TOM GRACE

Polar Quest

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the U.S.A as Twisted Web by Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2003

Copyright © 2003 The Kilkenny Group, LLC

Tom Grace asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847561244

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007420216

Version: 2018-07-09

To Robert Hopps, who shared with me a daughter and a lifetime of interesting stories

To Craig Hopps, who lived a full life in far too brief a time

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1 JANUARY 22 Tucson, Arizona

2 JANUARY 24 LV Research Station, Antarctica

3 JANUARY 25 Ann Arbor, Michigan

4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica

5 JANUARY 31 Skier-98

6

7

8

9

10 FEBRUARY 1 Rio Gallegos, Argentina

11 FEBRUARY 2 Lake Vostok, Antarctica

12 FEBRUARY 2 Tucson, Arizona

13 FEBRUARY 8 New York City

14

15 FEBRUARY 14, 11:30 PM Ann Arbor, Michigan

16 FEBRUARY 15, 1:20 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan

17 FEBRUARY 15, 6:45 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan

18 FEBRUARY 15, 1:45 PM Ypsilanti, Michigan

19 FEBRUARY 17 LV Station, Antarctica

20 FEBRUARY 18, 9:00 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan

21 FEBRUARY 18, 9:25 AM Langley, Virginia

22 FEBRUARY 18, 5:35 PM Livonia, Michigan

23 FEBRUARY 22 Langley, Virginia

24 FEBRUARY 24 Christchurch, New Zealand

25 FEBRUARY 27 Ann Arbor, Michigan

26

27 MARCH 4

28 MARCH 5 Waco, Texas

29 MARCH 6 Tucson, Arizona

30 MARCH 8 Ann Arbor, Michigan

31 MARCH 9 Rio de Janeiro

32 MARCH 11 George Town, Grand Cayman

33

34

35

36 MARCH 12 Langley, Virginia

37 MARCH 14 New York City

38 Ann Arbor, Michigan

39

40

41 MARCH 16 New York

42 MARCH 17 Bridgewater, New Jersey 12:30 AM

43

44

45 MARCH 17 3:45 AM New York City

46 MARCH 17 6:20 AM Bridgewater, New Jersey

47 MARCH 17 9:00 PM Ann Arbor, Michigan

48 MARCH 18

49

50 MARCH 19 Paris

51 MARCH 20 Evry, France

52 Paris

53 MARCH 21 Paris

54 MARCH 22 Paris

55 Evry, France

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65 Paris

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

1 JANUARY 22 Tucson, Arizona

The Ice Queen – a sexy Nordic blonde with pouty lips and ice blue eyes – gazed down at Kuhn. Her lusty smile and the mink bikini that barely contained her physical charms were warm reminders of his past. Like a Vargas pinup girl, she sat atop a globe that displayed her frozen domain: Antarctica.

Kuhn ran his hand over the aircraft’s smooth aluminum skin, paying his respects. The patches on Kuhn’s weathered aviator jacket matched those on the aircraft: US NAVY VXE-6 SQUADRON. Beneath the side cockpit window, just above the rendered image of the Ice Queen, stenciled letters read:

CDR GREGORY KUHN

COMMANDING OFFICER

For almost a quarter century, Kuhn had piloted XD-10, the Ice Queen. She was a Lockheed LC-130R, a variant of the venerable C-130 Hercules transport equipped with skis mounted to her fuselage so she could land on ice.

As ungainly as she looked, the Hercules could actually fly and was designed to do one thing: lift heavy loads. Except for the cockpit, the fuselage of the Ice Queen was a cavern of empty space big enough to accommodate several large trucks. Ninety-eight feet in length, she sat low to the ground, like a cylindrical railroad car with a ramp in her tapered tail that folded down like a drawbridge. Her wings spanned 132 feet, and the Ice Queen used every inch of her lifting surface and every ounce of power from the four Allison T56 prop engines to propel her into the sky.

The Ice Queen and her sisters once formed the backbone of the VXE-6 Squadron. Since the mid-fifties, the squadron had fulfilled the mission objectives of the ongoing Operation Deep Freeze, providing logistical support to research stations in the Antarctic. It was a tough job that earned the unit the unofficial nickname Ice Pirates. VXE-6 had owned the skies over the frozen southern continent until the end of the 1999 season, when the squadron returned to its home base at Point Mugu Naval Air Station and was disestablished.

Like many veterans of VXE-6, Kuhn felt anger and a sense of loss when the squadron was phased out, its planes mothballed and its mission reassigned to a National Guard air wing. He’d flown over Antarctica for twenty-four years and had fallen in love with the icy untamed wilderness.

In the years since, the Ice Queen sat tightly wrapped in a plastic cocoon in the high desert air of Arizona.She was one of the hundreds of military and commercial aircraft that sat row upon row in the Boneyard, as the Aircraft Storage and Reclamation Facility was known.

‘The old bitch looks pretty good, eh, Greg?’

Kuhn turned as Len Holland walked up.

‘Is that any way to talk about a lady?’ Kuhn asked.

Holland shook Kuhn’s hand, then looked over at the Ice Queen. ‘Hard to believe our planes have been sitting in the desert all these years.’

‘No different than the day we left them here.’ Kuhn nodded down the flight line at another LC-130R. ‘Polar Pete came out of hibernation just fine, too. Where’s the rest of the guys?’

‘Right behind me.’

Ten men emerged from the flight operations building, all sporting aviator jackets similar to Kuhn’s. Each plane flew with a crew of six men – a pilot, a copilot, a navigator, a flight engineer, and two cargo handlers. Escorting the flight crews was a man in a button-down shirt with a bolo tie and a clipboard.

‘Commander Kuhn,’ the escort said warmly. ‘I’m Jim Evers, the manager here at ASRF.’ Evers pronounced the facility acronym ay-surf. ‘Both XD-10 and XD-11 have been checked out, and all systems are flight ready.’

Kuhn pulled a thick envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Evers. ‘Here’s our flight plan for this short hop to Waco.’

Evers pocketed the envelope. ‘Your planes are fueled, so once you finish your preflight you can get out of here.’

‘Thanks.’ As Evers walked away, Kuhn turned to the two flight crews. ‘You guys know the drill. Let’s get these old birds in the air.’

The Ice Queen and Polar Pete flew a low route across southern Texas, carefully avoiding civilian air-traffic control radar as they bypassed Waco and headed into the Gulf of Mexico. The flight crossed over the Yucatan peninsula, then turned south toward Honduras.

‘I’m picking up the beacon,’ the navigator announced. ‘Bearing two-one-five.’

Kuhn glanced out his window at the rain forest below, the thick foliage barely a hundred feet beneath the aircraft.

‘About friggin’ time,’ Kuhn said impatiently. He had wanted to land before sunset, but an unexpected head wind had increased their flight time.

Kuhn deftly turned the Ice Queen until his heading matched the one his navigator had given him. Five minutes later, he saw a gaping hole in the jungle canopy. The runway looked to be in good condition and certainly long and wide enough to handle a Hercules. Along one side of the runway, he saw a cluster of large tents, a few heavy trucks, a helicopter, and a tall pole with a windsock fluttering in the breeze.

‘X-Ray Delta One Zero to X-Ray Delta One One, over.’

‘One One, over,’ Holland replied.

‘I’m going to circle around and land. You follow me in.’

‘Lead the way, One Zero. X-Ray Delta One One out.’

Kuhn piloted the Ice Queen in a smooth arc that aimed the nose of his plane down the length of the runway. Descending, he skimmed over the treetops and then dropped into the clearing. Sunbaked earth exploded into clouds of dust when the wheels touched down, the gray plume trailing the Ice Queen down the length of the runway. Holland waited until the dust cloud settled before making his approach.

‘Just like riding a bike,’ Holland said as he brought his plane down perfectly.

Once on the ground, Holland taxied Polar Pete behind a jeep with a sign that read FOLLOW ME and was led to a space beside the Ice Queen. A man with orange-tipped wands guided the plane into position and, once there, signaled Holland to cut his engines.

As Kuhn, Holland, and their crews stepped out of the planes into the steamy heat of the Honduran jungle, five brown-skinned men trotted out from the tents. Each grabbed a length of steel pipe from a large pile and began assembling scaffolding around the aircraft.

‘Commander Kuhn.’

Kuhn turned as a tall, lanky man dressed in militarystyle khakis walked toward him. The man had thick black hair and a full beard that gave him the look of a left-wing revolutionary.

‘Sumner Duroc?’ Kuhn asked.

‘Yes, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,’ Duroc said perfunctorily in Gallic-tinged English.

‘You cut this strip?’ Kuhn asked.

‘No, the Nicaraguan Contras cleared this area to receive supplies from you Americans. We merely restored it. Did you encounter any problems?’

‘None,’ Kuhn replied. ‘Everything went according to plan and both aircraft are flying perfectly.’

‘Good. For the next few days I expect you and your men to work with my staff in preparing for our mission.’

‘My men’ll be ready, but right now we’re in need of a bite to eat and some down time.’

‘Tents have been assigned to you and your crew.’ Duroc made a motion with his hand, and a swarthy man dressed in khaki ran over. ‘Commander, this is my executive officer, Leon Albret. Leon, show the commander and his men their quarters, then take them to the mess tent and see that they are fed.’

‘Yes, sir.’

After finishing his dinner, Kuhn stepped out of the mess tent and walked back over to the planes. Both were now enmeshed in a framework of vertical poles, crossbars, and wooden planks. A diesel generator purred nearby, powering work lights attached to the scaffolding. At several points, tall poles rose out of the scaffolding to support a broad sheet of camouflage fabric that completely covered both planes. The fabric not only hid the aircraft from view, but during coming days it would also prevent the sun from heating the aluminum skin on the planes like a skillet.

Duroc stood alongside the Ice Queen, watching as the workmen began the tedious process of carefully stripping off the aircraft’s paint scheme and markings.

‘Your men got this rigging up pretty quick,’ Kuhn said as he walked up to Duroc.

‘That’s what they were paid to do.’

‘Do they know what they’re doin’ to my plane? I’d hate to have one of them break somethin’.’

‘Like you, they were hired because of their skills,’ Duroc replied. ‘These are not the first planes they’ve rechristened.’

‘It’s gotta make you sick to see her like that,’ Holland remarked, ‘all done up like she’s air force – a guard unit at that.’

Kuhn nodded as he studied the new paint scheme that decorated his beloved Ice Queen. In two days, the Hondurans had stripped her down to bare metal, removing the red-black scheme and her sexy namesake. Now she bore air force markings and her wingtips and tail were painted orange. Stenciled letters identified the Ice Queen and Polar Pete as Skier-98 and Skier-99 – aircraft currently assigned to the National Guard unit that took over the Antarctica mission from the navy.

‘Make you sick enough to turn down Duroc’s money?’ Kuhn asked.

‘Hell, no. I just don’t like flying false colors.’

‘It don’t matter what she’s wearing on the outside,’ Kuhn said, ‘underneath, she’s still the Ice Queen.’

‘Looks like shit, don’t it?’ Holland said. ‘Got no personality whatsoever.’

‘Maybe,’ Kuhn replied, ‘but for the first time in the history of VXE-6, we’re going to really live up to our nickname.’

Duroc, Albret, and the rest of the two flight crews emerged from the camp and walked over to where Kuhn stood with Holland.

‘Commander, are your aircraft ready to fly?’ Duroc asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Kuhn replied. ‘The tanks are all topped off and it doesn’t look like your paint crew did any damage.’

