Ice Hunt

knew this to be true. Whatever she and Matt had once shared was shattered beyond repair.

The door swung open again, bringing with it the warmth of the diner, the smells of frying oil, and a bit of bright laughter. Matt stood at the threshold. “You two really should get a room.”

Jenny pulled out of the embrace and ran a hand through her hair. She hoped the tears were gone from her cheeks. “The plane’s all refueled. We can head out as soon as we’re done eating.”

“And where again were you all going?” Bennie asked, clearing his throat.

Matt scowled at him. For everyone’s sake, they had decided it best to keep their destination a secret. “Good try, Bennie.”

The man shrugged. “Okay, can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“Actually I can,” Matt said, swinging around. “Hey, Belinda, did you know your husband was making out with my ex-wife on the porch?”

“Tell Jenny she can keep him!”

Matt turned back and gave them a thumbs-up. “You two kids are in the clear.” He closed the door on them. “Have fun!”

Standing in the dark, Jenny shook her head. “And you want me to make up with him?”

Bennie shrugged again. “I’m just a mechanic. What the hell do I know?”

11:56 P.M.

ABOARD THE DRAKON

Admiral Viktor Petkov watched through the video monitors in the control station. The solid plane of ice spread in a black blanket overhead, lit from below by the Drakon’s exterior lights. The four thermal-suited divers had spent the last half hour securing a titanium sphere in place. The procedure involved screwing meter-long anchoring bolts into the underside of the ice cap, then positioning the device’s clamps to the bolts so the titanium sphere hung below the ice.

It was the last of five identical devices. Each titanium sphere was positioned a hundred kilometers from the ice island, encircling the lost Russian ice station, marking the points of a star. The sites of insertion were pinpointed to exact coordinates. All that remained was to establish the master trigger. It had to be positioned in the exact center of the star.

Viktor gazed past the divers to the dark waters beyond. He pictured the huge ice island and the station inside it. He couldn’t have asked for a better place to trigger the device.

Moscow had ordered him to retrieve his father’s work and lay waste to all behind it. But Viktor had larger plans.

Out in the water, one of the divers thumbed the pressure button on the bottom of the device and a line of blue lights flared along the equator of the sphere, drawing Viktor’s attention. The last of the five devices was now activated. In the soft blue glow, the Cyrillic lettering could be seen clearly across the sphere’s surface, marking the initials for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.

“And these are just scientific sensors?” Captain Mikovsky asked, standing at the admiral’s side. The doubt was plain in his voice.

Viktor answered softly. “The latest in bathymetry technology, designed to measure sea-level changes, currents, salinity, and ice densities.”

The Drakon’s captain shook his head. He was no naive recruit. Upon leaving the docks of the Severomorsk Naval Complex, Mikovsky had been given their mission parameters: to escort the admiral on a diplomatic mission out to the site of a lost Russian ice station. But the captain had to know that more was planned. He had seen the equipment and weapons brought aboard back at Severomorsk. And he surely knew of the coded message from FSB, if not the content.

“These underwater devices have no military application?” Mikovsky pressed. “Like listening in on the Americans?”

Viktor simply glanced over and shrugged. He allowed the captain to misread his silence. It was sometimes best to allow someone’s suspicions to run to the most obvious conclusion.

“Ah…” Mikovsky nodded, eyeing the sphere with more respect, believing he understood the intrigues here.

Viktor turned his own attention back to the monitors. Over the years, the young captain might learn that there were deeper levels to the games played by those in power.

A decade ago, Viktor had employed a handpicked team of scientists from AARI and began a covert project out of Severomorsk Naval Complex. Such a venture was not unique. Many polar research projects were run out of Severomorsk. But what was unusual about this particular project, titled Shockwave, was that it was under the direct supervision of then-captain Viktor Petkov. The researchers answered directly to him. And in the hinterlands of the northern coastlands, far from prying eyes, it was easy to bury one project among the many others. No one questioned this work, not even when the six researchers on the project had all died in an airplane crash. With their deaths two years ago, so had died Project Shockwave.

Or so it appeared.

No one but Viktor knew the research had already been completed. He stared out as the divers retreated from the sphere of titanium.

It had all started with a simple research paper published in 1979, tying carbon dioxide to the gradual warming of the globe. Fears of melting polar ice caps created horrible scenarios of rising ocean levels and devastating worldwide flooding. Of course, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg was the central agency in Russia assigned to investigate such threats. It accumulated one of the world’s largest databases on global ice. It was eventually discerned that while the melting of the ice found atop Greenland and the continent of Antarctica could potentially raise the world’s oceans by a dramatic two hundred feet, the northern polar ice cap did not pose such a risk. Since its ice was already floating atop an ocean, it displaced as much water as it would produce if it melted. Like cubes of ice in a full glass of water, the melt of the polar cap would not lead to a rise in ocean levels. It was simply no threat.

But in 1989, one of the AARI researchers realized a greater danger posed if the polar ice cap should suddenly vanish from the top of the world. The ice cap, if gone, would no longer act as an insulator for the Arctic Ocean. Without its ability to reflect the sun’s energy, the ocean would evaporate more rapidly, pouring vast amounts of new water into the atmosphere, which would lead in turn to massive amounts of precipitation in the form of rain, snow, and sleet. The AARI report concluded that such a change in world climate would wreak havoc on weather systems and ocean currents, resulting in flooding, agricultural destruction, ecosystem disintegration, and worldwide environmental collapse. It would devastate countries and world economies.

The hard truth of this prediction was seen in 1997 when a simple shift in currents in the Pacific Ocean, known as El Nino, occurred. According to UN agencies, the cost to the world was over $90 billion and led to the death of over fifty thousand people — and this was a single shift in currents over the course of one year. The loss of the northern polar ice cap would stretch over decades and reverberate over all oceans, not just the Pacific. It would be a disaster unlike any seen during mankind’s history.

So, of course, such a report led to the investigation of any possible military applications. Could one destroy the polar ice cap? Studies quickly showed that the power needed to melt the vast ice sheet was beyond the grasp of even current nuclear technology. It seemed such a possibility would remain theoretical.

But one of the scientists at AARI had come up with an intriguing theory. One didn’t need to melt the cap — only to destabilize it. If the cap were partially melted and the rest of the solid ice sheet shattered, a single Arctic summer could do the rest. With the cap turned into an Arctic slush pile, the sun’s energy would have greater access to a larger surface area of the Arctic Ocean, warming the waters around the fragmented ice, thus leading to the meltdown of the remaining ice pack. One didn’t need man-made nuclear energy to destroy the cap — not when the sun itself was available. If the polar ice cap could be shattered in the late spring, by the end of summer it would be gone.

But how did one destabilize the ice cap? That answer came in 1998 when another scientist from AARI, studying the crystallization of ice in the Arctic ice pack and the relation of ocean currents to pressure ridge formation, came up with his theory of harmonics. That ice was like any other crystalline structure, especially under extreme pressure, and at the right pitch in vibration, its structure could be shattered like a crystal goblet.

It was this study that became the basis for Project Shockwave: to artificially create the right set of harmonic waves and heat signatures to blast apart the polar ice cap.