by Alton Gansky
Perry looked up, but with his lights off there was nothing to see. He strained his eyes and noticed an area of black that was a shade lighter than the rest. It was round. It took a moment for his sluggish mind to realize he was looking at the bottom of the hole he had passed through when he entered the lake. The light from above was minuscule, and he would not have recognized it had he not been bathed in darkness for so long.
“So near, yet so far.”
He shuddered again, coughed, and wondered what heaven was like.
Then he felt a tug.
Jack hovered by the opening, his mind miles below the ice sheet. Few things upset him. He had faced danger, been gravely injured—far worse than the ribs and grazing gunshot wound he now sported—and been close to death a few times. All part of life’s experience to him. It was watching others suffer that tore his soul, especially those close to him. Perry Sachs, his closest friend, was out of reach and dying, maybe already dead, and he could do nothing but wait and try to exorcise the recurring image of finding a corpse in the dive suit. He stood motionless, doing the hardest work of his life: waiting. It took all his willpower not to fall to his knees and start ripping at the ice with his hands. It would be a useless act, but it seemed better than standing and staring down a very long hole in the ice.
A tear ran down his dark cheek, but Jack felt no embarrassment.
Gleason approached. “He must be free of the water by now. That will help.”
Jack nodded. “The plane?”
“Still taxiing straight and true and slow. This was ingenious, Jack. I never would have thought of it.”
“Griffin brought me around,” Jack replied. “I just hope what we’re doing is enough.”
“We’ll know soon, buddy. We’ll know soon. If anyone can survive, it’s Perry. He’d survive just to annoy Enkian.”
Jack chuckled. “Yeah, that’s Perry all right.” He lifted his head. Sarah sat at the computer, waiting for it to come back online. Enkian had several men working on the generators. Jack hoped they knew what they were doing. Gwen and Griffin stood off by themselves. Gwen stood slump-shouldered, looking like a deflated balloon. Dr. Curtis was near the middle of the Chamber, pacing in a tight circle.
“What do you think is up with Larimore?” Gleason asked. “Do you think he’s the one who did in the generators?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “He’s missing. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that? What does he stand to gain?”
“Beats me,” Gleason said. “But I have some serious questions for him.”
“If Enkian lets him live,” Jack replied. “If he lets any of us live.”
Jeter sat to the left of the president, who was leaning over his end of the long conference table that dominated the situation room. To the president’s right was Admiral Dwayne Kelly. He was seated in the chair normally occupied by General McDivett. Around the table were key advisors from the State Department, the military, the CIA, and more.
“Mr. President,” Admiral Kelly said. “This is a little hard to believe.”
“I agree,” President Calvert said. “It is nonetheless true.” He looked around the room. “You’ll notice some familiar faces are gone. That’s how much influence this group has. They’ve infiltrated not just our administration but every one, going back many years. Maybe to the founding of our country.”
Jeter saw the unbelieving stares. That had been the devious beauty of the generations-long operation—it was incomprehensible.
“But, Mr. President,” the secretary of defense said, “if what you say is true, then how do you know that one or more of us are not part of the group?”
“I don’t. Not completely. You are all being investigated, so expect a visit from the FBI. We’ve already done deeper and more specific background checks on all of you and everyone else in the West Wing. I’m sorry for the intrusion, but it can’t be helped. To preserve na-tional security, I’d have my own grandmother grilled. And so we’re clear on this, if you’re involved with this nameless group, you had better speak up now. Treason is still a capital offense.”
Jeter bit his lip. No one moved or spoke.
“Very well,” the president said. “You’ve been briefed. I want suggestions, and I want them fast. How do we deal with the mess in Antarctica?”
“That’s a tough one,” the admiral said. “Antarctica is a military-free area. No nation is allowed a military base on the continent. The Coast Guard runs icebreaking operations down there, but they’re not equipped for an assault operation. And you said that misinformation had been dispensed about the C-5 crash to throw off the search. The integrity of the operations down there may be compromised.”
“It makes sense,” Calvert said. “It seems Antarctica is the goal. That’s where you’d want operatives. So who do we trust?”
“I can think of one man,” Jeter said. The president looked at him. It was a different gaze than he had grown accustomed to. Jeter now saw suspicion in his boss’s eyes, despite Jeter’s honesty about the matter. That was the problem with conspiracies. One never knew who to trust.
“Who might that be?” Calvert asked.
“The Coast Guard captain that raised a stink about the search, the one whose radio transmissions NSA picked up. From the logs of his transmissions, he seems untainted.”
“But what can the captain of an icebreaker do?”
“I don’t know,” Jeter admitted. “But he’s close.”
Jack seized the line the moment Perry’s helmet emerged from the ice shaft and pulled. “Order the plane to stop!” Gleason did, and two seconds later the cable stopped moving. Jack heaved with all the strength he could manage. His damaged ribs ignited with pain, and the wound on his arm ripped open again. Jack ignored it all; his attention was on the man in the dive suit. He pulled until half of Perry’s body lay on the ice.