‘Good.’ Duroc nodded to Albret, who handed packets to Kuhn and Holland. ‘Here are the flight plan and the latest weather reports.’

Kuhn opened the manila envelope and glanced over the southbound route. From Honduras, the planes would fly along the Pacific coast of South America, landing at remote airstrips to rest and refuel. In the final leg, they were to cross over southern Chile into Argentina.

‘I will meet you in Rio Gallegos,’ Duroc said. ‘There, we will load the men and equipment required for the mission. Any questions?’

‘Not a one,’ Kuhn replied, holding out his hand. ‘I guess we’ll see you in Argentina.’

Duroc stood near the helicopter and watched the two LC-130s depart. The cargo planes circled the jungle airstrip once, then veered south toward the Pacific coast. Finding these unique planes and the crews to fly them was one of the more formidable challenges of this project, and he was pleased with his success. So far, everything was proceeding as planned, but Duroc knew that there was still much to be accomplished and many places where things could go disastrously wrong.

‘The workmen are in the mess tent, as you ordered,’ Albret announced. ‘They are eager for their wages.’

‘Understandably so.’

Duroc unlocked the cargo compartment of the Bell 427 and pulled out a Halliburton briefcase.

‘Put the rest of our gear on board while I take care of the men,’ Duroc ordered.

Albret nodded and jogged away as Duroc walked over to the largest tent in the compound. Inside, he found the five Hondurans laughing and enjoying the cold beer Duroc had provided. All eyes turned to him as he entered the tent.

‘Gentlemen,’ Duroc said, easily slipping into Spanish, ‘I wish to thank you for your excellent work over these past few days. As we agreed, here is five hundred thousand dollars in U.S. currency.’ Duroc set the briefcase down atop the table where the men were seated and opened it so the contents faced the men. Inside, the case was filled with neat bundles of U.S. twenty-dollar bills. ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you.’

Duroc shook a few hands and the rest of the Hondurans raised their bottles in his honor. One of the men picked up a battered guitar and began strumming – they were rich and it was time to celebrate. Duroc smiled and left what promised to be a wild day of drinking.

By the time Duroc returned to the helicopter, Albret had their gear loaded and the rotors turning. Duroc slipped on a pair of dark aviator sunglasses and climbed into the copilot’s seat. Albret ran through the rest of his checklist, powered up the twin turbine engines, and lifted off.

As the helicopter rose above the treetops and began to move away from the runway, Duroc keyed a command into the onboard computer that instructed it to transmit a series of pulses at a specific frequency. Less than two seconds later, a thin layer of plastic explosive lining the interior of the briefcase exploded.

The five men barely felt the searing heat from the blast or the shards of fragmented metal from the briefcase. Everything within fifty feet of the bomb disappeared in a fireball that incinerated the encampment. The explosion left a crater twenty feet across and ten feet deep.

Duroc’s helicopter sped over the rain forest toward Tegucigalpa, where he and Albret would board a private jet for Argentina.

2 JANUARY 24 LV Research Station, Antarctica

Collins stood beneath a clear blue sky bathed in the whitest light he had ever known, a light blinding with brilliant intensity. The hard-packed crystals of ice that covered the glacial plateau glowed in dazzling imitation of the sun. Were it not for the yellow-lens goggles protecting his eyes, he would have been snow-blind as soon as he stepped outside the station. From his vantage point, less than seven hundred miles from the South Pole, the sun traced another unbroken ellipse in the sky. Endless day.

Click.

Ansel Adams could’ve worked some real magic down here, Collins mused as he adjusted the exposure setting on his camera.

Today, the wind, temperature, and sky conspired to produce one of nature’s rarest and most dazzling sights: parhelic circles. Sunlight, refracted through tiny airborne ice crystals, created the illusion of luminous halos, arcs,and flaring parabolas in the sky. Collins counted twenty distinct formations dancing around the sun.

Click.

Like a surrealist painting, distance was an illusion in the interior of the southernmost continent. It was generally accepted that the otherworldliness of this place was due in equal parts to extremes in temperature, altitude, and lifelessness. Over fifty years of record keeping by Russian crews manning the Vostok Research Station – Collins’s closest neighbors some forty miles to the south – bracketed the local temperature range as between-40 degrees and-128 degrees Fahrenheit.

Satisfied that he’d captured at least one decent image from this spot, Collins moved his camera around to the opposite side of the station. LV Research Station had been home to Collins and his wife, Nedra, since November and had been entirely prefabricated in the U.S. as a mockup of the habitat for NASA’s manned-mission to Mars. At the center of the station stood a short domed tower. Four cylindrical modules – each the size of a railroad tanker car – stood mounted on thick legs and radiated out from the tower in a cruciform configuration. The modules provided space for research, crew quarters, power and environmental systems, and storage.

Beneath LV Station, the sheet of glacial ice that blanketed nearly all of Antarctica rose to a height of 11,500 feet above sea level. Thanks to the katabatic winds – dense sheets of frigid air that flowed down from the nearby ice domes – the rarified air that Collins breathed was even thinner than that of other sites of equal elevation around the world. These winds siphoned low-oxygen air from the upper atmosphere to fill the void left behind as they flowed down toward the coast. When they had first arrived here, it took Collins and his wife several days to acclimate themselves, and both still had to be wary of overexertion.

Collins could attest to the extremes in temperature and altitude, but assumption that this place was totally lifeless was something that he and many other scientists around the world were challenging. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, energy in the form of sunlight was assumed to be essential to the formation of life, but then life was found in the darkest depths of the oceans. When communities of organisms were discovered not merely living but thriving in the superheated mineral-saturated waters of geysers and hydrothermal vents, environments lethal to most other forms of life on earth, scientists were forced to rethink their assumptions about the conditions that might give rise to life. Being more tenacious than anyone had previously considered, life seems to need only three things to start: heat, minerals, and liquid water.

Walking past a row of thirty-inch in diameter metal spheres that contained liquid hydrogen for the station’s fuel cells, Collins approached the reason that NASA and a group of partner companies had financed this project. Fifty feet from the station stood a cobalt blue tetrahedron that was as out of place atop the glacial ice of Antarctica as Arthur C. Clarke’s monolith on the moon: the Ice Pick probe.

Collins shortened the legs on his tripod, lowering the camera to capture both the hard lines of the probe’s first stage and the luminous parhelic circles. Satisfied with the composition, he adjusted the exposure setting and snapped another picture.

‘Hey, Philip, how’s the show?’ Nedra asked, her voice clear over his headset.

‘Amazing. You should come out and see it.’

‘I snuck a peek out the window. Just wanted to let you know we’re ready for another dip in the lake.’

Far beneath LV Station, sandwiched between a glacier and the rocky surface of Antarctica, lay one of the largest lakes on Earth – a body of liquid water that could have easily been seen from space were it not concealed by the ice. When British and Russian scientists confirmed the existence of Lake Vostok in 1996, they theorized that heat rising from the earth’s interior through rifts in the crust kept the water from freezing. Seismic activity in the area increased the likelihood of hydrothermal vents in Lake Vostok, meaning that the lake had the water, heat, and minerals necessary to support life. What form that life would take, in a place isolated from the rest of the world for the last 20 million years, was the subject of great speculation.

In 1610, Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and discovered four moons orbiting the giant planet. This discovery came at a time when the whole of Western civilization believed that the earth was the center of the universe. News of Lake Vostok’s discovery and the possibility of life in its hidden waters coincided with the arrival at Jupiter of a spacecraft bearing the great astronomer’s name. During a fly-by of one of the moons discovered by Galileo – an ice-covered rock named Europa – the spacecraft transmitted a series of images as astounding to the scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the discovery of the moon itself was to Galileo four hundred years earlier.

Europa was named after the mythical Phoenician princess that Zeus carried off and ravaged. Detailed images from the spacecraft revealed a pattern of fractures on the frozen moon’s surface similar to ice flows in the Arctic Ocean – evidence that beneath Europa’s frozen shell lay an immense body of liquid water larger than all Earth’s oceans. Dark regions mottling the moon’s surface revealed ongoing volcanic and seismic activity, likely the result of Jupiter’s intense gravity wracking Europa’s molten core. With heat, minerals, and liquid water, scientists now saw Europa as the most promising place in our solar system to search for extraterrestrial life.

The complexity of a mission to Europa was unlike anything NASA engineers had encountered since the days of Apollo. Forays to other worlds had thus far only scratched the surface of those celestial bodies. Once on Europa, NASA planned to bore through at least six miles of ice in order to explore a mysterious ocean. A submersible robotic vehicle designed to plumb those hidden waters would not only have to survive a journey in the vacuum of space, but also be able to withstand a crushing pressure that, at a minimum, would equal the deepest place beneath Earth’s oceans.

NASA’s Europa team, led by Collins and his wife, sought out the best minds in robotics, biologic testing, artificial intelligence, and deep-sea remote vehicles to help tackle the technical problems posed by the mission.The Europa Lander not only had to perform numerous complex tasks in an extreme environment but, due to the distances involved, it also had to be capable of making decisions on its own.

Early on, Collins’s team seized on the idea of exploring Lake Vostok as a full-dress rehearsal for the mission to Europa. Exhaustive testing of various subsystems finally led to the construction of a prototype. Ice Pick incorporated all but three of the main systems to be used by the Europa Lander. The deep-space communications unit was deleted from Ice Pick, since the probe’s first stage wouldn’t be more than fifty feet from the people controlling it. While it would have been nice to have the genetic analysis module on board, the scientists at UGene were still tweaking it, and any samples retrieved from the lake would be analyzed in their laboratory afterward. The probe’s nuclear power supply – a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator – was not included, because an international treaty expressly forbade the importation of nuclear material into Antarctica.

The wind shifted and the parhelic circles slowly faded away. Satisfied that he’d captured what he could, Collins picked up his camera and headed back to the station. He followed the thick orange umbilical line that provided power and communications to Ice Pick.

After a quick look around the station, Collins reentered the tower air lock and closed the door. He wasted no time stripping down to his jeans and turtleneck – the station’s interior was over a hundred degrees warmer than outside. Static sparks crackled as he peeled the woolen balaclava from his head; his black hair and beard were matted down by the protective head covering.

‘Water?’ Nedra asked as Collins clambered up the spiral stair to the station’s main level, scratching his chin.

‘Oh, yeah. My mouth is drier than a camel’s ass.’

‘That’s not the image I want in mind the next time you kiss me.’

Nedra filled a tall plastic glass and handed it to him. Keeping hydrated was critical in a place totally devoid of humidity, where the average annual precipitation was less than the Sahara Desert. Collins sat down beside his wife at the long workstation. Nedra’s monitor displayed the same information she hoped to receive one day, several years from now, from a spacecraft on the surface of Europa.

‘Status?’ Collins asked.

‘The sample capsules from the last mission are stowed and a new set of empties are on board the hydrobot. Batteries are at one-hundred percent charge.’

‘Then let’s see if we get lucky today.’

Clinging by actuated crampons to the underside of the glacial ice sheet in the slushy upper boundary of Lake Vostok, the second stage of the Ice Pick probe waited for its next command. It had taken five days in late November for the three-foot in diameter sphere to melt its way straight down through over two miles of glacier. The cryobot liquefied the ice beneath it with the heating panels on its lower hemisphere, and, as it sank, the displaced water refroze above it to prevent contaminants from the surface from entering the hidden lake. A filament of superconducting wire imbedded in a carbon nanotube sleeve emerged from the top of the sphere like a strand of webbing from a spinneret, and ran straight up along the path of the cryobot’s descent from beneath the first stage on the surface.

