The Arctic Event

Chapter Twenty-three

Over the Arctic Ocean

The sky now flamed behind the Long Ranger, a gold and scarlet ribbon across the southern horizon. It served as a vivid contrast wedged between the stark black water and white ice of the fissured pack and the lowering gray of the cloud cover. The sunrise in the south was subtly perturbing, a disruption in the natural order of things that emphasized the alienness of the world they were penetrating.

“Red sky at morning…” Valentina Metrace murmured the first half of the old weather rhyme. With the helicopter’s passenger seats pulled, she, Smith, and Trowbridge did as well as they could hunkered in among the gear lashed to the deck.

Smyslov gave up on the overhead radio panel. “Nothing from the station. We should be within the reach of their short-range sets by now.”

“What about auroral interference?” Smith inquired.

“Building again, but the ship is still receiving us. And if the ship can hear us, we should be able to hear Wednesday.”

“Why weren’t we told?” Dr. Trowbridge spoke up suddenly. “This was criminal! Leaving our expedition members exposed to biological weapons without a word of warning! This can be nothing but criminal!”

“Your people were warned,” Smith replied, “repeatedly, as the communications logs will show, to stay well away from the crash site. And we were assured, repeatedly, by your office, that they were doing so. Besides, whatever’s hit your people, it wasn’t anthrax.”

“Can you be so sure of that, Colonel?” Trowbridge challenged.

“Yes, I can,” Smith replied patiently. “Let me remind you, Doctor, that I am a physician, one with a particular expertise in this field. I’ve established a very close working relationship with Bacillus anthracis in recent years, and whatever has happened, that isn’t it.”

Smith turned and stared into Trowbridge’s eyes from an eighteen-inch range, going on the offensive. “Doctor, if you and your people are concealing anything about what’s happening on that island, now would be an excellent time to come clean about it.”

The academic’s jaw flapped silently for a moment. “Me? What could we possibly have to conceal?”

“I’m not sure. That’s the problem. Could your expedition members have paid an under-the-table visit to that downed bomber? Could they have learned about its possible cargo of bioagent? Could they have passed that discovery on to somebody off island?”

Trowbridge gave a very good impression of a man totally stunned by a concept. “No! Of course not! Had we had any idea that anything like that was present on the island, we would have…we would have…”

“Started looking for a buyer on eBay?” Valentina Metrace neatly double-teamed Trowbridge. As the academic twisted to face her, it was her turn to lock him up with a chill gaze. “Doctor, I can name you half a dozen rogue states that would cheerfully empty their national treasuries to possess a bioweapons arsenal to call their very own, and it’s amazing the effect a seven-figure Swiss bank account can have on ethics and morals.”

“That’s why the United States and the Russian Federation didn’t want word of that downed aircraft’s possible payload to become public knowledge,” Smith added.

“Unfortunately, Doctor, it’s apparent the word has gotten out,” Valentina slashed in once more. “Maybe it was one of the Russians, maybe it was one of ours, or maybe it was one of yours. Be that as it may, somebody nasty knows about the filth loaded aboard that bomber, and they are out to get their hands on it. My associates and I were nearly killed because of it. Your people on Wednesday Island may have died because of it. For certain, millions of innocent lives have been placed at risk because of it!”

Valentina Metrace smiled. If the historian had possessed fangs, they would have gleamed. “You may count on this, my dear Dr. Trowbridge. We are going to find out just who has the big mouth. And when we do, he or she is going to be very, very thoroughly chastised.”

Trowbridge had no response, but a shudder ran through the man’s body.

“After Hades and Lazarus and a number of similar ugly events, the world’s governments take these matters very seriously,” Smith added. “So do I, and so do the other members of this team. And now that we’ve taken you into our confidence, Doctor, it is expected-no, cancel that; it is required-that you do so as well. Is this understood?”

“Yes.”

Abruptly the helicopter swayed, trying to weathervane in a gust of wind. “It’s kicking up a little,” Randi commented into the interphone. “I think we’ve got a squall line out ahead of us.”

“Can we make it to the island?” Smith inquired.

“I think so. In fact…” She paused for a moment, peering ahead through the frost-spangled windscreen. “We’re there.”

Beyond the Long Ranger’s bow, a craggy outline materialized along a sea-smoked horizon, vaster than the bergs they had been overflying, the white of its ice streaked by the gray of stone, the tips of its two distinctive peaks lost in the brooding overcast.

