Valhalla (12 page)

Macaulay removed the harness from his chest, pulled out his jackknife, and jogged through the murky gloom to the sounds of the struggle. Drawing closer, he heard a loud snapping of jaws, followed by a cry of pain. The yelping became frenzied, then frantic.

He could see the shadowy forms of three animals thrashing about together, separating briefly before charging at one another again, and baring their teeth as they sought to inflict a fatal wound.

One of the wolves had been hurt. Macaulay watched as it sought to escape, finally dropping to the ground in the midst of its flight, its throat torn open, but still alive, glaring up at him, fangs exposed.

Ahead, the bitter struggle continued, with the Alsatian and the second wolf each seeking advantage as they alternately charged and withdrew. Macaulay staggered toward them, hoping he could get there in time to help.

Hap suddenly dropped to the ice, continuing to fight from his back as the other wolf loomed over him, his jaws slashing at the dog's throat. Macaulay was about to strike the wolf with his knife, when Hap cried out in agony. Sensing Macaulay's presence, the wolf released the dog's throat from its jaws and loped off.

Hap was lying on his side, the blood flowing from wounds at his throat, chest, and legs slowly turning the snow red beneath his body. Macaulay began stroking his ears, remembering the first time he had ever seen him.

They had been driving across Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, when Hancock had seen the dog run out of the darkness into the road, where a car hit him.

One of his front legs was broken, and the Alsatian was trying to drag himself away. Hancock stopped the car, picked him up in his arms, and drove him to a veterinarian's office to have the leg set. After that, they had become inseparable.

Hap stopped breathing.

Dawn slowly rose in the east, illuminating the landscape around him. In the distance, Macaulay could see the ocean, dark and forbidding. He scanned the shoreline from north to south. Black rock formations covered the vista as far as he could see.

He had only an hour or so to find help before darkness fell again. Plodding back to the litter, he picked up the rope harness and placed it around his chest. He could go north or south along the shoreline. The decision was easy.

In his near delirium, he decided to walk south toward the warmth of the Florida Keys. As he dragged the litter over the new snow, he remembered visiting Hemingway's home, remembered the cats, dozens of them.

There was no indication that humans had ever visited this part of the world. His initial optimism gave way to despair as he saw the light begin to fade in the western sky.

That was when he saw their salvation, a small shack, not much larger than an outhouse, sitting back on a stone promontory above a shale beach, its weather-beaten clapboards scarred from endless battering of the wind.

It was one of the survival huts sprinkled along the rugged coast for lost mariners. Well, he was lost all right, even if he wasn't a mariner. Cutting open the plastic tarp, he picked Lexy up in his arms and carried her to the shack.

The door was unlocked. He shoved it open and lurched inside.

25 November
Washington, DC
White House Situation Room

Jessica Birdwell, the deputy Homeland Security adviser assigned to the White House, held up her access pass to the security camera mounted above the faux walnut steel security door, and listened for the signal that unlocked it.

Stepping through the doorway, she followed the underground passage leading to the smallest of the three soundproof situation rooms in the intelligence management center beneath the West Wing.

Her boss, Ira Dusenberry, the deputy assistant national security adviser to the president, was already there, talking to one of the duty officers on the watch team. A copy of the president's morning book, which contained the latest compendium of incidents with potential national security implications, was spread out on the conference table next to Dusenberry's ever-present mug of black coffee.

“Morning, Jess,” he said as she opened her briefcase, removed her Apple MacBook Pro, and turned it on.

At thirty-six, Dusenberry had thinning brown hair and a blunt, good-humored face. Short and thickset, he had the shoulders of a sumo wrestler and an even broader expanse of waist.

He had just participated in the morning briefing of the president, and was giving the duty officer an update on the priority issues that needed careful monitoring. His eyes remained focused on Jessica.

Tall and slender with dark gold hair, she was wearing a white blouse and charcoal skirt that enhanced her wide-set blue eyes. As always, she seemed serious and intent, not unfriendly, but polite and reserved. Not for the first time, he wondered if she had a lover.

“Addison just called to say he is on the way,” he said after dismissing the duty officer.

“What's the emergency?” she asked.

“I think we should wait for Ad,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“Anything new in the morning book?” she asked.

“The same tired litany of iniquity, peccancy, and evildoing,” he said with his familiar sarcasm. “The Russians are tracking a rogue army colonel with access to fissionable material who's on his way to Iran. There's another bombing threat in Jakarta, a fledgling shoe bomber in Greece, a shadowy group that is working to isolate the autoimmune gene and wipe out the African race, Chinese hackers who have created an invasive virus to wreck our most secret codes, a scheme to poison the water supply in Southern California, and a terrorist plot to kidnap both a liberal and a conservative television talk show host and hold them for ransom.”

