He nodded. “This time.”

“Steady on, everyone. Likely we’re all making a fuss over nothing,” Creston said crisply. “Still, it’s coming on dark soon. Ian, you bring the other portable transceiver, and I’ll get the medical kit. We’ll take one of the hand sleds, a tent, and a survival pack with us. Kayla, I want you to stand by the radio in case we have to tell the Haley we have a problem.”

“But…” The girl caught herself. This was no time to make a fuss. “Yes, sir.”

Kropodkin pulled his gloves on once more. “I will get the shotgun from the bunkhouse.”

Chapter Twenty

The USS Alex Haley

Jon Smith stared up drowsily at the springs of the overhead bunk, the lilting folk rock of Al Stewart’s “Sand in Your Shoes” flowing from the iPOD’s earphones. With tomorrow’s mission launch looming, sleep had been hard to come by. Now, finally, after an hour of assiduous courting, it was almost within reach.

The urgent knock at the cabin door snapped him back to full wakefulness. He sat up, tearing off the headset. “Yes?”

Valentina Metrace’s voice issued through the glowing louvers in the door. “We’ve trouble on Wednesday Island, Jon. It looks serious.”

He rolled out of the bunk and hit the light switch. “Right. We’re coming.”

Smyslov had already swung down from the upper birth and was hastily dressing. Smith pulled on a set of cold-weather BDUs and his boots, and in a few moments the two men were climbing the ladder to the radio room.

Apparently the mission launch wasn’t going to wait for tomorrow.

Beyond the rumble and susurrus of the ship’s routine internal white noise, an intermittent rasping and squealing reverberated through the Haley’s frames as chunks of growler ice brushed past the hull. There was also an occasional jolting shudder beyond the beat of the propellers as the cutter’s bow sheered into a thin pan of frozen seawater-sounds and sensations that had been occurring with growing frequency.

For the past three days the Alex Haley had been chewing her way deeper into the thickening pack ice of the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago, keeping to the open-water leads when she could, battering through the floating drift when possible, and sidestepping the looming bergs and bleak, cliff-cragged islands when necessary.

Captain Jorganson had put all his arctic seaman’s savvy into gaining ground toward their objective, but their rate of advance had slowed for every mile northward gained. The leads had been growing narrower and the berg clusters denser. Twice during the past forty-eight hours, Randi had launched in the Long Ranger, carrying one of the Haley’s officers on an ice survey flight, hunting for cracks in the pack for the cutter to wriggle through.

Winter was winning.

The cutter’s small radio room was already crowded by the time Smith and Smyslov squeezed their way in amid the gray steel equipment chassis. The duty operator sat hunched in front of the powerful sideband transceiver, nursing the frequency and squelch dials while Captain Jorganson leaned over his shoulder. Randi Russell and Valentina Metrace were both present as well, showing signs of their own hasty awakening. Professor Metrace hadn’t taken the time to pin up her hair, and a detached fragment of Smith’s awareness noted that her glossy black ponytail flowed almost to the small of her back. That was one question answered.

Dr. Trowbridge had been shouldered back into an odd corner of the compartment. As did everyone else, he looked worried, but also incensed, as if this cause for concern were something that should not be happening to him.

“What do we have?” Smith demanded.

“We’re not exactly sure,” Jorganson replied. “Two members of a science party apparently turned up missing shortly before nightfall. The expedition leader advised us a search was being organized but that he was not yet declaring an emergency. Then the station was knocked completely off the air for about five hours.”

“Did something happen to their communications gear?”

“In a manner of speaking, Colonel.” Jorganson glanced toward the overhead. “If it weren’t for the cloud cover, we’d be seeing a magnificent aurora borealis tonight. A solar flare is making a hash out of everything. Even the satellite phones are going down.”

“And?”

“And when we reacquired, the science station’s radio guard was calling mayday,” the Coast Guardsman continued. “The search party has not returned, nor has she been able to contact them.”

“She?”

“It’s the female grad student, Kayla Brown. Apparently she’s the only one left.”

The radioman pressed his headset closer and spoke into his lip mike. “KGWI, this is CGAH. We read you. I say again, we read you. Stand by.” The enlisted operator looked up. “We’ve got another hole opening, Captain. We got her again.”

“Put it on the speaker,” Jorganson commanded.

“Aye aye.”

Interference roared and crashed from the overhead, a thin, lonely woman’s voice sounding through it.

“Haley, Haley, this is Wednesday Island Station. They still haven’t come back! None of them! Something’s got to be wrong. When can we get help? Over.”

Captain Jorganson lifted the console hand mike from its clip. “This is the captain of the Haley, Miss Brown. We understand your situation and we are coming to your assistance with all possible speed.”

Jorganson lifted his thumb from the mike trigger. “The problem is that it might take us several days to work the ship through this last hundred miles of pack to Wednesday. We might never make it at all, given the way the freeze-up is coming on. We’ll have to rely on your helicopter to render any kind of immediate assistance, Colonel.”

Smith, in turn, looked to his pilot. “Randi, could we launch now?”

Randi Russell bit her lower lip, projecting and assessing. “We’re just barely coming into fly-and-return range of Wednesday,” she said after a few seconds. “But we have extremely low air temperatures and potential icing conditions, and the radios are bad. I’ve got to say it’s very marginal out there. I don’t like it, but we’ve got to wait for daylight.”

Smith accepted her judgment without question. “Can I have the mike, Captain?”

Jorganson handed it over.

“Ms. Brown, my name is Colonel Jon Smith. I’m the leader of the team being sent to investigate the downed bomber. We should be able to get to you shortly after first light tomorrow morning. I’m afraid you’re going to have to ride it out until then. Can you give us more on your situation? Over.”

“I’m here in camp and I’m fine,” she replied. “It’s everybody else who must be in trouble-bad trouble, or Dr. Creston would have sent some kind of word back and…and I can’t do anything! Over!”

“At the moment, you’re doing everything that can be done, Ms. Brown. We’ll take care of the rest when we get there. Now, I need for you to answer some questions. Over.”

“Go ahead, Colonel…Uh, over.”

“Have you or the other members of your party seen any indication of anyone else on the island? Lights, smoke, footprints, anything like that?”

The responding voice sounded startled. “Anyone else? No way! Other than you guys there’s nobody around for a thousand miles!”

“Are you certain, Ms. Brown? There’s been no sign of anybody at all?”

“What’s he talking about?” Dr. Trowbridge blurted from his corner of the radio room. “If he’s trying to blame the Inuit-”

“Hush,” Valentina Metrace snapped.

“No,” the staticky voice replied. “Nobody’s mentioned anything. Over.”

“Have you seen anything else out of the ordinary?” Smith probed. “A plane? A ship? Anything?”

“No. We see the contrail of an airliner going over the Pole now and again, but we haven’t seen anything else all summer. Why? Over.”