The Alex Cave Series. Books 1, 2, & 3.: Box set

by James M. Corkill

  Alex stood up from the desk and followed Bartram back to the lounge.

  Bett had returned from watching Harrison on the bridge, and she and Joshua pulled Alex to one side of the room. Joshua leaned close to whisper. “We’ve got your back, Alex.”

  Alex gave them a nod. “I know.” When they walked away, he saw Lisa standing near the table with a pleading expression in her eyes, so he gave her a nod to come over.

  Lisa grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled him from the room, into the walkway. “When we stopped, I peeked out from my cabin and saw Bartram coming out of the engine room.”

  “Did he have anything with him? Wire, tools, anything like that?”

  “Not that I noticed. He went straight to his cabin.”

  “All right. Thanks.” He turned to leave and Lisa grabbed his arm again.

  “Aren’t you going to arrest him or something?”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m just a geology instructor, not the sheriff. No offense, but all I have is your word and no evidence. Go back inside and I’ll talk to you later.”

  Lisa let go of his arm and Alex walked out onto the stern and stared out across the water. He knew Dieter would talk his way out of any wrongdoing, so it was a waste of time to try. Harrison had been with him on the bridge when it happened and, even though he was certain Bartram was the saboteur, there was nothing he could prove for the moment. Mike suddenly walked up beside him.

  “What are you thinking, Alex?”

  “I can’t prove anything right now, Mike.” He looked around and they were alone. “Tell me about Dieter.”

  “I found him on the internet. His credentials checked out, so I arranged a meeting with him and we got along fine. He’s never acted suspiciously. Why do you ask?”

  Alex told him what Okana had discovered. “He’s not who he claims, Mike. I’m waiting for a background check. A real one.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Nothing until we can recover that device. No one’s been injured yet, so let’s keep it that way.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Do you have a lock we can put on the engine room door?”

  “I’ll ask Rita. Those pirates can’t catch us, so we shouldn’t have any more problems until we try to locate the device.” They felt the Mystic suddenly slow down .

  “Mike? Professor?”

  They looked up at Dieter leaning over the railing behind the bridge, and Mike answered. “What’s going on?”

  “We just received a call from the U.S. Coast Guard. They discovered unusual ice floes in the Arctic Ocean.”

  Mike looked at Alex. “I guess I jinxed us.”

  “You’re the second person to tell me that. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

  Alex followed Mike across the deck and up the outside stairs, onto the bridge.

  Dieter waved them over to a computer monitor. “They transmitted a digital video recording of the ice flows, Mike.”

  As Alex and Mike crowded around the screen, Dieter started the recording from the beginning. The view was from a helicopter as it approached assorted sized slabs of clear ice scattered across the ocean. They were not high above the water like a white iceberg, just large flat slabs of transparent ice bobbing on the surface. They would be impossible to see from a ship until it was too late to avoid a collision.

  Alex looked over at Dieter. “How long until we arrive in that area?”

  “I checked the charts and we will start to encounter the ice in another hour.”

  Alex turned to Mike. “When we get close we should have Bett guide us through from the helicopter.”

  Mike was silent for moment, thinking. “We still don’t know where that device might be located, Alex. I think we should avoid those ice floes until we have a definite location to start our search.”

  Alex knew he was right. “Okay. I’d better make some phone calls.”

  Alex walked out from the bridge and stood at the railing. Even at the slower speed, the breeze across the deck gave him a chill as he unzipped his lightweight coat to retrieve the sat phone from his inside pocket. When he entered his code for his voicemail, a message from Sonja stated it was urgent that he call her back. She answered on the second ring.

  “I am so glad you called, Alex. Our computer model is predicting that within twenty four hours the water will freeze all the way down into the Bering Sea.”

  “Have you found a location to start my search?”

  “After the last expansion, we have narrowed the location to a sixty mile area of the ice, one hundred-miles north of the Bering Sea. We cannot narrow it down to a smaller area. I am sorry, Alex, but that is the best I can do for you. Here are the GPS coordinates.”

  “All right. I appreciate your help with this. We’ve been informed that large pieces of transparent ice will make our trip very hazardous.”

  “The ice blocks in the ocean are breaking off from the ice sheet as it rises out of the water. I collected a sample of the ice, and it did not contain a single trace of minerals. It is pure H20.”

  “Okay, thanks for getting the coordinates. I’ll call when I find the device.”

  He shoved the phone into his coat pocket and zipped the front closed. It won’t be long until I’ll need the heavier coat, he thought. He turned and walked back into the ship to tell the others what he had learned about the ice cap.

  When he entered the lounge, everyone but Joshua was sitting at the table, so he continued over and stood at the end. “There are some interesting events happening because of these devices. The strange ice we will encounter is breaking off from the polar ice sheet. The ice sheet is spreading south, and will reach the Bering Sea within twenty four hours.”

  “Have they located the device for us?” Okana asked.

  “Not exactly. I can get us to a GPS location to start the search, but it could be within a sixty mile radius.”

  “My baby can do that.” Bett informed him.

