ICE GENESIS: Book 2 in the ICE Trilogy Read online

  ICE GENESIS

  by

  KEVIN TINTO

  Copyright © 2018 by Kevin Tinto.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fiction, except when they are not. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. ICE GENESIS/ Kevin Tinto — 1st ed. — v1.6

  “It’s all true, except where it’s not.”

  For

  My Dad

  James Halliday Tinto

  &

  Bobo

  Contents

  Ice Genesis

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Cliff Hangers?

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  “The extraordinary disappearance of the Anasazi/Mogollon cliff dwellers from the American Southwest has been well documented but never solved. Why Native Americans who lived and prospered peacefully on the mesa tops for thousands of years suddenly abandoned these villages for precarious cities lodged in the cliffs around the year 1200—and for only a period of some two-hundred years, before disappearing—remained a mystery, until now.”

  If you’ve come this far, you’ve seen this quote before. It is placed prominently in the opening pages of ICE. A lot of time has passed since the Ancients, as we refer to them in ICE GENESIS, lived in the cliff dwellings. It almost feels like the same amount of time has passed since ICE was first published.

  Just another indie debut among millions of the same, sparring for reader attention. The cover price of any book is inconsequential to the time and attention readers take out of their busy lives to read and finish a novel. While selecting a Netflix movie might ‘take two hours out of your life you’ll never get back’ a book could be ten times that commitment—or more.

  If you’re reading this, for better, or for worse, you sat down, took a look at a pretty cool cover, and read one page, maybe even two of ICE. Two led to three, and by ten, ICE had already won the one-out-of-a-hundred, indie lotto; you’d turned to page eleven. Four-hundred and seventeen pages later, Jack and Leah had sucked up a significant chunk of your free time. For that I say, thank you!

  The ICE series is three books. ICE, ICE GENESIS and ICE REVELATION. I’m well along on ICE REVELATION. Look for IR in the fall, 2018.

  That’s enough from the author. After all, you’ve been waiting extra-long for ICE GENESIS.

  Find that special reading place, shut off that phone, get out a parka if you chill easily….

  Here it comes….

  ICE

  GENESIS

  Prologue

  Commander Gus Beckam hauled himself out of the sleeping cocoon constructed from fragments of burned aircraft insulation, cargo blankets, and anything else the survivors had been able to salvage from the fuselage of the Russian Antonov.

  The reprieve from what should have been vaporization, courtesy of a nuclear detonation, had been, apparently, only delayed. It had become obvious after more than ten days: no one was coming to rescue them. While Beckam would have liked to blame that on Fischer and the President of the United States, he suspected they’d spotted no overflights of any kind because of the electronic-communications disruption. Even basic Global Positioning Signals remained in full blackout.

  As for Beckam’s team’s unexpected survival, Beckam’s best guess was that two of the three Isomer-Hafnium warheads had not detonated. The explosion, although substantial at two kilotons, had been a whole lot less destructive than he’d anticipated.

  Prior to the detonation, Beckam and six of the surviving SEALS had taken a defensive position inside the burned-out fuselage of an Antonov transport that had crashed at the remote Antarctic site weeks before. The AN-12’s fuselage provided a perfect defensive position from which to set up a lethal spread of fire, pinning the newly arrived Russian troops down for the few minutes necessary to enable Paulson and his B-29 to takeoff from the primitive ice runway. The fact that Paulson’s plane had cleared the runway with only one of the World War II-era radial engines blowing smoke was beyond what Beckam had thought possible. His last view of the vintage bomber had been on the Antarctic horizon, the aircraft still gaining altitude. Watching the old B-29 disappear into the frigid air was the last thing he remembered before the detonation.

  Beckam’s first experience with the Iso-Hafnium devices had been on a mission to destroy an Iranian nuclear facility. Like characters out of a Tom Clancy novel, Beckam and twelve hand-picked SEALS had flown automated, terrain-hugging jet-wings to the bomb-drop site and parachuted in, while the state of the art jet-wings flew themselves off shore and were captured in what looked like a massive catcher’s mitt made of netting, strung across a carrier deck. Once the mission was completed, his team bugged out, transported out by Osprey aircraft. When the Iranian facility inexplicably exploded minutes later, wiping out all the offending hardware and every nuclear scientist in the deeply buried facility, the POTUS
had shrugged while the press went nuts.

  “It appears to be an industrial accident created by the Iranian nuclear industry,” was the U.S.’s official statement, the truth remaining a closely-held secret until being declassified many years down the road.

  Beckam’s mission to Antarctica, on the other hand, had been billed as a ‘milk run.’ “A simple mission,” the orders read, “requiring the removal of civilians caught in the epicenter of an American-Russian diplomatic dust-up.”