Gleason was by his side. “Let me disconnect him.” A moment later, the umbilical that had towed Perry to the surface hung limply over the hole.
Jack dragged his friend to the side, away from the hole, the gantry, and the other equipment. Before he had the helmet off, Gwen was at his side. Jack worked the releases and gently pulled the helmet away. Perry’s face was light blue.
“Move,” Gwen snapped.
Jack was rooted in place.
“I said, move!”
Jack yielded.
Gwen removed the glove of her right hand and touched Perry’s neck, positioning her fingers over his carotid artery. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak.
“Gwen—” Gleason began.
“Hush!”
Jack’s stomach dropped like a meteor when he saw her lower her head.
Her head snapped up. “I have a pulse. Get the FAWS.” She slapped Perry lightly on the side of the face. “Come on, Perry, come on.” She slapped him again. “Perry, can you hear me? Come back to us. Come back.”
Perry coughed. “Hands are . . . c–c–cold.”
She turned to Jack. “Get this suit off him.”
“Hold it,” a voice said. “Stand back.”
Jack watched Tia and Enkian approach, a handgun in the man’s grip.
“He needs help,” Gwen said.
Enkian raised the gun and pointed it at Gwen’s head. “Stand back.”
Gwen did.
“Watch them,” Enkian ordered Tia. She raised her weapon.
Enkian bent over Perry then reached for the dark plastic bag attached to his waist. He tucked his pistol in his parka and gently opened the bag. He removed the brick Perry had retrieved, turned it over, and ran his fingers along the letters pressed into its wide surface. “Marduk,” he muttered. He looked at Tia and smiled; then he stood and caught the gaze of his small army. He raised the brick over his head.
The Chamber filled with cheers.
Jack had had enough. He knelt beside his friend and unlatched the torso portion of the suit from the legs. It was time to get Perry out.
The light from the Chamber seemed wrong t
o Perry, but he couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t thinking clearly. All he knew was that he had opened his eyes to the face of Gwen James and it was a pretty face. A second later he drifted off, his mind muddled with disjointed and confusing thoughts. He wondered how the little fish was doing.
“Give me some privacy, gentlemen,” Captain Thomas Mahoney ordered as he entered the communications room. The place emptied in a moment. Remaining behind was the senior communications officer. “You said you had an eyes-only for me.”
“Yes, sir. Over there.” He nodded to a computer monitor. Ma-honey sat down and saw an e-mail with his name on it. He knew it was encrypted. He clicked on open, and a password request
window appeared. He entered a code known only to him. When the message decoded, he read it and felt a wave of confusion that was replaced immediately by resolve. He deleted the message. “Thank you. Carry on.”
Mahoney marched to the bridge and saw Ray Seager standing at his post. “XO,” he said sharply, “you’re with me.”
“Aye, sir.”
He turned and strode down the companionway toward his quarters. Behind him came the fast steps of his executive officer.
Once in the privacy of the captain’s quarters, Mahoney filled in his officer.
“Begging the captain’s pardon,” Seager said with dismay, “but this is impossible to do.”
“That’s true,” Mahoney agreed. “That’s why they called on the Coast Guard.”
Chapter 31
Perry awoke slowly, blinked, and tried to order his thoughts. His whole body ached, and his headache remained. But his lungs felt good, filled with air that was cold but sweet. He tried to move but couldn’t. He was paralyzed.
“Take it easy, buddy,” Jack said. Perry turned to see his friend sitting in a chair next to him. Since he had to look up, he realized that he must be lying on the ice. “We’ve got you tied down.”
“Tied down?” His voice sounded weak to his ears. Things were becoming clearer.
Gwen appeared. “We have you in the FAWS.”
Perry was puzzled. “My brain has been a little oxygen deprived. FAWS?”
“Forced Air Warming Suit,” Gwen explained. “Remember?”
Perry did. He had ordered several such suits for the mission. “It’s coming back. My hands and feet are still cold.” He shifted his weight in the sleeping bag-like device. He could barely move.
“They’re supposed to be,” Gwen said. “The suit warms the torso first. That’s where the important organs are. If we warmed the hands and feet first, then your blood would rush to your extremities before we wanted it to.”
“That’s what she says,” Jack joked. “I think she’s just afraid you’ll disrupt the party.”
“My invitation must have been lost in the mail,” Perry said.
“Yeah, go with that,” Jack said, then he softened his tone. “You had us scared, buddy. I’m glad you’re back.”
“You know how I like to make an entrance.” He met his longtime friend’s eyes. The gaze said enough. “How long have I been out?”
“Two hours or so,” Gwen said. “You deserved a nap.”
“The brick?”
“Enkian has it,” Jack said. “Things have gotten a little weird while you were gone, a little stranger.”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible, all right.” Jack explained about the power loss, the sabotaged generators, and the missing Larimore. “Gleason had to rip the batteries out of the backup suit to power the FAWS.”
“He’s still missing?” Perry said. “There aren’t that many places to hide.”
“They found him about an hour ago,” Jack replied. “He had slipped out to use the head. A guard went with him. They found the guard dead, his neck broken. His gun was missing.”