Wednesday Island. They had arrived.

Professor Metrace leaned forward intently. “Can we land directly at the crash site? All it would take is five minutes on the ground to verify the presence of the warload.”

Smyslov looked back over his shoulder. “I’m not sure about that, Colonel. That is an ugly sky north of the island. Miss Russell is correct. We have a front coming down on us. Maybe snow. For certain, wind. Here, there will always be wind!”

“He’s right, Jon,” Randi interjected. “That saddleback would be a very poor place to park a helicopter in this kind of deteriorating weather.”

Smith could see that for himself; the darkening clouds beyond the island were drawing closer even as he watched. They were in a race to touch home before the arctic environment tagged them out.

“Okay, Randi. Advise the Haley that we’ll be landing at the science station. We’ll go up to the crash site on foot.”

Valentina moaned softly. “And, my, isn’t that going to be fun!”

Five minutes later they were orbiting the Wednesday Island expedition base. The wisdom in landing here was already becoming apparent. The Long Ranger was beginning to wallow in the turbulence boiling over the ridgeline, and the twin peaks were becoming shadows in the snow haze.

No one emerged from the buildings at the beat of the helicopter’s rotors.

The camp helipad lay some eighty yards north of the huts. There the snow had been freshly compacted and marked with an “H” of orange spray paint. A V-shaped windbreak of snow blocks had also been built to partially shelter a grounded aircraft. Aligning the Long Ranger, Randi eased into the landing site. There was a final swirling flurry of snow, and the pontoons thudded down.

Instantly Smith bailed out of the helicopter’s passenger door, the SR-25 at port arms. Hunching low to stay under the blade sweep, he hastened to the end of the windbreak that overlooked the hut site. Pulling up the hood of his snow smock, he dropped to one knee and merged with the end of the snow wall, his rifle lifted and leveled.

Nothing moved, and there was no sound save for the whine of the wind and the slowing whicka-whicka of the rotors.

“No activity inside the hut windows,” a voice reported from a few feet away. Lithe as a snow leopard, Valentina Metrace lay in a prone firing position, her rifle muzzle swinging in delicate arcs as she scanned for targets through the Winchester’s powerful optics.

“No activity anywhere,” Randi Russell commented from beside him, resting the forestock of her MP-5 on the snow wall.

“So it seems.” Smith got to his feet. Slinging his rifle, he removed his binoculars from their case and panned them slowly around the frozen cove to the west and across the ridgeline above the station. To the limit of his vision there were no other skid or float marks from a helicopter landing, no human movement. Nothing alive at all.

Around his eyes Smith felt the sting of the first hard-driven snowflakes of the oncoming squall. “Major Smyslov,” he said recasing his field glasses, “remain here with Doctor Trowbridge and secure the helicopter. Set your intervals, ladies. Let’s see if anyone’s at home.”

Their boots crunched and squeaked on the corn snow of the trail as they moved on to the station.

According to the site map they had been given, the northernmost of the three huts was the storage and utility building, shorter trails radiating out from it to the camp’s flammable coal, gasoline, and kerosene dumps.

Outside the hut’s door there was no need for Smith to give orders or to speak at all. He only took a covering station beside the door. Valentina twisted a knurled knob on the model 70’s Pachmayr optics mounts, tipping the scope aside to clear the rifle’s close-range iron sights, and Randi drew back the bolt on the MP-5. Carrying the “short gun,” she would have the point going in. With Smith and Valentina covering from either side of the snow lock, Randi pushed through the outer and inner doors into the hut.

A moment of silence followed, then, “Clear.”

Smith took his own fast look around inside the unheated building. There was only the camp’s auxiliary gasoline generator and ranked shelves packed with equipment and stores. The reserves were somewhat depleted after a season in the field, but a sizable emergency stock remained. It was an old just-in-case for polar exploration. For a one-season stay, you supplied for two.

The central hut was the combination laboratory and radio shack. A wind turbine mounted on a short, heavily guylined mast purred nearby, pumping out electric power. A second, taller steel girder mast, carrying the communications antenna, stood atop a low ice-covered knoll some hundred yards beyond the camp area.

The last word from Kayla Brown had come from the radio shack.

Again the team repeated the entry drill.

Again, “Clear!”

