and the cat piss? Trying to protect their precious secrets. Hide their plans from the Americans.
Grigoriev could taste blood in his mouth now, but the tough old Russian grinned anyway. He’d show the bastards. The Chinese. Zhukov. All of them. He’d tell the Americans
CHAPTER 2
The helicopter came to a hover less than a meter above the ice. It hung there for nearly a minute as the downwash from its rotors blasted snow from the rugged icescape below. The roaring vortex of mechanically- induced wind created an instant blizzard around the aircraft, reducing effective visibility to almost zero. But there wasn’t enough snow to cause a true whiteout. Within seconds, the light accumulation of powder had been blown away, revealing a circle of dirty gray ice a little larger than the sweep of the rotor blades.
This was not the smooth ice sheet of the Arctic. The ice pack in the Sea of Okhotsk was strained and twisted by the collision of two opposing ocean currents, and the relentless hammering of the Siberian wind. The ice was pocked with hillocks, ridges, and fractures — a frozen diorama of unreleased pressure.
The helicopter made no attempt to land on the torturous surface. It maintained position, while doors slid open on either side of the fuselage. Three men made the short jump to the ice, and began unloading equipment through the open doors of the aircraft. As soon as the equipment was unloaded, the helicopter lifted away, climbing to an altitude of a thousand meters where it circled while the others carried out their mission down below.
The men moved quickly and smoothly, despite the roughness of the terrain. They worked without speaking, communicating via hand signals when required, but even that was rarely necessary.
They were a well-oiled team, and they had already performed this operation four times before at other locations on the Okhotsk ice pack. This would be the fifth and final time.
Their cold weather gear was ex-Soviet military issue. The dappled grays and dingy whites of the snow camouflage were a near-perfect match for the surrounding ice. From a few hundred meters away, they would be all but invisible, not that visibility particularly mattered out here. They were the only living souls for at least two hundred kilometers.
In forty minutes, the job was done; the team was back aboard the helicopter and thundering away through the frigid Russian sky.
Already the winds were beginning to hide the evidence of their work beneath a thin layer of grubby snow. The seven new holes in the ice were rapidly disappearing, as was the network of thin wires that cross-connected the holes like a spider web.
A scrap of torn plastic fluttered and skidded across the ice, sticking for a moment against the slope of a pressure ridge. For the briefest of seconds, a single word was visible — black Cyrillic lettering stenciled against gray plastic. The word was
CHAPTER 3
It was like falling into night. The deepwater submersible
Charlie Sweigart stared through the
“Bottom coming up in fifty meters,” Gabriella said.
Her voice sent a tiny shiver down Charlie Sweigart’s spine. Gabriella’s English was flawless, but her voice carried a musical French-Canadian lilt that never failed to give Charlie a tingle.
Charlie nodded without looking back. “Thanks.”
The cabin of the submersible was as cramped as the cockpit of the space shuttle. Charlie sat in the pilot’s seat, nearest the bow of the little submarine, surrounded by gauges, digital readouts, and equipment status lights. Gabriella’s seat at the sensor console was behind Charlie and to his left, so he couldn’t see her without turning almost completely around in his chair. That would be a bit
The reflections weren’t perfect. The curvature of the surface brought some distortion to the images. But Charlie could look at Gabriella in that imperfect mirror as often as he wanted.
Who was he kidding, anyway? What would a tall, willowy blonde want with a pudgy little sub-jockey like Charlie? A tall, willowy,
Charlie had read the research proposals and goals for this project. He’d been to the pre-dive briefings, and studied the mission plans carefully. This was their seventh dive, so he knew the plan inside and out. He had the navigational waypoints all programmed into the
He glanced at the glide angle indicator, and eased back on the control yoke to slow the boat’s rate of descent. Outside of the pressure hull, the submersible’s four propulsor pods rotated slightly, canceling some of the vessel’s negative buoyancy with vectored jets of water.
“Forty meters to bottom,” Gabriella said.
Charlie suppressed another shiver. Gabriella’s bottom was considerably closer than forty meters, but it was not a good idea to think about
Charlie nodded again. “Forty meters. Thanks.”
He was just sneaking another peek at Gabriella’s reflection when a different voice came from behind him.
“So, what color is it?”
Charlie flinched. He’d almost forgotten that Steve was even there.
Steve Harper, the other permanent member of the
