Clive Cussler - Fast Ice

“It certainly went beyond the horizon,” he snapped. “At least five hundred miles beyond. But it’s still afloat. Drifting and collecting ice. I’ve seen the images with my own eyes.”

She couldn’t imagine how that was true, but there was no point in arguing. “What do you want us to do?”

“The Americans are obviously headed there to investigate and perhaps salvage the ship. We need to be certain they fail. Where’s the tactical team?”

“They’re still on the Goliath ,” she said. “Which is too slow and too far away to get there in time.”

“Then you’ll have to do it,” he said. “Use the Blunt Nose.”

“That vessel is being readied to bring you our genetically engineered samples,” she said. “If you divert it, the samples will be delayed. Perhaps even damaged.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Which is more important?” he asked finally. “Speed or stealth?”

“Secrecy above all,” she replied. “But don’t forget, the Blunt Nose is unarmed.”

“I’m not expecting a running battle,” he replied. “The Grishka is a derelict at this point. Listing and adrift. It won’t take much to send it to the bottom once and for all. Since you failed the first time, I want you to finish the job. By my calculations, you should be able to beat them to the ship by several hours. Secrecy will be maintained and any clues you left behind will vanish forever.”

She bit her lip and held back from firing off another salvo. “And the samples?”

“You can deliver them after you’ve taken care of the Grishka. ”

The call ended before she could argue the point further. The discussion was over. So be it.

She put the phone away, she would have to leave almost immediately, but she needed to check one last thing. She moved forward and ducked under the tarp. A wave of heat swept over her as she entered the operations area. Heat and humidity.

An older man with a wrench in his hand walked over to her. He was short in height but broad across the shoulders. He had hands like the paws of a bear. Even the oversize wrench looked like a toy in his powerful grip.

Scars on his face and neck stood out. They came from an explosion while working at an oil field in Venezuela years earlier. He’d been given the most basic of care, denied any financial settlement and then left for dead. Until the Ice Queen found him.

Now he was one of them. A zealot who’d had the veil lifted from his eyes. Like the rest of them, he saw the dying world for what it was—a disgusting and polluted place where humans tore one another apart and burned nature to the ground for incremental scraps of imaginary wealth. Like her and the others, he was ready to change that for good.

“Do you feel that?” he said.

Of course she felt it. “Is something wrong with the drilling rig?”

“Nothing wrong with it at all,” he replied. “It’s shut down because we don’t need it anymore.”

“Then where’s all this heat coming from?”

“We’ve broken through and tapped the geothermal layer,” he said, offering a smile that stretched the scars painfully. “We capped the well, but it’s bringing up so much superheated steam that I’ve had to vent some of it. Otherwise, the pressure will get too high.”

“You’ve hit the target right in the heart,” she said. “Outstanding. What’s the depth?”

“Two thousand meters,” he said. “Roughly six thousand feet.”

There was only one pertinent question. “Will the pressure hold?”

The foreman nodded. “Trust me,” he said. “There’s more heat down there than your wildest estimates. You’ll have all the power and steam that you could ever need.”

A smile appeared on her face. Something the workers seldom saw. It made her look kind instead of harsh, attractive instead of someone to be feared. She banished it quickly. “Stay on top of this. We’re two months past the solstice. The days are getting shorter. This place will be uninhabitable in a matter of weeks.”

“It’s going to be a long, dark winter,” he said.

She nodded. “Longer and darker than anyone knows.”

6

NUMA JAYHAWK HELICOPTER

FIFTY-NINE DEGREES SOUTH LATITUDE

After a long flight from Washington, D.C., to Cape Town and a four-hour ride out to the Providence , Kurt and Joe got three hours’ rest before climbing back on board the NUMA Jayhawk helicopter and flying off toward the Grishka .

At that point, the stricken ship was still more than five hundred miles away. Even fitted with extra fuel tanks, the helicopter would have little time to hover over the Grishka before it had to turn for home.

“We’ve got a slight tailwind,” the pilot told Kurt and Joe, “but that’s going to be a headwind on our way back.”

“You won’t have to hang around long,” Kurt said. “Just get us on the deck.”

The pilot nodded and Kurt sat back. He and Joe were in the passenger section of the helicopter, their minds and bodies completing a rapid adjustment from the normal day-to-day operations back in D.C. to the intense environment of a critical field operation.

“By my calculations, we’ll be there in two hours,” Joe said. “Just enough time for me to pry the truth out of you.”

“What truth?” Kurt said.

“The truth about Cora.”

Kurt shook his head in surprise. “Sixteen hours from D.C. to Cape Town and you decide to pester me now?”

“I was plotting my strategy,” Joe said.

“On the back of your eyelids.”

“Best way to make a long flight seem short,” Joe said. “Besides, you know how these things go. Once we get rolling, sleep will be at a premium.”

Joe wasn’t wrong about that. But Kurt had found sleep hard to come by. On the flight out, he’d drifted off several times, only to be woken by memories of Cora and questions about what she’d been up to. Each string of thoughts led to the dark possibility of what they’d find on the ship.

The little they’d been able to discover regarding Cora’s expedition showed it to be funded by questionable sources and steeped in mystery generally. And whatever part of Antarctica they’d eventually made landfall on, she’d gone there without getting permission from the UN or any of the national agencies that handled that sort of thing. It was a long fall from being part of NUMA.

Joe was waiting. “I can be very persistent,” he said.

“The word you’re looking for is annoying .”

“That, too,” Joe said. “So, give me the scoop. What’s the real deal?”

Kurt gave in with a sigh. Two hours of being pestered by one’s best friend was more than any man could endure.

“Cora was everything Rudi said she was. And by that I mean she was brilliant, hardworking and a handful. Rudi handpicked her to be the next member of the team. He brought her in under a mentorship program, like the one they run at Annapolis. And like that program, the duty falls to the mentor to make sure the protégée succeeds. Unfortunately, the more Cora acted out, the more Rudi came down on her. Every reprimand crushed her spirit just a little bit more. And that spirit was what made her great. The bottom line was simple. Cora was like a horse you have to whisper to. Rudi wanted to break her and build her back up his own way. I opened the barn door and set her free.”

Joe nodded. He understood the tension better. “I wish I’d had a chance to meet her,” he said, then, realizing how he’d phrased it, added, “I mean, um, maybe I still can.”

“It’s okay,” Kurt said. “But for the record, you two would have gotten along famously. Together, you’d have driven Rudi to early retirement.”