At Nedra’s command, the circular heating plate at the lower pole of the cryobot receded about a quarter-inch into the sphere, then slid away to expose an iris diaphragm.

‘Equalizing tube pressure,’ Nedra announced.

A series of pressure-relief valves slowly opened to allow a flow of water from the lake to gradually enter the cylindrical chamber behind the diaphragm. Once the air inside the chamber had been evacuated and the water pressure inside made equal with that of the surrounding lake, the valves closed.

‘The tube is flooded and equalized,’ Nedra noted.

Collins switched on the monitor in front of him and gripped the joystick controls. ‘Launch the fish.’

The rings of the iris diaphragm rotated to create an eight-inch aperture at the base of the cylindrical chamber. A blast of compressed air shot the two-foot-long, torpedo-shaped hydrobot through the slush into the dark water below.

Once the hydrobot was safely away, three telescoping masts extended out from the bottom of the cryobot. A pre-programmed series of transmissions verified that communications between Ice Pick’s second and third stage had been established.

‘Hydrobot is in the water,’ Nedra said. ‘She’s all yours.’

The graphical display of gauges and bar graphs on Collins’s monitor became colorfully active as the stream of real-time data began flowing in from the hydrobot.

‘All systems are up and running,’ Collins announced. ‘I’m switching on lights and camera and powering up the propulsion system.’

Halogen lights in the bow of the hydrobot illuminated the crystal-clear water as it slipped downward toward the distant lake bottom. The hydrobot’s descent slowed, then halted as the screw propeller in its tail dug into the frigid water, spinning in reverse to counteract gravity. A trio of maneuvering thrusters clustered around the hydrobot’s center of mass pivoted in response to Collins’s command and slowly rotated it like a baton.

‘Signal strength is good. The hydrobot’s responding to guidance commands,’ Collins said, the image on his screen spinning wildly.

‘Do you have to do that every time we launch?’ Nedra asked, clinching her eyes shut as she rubbed her temples. ‘You know it makes me dizzy.’

Collins brought the hydrobot to a level stop. ‘Plotting course to the next search area.’

The bow of the hydrobot dipped down and Collins piloted the submersible in a gentle sloping descent toward the bottom. Other than a few gently drifting particles, the water in the upper reaches of Lake Vostok was crystal clear – there was no wind, currents, or tide to stir things up. Through the first three hundred feet of its journey downward, the hydrobot recorded only minor temperature fluctuations in frigid water.

‘I think I see something,’ Collins announced as the hydrobot entered the search area. The clear water characteristic of the upper lake was giving way to a gray-black haze. ‘Visibility is dropping.’

Nedra looked over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Where’s the bottom?’

‘Fathometer reads about seventy-five feet of water beneath the fish. This is deeper than the surrounding area. May be a rift in the bottom. The haze looks a lot heavier than before. I think we found a smoker.’ Collins slowed the hydrobot’s descent as it reached the haze. ‘Temperature is rising, pushing into the fifties.’

‘Let’s hold here and take another water sample.’

A clear rigid pipette extended out from the bow of the hydrobot into the water, the submersible’s camera relaying the action to the station above. Inside the hydrobot, a pump drew some water into a sterile sample capsule. After the capsule was filled and sealed, the sampling system purged its lines and withdrew the pipette.

‘Damn, I wish we had that lab kit on board. It’d be nice to know if we found anything alive down there.’

‘You’ll just have to wait. We’ll know within a couple of weeks after we get home.’

When the sampling was complete, Collins resumed the descent. Sixteen feet down, the water in front of the camera cleared considerably. The hydrobot’s lights grazed the underside of the thick silty cloud suspended over the lake bottom. Particles glinted as they fell through the powerful beam of white light.

‘I’m going to maintain about thirty feet off the bottom while we take a look around,’ Collins said. ‘Water temp is now in the mid-seventies.’

‘It looks like we’re inside a snow globe.’

‘Only that’s volcanic ash, not white glitter.’

Collins moved the hydrobot forward slowly as they scanned the image of the silty bottom for any sign that life existed inside this remote, alien realm.

‘Water temp is moving up,’ Collins said. ‘There just has to be a vent close by.’

‘If you do find one, just make sure you don’t get too close or you’ll fry the electronics,’ Nedra cautioned.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Collins snapped.

He brought the hydrobot to a stop and began turning it in a slow horizontal sweep to the right. Forty-three degrees right of his previous heading, he spotted a plume of particles billowing out of a lumpy black mass of rock that jutted up from the lake bottom like a broken fang. The ash gray landscape surrounding the smoker was mottled with patches of white.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Nedra asked.

Collins swallowed hard, his throat suddenly feeling very tight and dry. He pushed the hydrobot forward, gliding cautiously toward the nearest field of iridescent white. As he closed the distance, details began to emerge from the indistinct mass – long, thin strands of filaments. Collins brought the hydrobot to a stop just a foot above the edge of the spaghetti-like mass. The gentle turning of the hydrobot’s maneuvering thrusters disturbed the water, rippling through the filaments like a breeze through a wheat field. Small, transparent creatures similar to jellyfish darted out of the hydrobot’s light.

‘I don’t think you need that lab kit now,’ Nedra said.

Collins’s eyes were transfixed on the digital image. ‘Send a message to the Jet Propulsion Lab: Lake Vostok is alive.’

3 JANUARY 25 Ann Arbor, Michigan

‘Is the coffee in there any good?’ Nolan Kilkenny asked as he approached the main conference room.

Loretta Quinn, executive assistant to the chairman of the Michigan Applied Research Consortium, looked up from the letter she was preparing and gave Kilkenny an annoyed look. ‘Does this look like the counter at Starbucks?’

‘No, but you’d be making a killing if it was. Maybe I should talk to the boss about leasing them some space, might be a good way to generate some extra revenue.’

‘Don’t you dare, Nolan. Knowing your father, he’d probably think it was a marvelous idea and I’d end up with a cappuccino maker next to the fax machine. There’s a fresh pot of coffee on the table, and – ’ Quinn glanced down at her notes, ‘your satellite window opens at four-forty-five, and you only have about ten minutes of air-time.’

‘Thanks, Loretta.’

Inside the conference room, Kilkenny set his files and a legal pad on the granite table and poured coffee into one of the dark blue mugs that bore the consortium’s logo. Outside the snow was steadily falling on the wooded grounds surrounding the building.

One of the files he brought with him contained the current financial projections for the biotech firm UGene. The Michigan Applied Research Consortium, known as MARC, had provided UGene with several million dollars of venture capital in exchange for a significant piece of the company. That investment paid its first dividends when Kilkenny orchestrated UGene’s initial public offering on Wall Street, a feat which turned him into a paper millionaire.

It still amazed Kilkenny how much his life had changed. Three years earlier, he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, commanding a squad of SEALs and existing on a military paycheck. Now he was crunching numbers and helping promising young companies develop their potential – and getting rich in the process.

‘It’s called snow,’ a basso profundo announced from the doorway, cutting through Kilkenny’s drifting thoughts.

‘I’m familiar with it, Oz,’ Kilkenny replied without looking. ‘I grew up here.’

‘Then you have my condolences.’

At six-foot-six and 220 pounds, Oswald Eames had the physical presence to justify a voice that broadcast in the Barry White-James Earl Jones spectrum. Kilkenny turned his chair around as Eames entered the conference room, followed by his partner, Lloyd Sutton.

‘Thanks for coming, gentlemen,’ Kilkenny said. ‘Have a seat.’

Sutton shot a nervous glance at Eames as he shed his overcoat. ‘What’s this all about, Nolan? The fourth-quarter numbers?’

‘Partly, though the numbers are fine,’ Killkenny said reassuringly. ‘I’ve got the preliminaries from our accounants and there are no surprises.’

Kilkenny handed out copies of the financial statements and quickly ran through the highlights: Bottom line, UGene was generating a modest profit – which was no small feat for a newcomer in the notoriously capital-intensive world of biotechnology. What kept UGene from burning through its IPO cash horde like one of the many over-hyped dot-coms was the total focus of Eames and Sutton on ‘bioinformatics’ – the company’s main product line, biological information. UGene specialized in parsing the genomes encoded in lengthy strands of DNA, identifying genes and proteins, and determining how they function inside living organisms.

‘Any updates on the most recent batch of patent applications?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘It’s the Wild West all over again.’ Eames’s reply masked little of his frustration. Like the work of early cartographers in the American West, what the scientists from the Human Genome Project and Celera produced was little more than the first decent map of a previously uncharted territory. The real work came in exploring this vast frontier, and biotech companies were staking claims – in the form of patents – over potentially valuable sections of genetic real estate.

The genetic gold rush was on, complete with prospectors in lab coats and outlaw claim-jumpers in dark suits armed with lawsuits and patent applications instead of six-shooters. ‘Most of our work is clear and uncontested,’ Eames continued, ‘but there are a few sequences we’re going to have to fight for.’

‘That’s why I prefer my side of the business,’ Sutton offered. ‘The patents on my work are based on inventions and processes – they’re totally unambiguous. Gene patents are a claim of ownership over a naturally occurring molecule.’

‘Are you saying we shouldn’t try to patent what Oz and his lab team finds?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Not at all. As long as it’s legal to do so, we have to file patents on our work, if for no other reason than to prevent some company from shutting us out of a potentially profitable line of research.’

‘Lloyd and I have had this conversation before,’ Eames explained to Kilkenny, ‘usually after a couple beers when we’re both feeling philosophical.’

‘Sounds like the old debate between discovery and invention. You can’t patent the fire, but you can patent the matches.’

‘Exactly, Nolan,’ Sutton agreed.

‘Since you brought up your side of the business, Lloyd, how’s work coming on that package for NASA?’

‘Slow, but we’re getting there. The biggest problem we’ve run into is vibration. Our equipment has to withstand a launch and a jarring impact on Europa.’

‘Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’,’ Eames summarized.

‘I sent out a unit this week to NASA for testing. We should know something in a few months.’

‘Good,’ Kilkenny said. ‘Where are we on building depth?’

‘We’ve sampled just over twelve hundred individuals from a variety of ethnic backgrounds,’ Eames replied, ‘including multiple family members, so we’re making progress on building a database of genetic norms and variations. I’m just starting to get DNA in from zoos around the country, as well as material from the agriculture firms you cut deals with, but we’re about where we expected to be with the flora and fauna side of our database.’

‘What about the Jurassic Park stuff?’ Kilkenny asked.

Sutton rolled his eyes. He hated Kilkenny’s nickname for the extinct and endangered species portion of the database. ‘We have the first few samples, with more expected to trickle in over the next few months. Sorry to say, but there’s not a T-rex in the lot.’

‘Make lousy house pets, anyway,’ Eames added. ‘Better off sticking with your dogs.’

Kilkenny checked his watch. ‘Gentlemen, thanks for the update. Now I have a little surprise for you.’

A high-definition video monitor on the wall of the conference room displayed a bright blue test screen. A moment later, square bits of a still image appeared like scattered pieces of a puzzle trying to assemble itself. The image blinked once and filled the screen as the satellite connection between MARC and the LV Research Station was established.

‘Hello from scenic Lake Vostok,’ Nedra said with a smile, Collins seated at her side. ‘How are things back in the world?’

