Arctic Gold

Bridge operations on an American submarine were a meticulous choreography of order and order repeated back, each step checked and checked again to make sure a command had been properly heard and was being properly executed.

Grenville could hear the crack and rumble of ice on the hull. Normally, a submarine was moving forward as it dove and the diving planes were adjusted to literally “fly” the vessel into the depths. Starting from a dead stop surrounded by ice was a different matter. All you could do was pull the plug and go straight down.

Those MiGs would be almost on them now, bearing in from the north. What were the Russian pilots going to try to do? What were their orders?

He held the tactical layout in his mind… Ohio here… Lebedev there… aircraft there… and he smiled.

If they were trying for an attack run, the Lebedev was in the way. The ol’ Ohydro would have a few more crucial moments to slip back into her natural element.

GK-1 Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1112 hours, GMT-12

The Mir’s hatch clanged open and Braslov climbed up the ladder. Dean followed, then McMillan, with Golytsin coming out last. Braslov gestured with his pistol. “This way.”

Although the submerged structure was huge, the livable portions were relatively few and cramped, which made sense given the tremendous pressure of their surroundings. Most of GK-1’s internal structure was given over to ballast and trim tanks, and to the machinery necessary for turning and maintaining the drill.

The passageway into which they’d emerged was so low that the three men had to stoop slightly to negotiate it; Dean noticed several emergency survival dry suits hanging from a rack along one side of the passageway-available, he assumed, in case there was a need for an emergency evacuation.

The sight of those emergency suits, and the claustrophobic feel of the corridor, drove home to Dean the nightmarish aspects of life on board this facility. It was cramped, it was damp, and it was cold, with moisture condensing on every exposed metal surface. Outside those curving steel decks, bulkheads, and overheads, the ocean was pressing in with an inexorable, crushing pressure of better than half a ton over every square inch. If anything went wrong down here, did the crew have any hope of escape at all? With an air pressure of one standard atmosphere on board, they weren’t going to be able to go outside without a very long period of pressurization inside an air lock. The only way to the surface in an emergency would be on board one of those miniature submarines docked outside.

As Dean walked, bent forward with his head brushing bundles of pipes and wiring with each step, it was all too easy to imagine those tons upon tons of seawater pressing in from every side.

What a hell of a way to live…

The passageway led them over the control room, rather than past it. A large, open hatchway in the deck gave access to what was obviously the GK-1’s control center twelve feet below, a room thirty feet long filled with monitors, workstations, and consoles, and with both a ladder and an open elevator platform against the aft bulkhead leading up to the hatch at his feet. The perspective was odd and took some getting used to; it took Dean a moment to realize that the vessel was designed to ride both like a normal ship on the surface and in its vertical configuration during drilling operations. When the structure was rotated into the work configuration, decks became aft bulkheads, and forward bulkheads became decks.

There appeared to be eight or ten men on duty in the control center, though there were workstations for more than that. A large monitor on the forward bulkhead was showing what looked like a stark black-and-white image of the sea floor, though at this angle it was difficult to be sure. A murmur of Russian voices rose from the compartment.

Braslov gave Dean a hard nudge in the back with the muzzle of his weapon. “Keep moving,” he growled.

How many people were on board the facility? A normal drilling rig might have as few as fifty or sixty people on board, while one of the giants might have a population of hundreds. There would be other crew spaces-sleeping quarters, a mess deck that might double as a rec room, laundry facilities, probably lab spaces for analyzing core samples.

They reached a turning in the passageway and a door-set in the bulkhead this time, rather than in the floor. Golytsin produced a set of keys and fumbled at the lock. The door opened, and a young man tried to emerge.

“Hold it right there,” Braslov said, pointing his weapon at the prisoner. “Back!”

“Let me out of here!” the prisoner cried. “You have no right-”

“You two,” Braslov said, turning to Dean and McMillan. “Inside.”

“What’s this?” Dean said. “The brig?”

“It’ll do for now, until we decide what to do with you. Go on.”

Dean followed McMillan inside. It was a storeroom, mostly empty, but with a pile of musty-smelling mattresses at the back, stacked crates labeled with Cyrillic lettering, and shelves of folded sheets and blankets.

“There’s a bucket for your… sanitary needs,” Golytsin said, pointing to one corner. “I’m sorry about the accommodations, but as you can imagine, we’re a little cramped for space down here. Someone will bring food to you a little later.”

“If you’re lucky,” Braslov added with a sour sneer.

The door slammed shut, and they heard the sound of Golytsin’s key turning in the lock.

Dean looked at their new roommate. “Harry Benford, I presume?”

The man’s eyes widened. “Yeah! How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Listen! They’re trying to blame me for murdering Ken Richardson! It’s a damned lie! I never murdered anyone!”

“Oh? Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know! It… it was Commander Larson. He shot Ken. Then I hit the commander with a pry bar, took him down. But then the Russians came in and arrested everybody! And they took me off from the others and brought me down here. And now they say they’re going to blame me for the murder!”

“Sounds like your playmates play pretty rough,” Dean said.

“Kathy! You gotta believe me! I didn’t kill anybody!”

“Harry, right now we’re all in a pretty bad fix. I suggest you sit down, be quiet, and let us think about how we’re going to get out of this.”

Benford seemed inclined to argue. “They can’t do this to us!”

Dean stepped between McMillan and Benford, towering over the smaller man. “Do as the lady says,” he growled. “We’ll worry about who did what later, after we get out of here.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“Charlie Dean. I’m here to help.”

“Looks to me like you’re a prisoner just like us! Fat load of help you’ll be!”

“Sit down and shut up.” Dean considered whether or not to let Benford know how much he knew and decided that the information might give them a psychological edge. “Just so you know, Benford, we know you were feeding information to the Russians, we know you gave them blueprints to help them build this station-possibly illegally-and we know the Russians planned to use a murder at the NOAA station as a pretext for taking it over. If they knew about the murder in advance, then the murder was planned ahead of time… and that strongly suggests that you were the killer.”

As Dean spoke, Benford’s eyes got wider and wider, his mouth open. He tried to interrupt at several points but was unable to do more than sputter protests.

“You… you’re with them! It’s all lies!…”

“You can prove your innocence later. Now shut up!”

Sullen, Benford retreated to the back of the storeroom, collapsing on a mattress on the deck with his back to Dean and McMillan.

“I’m Kathy McMillan,” she said.

“I know. Charlie Dean.”

“Are you-”

He held up his hand, then tapped his ear. “Never say anything,” he told her.