Arctic Rising

13

The smell of ammonia bubbled, then ripped through Anika’s sinuses to sledgehammer her awake.

She gasped and sat up, coughing and spitting, her eyes watering, shoving the small capsule someone had underneath her nose away with her hands.

Both her hands, she realized muzzily, because they were handcuffed.

A Polar Guard MP unwrapped a blood pressure cuff from her upper arm and folded it back into a small emergency medical kit he had on the floor of an SUV.

“Where am I?” Anika asked, her voice husky. She put her handcuffed hands up to her throat, feeling the bruising and tenderness where she’d been choked.

She took a reflexive, deep breath of cold, sweet air, and watched it puff out with all the apparent satisfaction of a smoker hitting a first puff early in the morning.

“On this fine morning, you’re on your way to lockup,” the MP said. Anika realized that the vehicle was in motion. She sat up with a grunt. All those bruises and pulled muscles screamed at her.

The road underneath changed from paved road to gravel. A familiar-enough transition. Anika could see the tips of base housing units.

“You’re getting court-martialed, at the least,” Claude said from the front of the SUV.

Anika pulled herself a bit higher, using the backs of the seats. “What about the attempt on my life for the data?” she asked. “And Greenland? Did you find out who cleared the Kosatka? I don’t care what happens to me, just please don’t drop this.”

The MP driving the car looked over at the commander. “Damn. She sounds sincere, sir.”

“I know.” Claude’s voice sounded tired.

“Do you want to wait and let the big guys toss her place, or you still want to check it out?”

“Keep driving,” Claude said, and he pointed out the window. “There.”

They turned down the road and slowly approached Anika’s home, gravel crunching under the tires, and then stopped.

“What are we looking for?” the driver asked, as he opened the door.

“I don’t know.” Claude glanced back at Anika, then stepped out. “But we need to make sure she isn’t working for someone, or with someone.”

Anika rubbed her face. What was Claude up to? If he was genuinely not interested in killing her, then all this made sense. Or it could be he was looking for the scatter cam data.

She’d already made so many mistakes. She needed to think darkly, to assume the worst. And to plan for the worst.

What if he were planting something, and trying to get her locked up to get her out of the way?

And what was she going to do about any of it from the back of the SUV with handcuffs on?

Michel Claude and the driver opened the back of the SUV. “Come on, Addison,” Claude grunted, waving out the MP who’d acted as her medic. They kept their distance, and they had their guns in hand.

It wasn’t like Anika was going to be able to fight her way out through three armed men.

Particularly not in her current shape.

She watched the MP crawl out and stretch as he stood on the gravel, and saw the driver hand him his gun back. They were being very careful around her.

They shut the car door on her and walked off.

There were no handles on the inside to open it. Anika looked out. The three men were spreading out, one going around to her back door. Commander Claude and the driver approached her front door, guns ready.

Anika crawled out of the back of the SUV over the rear bench seat, grimacing in pain with every movement, and checked the doors. Unsurprisingly, no latches again. And there was a metal grid bolted behind the front seats.

On her back in the seat, she thought for a second.

If she escaped, or tried to escape, it made her look guiltier.

But then, she didn’t know whether her commander was trying to lock her up for life or just following the book.

She gritted her teeth and kicked at the window.

Nothing happened.

Again, she tensed and kicked with her heels, and thought she heard a faint cracking sound.

She took a deep breath, and as her feet struck the glass again the world exploded in pieces of glass as every window in the vehicle blew out.

For a split second she didn’t understand. Then the waves of heat roiled through the vehicle and debris started raining down, plinking off the roof of the car like a spatter of hail in a quick, brief storm.

When she sat up she saw the fiery frame of her house slump slightly. Debris smoldered, scattered out onto the road and several rows of houses back. Shattered windows slumped in frames, some tinkling to the ground well after the explosion.

Off-duty base people were stumbling out of their doors and looking around.

Anika reached out and used the outside door handle to open the door and step out. Something squished under her feet and she looked down.

It was a severed forearm, white bone sticking out of the bloody end, ropy muscle fibers limp on the gravel.

She stumbled forward, falling to her knees.

“Claude!” she shouted. “Commander Claude?”

This was nearly incomprehensible and apocalyptic and, somehow, even worse than some lone gunman trying to kill her on the highway. And she realized now that Claude hadn’t intended her any harm. He’d been following the book. A good man had walked right into a mess left for her.

Someone had rigged her home with explosives.

God. She repeated that to herself: someone had rigged her home with explosives!

Those “MPs” that Karl told her had been here previously.

“Claude!” she shouted again. He’d been standing behind the one MP, the driver, when she last saw him. Covering him.

She heard a groan, maybe a whimper, from somewhere nearby.

On her hands and knees, Anika scrabbled her way over to the remains of her front door and pulled it off Claude. She gasped. There were burns everywhere, the man was hardly recognizable.

But the pale eyes recognized her.

Someone crunched across the gravel. It was Karl. He was in boxer shorts, sandals, and a simple white shirt, his breath puffing in the air as he ran over. From the expression on his face, it was clear he was in just as much shock as she’d been. “Anika?”

“It’s the commander,” she yelled at him. “Call an ambulance! Now!”

Karl hesitated, looked down, flinched, then ran back to find a phone.

Anika turned back to the badly burned body of the commander. Claude was going to die, and it was going to be her fault. There was no way people weren’t going to think she did this.

“Commander Claude, what was the name of the man in Greenland?” she asked, staring right into his eyes. “Did you look it up?”

His breath was raspy and irregular. He stirred, and then groaned. No doubt the pain was unimaginable. Anika found tears in the corners of her eyes for doing this, instead of leaving him to die in peace, but she leaned in closer. “I’m begging you, sir. Greenland. For both our sakes.”

He kept panting for a long moment, until finally, his lips moved. Anika leaned in until they were almost touching.

“Braffit,” Claude hissed.

Anika waited for more, but it became clear from the faint gurgling in the back of his throat that this was all Claude could manage. She pulled back. “Thank you,” she whispered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the flat shard of plastic the scatter camera data was on. His good hand curled around it as she pressed it there.

If he lived, then maybe he could put it to good use. If he didn’t, then the world would assume she killed him, and not even the scatter camera data was going to do her much good.

He closed his eyes, and the whistling breathing slowed.

There were sirens in the distance.

Anika stood up and shielded her face with her handcuffed hands, approaching the burning remains of her home. She found the scorched, ruined, limbless body of the driver. The smell of burned flesh left her nauseous, the heat from the fire crackled and licked at her.

But she found the keys to the SUV on the man’s belt.

They burned her fingers, but she yanked them clear, gritting her teeth, and staggered back to the vehicle.

The hot keys turned the car on just fine, despite the handcuffs. After a moment of leaning over to awkwardly yank the shifter into drive, she accelerated out. She saw Karl in the rearview mirror, watching her leave.

She tensed and lowered her hands to the bottom of the wheel as she passed the emergency crews whipping their way down the road toward the base. But they paid her no mind, trying to get to the pillar of smoke as fast as they possibly could.