‘Cold, and we’re getting a bit of snow right now,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘You poor boys,’ Nedra said. ‘It’s a lovely morning here. The sun is shining, just like it does all day, every day, and it’s a balmy minus forty-four.’

‘You want to trade?’ Collins asked.

‘No way,’ Eames replied. ‘Michigan is more than cold enough for me. I don’t know how you two can stand it down there.’

‘Actually, it’s very cozy,’ Nedra said. ‘I’ve even managed to get a pretty good tan.’

Nedra turned in her chair and rolled the waist of her sweatpants down just enough to reveal a tan line on her hip. Collins laughed at the embarrassed looks on the faces of the three men in Ann Arbor.

‘You’ve been sunbathing at the South Pole?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘They’ve been down there too long, Nolan,’ Eames said. ‘NASA better pull them out ASAP.’

‘When there’s no wind, the sun’s strong enough to keep you warm,’ Nedra explained. ‘It’s like spring skiing at Tahoe.’

‘Enough of this chit-chat,’ Eames said. ‘What are you bringing home for us?’

‘It better be more than a T-shirt,’ Sutton added.

‘Oh, it will be,’ Collins promised, ‘considering what you’ve invested in this project.’

Nedra looked directly at Eames and Sutton. ‘The life flourishing in Lake Vostok is far beyond anything we anticipated. We’ve got some great samples for you guys to work on. Did IPL send you any of the pictures?’

‘Yeah, just got ‘em,’ Kilkenny replied. He slid a file across the table to Eames and Sutton.

‘Jesus, that’s beautiful,’ Eames said as he spread the glossy prints on the table.

‘Cousteau would’ve been proud,’ Kilkenny agreed.

‘We loaded the last samples yesterday and the cryobot is on its way back to the surface,’ Collins said. ‘As the pictures show, there’s some pretty bizarre stuff down there, and we’ve only just started exploring this lake. I hope we can count on UGene’s continued support of this project.’

‘Once we get these first samples analyzed, I’m sure there won’t be any trouble funding a more comprehensive investigation of Lake Vostok,’ Kilkenny predicted. ‘Since NASA’s announcement in December, I’ve taken calls from several drug companies offering millions for a peek at your samples.’

‘Lloyd and I have increased the scan rate on our sequencers,’ Eames said. ‘Depending on the size of the genome, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to decode whatever you’re bringing back.’

‘And we’re working on some more improvements to make the process even faster,’ Sutton added.

‘I’d be even happier if you’d make your equipment smaller and lighter,’ Nedra said. ‘As you already know, space on the Europa Lander will be at a premium.’

‘We’ll do what we can,’ Sutton promised.

‘While you two are busy raising the cryobot and getting packed for the trip home, I’ll be working my way south to pick you up,’ Kilkenny announced.

‘What? You’re coming here?’ Collins asked, incredulous.

‘Yeah. Something came up and the NSF agreed to let me have a seat on one of their planes. If everything stays on schedule, I’ll be knocking on your front door in couple of weeks.’

The image on the wall monitor began to degrade.

‘Looks like our time is up,’ Kilkenny announced. ‘See you soon.’

Collins and his wife waved, then the image disintegrated and the screen turned solid blue. Kilkenny switched the monitor off. ‘It’s not every day you chat with someone at the South Pole.’

‘These photographs are amazing,’ Sutton said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.’

‘Twenty million years of total isolation will do that to an ecosystem,’ Kilkenny said. ‘The Galapagos Islands were never cut off like Lake Vostok.’

Eames looked up from the photos. ‘All this good news calls for a celebration. Everyone up for dinner?’

‘I’m in,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘I’ve got plans,’ Sutton said apologetically, ‘but let me make a quick call. I’m sure I’ve got time for a drink.’

They ended up at Connor O’Neill’s, a Main Street restaurant modeled after the pubs of rural Ireland. In the front corner, a live band filled the place with a rollicking ballad that incited several patrons to holler and clap along with them.

‘Evening, Oz,’ a waitress called out as they entered, her accent authentic Dublin. ‘I see you brought some friends with ya tonight. If you like, there’s an open table by the fire.’

‘Thanks, Hannah.’

‘You come here a lot?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘I’m a regular,’ Eames replied. ‘Didn’t I ever tell you I was Black Irish?’

Kilkenny considered for a moment if Eames was serious. While it was obvious that most of Eames’s lineage was African, Kilkenny had to concede the possibility that, somewhere in the scientist’s ancestry, there might be a Spanish sailor who washed up on the Irish coast after the English navy destroyed the famed Armada. ‘I guess that would make us cousins.’

Eames turned and smiled at him. ‘Glad you finally noticed the family resemblance.’

On the way back, they ordered three pints of amber ale from the bar and settled in at a table by the fireplace.

‘To Lake Vostok,’ Kilkenny offered, his pint of beer raised.

Eames and Sutton seconded the toast and drained an inch from their glasses.

‘May I join you?’ a woman asked.

Kilkenny looked up as a woman approached the table. She looked to be in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair and the wardrobe of a working professional. To Kilkenny’s surprise, Sutton rose and kissed the woman on the cheek.

‘Nolan, this is Faye Olson,’ he said proudly.

Kilkenny stood and shook Olson’s hand. ‘A pleasure.’

‘For me as well. Lloyd speaks very highly of you.’

Olson then turned to Eames, who remained seated. ‘Hi, Oz.’

‘Hello, Faye,’ Eames replied politely.

Olson shed her overcoat and sat at the table as Sutton flagged down a waitress for a glass of white wine. ‘So, what are you celebrating?’

‘Just some exciting new things for these two guys to work on,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘I know how good that feels. I just brought in a big historic restoration project for my firm.’

‘You got Gordon Hall?’ Sutton asked.

Olson nodded with a smile.

‘Congratulations,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I live out that way. Given the history surrounding that old place, it deserves to be restored. What are your plans?’

‘Judge Dexter built the main house in the 1840s, so that’s our key date. We’ll make some concessions for mechanical and electrical systems, things that can be hidden in the walls,’ Olson explained, ‘but the rooms and the details will be as authentic as we can make them. Right now, the house is cut up into four apartments, so all that stuff has to go, as well as a couple of houses that were built on the property during the fifties.’

‘What about the acreage?’

Olson smiled. ‘All seventy acres are included in the National Historic designation, so no developer is getting his hands on it. This was, after all, a stop on the Underground Railroad.’

‘So that view will remain unchanged?’

‘It’ll actually be improved. When we’re done, it’ll be a pristine example of a Greek Revival mansion set on a rolling meadow.’

‘Sounds like an interesting project,’ Kilkenny said, picturing in his mind Olson’s architectural vision.

‘It is,’ Olson agreed. ‘Lloyd, do you have the tickets?’

Sutton patted his breast pocket. ‘Right here.’

‘What are you seeing?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Natalie Merchant is playing at Hill Auditorium tonight – Faye’s a big fan. We’re sitting in the main floor center.’

‘Good seats,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I saw her a few years ago. She puts on a very good show.’

Olson glanced at her watch. ‘I hate to steal Lloyd away from you, but we have dinner reservations next door and the show starts at eight.’

‘Have a good time,’ Kilkenny replied.

‘Thanks,’ Olson said. ‘Good to see you again, Oz.’

‘You, too,’ Eames replied.

As Sutton and Olson departed, the waitress returned and they ordered dinner and another round of beer.

‘I had no idea Lloyd was dating anyone,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I thought he just worked all the time.’

‘I think he learned from me that all work and no play makes Jack a lonely man.’

‘How’d you teach him that?’

Eames took another sip of his beer. ‘Faye is my ex-wife.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. My divorce was final last year and they just started dating a few weeks ago. The three of us have known each other for a lot of years. I met Faye when we were undergrads at UCLA. Shook both our families up when we started getting serious, but they got over the black-white thing by the time we got married. We spent the summer after our wedding backpacking across Europe. Those were good times.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what went wrong?’

‘It started with grad school. Faye stayed at UCLA and I went to Stanford. Long-distance relationships suck.’

‘Yeah, they do,’ Kilkenny agreed.

‘I hooked up with Lloyd at Stanford and we started laying the groundwork for UGene,’ Eames continued. ‘After Faye finished up her master’s, she moved up to be with me and took a job with a big architecture firm in San Francisco. We shortened the distance, but we still weren’t spending enough time together. It was mostly my fault. I fell in love with my work, and a man can only have one true love at a time. By the time I earned my Ph.D., Faye was ready to divorce me. I managed to talk her into giving me a second chance.’

‘How’d you pull that off?’ Kilkenny asked. ‘I’m interested in second chances myself.’

‘It was the promise of a fresh start. After Lloyd and I finished up at Stanford, we both signed on with the Life Sciences Initiative here at Michigan. Faye hired on with a preservation firm in town and we bought our first house. Things were pretty good for about three months, then I disappeared into my work again. By the time Lloyd and I officially formed UGene, my marriage was dead.’

‘Is it weird that your partner is dating your ex-wife?’

Eames sipped his beer and thought for a moment. ‘When you put it like that it sounds like something off a daytime talk show. Look, Lloyd and Faye are both entitled to happiness, and if they can find it together, then who am I to stand in their way?’

‘Very noble. Have you gotten over her yet?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Eames asked defensively.

‘It’s just that I recently screwed up a relationship so badly that the woman I thought I’d be going home to is training to leave the planet, and our future is one very big question mark.’ Kilkenny raised his hands up. ‘So, if I’ve crossed the line, tell me.’

‘If you’re asking whether or not I’m carrying a torch for Faye, I guess the answer is no. Our divorce wasn’t ugly and I still care for her, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that we will never be together again.’ Eames sipped on his beer. ‘So what’s your sad story?’

‘When my hitch with the navy was almost up, a friend of mine here at the U asked if I’d give her a hand with a project she was working on – an optical computer processor.’

‘Sounds like something Lloyd would like.’

‘It is. Kelsey, my friend, and I have known each other since we were kids. She was quite literally the girl next door.’

‘Your old high school sweetheart?’

‘No, back then our families were so close that it would’ve been like dating my sister. After high school, I went to the Naval Academy and was pretty much gone for about twelve years, but we kept in touch. We were just good friends up until a couple of years ago when some crazy things happened that forced us to peel back a few layers. Marriage seemed like the next logical step.’

‘There’s your mistake, mixing love and logic. Oil and water, my friend, oil and water.’

Kilkenny nodded. ‘Our problems started after the craziness was gone and things got back to normal. I know Kelsey loves me … and we both take the idea of marriage seriously.’

‘So who got cold feet?’ Eames asked.

‘She did, but it wasn’t cold feet as much as a better offer.’

‘Another guy?’

‘No, a lifelong dream. Kelsey has wanted to be an astronaut since we were kids. She’s been in the corps for a few years, and last August, she got the call. I was excited as anyone for her, until we got the bad news.’

‘What?’

‘NASA needed her to go to Houston ASAP to begin mission training with the rest of the crew. They’d work right up to launch, then she’d spend the next five months on the space station. That kind of schedule wasn’t going to leave a whole lot of time to plan a wedding, at least not the kind she had in mind.’

‘Why didn’t you two just elope?’

Kilkenny smiled grimly. ‘That’s what I suggested. Not a Vegas quickie at the Elvis chapel, but a small private ceremony. No dice.’

‘Most women have pretty strong feelings about their wedding day.’

