Smyslov spoke up sharply. “Colonel, given the situation, should not we immediately return to the base camp? Our priority must be to resume contact with our superiors.”
There could be no doubt about it. Smyslov wanted not to find that survival camp as urgently as Valentina wanted to locate it, and probably for the same reason.
“A valid point, Major, but we will still make a sweep up here for the aircrew’s survival camp.” Smith extended his hand and swept it from north to south, covering the eastern edge of the glacier. “Granted that Professor Metrace is correct, the crew’s best bet for finding shelter should be along there, the base of East Peak.”
“The camp may have been well drifted over during the last fifty years,” Valentina added, slinging the model 70 over her shoulder. “So I’d suggest watching for shapes, especially straight linear ones, under the surface of the snow.”
“Got it. Any other questions? Okay, let’s move out.” Smith kept his own rifle cradled in his arms as they started the trudge across the ice.
Smith worked to the north, angling across the saddleback to the point where the glacier broke into a wicked blocky tumble of shattered ice, a miniature Beardmore that slumped down the front face of the island to the narrow coastal strip. From that point, according to the plan, they swept back across the gap. Advancing line abreast at twenty-yard intervals, they scouted the broken stone and ice interface along the base of the eastern peak.
Valentina kept to the inside slot, ranging along the bottom of the slope with the eager intensity of a hunting bird dog. Smith took the center point in the line while Smyslov stayed on the outer flank. In addition to watching the glacial surface, Smith found himself covering Val as she worked and eyeing the mountain slopes above for a variety of potential threats: snow cornices, avalanche chutes, and the possibility of camouflaged observers.
He also found himself intermittently watching Gregori Smyslov out of the corner of his eye. Was the Russian looking for something else beyond the remains of the lost aircrew? Who was he waiting for, and what would be the key that would trigger him into action? And what would that action be?
They passed the crash site and climbed the last hundred gently sloping yards to the central ridge of the saddleback. Smith paused for a moment in his trudging advance to survey the greater world.
The sea smoke was closing in around Wednesday once more, the mists lapping at the island’s flanks, killing the horizons and enhancing the unworldly sense of isolation. For a moment the saddleback was a literal island in the sky, sandwiched in a layer of clarity between the fog and the overcast. How long it would last was questionable.
It didn’t really matter. Soon they must break off the search and head back for the station. And maybe just as well. If Val was right, locating the camp of the downed aircrew might be the activation point of the Russian alternate agenda. Maybe it would be wiser to eat this apple one bite at a time, keeping Smyslov as an ally. Deal with the anthrax question first; then force the confrontation.
Smith turned and then stumbled as his right crampon snagged momentarily. Automatically he glanced down at the obstruction.
The spiked toe of his arctic boot had kicked up and exposed a short length of wire, its black insulation crumbling with age and cold.
Smith hesitated for one moment more. It would be easy enough to scrape a boot edge of snow over it and just keep going. But then, not knowing had been at the heart of this crisis from the beginning. Deliberately courting ignorance now simply didn’t make sense. Smith shifted his rifle to his left hand and lifted the right over his head, the fist clinched in the rally signal.
“It’s Soviet,” Smyslov confirmed, kneeling beside the exposed wire. “A trailing antenna. The kind that could be streamed behind an aircraft for long-range communications.”
“Laying an insulated aerial across the ice has been a communications expedient used in polar environments before,” Valentina confirmed.
“But where is the radio set?” Smyslov asked, getting back to his feet. “Where is the camp? There is nothing, only the wire.”
“The easiest way to resolve that question is to follow it.” Smith pointed toward the base of east peak. “Thataway.”
The antenna had melted into the frozen surface like a thread across an ice cube, but the incessant scouring of the winds had kept it buried only a few inches deep. Exposing the antenna as they went, they found that it swept in a shallow curve, having drifted with the flow of the glacier. At one point stress had snapped the thin wire, but the broken end was located only a few feet away. Surprisingly it led toward an almost sheer blank-faced wall of basalt rock, vanishing into the shoulder-high drift of hard-packed snow at its base.
“What the hell?”
Undaunted, Valentina Metrace unslung her pack and rifle and drew her belt knife. Dropping to her knees, she began to tunnel into the drift like an industrious badger. After a moment Smith and Smyslov joined her.
It swiftly became apparent that the drifted snow was packed into an overhang in the black rock, a groove rasped into the side of the mountain by the incessant sawing drag of the glacier. And then Smith noticed the texture of the snow changing. It was growing more solid, and it was as if a pattern had been worked into it.
“These are snow blocks!” Valentina exclaimed.
It was true. Someone had used building blocks of compacted snow, igloolike, to build a wall within the overhang. Over the decades, the blocks had cold-welded together into a solid glassy mass that resisted the stabbing knife blades, but their resistance couldn’t prevent them from eventually yielding.
“Canvas! This is it! It’s a cave!”
The snow wall and the ancient canvas windscreen behind it collapsed into darkness. And the icy dankness of long unstirred air flowed out.
Smith retrieved the big electric lantern from his pack and played the beam into the mouth of the cavern. The tunnel was perhaps six feet wide and low enough so that even Valentina would be forced to stoop to enter. Small, jagged stalactites of black rock studded the cave roof.
“A lava tube,” Smith commented.
“To be expected on a volcanic island,” Valentina agreed. “Look, on the floor.”
The antenna wire and what looked like a hose extended from beneath the small avalanche of snow and ice they had created, to loop around a bend in the tunnel perhaps ten feet ahead.
“This must be it,” Valentina repeated. Hunching down, she started along the tunnel.
“Just a second.” Smith passed the historian her rifle, then caught up his own SR-25. “Let’s get the gear inside and out of sight, just in case.”
“I will take care of it, Colonel,” Smyslov spoke up.
“All right, we’ll wait for you if we find anything interesting.” Smith removed a couple of hand flares from his pack and moved into the cave after Valentina.
Smyslov lugged the packs inside the cave, then paused for a moment outside its mouth, taking a last long look around.
The others, the members of the Spetsnaz covering force, were here. He had seen no sign of their presence, but that wasn’t surprising. The men chosen for this task would be snow devils, invisible in this white world, leaving no hint of their presence or passage.
But they were present. He could feel them. They had been ordered to keep the crash site and its environs under strict observation. They would be watching him now, waiting for the one order Smyslov was authorized to give. The one command that would bring them in to kill.
If only the bloody political officer had done his bloody job!
Maybe then this all could be mended somehow. Maybe then he could regain control of the situation and stop any further escalation. But he must also be prepared to invoke the alternative. He must be ready to perform his duty.