Rifles lowered, Smith and Valentina followed Randi into the hut. A smoky warmth struck Smith’s face as he pushed through the inner snow lock door. This building still held life. Laboratory implements gleamed untouched on the workbenches and central table. Sample and equipment cases lay on the floor, some closed and secure, ready to load. Others were open and in the process of being filled.

The heat in the cabin issued from a small coal stove centered on the north wall. Crossing to it, Metrace lifted the stove lid, revealing glowing orange ash. “I wonder how long one of these things can hold a fire,” she mused, adding a few chunks of glossy black anthracite from the scuttle.

“Probably for some time,” Smith commented, looking around the lab. “There’s no sign of a struggle, and there are plenty of delicate things in here to smash.”

“Um-hm,” Valentina agreed, pointing toward a row of empty hooks near the exterior doorway. “Miss Brown must have had the chance to put on her snow gear. Apparently she left under controlled circumstances.”

Smith went on into the radio room. With her gloves off and her hood thrown back, Randi was sitting in the sidebands operator’s chair, a frown on her face. The radios were still switched on. Check lights glowed green, and the thin hiss of a carrier wave issued from the speakers. As Smith looked on she pressed the transmit key at the base of the desk mike. “CGAH Haley CGAH Haley, this is KGWI Wednesday Island. This is a check call. This is a check call. Do you copy? Over.”

The carrier hissed back emptily.

“What do you think, Randi?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “We’re on frequency, and the transmitter gain indicates we’re putting out.” She adjusted the receiver squelch and transmitter power and repeated the test call, to no effect. “Either they’re not hearing us or we’re not hearing them.”

There was a sat phone and data link at the far end of the console. Smith stepped around Randi and lifted the receiver, punching in the Haley’s address code. “No joy here, either,” he reported after a moment. “It’s not accessing the satellite.”

“Could it be the antennas?”

“Possibly. That’ll be something to check out later. Let’s go.”

The last hut in the row was the bunk room. The leading edge of the snow squall had enveloped the station, and visibility was graying out as the team approached the building.

Once more they repeated the entry drill. Flanking the snow lock door, Smith and Metrace listened as Randi pushed her way into the bunk room. After a moment, they heard her exclaim aloud, “Now, this is just too weird!”

Smith and the historian looked at each other and shouldered through the lock into the bunk room.

Inside, the overall layout was similar to the laboratory. There were two sets of bunk beds and a small coal heater against the north wall of the cabin. Kitchen equipment and a food preparation counter were on the south, with a communal mess table in its center. A set of women’s quarters had been partitioned in the far end of the hut, an accordion-style sliding door standing half open.

The bunk room had been heavily personalized with a variety of photographs, hard-copy downloads, and sketches, humorous and otherwise, tacked and taped to the walls.

Randi was standing beside the mess table, staring down at a plate holding a half-consumed corned beef sandwich and a half-empty glass of tea.

“I concur, Miss Russell,” Valentina Metrace said, joining in the stare at the sandwich. “That is indeed the limit.”

Randi set her submachine gun on the table. “I feel like I’ve just gone aboard the Mary Celeste.” She tugged off one of her leather inner gloves and touched a couple of fingers to the side of the glass. “Still warm,” she commented.

Looking up, she tapped the rim of the glass with a fingernail.

Jon Smith knew that he truly had a team working at that moment. None of the three in the bunk room had to say a word to understand her meaning.

The portable SINCGARS transceiver squalled and shrieked, with only the faintest fragmentary hint of human speech discernible through the clamor of the disintegrating Heaviside layer. Even with the extended-range eighteen-foot antenna strung in the rafters of the laboratory hut, it was futility.

Smith snapped off the radio. “I think the Haley might be receiving us and I think they might be trying to acknowledge our call, but I wouldn’t count on anything beyond that.”

“It’s the same with the set in the Ranger,” Randi added. “While we’re on the ground it doesn’t have enough power to punch through the solar interference. We might have more luck with the big station SSB, but I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.”

With their gear unloaded and the helicopter tarped and tied down against the weather, the landing party from the Haley had gathered in the laboratory hut, both to make a futile attempt to contact their mother ship and to develop a course of action.

“What do we do now, Colonel?” Smyslov inquired.

“We do what we came here to do: get a look at the crash site.” Smith glanced out of the lab window. The snow had slackened for the moment, but the wind still gusted uneasily. “We’ve got enough daylight left to reach the saddleback. Major, Val, you’re with me. Get your gear together and plan for a night on the ice. Doctor Trowbridge, as you’ve stated, this station is your responsibility. I think it’s best you stay here. Randi, if you could step outside with me for a moment. I need to talk with you.”

