Zero Hour (NUMA Files 11)

His fatigue was instantly forgotten as he thought about the reconnaissance photos and the hot spots near the front edge of the glacier.

“Even people who live underground need to eat,” he whispered.

Kurt sniffed the air in an attempt to locate the source of the smell, but he was no bloodhound. The best he could do was get a general sense that it was traveling upslope toward him. He eased forward until he found a treelike column of snow and ice.

He pulled the flashlight from a pocket, covered it, and then switched it on, allowing a tiny portion of light to escape from beneath his glove.

The column rose about ten feet. A few yards away, a second column stood only four feet high. And thirty or forty feet from that, he saw a third and a fourth and a fifth.

Kurt shut off the light and made his way to the shorter column. He found it was open at the top and roughly circular. As the wind gusted, it made a hollow sound, like someone blowing across the top of an open wine bottle.

He leaned over and peered down into the mouth of the icy tube. It was about the size of a manhole on a city street. Looking down into it, he saw nothing but darkness, nor did he detect a strong scent of food or grease. Still, he could feel warmth rising up and bathing his face. It felt almost surreal after so many hours in the cold. It also felt humid.

Kurt put a hand on the edge of the column and broke a piece off. It was just ice, and not very thick at that. It was also blackened with soot. He began to understand what he was looking at.

He’d been in Iceland a few years before and found similar structures near the geothermal vents up on the slopes of the active volcanic mountains. As the heated air from inside made its way to the surface, it brought humidity with it, some of which cooled and froze almost instantly as it mixed with the frigid outside air. Slowly, like coral building up a reef or the black smokers in the depths of the ocean, the freezing water vapor created chimneylike tubes. Since they were merely thin sheets of ice, they tended to topple in high winds. But as long as the vent was active, they would regrow.

Kurt risked another quick flash from his flashlight, aiming it down into the opening.

He could see nothing. He felt heat but didn’t smell sulfur, like he’d have expected if they were volcanic.

He pulled out his Zippo lighter and one of the oily rags. He held the lighter against it and lit it, sheltering the rag from the wind until a third of it was burning. Next, he dropped it into the tube.

It fell through the darkness like a small meteorite, illuminating the smooth sides of the tunnel as it went, until suddenly it hit something and stopped.

As the rag burned, Kurt saw the outline of a grate. The chimney was not volcanic, it was man-made, designed to evacuate heat or smoke or something else undesirable from down below. It had to lead to Thero’s lair. It had to.

Quickly, Kurt set up his rope. He found a section of the ice and rubble in the lateral moraine and hammered in three anchors to secure the rope. He didn’t have a harness, or time to improvise one, but it didn’t matter, he would rappel down, using his hands to control the descent.

He dropped the rope in and eased over the edge. The fit was tight. He could barely see past his boots. Twenty feet down, the tunnel was free of ice and consequently slightly wider. Kurt continued to descend. By the time his feet hit the grate, he figured he’d dropped about a hundred feet.

Pressing himself against one edge of the chimney, he studied the metal grate. He could see a dusty floor ten feet below it. He heard no sound of movement.

Bouncing up and down a bit, he tested the strength of the grate. On his third little hop, he felt it give.

“Time to drop in,” he muttered to himself.

He looped the rope through one of the bars and tied it. Then he jumped hard, and the grate broke free.

The sound of rock splinters hitting the floor was no louder than a whisper, and both Kurt and the heavy grate remained suspended by the rope.

Kurt lowered them both down gently and touched down without a sound.

He was in.

Exactly what he’d made his way into was another question entirely.

FORTY-TWO

Paul Trout stood on the bridge of the Gemini as the ship surged through the waves toward the MV Rama. The merchant vessel had been traveling northeast since finishing its Orion-like pattern, and the Gemini had been racing to intercept it for the last eight hours. They were finally closing to within shouting distance.

“Think we’re going to be able to do this alone?” Gamay asked from a spot beside him.

“We’ve got a fighting chance,” Paul said. He would have preferred some backup, but they were so far off the beaten track, there wasn’t a military or coast guard vessel for a thousand miles.

“If it wasn’t for the weather, we could at least get some air support,” she said. “A few threatening passes by a formation of military jets or an Australian antisubmarine aircraft circling the ship relentlessly might have helped.”

Paul agreed completely, but the leading edge of a gale had reached the area. It was whipping up the seas and slinging freezing rain across the Gemini’s deck. Not the kind of conditions aircraft made low, showy passes in. Especially fifteen hundred miles from the nearest land.