Icebound by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page A

icefield.”
    The Frenchman tightened his grip on Harry’s arm.
    Clearly not wanting to believe his own words, Pete said, “We’re adrift on an iceberg.”
    “That can’t be,” Claude said.
    “Outrageous, but it’s true,” Harry said. “We’re moving farther away from Edgeway Station with every passing minute…and deeper into this storm.”
    Claude was a reluctant convert to the truth. He looked from Harry to Pete, then around at the forbidding landscape, as if he expected to see something that would refute what they had told him. “You can’t be sure.”
    “All but certain,” Pete disagreed.
    Claude said, “But under us…”
    “Yes.”
    “…those bombs…”
    “Exactly,” Harry said. “Those bombs.”

TWO

    SHIP
             
    1:00
DETONATION IN ELEVEN HOURS
    One of the snowmobiles was on its side. The safety cutout had switched off the engine when the machine overturned, so there had been no fire. The other snowmobile was canted against a low hummock of ice. The four headlamps parted the curtains of snow, illuminating nothing, pointing away from the precipice over which George Lin had disappeared.
    Although Brian Dougherty was convinced that any search for the Chinese was a waste of time, he scrambled to the edge of the new crevasse and sprawled facedown on the ice at the jagged brink. Roger Breskin joined him, and they lay side by side, peering into a terrible darkness.
    Queasiness coiled and slithered in Brian’s gut. He tried to dig the metal toes of his boots into the iron-hard ice, and he clutched at the flat surface. If another tsunami set the world adance, he might be tipped or flung into the abyss.
    Roger directed his flashlight outward, toward the distant wall of the crevasse. Except for falling snow, nothing was revealed within the reach of the yellow beam. The light dwindled away into perfect blackness.
    “Isn’t a crevasse,” Brian said. “It’s a damned canyon!”
    “Not that either.”
    The beam moved slowly back and forth: Nothing lay out there. Nothing whatsoever. Less than astronauts could see when they peered from a porthole into deep space.
    Brian was baffled. “I don’t understand.”
    “We’ve broken off from the main icefield,” Roger explained with characteristic yet nonetheless remarkable equanimity.
    Brian needed a moment to absorb that news and grasp the full horror of it. “Broken off…You mean we’re adrift?”
    “A ship of ice.”
    The wind gusted so violently that for half a minute Brian could not have been heard above it even if he’d shouted at the top of his voice. The snowflakes were as busy and furious as thousands of angry bees, stinging the exposed portions of his face, and he pulled up his snow mask to cover his mouth and nose.
    When the gust died out at last, Brian leaned toward Roger Breskin. “What about the others?”
    “Could be on this berg too. But let’s hope they’re still on safe ice.”
    “Dear God.”
    Roger directed the flashlight away from the darkness where they had expected to find the far wall of a crevasse. The tight beam speared down and out into the humbling void.
    They wouldn’t be able to see the face of the cliff that dropped away just in front of them unless they eased forward and hung partly over the precipice. Neither of them was eager to expose himself to that extreme risk.
    The pale light angled to the left and right, then touched upon the choppy, black, unfrozen sea that raged eighty or ninety feet below them. Flat tables of ice, irregular chunks of ice, gnarled rafts of ice, and delicate ever-changing laces of ice bobbled and swirled in the deep troughs of frigid dark water, crashed together on the crests of the waves; touched by the light, they glittered as if they were diamonds spread on black velvet.
    Mesmerized by the chaos that the flashlight revealed, swallowing hard, Brian said, “George fell into the sea. He’s gone.”
    “Maybe not.”
    Brian didn’t see how there could be a hopeful