Ice Hunt

“We won’t be able to reach anyone for a while,” Jenny said.

Matt nodded. Such a dazzling display, created as solar winds struck the upper atmosphere of the earth, would frazzle most communications. But they didn’t have very far to go. Another half hour at most. Already the northern horizon had begun to brighten with the lights of the oil fields and distant Prudhoe Bay.

They flew in silence for several minutes more, simply enjoying the light show in the sky, accompanied by Bane’s snoring in the back. For these few moments, it felt like home. Maybe it was simply the aftereffects of their harrowing day, an endorphin-induced sense of ease and comfort. But Matt feared wounding it with speech.

It was Jenny who finally broke the silence. “Matt…” The timbre of her voice was soft.

“Don’t,” he said. It had taken them three years and today’s life-and-death struggle to bring them into one space together. He did not want to threaten this small start.

Jenny sighed. He did not fail to note her tone of exasperation.

Her fingers tightened on the wheel, moving with a squeak of leather on vinyl. “Never mind,” she whispered.

The moment’s peace was gone—and it had not even taken words. Tension filled the cabin, raising a wall between them. The remainder of the journey was made in total silence, strained now, bitter.

The first few oil derricks came into view, decorated in lights like a Christmas tree. Off to the left, a jagged silver line marred the perfect tundra, rising and falling over the landscape like a giant metal snake. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It ran from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s north coast to Valdez on Prince William Sound, a river of black gold.

They were closing in on their destination. The pipeline led the way. Jenny followed it now, paralleling its run. She tried the radio, attempting to reach the airport tower at Deadhorse. Her frown was answer enough. The skies still danced and flashed.

She banked in a slow arc. Ahead, the township of Prudhoe Bay—if you could call it a town—glowed in the night like some oilman’s Oz. It was mostly a company town, built for the sole purpose of oil production, transportation, and supporting services. Its average population was under a hundred, but the number of transient oil workers caused this number to vary, depending on the workload. There was also a small military presence here, protecting the heart of the entire North Slope oil production.

Beyond the town’s border stretched the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean, but it was hard to tell where land ended and ocean began. Spreading from the shore were vast rafts of fast ice extending for miles into the ocean, fusing eventually with the pack ice of the polar cap. As summer warmed the region, the cap would shrink by half, retreating from shorelines, but for now, the world was solid ice.

Jenny headed out toward the sea, circling Prudhoe Bay and positioning herself for landing at the single airstrip. “Something’s going on down there,” she said, tipping up on one wing.

Matt spotted it, too: a flurry of activity at the edge of town. A score of vehicles were racing across the snowy fields from the military installation, hurrying out of town in their general direction. He glanced to the other side of their plane.

Below lay the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The giant buildings of Gathering Station 1 and Pump Station 1 were lit up behind Cyclone fencing. Here the North Slope oil was cooled, water removed, gas bled off, and the oil began its six-day, eight-hundred-mile journey to the tankers on Prince William Sound.

As they crossed near Pump Station 1, Matt noted a section of the Cyclone fencing had been knocked down. He glanced back to the racing military vehicles. Foreboding lanced through him.

“Get us out of here!” Matt snapped.

“What—?”

The explosion ripped away any further words. The building that housed Gathering Station 1 burst apart in a fiery blast. A ball of flame rolled skyward. The sudden hot thermals and blast wave threw their plane up on end. Jenny fought the controls, struggling to keep them from flipping completely over.

Yells arose from the backseats, accompanied by Bane’s barking.

Swearing under her breath, Jenny rolled the Otter away from the conflagration. Flaming debris rained down around them, crashing into the snowy fields, into buildings. New fires erupted. Pump Station 1 blew its roof off next, adding a second ball of rolling flame. The four-foot-diameter pipe that led into the building tore itself apart, blasting up along its length. Burning oil jetted in all directions. It didn’t stop until it reached the first of the sixty-two gate valves, halting the destruction from escalating up the pipeline.

In a matter of seconds, the wintry calm of the slumbering township became a fiery hell. Rivers of flame flowed toward the sea, steaming and writhing. Buildings burned. Smaller, secondary explosions burst from gas mains and holding tanks. People and vehicles raced in all directions.

“Jesus Christ!” Craig exclaimed behind them, his face pressed to the glass.

A new voice crackled from the radio, full of static, coming from the general channel. “Clear all airspace immediately! Any attempt to land will be met with deadly force.”

“They’re locking the place down!” Jenny exclaimed, and banked away from the fires. She headed out over the frozen sea.

Her father stared back to the coast. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Matt mumbled, watching the coastline burn. “Accident, sabotage…whatever it was it seemed timed to our arrival.”

“Surely it can’t have anything to do with us,” Craig said.

Matt pictured the downed section of Cyclone fencing, the racing vehicles from the military installation. Someone had broken in, setting off alarms. And after the last two days, he could not dismiss the possibility that it was somehow connected to them. Disaster seemed to be dogging them ever since the reporter’s plane crashed. Someone sure as hell did not want the political reporter for the Seattle Times to reach that SCICEX station out on the ice.

“Where can we go now?” Craig asked.

“I’m running low on fuel,” Jenny cautioned, tapping an instrument gauge as if this would miraculously move the pointer.

“Kaktovik,” John said gruffly.

Jenny nodded at her father’s suggestion.

“Kaktovik?” Craig asked.

Matt answered, “It’s a fishing village on Barter Island, near the Canadian border. About a hundred and twenty miles from here.” He turned to Jenny as she banked the Otter westward. “Do you have enough fuel?”

She lifted one eyebrow. “You may have to get out and push us the last few miles.”