Beneath the Dark Ice

Aimee rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, her lips turning up contentedly at the corners. Even with the noise of the helicopter, Alex knew in a moment she had fallen asleep. He lifted his arm and carefully folded Aimee into the blanket, kissing the top of her head as she relaxed in closer.

Alex let a long breath escape his lips, leaned back against the cabin wall and after a few more seconds he too closed his eyes; already the dark and the ice seemed a long way away.

Epilogue

One Week Later — A World Away

Viktor Petrov climbed out of his four-poster bed, not caring whether he disturbed the sleeping thirteen-year- old prostitute or not. He smiled to himself as he pulled on his shimmering red silk robe and poured two fingers of L’Esprit de Courvoisier. From a burnished oak box inlaid with pearl, he withdrew a large Cohiba cigar — Castro’s favourite, when he was well enough to smoke them.

Petrov took a large swallow of the golden liquid and chuckled. The forged documents he had purchased were the best money could buy. He had told no one of his plans, left no trail, paid by cash. “Out of your reach forever, Volkov, you little puppy.”

Viktor pushed open the double doors to his balcony and listened to the sounds of a Pattayan early morning. Thailand hadn’t been his first choice, but better to live like a king here than die trying to live like a prince somewhere else. He held his cigar at arm’s length and breathed in all the beautiful Asian aromas — spices, dried shrimp, rotting vegetation and sex. The little Thai dek lek girls were plentiful here and didn’t mind that he smelled or his large, hairy belly almost hid his penis.

There was a small breath on the back of his neck and Viktor half turned. Standing behind Petrov was an apparition from his worst nightmare. A giant figure clad all in black with no features but a single red lens jutting out of a full face mask.

A massive hand wrapped around Viktor’s neck as the giant pulled the mask off his head. Viktor wet the front of his silk robe and his legs would have given way if not for being held in place like a puppet, his feet barely touching the floor. He whimpered as he stared into a brutal, disfigured face with a dark red hole where one eye should have been. The Beast’s deep voice spoke in close to his ear, “Greetings from the president, comrade.”

“I can pay more,” was all Viktor could squeak out before he saw out of the corner of his eye a twelve-inch spike, thinner than a knitting needle, being raised towards his face. He heard the Russian assassin’s voice once again. “An eye for an eye, da?”

The last living thought he had as the pick was being forced in beside his eye was that the Little Wolf had long teeth after all.

Two Weeks Later

The SS Titan was moving at a leisurely ten knots — well within its top speed of seventeen, even when fully laden. Like most modern tankers, the Titan was highly automated and computerisation meant everything ran as smoothly as a Swiss watch. The eighteen-foot single- propeller was tooled so perfectly that its rotations were just a gentle and pleasant vibration beneath their feet.

Olaf Jorgenson was a fifty-three-year-old Dutchman by birth but regarded himself as a citizen of the world’s oceans. He cultivated an Ernest Hemingway look with a neatly trimmed beard and small white hat tilted back on his whitened hair. He’d heard that his crew thought he looked more like the Skipper from the old TV comedy Gilligan’s Island, but they would never say that to his face.

They were halfway through their homeward voyage and as the ship had delivered its load the Titan rode high in the water. Olaf was delighted with their progress as the Southern Ocean could be a real bitch if she wanted to be. Forget about the water-level icebergs or the recent seabed tremors they had been warned about, it was the cyclonic storms that could howl around the continent that frightened the crew. The Antarctic Circle had the strongest average winds found anywhere on earth and could be a very dangerous stretch of water indeed. The Titan was just passing over the southernmost tip of the South Sandwich Trench; deep water, deeper than normal, at nearly 24,000 feet it was beyond the abyssal zone and descending right down to the hadal zone — cold, cold and black water.

Today the weather was calm with a steady, misty rain reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. It didn’t matter; their sonar and radar were state of the art — he could have guided the ship on the darkest of nights and avoided the smallest of fishing boats.

He wasn’t alone on the bridge; two of his senior officers were with him, continually checking charts in between a game of slow-motion chess. Suddenly, the sonar alarm flashed red, signalling imminent contact.

“Report, please.”

“Large body contact, five-thousand-foot depth and rising at speed,” his officer replied as he raced from illuminated screen to screen. Olaf knew they were over very deep water; the Southern Ocean averaged 15,000 feet — it had to be whales.

His other officer’s fingers were flying over buttons and he placed some headphones over his ears. He spoke after a few seconds. “No whale song… and not multiple signatures but a single mass, a big mass. Very, very big.” He typed some more commands into the computer. “Solid contact, but non-metallic. High-density materials present, but they aren’t metal or any ferrous materials, more biological.” His brow was furrowed.

“Three thousand feet, speed increasing. Now at fifty knots.” The first officer’s eyes widened as though trying to take in all the screens and images at once.

Olaf now came out of his chair. “Fifty knots, that’s bullshit. Nothing travels at that speed.” Olaf knew his naval armaments and even the most sophisticated U.S. aquatic missiles, such as the Mark-50 advanced lightweight torpedo, could only muster forty-seven knots.

Olaf’s thoughts were that there must be an error in the system and it was probably nothing more than a giant school of deep-water mackerel. However, he had been at sea long enough to know that there were many things that could never be explained away, things that only ever got whispered over a few drinks.

“Increase speed to full ahead. Sound general alarm and rig for impact.”

The collision alarm continued wailing as the crew braced themselves at their stations. Everyone held their breath… waited… nothing. Two of the forward cameras went black.

“We’re slowing.” It was true, the mighty ship that measured its stopping distance in nautical miles was easing down as though they had been caught in a gigantic fishing net. “Are we tangled?” Olaf asked. He turned to his first officer. “I’m going up on the foredeck to get a visual.”

Olaf jogged up to the foredeck. After the warmth of the bridge, the raw cold made his ears redden and cheeks sting, and a numbing rain was heavy enough to create a fog-like effect that made any visual difficult. An acrid, burning smell assaulted his nostrils. Through the rain sheets he thought he could see a figure by the rail.

“Hello?” he called.

The figure moved towards him. He could see her clearly now.

His last conscious thought was to wonder how a young woman holding her baby had come to be on his tanker.