Garbing up, they pushed out through the snow lock, making the transition from the enclosed warmth of the hut to the piercing cold of the outdoors. Smith led Randi up the packed snow trail between the cabins until there was no chance of being overheard.

“All right,” he said, turning to her. “We have a problem.”

Randi produced a wry ChapSticked smile. “Another one?”

“You might think so,” Smith replied, the mist of his breath swirling around his face. “Here’s the situation. I’m going to have to do something I don’t want to do. I have to split my forces, such as they are, to cover both the station and the bomber. I’m going to need both Professor Metrace and Major Smyslov with me at the crash site. That means I’m going to have to leave you here on your own. I don’t like it, but I’m stuck with it.”

Randi’s face went dark. “Thanks so much for the vote of confidence, Colonel.”

Annoyance cut across Smith’s features. “Don’t cop an attitude with me, Randi. I don’t need it. I suspect the minimum you’ll be confronting down here is a mass murderer. Your only backup will be Professor Trowbridge, who, I also suspect, will be about as much use in a fight as an extra bucket of water on a sinking ship. If I didn’t think you were the most survivable member of this team, I wouldn’t even be considering this scenario. As it stands, I estimate you have the best chance of coming out of this job alive. Are we absolutely clear on this?”

The cold words and cold focus in those dark blue eyes jolted her back momentarily. This was a facet of Jon Smith Randi had not encountered before, either in his time with Sophia or in her chance encounters since then. This was the full-house soldier, the warrior.

“I’m sorry, Jon, I got off base. I’ll cover things here for you, no problem.”

The look on his face disengaged, and Smith smiled one of his rare full smiles, resting a hand momentarily on her shoulder. “I never doubted it, Randi. In a lot of ways this will be the tougher job. You’ve got to verify our suspicions about what’s happened here while watching your back to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. You’ve also got to find out how the word was passed off the island and who it was passed to. Trowbridge may be of help to you there. That’s one of the reasons I brought him along. Anything you can learn about the identities, resources, and intents of the hostiles could be critical.”

She nodded. “I have some ideas about that. I’ll try and get the big radio working, too.”

“Good enough.” Smith’s expression closed up again. “But while you’re about it, remember to stay alive, all right?”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with the mission,” she replied. Then she tried to lighten the Zen of her statement. “And while you’re up there on that mountain I suggest you watch your own back with that scheming brunette. I think she has designs on you.”

Smith threw his head back and laughed, and for an instant Randi could see what had enraptured her sister. “An arctic glacier is hardly the environment for a romantic interlude, Randi.”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way, Jon Smith, and I have a hunch that lady has a lot of will.”

Standing outside the laboratory hut, Randi watched the three small figures trudge up the flag-marked trail, the one that led eastward along the shoreline toward the central peaks. The snow had stopped altogether, but the mist, the near-perpetual “sea smoke” of the poles, was closing in. The arctic camouflage her teammates wore blended them into the environment until, abruptly, they were gone.

“What now?” Doctor Trowbridge stood beside her in the lee of the hut, garish in the Day-Glo orange cold-weather gear issued to the science expedition. Randi could see that the academic was beginning to regret his momentary burst of responsibility back aboard the Haley.

He was a man meant for the warm classrooms and comfortable offices of a university campus, not for the wild, cold, and dangerous areas of the world. She could see the fear and loneliness of this place sinking into him. It would be so even without the overlay of the Misha scenario.

He was questioning his only companion as well, this alien being with the submachine gun slung over her shoulder.

Randi felt a momentary surge of contempt for the academic. Then, angrily, she dismissed the thought. Rosen Trowbridge could no more help what he was than she could help being the bitch wolf she had become. She had no right to judge who was the superior.

“That was a computer data link attached to the satellite phone, wasn’t it?”

Trowbridge blinked at her. “Yes, that was how most of the expedition’s findings were downloaded to the project universities.”

“Were the expedition members allowed access to that data link?”

“Of course. Every expedition member had a personal computer and was allotted several hours of Internet access a week for their project studies and for personal use-for e-mail and the like.”

“Right,” Randi replied. “That would work. The first thing we do, Doctor, is to collect laptops.”