  Of course, it had turned out to be the opposite.

  While engaged in a fierce firefight, the SEALs had done their best to stack debris against the aluminum skin of the fuselage, fortifying the interior against the coming explosion.

  The blast wave of the Hafnium detonation tossed the Antonov’s fuselage across the Antarctic terrain like an underhand softball pitch. After touching back down on the ice, it had tumbled over an ice dam, finally coming to rest on the downside of an icy slope more than five hundred meters from where it had originally touched down.

  The SEALS had been spun around inside the aircraft like agates in a rock polisher. The survivors: Beckam, his Executive Officer Lt. Danny Frantino, and the Clay twins. Beckam and the Clay twins had suffered a variety of cuts and bruises, and Liam Clay had lost his front teeth. Danny had gotten the worst of it, with injuries including a fractured femur, spinal contusions, and a class-A concussion.

  What had saved them from the Hafnium bomb’s lethal gamma radiation was the combination of distance from ground zero and simple topography. The Russians had cleared ice with a dozer flown in to flatten a working runway. The cleared ice had been pushed up into piles, and the fuselage had come to rest behind one of these piles, partially shielding it from the radiation.

  Nonetheless, all four of them had minor symptoms of radiation sickness: nausea, vomiting, the dreaded in-the-field diarrhea, and mouth sores. Given they had survived more than ten days and the symptoms hadn’t gotten worse, Beckam figured they were destined to survive the radiation dosage. They’d likely pay for it in ten or twenty years with variety of rare cancers. They could only hope the VA’s medical system would be in a whole lot better shape by then.

  One lucky break was the survival of the Clay twins. If Beckam ever needed two SEALs for back-up in a dodgy situation, he would have chosen Liam and Lenny. Not that they didn’t come without their risks. If you wanted to stay out of jail in Virginia Beach, you’d avoid them like the plague. The boys were naturals at drawing fire, whether from enemy combatants on the battlefield or the local rednecks who made their way to the beach for a night of boozing at Fran’s Ready Room or one of the other VB watering holes where non-deployed SEALs could be found.

  Beckam had sent them out on the ice, combing the wreckage blown for miles in every direction for medical supplies, food, and fuel for the two stoves they’d managed to resurrect. It hadn’t been easy, most of the debris having been covered in a layer of ice blown over during the blast. But they’d found enough to survive on. For a time.

  “We can’t stay here forever, Boss.”

  Frantino was finally awake, looking clear-eyed but worn.

  “How’s the pain?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, a twelve—way better than twenty.”

  “Need a shot of the good stuff?”

  “Always, but my dealer says his supplies are tight. I’ll just hold out.”

  “The Clays are looking for more meds,” Beckam said. “Morphine’s in short supply, so try and bite down on it if you can.” Beckam checked to made sure Frantino was tucked in and warm as possible in the penetrating cold. “I had hopes Antarctica might work out as a get-away-from-it-all, retirement option, but I’m starting to have my doubts.”

  Frantino nodded, managed a weak grin. “You know the Russians made a tactical airdrop somewhere out there on the ice. I think it’s time we take the bull by the horns and rescue our own asses.”

  “Reading my mind, Danny.” Beckam patted Frantino gently on the shoulder. “The Clays are feeling strong and I’m sick and tired of this hotel. Given the atmospheric interference, planes won’t be flying over us any time soon.”

  The sound of the makeshift door in the creaky fuselage turned both men’s heads. The Clay brothers had finished their treasure hunt. Except it seemed that they’d returned without any real treasure, only Heckler & Koch automatic weapons slung over their cold-weather combat gear.

  Beckam said, “Come on over, guys. I’m about to make a command decision.”

  Liam Clay winked at his brother. “Boss, if this is a personal-hygiene inspection, I can tell you right now we’re not gonna pass.”

  “No shit. I can smell you clear across the ice. No worries. We’re on modified grooming standards until we reach civilization.” He winked. “No, what I’m saying is, Danny and I are sick of this dump. Sorry, Frogs, but it’s time to leave this slice of heaven.”

  Lenny’s eyes widened. “No shit? We’re outta here? You got a plan?”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. I always have a plan.”

  Liam high-fived his brother. “I was damn sure I was gonna die, a handwritten note pinned to my chest: Cause of death: Vienna sausage.”

  Beckam chuckled. The Russians had left cases of Vienna sausages stacked around the camp and in the Antonov. He and the boys had been living on VS for the duration.

