Plausible deniability. It was the new catchphrase of modern battle.
But now two prisoners had escaped, two eyewitnesses who could place him, a Russian admiral, on-site.
Viktor forced himself to take a deep calming breath. He stanched his anger, snuffing it out. His initial reaction had been reflexive, purely military. Ultimately it didn’t matter. He placed a hand over the Polaris wrist monitor, reminding himself of the larger picture.
Viktor found his calm center again. Besides, both governments had authorized this secret war, what was coyly termed in political circles as a skirmish. Such clandestine battles occurred regularly between foreign powers, including the United States. They were waged in hidden corners of the world: the waters off North Korea, the deserts of Iraq, the hinterlands of China, and more than once even here in the lonely wilds of the polar seas. The chains of command understood these skirmishes, but the details never reached the radar screens of the public at large.
Out of sight, out of mind.
“Admiral,” Mikovsky continued, “what are your orders?”
Viktor reviewed the current situation. It was unfortunate but salvageable — yet he could take no further chances. Omega and its prisoners were no longer an asset. The prize was plainly not over there. He kept his voice stoic and firm. “Captain, take the Drakon to Omega.”
“Sir?”
“Once there, draw back our men from the base and retreat.”
“And Omega…the prisoners?”
“Once our men are clear, ignite the buried charges. Melt the entire base into the ocean.”
A long pause. It was a death sentence for those innocents left behind. The captain’s words returned faintly. “Yes, sir.”
“Afterward, return here. Our mission is almost complete.” Viktor replaced the handset to its cradle. He turned to the men gathered around him. “Now to the other problem at hand.”
Matt gaped, horrified, along with the others. A long curving hall stretched out from the main lab room. Lit by bare bulbs, the passage followed the outer wall of this level, circling and vanishing around the curve of this tier. Inset into the back wall every couple of feet were steel tanks standing on end, taller than Matt by a foot. Thick rubber hoses and twisted conduits ran along both floor and ceilings, connecting tank to tank. Though the fronts of the tanks were windowed in thick glass, the details inside remained murky because of the thick frost over the clear surface.
But a dozen of the closest tanks had the frost recently scraped from them. The glow of the overhead bulbs shone plainly upon the sight inside. The interior of each tank was filled with solid ice, a perfect blue clarity.
And like an insect trapped in amber, a shape was embedded in the heart of each tank. Naked. Human. Each face contorted in a rictus of agony. Palms pressed against the glass, fingers blue and clawing. Men. Women. Even children.
Matt stared down the long tunnel. Tank after tank. How many were there? He turned his back on the macabre sight. He saw the shocked looks on the others’ faces.
Two members of the group, though, looked more embarrassed than horrified.
He walked back to the main room and faced them: Lieutenant Bratt and Amanda Reynolds. “What is all this?” He waved an arm down the hall.
Craig appeared at his side. Washburn and the civilian scientists gathered with him.
“It’s what the Russians are trying to cover up,” Amanda said. “A secret lab dating back to World War Two. Used for human experimentation.”
Matt studied the barred door. Greer and Pearlson stood guard there. For the moment, the Russians had given up on trying to get the door open. They were probably wary of the return of the grendels after chasing them back into the Crawl Space with gunfire. But that fear wouldn’t keep them out forever.
“What were the bastards trying to do here?” Washburn asked, looking the most shaken, her stoic demeanor shattered.
Amanda shook her head. “We don’t know. We locked down the lab as soon as we discovered what was hidden here.” She pointed to a glass cabinet that contained a neat row of journals, covering two shelves. “The answers are probably there. But they’re all coded in some strange script. We couldn’t read them.”
Craig approached and cracked the door open. He leaned over, studying the bindings. “There are numbers here. Dates, it looks like. He ran a finger down the journals. “If I’m reading this right, from January 1933…to May 1945.” He pulled the last one out and flipped through it.
“Twelve years,” Bratt said. “It’s hard to believe this operation ran for so long without anyone knowing.”
Amanda answered, “Back then, communication up here was scant. Travel rare. It wouldn’t be hard to hide such a place.”
“Or lose it when you wanted to,” Matt added. “What the hell happened here?”
The biologist, Dr. Ogden, spoke from the hallway. He straightened from one tank. “I may have an idea.”
Everyone turned to him.
“What?” Bratt asked brusquely.
“The grendels,” he said to the lieutenant commander. “You saw what happened. The specimens came to life after being frozen for centuries.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “That’s impossible.”
Bratt turned to her. “No, ma’am. Dr. Ogden is right. I saw it happen with my own eyes.”
Dr. Ogden continued: “Such a miraculous resurrection is not unheard of in the natural world. Certain turtles hibernate in frozen mud over an entire winter, then rise again with the spring thaw.”
“But frozen solid?” Amanda asked.
“Yes. Arctic wood frogs freeze as hard as stone during the winter. Their hearts don’t beat. When frozen, you can cut them in half, and they don’t bleed. All EEG activity ceases. In fact, there’s no cellular activity at all. For all intents and purposes, they’re dead. But come spring, they thaw, and within fifteen minutes, their hearts are beating, blood pumping, and they’re jumping around.”
Matt nodded when Amanda glanced at him. “It’s true. I’ve read about those frogs.”
“How can that be?” Amanda argued. “When a body freezes, ice expands in the cells and destroys them. Like frostbite. How do the frogs survive that?”
“The answer is quite simple,” Ogden said.
Amanda raised an eyebrow.
“Sugar.”
“What?”
“Glucose specifically. There’s a Canadian researcher, Dr. Ken Storey, who has been studying Arctic wood frogs for the past decade. What he’s discovered is that when ice starts forming on a frog’s rubbery skin, its body starts filling each cell with sugary glucose. Increasing the osmalality of the cell to the point that life-killing ice can’t form inside it.”
“But you said the frogs do freeze?”
“Exactly, but it is only the water outside the cells that ices up. The glucose inside the cell acts as a cryoprotectant, a type of antifreeze, preserving the cell until thawed. Dr. Storey determined that this evolutionary process is governed by a set of twenty genes that convert glycogen to glucose. The trigger for what suddenly turns these specific genes on or off is still unknown, but a hormonal theory is most advocated, something released by the frog’s glandular skin. The odd thing, though, is that these twenty genes are found in all vertebrate species.”