Icebound

by Dean Koontz

  They couldn’t see the berg, even though the radar and sonar images had indicated that it was massive both above and below the water line. They were only fifty to sixty yards from the target, but the darkness was impenetrable. Instinct alone told Gorov that something enormous loomed over them, and the awareness of being in the shadow of an invisible colossus was one of the eeriest and most disconcerting feelings that he had ever known.

  They were warmly dressed and wore goggles. Riding in the lee of the iceberg, however, made it possible to go without snow masks, and conversation was not as difficult as when they’d been running on the surface a few hours previously.

  “It’s like a windowless dungeon out there,” Zhukov said.

  No stars. No moon. No phosphorescence on the waves. Gorov had never seen such a perfectly lightless night.

  Above and behind them on the sail, the hundred-watt bridge lamp illuminated the immediate steel-work and allowed the three men to see one another. Clotted with scattered small chunks of ice, choppy waves broke against the curved hull, reflecting just enough of that red light to give the impression that the Pogodin was sailing not on water but on an ocean of wine-dark blood. Beyond that tiny illumined circle lay an unrelieved blackness so flawless and deep that Gorov’s eyes began to ache when he stared at it too long.

  Most of the bridge rail was sheathed in ice. Gorov gripped it to steady himself as the boat yawed, but he happened to take hold of a section of bare metal. His glove froze to the steel. He ripped it free and examined the palm: The outer layer of leather was torn, and the lining was exposed. If he had been wearing sealskin gloves, he would not have stuck fast, and he should have remembered to get that particular item of arctic gear out of the storage locker. If he hadn’t been wearing gloves at all, his hand would have been welded instantly to the railing, and when he pulled loose, he would have lost a substantial patch of flesh.

  Staring in amazement at the captain’s shredded glove, Seaman Semichastny exclaimed: “Incredible!”

  Zhukov said, “What a miserable place.”

  “Indeed.”

  The snow that swept across the bridge was not in the form of flakes. The subzero temperatures and the fierce wind conspired to produce hard beads of snow—what a meteorologist would call “gravel,” like millions of granules of white buckshot, the next worst thing to a storm of ice spicules.

  Tapping the bridge anemometer, the first officer said, “We’ve got wind velocity of thirty miles an hour, even leeward of the iceberg. It must be blowing twice to three times that hard on top of the ice or on the open sea.”

  With the wind factored in, Gorov suspected that the subjective temperature atop the iceberg had to be at least minus sixty or minus seventy degrees. Rescuing the Edgeway scientists under those hideous conditions was a greater challenge than any he had ever faced in his entire naval career. No part of it would be easy. It might even be impossible. And he began to worry that, once again, he had arrived too late.

  “Let’s have some light,” Gorov ordered.

  Semichastny immediately swung the floodlight to port and closed the switch.

  The two-foot-diameter beam pierced the darkness as if a furnace door had been thrown open in an unlighted basement. Canted down on its gimbal ring, the big floodlight illuminated a circular swatch of sea only ten yards from the submarine: churning waves filigreed with icy foam, a seething maelstrom but one that was not too difficult to ride. Sheets of spray exploded into the bitter air as the waves met the boat, froze instantly into intricate and glittering laces of ice, hung suspended for a timeless time, and then fell back into the water, their strange beauty as ephemeral as that of any moment in a perfect sunset.

  The ocean temperature was a few degrees above freezing, but the water retained sufficient heat and was in such turmoil—and was sufficiently salty, of course—that the only ice it contained was that which had broken off from the polar cap, fifteen miles to the north. Mostly small chunks, none larger than a car, which rode the waves and crashed into one another.

  Grasping the pair of handles on the back of the floodlight, Semichastny tilted it up, swung it more directly toward port. The piercing beam bore through the polar blackness and the seething snow—and blazed against a towering palisade of ice, so enormous and so close that the sight of it made all three men gasp.

