The Arctic Event

Chapter Twenty-nine

Wednesday Island Station

Randi Russell lay quietly in the darkness. Beyond the partition, in the main room of the bunkhouse, she could hear the heavy slumber breathing of Doctor Trowbridge, the sound she had been waiting for.

An hour before, she and Trowbridge had banked the fire in the bunkhouse and theoretically had turned in for the night. However, in the women’s quarters, Randi had only stretched out fully dressed atop Kayla Brown’s bunk, refusing sleep. Now, rolling silently to her feet, she began to prepare for the out-of-doors. She squeezed three pairs of socks inside the white thermoplastic “bunny boots.” Then came the parka and insulated overpants with the Lady Magnum and its speedloaders fitted into the holster pocket. Thin Nomex inner and leather outer gloves were pulled on, along with a white balaclava and finally the snow camouflage.

She worked in total darkness. Before shutting down for the night she had carefully positioned everything she would need and had mentally mapped out every move she would make.

Stepping to where she had left her pack, she removed a small plastic envelope from an outer compartment. Then, slinging her ammunition pouches and submachine gun, she took a folded Hudson’s Bay blanket from the sleeping room’s upper bunk.

Sliding open the door in the partition, she moved the length of the bunk room to the outside door, navigating unerringly by the faint rectangular lessening of black of the windows and the light brush of a fingertip on a table or countertop, easing each footstep soundlessly onto the floor. Trowbridge was still deeply asleep as she slipped through the snow lock.

Sinking onto her hands and knees, she crawled through the outer door, keeping low in the snow trench beyond the entry. Snaking down the compacted paths, she made her way to the foxhole she had molded for herself covering the bunkhouse. There she constructed her hunting hide.

The heavy Hudson’s Bay blanket went beneath her, insulation between her body and the ice. The contents of the plastic envelope went over her. It was a silvered foil survival blanket, incredibly warm for its cellophane-light weight. But unlike the usual blanket of its type, the backing on this one was not high-visibility orange but arctic camo white.

Covering herself with it, Randi merged with her surroundings, making of herself nothing but an unevenness in the snow’s surface.

Here, in the lee of the island, the night was almost still. Yet the wind could faintly be heard, roiling and gusting over the sheltering ridgeline. Even with her night-adapted vision, Randi could only make out the slightly variegated shades of darkness around her, the hut’s solid shadow geometrics against the slightly grayish black of the snow pack. Gradually, as the minutes and eventual hours passed, she began to note a faint wavering in these shades of night. She puzzled over it for a time, then realized the northern lights must be playing somewhere overhead, a meager hint of their illumination leaking through the cloud cover above the island.

It was cold, a bitter, infiltrating cold that gradually seeped through her armor of blankets and heavy clothing. Still, as silent, patient, and invisible as an arctic fox, Randi waited, breathing as lightly as she could to minimize her breath plume.

Under the survival blanket she cuddled the MP-5 close, not to protect the rugged weapon itself-it had been lubricated with an all-environment synthetic proof against arctic temperatures-but to keep the batteries of the tactical combat light clipped under its barrel warm and energized.

Time crawled past like one of the island’s glaciers. Still, she waited. If she was cold, then he was cold, and he would know there would be a warm coal fire and a cozy bed waiting for him inside, with no reason not to claim them.

Finally Randi heard the first ever-so-faint squeaking crunch of a boot step on snow. Her thumb moved half an inch, flipping the fire selector on her primary weapon from “Safe” to “Auto.”

An amorphous blob of total blackness moved slowly down the trail from beyond the camp. Gradually it defined itself as the upright form of a man carrying a slender, elongated shape in each hand. Moving with a stalker’s care, he approached the bunkhouse entry.

The thumb that had flipped off the MP-5’s safety moved to the button on the SMG’s handgrip.

The figure paused for a moment outside the snow lock, taking a final protracted look around and missing the faint bumpy irregularity in the snow a few yards away. Then he leaned the elongated object in his right hand against the door frame and transferred the one in his left hand to the right. Using the freed left hand, he reached for the door handle.

Randi heaved aside the thermal blanket and came up onto her knees, the MP-5 lifting to her shoulder. Her thumb pressed the switch of the tactical light, and the narrow, dazzling blue-white beam lashed out, encompassing and paralyzing the man who stood at the bunkhouse door, his ice axe half raised.