  Alex shook his head. “The GPS location might already be hundreds of miles from the edge of the ice by now. We just don’t have enough information. I don’t want to waste the time and fuel until we can narrow the search area. We can’t risk hitting one of those big slabs of ice, so it’s going to take some time to reach the northern end of the Bering Sea.”

  He slowly looked at every face around the table and stopped when his eyes settled on Bartram. “With the number of guns onboard this ship, only a fool would try to sabotage the engines again.” He looked around the table. “That’s all I have for now.”

  Bett slid her chair from the table and stood. “I could use something to eat.”

  Okana remained sitting at the table while everyone stood and went to the kitchen. He stared at Dieter, who had separated from the group and was walking down the stairs to the cabins. He waited until Alex sat down, then leaned back and crossed his arms. “While everyone is still up here, I’ll try to find that CD case. I overheard Dieter mention needing a shower.”

  Okana slid his chair away from the table and gave Alex mischievous grin as he stood. “Hell of a thing, not having any locks on the doors.”

  He continued across the room to look down the stairs and heard water running in one of the showers. He slowly walked down to the bottom and noticed that Dieter had left his cabin door open. He tiptoed past the shower, down the hallway to Dieter’s cabin, and slowly peered around the corner of the doorway. He glanced down the hall in the direction of the running water, and then stepped into the room.

  He quickly glanced around the interior, but did not see the plastic case. He looked through the doorway and could still hear the running water, so he opened the top dresser drawer and slid his fingers under the flat rows of blue socks, but it was not there. He quickly did the same with the remaining three drawers. No luck. He raised the side of the mattress just enough to look underneath, but the plastic case wasn’t there, so he turned around and opened the double doors on the closet. The disk was not on the top shelf, so he moved the clothes out of the wa
y to look at the floor. The edge of a portable DVD player protruded from beneath a pile of dirty clothes.

  “Got it.” He reached down for the player to check inside for the disk.

  “What do you think you are doing, Okana?”

  Okana slowly stood and turned to face Dieter, it was only then that he noticed the corner of the plastic case protruding from his folded towel. He crossed his arms and leaned against the side of the cabinet. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on that disk.”

  How does he know about the disk? Dieter wondered. He stepped back into the hallway. “Get out.”

  Okana uncrossed his arms, casually strolled out of the room, and once in the hallway, turned and glared at Dieter. “This is a small ship, Captain. It’s hard to keep things hidden.”

  “It is password protected, so you need not bother, Okana.”

  Okana searched Dieter’s eyes for a hint that he was lying, but they remained impassive. He turned , walked down the hallway, and up the stairs.

  Dieter waited until Okana was out of sight and released the breath he had been holding. Okana believes it, he grinned.

  * * *

  Chapter 25

  DISCOVERY:

  Henry, Carl, Janice, and Victor were set up in the observation room. With the information from Alex, they had strategized a plan of action. When Celeas finished anchoring four steel cables into the slab of methane, she would grab one cable and pull the methane away once the hydrocarbons turned to jelly. Hopefully, when she let go of the cable, the slab would float up until the cables stopped it from rising to the surface.

  Carl Gregory was lying back on a small reclining chair, wearing a head mounted binocular display screen. Two cameras on Celeas gave him depth perception, while his hands held two handles with raised plastic buttons mounted on the armrests of the recliner for maneuvering the thrusters and robotic arms.

  Under the thin padding of the recliner, electronic actuators would apply a small amount of pressure under his butt and against two points behind his shoulders. It would give him the sensation of Celeas’s motions, up and down, forward and reverse, and side-to-side. For Carl, Celeas was an extension of his body. He was nearly finished attaching the cables to the four anchor points in the methane.

  The video picture from Celeas showed the robotic fingers grab one of the steel cables. “Ready when you are,” Carl announced.

  Janice was operating the rover using a video feed and would turn on the transducer when everyone was ready. She looked up at the expectant faces. “Firing the frequency, now.”

  Brilliant blue light flashed on the screens. Carl gasped and let go of the controls, yanking the headset from his eyes. “I can’t see!”

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  NORTHERN BERING SEA:

  Mark Hess, the captain of the Canadian cargo freighter, set the engines to stop and walked out of the bridge to join his crew. He shoved his hands deep into his thick coat pockets as he stared at the massive wall of transparent ice blocking their passage across the north Beaufort Sea to northern Canada. His first mate turned to face him, an imploring look in his eyes.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Hess told him. “We’ll just have to accept the fact that we’ll lose some money on this trip. We’ll have to go further south until we can go around this thing.”

  “I know. I wonder how far south this thing goes. How in the hell can a glacier reach this far south? Something’s not right about all this.”

  Brilliant blue light suddenly filled the ice and a soft crackling sound disturbed the air.

  A crewman standing at the railing looked over the side of the ship. His mouth opened slightly before his eyes went wide, then he spun around and ran across the deck, to the opposite railing. He stared in numbed fascination as the sheet of transparent ice raced across the water, away from the ship. He turned away and looked at the captain. “The water just froze around the ship!”

