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  “Odd,” one observed, gazing beyond where they planned to set up camp. “Not one fragment larger than a flattened golf ball.”

  With the temperatures and wind dropping, they hauled in the kites, dragged their sled of supplies another hundred yards away from any cracks or crevasses, and set up camp. Having been on the ice for three days, they’d not caught up on the news. That evening they did. While one read the latest CNN updates on his iPad, another ducked outside the tent and returned with a handful of the irregular metal pieces. “Looks like some type of aluminum alloy.”

  “From a crashed satellite?”

  “This much metal? It covers miles!”

  They all stared a somber moment at the metal fragments tossed on the ice. “You think…?”

  The next morning they called in their report.

  The missing C-17 Globemaster had been found.

  The huge primate never experienced the sensation of dropping thirty-one thousand feet still imprisoned in his preservation cocoon that had kept him alive, nor had any inkling of the millennia-long passage of time he’d been suspended. When he did awake and eventually break free in the middle of the night, he would recall only the direction he must take to reach home. What his captors had done to his brain only altered his recent memories, not his higher innate cognitive functioning abilities. Nor his mammalian will to survive.

  Hunger pangs drove the giant primate in search of nourishment.

  Instinct and his acute sense of smell drove him where to look.

  Twenty-three miles from the kiters’ camp, the Bagley Icefield research station slept. Only three researchers manned the tiny outpost at any particular time during the spring and summer months—two during the harsh winter months, if it was occupied at all. Much of their research involved determining how much the changes in global climate patterns had affected the ice field. In places, the nonglacial sheet extended down over half a mile; in others nearer the edges less than a hundred feet. Snowdrifts accumulated, especially from the north when the winds howled across the flat barren expanse. Two buildings—one sleeping and living quarters, the second for research and equipment storage—occupied the most eastern border of the ice field. Beyond that and to the south, rugged peaks, alpine glaciers, and boreal forests covered terrain extending to the Gulf of Alaska. To the north, more forests, mountains, and millions of acres of upland tundra.

  The head researcher lay in bed listening to the wind whipping across the corrugated roof. It had picked up since he’d gone to bed six hours earlier. Something had awoken him. Beep. Beep. Beep. He raised one wrist and checked the time—4:31 a.m. Sunrise in two minutes. He glanced at the set of bunks across the room and noticed the other two climatologists awake, too. The monotonous beeping continued—the alarm to the storage and research lab. A temperature drop warning.

  He began to speak, but an eerily long and loud howl quieted him. It went on for a full eight seconds at least.

  “What the hell was that?” one of the men in the bunks asked, swinging his legs over the side.

  The lead scientist arose as well. Hell, in less than an hour their day would begin anyway. “I’d have to say a wolf,” he guessed, though truth be told, it hadn’t sounded much like a wolf.

  The third man was up. “We share the land with coyotes, grizzlies, wolverines…”

  “That was no wolverine,” they all agreed.

  The RRAAUUUU repeated.

  The three stared at one another. The lead pulled on his thermals and silenced the alarm. “Get the coffee warmed up. I’ll check the lab.” He had to take a leak anyway.

  The wind was cool, though not biting, and the temperature registered a frosty thirty-eight. With the gusts the wind chill would be close to twenty intermittently. The day would warm quickly, though, reaching the mid-sixties. A light fog floated over the ground, making the research building only a ghostly outline fifteen yards away. The snowmobiles sat undisturbed under the awning. Everything appeared in order—the windows he could see intact, the doors shut.

  RRAAUUUU.

  He cut his stream off, staring to the north. The early dawn would have offered good visibility out a couple hundred yards, if it wasn’t for the fog. The unearthly silhouettes of seracs and boulders broke the white expanse, appearing more like medieval ruins than blocks of ice and stone.

  The door slammed behind him and he started with nervous jerk.

  “See anything?”

  “No.” The lead scientist silently chastised himself for being so jumpy. He noticed his colleague carried a rifle mounted with a scope. “Doubt we’ll be needing that.”

  “My first stint on Bagley. Hate to run across an angry grizzly or black bear.”

