Smith scrambled up the jumbled blocks of basalt to a point near the cavern roof. The paleness was a piece of doubled parachute silk, staked out and held in place by wedged chunks of stone.
A windblock.
Smith tore out the stones and pulled the cloth aside and felt the icy, dank flow of air on his face. The lava tube continued beyond the survival camp cavern! At some time in the past there had been a rockfall that had created a natural bulkhead in the tunnel. But a gap remained, large enough for a man to crawl through to another open section that lay beyond.
Smith snaked through the gap and worked his way down the slope of the inner face. Probing ahead, the beam of the lantern faded into the darkness. The tube flared out to the size of an automobile tunnel and seemed to continue for some distance. Taking a compass from his pocket, he flipped it open and checked the glowing luminescent dial. Orienting himself and making the mental correction for the nearness of the magnetic pole, Smith judged that the tunnel roughly paralleled the outer facing of the mountain.
Maybe…just maybe. It depended on how far the tube ran and if there was a second way out. With deliberation he started to work his way deeper into the tunnel, trying to gauge the angle of the slope. Was he above or below the level of the glacier?
The going was slow and treacherous. Olive-tinted puddles of slick, transparent glaze ice lay congealed around furniture-sized slabs of fallen basalt. The floor of this tube section was more broken and uneven than the camp cavern, possibly an indication that it was more unstable as well. Smith had neither the time nor the inclination to be concerned about it. A hundred yards…two hundred…
There! A ribbon of white against the black rock, a spill of snow down the tunnel wall!
Smith scrambled up the glassy slope of the miniature glacier to where the compacting snow was being forced into the lava tube. It was at a point maybe eight feet above the cave floor and took in an area the size of a coffee table. Bracing a foot on a solid stone ledge, he snapped off the lantern and let his eyes adapt. After a couple of minutes he could make out the faintest luminescence radiating through the snow plug from the outside. Daylight!
Drawing his bayonet, Smith started to dig, tunneling his way carefully toward the outside world. The luminescence grew brighter, and Smith recognized that he was digging through another of the ice-crusted snowdrifts such as they had found caking the first lava tube entrance. This was the back door he’d been seeking.
Suddenly Smith froze. Something more was leaking in from the outer world beyond the light.
Voices-faint, muffled, and not speaking English.
Smith resumed his digging, but he moved slowly, quietly, and with infinite care not to break through the drift. He eased a last knife thrust through the ice shell, creating a single blade-wide horizontal penetration to the outside. Daylight gleamed, bright to Smith even through the heavy overcast. He squinted through the narrow observation slit he had created.
This second entrance opened into a shallow notch in the cliff face. A bare forty feet away, two armed figures in snow camouflage crouched behind the shoulder of the notch, peering around the corner toward the main cave entrance.
Like a man moving on nitroglycerin-filled eggs, Smith backed out of the snow tunnel and down to the cave floor, easing each step and testing each foot and handhold. He had found an option.
Chapter Thirty-three
Wednesday Island Station
Randi saw it coming and was ready for it. The blows were delivered open-palm, but they were no mere slaps. She relaxed her neck and shoulder muscles and rode with the vicious left-right-left of the blows, minimizing their effect. Even so, stars flashed behind her eyes for a moment, and her skin burned.
There had been no reason for the assault. Randi had not spoken a word to her attacker, nor he to her. It was only the predictable start of the testing and breaking process, a testament on the part of her captors that they were not the least bit hesitant about inflicting pain and injury. Randi was already fully aware of that fact. She shook off the effects, straightened, and met her assailant’s gaze, her features defiantly neutral.
She knew from her escape-and-evasion training that this was a bad tactic. She should be keeping her eyes lowered in submissive mode. Given the animalistic psychology of the terrorist, meeting eyes was a threat act that could trigger a violent if not lethal reaction.
But what the hell, they were going to kill her anyway.
The man who had struck her was a giant in size and in dissipation, his height and bulk enhanced by his cold-weather gear. A tangled, graying ginger beard flowed over the opened collar of his parka, and narrowed pale blue eyes peered from beneath shaggy brows of the same color, bloodshot and intent.
Those eyes studied Randi’s face for a long moment; then the laughter wrinkles clenched around them and he chuckled, deep in his chest. Randi was not comforted. This man’s anger would likely be more merciful than his humor.
“This is a sassy little bit,” the big man rumbled. “What do you know about her, Stefan?”
“That she is some kind of American government agent, Uncle,” Kropodkin replied, spite heavy in his reply, “and that the bitch owes me.”
Uncle, Randi mused grimly-so it was all a family affair. Some incredible roll of random chance’s dice had placed Kropodkin’s fox inside the science expedition’s henhouse. The security services of the world were totally at the mercy of such flukes.
They were in the laboratory hut: Randi, Professor Trowbridge, Kropodkin, the redheaded giant, and two more of his gang-watchful, stone-featured Slavic types. Randi had been disarmed, searched, and stripped of her parka and heavy outer snow pants, and her wrists cuffed with the good old-fashioned steel variety of handcuffs.
One of the guards stood immediately behind her, and intermittently she felt the brush of a submachine gun muzzle between her shoulder blades.
“And what of him?” the giant asked, nodding toward Dr. Trowbridge.
Kropodkin’s flat, dark eyes flicked briefly toward the academic, the man he had beseeched for aid and who had defended him in the face of Randi’s accusations. “A schoolteacher. He is nothing.”
Trowbridge, his hands cuffed behind him as well, was reaching the apex of his waking nightmare. He had gone so pale, his skin had a greenish tinge, and Randi feared cardiac arrest might be imminent for the man. He stayed on his feet only because of the blows and kicks that had followed when his legs buckled. The crotch of his corduroy trousers was soaked.
Randi wanted to speak to him, to say some word of encouragement or comfort, but she dared not. For Trowbridge’s sake, she had to maintain a posture of complete indifference to him. If she exhibited even a hint of compassion toward the academic, their captors might view his systematic torment as a lever to get at her.
“Come, now, Stefan,” the big man said jovially. “No one is nothing. Everyone is something.” He turned to Trowbridge. “Come, now, my friend, you are something, aren’t you?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m…I am Dr. Rosen Trowbridge, the administrative director of the Wednesday Island Science Program. I’m a Canadian citizen. I’m…a…a noncombatant! A civilian! I have nothing to do with…with these other people!”
“See, Stefan?” The big man stepped across the laboratory to where Trowbridge cowered against the wall near the stove. He gave the doctor a light slap on the shoulder. “He is a doctor. A man of learning. An intelligent man.”
He glanced back at Randi. “And you, my pretty pretty? Are you intelligent, too?”
Randi didn’t reply. She stared past him out of the laboratory hut windows, her unfocused gaze automatically taking in the movements of the other men brought in aboard the giant helicopter, noting the supplies they were unloading, trying to spot where they might be establishing their sentry goes and guard posts around the camp perimeter.