White Death

30

THE SINGLE-ENGINE floatplane flew low, looking like a toy against the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Therri Weld sat next to the pilot in the front passenger seat, where she had a good view of the ranks of sharp, pointed treetops, any one of which could have ripped the belly out of the fuselage.

The first part of the flight had been spent in white-knuckled ter- ror. Therri had not been reassured when she saw the pair of fuzzy dice hanging in the cockpit. But as the flight proceeded without a hitch, she had concluded that the pilot, an enormous, grizzled man whose name was Bear, actually seemed to know what he was doing.

"Don't get up here very often," Bear shouted over the roar of the engine. "Too remote for most of the 'sportsmen' who come up to go hunting and fishing. Their idea of roughing it is staying at a lodge with inside plumbing." Bear pointed through the windshield at the featureless terrain. "Coming up on Looking Glass Lake. It's really two lakes joined by a short connector. Locals call it the Twins, al- though one's bigger than the other. We'll drop down on the little guy

in a few minutes."

"All I see is trees and more trees," said Marcus Ryan, who sat be- hind the pilot.

"Yeah, bound to find trees in these parts," Bear said, with a cheer- ful grin. He glanced over to see if Therri appreciated the joke on Ryan. She smiled gamely, but her heart wasn't in it. She would have felt far more confident if Ben Nighthawk were with them. Her calls to his apartment had gone unanswered. She'd wanted to keep trying, but Marcus had been in a hurry to get rolling.

"You can pull out if you want to," Ryan had said. "Chuck and I can go it alone, but we've got to move fast because the plane's wait- ing for us." Therri barely had time to pack before Ryan picked her up. Before long, they were piling into the SOS executive jet with Chuck Mercer, the former first mate of the Sea Sentinel. With his ship on the bottom, Mercer was eager to see action.

Therri would have been more enthusiastic if she didn't think Ryan was making up his strategy as he went along. Thanks to the infor- mation from Ben, Ryan knew where to go. Ben had told him the name and location of the lake. It was Ben, too, who had given him Bear's name.

The bush pilot used to be a drug smuggler and was known to work with no questions asked, if the money was right. He hadn't even blinked when Marcus had spun a cock-and-bull tale about doing a documentary film on native culture and wanting to observe Ben's village without being seen.

Bear was usually discreet, but he had become careless living in a community where everyone was aware of his past. He'd let a few Words slip about his job for SOS while he was fueling up the plane. He could not have known that sharp ears were listening, or that un- friendly eyes were watching as his plane took off and headed into the interior.

The lake loomed up suddenly. Therri glimpsed water shimmer- ing in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Seconds later, the plane dropped as if it had hit a downdraft. She felt her heart in her mouth, then the plane bottomed out and slid into a gradually angled trajectory. The floats skimmed the lake's surface a short distance be- fore the plane settled into the water and slowed.

Bear taxied close to shore. When the plane neared a sharply banked beach a few yards wide, he climbed out of the cockpit onto a float and jumped feetfirst into water up to his waist. He tied an an- chor line onto a strut, pulled the other end over his shoulder and towed the plane closer to shore. He tied up to a stump, then helped the others unload a large package and several smaller ones. They untied the largest bundle, and with the help of a CO capsule, quickly pumped up an inflatable boat about eight feet long. Bear watched with interest, hands on hips, as Ryan tested a quiet, battery-operated outboard motor.

"I'll be back tomorrow/' he said. "You've got the radio if you need me. Watch your ass."

The plane taxied to one end of the lake, took off and headed back the way it had come. Therri went over to where Ryan and Mercer were checking through the pack. Mercer unwrapped a block ofC-4 explosives and examined the detonators.

He smiled and said, "Just like the old days."

"Sure you're up for this, Chuck?"

"You're talking to the guy who sank an Icelandic whaling ship practically single-handed."

"That was a few years ago. We're a lot older now."

Mercer fingered a detonator. "Doesn't take much energy to push a button," he said. "I owe these bastards for our ship." Mercer had been steaming since he'd learned that Oceanus's ships were serviced at the same Shetlands boatyard where the Sea Sentinel could have been sabotaged.

"We can't forget Josh, either," Ryan said. "I haven't forgotten Josh. But are you sure there's no other way?" Therri said.

"I wish there were," Ryan said. "We've got to play hardball."

"I'm not arguing with the need to do something, but the means. What about Ben's people? You're risking their lives."

"We can't be diverted from our prime goal. We know from our contacts on Senator Graham's staff that Oceanus continued the trans- gendered fish experiments that were halted in New Zealand. We've got to stop this abomination before it is unleashed."

Abomination? You're scaring me, Marcus. You're talking like a Biblical prophet."

Ryan's face flushed, but he held his temper. "I have no intention of making Ben's people collateral damage. Oceanus will be too busy dealing with our little gifts to do anything. In any case, we'll call the authorities as soon as we're finished here."

