Jason dropped to a knee to peer through the crack. “No way we’re fitting through there.”
Kelly offered his own insight. “Luckily, you have an icebreaking crew with you.”
Gray stood. “What do you mean? Do you think we can use axes and chop a way inside?”
“Too risky.” Kelly straightened and headed toward one of the Snowcats, drawing Gray and Jason with him. “There’s an easier method.”
The captain waved to Ryan Marr, the former Coast Guard officer, to accompany them to the rear of the Snowcat. Kelly opened the vehicle’s cargo hold, which doubled as a weapon locker. To one side rested a wide case. He undid the latches and cracked it open.
Jason whistled appreciatively at the cellophane-wrapped blocks of white clay, stenciled with PE4-MC. It was the Australian military’s version of C4 or Semtex. Plastic explosives. Inside the crate were blasting caps and remote detonators.
“I mentioned that icebreakers could get trapped.” Kelly nodded to the explosives. “This is how we get out.”
Ryan reached inside and grabbed an electric drill and screwed a fat bit in place. He then faced the cliff of ice and scratched the scruff of his red beard. He studied the frozen surface, as if trying to read a map.
“You intend to blast a way through?” Gray asked the captain. “And that’slessrisky than using ice-axes?”
“With the right expert, yes.” Kelly eyed Ryan. “It takes a real artist.”
Jason grinned up at the shoulder of ice. “Kowalski is going to be sorry he missed this.”
Kelly glanced to Jason.
Gray explained. “He’s our team’s demolition expert. And Jason is right. He will be sorely disappointed.”
Gray searched to the west.
Wherever he might be.
40
May 14, 2:02P.M. ANAT
Airborne over the East Siberian Sea
“They’ve got to be down there somewhere, right?” Tucker asked.
He crouched in the copilot seat of the Baikal, serving as an extra pair of eyes as Monk glided them over a featureless fogbank. It stretched to the horizon in all directions.
Behind them, Elle and Kowalski searched from the windows back there. The only two who remained unconcerned were Kane and Marco, who slept in tight curls on two chairs.
Monk leaned forward. “Keep an eye out for any sign of them.”
Despite the tension, Monk stifled a jaw-cracking yawn with a fist. The man had had little sleep during the eight hours of flight. Tucker had briefly relieved him after catching Monk’s chin resting on his collarbone, drowsing off. With the plane on autopilot, Tucker had kept vigil during Monk’s nap, nervously watching the instrument panel, while the night skies had swirled with shimmering veils of the borealis.
They had to stop at daybreak to refuel at the northernmost tip of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. They landed at a small gravel airstrip next to a Russian Arctic park. Elle spoke with the lone keeper of that remote spot. Luckily, the park allowed dogs, so Tucker was able to let Kane and Marco run free over the rocky landscape, stretching their legs and releasing some of the tension from the past days. He kept them close, though, as distant white specks marked the presence of polar bears.
But there was another reason they had stopped, too.
Out of sight of the airstrip’s lone caretaker, he and Kowalski had carried Fadd’s body to a remote barren gully. They built a cairn of rocks over the young man, promising to come back and give him a proper burial.
When the two had returned to the plane, Tucker found Elle sobbing inside. She did her best to hide it, rubbing a fist over her eyes. A bloody rag lay next to her, where she must have tried to clean the floor of the plane.
Tucker had pulled her close and held her as Monk got the Baikal back in the air. At that moment, Tucker had needed her warmth as much as she did his. During his years with the Rangers, he had buried too many, too young. One never grew numb to it.
“Check to the right!” Elle called out, drawing Tucker back to the present. “Is that a break in the fog?”
Tucker leaned over to search in that direction. Off in the distance, thirty or forty miles away, a patch of glaring light shone from the featureless expanse of the gray fogbank. It looked like the sun reflecting off open ice.
