hoped that it didn’t mean the creature had somehow managed to fully pull itself up into their level of the labyrinth.
The air in the tunnels was now a mist of falling dust from the shaking and rending. It caused the darkness to become more oppressive and their torch beams, now starting to burn a deep orange, were cut shorter and only illuminated about twenty feet in front of them. Alex didn’t believe his senses would let him down and allow him to walk into an ambush, but with its enormous strength and bulk, if the creature was behind one of the walls and crashed through, it could easily crush them before they had a chance to flee.
Alex’s mind worked furiously at calculating the odds of his signal being picked up. He expected the Hammer would have floating birds looking for them, and the Australians had a close base at Casey, but since the SINCGARS had gone offline there was no chance of any transmission relay via the more powerful unit. If the transmission sweeps missed them or there was a storm in the ionosphere, then they were as good as dead.
Alex sensed the giant presence close by and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. The atmosphere in the tunnel carried a familiar chemical smell and a sensation of enormous power, and more alarming for Alex, a primordial aggression that made the skin on his neck prickle. They would have no second chance.
Twenty-nine
The military personnel assembled by Major Hammerson were in the darkened command centre looking at an image of a field of snow broken only by the black dots of men moving over its blinding whiteness. The live feed was coming from one of the reconnaissance choppers they had in the area from the McMurdo base but the images gave no clue as to the whereabouts of the missing team. Since they had lost communication with the group, Hammerson had authorised both surveillance and attack birds to be on constant rotation until further notice. He knew it was asking for too much to expect that they would find some way out already cut or open for them. This was going to be an ass-and-elbows free-for-all.
“Either way, if we want to reach them or bring them up we need to cut through that ice. We can dig through it, blast it or melt it. My guess is that they are sheltering in some sort of cave below that ice and snow layer.” Captain Hicks gave a summary of the pros and cons of each option. “Digging is by far the safest option, but also the slowest. Even if we bring in large-scale boring equipment it would take four days — and add to that another two days just to fly it down there. Blasting could fracture the ice and the impact shock wave could bring the tunnels down. Our engineers believe they can mitigate this through layer blasting, but it’s slow and the risk is still there.” Captain Hicks handed Major Hammerson pages of statistics and continued talking. “However, my choice would be to melt it. We could burn a hole in the ice fifty feet in diameter and one hundred feet straight down in minutes. We also have the ordnance on site right now.”
Hammerson looked up at Hicks and raised his eyebrows. “Thermite?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hammerson knew that thermite was messy, dangerous stuff but their choices were limited. Thermite wasn’t used in battle anymore, however its high burn temperature meant it was excellent for stealth missions where the enemy armaments needed to be neutralised quickly. Its high temperature and low visual flaming, depending on the barium/sulfur mix, meant that the molten thermite would permanently weld the breech of an artillery piece shut, making it impossible to open and load the weapon. Dirty, portable, and very useful.
Hammerson also knew when it came down to brass tacks they were running out of time, and the U.S. military wasn’t even supposed to be down there; any long-term digging operations and explosions had to be kept to a minimum.
“Talk me through it, Captain.”
Hicks gave Major Hammerson some more notes and continued with the briefing. “We recommend thermite as it contains its own supply of oxygen and does not require any external source of air. Meaning it won’t be smothered by the snow and will even continue burning while wet — it can’t be extinguished with water. That’s a good thing as we expect the melting ice will create a lot of water. Even underwater the molten iron produced from the burning thermite will extract oxygen from water and generate hydrogen gas in a single-replacement reaction.” Hicks flipped a page.
Hammerson interrupted, “TH3 or Standard?”
“Standard, sir; it’s hotter than thermite-TH3. Standard iron-thermite burns with little flame, but enormous heat. It’s a lot dirtier, but it will be a more effective incendiary composition for our purposes.”
“Risks?”
“Computer models recommend three iron-thermite blasts with seven-second intervals between each — the first two containing twenty-seven units of thermite, and the last blast containing just twenty-five. This should take us down between ninety-eight and one hundred feet and leave little residual water. The risks are that if our team under the ice is too close to the burn zone and we are out by just a few feet we’ll cook them. They must be under cover before ignition.”
Hicks paused for a few seconds and rubbed his chin.
“Go on, Captain.”
“There is one more thing. If there are any shallow deposits of petroleum in the vicinity we could light up the whole area. If there’s a big deposit, it could either go off like Hiroshima or create a burn hole that could continue to combust until it is capped or exhausted. Either way, it isn’t going to be a very well kept secret for long.”
“Better make sure you just burn the ice then, Captain.”
“Yes sir, we can do that.”
Alfred Beadman, the Chairman of GBR, was ushered into the room. Hammerson nodded to the chairman and then turned to Private Everson and glared. “Any contact yet?”
Hammerson already knew the answer to his own question, as he asked it just as low-level background noise emanated from the speaker in the centre of the enormous command room’s oak desk. He just wanted to keep the pressure up on the communication team.
“Nothing yet, sir.”
Everson was listening in as the communication team did everything they could to boost the signal and raise a response. The good news was that it wasn’t plain white noise which meant no communication. There was just the soft hiss of non-contact; someone was there, they just weren’t answering yet.
The Russian president looked at the security brief containing the transcript of an intercepted message from the Vostok base at the Antarctic. The Russian base contained some of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment in the Southern Hemisphere, and anything outside of a frequency hopper could be trapped, decoded and digested by the Russians at about the same time as the legitimate receiving party.
The Americans were preparing an extraction from the ice; their mission must have succeeded. That idiot Petrov had failed him one too many times.
Volkov squeezed the briefing paper in his fist, compressing it ever smaller as he mentally sifted through his options.
He spoke to the officer without turning. “I need an extraction from the southern ice. There is a man I want brought back here within twenty-four hours.” Volkov turned his watery stare on the young man. “See to it.”
The Russian president watched the officer leave then opened a desk drawer and removed a small black phone. He dialled a long number and waited as the signal was coded and bounced to the other side of the globe. He spoke softly when the connection was made.
“Comrade Borshov, your job there is finished. I have another for you. Priority.”
On the other side of Moscow, Viktor Petrov jumped into a large black Mercedes and headed for the airport. Several large diplomatic bags nestled safely beside him on the soft leather seat. Upstairs in his large drawing room the ashes of a copied security brief still smouldered.
Borshov heard the call disconnect and let his hand drop to his side. A priority assignment from the Little Wolf meant other missions were to be immediately abandoned. He reached up and touched the frozen blood around the ragged hole in his face. He ached, not from the raw wound, but for vengeance.
Alex Hunter would die by his hand, this day, next or whenever he got close enough. Borshov had his own priorities; Volkov would never know.
