As soon as Richard had rejoined them they sprinted across the tundra.
The helicopter exploded, sending fragments out into the landscape. At its heart an intense white light melted metal and everything else it came in contact with.
Noticing the Russian helicopter turn towards the black smoke whipped about by the wind, Richard and the SEALs lay down amongst a bunch of the shrub that thrived in the desolate wilderness. From their concealed positions they watched the helicopter swoop towards Krisztina when the pilot spied her waving at them. The helicopter landed near her, and two men climbed out. After conversing with Krisztina for a few moments they gazed towards the dissipating blast cloud over the facility and then over at the burning wreckage before all three boarded the helicopter. It took off and headed for the downed craft, where it hovered with a man leaning out of the open rear door scrutinizing the wreckage. Seeming to be satisfied with the explanation Krisztina had given for its presence, the man closed the door. The Russians turned and headed back the way they had come.
While waiting for the helicopter to fly far enough away to no longer be a danger, Mason spoke, “I’ve just thought of something. We’ve no rations, and it’s a hell of a long walk to the crater. I’m already starving.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Mason. You could do with losing some of that fat you’ve been collecting lately,” said Sullivan.
Deciding the Russians were now far enough away, Colbert prompted his team to restart their long walk to Batagaika crater.
“Yeah, but,” protested Mason, “after what all we’ve just survived, the aliens, the bomb and all, I’d hate to starve to death.”
As he climbed to his feet, Richard smiled at Boris beside him. He reached down and squeezed his side playfully, feeling the meaty flesh beneath his hairy covering. “Oh, I don’t think starving will be a problem we’ll have to worry about.”
Boris looked up at Richard and chattered at him.
As they headed across the tundra, Boris grabbed Richard’s hand.
Richard looked down at the chimp. “Your lousy taste in friends could come back to bite you in the ass, literally.”
Boris hooted and chattered at Richard.
Richard sighed. “No, I’m not carrying you.”
Boris chattered again.
“Maybe you’re right. Mason is chubbier and might be tastier.”
Mason turned his head at Richard and glared.
Factual Places and Events mentioned in Ice Rift – Siberia
The secret laboratory named Kamera is where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.
The Soviet Union’s secret poison factory was established in 1921, not long after an attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin via poison-coated bullets. Originally dubbed the “Special Room,” it was later called Laboratory No. 1, Lab X, and Laboratory No. 12 before becoming known simply as the Kamera or “the Chamber” under Joseph Stalin.
It’s no secret that the KGB used assassination, often by poison, to silence political dissidents who spoke out against the Soviet regime (known within the agency as “liquid affairs”). What remains shrouded in secrecy to this day, however, is the mysterious laboratory where the toxins were concocted.
The goal of the Chamber was to devise a poison that was tasteless, odorless, and, to protect the anonymity of the assassin, a substance that couldn’t be detected in an autopsy. This led to innovations such as a cyanide that could be deployed as a mist, a poison that made the cause of death appear to be a heart attack, and a gas pistol that could shoot liquid up to 65 feet away. One politician was killed by a poison sprayed onto his reading lamp, which the heat from the bulb caused to disperse through the room with no trace.
As for the lab itself, very little is known to this day, including the exact location. KGB agents were forbidden to enter the lab and were never informed of its whereabouts; only Chamber staff and high-level officials were allowed in. Some disturbing details were revealed in 1954 by a KGB defector, who admitted that poisons were tested on political prisoners and described the lab as being near the secret police headquarters in Lubyanka.
The Soviet government, for its part, had just the previous year claimed that the lab was abolished. But many believe it may still be functioning in some form today, and the lethal innovations developed there still in use. Though it’s been some 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, even within the last decade enemies of the Kremlin have been found dead in mysterious circumstances, including some, apparently, by poison.
Batagaika crater is a dramatic tadpole-shaped hole in the ground located near the Yana river basin in a vast area of permafrost.
The crater is also known as a "megaslump" and is the largest of its kind: almost 0.6 miles (1km) long and 282ft (86m) deep. But these figures will soon change, because it is growing quickly. A more recent report has it at 100 metres (328 feet) deep and continually expanding in size.
Locals in the area avoid it, saying it is a "doorway to the underworld".
For scientists, the site is of great interest. Examining the layers exposed by the slump can give indications of how our past climates of our world once looked. At the same time, the acceleration of the growth gives an immediate insight into the impact of climate change on the increasingly fragile permafrost.
The trigger that led to the crater started in the 1960s. Rapid deforestation meant that the ground was no longer shaded by trees in the warmer summer months. This incoming sunlight then slowly warmed the ground. This was made worse by the loss of cold "sweat" from trees as they transpire, which would have kept the ground cool.
As the ground surface warmed up, it caused the layer of soil directly above the permafrost to warm and thaw. Once this process started and the ice was exposed to warmer temperatures, melting escalated.
Analyzing the layers now exposed could reveal 200,000 years of climatic history. Continuous growth means that the crater gets deeper and deeper every year, exposing more of the past. Scientists have already found ancient forests and frozen remains of a musk ox, mammoth, and a 4,400-year-old horse inside the crater and believe there is much more to find.
Two 12,000-year-old cave lion cubs preserved in remarkable detail have emerged from thawing ice in Siberia.
After thousands of years trapped beneath the ice, their young faces are still covered in fur. You can even make out the whiskers on their cheeks and the tips of their sharp retractable claws.
Named for the Siberian riverbank where they were found, Uyan and Dina are the most complete cave lion remains ever discovered. They could prove key to learning more about a species that became extinct over 12,000 years ago.
Over the summer of 2015, flooding along the Uyandina River exposed the ice lens where the cubs were buried. By a stroke of luck, a team of contractors was in the area collecting mammoth tusks. One sharp-eyed worker, Yakov Androsov, spotted the remains through a crack in the ice.
Until now, everything we knew about cave lions came from Stone Age art and fossilized bones. One of the largest feline predators of the ice ages, the cave lion made its way from Africa to Europe about 700,000 years ago, gradually spreading to most of North Eurasia. The size of a modern-day Siberian tiger, the cave lion once roamed everywhere from the British Isles to the Yukon in Canada.
In 2017 the frozen remains of another cave lion cub likely dating back to the last Ice Age was recently unveiled in Russia.