Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

The two civilians weren’t a threat.

The sailors weren’t armed.

The captain and the other officer each wore a sidearm but hadn’t drawn them, although their hands looked ready to do so at any time.

He was inside a mammoth concrete bunker of some kind. That’s what the chart had told them already, but the scale of what he was seeing was phenomenal.

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw something that didn’t belong. Something inconsistent with all the other signals his senses were compiling. An anomaly. An object bobbing around in the water between the two subs. The others couldn’t see it as it was out of their line of sight. The elevation of the conning tower gave Jack a clear view. As his eyes adjusted to the blazing floodlights on the other submarine, he saw what it was.

The woman’s blonde hair fanned in the dark water like a halo, catching the light and Jack’s attention. Her arms and legs were spread eagle. She was face down, unconscious and beginning to slowly sink. Jack instinctively calculated how long before she’d sink below the surface, the distance between himself and the woman and the time it would take to reach her to keep her afloat. There was absolutely no way he’d get to her in time. She was probably dead already.

She might also still be alive. Jack remembered his mission in Pavlovsk Bay. The Russian Admiral he’d kidnapped tried to escape and had thrown himself into the sea rather than be taken. Jack fished his lifeless body from the waves and was surprised to learn the man was still alive. He learned later that hypothermia actually preserves brain function, even when deprived of oxygen for short periods of time.

He had to try.

He kicked off his heavy combat boots, shrugged out of his tactical vest and let his belt fall at his feet. Like an Olympic gymnast, Jack grabbed the top edge of the sail and in a blur of speed hoisted himself up and over, landing on the top rung of the outer ladder. He gripped the dripping wet handrails and found himself face-to-face with scars from bullets fired to kill. It wasn’t lost on him that he was on the very same ladder from which Sam had saved him from a fatal fall. There was something almost karmic about that, but he didn’t waste time thinking about it. He needed to move!

Gripping the side rails, he pushed his feet out so they, too, were resting on the handrails and he let himself slide all the way to the deck using his gloved hands to control the speed of his plunge. If he rolled an ankle when he hit the deck he’d not have a chance at saving the woman.

As soon as his bare feet hit the steel plate, he sprinted to the edge of the hull and without breaking stride, made a perfect shallow dive off the edge, arcing through the air with effortless grace before spearing into the water like a dart, barely making a splash.

With a half dozen powerful strokes from his muscular arms and broad shoulders, he intercepted the submerged woman just before she was out of reach and wrapped an arm around her, bringing her to the surface. Rolling her on her back, Jack kicked and stroked his way toward one of the low concrete fingers that bordered the nearest U-Boat pens. As he reached the dock a flurry of hands grabbed him and the woman and heaved them out of the bitterly cold water.

Jack was numb and shaking uncontrollably. He heard someone call out for thermal blankets. One of the officers was trying to revive the woman but she was already gone. He’d seen too much death not to be able to recognize it up close.

At least I tried, he thought as his body began to shut down and he slipped into hypothermia. One final thought clawed at his semi-conscious state before everything went black. He hadn’t seen the big man since they surfaced. What the hell was Sam doing?

Warmth. That was the first thing Jack noticed as he regained consciousness. Something he hadn’t felt since Pine Gap, which seemed like another lifetime ago. He opened his eyes and harsh lights forced him to squint. The room was so bright. After a few moments, he opened his eyes slowly and saw that he was in some kind of sick bay, but it was cramped. Maybe six feet across and barely fifteen feet in length. That was another thing he’d seen too many of in his career. Sick bays, medivac choppers, hospitals and rehab. Rinse and repeat. He wasn’t surprised that he made it to an infirmary on this mission as well. There’d be something wrong if he hadn’t. It would have meant he wasn’t trying hard enough.

Then he remembered the woman in the water. His stomach turned at the thought of his failure. So many missions, so much killing, he’d blown an opportunity to actually save a life for a change. He knew it was too late even before he threw himself into the water. But some small part of him hoped for a better result.

“Thank you,” a soft voice filtered through the hum of equipment in the sick bay. The narrow bunk in which he’d been shoehorned and wrapped in heated blankets made it difficult for him to move without rolling out of the bunk, but he managed to crane his neck around to see an attractive and familiar face poking out of cocoon of heated blankets.

She was alive. He hadn’t failed after all.

“I thought you were… you know… ” he replied.

“Dead? Apparently it was touch and go but here I am. They told me I’d be dead for sure if you hadn’t grabbed me when you did. I might be an oceanographer, but I’d prefer to study the sea than freeze to death or drown in it.”

“Jack Coulson.” He held out a calloused hand.

“Leah Anderson.” She stretched her hand across the narrow space and shook Jack’s.

Her hands were soft and warm and felt comforting. Jack held on for a moment longer than etiquette would normally allow.

“What do you do when you’re not sightseeing in Nazi submarines?” Leah asked to cover the awkward moment. She felt it, too.

“If I tell you that…”

Leah held up a palm, “Please don’t say you’ll have to kill me. I’ve been cooped up with navy guys, tech nerds and conspiracy theorists for so long I’m ready to slap someone.”

He awkwardly withdrew his hand and tried to reposition himself on the bunk. As he sat up, the blankets pooled to the floor, leaving him naked apart from his shorts. Of course, they’d removed his wet clothing. He should have thought of that.

“Then I won’t say anything,” promised Jack.

He bent down to pick up the blankets so he could at least make himself decent. But it was too late. Her steel-blue eyes were already raking over his well-muscled torso and powerful shoulders before widening at the sight of the collection of ropey knife scars and puckered bullet wounds that formed a graphic representation of his life as a covert ops soldier. She wouldn’t be the first woman to sight his battle scars and make a run for it.

But she surprised him.

“Geez, what happened to the other guy?” she asked, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear.

Despite being half naked and in a closed in space with a woman who’d just had a near death experience, Jack Coulson laughed. It felt good, too. He couldn’t remember the last time something actually made him laugh.

“Glad we got that out of the way,” he said as he wrapped the blanket around himself. “Speaking of other guys, has anyone mentioned the guy I was on the sub with?” he asked.

“U-Boat. We are on a sub. You were on a U-Boat and that’s all anyone is talking about right now. Quite the grand entrance from what I saw before your U-Boat threw me into the water.”