Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

Leah shook her head and her perky blonde ponytail swayed from side to side. “Does anyone want to tell me what an Elekro… thingy is?”

Juan took the bait, “He’s saying… we’ve found a World War II German submarine. A fricking Nazi U-Boat.”

There was a stunned silence as they digested what the captain was proposing.

“How do we know for sure it’s not a UFO?” Juan looked to Dave for support, “it still could be, right?”

Dave shrugged noncommittally. He’d never found either one before, so he wasn’t willing to stake his reputation by making a call.

“Look at the shape,” Jameson indicated to the long, smooth artifact on the screen, before continuing, “if it was meant to fly, it would be a lot more aerodynamic and we’d see some evidence of control surfaces. There are none, it’s sleek and streamlined, like it was designed to glide through water with minimal resistance. It’s a submarine, not a spacecraft and a very old one at that. The shape dates it to the Second World War and the dimensions are right on the money for a Type XXI U-Boat. I’d bet the farm on it.”

Leah drew a circle with her finger around the enormous void they’d found in the ice mountain, “This entire area is shaped like a giant ice cream cone. You can see the concentric striations, as if it were carved from the ice with a melon scoop, starting at the base, where the sea water enters through a tunnel in the ice, forming some kind of lake within the structure.”

She paused to see if they were following her. She took their silence as a cue to continue.

“Down here… and here,” she indicated two impressions in the graphic, “appear to be quite significant horizontal channels or tunnels bored through the ice linking this ‘lake’ with the open sea below the ice cap.”

“Where are you going with this, Dr. Anderson? I’m not sure I follow.” Captain Jameson looked Leah in the eyes, confusion on his face.

“Ocean here,” she stabbed at the monitor, earning a look of disdain from Juan. “Tunnel here.” She stabbed again. “Apparently a man-made lake, here.” She stabbed once more making the monitor shudder from the impact.

They still didn’t get it.

Leah let out a long sigh. “If this is a submarine, then how in the hell did it end up way over here, embedded in an ice mountain that’s been frozen above the water line for over a hundred thousand years?”

The silence was absolute.

Jack and Sam used harnesses and straps to haul the surviving pallet of equipment over the rough, wind torn ice to the protruding conning tower of the submarine. The bizarre nature of their mission and the fact that a World War II submarine should be embedded in the ice in the middle of an ice pack at the bottom of the world was not lost on either of the two men. However, in that moment, they were too busy trying to make survival plans to think too much about it. Incessant winds pinged snow and ice off their goggles and stung their exposed faces as they battled the elements, seeking shelter from the lee side of the submarine sail.

Exhausted and sweating profusely, despite the -50 degree temperature and the life threatening wind chill, both men dropped the haul straps and collapsed onto the hardened ice once they were out of direct line of the pummeling wind.

Shouting over the howling squall, Jack instructed Sam, “You see what needs to be done to access the sub and I’ll start an inventory of what weapons and survival gear we still have.”

“And food,” Sam added.

“You’ll be a frozen, wind chilled icicle long before you starve to death,” Jack assured him.

Sam looked to the sky but all he could see was a swirl of ice and snow, limiting visibility to no more than a few yards.

“What time does it get dark?” he asked, pointing overhead to where he thought the sun would be through the clouds and snow.

Jack ripped apart the Velcro on his expedition jacket sleeve and made a show of looking at his watch.

“Sunset will be around… March. So you’d better get moving while I sort through the equipment you didn’t manage to drop down the ice hole.” He slapped Sam on the back and proceeded to release the ratchets on the tie downs securing their gear to the pallet.

Shaking his head, unsure if Jack was yanking his chain or not, Sam trudged across the slippery ice and stopped at the base of the conning tower to marvel at its pristine condition. He had no idea that the frozen wasteland in which he now found himself preserved old boats so well. Still carrying his pack, Sam climbed the ice encrusted rugs hand-over-hand ensuring he always had a firm grip in case he lost his footing. He’d been around ships and subs long enough for that kind of caution to be second nature. They were in an environment where even a short fall from a ladder could get you killed.

Peeling back the tarps covering the equipment, Jack stole a glance at the conning tower, also. He’d seen a lot of high altitude helicopters wrecks in the Himalayas and quite a few ice bound ships in the Arctic during his time in the service, but he’d never seen anything in the condition of the conning tower trapped in the ice before him, like a giant fossil frozen in both ice and time. With the wind picking up there was no time to ponder the many mysteries of the Polar Regions. The mission and their very survival depended on the equipment that Sam hadn’t managed to lose to the frigid depths.

Reaching the top of the conning tower, Sam looked back down at Jack. The guy was really starting to get on his nerves and his comment about losing the equipment in the ice hole didn’t sit well with the career navy man who took great pride in his work and didn’t take criticism of his professionalism well.

“Ice hole,” Sam grumbled, “I know who the ice hole is on this mission, buddy.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when he heard the distinctive pinging of live rounds against steel. Looking down at the ice shelf, he could see row after row of bullets strafing the ice, making a direct line to Jack’s position, some of them ricocheting off the base of the tower. With his hood covering his ears and the roar of the wind, Sam knew that Jack couldn’t hear the barrage of fire closing in on him. Sparks flew from around the conning tower ladder as rounds found a new target, perched high up and vulnerable.

Descending the ladder into the field of fire would be suicidal, so Sam continued up the ladder and dropped himself over the top and into the relative safety of the heavily armored conning tower. Just in time too as the ladder he had been standing on erupted in a hail of gunfire. Sam was getting a little tired of dodging death. He’d had enough of that for one day. Maybe even an entire lifetime.

Now he had to help Jack.

Removing his combat pack, Sam rummaged through the contents for something that he could use and came up empty. Then he looked down at the tactical vest he was wearing. Wearing a multitude of deadly weapons might have been second nature to a SEAL or Marine but was completely foreign to the navy man and it took a moment for a solution to register. His beefy hand wrapped around a fist sized canister hanging from the front of his vest, pulling it free before he pulled the pin out of it and tossed it down toward the pallet Jack was working on. Ducking for cover again, Sam hoped he’d chosen the right one.

Thick red smoke discharged from the smoke grenade that bounced across the ice toward Jack. Suddenly Jack’s senses became acutely aware of the approaching danger, although the source of the smoke grenade remained a mystery. With his combat instincts firing on all cylinders, Jack triangulated the path of the bullets chewing up the ice as they approached him, his position and the relative position of the conning tower ladder, which was his only option.