  “Our tactical situation,” Beckam said, “is that we’ve had no visual contact with aircraft since detonation. Negative communications and no GPS. We can assume the same goes for the Russians’ GLONASS satellites. Otherwise we would’ve seen their planes by now. Two possible scenarios: The alien structure emitted a high-energy beam when the civvies breached the interior, and the energy burst either destroyed communications and global-navigation satellites or rendered them inoperable.”

  “So here we are,” Liam said, “twenty-thousand klicks from Virginia—sitting in the reefer from hell and a communications blackout. I think that about sums it up.” He looked to his brother.

  Lenny held up his H&K. “Yeah, but look at the upside—we’re destined for the history books. First firefight of World War III, right here. This baby here’s headed for the Smithsonian.”

  Beckam removed a plasticized map of Antarctica from his pocket and unfolded it. “We’ve got plenty of stove fuel to melt ice, at least enough for a week, maybe two. When the fuel runs out, we’ll have to have scoop it into the bottles, and wear them inside clothing in order to make water. A short-term solution at best.” He used a gloved hand to point out a spot on the Antarctic map. “Our position is here. The nearest survival point is here.” Beckam drew an imaginary line with his finger from their position near Thor’s Hammer to the center of the South Pole. He tapped on the South Pole and said, “Amundsen-Scott’s around five-hundred kilometers away as the crow flies.”

  Frantino croaked, “A long walk, even on a nice summer day.”

  “Right. Plus, we’re deaf, dumb, and blind. Without dependable GPS, regardless of how we got there, we’d likely miss it. No need to discuss in detail the ramifications.” Beckam moved his finger to the center of the magnetic South Pole, north of the geographic South Pole and a thousand kilometers from their current location. “See what happens if we use a compass and navigate straight for the magnetic South Pole?”

  “Yeah,” said Liam. “We miss Amundsen-Scott by half a continent and end up in Nowhere, Antarctica.”

  “Right. However, the South Pole Transverse runs here.” Beckam drew a straight line from the large American base at McMurdo, located on the coast, to Amundsen-Scott at the bottom of the globe. “The highway’s an overland route used during the summer months to transport supplies and equipment to Amundsen-Scott from Murdo. It’s marked by a series of flags running the entire length, around a thousand klicks.”

  Liam nodded. “We’d still have to find those flags, then?”

  “Negativ
e. The summer traffic leaves pretty clear tracks grooved into the ice. If we set a course for the Magnetic South Pole, even if we’re off a few degrees, it won’t matter. We’d have to cross the Transverse here.” Beckam showed how they’d bisect the South Pole Transverse on a path to the Magnetic South Pole.

  “Once we hit the Transverse, we make a left turn and follow it right up to Amundsen-Scott. Assuming Amundsen hasn’t been blown up, all we need is a deck of cards while we wait out a rescue. I’m discounting any chance that the Russians have occupied it, for now. Even if the base’s been destroyed, it’s riddled with tunnels dug under the ice during the last fifty years: under-ice food storage, snowcats, fuel and more. We’d find shelter and plenty of food, enough to survive on until we figure out our next move.” He shrugged. “And if the Russian are there? We go out in a blaze of glory.”

  Liam elbowed his brother. “Could be a quite a stroll, bro. Not that I couldn’t do it.”

  “Affirmative,” Beckam replied. “I have no interest in setting the Guinness Book of World Records for dumbass crossings of Antarctica using a Boy Scout compass, walking stick, a can of sausages, and a Sierra Club space blanket.”

  “Note to Boss,” Frantino said, raising a shaky hand. “I can’t walk.”

  Beckam grinned. “How could I forget? We know the Russians made a tactical drop of support gear for the airborne platoon we engaged prior to the detonation. My best guess is the drop was over here.” He pointed on the map to a location south of their position. “Far enough out to avoid parachuting gear into a gunfight. Maybe ten, fifteen klicks out. Without GPS navigation, getting back will be a risk. If we were Army Rangers, we’d be crying for Mama after the first klick, but we’re SEALs.”

  The brothers nodded in unison. Frantino managed to raise his eyebrows in solidarity.

  “All righty, then,” said Beckam. “An Arctic-spec drop for Spetsnaz commandos will contain food, ammunition, weapons, shelter, meds, and most important…transportation. You’ll take along tools scattered around our aluminum home here. Given no GPS and zero-visibility windstorms blowing up without warning, you’ll use them to mark your trail out and back. Use a compass azimuth and the reciprocal. Straight out, ten klicks and back. Use binoculars to eyeball the terrain off the azimuth for the supply drop. Then straight back. Don’t chase ghosts. If the weather breaks bad, you don’t want to be guessing the return bearing. Got it?”