“Pavel, we must get our hands on the probe,” said Muratov resolutely.
“Yes sir, we could have a detachment from the Special Operations Group on their way to Buenos Aires within a matter of hours. They could board the ship when it docks and seize the probe before anyone knew what was going on.”
Muratov shook his head. “No, my old friend, this will take a little more discretion than the boys in the Special Operations Group are capable of displaying. If you need something broken, they are the men to use; however, I want this done quietly, very quietly. With an election next year, this cannot come back on me. I want you to look outside of the normal channels and find me someone who is able to carry out this assignment with the utmost secrecy. Do you still have connections in the Black Ops world?”
Zharov smiled. “Sir, I know of one or two organizations that, for the right price, will be able to pull this off.”
“Pavel, price is of no interest to me. Pay them whatever they ask. I want that probe brought back to Russia; barring that, I want it and the soil sample destroyed.”
“Yes, sir, I understand fully.” With that, Zharov left the room to make a few discreet calls to connections he still maintained with several mercenary team leaders in Europe and North America.
Muratov suddenly felt tired and drained. He sat back in his chair and stared over at the far wall, at a painting of Marshal Kutuzov, the man who had saved Russia from Napoleon in winter of 1812. Muratov wondered if he was facing the same threat to his country’s existence now and if was strong enough to rise up and face the coming challenge. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then let out a deep sigh. He trusted Zharov to sort things out. There isn’t a better man in Russia to have at one’s side, thought Muratov. Opening his eyes, Muratov quickly scribbled a note for his executive assistant to pass to the president saying that he was taking a couple of weeks leave in the Crimea. No matter what happened next, Muratov didn’t want it sticking to him, not when the power of the presidency was so close that he could taste it.
12
After three days painstakingly reviewing each find, Maria had come to the conclusion that the debris under the ice could not have come from the missing Royal Navy airship. It had to be the destroyed remains of the Dornier Do J. Everyone was beginning to wonder if the Soviet probe had actually landed safely on the island. So far, they had not found a single piece of the return vehicle. If they didn’t come across something soon, Mitchell knew that they would have to abandon the project and let Houston know that it had all been a wild-goose chase.
“Anyone for lunch?” asked Jackson, as he stretched out his tired and aching back. Sleeping on a cot was far from his favorite thing to do. However, the other option, sleeping on the ice, was even less appealing to him.
“Sure, why not,” replied McMasters as he looked up at Olav’s Peak, just visible through the swirling fog still gripping the island.
“Maria, feel like taking a break?” asked Mitchell, letting go of the sled. When she didn’t respond, he looked over and saw her staring down intently at her laptop. “Find something?”
“Yes!” screamed out Maria, jumping up into the air. Full of excitement, she ran over beside Mitchell and showed him the image on the computer screen.
“What is it?” asked Mitchell.
“It’s the heat shield,” said Maria with a smile a mile wide.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” replied Maria. “It’s too near the surface of the ice to have come from the other wreck, and it conforms to the size and shape of the probe’s heat shield. My God, it’s really here.”
Mitchell looked at the image on the screen. It looked like a thick tire trapped in the ice. If Maria said that it was the heat shield, who was he to argue with her?
“How far under the ice is the heat shield?” asked Mitchell.
“Just over a meter, not half as bad as I had first envisioned,” said Maria, still smiling.
Mitchell turned to his colleagues and told them to head back to the camp, fix lunch, and return with it. They were going to work through the afternoon. Two hours later, they found several of the probe’s antennae that had been ripped off when it was dragged across the glacier by its parachutes. Jackson and McMasters stopped marking the ice behind them with flags; instead, they hovered near Maria like a pair of curious kids, peering over her shoulder, watching as each new discovery was made. Another hour passed, when suddenly Maria told them to stop what they were doing and look down at the screen on the GPR.
“My God,” said Mitchell when he saw the twisted and bent debris of the missing seaplane resting at a steep angle under the ice.
“There must have been a deep crevice here at one time,” surmised Maria. “The plane must have slid along the ice until it came to a halt inside the fissure.”
“What is that odd shape beside the plane?” asked Mitchell, pointing to a gray area on the screen.
“The GPR is reading a void in the ice. A cave or gap, perhaps,” said Maria.
“Poor bastards probably died on impact,” said Jackson, shaking his head as he looked at the image on the screen.
“Maria, what’s that?” asked McMasters, pointing at an object on the screen.
Maria let out a low whistle. “That, gentlemen, is the remainder of the return vehicle. You can see the distinct cylindrical shape where the soil sample would be stored and the smudge on the screen beside it has to be its parachutes trapped with it under the ice.”
“How deep would you say it is?” asked Mitchell.
“It’s a little deeper than the heat shield. There must have been a depression in the ice when it finally came to rest. I’d say that it’s sitting at just under two meters under the ice.”
“Child’s play,” said Jackson sarcastically.
“Quit whining. We have plenty of power tools,” said Mitchell. “Shouldn’t take us more than a few hours to dig it out, and then we can all go home.”
Maria smiled at the thought of going home. “No offense to you fine gentlemen, but you could all use a good shower.”
“I don’t stink that bad,” complained Jackson, pretending to take a quick smell under his fleece top.
“Yeah, trust me, she’s right. You do,” said Mitchell to his friend.
“Ryan, I think it’s too late in the day to start digging,” said McMasters, looking over at the gray horizon.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” replied Mitchell. “I’ll make a few calls after supper. We’ll have an early night and get up at dawn tomorrow morning. We can get right to work and with a little bit of luck, we’ll be back on board the Southern Star tomorrow evening and on our way home.”
“Amen to that,” added Maria.
As they all walked back to their camp, no one noticed McMasters reach into a jacket pocket and press a button on a small, but powerful transmitter that he had hidden there. Within minutes, a ship that had been waiting silently two hundred kilometers away turned north and began to sail at full speed for Bouvet Island.
The next morning, the sun crept up on the horizon, bathing the sky in a deep-pink hue. With a cup of steaming-hot coffee in his hand, Mitchell walked over and looked down at the spot in the ice where the recovery vehicle was entombed. For a few minutes, he pondered their next move. For tools, they had a metal tripod with a heavy-duty winch for lifting the device out of the ice, a couple of chainsaws, several axes, and a gas-powered drill. Although Jackson was keen on it, explosives were out of the question. They couldn’t risk damaging the probe.