Arctic Gold

Braslov in the deepest, most profound darkness he had ever known…

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1219 hours, GMT-12

“Golytsin!” Dean shouted. “Blow all ballast!”

“Give me a moment! I can’t see!”

“We don’t have a moment!”

An alarm was shrilling, and a recorded voice was saying something in Russian. The outside lights were off, but he could still hear the whine of the motors, and the instrument lights and LED readouts were still on.

A moment later, the Mir’s emergency lights switched themselves on. “You see, Admiral?” Dean said brightly. He reached out and thumped the console with his fist. “You Russians know how to build these things solid!”

“Don’t hit that too hard,” Golytsin warned. “Not until we know the full extent of the damage!”

Dean was pretty sure the man was cracking a joke.

Golytsin hauled down on a large handle, and there was a sudden jar as several hundred kilograms of iron suddenly dropped clear of the Mir’s keel. He pulled another handle, and they heard the shrill hiss of pressurized air forcing its way into the ballast and trim tanks. As the water was forced out, the Mir rose faster.

“Emergency surface,” Golytsin explained.

“Yeah, but there’s ice up there,” Dean said. “What happens when we hit it?”

Golytsin smiled. “Where is your faith in good, solid Russian engineering, my friend?”

The Mir rose rapidly up from the abyss…

Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 44' N, 176° 50' E 1219 hours, GMT-12

Some five miles away now, the first of the Russian 650mm torpedoes slammed into the seabed. Had the ocean floor consisted of soft mud and sediment, like so much of the abyssal plain elsewhere, the contact detonator likely would have failed to go off and the weapon would have buried itself harmlessly in the ooze.

Unfortunately, large stretches of the seabed in this region were covered by and penetrated by immense shelves of ice, methane ice clinging to the ocean floor like permafrost.

The detonator triggered and nearly one ton of high explosives went off.

With no oxygen to support combustion, the methane clathrates on the floor couldn’t ignite, but the blast did break a very great deal of ice loose and send it rocketing toward the surface.

It also liberated a large amount of methane gas-several hundred million tons of it-from the sea floor, the bubbles rising in massive clouds out of the deep.

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 33' N, 177° 45' E 1225 hours, GMT-12

“How long before we reach the surface?” Kathy asked.

“We’re passing two hundred meters now,” Dean told her, glancing at the instrument readout screen. “Maybe… another minute?” He looked to Golytsin for confirmation.

“Something like that,” the Russian replied. His hand was on the ballast control. “But I’m going to begin slowing the ascent now. You’re right, of course. We don’t want to hit the ice ceiling too hard.”

“It would be nice to be able to break through,” Dean said. “But if we happen to hit a thick patch…”

“Exactly. Even with recent climatic warming, the ice is as much as a meter thick in places, and the Mir might not be able to break through. There is also the chance, a small one, that we could come up beneath the keel of the Lebedev or one of the other ships up there. So we will come up close to the surface, and attempt to find a polynya.”

“Do you think Braslov will be able to come after us?” Kathy asked.

“I don’t know,” Dean said. “We hit him damned hard. If we’re lucky, he’s on his way down, now, while we’re going up.” He sighed. “Just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“My boss is going to kill me. I was supposed to bring Braslov back alive.”

Nomer Chiteereh Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1225 hours, GMT-12

The construction submarine was sinking, as water continued to leak in from a ruptured seal, dragging the craft down tail first. In total darkness, drenched in icy water, Braslov struggled upward toward the forward part of the compartment. If he could just reach the controls and trip the main circuit breakers, perhaps the emergency power circuits were still good. He needed to blow ballast and surface… or at least try to regain neutral buoyancy long enough for them to come out and rescue him from GK-1.

His arm felt like it was broken. The cold was a living thing, leeching the heat from his body, leaving him trembling and exhausted.

Almost there…

The methane cloud struck from beneath, totally unexpected, a sudden shock slamming into the construction submarine’s belly and stern. Braslov had the sudden sensation that he was rising, and then the submarine flipped end for end and he hurtled into the forward end of the compartment, screaming as he slammed into the control panel. Water cascaded over and around him, stunning him, immobilizing him.

And above the roar, he could plainly hear the shriek of metal as the tortured vessel began to tear open amidships…

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 33' N, 177° 45' E 1231 hours, GMT-12

“I can see light!” Dean said, peering up through the view port. “I can see the surface!”

“Let me have the controls,” Golytsin said. “I’ll see if I can find open water.”

The Mir was drifting toward the surface slowly now, the weight of the water in its ballast tanks counteracting the lift induced by the release of the heavy keel plates. Under his guidance, one of the electric motors was coaxed to life, and the Mir began to respond…

The cloud of methane, expanding enormously as it rose out of the constricting pressure of the depths, caught the Mir, sending it rocketing upward as the vessel rode the shock wave for a moment. Then, with a savage jolt, the Mir dropped through a methane bubble, hit water beneath, then hit another bubble. For several interminable seconds, the Mir tumbled in the frothing sea, its occupants slammed from deck to overhead and bulkhead to bulkhead like rag dolls.

Water came thundering in…

Nearby, the bubble mass struck GK-1, ripping the anchoring cables free. The drill train, extending into the depths, snapped, then snapped again, again, and yet again as the shock wave worked its way up out of the abyss.

The shock wave ruptured ballast and trim tanks, flooding the forward section first. Unimaginable stresses clawed at the ship, and the relatively slender and unarmored midships section ripped apart as conflicting forces tried to draw the stern higher while dragging the bow down.

Then watertight seals ripped open and the ocean came pouring in.

The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 2032 hours EDT

“My God!” Jeff Rockman said, staring at the big screen on the wall. “What in hell is that?”

The view, a real-time image of the Arctic ice around the Russian base, showed an awesome transformation, worked in an instant. The ice crazed like shattered glass, then appeared to blur. At the same moment, geysers erupted around all three of the Russian ships, still holding position in the ice, and from the open-water footprint left behind by the Ohio as well.

“What is it?” Rubens asked, leaning forward. “A volcanic eruption?”

The geysers were growing in size. The Lebedev was swallowed whole. The cargo ship was ponderously rolling over onto her port side. In places, solid ice was breaking open now as enormous blocks of ice shattered and broke free.

“I don’t know,” Marie Telach said. “But it’s big.” The view receded several clicks as the magnification on the spysat’s optics was cut back. The polar ice cap seemed to recede suddenly as the curve of