ICEBOUND By Dean Koontz

Turning to Lin, Harry said, “Well, George?”

With his goggles up and his snow mask pulled down, Lin revealed his distress in every line and aspect of his face. “If we stayed here, if we didn’t leave before midnight, isn’t there a chance we’d come through the explosions on a piece of ice enough to sustain us? I was under the impression that we were counting on that before this submarine showed up.”

Harry put it bluntly: “If we’ve only one chance in ten thousand of living through the escape Captain Gorov has planned for us, then we’ve got not better than one chance in a million of living through the explosions at midnight.”

Lin was biting his lower lip so hard that Harry would not have been surprised to see blood trickle down his chin.

“George? Are you with us or not?”

Finally Lin nodded.

Harry picked up the microphone again. “Lieutenant Timoshenko?”

“I read you, Dr. Carpenter.”

“We’ve decided that your captain’s plan makes sense if only because it’s a necessity. We’ll do it—if it can be done.”

“It can be done, Doctor. We’re convinced of it.”

“We’ll have to move quickly,” Harry said. “There isn’t any hope in hell of our reaching the crevasse much before eleven o’clock. That leaves just one hour for the rest of it.”

Timoshenko said, “If we all keep in mind a vivid image of what’s going to happen at midnight, we should be able to hustle through what needs to be done in the time we have. Good luck to all of you.”

“And to you,” Harry said.

When they were ready to leave the cave a few minutes later, Harry had still not heard from Gunvald regarding the contents of those five lockers. When he tried to raise Edgeway Station on the radio, he could get no response except squalls of static and the hollow hiss of dead air.

Apparently, they were going to have to descent into that deep crevasse and go down the tunnel beneath it without knowing which of them was likely to make another attempt on Brian Dougherty’s life if the opportunity arose.

Even the most sophisticated telecommunications equipment was unable to cope with the interference that accompanied a storm in polar latitudes in the bitter heart of winter. Gunvald could no longer pick up the powerful transmissions emanating from the U.S. base at Thule. He tried every frequency band, but across all of them, the storm reigned. The only scraps of man-made sound that he detected were fragments of a program of big-band music that faded in and out on a five-second cycle. The speakers were choked with static: a wailing, screaming, screeching, hissing, crackling concert of chaos unaccompanied by even a single human voice.

He returned to the frequency where Harry was supposed to be awaiting his call, leaned toward the set, and held the microphone against his lips, as if he could will the connection to happen. “Harry, can you read me?”

Static.

For perhaps the fiftieth time, he read off his call numbers and their call numbers, raising his voice as if trying to shout above the interference.

No response. It wasn’t a matter of hearing them or being heard through the static. They simply weren’t receiving him at all.

He knew that he ought to give up.

He glanced at the spiral-bound notebook that lay open on the table beside him. Although he had looked at the same page a dozen times already, he shuddered.

He couldn’t give up. They had to know the nature of the beast in their midst.

He called them again.

Static.

CHAPTER FIVE: TUNNEL

10:45

DETONATION IN ONE HOUR

FIFTEEN MINUTES

Dressed in heavy winter gear and standing on the bridge of the Pogodin, Nikita Gorov methodically searched one third of the horizon with his night glasses, alert for drift ice other than the iceberg that was carrying the Edgeway group. That formidable white mountain lay directly ahead of the submarine, still driven by the deep current that originated three hundred forty feet below the surface and extended to about seven hundred eighty feet.

The storm-tossed sea, which churned on all sides of the boat, exhibited none of its familiar, rhythmic motion. It affected the ship in an unpredictable fashion, so Gorov couldn’t prepare for its next attack. Without warning, the boat rolled to port so violently that everyone on the bridge was thrown sideways; the captain collided with Emil Zhukov and Semichastney. He disentangled himself from them and gripped an ice-sheathed section of the railing just as a wall of water burst across the sail and flooded the bridge.

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