Ice Hunt

Everyone slowly crawled free, checking their own limbs. Washburn carried Maki. She sang softly to the child, soothing him.

Tom worked his way up the narrow passage between the stacked bunks. His eyes were on the walls and ceilings. Je

“But at least we survived the explosion,” Ogden said.

“It was the ice around the sub,” Tom said dully. “It shielded us. The hollow sea cave was a structural weak point of the station. It simply shattered away, carrying us with it.”

“Are we going to sink to the bottom?” Magdalene asked.

“We’ve positive buoyancy,” Tom answered. “We should eventually surface like a cork. But…”

“But what?” Zane asked, cradling his arm.

All of the Navy crew stared at the walls as they continued to groan and scrape. Kowalski answered, “Pray we don’t reach crush depth first.”

With a start, Craig woke in darkness, upside down. He tasted blood on his tongue, his head ached, and his shoulder flared with a white-hot fire. Broken clavicle. But none of this stimulation woke him.

It was the spray of cold water in his face.

In the darkness, it took him a moment to orient himself. As he righted himself, his hands reached out to glass walls. He felt the source of the jetting spray. A crack in the tank’s glass door. The water was ice-cold.

His eyes strained for any sign of where he was. But the world remained as dark as oil. Water rose under him, filling the tank. He could hear the bubble of escaping air. The tank was no longer intact. He had survived the shockwave of the bomb, but he was deep underwater.

And still falling.

The spray grew fiercer as the depth grew deeper.

Ice water soaked through him, thigh-high now. His teeth chattered, half from cold, half from shock, but mostly from growing panic.

He secretly feared being buried alive. He had heard tales of agents being eliminated in such a ma

This was worse.

The cold rose through him faster than the water. Which would kill him first, he wondered, hypothermia or drowning?

After a full minute, the answer came.

The loud bubbling stopped, and the spray of water slowed to a trickle, then stopped. He had reached some equilibrium point. The pocket of air was holding the water back…at least for now.

But he was far from safe. The small pocket would quickly stale, and even before that, the cold would kill him.

Or maybe not.

Fingers scrambled into the pocket of his parka. The clink of glass sounded. His fingertips touched broken glass, cutting. Still, he searched and found what he sought. He pulled out one of the glass syringes, unbroken. He had taken two samples from the ice lab, insurance at the time.

Now it was survival.

He thumbed off the needle cap.

There was no way he could find a vein in the dark.

With both hands, he stabbed the long point into the flesh of his belly. The pain was exquisite. He shoved the plunger, pushing the elixir into his peritoneal cavity. From there, it should slowly absorb into his bloodstream.

Once emptied, he pulled the syringe free and dropped it into the icy pool at his waist. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, his limbs soon followed.

A fear rose through his panic.

Would the cryogenic elixir absorb fast enough?

Only time would tell.

Holding his breath, Matt stood with the others. The old sub groaned and popped. Kowalski swung his flashlight up and down the passage. Distantly a soft hiss of water whispered in the boat. A leak. The darkness pressed down upon them.

Je

Then Matt felt the shift under his legs, a slight rolling of his stomach. He turned to Kowalski and Tom, trusting the Navy men’s senses more than his own.

Tom confirmed his hope. “We’re rising.”

Je

Murmurs of relief echoed among the others.

But Kowalski’s face remained tight. Tom did not look any more relieved.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.

“There’s no way to alter our buoyancy,” Tom answered.

Kowalski nodded. “It’s an uncontrolled ascent. We’re going to keep climbing faster and faster.”

Matt understood, remembering Tom’s earlier analogy. The sub was like a cork shoved deep into the water. It was now back on its way up, gaining speed, propelled by its own buoyancy. Matt’s gaze drifted up, picturing what would happen.

Once they reached the surface, the speed of their ascent would be deadly. They’d strike the underside of the polar ice cap like a train wreck.

“Back into the mattresses?” Matt asked.

“That won’t do much good,” Kowalski said. “It’ll be pancake city once we hit the surface.”

Still they had no other recourse. The party fled back to the padding and security of the mattresses. Matt pushed in next to Je

Je

“Jen…”

She shook in his arms.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I always have. I never stopped.”

Her body quaked with silent sobs, but still she reached him with her lips, seeking his mouth. She kissed him deeply, hugely. She didn’t have to speak. She answered with her entire body and soul.

They clung to each other, shutting out the world, the terror. Here, in this moment, there was only forgiveness and love and simple need. One for another. How could they have forgotten something so simple?

The moment stretched to a crystalline eternity.

Then the sub hit the surface.

The moon was full, a bright coin breaking through the storm clouds. Its light cast the Arctic stillness into silver, shining off the ice. The only blemish was a half-mile-wide dark hole, still smoldering and smoking. The rest of the world remained a perfect plain of sterling silver.

But it was not to last. Perfection never did.

A mile from the hole, something smashed through from below, a black whale breaching from the water. It thrust itself high into the air, leaving the seas fully behind. It hung in the air until gravity claimed it again.

The length of iron and steel crashed, belly first, to the sea, vanishing under the ice for a moment, then rolling back up, sloshing and rocking in the slush.

Matt lay in a tangle with Je

A moment ago, they had struck the surface. They must have. Locked in each other’s arms, they had been thrown upward, held weightless for a long breath as if they were flying. Then they were inexplicably falling again.

The crash jarred them back to their berth, landing them in a pile.

Cries of surprise reached them from the others.

The sub rolled and canted.

Matt extracted himself from Je

Kowalski scratched his head with his flashlight. “We should be dead. Crushed.” He sounded oddly disappointed, his firm faith in the physics of buoyancy and ice betrayed.

“Well, I’m not complaining,” Matt said, gaining his balance as the sub settled. “Let’s see where we are.”