Lincoln Child - Terminal Freeze

He remained still, listening intently. He heard the mournful howl of the wind, the low rumble of the diesels in the powerhouse, the purr of the backup generator affixed to Davis’s trailer, and-now and then-the eerie murmurings and moanings that appeared to come from the northern lights themselves. But that was all.

He shook his head, smiling despite himself. Here he was, on the eve of what promised to be one of the most memorable days of his life…and he was working himself into a lather over a bad dream. He’d walk to the perimeter fence, take a turn along its length, then head back to his lab. Even if he couldn’t put in useful work, at least he’d try. He squared his shoulders, took another step forward.

The creak came again. And from where he now stood, Marshall got a bearing. It was coming from the direction of the vault.

He moved toward it slowly. The vault stood alone, one wall haloed in the unnatural light, the rest in darkness. Even without his flashlight, Marshall could make out the sheen of water beneath it: clearly, the automated thawing process was well under way. Tomorrow this steel container-and its contents-would be the star of the show. Tugging the flashlight from his pocket, Marshall aimed it at the silver structure.

Then he heard the creak yet again, louder. Armed with the flashlight, Marshall identified its source: a piece of lumber, hanging down loosely into the three-foot crawl space beneath the vault.

Marshall frowned. Shoddy workmanship, he thought. That’ll have to be taken care of before Conti and his variety show go live. Or perhaps something had simply broken loose from the structure. It was swaying in the wind, just above the dirty puddle of meltwater…

But there was something else wrong here. It wasn’t so much a puddle he was looking at but a lake. A lake full of chunks of dirty ice.

He moved closer, crouched, shone his light at the pool of meltwater. Frowning, he raised the beam to the loose piece of lumber. It creaked again as the wind played with it, the lower end badly splintered. Slowly, he let the flashlight beam travel up the lumber to the vault’s underside.

A hole-large, circular, and rough-had been cut into the wooden floor. And even in the shifting beam of his flashlight, Marshall could clearly see that the vault was empty.

In thirty minutes, somnolent Fear Base was completely awake. Now, Marshall -along with practically every other person on-site-sat in ancient folding chairs in the Operations Center on B Level. It was the only room large enough to hold so many people. He looked around at the assembled faces. Some, like Sully and Ekberg, seemed stunned. Others were openly red-eyed. Fortnum, the DP, sat with his head bowed, hands alternately clenching and unclenching.

They had assembled at the request of Wolff, the channel rep. Actually, Marshall reflected, it hadn’t really sounded like a request. It was more like an order.

When first confronted with the news, Emilio Conti had been dazed, almost paralyzed, by the sudden turn of fortune. But now, as Marshall watched the director move back and forth before the rough semicircle of chairs, he saw a different emotion on the small man’s face-desperate rage.

“First,” Conti snapped as he paced, “the facts. Sometime between midnight and five, the vault was broken into and the asset ”-he bit the word off-“was removed. Stolen. Dr. Marshall here made the discovery.” Conti glanced toward him briefly, his black eyes glittering with mistrust. “I’ve spoken with the management at Terra Prime and Blackpool. Under the circumstances, they have no choice: tonight’s live feed has been canceled. A rerun of From Fatal Seas will be aired instead.” He almost spat out the words. “They will be refunding $12 million in advertising guarantees to their sponsors. That is in addition to the $8 million they spent to make all this possible.”

He stopped for a moment, glared at the assembly, then continued his pacing. “Those are the facts. Next: conjecture. There’s a mole among us. Someone in the pay of a rival network. Or perhaps someone working for a ‘handler’-a dealer in exotic goods with connections to museums or wealthy collectors overseas.”

Beside Marshall, Penny Barbour scoffed under her breath. “Bloody daft,” she murmured.

“Daft?” Conti rounded on her. “It’s happened before. This isn’t just an artifact-it’s a commodity.”

“A commodity?” Barbour said. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re talking about a commodity.” It was Wolff who answered. The network liaison was standing in the back of the room beside Sergeant Gonzalez, arms crossed, a plastic swizzle stick in his mouth. “More than just an evening’s entertainment. An indefinitely exploitable network resource. Something that could be repurposed many times-touring on exhibition to museums, loaned to universities and research institutions, used in follow-up broadcasts. Maybe even a future icon for the network. Or-perhaps-its mascot.”

Mascot, Marshall thought to himself. Until now, he’d had no idea just how ambitious Blackpool ’s plans for their frozen cat had been.

As Wolff stepped to the front, Conti stopped pacing and joined him. “As a network, Terra Prime is part of a very small community,” Wolff went on. “Despite the pains we took to keep things quiet, we knew word of this project might leak out. But we were confident that our vetting process would weed out anyone not one hundred percent reliable.” He raised a hand to his lips, plucked out the swizzle stick. “Apparently our confidence was misplaced.”

Marshall noticed most of the network staff was listening, heads bowed. Only his fellow scientists seemed surprised by this cloak-and-dagger talk.

“What are you saying, exactly?” Sully asked.

“Just a moment.” Wolff turned to the sergeant. “Is the head count finished?”

Gonzalez nodded.

“Anyone unaccounted for?”

“Just one. That new arrival, Dr. Logan. My men are looking for him now.”

“Everybody else? Network and expedition crew?”

“They’re all here.”

Only then did Wolff glance back at Sully. “I’m saying we have reason to believe that someone at this base was paid to appropriate the specimen for a third party. Either arrangements were made before our arrival, or contact was established at some later point. We will be reviewing all communications in and out of Fear Base over the last seventy-two hours to learn more.”

“I thought you had all this under tight control,” Marshall said. “The thawing process, the security, everything. Just how was this pulled off?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Wolff replied. “It would appear the thawing was hastened-obviously by whoever appropriated the carcass. It was a fully automated process, there was a backup generator-nothing could have gone wrong without external manipulation. We’ve checked outside the perimeter fence. There is no sign of a plane either arriving or leaving in the night. That means the asset is still here.”

“What about footprints?” somebody piped up. “Can’t you track those?”

“Around the vault, where the ice thawed, the ground has been churned up by so many prints it’s impossible,” said Wolff. “Beyond that, the permafrost is too hard for prints to leave an impression.”

“If somebody stole it, why didn’t they take off in the Sno-Cat?” Marshall asked. “You keep the keys up in the weather chamber; anybody could grab it.”

“Too conspicuous. And too slow. The thief would use a plane.” Conti looked around. “We’ll be checking everyone’s belongings. Everyone’s quarters. Everything.”

Wolff rested his oddly expressionless eyes on Gonzalez. “You have the schematics for Fear Base, Sergeant?”