Icebound

“Yes, but we have.” Timoshenko explained how the gear would be gotten to them.

Harry was more impressed than ever with the Russian's ingenuity but still doubtful. “I've done some diving in the past. I'm not an expert at it, but I know a man can't dive that deep unless he's trained and has special equipment.”

“We've got the special equipment,” Timoshenko said. “I'm afraid you'll have to do without the special training.” He spent the next five minutes outline Captain Gorov's plan in some detail.

The scheme was brilliant, imaginative, daring, and well thought out. Harry wanted to meet this Captain Nikita Gorov, to see what kind of man could come up with such a stunningly clever idea. “It might work, but it's risky. And there's no guarantee that the tunnel from your end actually opens into the bottom of the crevasse at our end. Maybe we won't be able to find it.”

“Perhaps,” Timoshenko agreed. “But it's you best chance. In fact, it's your only chance. There's just an hour and a half until those explosives detonate. We can't get rafts across to the iceberg, climb up there, and bring you down as we'd planned. Not in ninety minutes. The wind is coming from the stern of the iceberg now, blowing hard along both flanks. We'd have to land the rafts at the bow, and that's impossible with the whole mountain of ice rushing down on us at nine knots.”

Harry knew that was true. He had said as much to Pete just half an hour ago. “Lieutenant Timoshenko, I need to discuss this with my colleagues. Give me a minute, please.” Still hunkering before the radio, he turned slightly to face the others and said, “Well?”

Rita would have to control her phobia as never before, because she would have to go down inside the ice, be entirely surrounded by it. Yet she was the first to speak in favor of the plan: “Let's not waste time. Of course we'll do it. We can't just sit here and wait to die.”

Claude Jobert nodded. “We haven't much choice.”

“We've got one chance in ten thousand of getting through alive,” Franz estimated. “But it's not altogether hopeless.”

“Teutonic gloom,” Rita said, grinning.

In spite of himself, Fischer managed a smile. “That's what you said when I was worried that an earthquake might strike before we got back to base camp.”

“Count me in,” Brian said.

Roger Breskin nodded, “And me.”

Pete Johnson said, “I joined up for the adventure. Now I'm sure as hell getting more of it than I bargained for. If we ever get out of this mess, I swear I'll be content to spend my evenings at home with a good book.”

Turning to Lin, Harry said, “Well, George?”

With his goggles up and his snow mask pulled down, Lin revealed his distress in every line and aspect of his face. “If we stayed here, if we didn't leave before midnight, isn't there a chance we'd come through the explosions on a piece of ice enough to sustain us? I was under the impression that we were counting on that before this submarine showed up.”

Harry put it bluntly: “If we've only one chance in ten thousand of living through the escape Captain Gorov has planned for us, then we've got not better than one chance in a million of living through the explosions at midnight.”

Lin was biting his lower lip so hard that Harry would not have been surprised to see blood trickle down his chin.

“George? Are you with us or not?”

Finally Lin nodded.

Harry picked up the microphone again. “Lieutenant Timoshenko?”

“I read you, Dr. Carpenter.”

“We've decided that your captain's plan makes sense if only because it's a necessity. We'll do it — if it can be done.”

“It can be done, Doctor. We're convinced of it.”

“We'll have to move quickly,” Harry said. “There isn't any hope in hell of our reaching the crevasse much before eleven o'clock. That leaves just one hour for the rest of it.”

Timoshenko said, “If we all keep in mind a vivid image of what's going to happen at midnight, we should be able to hustle through what needs to be done in the time we have. Good luck to all of you.”

“And to you,” Harry said.

When they were ready to leave the cave a few minutes later, Harry had still not heard from Gunvald regarding the contents of those five lockers. When he tried to raise Edgeway Station on the radio, he could get no response except squalls of static and the hollow hiss of dead air.

Apparently, they were going to have to descent into that deep crevasse and go down the tunnel beneath it without knowing which of them was likely to make another attempt on Brian Dougherty's life if the opportunity arose.

* * *

Even the most sophisticated telecommunications equipment was unable to cope with the interference that accompanied a storm in polar latitudes in the bitter heart of winter. Gunvald could no longer pick up the powerful transmissions emanating from the U.S. base at Thule. He tried every frequency band, but across all of them, the storm reigned. The only scraps of man-made sound that he detected were fragments of a program of big-band music that faded in and out on a five-second cycle. The speakers were choked with static: a wailing, screaming, screeching, hissing, crackling concert of chaos unaccompanied by even a single human voice.

He returned to the frequency where Harry was supposed to be awaiting his call, leaned toward the set, and held the microphone against his lips, as if he could will the connection to happen. “Harry, can you read me?”

Static.

For perhaps the fiftieth time, he read off his call numbers and their call numbers, raising his voice as if trying to shout above the interference.

No response. It wasn't a matter of hearing them or being heard through the static. They simply weren't receiving him at all.

He knew that he ought to give up.

He glanced at the spiral-bound notebook that lay open on the table beside him. Although he had looked at the same page a dozen times already, he shuddered.

He couldn't give up. They had to know the nature of the beast in their midst.

He called them again.

Static.

CHAPTER FIVE TUNNEL

10:45 DETONATION IN ONE HOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES

Dressed in heavy winter gear and standing on the bridge of the Pogodin, Nikita Gorov methodically searched one third of the horizon with his night glasses, alert for drift ice other than the iceberg that was carrying the Edgeway group. That formidable white mountain lay directly ahead of the submarine, still driven by the deep current that originated three hundred forty feet below the surface and extended to about seven hundred eighty feet.

The storm-tossed sea, which churned on all sides of the boat, exhibited none of its familiar, rhythmic motion.