  Fifty yards away, the berg drifted slowly east-southeast in a mild winter current. Even with the storm wind pretty much behind it, the massive island of ice was able to make no more than two or three knots; most of it lay under the water, and it was driven not by the surface tempest but by deeper influences.

  Semichastny moved the floodlight slowly to the right, then back to the left.

  The cliff was so long and high that Gorov could not get an idea of the overall appearance of it. Each brilliantly lighted circle of ice, although visible in considerable detail from their front-row seat, seemed disassociated from the one that had come before it. Comprehending the whole of the palisade was like trying to envision the finished image of a jigsaw puzzle merely by glancing at five hundred jumbled, disconnected pieces.

  “Lieutenant Zhukov, put up a flare.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zhukov was carrying the signal gun. He raised it—a stubby pistol with a fat, extralong barrel and a two-inch muzzle—held it at arm’s length, and fired up into the port-side gloom.

  The rocket climbed swiftly through the falling snow. It was visible for a moment as it trailed red sparks and smoke, but then it vanished into the blizzard as though it had passed through a veil into another dimension.

  Three hundred feet…four hundred feet…five hundred…

  High above, the rocket burst into a brilliant incandescent moon. It didn’t immediately begin to lose altitude, but drifted southward on the wind.

  Beneath the flare, three hundred yards in every direction, the ocean was painted with cold light that revealed its green-gray hue. The arrhythmic ranks of choppy waves cast jagged, razor-edged shadows that fluttered like uncountable flocks of frantic dark birds feeding on little fishes in the shallow troughs.

  The iceberg loomed: a daunting presence, at least one hundred feet high, disappearing into the darkness to the right and left, a huge rampart more formidable than the fortifications of any castle in the world. During their radar- and sonar-guided approach to the site, they had discovered that the berg was four fifths of a mile long. Rising dramatically from the mottled green-gray-black sea, it was curiously like a totem, a man-made monolith with mysterious religious significance. It soared, glass-smooth, gleaming, marred by neither major outcroppings nor indentations: vertical, harsh, forbidding.

  Gorov had hoped to find a ragged cliff, one that shelved into the water in easy steps. The sea was not discouragingly rough there in the leeward shadow, and a few men might be able to get across to the ice. But he saw no place for them to land.

  Among the submarine’s equipment stores were three inflatable, motorized rubber rafts and a large selection of the highest-quality climbing gear. On fifteen separate occasions in the past seven years, the Ilya Pogodin had carried top-secret passengers—mostly special-forces operatives from the army’s Spetsnaz division, highly trained saboteurs, assassins, reconnaissance teams—and had put them ashore at night on rugged coastlines in seven Western countries. Furthermore, in the event of war, the boat could carry a nine-member commando team in addition to her full crew and could put them safely ashore in less than five minutes, even in bad weather.

  But they had to find a place to land the rafts. A small shelf. A tiny cove. A niche above the water line. Something.

  As if reading the captain’s mind, Zhukov said, “Even if we could land men over there, it would be one hell of a climb.”

  “We could do it.”

  “It’s as straight and smooth as a hundred-foot sheet of window glass.”

  “We could chop footholds out of the ice,” Gorov said. “We have the climbing picks. Axes. Ropes and pitons. We’ve got the climbing boots and
the grappling hooks. Everything we need.”

  “But these men are submariners, sir. Not mountain climbers.”

  The flare was high over the Ilya Pogodin now, still drifting southward. The light was no longer either fierce or white; it had taken on a yellowish tint and was dwindling. Smoke streamed around the flare and threw bizarre shadows that curled and writhed across the face of the iceberg.

  “The right men could make it,” Gorov insisted.

  “Yes, sir,” Zhukov said. “I know they could. I could even make it myself if I had to, and I’m afraid of heights. But neither I nor the men are very experienced at this sort of thing. We don’t have a single man aboard who could make that climb in even half the time it would take a trained mountaineer. We’d need hours, maybe three or four, maybe even five hours, to get to the top and to rig a system for bringing the Edgeway scientists down to the rafts. And by the time—”

  “—by the time we’ve worked out a way to land them on the ice, they’ll be lucky to have even an hour left,” Gorov said, finishing the first officer’s argument for him.

