by Alton Gansky
“You said twenty-six hours before the probe breaks through the ice,” Tia said.
“At the current rate, yes,” Gleason said. “It’s impossible to be more specific since ice density changes with depth. It could be more; it could be a little less.”
“It must be monitored?”
“It should. There’s nothing to do now but watch, but yes, someone should monitor it.”
“And that’s you?”
“I can do it,” Perry said.
“So can I,” Jack interjected.
Tia pulled the barrel from Gleason’s neck, and Perry watched his good friend take a deep breath.
“You’re to stay with it until it breaks through,” Tia ordered.
“Not wise,” Perry said.
“Oh, really,” Tia said. “And why is that?”
“Gleason has already been on duty for too long. He needs rest, as does the rest of my crew. If they don’t eat and rest, they’ll make mistakes, and this operation is too sensitive for that.”
“If anyone makes a mistake, it will be their last one.”
“Nice a thought as that is,” Perry said, “if the cryobot freezes in place, then we’ll be left with a very deep hole and a half-million-dollar cork.”
“We have the other, larger cryobot,” Tia countered.
“As I told you, it’s designed to follow the smaller one down the hole. It’s not made to move much ice, only to widen the shaft. It’s like drilling a pilot hole in wood to make room for a screw—no pilot hole and the wood splits.”
“I get the idea,” Tia snapped.
Jack looked at the nearest of the four gunmen. “And you said she was dumb.” The guard started toward Jack.
“Stand down,” Tia commanded. “We have our orders.”
“Who gives you your orders?” Perry asked. “Enkian? You mentioned someone named Enkian.”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
Perry laughed. “Let’s see, I’m tied up, held against my will while five automatic weapons point in my general direction, and I watched you kill one of your own men. I’m afraid I have to disagree—it does concern me.”
Tia didn’t respond. She turned her attention back to the computer monitor.
“Surely you can’t be afraid that I’ll pick up the phone and call 911,” Perry said. “I assume you know our radios have been sabotaged.”
Tia didn’t rise to the bait.
“What about the C-5?” Perry asked. “Are you responsible for that?”
“Not personally.”
“But it was one of your people, right? What about your man—the guy who planted the bomb? It was a bomb, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“Your man left a bomb to destroy the Dome, the place we live, then he carried a similar device onto the plane. Correct?”
“Close,” Tia smiled.
“So what about your man? Unless he blew himself up, he must be one of us.”
Tia turned to face Perry. “He sacrificed himself for a greater cause.”
“He committed suicide?” Larimore asked.
“No, Commander,” Perry said. “That isn’t what she said. She said he ‘sacrificed himself’ for what he believed in. The guy who planted the C-4 in the bathroom didn’t know there was a bomb on the plane, right?”
“You should have been a detective, Mr. Sachs. Your deductive skills are wasted in engineering.”
“Someone else put the bomb on the plane then,” Perry said. “Someone here or back at McMurdo?”
“McMurdo,” Tia admitted. “It was regrettable, but necessary.”
Jack turned to the same gunman he had been egging on. “Kinda strips away that sense of job security, doesn’t it? One killed after doing his job, and one killed today doing his job. Tell me, pal . . . is your life insurance paid up?”
“Please don’t make me kill you, Mr. Dyson,” Tia said. “I’m not opposed to it, you understand, but someone wants to meet all of you. I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Enkian?” Perry said the name again.
Tia fell silent again.
“So what can be so important that you’d ‘sacrifice’ your henchmen?” Perry pressed.
“Something you can’t imagine.”
“Try me.”
“I won’t try you, Mr. Sachs, but I will warn you one last time.”
Perry looked up and saw a small movement near the open crates. He lowered his head but raised his eyes in the direction of the movement. Something was staring back at him from the crate Tia had opened a few moments before. His stomach twisted. He couldn’t see enough detail to identify which one, but he knew it had to be Sarah or Gwen. Maybe both. The wood container was large enough to hold them both. He had no idea how Tia missed seeing them, but he thanked God for it.
“Okay, no more questions, but I’m back to my original point. My crew needs food and rest. They’re no good to you otherwise. Leave one of us behind to monitor Hairy’s progress and let the others go back to the Dome.”
“Why is it I think you’re up to something?” Tia asked.
“What do you think a bunch of scientists and engineers are going to do against automatic weapons?”
Tia looked around the Chamber again. “This one stays,” she said, pointing to Jack.
“He’s already been on shift for twelve hours,” Perry argued. “I was due up next. I’ve slept more recently than the rest.”
Tia looked as if she were considering it. “No. Dyson stays, and one of my men stays with him. There’s nothing to do but watch the computer monitor. Someone can relieve him in a few hours.”
“At least untie my hands,” Jack said. “It’s difficult to enter computer commands this way.” He held up his bound wrists.
Tia nodded at one of her men, who removed a large knife from its leather sheath on his belt. He bounded to Jack and made a vicious slice with the blade. The nylon tie fell at Jack’s feet.
“Ow!” Jack jumped back, clutching his thumb. “You cut me.”
“Sorry,” the man said with a smile.
