Ice Hunt

As the altimeter dropped under the two-hundred-foot ceiling, she focused on her trim, fighting both the wind and the dead engine to hold herself level. The snow became thicker, not just from the sky but now blowing up at her from the ice plain below.

She intended to descend from here as gradually as possible. It was the only safe way to land blind. Slow and even…as long as the last engine held. She watched the altimeter drop under a hundred…then seventy…then—

“Watch out!” Tom called from the backseat.

Her gaze flicked up from her focus on her instruments. Out of the storm ahead, the winds parted in places to reveal a wall of ice ahead of them, broken and thrust up into jagged teeth, misted with blowing snow. It lay less than a hundred yards ahead. She thought quickly, weighing options in a heartbeat. She plainly didn’t have the engines to make it over them.

Beside her, Kowalski swore a constant string, his version of a prayer.

Je

The ground was nowhere in sight.

Kowalski’s prayer became more heartfelt, finishing with “I really, really hate you!”

Je

It was too much for her last engine. The motor gasped, choked, and died. In that moment, they became a frozen rock with wings, hurtling earthward.

“Fuuuucccckkkk!” Kowalski cried, hands now pressed to the side window and dash.

Je

Then her skis hit the ice, soft and even.

She punched up her flaps to brake their speed. They had landed at speeds much faster than she liked.

As the Otter continued to race over the slick surface, side winds threatened to topple it over on a wing, attempting to cartwheel them off to oblivion. But Je

“Ice!” Tom called from the backseat.

The peaks were rushing at them. The plane’s speed had hardly slowed. With skis for landing gear, the Otter had no hydraulic brakes — just flaps and friction. She had plenty of the former, little of the latter.

Still, after a decade of mushing in a dog sled, Je

The Otter continued to skate toward the towering cliffs, sliding toward a certain crash. Je

She was going to lose her plane.

“This is going to hurt,” she mumbled.

As the plane swept toward the cliff face, she prayed the ice remained slick. Everything depended on her flaps — and timing.

She watched the cliffs grow in front of her. She counted in her head, then at the last moment, she dropped the flaps on the starboard side and continued to brake with the other. The nimble plane fishtailed, spi

The tail assembly swept backward and struck the cliff, absorbing a fair amount of the impact and tearing away in the process. Je

Everyone was shaken but alive.

Bane climbed back into his seat from the floor, looking none too pleased by the whole experience. Je

“Let’s never fight again,” he said.

Outside, the engine on the crumpled wing broke away and hit the ice.

“We’d better get out of here,” Tom said.

They hauled out of the plane. Before climbing free, Je

She exited the broken plane and tossed one of the spare parkas to Kowalski.

“Looks like Christmas came early,” he muttered as he pulled into it. It was too small for his large frame. The sleeves rode four inches up his forearm, but he didn’t complain.

Je

Bane trotted around the wreckage, then lifted his leg. His yellow stream misted steamily in the frigid cold.

Kowalski stared a moment. “Damn smart dog. If I had to go, I’d be doing the same thing, too. Remind me from here on out never to get into anything smaller than a 747.”

“Be respectful. She gave all she had to get you here.” Je

Tom tugged his parka tighter around his boyish shoulders. “Where now?”

“Off to where we’re not welcome,” Kowalski answered. He pointed to the mountain range. “Let’s see if we can sneak in the back door.”

As they headed off, Je

Tom explained the base’s air circulation system. It functioned without pumps. Shafts were simply drilled from the surface to the deepest levels of the station — even below the station. The colder surface air, being heavier than the warmer air below would sink into these shafts and displace the warmer stagnant air. “This creates a passive circulation system,” Tom finished. “The fresh air is pocketed in a cavern system that wraps around the station. A reservoir of clean air, so to speak. It is then heated through baffles and used to service the station.”

“So the ventilation shaft empties into this cavern system?” Je

Kowalski nodded. “We should be safe once we get there.”

Tom agreed. “We call it the Crawl Space.”

Matt fled with the others down the circular hall as it wound the circumference of this research level. To his right, he marched past the gruesome tanks, one after the other. Matt found himself counting. He was up to twenty-two.

He forced himself to stop. The tanks continued around the bend. There had to be fifty at least. He turned to the other wall of plate steel. It was interrupted by a few windows into offices, some sealed doors, and a few open hatches. He peered through one of these and spotted a hall of small barred cells. And in another, a larger barracks facility.

Here is where they must’ve housed the prisoners, Matt thought. He could only imagine the terror of these folk. Did they know their eventual fate?

Dr. Ogden trailed at Matt’s heels, while Amanda strode ahead of him. The biologist would occasionally rub at the frosted glass of a tank with the cuff of his sleeve, peer inside, and mutter.

Matt shook his head. He hadn’t the stomach for further scientific curiosity. He only wanted to get the hell out of here, back to the Alaskan backcountry, where all you had to fear was a hungry grizzly.

Behind him, a loud clang echoed from the main lab. The Russians were breaking in. After the threat from that icy voice, the group had fled, heading farther into this level.

Bratt led them. “It should be another ten yards or so.” He clutched a set of folded station plans in his hand.