‘So I discovered. I also learned that, according to the etiquette books, a wedding is the bride’s party and the groom is just one of the invited guests. Long story short, I misread all the signs and started a fight in which I said some truly boneheaded things to her. During the few days when she wasn’t speaking to me, she gave some serious thought to our situation and decided it would be best for both of us if we postponed our engagement until after she returned from space. After all, seventeen months is a long time to be apart.’

‘Define postponed.’

‘My current status is single and unattached. Kelsey and I parted with no conditions and no promises regarding the future.’

‘Que sera sera.’

‘Yep. Doris Day is singing the sound track to my love life.’

‘I hear you, Nolan, and if I can offer you one bit of advice, as a man whose last romantic bridge is so badly burned that there’s nothing left but ash and some tiny bits of charcoal, it’s this: Get off your ass and do something about it. Wishing won’t fix nothing between you and Kelsey, and neither will hiding from it. I wished and hid my way right out of a marriage.’

‘Any suggestions?’

Eames took a draw on his beer. ‘She’s following a dream right now, that’s good. Make damn sure she knows you support her all the way and that you’ll be waiting for her when she returns from the heavens.’

After dinner, Eames returned to his office at UGene and spent the next several hours reviewing experimental data. His radio was tuned to a campus station that was playing a Natalie Merchant retrospective in connection with the concert. Eames recalled taking Faye to see the sultry vocalist back when she fronted for 10,000 Maniacs.

Eames left his office well after midnight. As he drove toward his home, he gave into an impulse and changed direction. He entered a modest neighborhood of well-kept homes and turned onto a street called Pineview. On their first visit to Ann Arbor, Faye had fallen in love with a cute ranch house that they eventually moved into.

Passing his former home, Eames saw that it was dark and Lloyd Sutton’s car was parked in the driveway.

4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica

Nedra pulled the disk from her computer, labeled it, and placed it in a plastic jewel case. She had burned through a stack of CD-RWs this afternoon, downloading the final record of what she and her husband had accomplished during their time at LV Research Station. She switched off her workstation and set the box of disks into a small storage crate for the journey back to the U.S.

Years of planning, design, and testing had led them to this place, and now their work was done. She and her husband had proved it was possible to explore a world hidden beneath miles of ice, and they were now one step closer to hunting for life on Europa.

‘Are you finished yet?’ Collins called out from the galley.

Nedra closed the latch on the crate. ‘We are now officially packed and ready to go home.’

‘Great, now I can open this.’

Nedra heard a loud pop.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘Depends. Do you think it’s champagne?’

‘Didn’t we already drink the one bottle you smuggled in back in December?’

Collins appeared in the doorway of the research wing with two coffee mugs filled with Great Western. ‘Yes, but then I found this while I was rummaging around in the wine cellar. Of course, we can’t just let it go to waste.’

Nedra and Collins tapped mugs and sipped the effervescent liquid.

‘Mmmm,’ Nedra purred.

‘And for our final meal here at LV, I’ve prepared some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.’

Nedra forced a smile. ‘Sounds delicious.’

‘I know,’ Collins said with a sigh, ‘but when we get to New Zealand, I’m taking you out for a great meal at the finest restaurant in Christchurch.’

‘I’d settle for a long hot bath, room service, and a week of passion in a five-star suite.’

‘I’ll see what I can – ’ Collins paused. ‘Do you hear that?’

A low distant rumble started to resonate through the station: the mechanical throb of engines.

‘Yeah,’ Nedra replied. ‘It sounds like the plane.’

‘They’re early. Something must’ve changed the schedule.’

‘The last weather report I saw looked fine, but I won’t complain if they get us home sooner.’

‘Your sandwich is in the kitchen. I’m going to go out and meet our ride.’

Collins climbed down to the lower level, donned his gear, and stepped through the air lock. Outside, the wind blew down steadily from the glacial highlands, and the drone of the plane’s engines thundered all around the station.

A cloud of powdery snow and ice crystals flared from the broad skis beneath the LC-130, billowing behind the plane like the dust trail behind a car on a dirt road. The plane grew larger as it approached, sliding down the icy runway, and finally came to a stop just short of the station. The pilot taxied the aircraft closer, then turned so that the tail ramp faced the station door.

The plane’s engines slowed, but kept running – it was too cold to risk shutting them off. As Collins walked over to the plane, the side door dropped to become a stair and a man dressed in a white hooded snowsuit quickly descended from the plane.

‘Kilkenny?’ Collins asked expectantly, but he was unable to discern the man’s identity.

Duroc reached out, grasped Collins’s offered hand, and yanked him forward with a violent jerk. Collins stumbled, tripping as he tried to regain his balance. Duroc pivoted at the waist and struck him in the temple with the palm of his hand, dislodging the goggles from the engineer’s face. Collins dropped to his knees as Duroc twisted his arm behind his back.

‘Cooperate, and you and your wife will live,’ Duroc said, pressing the barrel of a Glock 9mm pistol against Collins’s cheek. ‘Do you understand, Mr Collins?’

Collins nodded groggily, still dizzy from the blow. As he lifted his head, Collins saw five more men emerge from the plane, each dressed in white camouflage suits and cradling submachine guns.

‘Secure the station,’ Duroc ordered.

The soldiers approached cautiously, even though they didn’t expect any resistance. Their intelligence reports indicated that only Collins and his wife occupied LV Station and that neither was armed.

‘Nedra!’ Collins shouted as the soldiers swept into the air lock.

Duroc struck Collins on the side of the head with his pistol and the engineer collapsed to the ice, unconscious.

Four soldiers thundered up the spiral stair to the main level, then broke into two-man teams to check the hall-ways while the fifth man covered the stairs from the air lock.

‘Philip?’ Nedra called out from the kitchen.

She had just refilled her mug with champagne when a soldier swung around the edge of the doorway, his machine gun held shoulder high, the barrel and the man’s eyes locked on her face.

‘Hands on your head! Now!’ the soldier shouted.

Nedra slowly set the bottle on the counter and placed her hands behind her head.

‘I have the woman,’ the soldier called out, the thin wire of a lip mike curled around his cheek to the corner of his mouth.

Duroc glanced down at Collins’s prone body as he listened through his earpiece to the reports of his men inside the station. He checked his watch; less than thirty seconds had passed since he’d stepped out of the plane and the station was his.

‘Fouquet, Cochin,’ Duroc said into the tiny microphone nestled at the corner of his mouth.

‘Oui, Commander,’ both men replied.

‘Come outside and collect the other prisoner. Secure both in their sleeping quarters for interrogation.’

Overhead, the second LC-130 circled LV Station and began its descent. Duroc smiled, pleased with how well the mission was proceeding. If everything continued to develop according to his plan, no one would ever know they had been here.

5 JANUARY 31 Skier-98

‘Ten-minute warning,’ the pilot announced, his voice clear over the speakers imbedded in Kilkenny’s helmet.

‘Roger,’ Kilkenny replied.

The cargo hold of the LC-130 reverberated with a low steady drone. On her wings, four massive Allison engines beat the frigid air with the combined pulling power of fifteen thousand horses in a synchronized effort to keep the sixty-ton plane aloft. Designated Skier-98 by the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing, she was one of a handful of specialized heavy-lift aircraft servicing some of the coldest and most remote places on Earth. From October to March, Skier-98 plied her trade between New Zealand and Antarctica.

The hold of the Hercules was empty save for Kilkenny and the two crewmen who now stood on either side of the personnel door. All three men were breathing from portable oxygen systems, the air in the depressurized hold far too thin and cold at this altitude to sustain them.

Kilkenny’s presence on board was the direct result of some Pentagon muscle-flexing by the man in charge of the navy’s special warfare group and Kilkenny’s former commanding officer, Rear Admiral Jack Dawson. When Dawson learned of Kilkenny’s involvement with NASA’s project at Lake Vostok, the admiral used his considerable influence to quietly add an equipment test for the navy to the project task list.

Kilkenny stripped off the NSF-issue parka and stood in the center of the empty hold to stretch his muscles. The matte gray suit that covered his body like a second skin felt thin and light. Other than his face, which was concealed by a helmet, not a square inch of Kilkenny was exposed, and vulnerable points on his body were protected with molded panels of Kevlar.

The suit – called SEALskin by the company working with the navy to develop it – incorporated the latest in combat electronics, chemical and biological warfare protection, and exceptional thermal control. Under laboratory conditions, the suit had performed well, but Kilkenny’s old C.O. wanted to see just how well it would fare in more realistic settings. Antarctica, in Dawson’s mind, was the perfect place to see if SEALskin could keep a man warm.

The two crewmen in the hold with Kilkenny stared at him with puzzled disbelief. He didn’t blame them a bit, because he was about to attempt a HAHO (High-Altitude High-Opening) jump out the side of their plane at 35,000 feet and parachute onto the glacial ice below.‘I have contact with an inbound aircraft,’ the radar operator announced.

Sumner Duroc glanced down at the image on the radarscope. ‘Range?’

‘Eighty kilometers.’

‘Keep tracking.’

What intrigued Kilkenny about this jump, and the reason he agreed to do it, was the location; Antarctica was the only continent he had never parachuted onto. Only a few people had ever attempted a jump over the southernmost continent, and three of the most recent to do so became so disoriented with altitude sickness that they never opened their chutes and plummeted to their deaths at the South Pole.

‘Sixty-five kilometers and closing,’ the radar operator called out.

‘Are all systems ready?’ Duroc asked.

‘All systems are green and ready to go.’

‘Good. Bring them in a little closer.’

‘Five minutes,’ the pilot called out.

‘Roger,’ Kilkenny answered. ‘Switch homing beacon on.’

The voice-activated computer strapped to his chest began transmitting a signal that would allow the plane to locate him in the event of an emergency.

‘We are receiving a strong signal,’ the copilot said. ‘Everything looks A-okay for the jump.’

Kilkenny ran through a final inspection of his rip cords and chute containers. He patted his thigh and found his combat knife strapped right where he wanted it – insurance in case the main chute failed and he needed to do a quick cut away before deploying the reserve.

‘Gauges on,’ Kilkenny commanded.

A bar strip of information appeared to float in front of him; the face shield of his helmet served double duty as a heads-up display. Kilkenny studied the compact image that displayed his heading, altitude, airspeed, longitude, and latitude – all gleaned from the constellation of Global Positioning Satellites orbiting the planet.

‘Fifty-five kilometers and closing,’ the radar operator said to Duroc.

‘Two minutes,’ the pilot called out. ‘Sergeant Boehmer, open the door.’

‘Door opening,’ Boehmer replied.

A blast of frigid air roared into the cargo bay and the low rumbling of the Hercules changed in pitch as the pilot slowed the aircraft down to 135 knots. Kilkenny grabbed hold of the steel anchor line cables and stepped up to the side door.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Boehmer shouted over the wind, ‘but why are you doing this?’

Behind the tinted visor, Kilkenny smiled. ‘Do you know what NAVY stands for, Sergeant?’

‘Beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Never Again Volunteer Yourself.’

The red caution light blinked off and the jump light flashed green.

‘Those are words to live by,’ Kilkenny shouted. ‘See you on the ground.’

Kilkenny leapt into the turbulent slipstream behind the plane and felt an immediate jolt of acceleration as gravity pulled him downward. With arms and legs outstretched, he sailed through a 6,000-foot free fall. The altimeter on his heads-up display quickly counted off his descent. Beneath the altimeter, a digital readout clocked his rate of fall approaching 140 miles per hour.