"It would only take a few bursts from an automatic weapon to kill

Ben's people. Why not call in outside help now?"

"Because it would take time we don't have. We're talking search warrants and legal process. The villagers could be dead by the time the Mounties decide to investigate." He paused. "Remember, I tried to bring NUMA in on this, and Austin refused."

Therri bit her lower lip in frustration. Her loyalty toward Ryan was intense but not uncritical.

"Don't turn your sights on Kurt. If it weren't for him, you'd be eat- ing sardines in a Danish prison cell."

Ryan beamed his lighthouse smile. "You're right. I'm out of line.

But there's still time to call Bear and have him take you out of here."

"Not on your life, Ryan."

Mercer had finished organizing their backpacks. He strapped on a pistol belt and handed one to Ryan. Therri refused a weapon. They piled their supplies into the inflatable, shoved it off the beach and started the engine. It ran with a low hum and pushed them through the water at a slow but respectable speed. They hugged the shoreline even after they had passed through the channel into the larger lake.

Ryan was using a topographic map with notations based on Ben's information. He stopped the boat at one point and peered through his binoculars at the opposite side of the lake. He could make out a pier and several boats, but no structure matching Nighthawk's de- scription.

"That's funny, I don't see any dome. Ben said it rose above the trees.

"What should we do?" Therri said.

"We'll go to Ben's village and wait there. Then we'll head across the lake, leave our calling cards where they will do the most good and set the timers for late morning, when we'll be well on our way out of here."

They got underway again. The sun was falling behind the trees when they saw the clearing and the dozen or so houses that made up Ben's village. It was deathly quiet, with only a faint soughing in the trees and the lap of the waves against shore breaking the silence. They stopped about fifty yards offshore while Ryan, then the others, checked out the village with light-gathering glasses. Seeing nothing, they cruised straight on in, beached the boat and came ashore.

Ryan was careful, insisting that they check out the houses and store. The village was deserted, as Ben had described. They had something to eat. By the time they finished, darkness was complete, except for a blue-black sheen on the lake and pinpoints of light on the opposite shore. They took turns standing watch while the others slept. Around midnight they were all awake and preparing to move out. They slid the boat into the water and pushed off.

Halfway across the lake, Ryan peered through his glasses, and said, "Jesus!"

The sky across the lake was lit up. He handed the binocs to Therri, but even with her naked eye she could see the dully lit greenish-blue structure that mounded above the trees. It seemed to have dropped from space.

Ryan directed Mercer to steer off to one side, away from the pier. They beached a few minutes later, pulled the inflatable onshore and piled brush around it. Then they made their way along the beach to- ward the pier. When they were a few hundred feet away, they cut in- land and came upon the road that Ben and Josh Green had used to get to the airship hangar. The muddy ruts Ben had described had since been graded and blacktopped.

They were looking for a particular type of building, and found what they were looking for in a structure that hummed with the sound of pumps. Mercer made short work of the padlocks with a tiny cutting torch.

Large glass tanks stretched from one side of the building to the other, and the air inside was heavy with the smell offish and the hum of motors. The room was in semi-darkness, but large pale shapes could be seen moving behind the glass. Mercer got right to work. He placed packets of C-4 in strategic places, molding the putty-like explosive around pumps and electrical conduits where explosions would do the most damage. What was left, he placed on the outside of the tanks.

They worked fast, arming the charges and setting the timers, and were done within thirty minutes. The only people they had seen were those moving in the distance, but Ryan wasn't going to press their luck. They made their way back toward the lakeshore, again with- out encountering anyone. Ryan was beginning to feel uneasy, but he pressed on. If all went as planned, Bear would be picking them up just before the big bang.

Unfortunately, all did not go as planned. Their boat was missing to begin with. Thinking that they may have misjudged the distance in the dark, Ryan sent the others down the beach to look for the boat while he stood watch. When five minutes had passed and they hadn't returned, he struck out after them, and he found Therri and Mercer standing side by side looking out toward the lake.

"Did you find it?" he said.

No answer. They remained motionless. When he moved in closer, he saw why. Their wrists were bound behind their backs with wire, and they had tape across their mouths. Before he could free his friends, the bushes behind the beach erupted and they were sur- rounded by a dozen burly figures.

One man took Ryan's gun away and another came closer and flicked on a flashlight, its beam illuminating the man's hand. Dan- gling in his fingers was one of the charges Ryan had set in the fish house. The man threw the explosives into the lake and put the beam on his own face so that Ryan could be sure to see the pockmarked jack-o'-lantern features and the fierce grin.

He drew a white-bladed knife from his belt and put it under Ryan's chin so that the point dimpled his skin and drew a droplet of blood. Then he uttered something in a strange language and re- turned the knife to its scabbard. Together, they began to march back toward the airship hangar.