James Cobb - The Arctic Event

“Red sky at morning…” Valentina Metrace murmured the first half of the old weather rhyme. With the helicopter’s passenger seats pulled, she, Smith, and Trowbridge did as well as they could hunkered in among the gear lashed to the deck.

Smyslov gave up on the overhead radio panel. “Nothing from the station. We should be within the reach of their short-range sets by now.”

“What about auroral interference?” Smith inquired.

“Building again, but the ship is still receiving us. And if the ship can hear us, we should be able to hear Wednesday.”

“Why weren’t we told?” Dr. Trowbridge spoke up suddenly. “This was criminal! Leaving our expedition members exposed to biological weapons without a word of warning! This can be nothing but criminal!”

“Your people were warned,” Smith replied, “repeatedly, as the communications logs will show, to stay well away from the crash site. And we were assured, repeatedly, by your office, that they were doing so. Besides, whatever’s hit your people, it wasn’t anthrax.”

“Can you be so sure of that, Colonel?” Trowbridge challenged.

“Yes, I can,” Smith replied patiently. “Let me remind you, Doctor, that I am a physician, one with a particular expertise in this field. I’ve established a very close working relationship with Bacillus anthracis in recent years, and whatever has happened, that isn’t it.”

Smith turned and stared into Trowbridge’s eyes from an eighteen-inch range, going on the offensive. “Doctor, if you and your people are concealing anything about what’s happening on that island, now would be an excellent time to come clean about it.”

The academic’s jaw flapped silently for a moment. “Me? What could we possibly have to conceal?”

“I’m not sure. That’s the problem. Could your expedition members have paid an under-the-table visit to that downed bomber? Could they have learned about its possible cargo of bioagent? Could they have passed that discovery on to somebody off island?”

Trowbridge gave a very good impression of a man totally stunned by a concept. “No! Of course not! Had we had any idea that anything like that was present on the island, we would have…we would have…”

“Started looking for a buyer on eBay?” Valentina Metrace neatly double-teamed Trowbridge. As the academic twisted to face her, it was her turn to lock him up with a chill gaze. “Doctor, I can name you half a dozen rogue states that would cheerfully empty their national treasuries to possess a bioweapons arsenal to call their very own, and it’s amazing the effect a seven-figure Swiss bank account can have on ethics and morals.”

“That’s why the United States and the Russian Federation didn’t want word of that downed aircraft’s possible payload to become public knowledge,” Smith added.

“Unfortunately, Doctor, it’s apparent the word has gotten out,” Valentina slashed in once more. “Maybe it was one of the Russians, maybe it was one of ours, or maybe it was one of yours. Be that as it may, somebody nasty knows about the filth loaded aboard that bomber, and they are out to get their hands on it. My associates and I were nearly killed because of it. Your people on Wednesday Island may have died because of it. For certain, millions of innocent lives have been placed at risk because of it!”

Valentina Metrace smiled. If the historian had possessed fangs, they would have gleamed. “You may count on this, my dear Dr. Trowbridge. We are going to find out just who has the big mouth. And when we do, he or she is going to be very, very thoroughly chastised.”

Trowbridge had no response, but a shudder ran through the man’s body.

“After Hades and Lazarus and a number of similar ugly events, the world’s governments take these matters very seriously,” Smith added. “So do I, and so do the other members of this team. And now that we’ve taken you into our confidence, Doctor, it is expected-no, cancel that; it is required-that you do so as well. Is this understood?”

“Yes.”

Abruptly the helicopter swayed, trying to weathervane in a gust of wind. “It’s kicking up a little,” Randi commented into the interphone. “I think we’ve got a squall line out ahead of us.”

“Can we make it to the island?” Smith inquired.

“I think so. In fact…” She paused for a moment, peering ahead through the frost-spangled windscreen. “We’re there.”

Beyond the Long Ranger’s bow, a craggy outline materialized along a sea-smoked horizon, vaster than the bergs they had been overflying, the white of its ice streaked by the gray of stone, the tips of its two distinctive peaks lost in the brooding overcast.

Wednesday Island. They had arrived.

Professor Metrace leaned forward intently. “Can we land directly at the crash site? All it would take is five minutes on the ground to verify the presence of the warload.”

Smyslov looked back over his shoulder. “I’m not sure about that, Colonel. That is an ugly sky north of the island. Miss Russell is correct. We have a front coming down on us. Maybe snow. For certain, wind. Here, there will always be wind!”

“He’s right, Jon,” Randi interjected. “That saddleback would be a very poor place to park a helicopter in this kind of deteriorating weather.”

Smith could see that for himself; the darkening clouds beyond the island were drawing closer even as he watched. They were in a race to touch home before the arctic environment tagged them out.

“Okay, Randi. Advise the Haley that we’ll be landing at the science station. We’ll go up to the crash site on foot.”

Valentina moaned softly. “And, my, isn’t that going to be fun!”

Five minutes later they were orbiting the Wednesday Island expedition base. The wisdom in landing here was already becoming apparent. The Long Ranger was beginning to wallow in the turbulence boiling over the ridgeline, and the twin peaks were becoming shadows in the snow haze.

No one emerged from the buildings at the beat of the helicopter’s rotors.

The camp helipad lay some eighty yards north of the huts. There the snow had been freshly compacted and marked with an “H” of orange spray paint. A V-shaped windbreak of snow blocks had also been built to partially shelter a grounded aircraft. Aligning the Long Ranger, Randi eased into the landing site. There was a final swirling flurry of snow, and the pontoons thudded down.

Instantly Smith bailed out of the helicopter’s passenger door, the SR-25 at port arms. Hunching low to stay under the blade sweep, he hastened to the end of the windbreak that overlooked the hut site. Pulling up the hood of his snow smock, he dropped to one knee and merged with the end of the snow wall, his rifle lifted and leveled.

Nothing moved, and there was no sound save for the whine of the wind and the slowing whicka-whicka of the rotors.

“No activity inside the hut windows,” a voice reported from a few feet away. Lithe as a snow leopard, Valentina Metrace lay in a prone firing position, her rifle muzzle swinging in delicate arcs as she scanned for targets through the Winchester’s powerful optics.

“No activity anywhere,” Randi Russell commented from beside him, resting the forestock of her MP-5 on the snow wall.

“So it seems.” Smith got to his feet. Slinging his rifle, he removed his binoculars from their case and panned them slowly around the frozen cove to the west and across the ridgeline above the station. To the limit of his vision there were no other skid or float marks from a helicopter landing, no human movement. Nothing alive at all.

Around his eyes Smith felt the sting of the first hard-driven snowflakes of the oncoming squall. “Major Smyslov,” he said recasing his field glasses, “remain here with Doctor Trowbridge and secure the helicopter. Set your intervals, ladies. Let’s see if anyone’s at home.”