Fast Ice Read online

  “There’s no ‘we’ out on that yacht,” Joe said with a laugh. “Just ‘you.’ And just so you know, I took out triple insurance on that machine. If you wipe out, I’ll be a rich man. So, pour on the speed.”

  Kurt laughed and adjusted his position, getting into the most aerodynamic shape possible. He was on the straightaway, heading toward Joe, with the wind gusting from directly behind him. If he was going to break his own personal speed record, it would happen now.

  “Going for one hundred,” he said.

  “Let it run. I’ll call out the speed as you near the finish line.”

  Kurt pulled the sail taut once again, drawing his arms in and holding the rope in a grip of steel.

  Though he’d spent half his life at sea, Kurt had never been a big fan of soft water sailing. It was too slow and ponderous, requiring too much work for such ordinary speeds and offering too much idle time between moments of activity.

  Ice yachting—or hard water sailing, as some called it—was a different animal altogether. Ice yachts got their power from the wind, like a sailboat, but with almost zero drag from the sharpened blades they traveled on. They could hit triple-digit speeds, in the right hands. With the Potomac frozen solid, and a ten-day vacation on the books, Kurt had been practicing daily, getting tantalizingly close to that elusive number.

  “Ninety-one,” Joe told him. “One mile to go.”

  Kurt guided the tiller lightly as the yacht ran straight and true. The polished black ice stretched out in front of him like a sheet of tinted glass, the snow-covered banks of the Potomac racing by in a blur caught only by his peripheral vision.

  “Ninety-five,” Joe said. “Ninety-six.”

  Kurt sensed a tiny vibration through his fingertips. A buzzing that shouldn’t have been there. It ran through the frame of the craft and up through the tiller.

  “Ninety-seven,” Joe told him.

  Kurt heard Joe, but he wasn’t really listening. The vibration had grown rapidly worse and the sense of impending disaster had grown with it. The tiller began shaking violently. One of the runners had come loose.

  Kurt spilled the wind from the sail, trying to slow down.

  “Ninety-eight,” Joe said. “Kurt, you—”

  There was a sharp crack as the outboard runner broke free. The right side of the hull dropped to the ice, pulling the ice yacht to the right. The nose runner dug in and snapped off, taking part of the hull with it. Sharp shards of fiberglass flew up from the nose. One piece whipped past Kurt’s head, another ripped the sail.

  The rest of the crash was incomprehensible chaos. The yacht spun and slid and then caught an edge, which sent it tumbling uncontrollably. The carbon fiber mast snapped, the outrigger pontoon folded underneath Kurt and the sail draped him and what was left of the machine.

  The yacht slid another hundred feet before crashing into the snowy bank of the river, rebounding off it and coming to a stop in an unrecognizable heap of fiberglass and canvas.

  Kurt found himself trapped inside of what remained of the cockpit, aggravated with himself for pushing so hard but thankful for the helmet and five-point harness he wore.

  Pushing some of the debris aside, Kurt sat up. He pulled off his helmet, catching sight of his own reflection, distorted and dark, in the ice. An unruly mane of silver hair covered his head. His coral blue eyes looked brown in the reflection, and the furrows in his brow made him look older than his thirty-eight years. A lifetime spent in the elements had seen to that. Not to mention a few crashes long before this one.

  Putting the helmet down, he reached for the quick release on the safety harness, unbuckled it and slid out from what remained of the seat. As he pulled himself clear, he spotted Joe running toward him across the ice.

  Joe had a radio in one hand and the radar gun in the other. He ran carefully, dashing several yards and then sliding along for several more in a controlled skid. He came to a stop a few feet from Kurt. “You all right?”

  “I will be,” Kurt said, “if you tell me we reached a hundred before the wipeout.”

  Joe looked at the radar gun and shook his head. “Sorry, amigo. You topped out at ninety-eight. Maybe this thing is broken.”

