campers.'
'There's something going on here that goes far beyond San Miguel County.' Pitt peeled off his dry suit and began dressing in his street clothing. 'It won't hurt to cover your bases.'
Eagan looked thoughtful. 'All right, I'll send a report to the Colorado Investigation Agency-'
The sheriff broke off as every head turned and stared up the tunnel. A man was shouting and running toward them as if chased by demons. A few seconds later, they could see that it was one of Eagan's deputies. He staggered to a halt and leaned over until his head was even with his hips, panting for breath, exhausted after running from the hotel wine cellar.
'What is it, Charlie?' Eagan pressed. 'Spit it out!'
'The bodies…' Charlie the deputy gasped. 'The bodies in the morgue!'
Eagan took Charlie by the shoulders and gently raised him upright. 'What about the bodies?'
'They're missing.'
'What are you talking about?'
'The coroner says they've disappeared. Somebody snatched them from the morgue.'
Pitt looked at Eagan for a long moment of silence, then said quietly, 'If I were you, Sheriff, I'd send copies of your report to the FBI and the Justice Department. This thing goes far deeper than any of us imagined.'
PART TWO
IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE ANCIENTS
9
Captain Daniel Gillespie stood on the huge glass-enclosed bridge of the Polar Storm and stared through tinted-lens binoculars at the ice that was building around the eight-thousand-ton research icebreaker's hull. Lean as an aspen tree and prone to moments of anxiety, he studied the ice while plotting a course in his mind for the easiest passage to take the Polar Storm. The autumn ice had formed early in the Ross Sea. In some places, it was already two feet thick, with ridges rising to three.
The ship trembled under his feet as its great bulbous bow rammed the ice and then heaved up and over the white surface. Then the weight of the forward part of the ship crushed the pack into piano-size portions that tore at the paint on the hull as they groaned and scraped against the steel plates until they were chopped to small chunks by the ship's huge twelve-foot propellers and were left bobbing in the ship's wake. The process was repeated until they reached a part of the sea a few miles off the continent where the ice pack had been slow to thicken.
The Polar Storm incorporated the capabilities of both an icebreaker and a research vessel. By most maritime standards, she was an old ship, having been launched twenty years earlier, in 1981. She was also considered small alongside most icebreakers. She had an 8,000-ton displacement, a length of 145 feet, and a 27- foot beam. Her facilities supported oceanographic, meteorological, biological, and ice research, and she was capable of breaking through a minimum of three feet of level ice.
Evie Tan, who had joined the Polar Storm when it had stopped at Montevideo in Uruguay on its way to the Antarctic, sat in a chair and wrote in a notebook. A science and technical writer and photographer, Evie had come onboard to do a story for a national science magazine. She was a petite lady with long, silky black hair, who had been born and raised in the Philippines. She looked over at Captain Gillespie and watched him scan the ice pack ahead before asking him a question.
'Is it your plan to land a team of scientists on the pack to study the sea ice?'
Gillespie lowered his binoculars and nodded. 'That's the routine. Sometimes as many as three times an Antarctic day, the glaciologists march out on the ice to take samples and readings for later study in the ship's lab. They also record the physical properties of the ice and seawater as we sail from site to site.'
'Anything in particular they're looking for?'
'Joel Rogers, the expedition's chief scientist, can explain it better than I can. The primary goal of the project is to assess the impact behind the current warming trend that is shrinking the sea ice around the continent.'
'Is it a scientific fact the ice is diminishing?' asked Evie.
'During the Antarctic autumn, March into May, the ocean around the continent begins to freeze and ice over. The pack once spread out from the landmass and formed a vast collar twice the size of Australia. But now the sea ice has retreated and is not as thick and extensive as it once was. The winters are simply not as cold as they were in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Because of the warming trend, a pivotal link in the Antarctic sea chain has been disrupted.'
'Beginning with the single-cell algae that live on the underside of the ice pack,' offered Evie, knowledgeably.
'You've done your homework.' Gillespie smiled. 'Without the algae to dine on, there would be no krill, the little shrimplike fellows, who in turn provide nourishment for every animal and fish in these southern waters from penguins to whales to phocids.'
'By phocids, you mean seals?'
'I do.'
Evie gazed out over Okuma Bay, which divided the great Ross Ice Shelf and the Edward VII Peninsula. 'That range of mountains to the south,' she said, 'what is it called?'
'The Rockefeller Mountains,' answered Gillespie. 'They're anchored by Mount Frazier on this end and Mount Nilsen on the other.'
'They're beautiful,' said Evie, admiring the snow-covered peaks that blazed under the bright sun. 'May I borrow your binoculars?'
'Certainly.'
Evie focused the glasses on a complex of large buildings set around a large towerlike structure only two miles to the south in a sheltered part of Okuma Bay. She could distinguish an airfield behind the buildings and a concrete pier leading into the bay. A large cargo ship was moored to the pier, in the process of being unloaded by a high, overhead crane. 'Is that a research station there at the base of Mount Frazier?'
Gillespie peered in the direction the binoculars were aimed. 'No, it's a mining facility, owned and operated by a big international conglomerate based in Argentina. They're extracting minerals from the sea.'
She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. 'I didn't think that was economically feasible.'
Gillespie shook his head. 'From what I've been told by Bob Maris, our resident geologist, they've developed a new process for extracting gold and other precious minerals from seawater.'
'Odd I haven't heard about it.'
'Their operation is all very secret. This is as close as we can come without one of their security boats coming out and shooing us off. But it's rumored they do it through a new science called nanotechnology.'
'Why in such a remote area as Antarctica? Why not on a coast or port city with easy access to transportation?'
'According to Maris, freezing water concentrates the sea brine and forces it into deeper water. The extraction process becomes more efficient when the salt is removed-' The captain broke off and studied the ice pack beyond the bow. 'Excuse me, Ms. Tan, but we have an iceberg corning on dead ahead.'
The iceberg loomed up from the flat ice pack like a desert plateau covered by a white sheet. Its steep walls rose well more than a hundred feet from the sea. Brilliant white under a pure radiant sun and a clear blue sky, the berg seemed pristine and unblemished by man, animals or rooted plant life. The Polar Storm approached the berg from the west, and Gillespie ordered the helmsman to set the ship's automated control systems on a course around the nearest tip. The helmsman expertly shifted the electronic controls on a broad console and nudged the
