Chapter 47 - The Svalbard Ice Shelf
A gunshot cracked through the howling wind.
The bullet struck the titanium deck plating inches from my boot, sending a shower of sparks into the foam.
"Jump!" Clara screamed, grabbing the strap of my thermal vest.
Directly off the submarine’s port bow, a massive polar ice shelf—a vast, floating continent of packed permafrost and compressed blue ice—drifted within twenty feet of the hull, pushed against the submarine by the violent oceanic swell.
We didn't hesitate. Clara and I leaped across the freezing void.
We hit the snowbank hard, the impact knocking the air from my lungs. The sovereign registry cylinder tumbled into the powdery snow beside me. Freezing white crystals filled my mouth and eyes, but the adrenaline surging through my veins completely numbed the cold.
Behind us, another rifle shot cracked. The bullet punched through the ice pack six feet to our left.
Clara turned on her stomach, bringing her captured carbine to bear, and fired three suppressive rounds toward the conning tower. The heavy naval rounds pinged off the submarine’s reinforced bridge wing, forcing Julian to duck behind the ballistic shielding.
"Up! Get up, Evelyn!" Clara pulled me to my feet. "The ice shelf has fissures. If we reach the ridge, the patrol boats will spot our flares!"
We ran across the blinding white expanse. The wind was a living predator, tearing at our clothes, freezing the moisture on our eyelashes into needles of ice. Every breath burned like inhaling broken glass. Behind us, the low, mechanical rumble of the submarine’s diesel generators began to die down as the coast guard vessels closed the distance, firing warning illumination flares into the gray sky.
Brilliant magnesium light burst above us, turning the endless white plain of Svalbard ice into an eerie, alien landscape of long shadows and razor-sharp blue crevices.
I glanced back.
Julian had not stayed on the submarine. He had crossed the ice bridge behind us.
He was moving with terrifying speed, stripped of his heavy coat, carrying only a tactical sidearm and a handheld uplink transmitter. He was not trying to escape the approaching naval cutters; he was hunting us. He knew that if the registry remained in my possession, the entire architecture of the Duncan Foundation’s black accounts would be handed over to international prosecutors.
"He’s not letting go!" I yelled over the blizzard.
"He doesn't have a choice!" Clara yelled back, stopping at the edge of a massive glacial crevasse that cut across the shelf like a bottomless blue wound. "The shelf ends here! Turn around, Evelyn!"
May you like
We were trapped.
Ahead of us lay an abyss of sheer ice dropping thirty feet down into the churning, black ocean below. Behind us, forty yards away, Julian Duncan walked slowly through the falling snow, his gun leveled at my heart.