  Kurt got to his feet, metal studs on his boots giving him grip. He looked back at the yacht. “Something tells me that’s the only thing not broken around here. Hope you were serious about that insurance.”

  The ice yacht was demolished, it would take weeks to repair. It might have been quicker to build a new one from scratch. Either way, the Potomac would be thawed by then and back under the control of the soft water sailors.

  Before Joe could respond, his phone began to buzz. He put the radar gun down and pulled the phone from the inner pocket of his coat. “Zavala here.”

  Even though the phone wasn’t on speaker mode, the person on the other end spoke loud enough for Kurt to hear clearly. He recognized the voice as that of Rudi Gunn, the number two man at the National Underwater and Marine Agency, where Kurt and Joe both worked.

  NUMA was a U.S. government agency tasked with a wide range of nautical affairs, everything from studying ocean currents and sea life to the raising and salvaging of sunken ships, especially those of historical or strategic value.

  Rudi Gunn was a logistical and operational expert. He handled most of the day-to-day affairs. He was also Kurt’s and Joe’s direct superior.

  As Rudi spoke, Kurt waved his hands back and forth, giving Joe the international I’m not here signal.

  Joe ignored him. “Actually, he’s standing right next to me,” Joe said, then added, “I have no idea why he’d be ignoring your calls. Probably a personality defect or a pathological disregard for authority figures . . . Yes, I think he likes his job at NUMA quite a bit—”

  “Give me that phone,” Kurt said.

  Joe grinned as he handed it over.

  Kurt put the phone to his ear. “Afternoon, Rudi. What can I do for you?”

  “For starters,” Rudi said, “you can answer when I call. Or at least respond to one of the seven messages I left.”

  Rudi sounded hot under the collar, a rare occurrence for one of the calmest men Kurt knew.

  With his free hand, Kurt patted down the pockets of his jacket. “Seem to have misplaced my phone,” he said. He glanced over at the wreckage. “I must have left it in the yacht.”

  “Yacht?” Rudi said. “We’re obviously paying you too much.”

  Kurt laughed. “It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, at this point. I assume you called seven times for a reason?”

  Rudi shifted gears instantly. “I need you and Joe to come into the office. I have a mission I’d like you to tackle personally.”

  Kurt was NUMA’s Director of Special Projects. The position acted as a catchall for anything out of the ordinary that might come NUMA’s way. It often meant flying off to distant parts of the world at a moment’s notice. And just as often involved high stakes scenarios of one type or another.

  Based on Rudi’s tone, it sounded like one of those scenarios was unfolding. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Rudi acknowledged that time frame and hung up. Kurt handed Joe his phone.

  “Let me guess,” Joe said. “Winter break is over.”

  Kurt nodded, stretching and twisting until he felt three of his vertebrae pop mercifully back into their correct position. “And not a moment too soon. We’re liable to hurt ourselves out here.”

  4

  NUMA HEADQUARTERS BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  After dragging the wrecked ice yacht onto the bank—and leaving a note promising they’d be back to clean up the mess—Kurt and Joe hiked along the frozen river until they stood below the NUMA headquarters building, which overlooked the Potomac.

  Climbing the riverbank and crossing the street, they entered the building and took the elevator to the seventh fl
oor. The hallway was warm and filled with the aroma of cinnamon, as someone on the weekend staff had made hot chocolate with a liberal dosing of the spice.

  Joe inhaled deeply. “If I’d known it could smell this good in here, I’d gladly come in on my day off.”

  “This is our day off,” Kurt reminded him.

  “Was,” Joe replied.

  Passing several empty offices, including one with Christmas lights still twinkling on a small tree, they reached a well-lit conference room. Rudi Gunn waited inside.

  Rudi was a trim man, short in stature, but fit and stern. He stood ramrod straight, staring at them, before glancing at his watch. “Sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds,” he said. “You’re late.”

  “There was a wreck on the Potomac,” Kurt joked.

  “On the Potomac?” Rudi said. “You mean the Beltway, don’t you?”