His heart pounded in his chest. Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream as his body reacted instinctively to the unnatural sensation of falling. Kilkenny felt the dull sting of air-borne ice particles impacting against his body through the SEALskin, but thankfully the navy’s new miracle suit was performing as advertised.

‘Range to aircraft is twenty-five kilometers.’

‘Lock on target,’ Duroc ordered. He then scanned the light blue sky for the aircraft he could not see but knew was there.

At 29,000 feet, Kilkenny pulled his main rip cord. Looking over his right shoulder, he watched the rectangular parabolic wing unfurl and catch the air. The heads-up display showed his altitude at 27,250 feet and his airspeed nearly zero. The deafening roar of wind that accompanied his free fall was gone, and Kilkenny’s ears rang in the silence.

‘Display flight path to target.’

In response to Kilkenny’s voice command, the computer calculated the straight-line distance from his current position to the known coordinates of LV Station and projected a bright yellow line on the display that graphically showed the most direct flight path. The imaginary line, which was updated several times a second, appeared to run from the center of Kilkenny’s chest to a point several miles in the distance.

He reached up, grasped the control toggles for the right and left risers, and pulled to release the brakes. The ram-air chute surged forward in full flight mode, rapidly picking up speed. The design of the canopy allowed Kilkenny to control his flight with great precision. Given the right wind conditions, he could stay aloft for hours. Below, an undulating sheet of white spread out in each direction toward the horizon.

‘Target lock is established.’

‘Fire,’ Duroc ordered.

A new line appeared in front of Kilkenny. This one was white and arcing upward from LV Station.

‘What the hell?’ Kilkenny blurted out, recognizing the launch of a surface-to-air missile.

‘COM on,’ he commanded. ‘Ice Jump One to Skier-Nine-Eight. Take evasive action! You have a missile inbound. Repeat, you have a missile inbound! Do you copy? Over.’

Static and feedback filled his ears. Faintly, buried beneath the electronic noise, he heard the pilot of Skier-98.

‘Say again, Ice Jump One. We’re not – ‘

The missile homed in on the heat radiating from the Allison engines. It approached at supersonic speed, easily running down the lumbering Hercules. As the missile struck the number three engine, its high-explosive war-head detonated with concussive fury. Hot metal fragments shredded Skier-98‘s aluminum skin and ignited the wing tanks.

6

‘COM off,’ Kilkenny commanded angrily, the range on his communications gear too short to reach anyone but the people who’d fired the missile. The static that filled his ears immediately vanished.

A black smudge marked the spot in the sky where Skier-98 had exploded, and smoky trails followed the descent of the burning wreckage to the ground – ominous stains on an otherwise perfect expanse of blue. Tilting his head toward the ground caused the bright yellow line of his flight path to reappear on the heads-up display.

He checked his altimeter. It read 26,750 feet. Kilkenny calculated his distance to the ice sheet below to be little more than 15,000 feet, just under three miles. With a lift-to-drag ratio of five-to-one, Kilkenny knew he might squeeze roughly fifteen miles of travel out of his ram-air parachute before gravity finally brought him down. As far as he could see, there was nothing but an endless expanse of ice.

‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to die here,’ Kilkenny vowed. ‘Clear flight path display.’

The bright yellow line vanished.

‘Display map.’

The outline of Antarctica appeared on the heads-up display.

‘Zoom in thirty-mile radius of current position. Display all stations.’

The image on the heads-up display raced toward Kilkenny – a greatly accelerated version of his present descent – and stopped at the specified magnification. Two labeled dots appeared on the display, one to either side of the X that marked his position.

Not going there, Kilkenny thought, looking at the dot labeled LV on the right.

He shifted his gaze to the other side of the display; beside the second dot he saw the letters VOS: Vostok Research Station.

Kilkenny knew little about the Russian research station, other than that it was dilapidated and ran on a shoestring budget. He considered the possibility that the Russians might be responsible for shooting down Skier-98, but couldn’t think of a reason compelling enough for them to risk starting World War Three in Antarctica.

Even with the SEALskin suit to keep him warm, Kilkenny had no food or water and the nearest U.S. outpost was several hundred miles away. Eliminating a suicide march across Antarctica, Kilkenny’s list of survival options shrank to one.

‘Clear map,’ Kilkenny commanded. ‘Reset destination point to Vostok Station.’

The computer calculated a new flight path and projected it on the heads-up display.

‘Twenty-five miles to Vostok,’ Kilkenny read off the display. ‘I should be able to fly fifteen of it, but the last ten are going to be on foot.’

Kilkenny banked his chute sharply into a welcome tailwind. In the bright polar daylight, he raced over the nearly flat surface of stark white ice, quickly accelerating past forty miles per hour. The only sound he heard was the wind whistling around his body.

He quickly fell into a familiar pattern: checking his chute, the horizon, and his altimeter. Five hundred feet above the ice, Kilkenny pulled down on the right control toggle and gradually turned his canopy into the wind. As his speed dropped off, Kilkenny pulled down evenly on both toggles and studied the ground below. The ice was now rushing up toward him. His altimeter rapidly counted down his descent, quickly passing through two hundred feet.

At one hundred feet, Kilkenny momentarily eased up on the toggles. The chute surged forward and his rate of fall slowed. An instinct borne from experience took over, and, at precisely the right moment, he pulled the control toggles down as far as they would go, and gently touched down on the icy plain that covered Lake Vostok.

Quickly, before the wind grabbed it, he unbuckled his harness and deflated the ram-air chute. He stripped off his air tank and patted the knife sheath strapped to his right thigh.

In every direction, the landscape looked the same, and the sun’s peculiar path in the sky rendered it useless for navigation. Kilkenny turned around until the bright yellow line reappeared on his heads-up display, pointing the way toward Vostok Station.

He ran slowly at first, getting a feel for the terrain. The snow that covered the glacier was hard and fine like sand, and the wind sculpted it into rippling frozen waves. Kilkenny’s vision gradually narrowed, focusing only on the next thirty yards ahead and the holographic line that guided him.

Kilkenny pressed on at a deliberate pace, following his guideline and watching the distance readout count down the miles to Vostok Station. At 0.35 miles to go, Kilkenny was gradually able to discern man-made features in the Antarctic landscape. The GPS readout read at 78.5 degrees south latitude, 106.8 degrees east longitude.

The first structures that came into view were the antennas – a field of six to the left of the compound and a single taller one on the right. Closer to Vostok, Kilkenny came upon a small ridge in the snow that extended away in a straight line – a plowed runway.

‘Clear display,’ Kilkenny commanded.

Kilkenny glanced down the length of the smooth icy surface and saw some small drifts beginning to form. The few man-made ruts he saw in the runway looked like they had been there awhile, but he couldn’t tell just how long. He followed the runway until he reached the base of the tall antenna, then followed the plowed pathway into the station compound. Mounds of broken ice lay piled around the edges of the station, remnants of the Sisyphean effort by the Russians to keep their buildings from becoming entombed.

Ahead, a tower jutted upward from the one-story building that hunkered around its base. The tower groaned as the wind pressed against the rust-brown steel panels that enclosed its steel frame. Kilkenny remembered the drilling tower from the photographs he’d seen of Vostok Station while being briefed on the Ice Pick project – the Russians had used it to pull almost two miles of core samples from the glacier. Edging his way along the metal-paneled wall of the tower building, Kilkenny reached a small window beside the door. The interior of the building was dark and appeared uninhabited.

He moved up to the corner of the building and carefully studied the remainder of the station compound – a collection of rectangular structures hunkered down against the ice, their shape more a result of quick modular assembly rather than any aesthetic design. The once brightly colored building panels looked faded, aged by six months of extreme sun each year and abrasion from wind-borne particles of ice. Vostok Station was over forty years old and looked even older.

In the distance, Kilkenny saw the striped dome atop a small square building: a radar shack. He worked his way around the perimeter of Vostok Station, carefully moving from building to building to stay out of sight. When he reached the radar shack, he unsheathed his combat knife and tested the door handle. It turned easily.

Kilkenny stepped through the doorway into a large room illuminated by sunlight pouring through a small window. There was no one inside. He glanced at a few printouts spread across a worktable and found telemetry tracking data for high-altitude weather balloons. The dates on the printouts were several years old. Kilkenny stepped back outside and closed the door.

A steady stream of smoke flowed from the metal flue pipe that penetrated the roof of the building closest to the weather station. Thick black cables ran from the front of the building out onto poles and eventually to the other buildings.

Power house, Kilkenny concluded.

He carefully approached the power house, keeping an eye on the two large buildings set near it. He crept in the shadows alongside the building wall until his face was near the edge of a small window near the main door. Inside, he saw a man towel off his body and begin dressing.

A moment later, the door opened and a bundled figure walked stiffly outside. A white cloud issued from his face, a mix of steamy breath and burnt tobacco. Kilkenny reached out and grabbed hold of the man’s collar, and threw him down onto the ice. The man’s cigarette struck the ground with a hiss.

Kilkenny pinned the man with a knee to his chest. Dazed and frightened, the man looked up and saw his own face reflected in Kilkenny’s helmet.

‘Vy govarite poangltyski?’ Kilkenny demanded, his voice dry and raspy.

‘Yes,’ the man replied.

‘Great, because that’s about all the Russian I know. How many people are here?’

‘Nine, including myself. We are winter crew.’

‘Any military?’

‘Nyet, civilian all.’

Kilkenny saw a bewildered fear in the man’s eyes – the Russian had no idea why he was flat on his back with a knife held to his throat. Kilkenny patted the man down and found no weapons.

‘What’s your name?’ Kilkenny asked. in a more diplomatic tone.

‘Yasha.’

‘What is your job here?’

‘I am crew leader.’

‘Okay, Yasha, I’m going to let you up. If you shout or make any sudden movements, I will kill you,’ Kilkenny said matter-of-factly. ‘Understand?’

The Russian nodded. Kilkenny eased off and pulled him to his feet. They stood in silence for a moment, Yasha taking his first good look at his attacker.

‘Where are the others?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘In the living quarters,’ Yasha replied, pointing to one of the larger buildings.

‘Let’s get inside and round up your people.’

Yasha led him through an air lock and into the building. Once inside, the lanky Russian stripped off his bulky gloves and coat.

Yasha motioned to the left. ‘This way.’

The building had the look and feel of a rundown industrial warehouse overrun by urban squatters. Every available bit of space held a steel drum or crate or a piece of equipment, and the recycled air reeked of machine oil and cigarettes. In the galley four men sat at a long table eating and watching a video on an old television.

‘Yasha, tell them to stay where they are and put their hands on the table,’ Kilkenny commanded. ‘Then get the rest of your crew in here.’

The four men seated at the table turned at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. Yasha translated the orders and the men complied. None took their eyes off Kilkenny.Yasha then walked through a door on the opposite side of the room, shouted, and returned a moment later with four more men. Once the entire crew was seated, Kilkenny sheathed his combat knife.

Standing at the head of the table, Kilkenny removed his helmet and peeled off his balaclava. His thick red hair lay matted against his head and his freckled skin was flushed. He then took a pitcher of water from the table and took a long drink.

‘Who speaks English?’ Kilkenny asked, his throat less hoarse.

Several of the men turned to Yasha for a translation.

‘Only Mati, our radio operator, and I speak English,’ Yasha replied. ‘The rest speak only Russian.’

‘Then you two will have to translate for the others. My name is Nolan Kilkenny. Which one is Mati?’

‘I am,’ said a man with bushy black hair and spectacles.

‘Have there been any transmissions from LV Station in the past few hours?’