  Midnight was fast approaching.

  The flare winked out.

  Semichastny still trained the floodlight on the iceberg, moving it slowly from left to right, focusing at the water line, hopefully searching for a shelf, a fissure, a flaw, anything that they had missed.

  “Let’s have a look at the windward flank,” Gorov said. “Maybe it’ll have something better to offer.”

  In the cave, waiting for more news from Gunvald, they were exhilarated by the prospect of rescue—but sobered by the thought that the submarine might not arrive quickly enough to take them off the iceberg before midnight. At times, they were all silent, but at other times, they all seemed to be talking at once.

  After waiting until the chamber was filled with excited chatter and the others were particularly distracted, Harry quietly excused himself to go to the latrine. Passing Pete Johnson, he whispered, “I want to talk to you alone.”

  Pete blinked in surprise.

  Not even breaking stride as he spoke, barely glancing at the engineer, Harry put his goggles in place and pulled up his snow mask and walked out of the cave. He bent into the wind, switched on his flashlight, and trudged past the rumbling snowmobiles.

  He doubted that much fuel remained in their tanks. The engines would conk out soon. No more light. No more heat.

  Past the snowmobiles, the area that they had used for the temporary-camp lavatory lay on the far side of a U-shaped, ten-foot-high ridge of broken ice and drifted snow, twenty yards beyond the inflatable igloos that now lay in ruins. Harry actually had no need to relieve himself, but the call of nature provided the most convenient and least suspicious excuse for getting out of the cave and away from the others. He reached the opening in the crescent ridge that formed the windbreak, shuffled through drifted snow to the rear of that pocket of relative calm, and stood with his back to the ridge wall.

  He supposed he might be making a big mistake with Pete Johnson. As he’d told Brian, no one could ever be entirely sure what might lie within the mind of another human being. Even a friend or loved one, well known and trusted, might harbor some unspeakable dark urge and despicable desire. Everyone was a mystery within a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. In his lifelong quest for adventure, Harry had settled by chance into a line of work that brought him into contact with fewer people on a daily basis than he would have met in virtually any other profession, and each time he took on a new challenge, the adversary was never another person but always Mother Nature herself. Nature could be hard but never treacherous, powerful and uncaring but never consciously cruel; in any contest with her, he didn’t have to worry about losing because of deceit or betrayal. Nevertheless, he had decided to risk confronting Pete Johnson alone.

  He wished that he had a gun.

  Considering the assault on Brian, it seemed criminally stupid of Harry to have come to the icecap without a large-caliber personal weapon holstered under his parka at all times. Of course, in his experience, geological research had never before required him to shoot anyone.

  In a minute, Pete arrived and joined him at the back wall of the U-shaped, roofless shelter.

  They faced each other, snow masks pulled down and goggles up on their foreheads, flashlights aimed at their boots. The light bounced back up at them, and Pete’s face glowed as if irradiated. Harry knew that his own countenance looked much the same: brightest around the chin and mouth, darker toward the forehead, eyes glittering from the depths of what appeared to be dark holes in his skull—as spooky as any Halloween mask.

  Pete said, “Are we here to gossip about someone? Or have you suddenly taken a romantic interest in me?”

  “This is serious, Pete.”

  “Damn right it is. If Rita finds out, she’ll beat the crap out of me.”

  “Let’s get right to the point. I want to know…why did you try to kill Brian Dougherty?”

  “I don’t like the way he parts his hair.”

  “Pete, I’m not joking.”

  “Well, okay, it was because he called me a darky.”

  Harry stared at him but said nothing.

  Above their heads, at the crest of the sheltering ridge, the storm wind whistled and huffed through the natural crenelations in the tumbled-together slabs of ice.

