Clive Cussler: Fast Ice

Neither of the figures stirred upon his arrival and Rudi stepped closer without saying a word. He touched Gamay on the shoulder and called her name. Her eyes opened slowly. She looked pale and seemed dazed.

“Rudi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to get you,” he replied. He looked to Paul, who still hadn’t stirred. “Is he—”

“It’s okay,” Gamay said. “He’s still with us.”

She pulled back the blanket and revealed a line connecting her arm to Paul’s. “I gave him a transfusion. I’m a universal donor. Lucky for my husband, whose blood type I should really know.”

Paul opened his eyes, looked briefly at Rudi and then drifted back into unconsciousness.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Rudi said as the medics joined them and began to undo her work. “Now, let’s get both of you out of here.”

67

FIMBUL BAY

THREE WEEKS LATER

The Antarctic winter was beginning to set in as a small fleet finished up the salvage job around the Goliath .

Kurt, Joe and Rudi led the team. There were also a dozen ships on-site from various countries.

The initial effort had kept any algae that might be leaking from the ice ship from reaching the open ocean. For that reason, long floating barriers, known as booms, similar to those used to contain oil spills, were stretched around the ship in concentric rings.

Other ships housed crews that had cut into the ice, eventually allowing access to the storage tanks, which were then pumped full of sterilizing algicide. Another salvage vessel was on hand to off-load the diesel oil and other contaminants lest the ship break up and start leaking.

Ryland’s body had been recovered the first week. Eighty-four others had been recovered since. According to the survivors, including Björn, the toll accounted for the entire crew.

On a short day, when the sun barely made it off the horizon, the operation was deemed complete. The salvage ships and oceangoing tugs that had come to participate in the cleanup left the bay one at a time. Soon only NUMA’s Providence remained.

Kurt was busy breaking down the last vestiges of equipment on the shore when Rudi and Joe arrived to pick him up in an orange-hulled tender.

The bow of the small craft slid up onto the stony beach and Rudi stepped forward. “Time for us to go.”

“So soon,” Kurt said. He was joking of course. The frigid days and long, dark nights had made three weeks feel like an eternity.

“I have a date with Leandra,” Joe said. “I’d like to make it back to Johannesburg before she forgets who I am. And if I remember rightly, you owe Lieutenant Zama and his crew a round of drinks in Cape Town.”

“That’s true,” Kurt admitted.

“And I,” Rudi said, “have to figure out how to pay for Paul and Gamay’s month in the Seychelles along with a shopping spree in Milan.”

Kurt gave him a sideways look.

Rudi shook his head. “Don’t ask.”

“Well, that should help Paul heal up at any rate,” Kurt said.

“It better,” Rudi told him. “In the meantime, this ship will remain frozen in the solid ice. Six months from now we’ll come back down and finish up. And when we do, I’ll make sure there’s something in the budget for the excavation and salvage of a certain aircraft left over from 1939.”

“So the Trouts get sunshine and golden sand, and we get to dig in the ice and snow, is that it?” Kurt laughed. “I must have been born under a lucky star.”

“Don’t try to kid me,” Rudi said. “If I didn’t send you two back down here, you’d probably take all your vacation time and come south on your own. This way at least I get to keep an eye on you.”

Kurt laughed again and carried the final crate of equipment to the tender. With everything packed and ready to go, he took a moment to look around. He noticed his boots firmly planted on a thin section of ice that had formed between the rocks where the water was shallow. It cracked under his feet but remained in place.

As the nights grew longer and colder, the fast ice was stretching across the bay from both shores. At the same time, sea ice was filling the sound in from the middle. He pointed out the one thing they couldn’t account for. “You know, we can’t be certain we’ve contained all the algae.”

Rudi disagreed. “A hundred samples of water say otherwise. We’ve tested, tested and retested. No sign of algae in the bay.”

“And the Goliath ?”

“We’ve pumped everything out of it, surrounded the hull with rings of containment booms and used sixty thousand gallons of algicide to sterilize the tanks inside. I doubt anything has gotten past us.”

Kurt nodded. He figured that was as much as they could do. “What about the samples we sent back to Washington?”

“A team of experts are studying them now,” Rudi said. “It was Cora’s idea that we might use the algae as a bandage to keep some of the world’s glaciers from melting, at least until humanity can create a future where the environment is more stable. It’ll be up to the nations of the world to decide if that’s possible . . . or if it’s wise. But at least we’ve averted one disaster.”

Kurt climbed into the boat and took a seat. “Cora would have liked that,” he said. “Who knows, with a little luck, she might have changed the world after all.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Clive Cusslerwas the author of more than seventy books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Sam and Remi Fargo. His life nearly paralleled that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers discovered and surveyed more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley , which was raised in 2000 with much publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collected classic automobiles. His collection featured more than one hundred examples of custom coachwork. Cussler passed away in February 2020.

Graham Brownis the author of Black Rain and Black Sun , and the coauthor with Cussler of Devil's Gate, The Storm, Zero Hour, Ghost Ship, The Pharaoh's Secret , Nighthawk , The Rising Sea , and Sea of Greed . He is a pilot and an attorney.

What’s next on

your reading list?

Discover your next

great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

Sign up now.