“Hello, Mr. Kropodkin,” Randi said, her voice as cold as the barrel of the leveled submachine gun. “Shall I cut you in two now, or should we wait until later?”

The MP-5 lay on the bunkhouse dining table, its muzzle aimed at the dark-stubble-bearded youth seated in the wall-side bunk. Randi Russell’s hand rested a short grab away from the SMG’s trigger. They had both shed their heavy outdoor snow gear, and she had used a set of nylon disposacuffs to bind Kropodkin’s hands behind his back. Now she stared at the man with ebon-eyed intensity.

“Where did you leave the bodies of the other members of the science team?”

“Bodies?” Kropodkin turned to the third party in the room. “Dr. Trowbridge, please. I don’t know what this madwoman is talking about! I don’t even know who she is!”

“I…don’t either, really.” Trowbridge blinked uneasily in the glare of the gas lantern, smoothing back his sleep-rumpled fringe of white hair. Still clad only in thermal long johns and socks, he had been jarred awake a few minutes before when Randi had prodded Kropodkin in through the snow lock.

“Don’t worry about who I am,” Randi said coldly. “Don’t even worry about standing trial for murder yet. Focus on staying alive long enough to be handed over to the authorities. Answering questions is your best chance. Now, who do you report to? Who’s coming for the anthrax?”

“Anthrax?” The Slovakian’s eyes darted once more to his only potential ally in the room. “Dr. Trowbridge, please help me! I don’t know what is happening here!”

“Please, Ms. Russell. Don’t you think we might just be getting ahead of ourselves here?” The academic fumbled his glasses onto his nose.

“I don’t think so,” Randi replied flatly. “This man killed the other members of your expedition in cold blood, the teammates he’d lived and worked with for over six months. He slaughtered them all like sheep, and I’ll bet for no better reason than money.”

Kropodkin’s jaw dropped. “The others…dead? I do not believe this! No! This is insane! I am no killer! Doctor, tell her! Tell this woman who I am!”

“Please, Ms. Russell!” Trowbridge’s voice strengthened in protest. “You have no grounds to make such…drastic accusations. We have no real proof that anyone has been killed here yet.”

“Yes, we do, Doctor. Last evening I found Kayla Brown’s body on the hill below the radio tower. Someone had used an ice axe on her. That one, I suspect.” Randi nodded toward the axe that lay on the table beside the submachine gun, the axe Kropodkin had been carrying. “I have no doubt DNA testing will prove the point. They’ll probably also find blood traces from Dr. Gupta and Dr. Hasegawa as well. You took out Creston and Rutherford by other means, didn’t you, Kropodkin?”

The graduate student half rose from the bunk, straining at the nylon bands around his wrists. “I tell you, I have killed no one!”

Randi’s hand covered the grip of the MP-5. The muzzle traversed half an inch, indexing in line with Kropodkin’s chest. “Sit down.”

He stiffened and subsided into the bunk.

Trowbridge stood watching the developing tableau, a totally blasted expression on his face. The revelation about Kayla Brown’s corpse had been another of those things that shouldn’t happen in his existence, another boulder in the accelerating avalanche that was sweeping his life and carefully ordered career into scandal and chaos. His only escape lay in denial. “You have no proof that any of the expedition members are responsible for any of this,” he protested hoarsely.

“I’m afraid I do.” Leaning back in her chair, Randi caught up the model 12 Winchester Kropodkin had been carrying, the camp’s polar bear deterrent. “This shotgun has a three-round magazine capacity. It’s a safe assumption that there were three shells in it when it left this camp.”

She jacked the model 12’s pump action repeatedly, but only a single round of magnum-load buckshot ejected to clatter on the tabletop. “Three shells in the gun when it left the camp, three men with this gun when it left the camp. One of each came back. Do the math.”

“I fired those shells as a signal, Doctor, out on the ice pack! Will you make this woman listen?”

“The boy is right,” Trowbridge protested with growing vehemence. “At least he has the right to be heard.”

Randi’s cold stare never left Kropodkin’s face. “All right. That’s fine with me. Let’s hear him. Where’s he been? What happened to the others?”

“Yes, Stefan,” Trowbridge interjected almost eagerly. “Tell us what happened.”