Perry started toward his friend but stopped when every MP-5 pointed his way.
“It’s okay,” Jack said, waving Perry off. “It’s not deep.”
“You stay with him,” Tia told the man with the knife. “Every-one else into the other dome.”
Perry turned and took a step, then glanced over his shoulder at Jack, who had already taken a seat behind the monitor. This was not how he had expected it to go. He had hoped to be the one left behind, to have more time to figure out some useful plan. What now, Lord? I’m running out of ideas.
Robert Jeter paced his plush office. His stomach was a vat of heated acid, and his jaw ached from clenching it. Small droplets of sweat dotted his brow. This is crazy, he said to himself. Pure, unadulterated lunacy.
In precisely three and a half minutes, he would have to walk through the door into the Oval Office and meet with the same people he had seen that morning and one additional person: General Brian McDivett. It wasn’t going to be pleasant. The president was in a mood . . . more than a mood; he was on the verge of smashing furniture. The NSA had verified its previous belief that a C-5 had gone down and may have gone down in a place other than was being searched.
That was bad enough, but now the president had learned—thanks to General McDivett—who had been on the aircraft. If that was all there was to it, then things would not be so bad. But the president was facing an uphill reelection battle, and Jeter wanted the chief executive’s image to be clear as crystal.
And there was a greater problem hovering over Jeter like an engorged thunderhead. His call to Enkian had gone south in the first thirty seconds. He made it clear that Jeter was to “take care of the matter.” How? Jeter wanted to know. There was no sane way to take care of the matter. Now Jeter was stuck, as his mother used to say, between the devil and the deep blue sea.
He looked at his watch. Thirty seconds before the meeting, and he had no idea what to do. Normally
a decisive man, quick on his feet and quicker in speech, he suddenly felt mired in fear. Something wasn’t right, and he suspected it was going to get worse.
Jeter dried his palms on his trousers, pulled on his suit coat, ran a hand through his brown hair, and took a deep breath. He told himself he was ready, but he knew otherwise. A few steps later he was in the Oval Office, looking at a very angry president and four very uncomfortable men, one wearing an army uniform. “Again, it appears I’m last in,” Jeter said. He looked at his watch. He was ten seconds early.
The president was standing behind his desk, and Jeter knew what that meant. Normally, President Richard Calvert was the kind of leader who offered you a comfortable seat and something to drink, then sat next to you and chatted about sports for a few minutes. When angry, though, he used the full force of his office to get his point across. He stood behind the wide desk and made his guests sit in less comfortable chairs opposite him.
“Let’s get to it,” the president snapped. “I want to hear from you, General, because I know what I’m hearing from CIA can’t be right.”
“I’m not certain what the CIA has been telling you, Mr. President—”
“Tell me about the C-5 in Antarctica,” he snapped.
“Yes, sir. As you know, the Pentagon became aware that something unusual was going on over an under-ice lake called Vostok. It’s about the size of Lake Ontario, and the Russians have a couple of research stations in the area. Some years back, the Russians drilled very close to the lake then stopped. Or so we were told.”
“You think they were doing something else?”
Jeter stood to one side of the desk and watched the general squirm. He understood what the man was going through.
“We couldn’t be sure,” General McDivett said, “but it crossed our minds. With all their economic problems, the Vostok research facility was supposed to be very nearly closed down. So when recent surveys over the area showed that Lake Vostok was expanding, we thought we should take a look. Ostensibly, we teamed with the National Science Foundation and sent a team of scientists and engineers to investigate.”
“What could the Russians do to make a lake under a few hundred feet of ice grow?”
“Actually, sir, it’s two miles below the ice, and the answer is, we don’t know. There has been suggestion of under-ice nuclear disposal or testing.”
“That sounds far-fetched,” the president said.
“I agree, sir, but we have our share of paranoids.”
“You’re not one of them?”
The jab pained the general, who frowned. “No, sir, I am not. It might be a natural occurrence, but it demanded investigation. A melting of the ice cap would be disastrous, to say the least.”
“You said you partnered with the NSF. Who else was down there?”
McDivett filled his lungs. “We sent three scientists with needed specialties, a crew of engineers and workers from Sachs Engineering—government-approved contractors—and six navy Seabees with their commander.”
Jeter watched as the president’s face turned crimson. “You’re telling me that we lost military people on this mission?”
“Yes, sir. The six Seabees were due to be on that plane. For security reasons, we wanted to limit the number of people on the site to essential personnel. Only the commander remained behind. However, we’ve been trying to raise the base by satellite phone and radio, but there’s no answer. We think something may have gone wrong and the team abandoned the site.”
“Why would they do that?” the president wondered.
“We don’t know, sir. All we know is that they’re no longer responding, and that the C-5 is lost over the ocean.”
“Is it?” the president said. “Our friends from CIA seem to disagree. Fill the general in, David.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure the general knows some of this, but compiling information from the NSA and other sources, we know there is a disparity between radio traffic from the Coast Guard, the airport at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and what we have recently discovered.” He removed some photos from a file he held on his lap. “These photos were taken by satellite two hours ago.”
