Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

"Where are the others?"

"Dead. All dead."

Austin felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. "What about the young woman? Karla Janos?"

"I don't know what happened to her. They took her away."

"The same people who shot you?"

"Yes. Ivory hunters. They killed my husband, Sergei, and the two Japanese men."

"Where did this happen?"

"The old riverbed. I crawled back to the campsite and put the raft in the river." Her eyes flickered and she passed out.

They inspected the shoulder more closely. The wound wasn't fatal, but Maria had lost a great deal of blood. Zavala cleaned and bandaged the wound. Austin called the Kotelny on his hand radio.

"We found an injured woman on the beach," he told the captain.

"Miss Janos?"

"No. Maria Arbatov, one of the expedition scientists. She needs medical attention."

"I'll send a boat in immediately with my medical officer."

Austin and Zavala made Maria as comfortable as possible. The boat arrived with the medical officer and two crewmen. They carefully loaded the woman aboard and headed back to the icebreaker.

Austin and Zavala hooked up the paraglider. The takeoff went much smoother than their icebreaker launch. As soon as they had gained altitude, Austin steered the paraglider along the river. Alerted by Maria, they kept a sharp eye out for the ivory hunters. Minutes later, they made a soft landing in the permafrost near the old sheds. They slipped their side arms from their holsters and cautiously made their way toward the settlement.

While Joe covered him, Austin checked out the main tent. There were broken eggshells in the rubbish bin, evidence of a recent breakfast. They peeked into the smaller tent, then made their way to the sheds. All the buildings were unlocked except one. They pounded the padlock with a boulder. The lock stayed intact, but the nails holding the clasp in the rotting wood gave out. They opened the door and stepped inside. A musky animal smell greeted their nostrils. The shaft of light coming through the open doorway fell on the fur-covered creature stretched out on the table.

"This isn't something you're likely to see at the Washington Zoo," Zavala said.

Austin bent over the frozen carcass and examined the stubby trunk and undersize tusks. "Not unless they've opened a prehistoric wing. This is the carcass of what looks like a baby mammoth."

"The state of preservation is incredible," Zavala said. "It looks freeze-dried."

After inspecting the frozen animal for a few minutes, they went back outside. Austin noticed boot prints in the permafrost leading to a path that ran alongside the river. They set the paraglider up for a takeoff from a low hill and flew along the winding path of the river, reasoning that Maria Arbatov couldn't have been far from the waterway when she was shot. Austin saw three bodies lying near a fork in a narrow canyon. He circled the immediate area but saw no sign of ivory hunters, and set the paraglider down near the edge of the gorge.

They climbed down the side and made their way to three bodies. The three men had been shot. Austin's jaw hardened, and all traces of warmth vanished from his light blue eyes. He thought about Maria Arbatov's harrowing escape down the river and vowed that whoever did this would be made to pay.

Zavala was bending over scuff marks in the gravelly sand. "These guys didn't care about covering their tracks. The trail should be easy to follow."

"Let's go pay them our respects," Austin said.

Moving stealthily with guns in hand, they followed the footprints along the winding canyon. Rounding a corner, they came upon a fourth body.

Zavala knelt by the side of the dead man. "Knife wound between the shoulder blades. Strange. This gentleman wasn't shot like the other people. I wonder who he is."

Austin rolled the corpse over and stared at the unshaven features. "Not the kind of face you'd see at a chamber of commerce meeting."

The ground around the dead man showed evidence of a scuffle, and prints led away from the body. Austin thought he saw the smaller boot prints of a woman in with the others. Moving even more quietly, they made their way along the gorge and eventually came to a place where the footprints ended and the banking had been broken down.

They climbed from the ravine, and picked up the trail again in the permafrost. Although the countryside was open and they could see for miles, there was no sign of life except for a few wheeling seabirds. The trail led to a shallow valley that brought them to the cave entrance.

"Someone has been doing some mining," Zavala said.

"Nice call, Sherlock." Austin picked up a jackhammer, attached to a portable compressor, that had been lying on the ground near the entrance.