The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

They had discussed the possibilities ad nauseam and would make their approach assuming the base had been taken by hostile forces. It took an hour to make their cautious approach. They found a low ridge overlooking the station and studied it through binoculars.

The futuristic structure with its domes and interconnecting tubes looked abandoned. The sound of a generator should have carried to them, but all they heard was the whistle of wind and the occasional slap of a door moving on its hinges. It was the personnel entrance to the adjacent garage building that flapped in the breeze. The station’s windows were all dark.

A chill ran down Linda’s back that had nothing to do with the weather. Through the green optics of her night vision binoculars, Wilson/George Station had an eerie feel unlike anything she had ever seen. Blowing wisps of snow took on the shapes of earthbound spirits doomed to haunt this desolate place.

“What do you think?” Linda asked to break herself out of the dark visions.

Mark turned to her. “A couple of days ago, I thought I was on the set of Apocalypse Now. Now I feel like I’m staring at the base from The Thing.”

“Interesting observation, but not what I’m talking about.”

“I’d say no one’s home,” Linc said.

“Looks like it to me.” Linda stuffed her binoculars back in her bag. “Let’s go, and stay low.”

Her arctic clothing was doing its job of keeping out the cold, but there was nothing she could do about the knot tightening in her stomach. The sense of foreboding built with each slow pace toward the station. Something bad had happened here, she felt, something very bad.

There were no tracks around the base, meaning nothing had moved here since the storm, though it was possible someone had come right before or during it. Linc climbed the stairs at the entrance, his assault rifle at the ready. Mark moved into position next to him, and Linda carefully reached for the handle. It pulled outward, revealing a dim vestibule beyond. The main entry door into the facility was ajar, meaning whatever latent heat that might have been trapped by the station’s thick coating of insulation had long since dissipated. There was no hope of any of the scientists surviving such prolonged exposure.

Linda indicated that Linc take point. The former SEAL nodded and peered through the station’s door. He recoiled slightly, then turned.

He mouthed, This ain’t good.

Linda moved up to his side and looked for herself. The room was in shambles. Clothing was strewn across the floor. Lockers had been emptied and overturned. A bench where workers once donned their boots had been flipped onto an object that truly held her attention. It was the body of a woman, turned blue from the cold. She was wearing a hoarfrost death mask, tiny icicles that clung to her skin and made her eyes opaque. What was worse was the blood, a pool of it frozen solid on the floor under her. Her chest was covered in it, and streaks and splashes decorated the walls.

“Gunshot?” Linda whispered after taking off her face shield.

“Knife,” Linc grunted.

“Who?”

“Dunno.” He sw

ept his weapon’s light around the space, checking each square foot, before stepping into the room. Linda and Mark entered at his side.

It took ten tension-fraught minutes to confirm that everyone at the station was dead. There were thirteen bodies in total. All of them showed similar signs of a gruesome death. Most had been stabbed and lay in hardened lakes of blood. A couple showed blunt force trauma, as if someone had taken a baseball bat to them. One of them showed defensive breaks to the arms—he had clearly put up a fight. The bones were splintered. Another looked like he’d been shot with a large-bore gun, though Linda had been assured that there were no firearms at the base. In fact there were none on the entire continent.

“Someone’s missing,” Linda told them. “Wilson/George had a winter staff of fourteen.”

“It’s gotta be our killer,” Mark said.

“I’ll go check the vehicle shed,” Linc said. “How many snowcats should there be?”

“Two, and two snowmobiles.”

A few minutes later, Linda was searching through a desk drawer when Mark called out to her from another module. His voice made her jump. To say the research station and its grisly inhabitants gave her the creeps was putting it mildly. The hair on her arms had yet to stand down. She found him in one of the small crew’s rooms, his light trained on more bloody smears on the wall. It took her a second to realize the lines weren’t random. It was writing.

“What does that mean?”

Mark read it aloud, “ ‘Mime Goering for crow Nicole.’ ”

“Was someone saying they were killed by Hermann Göring?”

“I don’t think so,” Mark said absently.

“It doesn’t make any sense. No one stationed here was named Nicole. I checked their roster.”

Murph didn’t reply. His lips moved silently as he read the bizarre sentence again and again.