‘Just one. I overheard a report to McMurdo that the transport plane arrived.’

‘It didn’t,’ Kilkenny said bitterly.

‘What?’ Mati asked.

‘The transport that was to have picked up the crew at LV Station was destroyed not far from here by a surface-to-air missile.’

‘Not possible!’ Yasha shook his head. ‘International treaty bans all military weapons in Antarctica. Bringing missiles here would be insane.’

‘Apparently, someone doesn’t give a shit about the treaty,’ Kilkenny replied.

As soon as Mati translated what Kilkenny had said, the men at the table panicked and excitedly shouted questions at Yasha.

‘Hey!’ Kilkenny yelled, his voice booming over the others.

The Russians quieted, looking warily at Kilkenny.

‘What’s the problem?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘You are,’ Yasha replied. ‘You are an American soldier. When Mati tells them American plane was shot down, they think that maybe your country blames Russia and you’ve come to kill us.’

‘First, the missile was fired from LV Station and, from what I’ve seen of this place, you had nothing to do with it. Second, I’m here because this was the nearest shelter I could find. And third, I once was a soldier, but I’m a civilian now, and I won’t kill anyone – unless I have to.’

‘What you tell us makes no sense,’ Mati said. ‘How do you know that the plane was shot down? McMurdo believes it landed at LV Station. I heard Collins make the report.’

‘When a transport from McMurdo comes here, who reports its arrival?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘The pilot, but the aircraft that landed at LV had radio problems. That’s why Collins radioed in.’

‘I’m betting someone had a gun to his head while he was doing it.’

‘But how do you know the plane was shot down?’ Mati insisted.

‘Because I saw it. I was on the plane up until a few minutes before the missile was launched.’

‘What do you mean you were on the plane? How did you get off?’ Yasha asked.

‘Parachute. I was testing some new equipment, but that’s not important right now. The six other people on my plane were killed and someone has seized control of LV Station.’

‘Bozha moi,’ Yasha said, shocked. ‘These people, do you think they will come here?’

Kilkenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea who they are or what they’re after.’

Mati looked skeptically at Kilkenny. ‘So you flew in from McMurdo and just before your plane is to land at LV, you jumped out of it, yes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then how did you get here? LV is over sixty kilometers away.’

‘When I jumped I was only twenty-five miles, about forty klicks, from here,’ Kilkenny explained. ‘It was a high-altitude jump – I flew most of the way and covered the rest on foot with GPS. Finding my way across the ice wasn’t a problem.’

‘What you’re saying sounds crazy,’ Yasha said. ‘How do we know you’re telling us the truth?’

‘You don’t,’ Kilkenny fired back angrily. ‘But try to come up with a better explanation for how I got here.’

Kilkenny locked eyes with the station leader. He was tired, hungry, and irritable – a combination that left him dangerously close to punching the doubting man in the face.

‘If what you’ve said is true,’ Yasha said more diplomatically, ‘shouldn’t we contact McMurdo?’

‘No. If Mati overheard a radio message from Collins reporting that the plane landed safely – ‘

‘That is what I heard,’ Mati interjected.

‘Then,’ Kilkenny continued, ‘whoever did this is trying to maintain a fiction that nothing has happened. We have to assume that they’re monitoring communications, so if you contact McMurdo to report the downing of Skier-98, they’ll know their cover’s been blown. And that might piss them off enough to bring them here.’

‘How did they get a missile to LV?’ Mati asked. ‘Could they have smuggled something like that through McMurdo?’

‘McMurdo is not the only way into Antarctica,’ Yasha said.

‘The weapon they used wasn’t one of those small, shoulder-fired units,’ Kilkenny said. ‘My plane was shot down about twenty-five kilometers away from LV. To hit a target at that range requires some very serious hardware.’

‘Mati and I were at LV two days ago for a farewell meal with Philip and Nedra,’ Yasha said. ‘No one else was there and we saw nothing unusual. They must have flown this missile launcher in – a traverse from the coast would take too long. But why would anyone do this? LV has no strategic value, no precious metals or natural resources. It’s a scientific research station.’

‘It does have one thing of value – the Ice Pick probe. It’s jam-packed with exotic technology, and right now it’s all crated up and ready for the trip back to the States. This is the perfect time to steal it.’

‘But why did they shoot down your plane?’ Mati asked. ‘Why not just come in, take the probe, and leave?’

Kilkenny considered the question for a moment. ‘Because they don’t want anyone to know the probe was stolen. That message you overheard was to make McMurdo think my plane arrived safely. McMurdo will probably get another message about the time we’re scheduled to take off, and that’s the last anyone will hear of Skier-98. When the plane doesn’t arrive, they’ll assume it crashed somewhere on the way back.’

‘And the weather is getting too cold to search for survivors,’ Yasha added. ‘We battle all winter long to keep our buildings from being swallowed by the ice. By next October, they won’t be able to find any trace of your plane’s wreckage.’

Kilkenny envisioned the debris field left by Skier-98 on the polar plateau slowly disappearing into the ice. Had Kilkenny been aboard when the missile hit, the search teams wouldn’t know where to start to look.

‘What about Nedra and Philip?’ Mati asked. ‘What will happen to them?’

‘My guess is they’ll be killed as soon as the people who took LV Station are ready to leave.’

‘Those are good people,’ Mati said to Yasha. ‘We must tell McMurdo what has happened.’

‘You can’t,’ Kilkenny said sternly. ‘If you do, you’ll erase any usefulness Philip and Nedra may still have to their captors. And even if you could contact McMurdo quietly, there’s no time to bring in anyone to deal with this. My plane was scheduled to take off from LV in less than six hours.’

‘This is madness!’ Mati said angrily.

‘Yasha, you said that you and Mati were at LV Station two days ago. How did you get there, snowmobiles?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘No, those are too difficult to keep running here. Mati and I sail iceboats. We race them back in Russia. Here, we just practice. Why?’

‘There’s a chance we can get Philip and Nedra out of this alive, but I’ve got to get to LV Station fast.’

7

Yasha led the way toward one of the support buildings, followed by Kilkenny and Mati. When he grasped the lever handle and pulled, a brittle veneer of ice shattered as he opened the door.

‘Inside, please,’ Yasha said urgently.

The wind slammed the door behind them, knocking Yasha back. He flipped the switches by the door and a dozen fluorescent tubes flickered on. The building housed a large machine shop used to service the station’s equipment.

Yasha studied Kilkenny for a moment. ‘How much do you weigh? About eighty kilos?’

Kilkenny did the math in his head. ‘About that. Why?’

‘The masts and planks on our iceboats are designed to bend under our weight. You and Mati are about same weight and build. You should use his boat.’

‘It will bring you luck,’ Mati said. ‘It’s good Estonian boat. Everybody knows best iceboaters come from Estonia.’

Near a large overhead door, Kilkenny saw a pair of thirty-foot-long iceboats. The sleek, carbon-fiber hulls – fully enclosed with clear Plexiglas bubble canopies – looked more like F-18s than watercraft. From the stern of the iceboats, a broad plank sprang like an outrigger, ten feet to each side, at the ends of which were fixed runners. A third runner mounted on a pivot stood beneath the tapered nose of each iceboat, providing a means to steer the agile racers.

‘They are beautiful, no?’ Yasha said proudly as they approached the iceboats.

‘Very,’ Kilkenny replied. ‘I was expecting a DN boat.’

Yasha shook his head. ‘No, it’s too cold here for open cockpit. These are Skeeter Class.’

‘You know about iceboats?’ Mati asked with some surprise.

‘A little. I helped my grandfather build a few DN boats when I was a kid, but I sailed on water.’ Kilkenny ran his hand over the hull’s glossy white surface. ‘How fast?’

Mati grinned. ‘On smooth ice with a good wind, two-hundred-and-fifty kilometres per hour. Here, we sail on mix of rough ice and snow, so we have to use hybrid blade/ski runners. It’s not as fast as back home.’

‘Show me what I need to know.’

Mati slid the canopy forward along its tracks. Then he stripped off his parks and lay down on his back inside the cockpit of his dark blue iceboat. Mati’s body filled most of the long narrow cockpit, his shoulders almost touching the sides. ‘You steer with your feet to turn the front runner at the end of the springboard.’

‘Push left to go right?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Yes.’ Mati grabbed the joystick mounted near his right hand. ‘Instead of lines, this operates electric winches for adjusting sail and stays. Push forward to let out sail and slow boat down; pull back to trim sail and increase speed. Pushing right will loosen the stays. This will allow mast and plank to bend more – good for acceleration. Pull joystick to left to tighten the stays – it will help point closer to wind. Doing this may also cause you to hike boat up on two runners, so be careful.’

‘Hiking boat is fun,’ Yasha added, ‘but you run risk of capsizing. Not good thing to do on ice.’

‘Joystick is spring-loaded,’ Mati continued, ‘so once you make adjustment, you can let go and the sail will stay where you set it. The art of iceboating is tuning mast and sail to match the conditions. Here, on left side, is small steering wheel. You use it to steer the boat when you run alongside, pushing boat to get it moving. You can also use wheel as a backup, if the foot-pedal steering fails.’

‘If it handles anything like my Windrunner, I should be fine.’

‘Our boats are equipped with small electric heater and GPS unit.’ Mati tapped a small, flat-display panel mounted beneath the front edge of the cockpit opening. ‘Yasha and I have made trip to LV several times over summer; route is programmed into the GPS.’

‘You will encounter cracks in the ice – don’t try to run parallel or you risk dropping runner into crack and wrecking boat,’ Yasha advised. ‘Just sail over them, perpendicular to the crack.’

‘How do I stop?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘Pull on this,’ Mati replied, pointing to a black T-shaped plastic handle mounted to the upper hull above his right leg. ‘Pull and hold. The brake drops from underside of boat and drags across the ice. When you let go, the brake will spring back up.’

Yasha crouched by the front runner. Near the tip of the combination blade/ski, Kilkenny saw a square metal hoop pin connected to the top of the runner. ‘Once you stop, point the boat into wind and set this brake in place.’ Yasha flipped the metal hope over the front of the runner. ‘It will keep boat from blowing away.’

Kilkenny and Yasha assisted Mati in preparing the ice-boat for a sail. Mati fine-tuned the seat to accommodate Kilkenny’s six-foot frame. Ten minutes later, they opened the overhead door on the leeward side of the building and carried Mati’s iceboat out into the Antarctic night. They then installed the thirty-foot fiberglass mast and unfurled the Dacron sails. When the boat was rigged, Yasha and Mati gave it a quick visual inspection.

‘You’re ready to go,’ Mati said.

‘Great. Mati, you’re my backup. Keep monitoring the radio for transmissions from LV. If you hear anything that sounds like a routine departure, that means I failed. Notify McMurdo immediately about what really happened.’

‘I understand. Good luck.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

Kilkenny climbed into the iceboat and pulled the bubble canopy over his head, then signaled that he was ready to go. Mati and Yasha began pushing the iceboat forward, the wind blowing a steady twenty knots from Kilkenny’s right. Beyond the protection of the building, Kilkenny’s sail fluttered as it filled with air. Once the sail caught hold of the wind, the Russians let go. Kilkenny quickly pulled away from Vostok Station, the bow aimed at the first way point.

As Kilkenny became more comfortable handling the iceboat, he trimmed the sail to pick up speed. The composite runners attacked the rough surface, alternating between gliding over and slicing through the granular particles of snow and ice. He was amazed at how quickly the sleek craft accelerated, and the zigzag pattern of his tacks kept him on course while using the wind to his advantage. Then, ahead, he caught sight of a small white cyclone forming on the ice.