“Let's hope the last one pans out,” pronounced Addison Kingship, the executive assistant director for national security at the FBI, as he walked into the room and dropped his suitcase-sized satchel on the conference table.

Classically good-looking with dark brown hair and a thin aquiline nose, the Princeton-educated Kingship had been rewarded with his current post after leading a celebrated FBI task force that had prevented at least a dozen serious attacks against American installations around the world.

Jessica saw the deep wrinkles at the corners of his gray eyes. The cynical side of Washington was obviously wearing him down, she thought, wondering how long he would remain in the cauldron.

Ira Dusenberry closed the morning book and said, “Sorry about the short notice, but we have a breaking event here. You would have already been briefed on it, Ad, if you hadn't been up on the hill. It's too soon to know all the implications, but I need your input. . . . I should first point out that this issue is not strictly within our purview.”

Kingship began shaking his head.

“It's nothing illegal, Ad,” said Dusenberry. “Just politically sensitive.”

“Right,” said Kingship skeptically.

“It involves a group of American nationals who are currently in a friendly nation,” said Dusenberry, “but who may have become the targets of a terrorist organization.”

“It's up to that friendly power to investigate the incident if it's on their sovereign soil,” said Jessica. “Protocol requires that we only help if we are asked.”

“Yes . . . well, one of the American nationals is John Lee Hancock,” said Dusenberry.

The revelation registered on their faces. Hancock was a close friend of the president, and his most active supporter within the energy industry. Probably his only one.

“Has the president been informed?” asked Jessica.

“He has,” said Dusenberry with a pause. “Unofficially.”

“And now?” demanded Kingship.

“Unofficially, he is hoping that we might take a look at the situation and possibly provide some assets and logistical assistance,” said Dusenberry.

“Was he kidnapped?”

“We don't know.”

“That could be a good pretext for our getting more actively involved,” said Kingship.

“No one is sure exactly what happened yet,” said Dusenberry. “This has occurred in a very remote area of Greenland, which is as you know still part of the Royal Danish Commonwealth. Although the Greenlanders have home rule, functions like defense and security are provided by the Danes. Suffice it to say, with a million square miles of ice and rock, there isn't a significant security apparatus up there on the ground.”

“So what do we actually know?” asked Jessica, beginning to type notes into her laptop.

“At oh six twelve this morning, Mark Devlin, the head of corporate security at Anschutz International, called the local FBI office in Dallas to state they had lost communication with Hancock and it couldn't be restored,” said Dusenberry. “Then he called here.”

He refilled his empty coffee mug from the insulated pitcher on the table.

“By way of background,” he went on, “one of Hancock's vanity foundations is called the Cactus Legion, and it travels around the world recovering lost Second World War military aircraft. According to Devlin, Hancock and his team had successfully recovered a B-17 Flying Fortress that was buried beneath the ice cap, and then shipped the plane in sections back to Texas. For some reason, Hancock then decided to stay at the expedition site with his team. Now they've lost all contact.”

“The weather at this time of year must be horrendous up there,” said Jessica. “Maybe it knocked out his radios.”

“That was already explored, Jess,” said Dusenberry. “Devlin said Hancock has the latest satellite and VHF equipment with full redundancy, and it was running perfectly.”

Ira passed them each a copy of another verbatim communication.

“At oh nine twenty this morning,” Dusenberry went on, “an RAF air-sea rescue plane coming in to land at an old DEW Line installation called Kulusuk on Greenland's eastern coast reported flying over the wreckage of a large helicopter that had crashed and burned. After the plane landed, a rescue party went out in a snow tractor and found a badly burned body in the passenger section of the helicopter. It was a Bell 412EP. Hancock had one in his corporate fleet.”

“No sign of the pilot?” asked Kingship.

Ira shook his head. “Only one body.”

“Where is Hancock's expedition site?” asked Jessica.

“About six miles from the helicopter crash,” said Dusenberry. “After searching the wreckage, the search party used its GPS to try to reach Hancock's team, but it couldn't find a trace of his base camp.”

“Maybe the search party had the wrong coordinates,” said Kingship.

“Possibly,” said Ira. “There was also an arctic gale blowing and visibility was limited in the darkness.”

Ira handed them the second verbatim communication.

“So here is the latest piece of news, and it's wild,” he said. “That's a transcription of the call I received about thirty minutes ago from Devlin, along with the e-mail message he received from an organization claiming responsibility for taking Hancock and his team hostage.”