“This isn’t over water,” McDevitt said.
“The big ears of NSA picked up radio communication from the Coast Guard cutter conducting the search. The skipper thinks he’s on a wild goose chase and the plane had to go down over ice.”
A set of pictures was passed to Jeter. He studied them for a moment. The image was clear enough. He didn’t need photo analysis training to recognize the scattered and burned remains of an airplane or to see the smoldering crater.
“That’s it?” Homeland Security Secretary Larry Shomer asked.
“Not much left,” Jannot said. “No one could have survived that, and if they did, the cold would have killed them soon after.”
“So it didn’t go down over the ocean,” President Calvert said. “The Coast Guard skipper was right. But why would anyone think the craft was over the ocean to begin with? It was a direct flight to . . . to . . . where does one go when they leave Antarctica?”
“Usually Christchurch, New Zealand,” the general answered. “Our team was to spend a few hours at McMurdo then fly to Christchurch.”
“So I ask again,” Calvert pressed. “If they weren’t scheduled to be over the ocean, then why search it?”
“I made some calls to the Coast Guard commandant,” Jannot said. “He checked things out and tells me there was an eyewitness who saw it hit the water.”
“An eyewitness?” Calvert looked at the picture. “Two crashes?”
Jannot shook his head. “I doubt it.”
Jeter watched his boss drop deep into thought. “Wait a minute.” The president turned to McDevitt. “General, you said there were navy Seabees and a crew from an engineering company. What company did you say?”
“Sachs Engineering,” the general replied. “They’ve done a great deal of work for the military all around the world. Always on time and always under budget. They have some expertise that—”
“Henry Sachs?”
“Yes, sir,” the general answered. Jeter saw the puzzlement on his face.
“Henry Sachs has been a longtime supporter,” Jeter explained. “He and the president are acquaintances.”
“You’re telling me Sachs lost some of his employees in that crash?”
“Yes, sir,” McDevitt said. “And worse than that. I checked the roster of workers. His son Perry was leading the mission.”
Curses erupted from the president’s mouth. He began to pace back and forth behind his desk.
Jeter felt his heart flutter. He knew what was coming next. He had to speak. “Mr. President, you should know that Mr. Sachs called earlier today. Word has reached him.”
“And you didn’t tell me!” Calvert bellowed. His words reverberated in the round room.
“I was planning on telling you in this meeting—”
Another volcanic eruption spewed from the president. “All right, here’s what I want. David, I want the CIA on this. I want more and better photos. I want to know everything. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Jannot replied.
“Tell NSA to step up their monitoring of the communications down there. If a penguin burps, I want to know about it. General, I want to know if those folks truly abandoned the site and died in that crash.”
“Sir, communications are broken and—”
“Fix them! I don’t care if you have to hitchhike down there yourself. I want information. I want answers, and I want them now.”
Jeter took a step back when the president snapped his head around to face him. “We’ll talk later. In the meantime, this is a high-priority situation. I want this on top of everyone’s to-do list. The rest of you, get me what you can.”
Everyone stood.
“Now get out.”
“What are you going to do?” Jeter asked.
“I’m going to call a friend who just lost his son. Now give me some privacy.”
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Jeter shambled from the room, feeling scalded by the president’s anger. He closed himself in his office, dropped into his chair, and began to think. Hard.
Chapter 21
Jack studied the dials displayed on the computer monitor. He preferred real dials and readouts, not pictures of them produced by a computer. Gleason loved this stuff, but give him the real thing any day. He harbored no ill will toward computers. He could use them better than most, but he had a predilection for things that left grease or dirt under his fingernails. Computers, while useful, were also sterile. Still, he was stuck with this one, and he made sure he was familiar with the readings and the computer commands. It wouldn’t do to upset the gunman who could cut him in half before he could speak a word.
He moved his eyes from one dial to the next until he had them memorized. Gleason and Perry had briefed him on its operation, but he had had little reason to believe he would actually be seated behind the controls. That was Sarah’s job . . . Gleason’s job.
He was thankful there was nothing to do but watch and wait. That meant there was less opportunity for him to do something wrong. It also gave him time to think about his situation. Something needed to be done. He held no optimism that these guys were going to give everybody a lift home.
For the moment the numbers were even, but the automatic weapons tipped the balances to the bending point. He had also seen how fast, fluid, and vicious the woman named Tia could be. And the incident with the man and the knife that left the thumb of his left hand bleeding drove home the point that the men were well trained.
Jack glanced up from the dials at the man in black who stood just to his left. He was a few inches shorter than Jack and weighed twenty, maybe thirty pounds less, but Jack doubted the man was anything but muscle. Take away the gun and the knife, and Jack might have a chance, but for now he could do nothing but wait.
Then there was another problem. Jack had been friends with Perry for so many years that he could read his body language and anticipate almost everything he was going to do. It had been a brief movement, the merest of tells, but Jack picked up on it. Perry saw something, something in the area of the empty shipping crates. Jack had brought his gaze to bear just in time to see someone peeking over the edge of Hairy’s crate, the lid raised just enough to allow a pair of pretty eyes to scan the situation.