“I have been trapped out on the damned pack ice for two nights, and I have been wondering what happened to the others!” He took a deep, shuddering breath, bringing himself under control. “Dr. Creston, Ian, and I were looking for Dr. Gupta and Dr. Hasegawa. We thought maybe they had gone out onto the pack after a specimen or to get around the ice jam along the shore. Somehow, when we went out onto the pack, I became separated from the others. The ice near the island is very broken, with many hummocks and pressure ridges.

“Then the wind shifted and a lead opened in the ice. I was cut off from the island! I couldn’t get back to shore. I called for help! I fired shots. Nobody came!” Kropodkin’s eyes closed, and his head sank onto his chest. “I had no food. I have not eaten for two days. No heat. No shelter but the ice. I thought I was going to die out there.”

Randi was unimpressed. She picked the single shotgun shell up from the table. “The standard firearm distress signal is three shots fired into the air.”

Kropodkin’s head snapped up. “We found signs of a polar bear out there! I kept the one shell for him! I didn’t want to be devoured on top of dead!”

“And how did you get back?” Randi kept her words emotionless.

“Tonight the lead in the ice closed. The wind must have changed, and I managed to get back to the shore. Then I came straight back to the camp. All I wanted was to get warm again!”

“That’s odd,” Randi said. “I was out there tonight, too, and the wind seemed to be holding steady from the north, just as it’s been all along.”

“Then it must have been the tide, the current, the Holy Virgin-God knows I prayed enough! I don’t know! All I know is that when I finally get back to camp, someone pushes a machine gun in my face and accuses me of murdering my friends.” Awkwardly Kropodkin twisted in the bunk, looking to Trowbridge once again. “Damn it to hell, Professor! You know me! I have taken classes with you. You were on my selection committee. Are you a party to this insanity as well?”

“I…” Trowbridge stammered for an instant; then his sleep-puffy features tightened in resolve. He could not have been so totally wrong. “No, I am not! Ms. Russell! I must protest. This man has obviously undergone a serious ordeal! Could you at least put off this inquisition until after he’s had a chance to rest and have a hot meal?”

Randi’s eyes still didn’t shift from Kropodkin, and her slight smile held the chill of the polar katabatics. “That’s an excellent idea, Doctor. He should have something to eat.”

Standing, she removed a paratrooper’s knife from the slit pocket of her ski pants and thumbed the button that snapped out the hook-shaped shroud cutter. “Turn him loose, Doctor.” She set the open knife in the center of the table. “He can fix himself a meal.”

Trowbridge picked up the knife. “I’ll do it for him,” he said, self-righteousness trembling in his voice.

“I said he fixes his own meal, Doctor!” Randi snapped, catching up the MP-5. “Just cut off the cuffs and don’t block my line of fire. Then go to your bunk, put on your pants, and stay out of the way.”

Wordlessly, but red-faced with anger, Trowbridge cut the disposacuffs from Kropodkin’s wrists. Keeping the student covered, Randi reclaimed her knife and pulled her chair to the farthest corner of the bunk room. With her back to the wall, she settled down once more, the stock of the MP-5 tucked under her arm, and the barrel leveled.

“Okay, Mr. Kropodkin, you can stand up and fix yourself something to eat now. But don’t get funny. It would be a very bad idea.”

The room went quiet beyond the wind moan and the clatter of pans and cutlery. Kropodkin heated a can of stew and a kettle of water on the bunkhouse’s primus cooker. Occasionally he cast his eyes in Randi’s direction, but every time he found the barrel of the submachine gun tracking him as if guided by radar fire control. Something hovered in the air of the room…expectancy, but her glittering jet eyes were totally unreadable and unrevealing.

“May I pick up a knife to cut myself a slice of bread?” he asked with biting politeness.

“If you make a move I don’t like, you’ll find out about it.”

In the far corner of the bunkroom Trowbridge finished dressing, regaining his pomposity along with his trousers. “I think, Ms. Russell, that it is time for us to clarify a few things…”

“And I think, Doctor, that you had better shut up.”

The academic’s voice started to lift. “I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner!”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Trowbridge had no choice but to subside.

Kropodkin set his dishes on the mess table and wolfed into his tea, stew, and bread, eating rapidly and glancing between Trowbridge and the woman silently covering him.

Randi let him get half the meal down before she spoke. “Okay, let’s get this finished. Your name is Stefan Kropodkin, you are a Slovakian citizen of Yugoslav descent, and you’re attending McGill University on a scholarship and student visa.”

