James Rollins - Ice Hunt

Kanter simply rolled to his back. Staring skyward, he faced his death. “Shit…” He had nothing more profound to say and that bothered him more than anything.

Perry listened as stations reported their status.

He hardly heard, his mind still on what had just happened.

Moments ago, the Drakon had sunk away and rolled into the deep ocean trench below, fading beyond crush depth. Perry had listened himself to the final bubbling as the Russian submarine gasped its last breath and was gone.

But it had not died alone.

Float ice is a great drum, transmitting sound to the waters below. Perry had heard it all happen. Then a helicopter had jammed into the cap, shattering through it. It had been visible through the periscope. The wreckage hung for a stretch, lit by the fires of its own oil and fuel. Then the surrounding ice melted from the heat of the conflagration and released its hold. The twisted wreckage sank into the sea, chasing the Drakon down into the depths.

Now all had gone dead quiet.

Perry kept his own boat running silent, patrolling the waters.

What the hell was going on? Cut off from the world, he was unsure what to do next. Should they surface and attempt to contact those who’d taken out the Russians? Was it indeed a Delta Force team or could it be a third combatant? And what about the Russian ice station? Was it still commandeered by a team of Russian ground forces?

“Sir?” Lieutenant Liang was staring at him. “Do we prepare to surface?”

That was the most logical next step — but Perry held off.

A submarine was at its most effective when no one knew it was there, and he wasn’t ready to give up that advantage. He slowly shook his head. “Not yet, Lieutenant, not yet…”

Admiral Kent Reynolds strode through the foot-thick steel blast doors of the command’s flag plot room. Already in the cavernous room were his handpicked team, experts in their fields called in last night, most buzzed from their beds and set to work here.

The heavy door shut behind him, the locks engaging.

In the center of the room stretched a long conference table, constructed of polished native koa wood, a true Hawaiian treasure in rich, dark hues — not that any of the table’s handsome surface could be seen through the piles of loose papers, books, folders, charts, and laptop computers.

Around the table, his team of communication, intelligence, and Russian experts worked singly and in small groups. Their voices were hushed, keeping private their conversations from one another. Even here, secrets were shared reluctantly among the factions gathered.

A tall, gangly fellow stepped away from one of the backlit wall maps. He wore an Armani suit minus the jacket, shirtsleeves rolled up. It was Charles Landley of NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office. A good family friend, he was married to one of Reynolds’s nieces. He had been poring over a chart of the Arctic region, a map looking directly down upon the North Pole.

He turned now, wearing a tired expression, no welcoming smile. “Admiral Reynolds, thank you for coming so quickly.”

“What is it, Charlie?”

Five minutes ago, Admiral Reynolds had been interrupted from a conference call with COMSUBLANT, his counterpart on the Atlantic coast, but Charles Landley wouldn’t have summoned him away unless it was urgent.

“SOSUS has picked up a series of explosions.”

“Where?” SOSUS was an ocean-based listening system of linked hydrophones. It could pick up a whale’s fart anywhere in the seven seas.

Charlie stepped to the wall and tapped a spot on the map. “We believe with eighty-five percent probability that it was at the coordinates of the Omega Drift Station.”

Admiral Reynolds had to take a deep breath. Fear for his daughter, Amanda, always present these last hours, flared to an ache behind his sternum. “Analysis?”

“We believe it was a series of depth charges. We also detected signature bubbling of an imploding submarine.” Charlie lifted one eyebrow. “Prior to these strong detects, we also picked up what sounded like helicopter bell beats…but they were too weak to say for certain.”

“A strike team?”

Charlie nodded. “That is what current intel believes. Without pictures from the Big Bird recon satellite, we’re blind to what’s going on.”

“How long until the spy platform is clear of the solar storm?”

“At least another two hours. In fact, I believe that is why the Russians dragged their feet for two weeks after being leaked news of the Arctic discovery. They were waiting for this blackout window to open so they could proceed free of spying eyes.”

“And the strike team that sank the sub?”

“We’re still working on that data. It could be either a second Russian assault team — in which case, it was the Polar Sentinel that was sunk. Or it’s our Delta Force team, and the Drakon has been scuttled.”

Admiral Reynolds allowed himself a moment of hope. “It has to be the Delta Force team. The word I’ve gleaned from Special Forces is that the Delta teams were deployed in advance of the Russian attack.”

Charlie stared at him, eyes pinched, pained. The admiral braced himself for his friend’s next words. Something was wrong.

“I’ve learned something else.” These words were spoken in hushed tones.

Admiral Reynolds’s gaze flicked to the team gathering and collating data. Charlie had not shared whatever he had discovered with these others. The admiral sensed the next bit of news was the true reason he had been so urgently summoned. The throbbing behind his ribs grew more lancing.

Charlie led him over to a side table under one of the maps. A titanium laptop rested atop it, floating the NRO icon over its flat-screen monitor. Charlie booted the laptop and typed in his security code. Once it was up and running, he opened a file that required him to place his thumb over a glowing print-reader to open.

Stepping away, Charlie waved him forward.

Admiral Reynolds leaned toward the screen. It was a Pentagon memo stamped top secret. It was dated over a week ago. The heading was in bold type: GRENDEL OP.

Charlie shouldn’t have been able to access this file, but NRO moved within its own channels. Its organization had its fingers and eyes everywhere. His friend deliberately concentrated on the wall map of Asia. It had nothing to do with the current situation, but he kept his attention focused there anyway.

Slipping a pair of reading glasses from a pocket, Admiral Reynolds leaned closer and read the message. It was three pages. The first section detailed what was known about the history of the Russian ice station. As he read, Admiral Reynolds found his vision blurring, as if his body were physically trying to deny what it was seeing. But there could be no doubt. The dates, the names, were all there.

His gaze settled on the words human experimentation . It took him back to his father’s war stories, of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, of the atrocities committed within those dark halls.

How could they…?

Sickened, he continued to read. The last part of the report detailed the U.S. military’s response: the purpose, the objectives, the endgame scenarios. He read what was hidden at the ice station and the ultimate mission statement of Grendel ops.

Charlie reached a hand to his shoulder as he straightened, steadying him, knowing he would need it. “I thought you deserved to know.”

Admiral Reynolds suddenly found it hard to breathe. Amanda… The pain behind his sternum stabbed outward, lancing down his left arm. Bands of steel wrapped around his chest and squeezed.