The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,25

won’t hold out much longer. It could collapse at any time.

Still, it might not matter in the end. Ahead of them, the meltwater river had transformed into a lake. And with more and more water flowing in here, the level climbed steadily toward their position. The rising waters also squeezed the thick smoke into an ever-shrinking pocket of air, making it hard to breathe.

John coughed hoarsely.

Unfortunately, something heard him.

An angry bellow rose out of the smoky pall on the ship’s starboard side. With his heart in his throat, Mac shifted to the deck rail. He remembered the crabs hadn’t been the only creature to emerge from those oil-filled pots.

He stared down. Large sections of the roof had collapsed, littering the shoreline and building a breakwater pile of ice and rock between the ship and the cascade flooding the chamber.

Something moved down in that maze.

Flames lit its path through the smoke, offering glimpses of a hulking form. Drawn by John’s cough, it pounded toward their position, then vanished into the thicker pall surrounding the ship.

Mac held his breath, afraid even his exhalation would be heard. His eyes strained to pierce the darkness.

Where is—

Something crashed into the side of the dhow, hard enough to shake the entire ship. Mac fell to one knee. John kept upright, his shotgun fixed to his shoulder, the double barrels pointing down into the darkness.

The creature roared its frustration below, casting flames from its maw, revealing jaws lined with fiery razors. Curved bronze horns mounted its brutish head. As it bellowed, it had lifted onto its hind legs, kicking the air with its front legs, which displayed a row of curved blades along their backsides.

Then it crashed back down to all fours and vanished into the smoky darkness.

Mac listened as the killing machine—half bull, half bear—paced back and forth below.

Another section of ice cracked from the roof and splashed into the rising lake. Mac shared a frightened look with John.

We can’t stay here.

If that thing didn’t kill them, the cold, the water, or the ice would. They needed another way out, a way past that fiery bull.

But how?

12:55 P.M.

“No way!” Kowalski screamed into the gale-force winds.

The rescue party huddled on the lee side of a row of three red snowmobiles. They shared the space with a sled and its team of dogs, thick-furred husky mixes. The dogs had scraped little nests in the glacier’s ice and curled there, breaths steaming the air, oblivious to the cold.

Nuka had used the team to guide the trio of snowmobiles across the glacier. He had explained his choice of transportation: The dogs know the safest path across the ice. Too easy to fall through a hidden hole. You learn to trust their eyes, their noses.

After leaving the hotel at Tasiilaq, the group had boarded a Ram 2500 truck with giant knobby tires and traveled a treacherous gravel road to reach the top of Helheim Glacier. The storm pounded them continually, battering the truck with gusts that threatened to tip it over. Once at the glacier’s edge, they parked next to a huddle of small blue-painted shacks and a dozen parked snowmobiles. It seemed Nuka’s family operated a tour company, offering trips across the glacier.

Maria had asked where the kid’s parents were. He told them that his mother and father were members of Tasiilaq’s search-and-rescue unit. They were gone, dealing with an emergency inland, which had also pulled most of the experienced crew from the village.

Kowalski looked at who they were left with.

The second string . . .

Despite his previous misgivings, Jørgen had come along. So had a pair of natives: two stocky older men, said to be relatives of the family, which probably could be said of everyone in the village. The two were rigging a rope to the back of one of the snowmobiles.

Nuka coiled the loose length over one shoulder. He pointed past the rubber track of the snowmobile. “That’s the only way into the heart of the glacier. Down through the moulin.”

“No way,” Kowalski repeated.

He leaned out from the shelter of the snowmobiles. The wind came close to tearing the set of goggles from his face. Nuka had lent them to him, along with a helmet and a thick parka that was too small for his large frame. The sleeves didn’t even reach his wrists.

Ten yards off, the white surface of the glacier had been cut deeply by a blue stream. The water wended down from the higher elevations and vanished down a ten-foot-wide hole, spiraling away into