The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

Unlike other areas of Antarctica, where the ice was miles thick, there was little chance of driving into hidden crevasses here, so Linc drove fast, the crawler treads having little difficulty hauling them across the wind-scarred surface.

“It’s believed,” Mark said to cut the boredom, “that the mountains to our left are a continuation of the Andes in South America.” He stayed quiet when no one engaged him.

Three hours of monotonous driving found them two miles behind the Argentine research station. Given the militaristic nature of the current regime in Buenos Aires, they expected there would be perimeter security of some kind, most likely patrols on snow machines. Linda judged two miles was close enough. From here, they would proceed on foot.

Linda and Linc tightened up their arctic clothing. Mark was to remain with the snowcat so he could start the engine occasionally to keep it warm and also to be able to move it if trouble approached. They grabbed up their weapons and leapt to the ice. It was dark but the clouds had moved on, allowing the moon’s glow to glitter off the snow.

The night had an eerie stillness. It seemed the only sound in the world was their breathing and the crunch of their boots. It was as though they were walking on another, inhospitable planet. And in a sense they were, because without their protective suits they wouldn’t last five minutes.

Linda had pocketed a bunch of nuts and washers from a storage bin in the snowcat. She dropped one every fifty or so feet. The metal looked black against the ice and was easily seen. She carried a handheld GPS, but the little trail of metal bread crumbs was her low-tech backup.

They’d gone a mile when Linc suddenly dropped flat. Linda threw herself to the ground and started scanning the horizon.

“I don’t see anything,” she whispered.

Linc wiggled forward on his elbows. She matched him move for move and then she spotted what he’d seen. There were tracks in the ice from a snowmobile. They’d been right to be cautious. The Argentines did patrol around their base.

“Makes you wonder what they’re protecting,” Linc said.

“Let’s find out.”

They got to their feet again and continued onward. As a former SEAL, Franklin Lincoln was always on guard, but he moved with even more vigilance than usual. His head turned side to side as he studied the barren terrain around them, and every couple of minutes he would pull down his parka’s hood to listen for the telltale buzz of an approaching snowmobile.

The back of the Argentine base was protected by low jagged hills. Here the snow and ice had been blown away in spots to reveal rocky crags as black as midnight. It wasn’t a particularly difficult climb, but they moved with slow deliberation. Their thick boots weren’t suited to the task, and they were on constant lookout for patrols.

They reached the top and got their low-light binoculars ready before peering over the crest.

Linda didn’t know what to expect. She assumed the Argentines would have something similar to Wilson/George, but what lay below them between the hills and the sea was astonishing. It wasn’t an isolated little research station as had been claimed, but rather a sprawling town so cleverly camouflaged it was impossible to tell its size. There were dozens of buildings built on what at first looked like an ice shelf but was in fact an artificial construct made to look like ice. Because nature abhors a straight line, all the buildings were constructed with curved shapes to hide their outlines from satellite observation.

Huge white tents hid even more of the base. She imagined these were made of Kevlar to withstand the elements. They had also constructed a large dock with several piers, again made to look like ice.

The natural bay the facility abutted was ice-free, except for a dozen tall iceburgs. She zoomed in on one. Something wasn’t right about it. It looked real enough, but it was too tall for its base. It should have toppled over during the latest storm. They all should have. That’s when she realized they were artificial, too.

Oil platforms. That’s what they were—small offshore oil-drilling rigs.

Now that she understood the nature of what the Argentines had built here, she recognized that three odd hills near the pier were actually giant storage tanks that had been buried under earthworks redoubts. These weren’t just exploratory wells out there. They were about to go into full-scale production. The dock may not be large enough for the latest-generation supertankers, but it could certainly handle a hundred-thousand-tonner.

She knew what she was seeing flew in the face of one of the most important treaties in existence. Since the early 1960s, the Antarctic Treaty had maintained that the continent was a scientific preserve and that no nation could claim sovereignty over any part of it. The accord also stated that it was illegal for signatories to mine for raw materials or drill for oil, on land or offshore.

Linc tapped her on the shoulder and pointed farther south. She saw what he was pointing at, a separate building away from the others, but she wasn’t sure what piqued his interest. She shot him an inquiring glance.

“I think that’s a missile battery.”

If he was right, that was another violation, she believed. She clicked off more than a dozen pictures with her camera, shooting through the night vision binoculars. They weren’t the best pictures, but they were at least proof.

Linc slithered back over the crest of the hill. “What do you think?” he asked when they were clear.

“I’d say the Argies have been busy. Did you notice the icebergs in the bay?”

“Yeah. Oil derricks.”

Linda nodded. “We’ve got to report this.”

A wind was starting to pick up. It wasn’t enough to cause a whiteout, but visibility was down dramatically, and after so much time exposed Linda felt the cold starting to seep through her clothes. Remarkably, she could still see her trail of nuts and washers.

Linc continued to scan all around them, so he was the one to spot the snowmobile. He pushed Linda to the ground hard enough to cause the air to explode from her lungs. They didn’t know if they’d been spotted, and a tense few seconds passed as the machine’s single headlamp bounced through the darkness.

Time stretched, and it looked like the driver hadn’t seen them moving, or, if he had, he though it was a trick of the wind. The sled’s motor was a piercing whine, but he continued to angle away from them. At the last second, the sentry jerked the handlebars hard over and drove straight for the prone pair.