“He had a gun?”
“Yes, but he didn’t get to use it. Tia and the others found Larimore hiding in a fiberglass crate in the cargo area of Tia’s plane. Apparently he was going to wait there until they flew out.”
Perry thought about what he was hearing. “You think he killed the power then hid on the plane to make his escape?”
Jack nodded. “No one can survive out here without power. In some ways, it’s a decent plan. If Enkian and the others wanted to stay, then someone would have to fly for parts or maybe a whole new generator, or at best, they’d just leave, and he’d be on the aircraft with them. Ironically, he was hiding in the aircraft we used to pull you up. That’s when he was found.”
“Ingenious and stupid,” Perry said. “I can see a dozen problems with that plan.”
“I think he’s rounded the bend, if you know what I mean,” Jack said. “He’s in no shape to try anything like that again. They roughed him up pretty good.”
“The power’s on now,” Perry observed.
“Yeah, Enkian’s men got the lines spliced and the repairs made about an hour after we brought you up.”
“I wouldn’t have lasted another hour,” Perry said.
“True,” Jack agreed. “Larimore almost killed you.”
“You know, I was entertaining thoughts that he might be part of Enkian’s group.” Perry turned away from Jack and directed his attention to the center of the Chamber. Things had changed. “What’s going on over there?”
“That’s the weird part,” Jack said. “They’ve been unloading rocks, of all things. Rocks! They’ve put them in a circle. I think they’re planning some kind of ritual. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“I’ll tell you what creeps me out,” Gwen said. “They have Sarah and Gleason training some of their men to use Slick. I don’t think they’re going to need us for much longer.”
“I envy you,” Enkian said. He had approached Perry as Gwen was helping him out of the FAWS.
“Don’t,” Perry said. Jack handed him his parka. He still felt cold but well enough to leave the confines of the warming suit. He stood and swayed, his head spinning. “I’m not in the best position here.”
“You have seen with your own eyes what I have only seen on the monitor, what my father and his father and his father back more generations than I can count have longed to see. You have touched the tower.”
“I can have Gleason put the batteries back in the other suit if you want to pay your brick mountain a visit.”
“Don’t be snide with me, Mr. Sachs,” Enkian said. “I am a proud man and have no patience. I let your friends treat you because I owed you something for bringing me the brick. As far as I’m concerned, my debt is paid.”
“Why are you here?” Perry pressed, too tired and sore to care about offending.
“To reclaim what is rightfully ours,” he said.
“You have title deed to the ziggurat?” Perry said, his legs buckling. Jack stepped to his side.
“We are tied to it,” Enkian admitted. “Tied in a way you cannot understand. It is the work of my people from ages before recorded history.”
“Well, now you’ve seen it. So what’s next? Taking up occupancy is going to be difficult, with it submerged in a pressured lake under ten thousand feet of ice. Trust me, it’s not even a nice place to visit.”
“We’re taking our continent back,” Enkian said. “This land was once ours. It will be ours again.”
“That seems unlikely,” Perry argued. “No one owns Antarctica. No country and certainly no person. You may have captured this base, but that’s a long way from taking all five million square miles of it.”
“You will be surprised.”
“What can you do with it?” Jack asked. “I don’t care how big a strip mall you build, people aren’t going to come down here.”
“Those who know—those who believe—will come.” He stared as if his eyes could burrow into Perry’s skull. “There is much here: water, obviously, but under the ice there is a continent of untapped minerals.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? That whole ice thing, I mean.” Perry returned the stare.
; “I’m a mining expert, Mr. Sachs. I know how to move dirt. I can move ice.”
“What? You’re going to strip mine the ice?” Jack asked.
Enkian never took his eyes of Perry. “We prefer to call it open-face mining. I have the equipment that will uncover the ziggurat. It will take a few years, but it can be done.” He smiled. “I’m under no obligation to explain anything to you, Mr. Sachs, but I’ll leave you a few things to think about. One reason this area is so cold is albedo. Are you familiar with the term?”
Perry nodded. “It’s reflective power—the amount of light that’s reflected from a surface.”
“Very good. The ice reflects a tremendous amount of sunlight, far more than it would if the continent were bare ground. Change that, and the ice begins to melt.”
“How can you change the physical characteristics of ice?” Perry asked. Then the answer hit him. “You’re going to color the ice?”
“You are sharp, Mr. Sachs. But we will only do so where we want the ice to melt. Coal dust—and I have many sources for that—dark aggregates, dyes dropped from aircraft like fire retardant from firefighting planes, and . . . well, you get the idea. Also imagine what might happen to shipping lanes.”
“Do you think other nations are going to just turn it over to you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. We have been planning this for more than a few years. I have been honored with refining the plans and implementing them, largely because of your fine work.”
“Give us the keys to that plane out there, and I’ll consider that payment in full.”
“I think I’ll keep you a little longer,” Enkian said. “But now that you’re back among the living, you should be warned: I have no compunction about putting you or your friends at death’s door. Or through it.” He walked away.