  “I mean the river,” Kurt said. “We were out on the ice, testing a new sail that Joe designed for my ice yacht. Unfortunately, it worked a little too well. The rest of the machine couldn’t handle the speed.”

  Joe disagreed. “More like pilot error.”

  “Or faulty construction,” Kurt shot back.

  Rudi smiled. He was used to Kurt and Joe building machines and wrecking them. Usually they were expensive prototypes accounted for in the NUMA development budget.

  “I have no idea what an ice yacht is,” Rudi said. “But at least I didn’t have to pay for it. More importantly, you two don’t seem to mind the cold. That’ll come in handy where you’re going.”

  Kurt unzipped his jacket and took a seat. “Sounds rather ominous.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Joe said. He made his way over to the coffee machine, searching unsuccessfully for the treasured cinnamon hot chocolate. “And what, exactly, are we in for?”

  “Let me explain,” Rudi said. He dimmed the lights and used a remote to turn on a large flat-screen. “Early this morning, one of our satellites made a pass over southern waters between South Africa and the Antarctic coast. It was a standard high-resolution, wide-scan run. The main purpose of the sweep was to study the melting of sea ice and the extent to which recently calved icebergs have moved. As you might imagine, we picked up plenty of icebergs. And then something else entirely.”

  Rudi clicked the remote. A wide shot appeared on the screen. It showed a large expanse of dark water speckled with flakes of white. Digital lettering in the corner revealed the time and date of the image, along with the latitude and longitude.

  “I do believe you’ve found the Great Southern Ocean,” Kurt said.

  “Nothing gets past you,” Rudi said. He clicked the remote again, zooming in on one speck of white in one part of the image.

  At first glance, it appeared to be a small iceberg. But as Rudi continued to zoom in, the image took on the form of a ship. Closer still and the three-dimensional structure of the vessel could be seen. It had a wide bow and a tall superstructure. Every inch seemed to be covered in a thick layer of white frost, except for a square section on the top of the accommodations block and the helicopter tied down to the landing pad at the stern.

  “Frozen solid,” Kurt noted.

  “Appears to be listing, too,” Joe said.

  “Doesn’t look like a whaler or a fishing trawler,” Kurt said. “Not with that helicopter on the stern. It’s obviously not military. Must be a research ship.”

  “It is,” Rudi said. “We’ve identified it as a scientific vessel out of Cape Town. Its most recent name is Grishka, though the ship is forty years old and on its fifth name and seventh owner.”

  “Have you alerted the South African Navy?”

  “Not yet,” Rudi replied.

  Kurt raised an eyebrow. “That would seem like the prudent thing to do.”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes,” Rudi said. “But in this particular case, I want you and Joe to go investigate first.”

  “And by ‘investigate,’” Kurt clarified, “you mean fly out there, climb aboard the ship and find out why it got caught in the frozen food section of the ocean?”

  Rudi nodded.

  Joe raised a finger to interject. “You realize that ship is about as far from Washington as it’s possible to get while still remaining on the planet Earth?”

  Rudi nodded. “Yes, Mr. Zavala. I do have a globe of my own.”

  “So why send us?” Kurt asked.

  “Because Cora Emmerson was on that ship.”

  Once the name dropped, silence followed. Cora was a former member of NUMA and a brilliant scientist. She’d been with the organization for three years when Rudi brought her to Washington. She’d been especially close to both Kurt and Rudi, before striking out on her own. She’d also been a lot of trouble.

  “Are you certain of this?”

  “Not entirely,” Rudi admitted, “but we know she was aboard at one point. An expedition she cobbled together chartered that ship out of Cape Town. They left four months ago. We have no track on where they went or where the ship has been since. According to the harbormaster’s records, it hasn’t been back to South Africa.”

  Kurt glanced back at the frozen ship on the screen.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Joe said. “But you two are leaving me in the dark. Who, exactly, is Cora Emmerson?”