“The doctor must have told you that,” Kropodkin said around a mouthful of bread and margarine.

“He did. He also said you were a top-flight student and a very capable individual. That’s how you got the posting to this expedition.” Randi leaned forward in her chair. “Now, let’s get on to what you say. You say you were on a science party with two other members of your expedition, the doctors Gupta and Hasegawa, when suddenly the two of them disappeared. You came back here and reported their disappearance. Then you went out on the search party with Dr. Creston and Ian Rutherford. You went out onto the pack ice while searching; then Creston and Rutherford vanished as well. You were trapped on the ice by an opening water lead. You just happened to be the man with the shotgun, and you just happened to fire two shots from it.

“You were stuck out there for almost two full nights; then the ice leads closed and you made it back to camp only an hour or so ago. You have no idea what happened to Gupta, Hasegawa, Creston, or Rutherford, and you have no idea who may have killed Kayla Brown here at the camp. Is this essentially your story?”

“Yes, because that is the truth,” Kropodkin replied sullenly, after taking a gulp of tea.

“No, it isn’t,” Randi said matter-of-factly. “You’re a liar, and a murderer and probably a number of other unsavory things that we’ll find out about.”

She rose slowly out of her chair. “To begin with, your name isn’t Stefan Kropodkin. I’m not sure what it really is, but it doesn’t matter. There are other people tearing your fake past apart right now, and they’ll find out. They’ll also learn about the Middle European ‘businessmen’ who are sponsoring your education. That should prove interesting as well.”

Kropodkin stared at her warily, the tip of his tongue moving along his chapped lips.

“I suspect you came to Canada, the university, and Wednesday Island for reasons other than higher learning,” Randi continued, pacing slowly between the mess table and the cooking counter. “The collegiate ivory towers might make a convenient hideout for a man on the run. It’s the kind of place the police or the security services wouldn’t look, granted you kept your nose out of the conventional campus radical groups. As I said, we’ll learn more about that later.

“But you still wanted to have a secure mode of communications with your backers while you were laying low, just in case. That’s why you brought this with you.”

Randi slipped one hand into the pocket of her ski pants and produced the transparent plastic evidence envelope that contained the mini hard drive. “I found this where you’d hidden it in the radio shack. The correspondence files on it should be very interesting. I’ll also bet you were sloppy enough to leave fingerprints.”

Randi returned the hard drive to her pocket. “I’ll also wager you were curious enough to make a private visit to the Misha 124 crash site. My friends who are up there now will find out about that. Maybe it was pure curiosity, or maybe you caught the scent of something when your expedition was warned away from the wreck. Be that as it may, you went aboard that old plane and you found out what it was carrying. You recognized that the biowarfare agent aboard the bomber would be worth several fortunes to the right parties, and somehow you knew how to contact those right parties.”

Kropodkin had forgotten about his food.

“You told them about the anthrax, and they cut you in on the deal. You were to be their point man on Wednesday. You were designated to eliminate the other members of the expedition, securing access to the anthrax before the arrival of your partners!”

“I deny this!” the Slav exploded.

Randi took a step toward the mess table. “Deny away, but it is the truth. Your new partners weren’t quite in position to make the collection yet, but the expedition’s extraction ship and the crash site assessment team were on the way. You had no choice but to start the eliminations! You had to thin down the number of witnesses on Wednesday before the odds got worse!”

Her words flowed, precise, steady, and cold, accusing and then supporting each accusation, a prosecutor closing in for the kill. “So while you were out there on the ice with Gupta and Hasegawa you murdered them and hid their bodies. Then you came back here with a story about their disappearance. And when the search party set out after them, you made sure you were carrying the only gun on the island. You led Rutherford and Creston out into the middle of nowhere and you blew them away with two of the shells that were in that gun!”

Kropodkin was crushing the chunk of bread in his hand, the crumbs and margarine squeezing out between his fingers.

“Then you came back here for Kayla Brown, and when you scoped out the camp you found her in the lab building sitting beside a live radio, talking with the Haley. A complication. You had to disable the radio first so she couldn’t say anything she shouldn’t. But you managed that and then you went in after her and you took her up on that hill and you bashed her brains out with your ice axe.”

Randi tapped the tabletop with the muzzle of the MP-5. “Then you came back to the bunkhouse and you sat down at this table and fixed yourself a sandwich. Corned beef, plenty of mustard.

