoulders and knotted it to form a crude hooded poncho. It was too large for her slight frame, but it was better than nothing. Anything to cut the wind.

The last screw fell. A plate dropped next into the waiting hands of one of the workers. It was followed by a blast of cold air.

Wind whistled inside. Much too noisy. Sewell pointed to a petty officer, who turned up his CD player. The band U2 wailed over the howl of the blizzard outside.

“You’ll have to hurry,” Sewell said to Kowalski and Jenny. “If anyone chances in here, we’ll be discovered. We’ll have to reseal the opening ASAP.”

Jenny nodded. A bunk bed had been shoved under the opening to use as a makeshift ladder. Jenny scrambled up. She met her father’s eyes for a moment, read the worry in them. But he remained silent. They had no choice. She was the best pilot here.

Standing atop the bunk, Jenny reached up through the hole in the ceiling. She gripped the icy edge of the roof. Without gloves, her fingertips immediately froze to the metal, burning. She ignored the cold.

Helped by the two sailors shoving her hips, she pulled up and poked her head into the blizzard. She was immediately blinded by the winds and blowing ice.

She donned her goggles and dropped belly first to the curved roof of the hut and slithered out. She moved carefully, her nose inches from the corrugated exterior. The winds threatened to kite her off the roof. Worse, the Jamesway huts had barrel-shaped roofs, like the older Quonset huts. The roof sloped steeply to the snowy ground on either side.

Jenny straddled the top, clinging as best she could to the ice-coated surface. She carefully crabbed around to see Kowalski miraculously squeeze his bulk through the dimly lit hole, like Jonah squeezing from the blowhole of a metal whale.

He grunted a bit, then signaled her, jabbing a finger toward the windward side of the hut. The pair shimmied and slid on their butts to where the sloping roof went straight down toward the ground. The ice threatened to take them over the edge against their will.

On this side of the Jamesway, snow had built up into a large bank, a frozen wave permanently breaking against the hut, reaching almost to the roof. Kowalski searched from his perch for any Russian guards. Jenny joined him. It looked clear for the moment, but visibility was mere feet in the ground blizzard.

He glanced over to her.

She nodded.

Kowalski led the way. Sliding feetfirst over the edge, he dropped down onto the snowbank, then rolled skillfully down its icy slope. He vanished out of view.

Readying herself, Jenny glanced back to the hole. It had already been closed. There was no turning back. She slid on her cold rear over the icy edge of the roof and fell to the snow.

Now to escape.

She rolled artlessly down the snowbank, losing control of her tumble and landing atop Kowalski. It was like hitting a buried boulder. The collision knocked the wind out of her.

She gasped silently.

Rather than helping her, Kowalski pushed her farther down into the snow. He pointed with his arm.

Beyond the edge of a neighboring hut, a group of shadowy figures hunched against the wind. They were only discernible because of the pool of light cast about them from idling hovercraft bikes.

The pair stayed hidden.

The shadowy group soon mounted their hovercraft. The engines must have been idling because the headlamps immediately rose, swaying in the gusts, then turned away. The wail of winds covered the sound of the engines, giving an eerie quality to the sight.

The vehicles vanished into the empty ice plains. The two remaining guards stalked away and disappeared into the next building.

Jenny watched the glow of the last hovercraft fade out. They could be going to only one place: the Russian ice station. Her thoughts turned to the other Sno-Cat that had vanished, heading in the same direction, carrying Matt and the Seattle reporter.

For the first time in years, Jenny prayed for Matt’s safety. She wished she could have spoken the words that bitterness and anger had locked inside her all this time. It seemed so pointless now, so many years wasted in despair.

She whispered soft words into the wind.

I’m sorry…Matt, I’m so sorry…

Gunfire erupted behind them, loud and near.

“Up!” Kowalski yelled in her ear, yanking her to her feet. “Run!”

Amanda fled alongside the tall stranger. The grendel still remained out of sight farther up the maze of passages, but the buzz of its echolocation filled the back of her head with a fuzzy, scratchy feeling.

It was tracking them, slowly, cautiously, driving them deeper into the ice island.

“What is it waiting for?” Matt asked.

“For our luck to run out,” she answered, remembering Lacy Devlin’s fate. “One of these times, we’re going to turn into a dead end. A blocked passage, a cliff. Then we’ll be trapped.”

“Deadly and smart…a great combination.”

Together they rounded a curve of smooth tunnel. The crampons on Amanda’s boots gave her traction, but Matt slid, skidding around on the ice. She grabbed his arm to help him keep his footing.

Matt turned to her. “We can’t keep this up. We’re just heading deeper and deeper down, away from where we want to go.”

“What else can we do?” She held up the small ice ax she had taken from Connor. “Face it with this?”

“Not a chance.”

“Well, you’re Fish and Game. I’m geophysical engineering. This is your department.”

Matt bunched his brows. “We need something to lure this thing off our scent. Lay a false track for it to follow. If we could slip past it, get above it, then at least we’d be heading toward the exit as we ran.”

Amanda struggled for an answer to this riddle, her mind shifting into objective mode. She reviewed what she knew about the beasts. Little to nothing was the answer, but that did not preclude her from extrapolating hypotheses. The grendels hunted by echolocation, but they were also sensitive to light and perhaps even heat. She remembered her experience in the beast’s nest. It hadn’t been aware of her hiding place until after it destroyed the flashlight and she had begun to sweat.

Light and heat . She sensed an answer here, but what?

They ran past another crisscrossing of tunnel — then she had it!

“Wait!” she called out, and stopped.

Matt slowed, braking on his heels, one hand on the wall. He turned to her.

Amanda backed to the tunnel crossings. Light and heat . She tugged the chin strap to her helmet and pulled it off. She twisted on the lamp so it glowed brightly, then reached to her waist where her air-warming mask was belted in place next to its heater. She unhooked it and dialed the heating element to full burn. It quickly grew warm in her hands.

“What are you thinking?” Matt asked.