Arctic Gold

Methane-natural gas-formed in underground pockets. When it percolated through to the ocean at depths of over about five hundred meters, the cold and extreme pressure of those depths sometimes formed clathrate fields. As Dean understood it, water froze into normal water ice on the sea floor and adhering to it and within it, rather like permafrost, clinging to the bottom instead of floating to the surface. As the water froze, it trapped molecules of methane-CH₄-inside its crystalline structure. A piece of methane hydrate liberated from the seabed to a laboratory counter looked like an ordinary chunk of ice. Set a match to it, however, and the ice burned with a hot, bright red flame as the methane was liberated.

Methane clathrates had been advanced as a possible solution to the energy crisis, since it appeared that there was more methane locked up inside seabed deposits of clathrates than there were reservoirs of natural gas under dry land. But they also posed certain risks of unknown magnitude. A few climatologists had actually suggested that periods of global warming in the past had been caused by massive releases of seabed methane. A mass extinction of life on ancient Earth-like the one that had wiped out the dinosaurs, but almost 200 million years earlier and on a far larger scale-had been blamed by some on an explosive release of undersea methane into the atmosphere.

“It could put a real stopper on your pet project, couldn’t it?” Dean continued after a moment’s silence. “I mean, you drill into the sea floor and find you’re drilling through ice. What happened? The drilling broke some pieces off that floated to the surface and ignited?”

“GK-1 sustained minor damage when a large block of methane ice floated up from the bottom and struck one of the anchoring cables,” Golytsin said. “Mainly, though, Gazprom called a halt to activities while an assessment was made on the possibility of harvesting methane ice in quantity from the ocean floor.”

Some more pieces fell into place for Dean. The organized crime groups trying to infiltrate Gazprom were doing so through the GK-1 drilling project. Probably the revenue from newfound petroleum was going to give Kotenko and Tambov leverage within the organization.

But now another branch of Gazprom had interfered, stopping work at the GK-1 site while decisions were made about the natural gas resources discovered there. A power struggle? Or simply a delay? It would be interesting to know what was happening within Gazprom’s halls of corporate power.

The Mir sub drew closer to the undersea station now, approaching the stern of the submerged and vertical ship. In the glare of the outside lights, Dean saw other Mir submersibles docked with their upper hatches snug against a massive tube, evidently a boarding tunnel or air lock.

“What kind of pressure do you maintain in there?” Dean asked.

“Standard sea level pressure,” was Golytsin’s surprising answer. “Just as inside the Mir. We haven’t had to work with high atmospheric pressures in some years now. We build very good in Russia, you see…”

Impressive, given that the outside seawater pressure on the GK-1 must be incredible. Dean did some fast calculations. The pressure exerted by seawater went up by.445 pounds per square inch for every additional foot of depth, he knew. Eight hundred meters was about twenty-six hundred feet and a bit, times.445…

At a rough estimate, the pressure at this depth was over half a ton per square inch. Most of the outside work at GK-1 must be handled by robots or with miniature submarines like the Mir, equipped with mechanical arms. He noticed that there weren’t any windows or portholes on the vessel, not even at the lower edge of the stern section, where he expected the bridge to be.

Skillfully Golytsin maneuvered the Mir underneath the docking tube, watching the approach through a TV monitor relaying the view from a camera mounted on the Mir’s dorsal hull next to the hatch. For a moment, Dean had memories of space-docking events he’d seen, of Apollo spacecraft docking with Lunar Excursion Modules, or the Space Shuttle connecting with the space station.

There was the faintest of bumps, and a hollow clang. Golytsin threw a series of switches. “We’re home,” he said.

“The last home they’ll ever know,” Braslov said with an unpleasant grin.

22

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1112 hours, GMT-12

“BRIDGE, RADAR!” AN URGENT VOICE called over the intercom. “Two bogies incoming at very high speed, bearing one-seven-five, range twenty miles! We’ve got maybe fifty seconds!”

“Very well,” Captain Grenville replied. He glanced at the southern sky, saw nothing, and turned his attention back to the forward deck. The last of the Navy SEALs scrambled up the gangway. A deck detail of sailors started to haul the gangway in. Grenville picked up a loud-hailer. “Chief of the Boat!”

Master Chief Fuselli, bulky in his Navy-issue parka, turned and looked up at the weather bridge.

“Jettison the gangway!” Grenville called.

Fuselli tossed him a salute and started bellowing orders. In seconds, the lines making the gangway fast had been freed and the long metal bridge had been heaved over onto the ice.

He took another look at the Lebedev, just one hundred yards to the north. When the firefight had finally sputtered out, the SEALs had disarmed the crew and herded them into a hold, but it hadn’t taken long for Russians hiding elsewhere in the ship to set their comrades free. There’d been a couple of gunshots from the Lebedev as the SEALs crossed the ice, but nothing concerted and nothing accurate.

“Lookouts below,” he ordered. The two lookouts in their cockpits aft of the weather bridge began securing their posts. One pulled in the fluttering American ensign.

Grenville’s major concern at the moment was the fact that he didn’t know what the Russians were going to do. Those incoming aircraft might be lining up a bombing run on their very first pass… and that would be very, very bad. More likely, they would overfly first, to get an eyes-on look at the ships in the ice and to make sure they knew which targets were friendly, which hostile. Then they would attack if, in fact, they’d been ordered to do so.

Grenville assumed that the Russian pilots had those orders. From their point of view, their people had been attacked first, on board the Lebedev. They would assume the commandos had come from his boat. Besides, right now the Ohio was the only American target around.

Master Chief Fuselli was the last man down the forward hatch. Grenville heard it bang shut, saw the wheel dog tight.

“Diving Officer of the Watch,” he said over the intercom as his hand came down on the dive klaxon button. “Dive the boat!”

He turned to descend into the Ohio’s sail but stopped as he heard a low-voiced growl, a distant, trembling thunder. He looked south… and then, almost before his brain could register what he was seeing, two sleek high-performance jet aircraft streaked in low above the ice, traveling almost wingtip to wingtip. He had the briefest of instants to take in details-broad, delta wings; canards riding far forward under the cockpits; the glaring flash of sunlight off of canopies; the red-star-inside-white-star roundels on the wings.

MiG-35s, definitely. They passed two hundred yards east of the Ohio, streaking past the Lebedev and dwindling to specks above the northern horizon. Grenville heard a far-off roar emerge from the dwindling thunder of engines and wondered what it was.

Then he knew. Cheering. The crew of the Lebedev was cheering.

He descended the ladder into the Ohio’s sail.

The Ohio’s ballast tanks were already flooding by the time he reached the control room. “Captain on deck!” the Officer of the Watch cried as he walked in.

“As you were. Radar! What’re our friends up there doing?”

“Bogies have made a full one-eighty and are coming back at us, bearing three-five-four, range five miles. Looks like an attack run, sir.”

“Very well. Diving officer. Take us down. Make depth two-five-zero feet.”

“Make depth two-five-zero feet, aye, aye, sir.”