‘Oh, shit!’ Kilkenny cursed.

The snow devil raced toward him, its turbulent winds snapping his sail wildly. The iceboat shuddered violently as the snow devil struck it broadside just behind the canopy. The collision broke the grip of the rear runners on the ice and threw the craft into a broach. Kilkenny’s shoulder slammed into the hull as the craft lurched into a spin. White rooster tails sprang from each of the runners as their honed edges scraped sideways across the ice.

Kilkenny’s shoulder ached and his breathing came in hungry gulps. He braced himself inside the cockpit and pushed hard on the foot pedals, trying to steer in the direction of the spin. The iceboat spun past 270 degrees before the snow devil released it and the runners finally caught hold of the ice again. Weakened by its encounter with the iceboat, the snow devil rapidly lost coherence and dissipated.

After regaining control, Kilkenny eased the sail, pointed the bow directly into the wind, and pulled on the brake. The iceboat quickly came to a stop. Kilkenny lay in the cockpit staring up at the blue sky for a moment, letting the adrenaline rush subside, then pulled himself out of the cockpit to check the boat for any sign of damage from the broach.

Kilkenny knelt down to check the long flat plank beneath the iceboat’s stern and, thankfully, found no cracks. He then cleared the coating of shaved ice that covered each of the runners and found them undamaged.

Kilkenny released the parking brake, grabbed hold of the left side of the cockpit, and pushed the iceboat forward. As it moved, he turned it back toward his destination. The sail fluttered, and Kilkenny continued pushing until he felt the wind take hold. He then leapt into the cockpit, braced his feet on the steering pedals, and pulled the canopy closed. After tightening the stays a little, Kilkenny steered into the next tack.

When he reached the outermost of the windward way-points, Kilkenny turned toward LV Station. The wind now blew in his direction of travel and he jibed the iceboat to take the best advantage of it.

The ice that covered Lake Vostok was remarkably flat and covered with rows of ice particles lined up like wind-driven ripples on a glassy lake. Tired and lulled by the drone of blades carving the ice and by the monotonous view, Kilkenny struggled to keep his eyes open.

As he fought to remain awake, one of ripples rose up sharply out of the ice forming a jagged ridge inside of the starboard runner. The brittle ice grated loudly against the carbon-fiber plank, threatening to tear into it like a chain saw. Kilkenny hiked the iceboat onto the port side, pulling it up forty degrees from level.

‘C’mon, baby,’ Kilkenny urged.

The mast leaned toward the horizon under the load, with the lines straining to keep the sail attached to the iceboat as Kilkenny carved a shallow arc away from the ridge: Ahead, the pressure ridge abruptly turned across Kilkenny’s path and he struck it squarely. The iceboat sailed ninety feet through the air, righting itself before slamming down on the ice. Kilkenny’s helmet smacked loudly against the canopy.

He blinked to clear the stars from his vision, then checked the GPS and corrected his course.

The drowsiness he’d felt a moment ago was gone.

8

Kilkenny slowed the iceboat as he turned into the final leg of his journey. He sailed with the sun directly behind him, the white hull and blinding sunlight serving as camouflage. Ahead, LV Station stood out from the icy plain. Beyond what was considered the front of the station, Kilkenny saw two large planes with streams of exhaust trailing from their engines.

One hundred yards from the station, he eased back on the sail, turned into the wind, and pulled back on the brake cable. Beneath the hull, a quarter-circle wedge of stainless steel pivoted out like a pelvic fin and dug into the ice. The iceboat quickly scraped to a halt.

Kilkenny opened the canopy and eased his body out of the cockpit. The throb of engines filled the frigid air. The temperature display on Kilkenny’s helmet read-48 degrees Fahrenheit. He crouched behind the bow of the iceboat, set the brake, and took a careful look at the station.

Two men on patrol walked around to the back side of the station. Both were dressed in thick white fatigues and cradled a submachine gun. Kilkenny waited for one of the men to spot the white iceboat parked in the distance, but the glare made it almost impossible for either to pick it out from the landscape. The sentries continued their circuit and disappeared around the opposite side of the station.

He unsheathed his k-bar knife and silently crept forward, keeping the station between him and the planes. Each step was a deliberate movement designed to avoid the barking sound made by a careless footstep on dry, tightly packed snow.

Kilkenny reached the end of the windowless storage module and waited. No alarm sounded. No footsteps rushed in his direction. He had crossed the open field undetected.

He carefully rounded the end of the storage module and slipped into the next triangular quadrant of the cruciform station. The low angle of the sun cast a long shadow off the storage module, darkening the area in front of him. Staying in the shadow, he moved up to the next module, crouching beside its thick steel supports. Peering from beneath the elevated module, Kilkenny saw two LC-130s with markings identifying them as Skier-98 and Skier-99 of the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing.

That one sure as hell is false-flagged, Kilkenny thought, knowing all that remained of the real Skier-98 was a wide-strewn field of charred debris.

Several men busied themselves loading crates into the hold of Skier-98. The tail door of the other plane was already closed. Two men with side arms stood between the aircraft. Kilkenny studied the placement of men and equipment around LV Station, looking for anything he could use to his advantage.

The sentries walked around the far side of the aircraft and turned back toward the station. Both men held a hand in front of his eyes as they faced the low sun. Kilkenny braced himself against the station module and waited.

As they passed his hiding place, Kilkenny attacked. From behind, he grabbed the closest of the two, hooking his right arm over the sentry’s shoulder. The man expelled a lungful of air as Kilkenny’s arm clamped down and jammed the man’s submachine gun into his abdomen. Kilkenny coiled at the waist like a spring, then unwound with a swift turn and drove the k-bar through layers of protective clothing into the soldier’s back. The black stainless-steel blade severed the man’s aorta and plunged into his heart.

‘Que?’ the other sentry blurted out, his attention drawn by the sudden movements to his left.

As he drove his knife into the back of the one sentry, Kilkenny shifted his weight onto his left foot and snapped a side kick with his right into the throat of the other. The heel of Kilkenny’s boot flattened the man’s windpipe. He staggered back, his eyes bulging behind yellow-lens goggles as he vainly gasped for air. Acting more on reflex than thought, he squeezed the trigger of his Heckler-Koch MP-5. Kilkenny held the dying sentry up as a shield and several rounds struck the man’s body. One grazed across Kilkenny’s upper arm and steam slowly rose from the wound as the groove filled with warm blood.

Rushing forward, Kilkenny rammed the choking sentry with his bullet-riddled partner. The man fell onto his back and Kilkenny landed on top of him. He thrust his knife into the side of the sentry’s neck, the blade disappearing up to the hilt. The man looked up only to see his own horrified expression reflected in Kilkenny’s face shield. As Kilkenny withdrew his knife, a great rush of blood followed it out, staining the white hood of the man’s parka and the ice beneath him.

The men loading cargo and servicing the planes dove for cover when they heard the short burst of submachine gunfire. Those armed readied their weapons, scanned the area for threats, and awaited orders. Duroc crouched beside one of the planes with his pistol drawn, searching vainly for some sign of trouble.

‘Albret,’ Duroc barked out to his executive officer. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘All units report!’ Albret shouted angrily into his lip mike.

One after another, Duroc’s soldiers responded with their status.

‘Sir, only the perimeter team has failed to report in,’ Albret said. ‘The rest of the men are in position and weapons are secure.’

‘Idiots! They probably slipped on the ice. Finish loading the plane while I see what the problem is.’ Duroc motioned to a pair of soldiers. ‘You two, come with me.’

Kilkenny rolled the one sentry off the other, grabbed an MP-5, then searched the bodies for additional ammunition. His arm stung, the blood congealing into an icy scab. For the first time he felt the bone-chilling cold of Antarctica.

After finding two more clips for the MP-5, he stuffed the two bodies, one atop the other, beneath the curved aluminum belly of the elevated module. He then dropped onto his stomach, using the bodies as protective cover. Between the station and the planes, Kilkenny saw men racing about in response to hastily issued orders.

French, Kilkenny thought, or maybe Spanish. Impossible to tell with those engines running.

The commander stepped away from one of the planes, yelled something at two soldiers, then all three began moving toward his position. With no clear shot at the commander, Kilkenny tracked the closest of the three with the barrel of his MP-5. At twenty feet, Kilkenny fired a three-round burst that pulverized the man’s face.

Duroc saw the muzzle flash in the dark space beneath the station module. The soldier to his left suddenly jerked around, his head thrown back, his face exploding. Blood and torn bits of flesh and bone splattered against Duroc’s face, covering his goggles and balaclava. The remaining soldier opened fire on Kilkenny’s position.

Duroc could feel blood seeping through the fabric that covered his face, and his goggles were smeared with the rapidly freezing fluid. He flipped back his hood and stripped everything off his head. The frigid air stung his exposed skin.

A fusillade of bullets bore down on Kilkenny’s position as the second soldier fired his weapon on full automatic. The two bodies stacked in front of him absorbed several rounds; the rest either punched holes in the module’s aluminum skin or chiseled into the ice.

From beneath the module, Kilkenny had a protected field of fire to the front and side, but was vulnerable to a wide sweep around the rear. The instant the soldier emptied his weapon, Kilkenny popped up, found his target, and fired. The man spun and dropped to the ice.

‘Merde!’ Albret cursed. ‘You two, cover the commander. The rest of you, get this plane closed up and ready to leave.’

Search, aquire, fire. The words played in Kilkenny’s mind like a mantra. Once he was sure the second soldier wasn’t going to get back up, he sought out another target. The commander was lying on his stomach, facing Kilkenny with a pistol. The man had stripped off all the protective gear from his head, and Kilkenny got a clear look at his face. As he lined up the MP-5′s site, the commander fired. Kilkenny saw the muzzle flash at the same instant as the bullet struck his helmet an inch above his left eye.

The impact snapped Kilkenny’s head back so fast his neck hurt. He dropped behind his barricade, gripping the MP-5 tightly, waiting for his vision to clear.

The two soldiers sent by Albret were more selective with their fire, squeezing off rounds individually to keep Kilkenny pinned down. Duroc and one of the soldiers grabbed hold of the two bodies and dragged them back toward the aircraft while the other man covered their withdrawal.

‘Albret, I hit him,’ Duroc said. ‘Head shot, but he’s wearing a helmet. I don’t know if it got through.’

Three shots flew out from beneath the module and struck the fuselage of the plane nearby.

‘There’s your answer,’ Albret said.

‘Where did this sniper come from?’ Duroc demanded.

‘Unknown. Except for the transport, the radar has been clear since we arrived. The rest of the perimeter is secure, no sign of any additional threats.’

‘He’s not one of our men. How did he get here? How did he know?’

‘We won’t learn that unless we capture him, sir, but we have a more important problem – the aircraft. They are in the open and, as you can see, very difficult to protect from weapons fire. Both are ready to go, and I think we should get them airborne before either is damaged too greatly.’

Duroc considered his executive officer’s suggestion. ‘See to it. Position the men to protect the first plane. We will depart on the second.’

‘I think it would be wise for you to be on board the first plane.’ Albret could see the rebuke forming on his superior’s lips. ‘Hear me out, sir: Our primary objective is to acquire the probe. As commander, you should see that task through to delivery, as if nothing has changed. The men and I will kill this bastard and follow you out on the second plane.’

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