Читать книгу Hot As Ice - Merline Lovelace - Страница 7

“I hear her!”

The figure swathed from head to foot in bright orange Extreme Cold Weather gear whooped with joy. “She’s punching through!”

His companion spun in a circle, searching the endless, unbroken surface of the polar ice cap. A dozen different shades of white dazzled his eye, shielded though they were by protective goggles. The blue white of the ice. The downy, cloud-soft drifts of glistening snow. The hazy, gray white of the sky that merged with the horizon.

“I don’t hear anything!”

“Listen!”

The frustrated listener threw back his hood. He risked losing an ear to biting wind that dropped the outside temperature to almost thirty below but was too eager to care at that moment. Then he, too, gave a shout of glee as a series of sharp cracks rifled through the air.

Suddenly, a scant forty yards away, the ice cap erupted. Huge white slabs pushed upward. Groaning, they rose straight into the air before toppling over with a crash. A moment later, the tip of a black conning tower poked through the crack.

“How do you like that! She’s right on target.”

Both men grinned. Sophisticated navigational equipment had guided the USS Hawkbill from Hawaii, but good old-fashioned muscle power had provided her surfacing site…a large X shoveled in the ice.

The two oceanographers raised their hands and clapped fur-lined mitts in a jubilant high five. After months at the remote laboratory one hundred and sixty-five miles north of Point Barrow, Alaska, they were ready—more than ready!—for a fresh infusion of supplies and outside conversation. Still grinning, they watched as the submarine’s conning tower rose a foot. Two feet. Ten.

The hulking body of the sub appeared, rolling great chunks of ice off its sides. When the hatch atop the conning tower opened and a hooded sailor appeared, the two men rushed forward.

“Boy, are we glad to see you!” the senior scientist shouted. “We’re down to the last battery for the underwater observation buoy.”

“We brought the spares you requested.” Bulky and awkward in his protective gear, the seaman climbed down the iron rungs riveted to the conning tower. “We’ll start unloading immediately.”

“We’ll help. Jack, bring up the snowmobile.”

Eager to get the valuable equipment unloaded and hauled back to the collection of huts connected by air-heated tunnels that formed the United States Arctic Oceanographic Research Station, the lead oceanographer threw an impatient glance over his shoulder.

“Jack! The snowmobile!”

His partner didn’t move. Frozen in place, he gawked at one of the huge slabs of ice tossed up by the sub.

“What’s got into you, man?”

His breath clouding on the frigid air, the senior scientist stomped across the ice. Irritation creased his forehead under his ski mask.

“Why are you just standing there? We’ve got a hundred tasks to get done before we… Oh, my God!”

His eyes bugged. Disbelief rose up in great, choking waves to close his throat, cut off his breath. Stumbling to a halt, he gaped at the helmeted figure staring back at him through five feet of ice.