Vostok (45 page)

The supertanker
Tonga
pushed its way south through Prydz Bay at a steady eight knots, her starboard flank hugging the eastern face of the Amery Ice Shelf.

Mac stood on her bridge next to my father, both men’s binoculars focused on the surface ship less than three nautical miles away. The
Tortuga
’s bow was pointed at the Loose Tooth Rift, her starboard flank exposed.

“Captain, any response from the Manta?”

“Nothing but static, Mr. Mackreides.”

“Shut down your engines. Full reverse. Mr. Al Nahyan, you may begin transmitting the message.”

The radio man spoke with an urgent British accent. “Mayday, mayday. This is the United Arab Emirates research tanker
Tonga
. Our rudder is badly damaged. We cannot navigate. We strongly advise you to move your ship or risk a collision.”

Mac stared at the steel vessel growing larger in his binoculars. “Angus, I believe it was Robert Burns who once said, ‘No man can tether time or tide. Time is short and the tide is out.’”

Angus grinned. “Those tha’ cannae be counseled cannae be helped.”

“Who said that?”

“My father, before he’d beat my arse with a hickory switch. Jist a wee love tap, he’d say.”

“What say we give MJ-12 a wee love tap?”

We were powerless, our sub lying on the floor of Prydz Bay, weighed down by our two lasers. Silt had buried all but the Valkyries and the top of our cockpit dome. The
Tortuga
’s keel was just visible in the distance, anchored in 320 feet of water.

We felt the rumble of the steel beast before we saw it, its 300,000 tons displacing the surface while vacuuming up the bottom, its presence causing the ice sheet to reverberate.

Then I saw the 1,100-foot supertanker’s bow converge upon the
Tortuga
’s starboard flank, and for the second time that morning I prepared to meet my Maker.

The process of slowing a supertanker must be initiated miles in advance using a braking pattern called a slalom, which veers the ship back and forth from starboard to port while her engines run full astern. Mac had either seriously miscalculated Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum, or he simply didn’t give a damn.

The prow of the supertanker struck the exposed flank of the
Tortuga
like a steadily moving train plowing through a double-decker aluminum bus, crushing the starboard infrastructure while its submerged bulb-shaped bow scooped up the vessel’s disfigured hull and carried it away with hardly a drop in speed or forward momentum.

Passageways crumpled. Water blasted through shredded steel plates. Internal pipes and cables ruptured. From Angus and Mac’s perspective, it must have appeared as though the supertanker had bitten off a chunk of the
Tortuga
’s ribs. From our perspective, it looked like a megalodon had snatched an orca in its jaws and was carrying it off to be consumed.

And then an unseen force swept us off the bottom into the eye of a hurricane.

I squeezed my eyes shut and held on as the vortex created by the two passing ships inhaled us, spinning us end over end toward the supertanker’s propeller shafts, the blades churning in reverse.

Jonas was a rock. Knowing the
Tonga
’s impact would shut down power to the
Tortuga
’s sonar array, he focused only on his command console. The moment the lights powered on he jammed the controls hard to port and pulled us away from the spinning blades into a steep dive.

Moments later a submerged wall of ice materialized into view. Jonas quickly honed in on the Loose Tooth Rift’s jagged chasm, which harbored the cavernous opening created nearly six hours earlier by the
Tethys
.

The borehole was now a clogged artery of white ice. Powering up the Valkyries, Jonas pressed the Manta’s nose to the frozen gauntlet, which quickly liquefied and inhaled us into its dark, widening orifice.

We were on our way.

“How puzzling all these changes are!
I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.”

—Lewis Carroll

The sub’s lights illuminated a near-vertical shaft of ice so crystal-clear that Jonas struggled to discern the boundaries of the funnel. After the Manta’s fifth collision with the borehole’s walls, he shut down the exterior lights and relied strictly on the cockpit’s night-vision glass, which generated a view that reminded me of a miniature medical camera plunging down an olive-green esophagus.

After descending nearly six hundred feet, the passage leveled out, depositing us in a shallow sea of meltwater that separated the bottom of the ice sheet above our heads from the floor of Prydz Bay. Squeezed between these two titanic forces, the water pressure within this narrow, seemingly endless cavity registered an eye-popping 12,656 psi, the weight above us muffling everything but the sound of our breathing.

Visibility was limited to an olive-green patch that extended ten to twelve feet in every direction. For several minutes we maintained a snail’s pace through this vast, dark, liquid space, until the overwhelming sensation of claustrophobia sent Jonas fumbling for the lights. He flipped the switch, and our beams illuminated a hidden chamber of breathtaking beauty.