“An exploiter of Islam?” said Kingship, reading from the transcript.

“I gather Hancock's company was one of the consortia that got the oil and gas wells up and running in Iraq after the war,” said Dusenberry. “I don't know what his interests are in the Persian Gulf now.”

“An Arab commando team operating in Greenland?” said Jessica. “That sounds a little far-fetched, but these days anything is possible.”

“It's also possible Hancock made some serious enemies in the Gulf,” said Kingship. “Maybe they're settling old scores. If they had in fact been targeting him, maybe this was where they thought he would be most vulnerable.”

“It's too early to answer those questions,” said Dusenberry. “Our first job is to try to locate Hancock and determine if he is safe, and so far, the response from the Greenland government has not exactly been robust. In reply to our request for an emergency response team to be dispatched to the area right away, the government security office in Nuuk has agreed to send a police detective to the area once they can arrange transportation for him.”

Addison Kingship rose from the table and picked up his satchel.

“I'm due back on the hill,” he said sourly.

“I would strongly recommend that we put a special mission unit from the Joint Special Operations Command on immediate standby and try to deploy an MH-60 as close to the mission area as possible, maybe Halifax, where they won't be so noticeable,” said Jessica. “The cover legend can be that we're preparing an emergency mission to provide necessary medical care to one of the members of Hancock's expedition team.”

“Agreed,” said Kingship.

“Good,” agreed Dusenberry. “I'll ask State to make a high-level call to the Danish foreign ministry in Copenhagen requesting their cooperation in our sending in a medical team. Within the next couple hours, we'll also have a surveillance satellite with infrared capabilities trained on the coordinates that Devlin gave me to pinpoint Hancock's expedition site. It should hopefully provide some kind of picture of what's there.”

“I'll give you both an update this afternoon,” said Dusenberry, following the other two out of the situation room.

*   *   *

An hour later, the Lynx was awakened in his stateroom aboard the ship by one of the master's mates and was told he was needed in the ship's command center. Jensen was waiting for him with the decoded message he had just received.

“General Macaulay did not perish in the helicopter crash,” he said. “Presumably, he is still alive and on the run somewhere on the ice cap.”

25 November
Eastern Coast
Greenland

Macaulay awoke to the roar of the sea outside the windows of the survivor's hut. Checking his watch, he saw that it was nine o'clock. In the darkness, it was easy to lose track of time, but it had to be night. He had slept for twelve hours.

After stumbling into the hut for the first time, he had taken a few moments to train his flashlight around the single room. A bunk bed was built into the rear wall, and he laid Lexy down on the lower of the two straw-filled mattresses.

In a quick look around the room, he saw an old cast-iron stove near the side wall. The wood box next to it was empty. He was too numb with exhaustion to go outside to replenish it.

Macaulay had only one thought before succumbing to sleep, and that was to begin restoring Lexy's body temperature before she sustained lasting damage from hypothermia. Unzipping the front of her thermal suit, he placed his hand over her heart. The beat seemed irregular and her body unnaturally cold.

He scoured the room to find a means of warming her. Aside from the blankets on the bunk bed, there was nothing. He spread them over her and then pulled the thin mattress off the upper bunk and laid that on top of the blankets. He slipped under the covers beside her.

As he listened to the surf pounding the shoreline, he vaguely recalled the air force studies he had reviewed during his last stint in the Pentagon on methods for improving the survival rate of pilots downed in the sea.

He remembered that skin-to-skin contact was considered the most efficient method of heat transfer using the principle of conduction, if not the fastest way to restore a person's body temperature. The technique was to place the hypothermic person together with a rescuer who was not hypothermic after removing both individuals' clothes.

Pushing aside the covers, he removed her boots, thermal suit, flannel shirt and trousers, all the while conjuring lame excuses for how to explain himself when she woke up. He was too numb with fatigue to feel any sense of conscious virtue.

After she was stripped to her underwear, he shed his own clothes and crawled under the blankets with her. Spooning the back of her icy body with his own, he began rubbing her arms and back to help restore circulation. She was still unconscious when he finally dropped off into oblivion.

Now fully awake, Macaulay pondered what to do next. His body ached from head to toe, and he was in no condition to continue their journey on foot. Lexy was still unconscious or in deep sleep, and obviously could not walk either. Gently touching her carotid artery, he found her pulse stronger and steadier. Her body was warm to the touch.

He climbed out of the bunk and put on his shirt, pants, and thermal suit before lacing up his boots. Using the flashlight, he found a kerosene lamp on the table near the kitchen alcove, along with a tin of lamp oil. He filled the reservoir, lit the wick, and replaced the chimney.

