Polar Quest
In a twisting, fast-moving adventure, ex-Navy Seal Nolan Kilkenny finds himself on a dangerous mission where he must recover a priceless artifact of human existence. The key to all life has suddenly become worth killing for…Deep in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, a remote NASA research lab rests atop a two-mile thick glacier, covering a vast underground water resevoir. But the true discovery isn’t the lake buried in ice - it’s what has been found within its boundaries. Something amazing. Something alive. And it may hold the answers to existence itself.When the lab is attacked and its scientists murdered, Nolan Kilkenny realises that there is more than science at stake - there’s power, money, and what may be another step in evolution. Racing around the globe, Kilkenny must stop the machinations of a diabolical adversary and recover a priceless artifact of human existence - or die trying…
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TOM GRACE
Polar Quest
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in the U.S.A as Twisted Web by Pocket Books, New York, NY, 2003
Copyright © 2003 The Kilkenny Group, LLC
Tom Grace asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847561244
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007420216 Version: 2018-07-09
To Robert Hopps, who shared with me a daughter and a lifetime of interesting stories
To Craig Hopps, who lived a full life in far too brief a time
Contents
2 JANUARY 24 LV Research Station, Antarctica
3 JANUARY 25 Ann Arbor, Michigan
4 JANUARY 30 LV Research Station, Antarctica
10 FEBRUARY 1 Rio Gallegos, Argentina
11 FEBRUARY 2 Lake Vostok, Antarctica
15 FEBRUARY 14, 11:30 PM Ann Arbor, Michigan
16 FEBRUARY 15, 1:20 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
17 FEBRUARY 15, 6:45 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
18 FEBRUARY 15, 1:45 PM Ypsilanti, Michigan
19 FEBRUARY 17 LV Station, Antarctica
20 FEBRUARY 18, 9:00 AM Ann Arbor, Michigan
21 FEBRUARY 18, 9:25 AM Langley, Virginia
22 FEBRUARY 18, 5:35 PM Livonia, Michigan
23 FEBRUARY 22 Langley, Virginia
24 FEBRUARY 24 Christchurch, New Zealand
25 FEBRUARY 27 Ann Arbor, Michigan
30 MARCH 8 Ann Arbor, Michigan
32 MARCH 11 George Town, Grand Cayman
42 MARCH 17 Bridgewater, New Jersey 12:30 AM
45 MARCH 17 3:45 AM New York City
46 MARCH 17 6:20 AM Bridgewater, New Jersey
The Ice Queen – a sexy Nordic blonde with pouty lips and ice blue eyes – gazed down at Kuhn. Her lusty smile and the mink bikini that barely contained her physical charms were warm reminders of his past. Like a Vargas pinup girl, she sat atop a globe that displayed her frozen domain: Antarctica.
Kuhn ran his hand over the aircraft’s smooth aluminum skin, paying his respects. The patches on Kuhn’s weathered aviator jacket matched those on the aircraft: US NAVY VXE-6 SQUADRON. Beneath the side cockpit window, just above the rendered image of the Ice Queen, stenciled letters read:
CDR GREGORY KUHN
COMMANDING OFFICER
For almost a quarter century, Kuhn had piloted XD-10, the Ice Queen. She was a Lockheed LC-130R, a variant of the venerable C-130 Hercules transport equipped with skis mounted to her fuselage so she could land on ice.
As ungainly as she looked, the Hercules could actually fly and was designed to do one thing: lift heavy loads. Except for the cockpit, the fuselage of the Ice Queen was a cavern of empty space big enough to accommodate several large trucks. Ninety-eight feet in length, she sat low to the ground, like a cylindrical railroad car with a ramp in her tapered tail that folded down like a drawbridge. Her wings spanned 132 feet, and the Ice Queen used every inch of her lifting surface and every ounce of power from the four Allison T56 prop engines to propel her into the sky.
The Ice Queen and her sisters once formed the backbone of the VXE-6 Squadron. Since the mid-fifties, the squadron had fulfilled the mission objectives of the ongoing Operation Deep Freeze, providing logistical support to research stations in the Antarctic. It was a tough job that earned the unit the unofficial nickname Ice Pirates. VXE-6 had owned the skies over the frozen southern continent until the end of the 1999 season, when the squadron returned to its home base at Point Mugu Naval Air Station and was disestablished.