“But your snack was interrupted by the arrival of our helicopter, and you had to take off. You’ve been out there all afternoon, keeping an eye on us. You watched my friends leave for the crash site and you watched us turn in for the night. Then you crawled out of your hole and you came down to this hut with the intent of axing Dr. Trowbridge and me to death in our beds.”

Trowbridge stared at Kropodkin as if he had suddenly sprouted horns. “You have no proof!” Trowbridge croaked weakly, not wanting to hear any more. He could not have been so wrong. He could not have sat across a desk from such a monster.

“Oh, I have proof, Doctor,” Randi replied so softly that both men had to keep silent to hear her. “For one, let’s consider the state the laboratory hut and radio room were in when we found them. Totally undamaged. There was no sign of a struggle. No resistance at all. Then let’s consider the state of Kayla Brown’s body. She was fully dressed in all her cold weather clothing. She had been allowed to gear up and leave that hut under controlled circumstances when she started up that hill. There was no indication of haste, of flight. No indication of panic. In short, she was not frightened.”

Randi glanced at Trowbridge. “You were in the radio shack aboard the cutter that last night, Doctor. We were talking with one very nervous and upset young woman. She knew something was very wrong on this island. I doubt she would have left the lab hut on her own, and I very much doubt she would have left so casually with a stranger. I suspect she was with someone she knew and trusted. Someone she saw as a friend. Him.”

The MP-5 barrel gestured toward Kropodkin.

“No,” the Slovakian gritted.

Randi moved to the edge of the mess table, immediately across from Kropodkin. “Then we come to his story about being stuck out on that ice flow. It’s a total fabrication. He wasn’t starving for two nights running. He was forted up somewhere, chewing on the emergency rations from the survival pack the rescue party had taken with them.”

“How can you possibly know?” Dr. Trowbridge whispered, intrigued in spite of himself.

“His atrocious table manners,” Randi replied. “Have you ever had to go hungry, Doctor? Really hungry? Several days worth of hungry in a hostile environment? I have, on several occasions. When you finally get a chance at a meal, you don’t bolt your food like this gentleman did. You don’t eat like you’re just hungry. You eat like food is the most wonderful experience in the world. You eat slowly, getting the most out of each mouthful. Personal experience.

“And while we’re on the subject of food…” Randi leaned forward across the table. “When we came into this hut, we found the half-eaten meal Mr. Kropodkin had left on the table. That corned beef sandwich and tea, hot tea.”

Hate glittered in the look Kropodkin aimed up at her. “It was not mine!” he spat.

“Oh, yes, it was.” Randi’s voice was almost hypnotic. “There was something a little bit different about the way that tea had been served. You see, it was in a glass. Now, we had a group of Anglo-Saxons, a couple of Asians, and one Slav on this island. When someone of Anglo-Saxon or Asian cultural descent makes hot tea, he or she drinks it from a cup or a mug, automatically, as a cultural norm. Only an Arab or a Slav would drink hot tea from a glass…” The barrel of the submachine gun swung across the table and lightly tapped the rim of the steaming glass at Kropodkin’s side, producing a clear ringing ting. “And there aren’t any Arabs on this island.”

Kropodkin grabbed for the inviting gun barrel. Randi, who had been expecting and waiting for the desperation move, yanked the submachine gun back, then smashed the muzzle full into Kropodkin’s face, hurling him backward off the bench.

Screaming a curse, Kropodkin scrambled to his feet, but Randi had already rolled over the tabletop, confronting him before he could recover. To a flabbergasted Dr. Trowbridge, she moved in a golden-haired blur. Three blows were landed with the submachine gun within two seconds; a two-handed horizontal strike across the forehead with the receiver, another savage punch in the groin with the muzzle, and a final butt stroke across the back of the neck as Kropodkin folded over in agony. Randi was careful to pull the finishing blow so it would not quite fracture the spine.

Kropodkin dropped like a dynamited bridge.

Dropping to her knees beside the Slovakian, Randi first checked his breathing, then yanked his arms behind his back, applying a fresh set of disposacuffs.

“Help me get him back onto the bunk, please, Doctor.”

Trowbridge just stared down at her and at the graduate student, sprawled bloody-faced on the floor.

“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that anyone could kill so many people so casually.”

“There are more of them around than you might expect, Doctor.” Randi rubbed her eyes, suddenly very tired. “You’ve been sitting in a room with two of them.”