In the comforting glow of the lamp, he could see his breath in the air, but estimated that the temperature was above freezing inside the hut. He began a thorough search of the cabin.

It was one of the survival huts the Danish government had built along the Denmark Strait, consisting of one large room, with clapboard walls on unmilled studs, rough pine flooring, and four small windows. The kitchen alcove had a Primus stove and rough shelving that held a small assortment of pots, pans, and plates. A metal pitcher and washbasin served as the lavatory.

No one had been there for a long time. A thick layer of undisturbed dust covered every surface. He noticed a shortwave radio sitting on a table set against the far wall. It was a Danish model, probably fifty years old. The battery sitting next to it was as large as a loaf of bread. When he connected the wires, it was dead.

He found the cabin's meager food supply in a cupboard beneath the kitchen shelves. It consisted of a few cans with the labels long reduced to dust and some tightly sealed metal canisters that contained hard-packed flour, dried tea leaves, and salt.

His first task was to build a fire, for warmth as well as for meltwater to drink. He glanced through one of the windows facing the sea. Although it was still dark outside and the window was fogged with salt spray, he could see the heaving white-capped sea lashing the rock formations that surrounded the narrow stony beach.

He stepped outside into the rising wind that foreshadowed another storm. Shining the flashlight in both directions, he glimpsed a wooden lean-to attached to one of the side walls, which probably held the hut's firewood.

It was empty of firewood but contained something else. The object was covered by a large swatch of rotting canvas. When Macaulay pulled the edge away, he saw that it was an old kayak.

He began combing the edge of the beach for firewood. Here and there were shards of driftwood, the ends frozen into the ice. He wasn't about to spend time breaking them free. He went back to the lean-to and began ripping off the roofing boards.

The snow was falling more heavily as he returned to the hut.

After stoking the stove, he looked around for a fire starter. Next to one of the chairs, he found a Swedish pulp magazine from 1952 with a photograph of a young boxer named Ingemar Johannson on the cover. The crumpled pages burned well.

Once the fire was going, he grabbed an iron poker and a large pot from the kitchen shelf and went outside to break up enough ice chunks to fill it. The new snow had already obliterated his tracks from the morning. Returning to the cabin, he placed the pot on top of the stove.

Lexy still hadn't stirred from under the blankets in the bunk. Careful not to wake her, he checked her vital signs. She was breathing normally and her color was much better.

Twenty minutes later, he had meltwater. Drinking down three mugs of it, he set aside another two quarts for drinking, and let the rest continue to heat on the stove.

There was a six-inch-square metal mirror on the kitchen wall. In the glow of the lamp, he saw a gaunt stranger with a week-old beard staring back at him. His unruly brown hair was filthy and matted to the sides of his head. There was a long, jagged gash on his forehead where he had hit the instrument panel after the helicopter crashed. It was still seeping blood. His thin nose was fish-belly white. Rubbing it, he could feel sensation, which meant he had somehow avoided frostbite. All in all, he had been very lucky.

He found an ancient bar of gray soap in the kitchen, along with a straight razor and leather strop. Taking off his clothes, he washed his body in the rest of the hot water, and then shaved. With no towel or rag handy, he could only dry himself next to the hot stove.

He almost jumped when he heard her voice.

“I appear to be almost naked myself,” she said, her face peeking out at him from the edge of the covers.

Embarrassed, Macaulay put on his underwear, and then his shirt and pants without saying anything. As he dressed, Lexy saw that his lean body was covered with bruises. Then she noticed the gash on his forehead.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, “can lick my weight in polar bears.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“In a survivor's hut on the Denmark Strait,” he said.

Putting tea leaves into a kettle, he added hot water and waited for it to steep before pouring the tea into two mugs and adding a spoonful of sugar. He carried the mugs over to the bunk and handed one of them to her, sitting down on the edge of the mattress.

“I seem to recall your hauling me a long way,” she said, feeling the hot strong tea warm her inside. “I was a little delirious most of the time.”

Macaulay told her of their journey across the cap, of the attack by the wolves that had killed the Alsatian, and the small miracle of finding the survivor's hut in the brief window of natural light before darkness fell again. He was attempting to explain the theory behind skin-to-skin contact as a means to help someone recover from hypothermia, when she interrupted him.

“I understand. . . . You were serving the interest of science,” she said, smiling.

“Something like that,” he said.

“Well . . . it worked, Steve. Thank you for my life.”

