Chapter 15
As midnight crept near, Kurt’s ice cave became less and less hospitable. Cold air seeped through the cracks no matter how he tried to seal them. With no method of heating the place, Kurt’s joints stiffened, while his extremities grew numb. At one point the floor shifted beneath him, a reminder that fathoms of bitterly cold water lay below him, not rock and soil and other forms of terra firma.
He recognized this as his one real mistake. He was only a few hundred yards from the channel cut by the Chinese icebreaker. It made the ice floor beneath him more susceptible to the currents and small waves, causing it to flex and react to the water’s push and pull.
As the push-pull of the current returned, one of the larger slabs in his ice wall shifted. Its footing slid back with a grating sound, but it caught on something and stopped before falling completely down. This opened a gap to the outside world. The bitter air seeped in, and Kurt began to shiver.
If there was ever a time for his Viking blood to thicken up, he thought, now would be the moment.
He checked his watch, tapping the dial to make sure the hands hadn’t frozen in place. In the pitch-black of the cave, it was easy tosee the dimly glowing dots marking the hands and the cardinal hours.
Ten minutes till midnight. Ten minutes until he could broadcast the signal and light a flare to help Joe spot him. It seemed like an eternity.
And then, as Kurt watched the second hand sweep around in the dark, a sound reached him through the triangular gap in his fortress wall. He listened closely, allowing a grin to crack his frozen face. It was the glorious sound of helicopter blades approaching from a distance.
“We have something on the infrared,” a voice called out, shouting over the din of the helicopter’s engine and rotors.
Gushan pointed at the intercom button. They were all wearing headsets for a reason.
The man pressed it and repeated his statement. He showed Gushan the image. It was a smudge on the flickering screen, a vague heat source two miles out and slightly behind them.
It was a dim reading, nothing so bright as a man or beast. The shape was oddly triangular. Like something warm that had been left on the ice.
From the bearing, Gushan determined that they’d actually flown past it and were only picking it up by looking back. “How did we miss it?”
“It must have been shielded by something.”
“What do you make of it?”
“Temperature is too elevated to be an error. There’s something down there. It’s over near the channel. Could be a seal or sea lion.” They’d seen several pods of the animals on their journey from theother side of the world. The large seagoing creatures rested on the pack ice when they were tired of hunting fish or hiding from killer whales.
“Show me on the map,” Gushan demanded.
The lieutenant brought up an overhead mapping system with the positions of the helicopter and the infrared signal overlaid on it. The target was not far from where the NUMA submersible had been abandoned. They’d been so close. Some of the men might have walked right by him.
“That’s it,” Gushan said. He radioed Li and shared the good news. “Send out a squad of my men. I’ll turn back and land to complete the capture.”
There was a long delay before Li came on the line. “How confident are you that this target is the American?”
“Ninety percent,” Gushan replied. “Trust me, it’s him.”
“Continue on your course,” Li ordered bluntly. “Make no effort to approach the target. I don’t want him to know he’s been spotted.”
Gushan found the order nonsensical. “I want to be there when we capture him.”
“That won’t be necessary, Major,” Li said. “We’ll take it from here.”
The pilot glanced at him, awaiting a command. Gushan raised a hand and pointed forward. “Stay on course. Follow orders.”
The pilot turned back to the controls and the helicopter continued its slow path northward. Gushan looked out the side window. He saw nothing but darkness, and then a couple of miles behind that the lights of the icebreaker.
It had pulled free from its moorings, turned around, and begun a run up the channel. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be angling toward the location of the heat source.
The admiral didn’t want a hostage, a prisoner, or an insurance policy. He wanted the American gone. And he intended to run him down using the great ship itself.
Kurt listened intently to the sound of the helicopter and quickly realized something was off. The machine sounded bigger and heavier than the nimble craft he and Joe had flown up in. And it was lumbering through the night sky, in a lazy, unhurried manner.
Joe would come in faster, screaming across the ice at low altitude, broadcasting as he got in close and demanding Kurt light a flare or use his flashlight to reveal his exact location. Low and fast meant a rescue. High and slow meant someone was searching or loitering. Either way, the aircraft he heard was not his friend.
