Valhalla

“Great writing . . . great history.”

—Nelson DeMille

“A priceless novel . . . a must-read book . . . a great tale.”

—
The Washington Times

“A novel of suspense and intrigue woven into the fabric of . . . history.”

—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A superb piece of literature, rich in texture and of surpassing literary merit.”

—Robert K. Krick, author of
Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain
and
Lee's Colonels

“A rattling good adventure story.”

—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
War on the Waters

“A simple tale almost magically rendered.”

—
The Denver Post

“A rare find: a book that successfully combines mystery, historical drama, and impressive wartime verisimilitude . . . stark, graphic, bloody, and exciting.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A fast-paced thriller laced with violence and filled with unexpected twists that keep the reader guessing to the last page.”

—Rennie Airth, author of
River of Darkness

“A first-rate World War II adventure.”

—Susan Isaacs,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Goldberg Variations

“Tautly gripping, with vividly malevolent characters and some excellent historical color.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“[An] exciting thriller.”

—Historical Novel Society

“Full of dark twists and turns, this brooding drama underscores the brutal nature of both the physical and the psychological casualties associated with war.”

—
Booklist

 

Praise for Robert J. Mrazek's Nonfiction

To Kingdom Come

“Riveting.”

—
Library Journal

“A great book with ‘hold on to your seat' suspense.”

—Donald Miller, author of
Masters of the Air: America's Bombers Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Rendered . . . in vivid clarity.”

—Hugh Ambrose,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Pacific

“[A] work of cinematic sweep and pace.”

—Richard Frank, author of
Downfall
and
Guadalcanal

“Superb historical research and powerful narrative writing.”

—Tami Biddle, professor, U.S. Army War College, and author of
Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare

A Dawn Like Thunder

“Strap yourself in as Robert J. Mrazek takes you on a heroic flight into history.”

—James Bradley, author of
Flyboys
and
Flags of Our Fathers

“A spectacular achievement.”

—Hon. Charles Wilson of
Charlie Wilson's War

“A remarkably vivid tale . . . [an] epic story.”

—Rick Atkinson, author of
The Guns at Last Light
and
The Day of Battle

“Destined to become a classic.”

—Alex Kershaw, author of
The Liberator
and
The Longest Winter

“Fast-paced. . . . [Mrazek] melds a good story with solid and skeptical research.”

—
The Washington Post

“A must read . . . gripping.”

—Curled Up with a Good Book

“Robert J. Mrazek has, with a raw, unsparing telling, given grace and life to so many who died so young . . . so gallantly.”

—Frank Deford, author of
Over Time

“Compelling.”

—
The Columbus Dispatch

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

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Copyright © Robert Mrazek, 2014

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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ISBN 978-0-698-14867-3

PUBL
ISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Martin Andrews

“Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother, my sisters, and my brothers. Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo they do call me. They bid me take my place among them in the Halls of Valhalla. Where the brave, may live forever.”

The Vikings,
The 13th Warrior

He could no longer endure the agonizing cold.

The eternal darkness.

The ever-howling wind.

He was the last one left.

Ice particles peppered his cheeks as his bruised and aching fingers labored at their final task. He imagined the rest of them celebrating with bowls of honey-soaked mead in the halls of Valhalla. Where he would soon join them.

The rescue party would come in the spring. They would see what he had done in these last hours of mortal life. They would bring the tale back home and share it with the others. Grindl would learn of what he had done. She would always be proud.

And they would know of the hallowed place.

And go
there.

8 November
Helheim Glacier
Greenland Ice Cap

“A toast to the crew of
March Hare
,” John Lee Hancock shouted above the shrieking wind as he raised his pewter Air Force Academy goblet and downed three inches of vintage 1942 Dom Pérignon champagne. “Tonight we will unearth her secrets.”

Hap Arnold, Hancock's one-hundred-twenty-pound white Alsatian, stirred at his master's feet as the twelve other men in the expedition joined him in the toast. Outside the operations tent, the wind was blowing forty miles an hour and the unfastened flaps were making snapping sounds like pistol shots.

“Steve and I will be the only ones going into the ship, but you'll be able to see everything we do on the television monitors up here,” said John Lee.

In December 1942,
March Hare
, a newly christened B-17 Flying Fortress with a ten-man crew, had been
flying from Goose Bay, Labrador, to join the Eighth Air Force Bomber Command in England when it had disappeared in a blizzard over the Greenland ice cap.

Due to Greenland's violent weather patterns, dozens of warplanes had gone down there during the war, but
March Hare
was unique. Instead of bombs, it had been carrying ten wooden crates of Christmas gifts from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to his European admirers, including King George VI, British prime minister Winston Churchill, the exiled monarchs of Europe, and the top Allied war commanders.

The manifest included personally inscribed books and handwritten letters from the president, a slew of commemorative gold coins and stamps from his personal collection, “New Deal” oil paintings by Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, ancient Navajo turquoise jewelry, hand-carved wooden puzzles, and a dozen cases of Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky.

March Hare
captured Hancock's interest and he immediately committed five hundred thousand dollars to locate the lost war bird. The founder of Anschutz International, a technology pioneer in the field of oil and gas exploration, Hancock was reputed to be the eighty-second richest man in the world. He found his personal pleasure in the pursuit of high adventure.

In the plane's last radio transmission, its radio operator had reported severe blizzard conditions and that the pilot was attempting to land somewhere along Greenland's rugged and unforgiving eastern coast.

His message had been picked up by a weather-monitoring station near Kulusuk. Based on the strength
and direction of the signal, a search party set out from Comanche Bay to an area near the coastal settlement of Angmagssalik. Battling hundred-mile-per-hour winds, they discovered no trace of
March Hare
or its ten-man crew. The plane was never found.

Hancock's expedition team needed just four days to locate it.

Knowing the aircraft's original flight plan, as well as the strength and direction of the radio operator's last transmission, they decided to start the hunt for the plane on the Helheim Glacier, to the west of Angmagssalik.

Hancock's expedition was equipped with two Bell 206L4 LongRanger IV jet helicopters, and they began the search patterns along twenty-kilometer parallel lines at one-kilometer intervals. After completing a search pattern, the birds would then fly the same grid quadrants perpendicular to the first one.

A QUESTON (V) ice-penetrating radar system was deployed under each helicopter, its antenna clusters capable of sending and receiving an ultrawide spectrum of RF energy pulses through more than a thousand feet of glacial ice, and producing clear virtual imagery.

Four days into the search, recognition signals on one of the helicopters began registering a target in the glacier. It was less than ten miles from the coast. The second helicopter converged on the location and both landed on the ice cap to take more definitive readings.

The virtual images revealed that
March Hare
's pilot had made an almost miraculous landing between two jagged peaks. The Fortress was sitting primly on its wheel
struts where it had rolled to a stop, but it was now encased in a solid tomb of ice one hundred forty feet beneath the surface of the cap.

“We're going down after her,” said Hancock to his expedition leaders.