12:22 P.M.
“We have to risk it,” Mac said.
Standing waist-deep in frigid water, he slid the bronze bar away from the door of the captain’s cabin. He turned to John, who nodded.
Better to die on our own terms.
Half an hour ago, a massive explosion had rocked through the glacier. Mac had expected to be crushed under tons of ice. But as echoes of the blast died away, he and John found themselves still alive. Then the waters began to flood into the cabin, indicating the meltwater river had been dammed up by a collapse of ice from the blast.
Mac could guess what had happened. The bastards must’ve blown the entrance into the glacier, slamming the door on their way out.
Rather than allowing them to drown, like two trapped rats, Mac took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It took effort due to the rising waters. He cringed, expecting to be ambushed by hordes of fiery crabs. Instead, his flashlight revealed half of the stern was gone. The remaining hold was a smoldering ruin lit by a few fiery timbers. Flames also pooled in rafts atop the water.
Through the dense smoke, handfuls of crabs glowed ruddily in the darkness. They crouched on blazing bits of flotsam or sat atop boulders of ice. A pair even rode a corpse floating in the water. Most appeared not to be moving, their fires ebbing. A few scrabbled feebly.
Whatever volatile compound it was that fueled the creatures, it seemed to be losing its potency. Mac searched for the rest of the mass of crabs, but they were nowhere to be seen. Maybe the sudden flooding was too much for them to handle, and they all drowned away.
Still, as he led the way slowly into the hold, he warily kept his distance from those he could see.
John tapped Mac’s shoulder and pointed to where a section of the hull had broken open. He then pointed up. Mac nodded.
We need to get out of this water.
Both of them wore dry suits under their outerwear, but it didn’t stop the cold from penetrating down to their bones. Mac clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. His legs and feet were already numb, making it hard to traverse the uneven floor hidden under the black water.
Finally, they reached the breach in the hull and climbed the ship’s broken ribs, steering clear of any timbers that still burned. Once up top, they found that the forward half of the deck was still intact, the nose of the ship still solidly imbedded in ice.
From this high vantage, Mac surveyed his surroundings. As he did, a slab of ice broke off the roof and crashed into the water. A huge wave sloshed against the side of the ship, stirring the flaming pools and washing more bodies into view.
Mac tried not to think about his friend Nelson.
Now’s not the time for mourning.
The icefall was a reminder of a more immediate danger.
While holed up in the cabin, secondary quakes and thunderous cracking had continued sporadically as the weight of the glacier pressed down upon this fragile pocket. Mac knew the truth. After a decade working up here, he could read ice like a book.
This place won’t hold out much longer. It could collapse at any time.
Still, it might not matter in the end. Ahead of them, the meltwater river had transformed into a lake. And with more and more water flowing in here, the level climbed steadily toward their position. The rising waters also squeezed the thick smoke into an ever-shrinking pocket of air, making it hard to breathe.
John coughed hoarsely.
Unfortunately, something heard him.
An angry bellow rose out of the smoky pall on the ship’s starboard side. With his heart in his throat, Mac shifted to the deck rail. He remembered the crabs hadn’t been the only creature to emerge from those oil-filled pots.
He stared down. Large sections of the roof had collapsed, littering the shoreline and building a breakwater pile of ice and rock between the ship and the cascade flooding the chamber.
Something moved down in that maze.
Flames lit its path through the smoke, offering glimpses of a hulking form. Drawn by John’s cough, it pounded toward their position, then vanished into the thicker pall surrounding the ship.
Mac held his breath, afraid even his exhalation would be heard. His eyes strained to pierce the darkness.
Where is—
Something crashed into the side of the dhow, hard enough to shake the entire ship. Mac fell to one knee. John kept upright, his shotgun fixed to his shoulder, the double barrels pointing down into the darkness.
The creature roared its frustration below, casting flames from its maw, revealing jaws lined with fiery razors. Curved bronze horns mounted its brutish head. As it bellowed, it had lifted onto its hind legs, kicking the air with its front legs, which displayed a row of curved blades along their backsides.
Then it crashed back down to all fours and vanished into the smoky darkness.
Mac listened as the killing machine—half bull, half bear—paced back and forth below.
Another section of ice cracked from the roof and splashed into the rising lake. Mac shared a frightened look with John.
We can’t stay here.
If that thing didn’t kill them, the cold, the water, or the ice would. They needed another way out, a way past that fiery bull.
But how?
12:55 P.M.
“No way!” Kowalski screamed into the gale-force winds.
The rescue party huddled on the lee side of a row of three red snowmobiles. They shared the space with a sled and its team of dogs, thick-furred husky mixes. The dogs had scraped little nests in the glacier’s ice and curled there, breaths steaming the air, oblivious to the cold.
Nuka had used the team to guide the trio of snowmobiles across the glacier. He had explained his choice of transportation: The dogs know the safest path across the ice. Too easy to fall through a hidden hole. You learn to trust their eyes, their noses.
After leaving the hotel at Tasiilaq, the group had boarded a Ram 2500 truck with giant knobby tires and traveled a treacherous gravel road to reach the top of Helheim Glacier. The storm pounded them continually, battering the truck with gusts that threatened to tip it over. Once at the glacier’s edge, they parked next to a huddle of small blue-painted shacks and a dozen parked snowmobiles. It seemed Nuka’s family operated a tour company, offering trips across the glacier.
Maria had asked where the kid’s parents were. He told them that his mother and father were members of Tasiilaq’s search-and-rescue unit. They were gone, dealing with an emergency inland, which had also pulled most of the experienced crew from the village.
Kowalski looked at who they were left with.
The second string . . .
Despite his previous misgivings, Jørgen had come along. So had a pair of natives: two stocky older men, said to be relatives of the family, which probably could be said of everyone in the village. The two were rigging a rope to the back of one of the snowmobiles.
Nuka coiled the loose length over one shoulder. He pointed past the rubber track of the snowmobile. “That’s the only way into the heart of the glacier. Down through the moulin.”
“No way,” Kowalski repeated.
He leaned out from the shelter of the snowmobiles. The wind came close to tearing the set of goggles from his face. Nuka had lent them to him, along with a helmet and a thick parka that was too small for his large frame. The sleeves didn’t even reach his wrists.
Ten yards off, the white surface of the glacier had been cut deeply by a blue stream. The water wended down from the higher elevations and vanished down a ten-foot-wide hole, spiraling away into the depths of the glacier.