He felt an almost-desperate urge to wrap her in his arms. Embarrassed at his thoughts, he got up from the lower bunk and went over to the kitchen alcove.

“The next stage in your recovery is to get some hot food into you,” he said, picking up one of the unmarked cans.

When he opened it with his jackknife, he saw that it was cured bacon and still edible. The second tin yielded what looked and tasted like stewed prunes. Lighting the spirit stove, he began frying the bacon in a skillet while making a thick batter of flour and water in a mixing bowl.

Clad in her underwear, Lexy got out of the bed and slowly walked on trembling legs to the woodstove. After luxuriating in its heat for a few minutes, she used the remaining hot water in the iron pot to bathe as Macaulay had done. After allowing herself to dry next to the fire, she put on her flannel shirt, corduroys, and leather boots.

By then, the meal was done.

“Camp cakes with bacon and stewed prunes,” said Macaulay, serving it out on the table next to the stove. “Julia Child gave me the recipe.”

“Delicious,” she said, wolfing down the first bite.

“You're an easy date. Remind me to take you to a place I know in Antarctica,” Macaulay said as the rising wind moaned through the cracks in the clapboard walls.

“How did you wind up a general?” she asked.

“Long story.”

“I mean why did you decide to spend most of your life in the military?”

“That's even more boring,” he said.

“I'm listening.”

He took a long time before he answered.

“I guess it comes down to my being a life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness kind of guy—all of us equal and all that. Not just some of us. All of us. I think that's worth fighting for.”

“I agree,” she said, smiling at him. “Not very eloquent, but I get the point. Thank you for that.”

“Maybe we'll get there in another thousand years,” he said.

After they finished the meal, Macaulay went back out to replenish the firewood supply. When he returned, they sat together in front of the open stove, absorbing the life-giving heat.

Removing the pewter flask containing his Jack Daniel's, Macaulay divided the last inch of it between their two mugs.

“You're trying to get me drunk,” she said.

“Not on this supply,” said Macaulay. “I just wish I had a bottle of that whiskey we found in
March Hare
.”

His words brought back the enormity of everything that had happened.

“Why did they have to kill them all?” asked Lexy.

“Probably so that no one would be left to tell about the discovery of the Viking cave,” he said.

“Then why did they destroy the cave?”

“Because they had everything they needed from it,” he said. “You told me you saw big bins coming out of the shaft along with body bags. They must have taken the rune tablet as well.”

“Then they have what they want,” said Lexy.

“Which is?”

“The clues to the greatest archaeological discovery of modern times,” she responded. “If I'm right, the saga depicted in those rune markings pinpoints the location of the tomb of Leif Eriksson, and it's probably somewhere along the New England coast . . . Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine.”

“And that would be worth the lives of a dozen men?” said Macaulay bitterly.

“You obviously don't know much about the archaeological world.”

“You don't systematically massacre all those people over a discovery like this, even if it changes history as we know it,” said Macaulay. “This was a well-trained commando force conducting a complicated military mission. They weren't rogue archaeologists. There has to be more to it. . . . The question is what.”

“I guess we'll never know. They have it all now.”

“I'm going to find out,” said Macaulay with menace in his voice. “Did you recognize any of the men aside from Jensen?”

“No. They were all wearing helmets except the leader, the blond one. He murdered Doc Callaghan and the cook.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Two of them were Norwegians.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Macaulay.

“I told you my maternal grandparents were Norwegian and I learned the language as a little girl,” said Lexy. “The two men spoke to each other when they were using the latrine.”

“What were they saying?”

“Only that the mission had been ordered with almost no notice. They had no idea it was coming until a few minutes before they left the ship.”

“What ship?”

“I don't know that.”

Macaulay added boards to the fire. It briefly flamed out through the stove's iron door.

“Tell me about Falconer,” said Macaulay.

She shuddered involuntarily.

“A past mistake,” she said.

“I don't mean that,” he said. “Tell me about his visit to your tent before all hell broke loose.”

Lexy repeated the sequence of events, beginning with her sensing that someone was in the tent and switching on her flashlight. She described Falconer holding her notebook in the air after removing it from her boot.

“Rob knew that I always kept my journal in one of my boots at a dig.”

“Why would he try to steal your journal if he had already been down to the cave and had seen the rune markings?”

“I don't know.”

Macaulay was still staring at the fire when his eyes came alive with excitement.

“Maybe he was bringing something to you,” he said. “After he photographed the rune tablet, he had to assume there was a chance he might get caught, and if he did, he would be thoroughly searched. He may have decided you were the one person he could use to hide what he had, something as small as a digital memory card.”