Under the Ice

Mikhail Kharkov felt like a child again. With an innocent joy, he steered the speedy snowmobile down a sloping grade that led directly to the frozen surface of Lancaster Sound. It had been many years since he had last traveled on such an exhilarating means of transportation. Yet as a native Siberian, he was certainly no stranger to such tracked vehicles.

Why he could even remember a time when the only expedient way to travel over the snow was by horse-pulled sleighs.

His father had had a gorgeous team of black stallions, and a hand-tooled sled that he had built himself. As a youngster, it was Mikhail’s duty to harness the team. And he was always available to drive if needed. Many of his fondest memories were of such sleigh rides, sitting bundled in a thick fur blanket, with the crisp Siberian wind in his face and the sound of the sled’s bells twinkling to the hollow clops of the horse’s gallop.

The arrival of motorized sleds doomed this innocent era. Though much more efficient, such vehicles were loud and belched noxious fumes. They also sped along so rapidly that it was often difficult to even get a glimpse of the passing countryside.

The snowmobile he currently drove was quick and easy to steer. Its speed was even further enhanced when he got rid of his additional passenger. This he’d done soon after leaving the plain where the black box had been found.

The Eskimo he had taken hostage was a cowardly, foul-smelling brute. As they sped away from his igloo, he began trembling with fear, and Mikhail was expecting him to break out in tears at any moment.

What the veteran mariner hadn’t expected was the moment the idiot tried to break out of his grasp.

This abrupt move caused Mikhail to temporarily lose control of the vehicle, and it went plowing into the face of a snow drift. Mikhail had been thrown right out of his seat by the force of this collision, and as he scrambled to his feet, he spotted the eskimo desperately digging into the overturned vehicle’s storage compartment. There was no doubt in MikhaiFs mind that the savage was after the cockpit voice recorder, and his hand went straight to his bolstered pistol. At the exact moment Mikhail raised his Kalashnikov, the Eskimo turned to face him, and the veteran shot him a single time square in the chest.

As the native went sprawling to the snow, Mikhail righted the vehicle and after a bit of effort, finally got its motor started. It had been whining away with a vengeance ever since.

With a bone-jarring jolt, the snowmobile dropped down upon the pack ice. It would be on this frozen medium that he would find his lift back home to the Motherland. While checking the dashboard-mounted compass to make certain his course was correct, Mikhail opened the throttle wide. As the vehicle zoomed over the ice, his thoughts returned to the last time he had killed a man face-to-face.

It had been during the closing days of the Great War. As the Nazis retreated to make a last stand at Berlin, both the Soviets and their western allies rushed in to fill the void. Mikhail had been sent to occupy the German port complex at Danzig. Here at the Schichau shipyards, a revolutionary new class of German submarine was being constructed. Known as Type XXI, this vessel represented a last-ditch effort by Admiral Donitz to turn the tide of war. Able to dive deeper for a longer period of time and at a greater speed than any previous class of submarine, the TYpe XXI was an engineering masterpiece. Yet it went into production too late to serve the Nazi cause, and Mikhail’s job was to complete the five hulls that had already been laid down in Danzig.

It was while touring the partially completed engine room of the boat known as U-3538 that he’d been attacked by a German engineer. The grease-stained Nazi was high on schnapps, and came at Mikhail with wrench in hand. Even though the German was powerfully built, Mikhail was able to take advantage of his drunken state and throw his attacker down to the deck. Without giving the German a second to catch his breath, Mikhail jumped down upon the man’s heaving chest and began strangling the life out of him. With his hands tightly gripped around the Nazi’s neck, Mikhail watched the German die. During the last frantic seconds, their glances directly met, and he actually saw the manner in which death took him.

That incident had taken place over four decades ago. Yet it was still so fresh in his mind that he could actually smell the scent of fear that exuded from his attacker’s pores.

And now, forty-five years later, fate had once again put him in a position to directly take another’s life. And once more, he felt strangely stimulated by this godlike power. This was the case even though the Eskimo was nothing but a subhuman. The savage was little more than a beast, and shooting him was like putting an injured horse out of its misery.