Clive Cussler - Fast Ice

Kurt pulled on the hoses. They wouldn’t budge. “We need to go down there.”

“That will take us below the waterline,” Joe warned.

“I have a feeling we’ll be skating instead of swimming.”

Kurt squeezed through the circular opening and descended the ladder. Two-thirds of the way down, his foot hit something cold and wet. He pressed downward and felt his boot sliding into an icy mush.

“I was half right,” he said.

“That’s better than normal,” Joe replied.

Kurt glanced at the slush below him and then scanned the compartment. It was flooded chest-high and the water had been turned to briny slush, with salt deposits coating the walls.

Stepping off the ladder, Kurt sank up to his thighs. The chill ran through his exploration gear but was tempered by the insulated wetsuit he wore underneath.

He moved away from the ladder, pushing through the heavy mixture and following the cryogenic hoses across the room.

It took an unbelievable amount of effort to wade through the slush, as if he were walking with a fifty-pound weight attached to each leg. The farther aft he went, the denser the slush grew, finally turning to ice near the far end of the compartment. Kurt climbed up onto the ice and crawled the rest of the way.

Arriving at the aft bulkhead, he was now up against the ceiling. This entire end of the compartment was solid ice. Ahead of him, he spied the top of a watertight door. The cryogenic lines were there as well, looping out of the solid block and back down into it.

Kurt studied the arrangement as Joe crossed the compartment and joined him. “Tell me we didn’t freeze our extremities off just to find the ship’s sno-cone maker.”

“We’ve found a lot more than that,” Kurt said. “Look at the hatch. It’s slightly ajar. Water was coming through. But someone stopped it by running these cryogenic tubes down here and freezing the water as it filled the compartment.”

“That might explain the growth of ice attached to the hull,” Joe suggested. “The cold would radiate through to the gap in it. A coating of ice would build up, eventually sealing the puncture. But since no one ever turned this off, it would continue to grow.”

“That explains why the attachment of ice is smooth and swept back like a wing. It formed slowly by accretion.”

“That would be my thought,” Joe said. “But what happened to the people who came up with this plan? Did they get rescued before we got here?”

“I wish that were the case,” Kurt said.

Using the outside of his glove, he scraped at the frost beneath them, buffing it in a circular pattern until the rough, opaque veneer turned smooth and clear. A face appeared below it. A slightly distorted vision of a woman with dark hair, fine features and eyes that were peacefully closed. Her hands remained clasped around the cryogenic lines.

“Is that who I think it is?”

“Cora Emmerson,” Kurt said quietly. “Looks like she gave her life to save the ship.”

“I’m sorry,” Joe said.

Kurt stared for a long, silent moment. “Damn,” he whispered.

He’d expected this would be the reality since they’d left Washington. That didn’t make it any easier.

8

RESEARCH VESSEL GRISHKA

ANTARCTIC WATERS

Having spent an hour chipping her from the ice, Kurt lifted Cora free and carried her to the Grishka ’s sick bay.

Searching for anything he might be able to bring home to her family, he found a necklace, an ID card and a phone, which remained frozen solid in its protective case. He slid the items into another pocket before covering her with a blanket.

As Kurt stood up, Joe brought in the last of the dead crewmen, dragging the man on a collapsible litter. Sliding the body to a spot beside the bulkhead, Joe placed the end of the stretcher down and then picked up the manifest they’d discovered. Comparing the man’s ID tag to the list, he made a check mark.

“Is that everyone?” Kurt asked.

“We’re still missing one of the science team,” Joe said. “A woman named Yvonne Lloyd. I’ve searched everywhere. She’s not on the ship.”

“Maybe that tells us something,” Kurt said. He looked at his watch. “Let’s get back to the bridge. It’s time to check in with Rudi.”

Broadcasting from the bridge of the ship, Kurt and Joe spoke with Rudi Gunn via a small handheld satellite phone. A grainy picture of Rudi was displayed on the phone’s four-inch screen. Data lag caused the image to freeze and skip every few seconds. At times, it made Rudi’s movements look robotic.

Kurt gave Rudi the bad news about ship, the crew and Cora, explaining how she had courageously stopped the vessel from sinking. “She’d been shot,” Kurt explained. “A superficial head wound. Not fatal, but between the injury and the loss of blood, it’s hard to overstate the effort she made to keep the ship from going down.”

Rudi took the news with notable silence, processing the sad reality with a military instinct. “I want to know who did this,” he said finally.

“Whoever it was,” Kurt said, “didn’t leave many clues. Though there are a few things out of order.”

“Such as?”

“To start with, someone’s missing.”

Joe explained. “Once we determined that the ship was stable, we began with a body count,” Joe said. “We brought all the dead crewmen to the main deck and matched ID tags and passports against the names on the manifest. When it was all said and done, everyone on the ship was accounted for except a woman named Yvonne Lloyd. She’s listed on the science team’s roster as a climatologist and paleomicrobiologist . . . Whatever that is.”

“Maybe she got trapped belowdecks when the water came in,” Rudi suggested.

“The only flooded compartments are the bilge and the engine room,” Kurt replied. “No reason for a scientist to be down there.”

“Hiding is a reason,” Rudi said. “That ship was under attack.”

“I doubt she got the chance,” Kurt said. “Looks like the ship was taken by surprise. Some of the crew were shot dead in their bunks.”

“How do you take a ship by surprise in the middle of the open ocean?” Rudi asked.

Kurt shook his head. He was having trouble with that one as well.

“It’s possible she was taken hostage,” Joe said.

“Hostage?”

“The ship was cleaned out,” Kurt explained. “The ice cores are gone. And the computers and hard drives. Basically, the science lab looks like Whoville after the Grinch came to town.”

“Meaning there’s no sign of what Cora found out on the ice,” Rudi noted.

“None,” Kurt said. “But it stands to reason that this missing scientist might have had something to do with Cora’s discovery. If so, the people who attacked this ship may have wanted her knowledge, too.”

Rudi scribbled something else on a notepad. “I’ll have Hiram run her name through the computer. What about the ship? Can it be salvaged? I’d like to get it back to dry dock where authorities can go over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

Kurt nodded. “Joe and I have a plan to make her seaworthy again. But the engine room is flooded beyond repair. We’ll need a tow.”

“The Providence can handle that,” Rudi said. “By my calculations, she’ll rendezvous with you in four hours. I want that ship ready to go when they get there.”

With a great deal of work to do, Kurt and Joe prioritized what was necessary over what would merely be helpful.

—

Joe got the power back on by diverting fuel from the main bunker to the auxiliary power unit. That got the heat on and enabled them to restart the bilge pumps once the ice began to thaw.