Following him, Matt twisted to climb down the ladder when bullets ricocheted off the plate near his head. He ducked lower, crab-crawling down into the hatch.
He looked back to the docking-bay doorway, spotting Craig. A rifle was leveled at Matt. Between them swam a small pod of grendels.
There was no trace of the admiral’s body.
The answer came a moment later. The grendels suddenly went crazy. The waters churned as the monsters thrashed, rolling, leaping, snapping at the air.
Matt understood what had upset the beasts, driving them to a frenzy. He felt it, too. From his head to his toes. A vibration through the station, like a tuning fork struck by a sledgehammer.
A sonic pulse.
Matt knew what it meant.
Just as the admiral had described, the device would generate a sonic pulse. And according to Petkov, the pulse would last sixty seconds, then the nuclear trigger would blow, destroying the island and concussing out in a deadly shock wave.
Across the churning lake, Craig had backed a step away, his rifle still in his hands, his head cocked, listening.
Matt pushed up higher. “One minute!” he called over to Craig, tapping his empty wrist, repeating Petkov’s earlier warning.
Craig’s gun dropped as the realization stuck him.
Time had just run out for all of them.
Satisfied by Craig’s look of horror, Matt dropped through the hatch, clanging it shut behind him. He dogged it tight and climbed down to the others.
Kowalski sealed the inner hatch, locking it tight. Tom and Washburn held flashlights. No one spoke. Bane sensed the tension, whining at the back of his throat.
There was no stopping Polaris now.
“We have less than a minute?” Perry asked, incredulous.
Scratchy static came over the phone as he listened.
Perry glanced over to Amanda. She had read his lips, saw his expression. She mirrored his reaction. The race was over before it began. They were defeated.
Before Perry could answer, Amanda’s fingers dug into his arm. Her voice slurred at her sudden anxiety. “Get us deep! Now!”
“What?” he asked.
But she was already running. “As deep as the boat will go!” she yelled back at him.
Perry responded, trusting the woman’s urgency. “Emergency dive!” he yelled to the crew. “Flood negative! Now!
Klaxons rang throughout the sub.
Craig pounded down the hall of Level Four. He knew his destination, but did he have time? There was no telling. He patted his parka’s pocket, hearing a satisfying clink.
He ran past one of the Delta Force team members. The sergeant major called to him as he fled past. “Sir…?”
He didn’t slow, running headlong around the curving hall. His goal came in sight. He needed a secure place to hide, somewhere to ride out the blast wave, someplace waterproof. He knew only one sure place.
The door to the solitary tank was still open, empty of its recent occupant, the Inuit boy. Craig dove inside. He twisted around and yanked the glass door closed. Still powered on the generators, it automatically locked down and was sealed, closing him in.
But was it secure enough? He touched the glass. It vibrated from the sonic pulse of Polaris.
Craig sank to the bottom of the cylinder, bracing himself.
How much time was left?
Matt lay with Jenny. In each other’s arms, the pair was nestled between two mattresses, crammed and sandwiched in one of the bunks. The others were similarly padded, limited two to a bunk. Washburn watched over Maki. Even Bane had been penned in a padded cell of mattresses.
After boarding the sub, there had been no time for niceties or plans. They had all fled to the sub’s berths and found ways to secure themselves from the coming explosion.
And now the waiting.
Matt buried himself into Jenny. The admiral must have survived longer than he’d guessed. Or perhaps the lag time on the device was a bit longer than one minute.
He clutched Jenny, and she him. Hands sought each other, moving from memory, reflexively. His mouth found hers. Soft lips parted under him. They murmured to each other, no words, merely a way to share their breath, reaching out to each other in all ways, a promise unspoken but heartfelt.
He wanted more time with her.
But time had run out.
Under the twilight sky, Command Sergeant Major Edwin Wilson, currently designated Delta One, stood on the ice. The Sikorsky Seahawk rested five paces behind him. Its rotors slowly spun, engines kept hot, ready for immediate action. As ordered, he had retreated thirty miles from the submerged ice island. With the discovery of the bomb at the station, it was up to him to protect the stolen journals. He was only to return if an all clear was dispatched by the mission’s operational controller.
Until then, he waited. No further updates had been transmitted.
Under his feet, the ice had begun to vibrate. At first he thought it was his imagination, but now he was not so certain. The trembling persisted.
He faced northeast, staring through high-powered binoculars, equipped with night vision. The terrain was so flat and featureless that he was able to make out the tall line of pressure ridges near the horizon.
Nothing. No answers there.
He checked his watch. According to the timetable of the original report, there were only a few more minutes to spare.
Frowning, he lifted the binoculars again.
Just as he raised them to his face, the world ignited to the north. The flash of green through the scopes whited out the view, blinding him. Stumbling back, he let the scopes drop around his neck.
He blinked away the glare and stared to the north. Something was wrong with the horizon. It was no longer a smooth arc. It now bowed up, rising like a wave.
He snatched the binoculars and stared again. A deep green glow marked the center of the cresting wave, like a signal buoy riding a wave.
Then it was gone.
A roar like the end of the world rumbled over the ice.
He continued to stare. The bomb had clearly gone off, but what was happening? He couldn’t understand