  Pete’s grin faded. “Man, you are serious.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Pete.”

  “Harry, for God’s sake, what’s going on here?”

  Harry watched him for long seconds, using silence to disconcert him, waiting either to be attacked—or not. Finally, he said, “Maybe I believe you.”

  “Believe me about what?” The bafflement on the big man’s broad, black face seemed as genuine as any lamb’s sweet look of innocence; the only hint of evil was entirely the theatrical effect from the upwash of the flashlight beams. “Are you saying somebody actually did try to kill him? When? Back at the third blasting site, when he got left behind? But he fell, you said. He said. He told us that he fell and hit his head. Didn’t he?”

  Harry sighed, and some of the tension went out of his neck and shoulders. “Damn. If you are the one, you’re good. I believe you really don’t know.”

  “Hey, I know I really don’t know.”

  “Brian didn’t fall and knock himself unconscious, and he wasn’t left behind by accident. Someone struck him on the back of the head. Twice.”

  Pete was speechless. His line of work didn’t usually require him to carry a sidearm, either.

  As quickly as he could, Harry recounted the conversation that he’d had with Brian in the snowmobile cabin a few hours ago.

  “Jesus!” Pete said. “And you thought I might be the one.”

  “Yeah. Although I didn’t suspect you as much as I do some of the others.”

  “You thought I might go for your throat a minute ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I like you a hell of a lot, Pete. But I’ve known you only eight or nine months, after all. There could be things you’ve hidden from me, certain attitudes, prejudices—”

  Pete shook his head. “Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself. You had no reason to trust me further than you did the others. I’m not asking for an apology. I’m just saying you’ve got guts. You aren’t exactly a little guy, but physically I’m more than a match for you.”

  Harry had to look up to see Pete’s face, and suddenly his friend seemed more of a giant than ever before. Shoulders almost too broad for a conventional doorway. Massive arms. If he had accepted those offers to play pro football, he would have been a formidable presence on the field, and if a polar bear showed up now, he might be able to give it a good fight.

  “If I’d been this psycho,” Pete said, “and if I’d decided to kill you here and now, you wouldn’t have had much chance.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t have any choice. I needed one more ally, and you were the best prospect. By the way, thanks for not tearing my head off.”

  Pete coughed and spat
in the snow. “I’ve changed my mind about you, Harry. You don’t have a hero complex after all. This is just perfectly natural for you, this kind of courage. You’re built this way. This is how you came into the world.”

  “I only did what I had to do,” Harry said impatiently. “So long as we were stranded on this iceberg, so long as it appeared that we were all going to die at midnight, I thought Rita and I could watch over Brian. I figured our would-be killer might take advantage of any opening we gave him at the boy, but I didn’t think he’d bother to engineer any opportunities. But with this submarine on the way…Well, if he thinks Brian will be rescued, he might do something bold. He might make another attempt on the boy’s life, even if he has to reveal himself to do it. And I need someone besides Rita and me to help stop him when the time comes.”

  “And I’ve been nominated.”

  “Congratulations.”

  A whirl of wind crested the ridge and swooped down on them. They lowered their heads while a column of spinning snow passed over them, so dense that it seemed almost like an avalanche. For a few seconds they were blinded and deafened. Then the squall-within-a-storm passed out of the open end of the crescent ridge.

  Pete said, “So far as you’re concerned, is there any one of them we should watch more closely than the others?”

  “I ought to have asked you that question. I already know what Rita, Brian, and I think. I need a fresh perspective.”

  Pete didn’t have to ponder the question to come up with an answer. “George Lin,” he said at once.

  “That was my own first choice.”

  “Not first and last? So you think he’s too obvious?”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t rule him out.”

  “What’s wrong with him, anyway? I mean, the way he acts with Brian, the anger—what’s that all about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Harry said. “Something happened to him in China when he was a child, very young. It must’ve been in the last days of Chiang’s rule, something traumatic. He seems to connect Brian to that, because of his family’s politics.”