Page 98 of Enemy Within

“WRIGHT? WRIGHT, COME BACK. Shit, I can’t raise anyone.” Adam pushed on his earpiece like that would make the signal clearer. All he could hear was static, endless wails and warbles. “Where the hell is this static coming from? We should have a clear signal.”

They’d wound their way through the complex, back to the dormitories. A long line of empty, mostly unmade bunkbeds. Pictures of wives, girlfriends, and porn stars were pushed into the metal grates of the bunks and tacked on walls. People had been there. Had lived there. Where had they gone?

“Unless there’s something else in the air.” Faisal leaned his rifle against the wall and dropped his backpack. He sat on the edge of a bunk.

Faisal pulled his laptop out of its protective sleeve and powered it on. The battery stuttered and the screen flickered, but it finally powered up. Faisal grinned. “I will do an RF sweep. See what else is out there.”

Adam nodded. He poked around the rest of the dorm, using the barrel of his rifle to open locker doors and flick through the RusFuel technicians’ clothes and jackets. Their shirts were stained with sweat and dribbled sauces, and stank like vodka. Definitely a Russian station.

“Adam…” Faisal’s voice hardened. When Adam turned back, he saw Faisal frowning at his screen. “The frequencies here are jammed almost to the max. The C-band is off the scale.”

“C-band?”

Faisal looked up. “It’s the band for satellite transmissions. Whatever is going on there is bleeding into everything.”

“Let’s go find out what it is.”

HIS FIRST THOUGHT FOR finding whatever satellite was transmitting with enough power to clutter the airwaves was the antenna farm on top of the shipping container Doc and Ruiz had gone to investigate.

“No,” Faisal said. “None of those dishes would be capable of this kind of power. From what I saw, most of the masts and receivers were damaged anyway.”

“Then this is something different? Something new?”

Faisal nodded. “It will be somewhere with a clear line of sight to the sky.”

Adam’s eyes rolled upward. He stared at the ceiling.

Faisal stayed in the station while Adam clambered to the roof. There weren’t any ladders to help him up. He jumped from the top of an oil drum to the sharply angled overhang, and then pulled himself up by grabbing onto the edges of the corrugated steel sheets and sliding on his belly. The overhang tried to block the harsh winds roaring off the ice sheet from pushing too hard on the station. For Adam, it was a frigid obstacle, chilling his body as he slid over the frozen metal. Finally, he swung his feet over the edge and jumped down to the flat roof of the main station.

He peered around, turning in a slow circle with his rifle up. Nobody home.

He scanned the snow.

Footprints, from the edge of the roof to the center. Something squatted in the middle of the roof, covered with a thin piece of parachute silk. It rustled in the faint wisps of wind that slipped around the protective overhang, shuffling like dry sand.

Adam slowly crept toward the center, keeping his head on a swivel, searching for anything. Static hummed in his ear. His molars ached, and the hairs on his arms stood straight up, quivering like he’d been zapped with electricity.

A sound split the air, almost like a shout. He whirled and raised his rifle, scanning right and left.

What was that? A bear? What did a polar bear shout sound like, anyway? He shuffled toward the edge of the roof, his rifle still up and ready to fire.

Over the edge, he could see almost the entirety of the station. The antenna farm and the doors of the shipping container wide open. Rows and rows of more shipping containers. The ice hole. Snowmobiles. The plane. A smear against the endless white, lying in the snow at the edge of the runway caught his eye. Wright, keeping watch after searching the plane.

He scanned the station again. Someone kneeled next to the ice hole, peering into the darkness, but from his vantage point, he couldn’t see which of his men it was. They wore the same arctic uniforms, all white from head to toe, an almost seamless blending into the snow and ice.

Must have been a bear. Or the wind. Radios were down, but no one had raised an alarm. His team was still searching.

He had his own search to complete. Adam turned back toward the roof and took a step. He tripped, stumbling for a few steps before falling to the roof. He curled to his side as he landed on his shoulder. Wincing, he lay there for a moment, letting the sting fade.

When he opened his eyes, he saw it. A thick black cable, rubber coated, stretching over the roof and toward whatever was in the center. Snow had covered it completely. His eyes tracked the cable, and like a maze being revealed, he suddenly saw the rise in the snow where the cable had been buried, purposely hidden. Another cable stretched from the center of the roof beneath the parachute silk, and another. And another, like the spokes of a wagon wheel radiating outward. The ends went over the edge, dropping toward the runway.

Peering over the roof, he traced the cables through the snow, following the rise, the disturbances where they had been buried and concealed. They wound around the snowmobiles and disappeared into the lines of shipping containers.

Adam frowned. What the hell were those?

He peered across the station. He couldn’t see his team. Whoever had been at the ice hole was gone now. Doc and Ruiz, at the antenna farm, were silent. A little strange, but Doc knew when to get serious on an operation.

He headed for the center of the roof. Whatever the cables were doing, somehow it was connected to whatever was under the parachute silk. He ripped it away.