Chapter 39

39

May 14, 1:27 P . M . ANAT

East Siberian Sea

Gray raced his Polaris snowmobile up to the towering spire of black rock. It climbed four hundred feet in sheer, unscalable cliffs. Mists shrouded its summit, while the frozen sea framed its base. The eastern side was covered by a shoulder of ice that climbed a quarter of the way up. At this northern latitude, the winds mostly blew from that direction, known as the polar easterlies.

Must've taken centuries of thawing and freezing to build that mass of ice.

He waved to Seichan and the two trailing Snowcats. The group intended to circle the peak and search for a way inside. If this site had been habitable at one time, it was likely not on the surface. Still, he didn't hold out much hope of finding an entrance.

He glanced back to the old masts sticking out of the ice. According to Byron, the last time this ice had melted down to the open sea had been nearly three centuries ago, when Catherine's expeditions had sought out Hyperborea. Any entrances were likely buried under the ice.

Still, they had to look.

Gray sped away, leading the others around the flank of the peak. Seichan drew alongside him, leaning tight to her machine's handlebars. The two Snowcats followed. Gray kept a slow pace, eyeing the black rock.

Seichan noted the oddity first and radioed. This close to each other, the interference was just a staticky background. "I think there's a rim of open water where the ice meets the rock."

Gray squinted and spotted the gap, less than a foot wide, along the bottom edge of the cliff face. He slowed his Polaris and braked to a stop. He hopped off to investigate, while the Snowcats closed in on his position.

His boots crunched across the ice as he crossed to that frozen lip. He stared down into the gap and spotted dark-blue waters far below. To investigate closer, he leaned out, bracing an arm against the rock. His gloves disturbed a slippery layer of moss over the rock. It was millimeters thick, little more than furrier lichen. His disturbance stirred up a cloud of gnats, no larger than grains of pepper. Up higher, the dark stone was scribed with more of the same, thinning to regular lichenous fungi in hues of yellows, reds, and oranges, forming some cryptic petroglyph across the rock.

Returning his attention below, he identified a misty haze that had nothing to do with the fog. It matched his own exhalations, the misty condensate of his warm breath in the cold.

He pulled off his glove and placed his palm against the stone. The surface was cold, but far from icy. The moss under his fingers was damp, moistened by the rising condensation.

"It's warmer than it should be," he mumbled.

He stared up the length of the peak, at the surrounding ring of cliffs. He wondered if these outcroppings created their own microclimate, holding back the ice fog that covered this region.

"What are you doing?" Seichan called from her snowmobile, not bothering with the radio.

He turned and headed back to his own vehicle. He hooked a leg over his seat. "You were right. The rock is warm enough to hold the ice at bay. Something must be heating it down deep."

As he got moving again, he remembered how Sister Anna had told them that much of northern Russia was geothermally active. He stared up at the peak as he rode alongside its flank.

Is the same true here?

Their group continued around the spire, which was roughly a mile in circumference. He slowed a few times to inspect deeper shadows, hoping they might mark the mouths of a tunnel, but he found only more rock.

Finally, they reached the shoulder of ice on the eastern side. He felt defeated. If there was any opening here, it would be covered under meters of ice. He searched the expanse. The frozen surface had been polished to a bluish hue by winds and periodic melts. The midday sun blazed off it, turning the ice a fiery cobalt.

Gray squinted against the glare. He shaded his eyes with a hand as he edged along it, going even slower. Sections of the ice wall had calved away over the centuries and had left shattered cliffs littered over the ice.

He searched through them, peering into the bluer gaps of the exposed ice.

Still nothing...

Then he reached a region that was misted over, just a haze. It reminded him of what he had noted rising from the gap between the ice and rock. He drew his snowmobile closer. It rose from one of the broken sections. He flicked on the snowmobile's single headlamp, a customized add-on for a vehicle that had to operate during the sunless months of winter. A toggle let him swivel the beam around.

The haze seeped from a crack near the bottom, maybe a foot tall and four times as wide. He stopped his machine and cut the engine. He slid off the seat and continued on foot. The mist-dampened ice grew slippery near the opening, but his Arctic boots had studded grips.

Seichan followed as the Snowcats drove into view behind them.

He freed a flashlight and dropped to his belly. He shined a bright beam down the crack. Blue ice glowed in the brightness. He followed a trickling flow of meltwater. It ran steeply away, toward a wall of black rock three meters away—then vanished through an arched opening in the stone.

Gray pushed farther in, tilting his head to the side to do so. He stretched his arm and light. Past the archway, he spotted a chute of ice that continued downward. The meltwater flowed along it, vanishing into the darkness.

Frustrated, he pushed back and rolled to his side. As he did, he noted the nearby broken tips of masts sticking out of the ice. "I think there's an opening," he said. "Maybe an old port entrance to this place before it froze over."

By now, the others had exited their Snowcats and gathered closer.

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's less risky 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.