  Everyone ran to the opposite side and stared at the ice sheet as it disappeared over the horizon. Captain Hess heard a cracking sound and turned to look at the ice wall. Thin fracture lines began forming on the surface, racing toward the top, and then the deck shook so hard it tossed him off his feet. He crashed onto the deck, his head slamming against the steel. He rolled onto his hands and knees and stared at the wall as massive slabs of ice crashed onto the ship.

  The shaking continued as he crawled across to the railing. He watched his men jumping from the ship, onto the ice sheet. Hopefully, they can get far enough away, he thought. He was just about to jump over the railing when he noticed something odd. His men just suddenly stopped running and stared down at their shoes.

  They all started screaming and he watched one man grab his leg with both hands, but when he pulled, his foot broke away at the ankle and he toppled over onto the ice. When he frantically tried to get up, his hand stuck to the surface and his arm suddenly turned frosty white. When he pulled, it shattered into a thousand colored pieces that bounced off the surface like chunks of pink metal.

  Hess noticed frost climbing up onto another man’s legs, and when it reached his chest, he started gasping for air. In an instant, his mouth became frozen into a permanent scream of agony.

  Hess couldn’t keep watching and turned away from the grisly scene as massive slabs of ice continued battering his ship. Half of the bridge suddenly crumpled. When he looked up, the top of the slab rising out of his ship looked like a clear obelisk.

  His entire ship felt like it was rising into the air, and then abruptly stopped. He stared up at the obelisk while the sound of crashing ice slowly subsided, and the air grew deathly quiet.

  He grabbed the railing, slowly pulled himself up off the deck, and then stood to look around. His ship was now a crumpled pile of twisted steel and massive blocks of ice. He slowly turned back to the railing, dreading what he would see. When he saw the frozen red shards of his men scattered across the ice sheet, he felt nauseated and spun away from the rail, retching violently onto the deck. He stayed bent over, spitting out remnants of the foul bile, and catching his breath. He could not get the image out his mind. He leaned back against the railing, and then slowly slid down onto the deck as tears rolled down his cheeks.

  * * *

  Chapter 27

  MOUNT BAKER:

  Jamie grabbed a lock of wet hair dangling across her face and shoved it back. “Stay out from the center, Wesley? We’ve walked at least a mile and this whole place is the center. It’s raining on me no matter where I walk.”

  “It’s only been a quarter of that. Do you want to go back?”

  “No,” she answered miserably. “I’m already drenched, so what’s the point. It is pretty amazing walking under a glacier. I would never have known about this place if you hadn’t brought me along.”

  The ground suddenly moved up for a fraction of a second. ‘CRACKKKKKK!’

  “RUN!” Wesley yelled as the left side of the ceiling crashed to the ground.

  Jamie spun around to run for the entrance, but the wet gravel shifted under her feet and she started to fall. Wesley grabbed the back of her coat as she toppled over, hauling her back onto her feet. They ran for the entrance, the rumble of massive chunks of ice smashing onto the rocks from behind.

  Wesley glanced over his shoulder as the cave began to collapse. “Faster!” he hollered as he pulled her across the gravel.

  The crashing sound was getting closer, but the exit was only a short distance ahead.

  ‘CRACKKKKKK!’

  Wesley looked up and shoved Jamie ahead as chunks of ice smashed onto his head and shoulders, and then a massive block of ice drove him to the ground.

  The roar of the collapsing cave was nearly deafening as Jamie ran for the entrance, jumping over blocks of ice while dodging falling pieces and trying not to slip on the gravel. It seemed an eternity when she finally ran out through a crack in the fallen blocks of ice.

  Jamie staggered to a stop and dropped onto her hands and knees. “That was clos
e, Wesley,” she said between deep breaths. She rolled over, sat on the gravel, and looked around. “Oh no! Wesley!” she yelled.

  She scrambled back onto her feet and ran back to the crack, staring through the opening. “Wesley!” She hollered, but he did not answer. “Wesley!”

  She clawed at the blocks of ice, desperately trying to get back inside. One large block fell onto the ground and she stared through the opening. Wesley’s arm protruded from a pile of shattered ice. “Wesley!”

  She grabbed another block and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. She placed one foot against another block, clenching her teeth as she pulled with all her strength.

  “AAAAAAAAHH!” she groaned, then the block broke loose and she crashed back onto the gravel.

  She looked at the narrow opening and scrambled back onto her feet, then ran into the cave. She knelt down and shoved a large block off his back and smaller pieces off his head and shoulders. She heard him groan. “Can you get up?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  Wesley grunted against the pain in his ribs and pushed himself up from the gravel. Jamie helped him stand, and they climbed over shattered blocks of ice and out through the opening.

  Wesley bent over, clutching his right ribs and taking shallow breaths. “Thanks.”

  Jamie noticed the bloody water dribbling down the side of Wesley’s face. “Oh, no.” She parted his blood soaked hair above his ear. “You have a nasty cut. You’re going to need stiches.”

  “I lost my hat.”

  “What?” Jamie thought she heard wrong, and stepped back. “We were almost killed, there’s a possibility you’ve got broken ribs, and you’re worried about your hat? Really, Wesley?”

  “I’ll be fine once we get down the mountain.”

  She saw the pain his eyes. “Can you tell if any are broken?”