  Rudi explained. “Cora was a climate expert who worked for NUMA. She’d come to us from a doctoral program at UCLA after several years working internationally. She excelled on her initial field assignments and was hungry to do more. I brought her to D.C., where I thought she would shine, but she decided government work was stifling her ability to bring about radical change in the world’s climate policy. So, she resigned.”

  “Twice, if I’m not mistaken,” Kurt said, “since you shredded her first letter.”

  Rudi was unapologetic. “We wanted to keep her. That’s what you do with good people.” He turned back to Joe. “Everyone tried to convince her to stay. Everyone except for Kurt.”

  Kurt had no desire to open up this disagreement once more. He and Rudi were usually on the same page, but Cora’s abrupt resignation had been a rare point of conflict between them three years ago.

  The truth was he’d given Cora the advice he thought was best for her. “She needed freedom,” Kurt said. “The kind she wasn’t going to get working for a big government agency in the D.C. spotlight. I told her it was okay to reach for what she wanted. Ultimately, she made her own decision. Like all of us do.”

  Rudi nodded. “Unfortunately, that decision may have brought her to a cold and bitter end.”

  Kurt glanced at the screen again. The ship was frozen, adrift and dark. It looked dead. Obviously, Rudi figured everyone on board for a similar condition. “All right,” Kurt said. “What gives here?”

  Rudi narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Kurt said, “there’s zero chance you just happened to spot a frozen ship half the size of the smallest iceberg in the region with a standard weather satellite. You couldn’t have found that ship unless you were looking for it. More to the point, how could you know Cora was even on board?”

  Rudi’s intense demeanor softened just a bit. “Because I got a message from her nine weeks ago. She said she was out on the ice shelf and that she and her team had found something incredible. Something with the power to remake the world.”

  “Remake the world?” Joe said. “That’s a strong claim.”

  “There might be some exaggeration to it,” Rudi explained. “You have to understand Cora. If she didn’t save the planet by the time she was forty, she was going to be disappointed.”

  Rudi was right about that. “Did this message say anything else?” Kurt asked.

  “No details about what she’d found,” Rudi said. “She promised she’d share them with us once she got back from Antarctica. Her bigger concern was making it back. She
insisted there were people who didn’t want this discovery to see the light of day. In her words, ‘powerful, well-financed people.’ She didn’t know who they were but claimed her team had dealt with sabotage in the run-up to leaving South Africa and had been under surveillance at times while they were out on the ice.”

  “Under surveillance?”

  “She said they’d picked up high-frequency radio signals that weren’t coming from the camp. And on several occasions they’d seen drones in the distance. While I can’t confirm any of that, I think we can all agree there’s not a lot of drone traffic in remote areas of Antarctica.”

  Kurt nodded.

  “They left camp three weeks early, in the middle of the night, hoping to shake whoever was watching them,” Rudi added. “She insisted she’d contact us once she reached Cape Town. Obviously, she never made it.”

  Kurt set his jaw. The details only made it worse. “You might have shared that message with me. We could have offered some help, given her some protection. We could have met her down on the ice and escorted her back home.”

  Rudi looked across the table at Kurt. Despite the tension between them, there was still the utmost respect. “Believe me, Kurt, if I had any idea where she was—even the slightest clue—I’d have sent you out there nine weeks ago. But she didn’t share that information with me.”

  Kurt nodded. He appreciated the words. He took another look at the photo. “What did the infrared cameras show?”

  “That the ship is cold,” Rudi said. “Very cold. Engines must be off. Battery likely drained. There’s a small heat plume discernible at the top of the superstructure, but the rest of the ship is at the same temperature as the background. That’s part of the reason it was so hard to find. Every automated scan passed over the ship as if it were another iceberg. We had to find this the old-fashioned way.”

  “What’s causing the heat plume?” Joe asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Rudi said. “Our best guess is solar panels on top of the superstructure that might still be functioning.”

  “So, they have electricity, but no lights, no radio calls, no distress beacon.”