Hot Ice by Gregg Loomis Read Free Book Online

largest glaciers as a tourist, not in the normal sense.
    He looked back up the gravel road he had just traveled and saw nothing but the rocky volcanic hills that had been sculpted by millennia of ice. Nothing moved. He turned his attention to the black boulders, some bigger than houses, dotting the landscape and shook his head. Too many places from which he could be observed by unseen eyes. He sighed. Too late to worry about that now. The people he worked for wanted answers and they wanted them in a hurry.
    Still, caution was called for. Taking a pair of binoculars from the seat beside him, he swept a wide arc.
    Nothing.
    Replacing the glasses with a cell phone, one with photographic capabilities, he stepped out onto the near-frozen ground. Even though it was summer, he was glad of the heavy sweater he had brought. These days, he was subject to chills.
    No wonder. He was too old for this sort of work. But he knew no other.
    He took a final look around and started walking toward a series of metal stakes near the first patch of ice. If what he had read was correct, they were markers placed by one of Iceland’s glacier societies to indicate the annual summer shrinkage of the ice cap, a foot or so of tundra that had been under tons of ice since last fall.
    He stopped as he spied something protruding from the white in front of him. A stick? Some sort of growth. Could that be … ? He snapped two pictures, checked the phone to make sure he had photographed exactly what he was looking at, and stepped closer.
    He squatted and reached for what was sticking out of the ice. He gave it a tug. Frozen fast. Shoving the phone into a pocket, he reached into another and produced the bone-handled jackknife he had purchased just yesterday. In less than a minute he had an inch-or-so section of a woody, sticklike object in his hand.
    This was the sort of thing his employers wanted. They should be pleased. He stuffed it and the knife into a pants pocket.
    He began a slow walk along the edge of the glacier, his boots squishing in the sodden moss that, along with shards of stone, were the only ground cover. He had taken just a few steps when he stopped to examine the rocks at his feet. Something had caught a ray of the sun, drawing his attention. Natural gneiss or … ?
    He squatted again, using his hands to brush aside pebbles polished smooth as marbles. There it was. Bronze? Copper? Maybe simply iron burnished by ice scraping across rocks. No larger than a quarter, it had been sheared from something larger but the curved, sharpened edge was quite visible. He took another couple of pictures before picking it up and putting that in his pocket too.
    He was searching the surrounding area when he heard the sound of stones being displaced as if … as if someone were walking none too carefully on them. He fought the impulse to flee, instead pretending he had not heard. He was trying to determine the direction from which the sound had come, how far away it might be.
    Not that either bit of information would be of any great help, not without a weapon.
    Slowly, he stood with as much nonchalance as he could muster. He took one step and then a second before he bolted.
    He was not surprised at the shot that sent something buzzing past him, but his short legs churned faster. If he could reach that clump of boulders, the one resembling a church complete with square tower, he might somehow escape. He ducked as though he might somehow dodge the second bullet that sang its evil song overhead.
    The rocks ahead seemed impossibly distant; they seemed to recede with every step he took.
    He pivoted on one foot, swinging to his left, then back to his right. There in the open, a zigzag was his only defense.
    There was no third shot.
    Not yet.
    The thought was more frightening than the gunfire. The shooter must be confident he was going to get close enough to make the next try successful. The theory was accurate: he could hear the footsteps behind him getting closer.