Shadow of the Dragon полностью

“My money is on bubbles,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. He nodded toward his computer. “It’s not on the charts, but the sonar’s showing a tall ridge jutting up from the seafloor about fifty meters northwest of our position. It’s likely you’re hearing current burbling around the rocks.”

It was Moon’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t think it’s burbling bubbles…” She fiddled with the touchpad on her computer. “What depth are you showing now?”

He checked his computer, then leaned sideways, squinting at her screen.

“Same as you. Three-six-five feet.”

She gave Thorson her best imploring look, going so far as to bat her eyes a little. “Think we could bring it up a hundred feet, see if I could get that sound again?”

The numbers on her screen kept climbing as the buoy went deeper.

“Sorry, kiddo,” Thorson grunted. “Entanglement danger if we reverse the winch right now.”

Damn him, but he was right.

Moon thought of begging him more, but Sikuliaq’s first officer, a thirtysomething woman named Symonds, trotted down the steps from the wheelhouse and strode over to them, her head bowed against the wind. She also wore a wool turtleneck under waterproof orange Grundens bibs, but she wore hers better than Thorson, like she’d been born in them. A shock of curly blond hair jutted from beneath a black wool watch cap. One of the handful of people on the boat who didn’t hold a graduate degree in science or engineering, Kelli Symonds possessed more common sense than most of them put together.

“Low pressure toward Wrangel Island is sucking a knife ridge of heavy pack ice south and west, right on top of us,” she said. “The first course looks to be about the size of a cruise ship, and there’s city blocks of the stuff after that. The skipper wants us up and outta here in five minutes.”

Faces glued to their screens, both scientists gave Symonds a thumbs-up.

Sikuliaq was a Polar Class 5 vessel, fully capable of operating year-round in two and a half feet of new ice, with a few chunks of the previous year’s stuff mixed in. Even now, a slushy soup of seawater and baby ice rattled and thunked against the powder-blue hull.

“… and… we have touchdown,” Thorson said. “Can is stable. Detaching now. Cable’s coming up.”

Patti Moon hunched over her computer again, ready this time, focusing intently on her headset as the winch wound in the Kevlar cable, raising the hydrophone faster now that there was only the counterweight and not a half-ton of gear dangling on the end of it.

The azimuth thrusters under Sikuliaq’s hull had already begun pushing her south, away from the jagged teeth of oncoming ice.

And there it was — at least part of it.

The noise started again at two hundred and fifty feet, continuing for almost four seconds before going quiet.

Dr. Moon marked the position in her journal and looked aft, past the red cranes and over the transom at the wake Sikuliaq left in the churning blue-green water. She shivered, and not from the bitter wind. This could not be what she’d initially thought. That was impossible.

Banging metal.

Screams.

Human screams.

Today, the lesson was on field-expedient weapons, a subject with which John Clark was intimately familiar. Two-by-fours, pointy mop handles, socks full of sand, a handy magazine rolled into a tight tube if it came down to that — all of them could be useful in a pinch when an operative found him- or herself without a gun or a suitable knife. Campus director of transportation Lisanne Robertson was proving herself to be an able student as they walked through the teeming Ben Thanh Market.

Clark registered the sweating European man with his peripheral vision. Open cotton shirt, juking this way and that as he made his way through the crowd. This guy was up to something, leading Clark to believe that some kind of a weapon might come in handy in the not-too-distant future.

Clark estimated the European to be in his mid-thirties. Lean, fit, with the kind of ropy muscles that were difficult to keep hold of in a fight. A workingman’s muscles, like he’d just come from hanging Sheetrock or swinging a hammer at a construction site. Dark hair hung in sweaty curls over the collar of his shirt. Glancing furtively, obviously searching for someone, the man attempted to move quickly, but was impeded by the mass of shoppers and sightseers who clogged the aisles between what, at first glance, appeared to be an endless line of T-shirt shops.