For millions of years the ice sheet had surfed this watery conveyor belt as it inched its way across East Antarctica before slaloming along the Amery Basin into Prydz Bay. Perpetually melting and refreezing, the bottom of the glacier appeared a rich azure-blue, its sculpted patterns and textures creating a three-dimensional mosaic so mesmerizing I was tempted to ask Jonas to direct a light at the ceiling, just so I could absorb its
incredible details.

Complementing this chapel of art was a boundary of fresh water so pure and clear it actually magnified our twin beacons of light, extending visibility for miles. As for what resided below, for now it was dark silt. But that would change.

Jonas was still too overwhelmed by grief to allow himself to be dazzled. “Zach, this subterranean waterway seems to run forever. How do we know which direction to go?”

“We need to follow the Amery Ice Shelf inland about 340 miles, where it will meet the Lambert Glacial Basin. A subglacial river with a northern outflow should merge with this meltwater. We follow it southeast into Lake Vostok.”

“Not exactly navigating by the stars, is it?” Jonas typed a search command over his computer’s keyboard. The GPS finder zoomed in on East Antarctica, honing in on the Loose Tooth Rift. “Here we are. Here’s where the ice shelf meets that glacial basin. That’s a huge expanse. How the hell are we supposed to find a river amid an ocean of meltwater?”

“I don’t know, Jonas. Maybe we’ll be able to hear it on sonar.”

“So that’s 340 miles to the north and at least another five hundred to the southeast. At our best speed, it’ll take us eleven hours just to hit the river, assuming this meltwater remains stagnant. Traveling another five hundred miles into a head-current—that alone could take twenty-four to thirty-six more hours.

“When I was an undergrad at Penn State, my roommate and I would drive down to Fort Lauderdale over Christmas break. We’d take two-hour shifts, twenty hours straight. We were so wiped out by the time we arrived that we’d have to sleep all day. And we were nineteen.”

“Is there any way you can program the autopilot to at least get us to the river?”

“The GPS navigator isn’t functioning with that ice sheet over our heads. What I can do is program the autopilot to remain on a solitary heading. It’ll use the Manta’s sonar to navigate around perceived obstacles, but one of us should still stay awake to monitor our surroundings. I’ll take the first shift while you sleep.”

I reclined my seat, removed my shoes, and covered up with a wool blanket. I was exhausted, having barely slept since arriving in Antarctica. Lying back, I looked up through the thick cockpit glass, gazing at the bottom of the ice sheet.

Jonas accelerated to thirty knots, turning the glacier’s artwork into a blue blur.

Within minutes I was asleep.

I awoke as Avi Socha
.

I was in a cave close to the ocean. I could hear the echo of the sea and feel the pounding surf through the rock upon which I sat. The night howled at my back, glistening with stars. Berudim shone brightly in the northern sky, a cloud-covered world orbited by a solitary moon one-ninth the mass of Charon
.

I was anxious to begin; the alignment of Berudim with Charon was a powerful cosmic antenna that facilitated the best reception with the upper worlds. Closing my eyes, I recited my mantra, tapping into the universal consciousness
.

ANA BEKOACH… GEDULAT YEMINECHA… TATIR ZERURA …

My consciousness was moving through the void, passing over a dark sea
.

KABEL RINAT… AMECHA SAGVENU… TAHARENU NORA …

The sea moved inland, becoming a twisting river that separated a rift valley
.

NA GIBOR… DORSHEY YICHUDCHA… KEBAVAT SHOMREM …

Mountains rose along either bank as the river emptied into a vast lake, its waters dark and forboding…

BARCHEM TEHAREM… RACHAMEY ZIDEKATCHA… TAMID GOMLEM …

On the western bank appeared an alien dwelling that was somehow familiar…

HASIN KADOSH… BEROV TUVECHA… NAHEL ADOTECHA …

My consciousness hovered over the center portion of the dwelling until it was drawn through a glass partition
.

YAHID GE’EA… LEAMECHA PENNE… ZOCHREY KDUSHATECHA …

I was inside a dark chamber, the only light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered a view of the lake and the snow-covered peaks of the mountains rising above the far eastern bank. An extraterrestrial being was seated before the glass, its demeanor melancholy as it stared outside at the weather
.

SHAVATENU KABEL… USHEMA ZAKATENU… YODE TA’ALUMOT…
I had moved to hover over the life-form when my consciousness was suddenly drawn into its aura by a magnetic force, inhaling me into a vortex of physicality. And I could hear!

“Zachary, this woman is here tae speak with you. Are ye sober?”

I stood, my temper flaring
. “Of course, I’m sober. Hi, I’m Zachary Wallace.”