  “That wasn’t a bear.”

  The colleague gazed briefly at the sky. “Was in the Arctic one time and ran across a polar bear that considered us trespassers. Bears can get pretty territorial.”

  The lead didn’t say what he was thinking. We are the trespassers. Instead, he wondered aloud, “Couldn’t tell how far away it was. Sounded close but with the wind it’s damn hard to pinpoint.”

  When the third joined them, they hiked across the frozen ground to the second building. As was the lead scientist’s initial impression the doors and front windows were secure. Not so the rear wall. All three stared incredulously at the gaping hole where the back window had been ripped from its frame and the corrugated metal peeled down nearly to the ground. The lead asked in disbelief, “No one heard anything?”

  The armed one reflexively checked behind them. “Must have been the wind, plus the building itself shielded most of the noise.” He checked the pebbly frosty ground. “Earth’s pretty hard. No tracks, but it has all the earmarks of a bear.”

  “A fucking big bear,” the lead commented, stepping through the large rent, careful to avoid the sharp metal edges. “This will be an all-day job to repair.” He looked around. “Anything unaccounted for?”

  The third checked the food hamper. “Yeah.” He indicated the insulated door ripped from its hinges. “Won’t be eating any apples or bananas for a while. A bushel bag’s missing.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Within a half day of the ice kiter’s call, the wreckage was identified and confirmed.

  Mendle escorted John and Shelby inside Hangar 13, leading the way to his office. “I’m sure you’ve both heard the news.”

  John glanced at Shelby. They’d been planning a second attempt to reach Little Okpilak Glacier after Shelby convinced her mentor, Reddic, that the fact that both sets of primate bones were related made collecting the second adult that much more imperative. They would be without the military’s assistance this time, though, so the trip would be a few days in length, not hours. Especially if the remains lay buried deep in the ice. The lieutenant’s call had put that plan on indefinite hold.

  “It’s all over the airwaves,” John answered for both of them.

  “Seems you two have been promoted to point again.” Mendel shot the glaciologist a look. “Get a chance to check what I asked for?”

  “I did.” They seated themselves in the office while the lieutenant busied himself with his computer. John continued, “No signs of heat or unconventional cracking or fissuring. The shale and granite, even the slate which can be quite brittle, are exactly what you would expect to find after being buried that long in a glacier.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary? No indications of burning? Extreme heat?”

  “No. All…unremarkable.”

  “Except for the Okpilak crevasse itself?” the lieutenant commented.

  “Yes, like I stated in my report, that almost looked like—” He stopped. “How much do you know about the cargo plane? We just heard it was found.”

  Mendle’s eyes broke from the updating emails. “Much of this is classified. The C-17 broke apart catastrophically at thirty-one thousand feet.”

  Shelby gasped. “The crew?”

  “Haven’t found any remains yet…
and frankly speaking we probably never will.” He paused, seemingly lost in thought. “‘Broke apart’ is probably a misnomer. The Globemaster was literally blown apart. The debris field covers five square miles and no pieces over several inches have been isolated. So far, nothing’s ruled out, but at this point in the investigation there are no links to terrorism, or signs of malfunction. The plane just…disintegrated.”

  Shelby murmured, “The UCO,” though inside she couldn’t help thinking Goliath.

  Mendle met her shocked gaze. “That’s why you are here. The searchers combing the wreckage scene found the UCO. Intact!”

  “Intact?” Shelby exclaimed.

  “Yes, intact.” He scratched his eyebrow. “Except for a single very important detail.” He stared at some point over their heads. “It was empty.”

  Shelby and John exchanged looks. The lieutenant spoke for them. “I know, very, very difficult to reconcile. Absolutely nothing fits what we have observed. The NTSB is on the scene with our best military experts. The working hypothesis is this—the UCO emitted some tremendous energy force powerful enough to virtually vaporize the aircraft. We are talking nuclear strong, but there is no evidence of radiation. Astor’s in the know and the best physics minds are working on it, but thus far they have been unable to come up with a scenario that would create this amount of energy without leaving some type of radioactive or electromagnetic footprint. It’s completely, for lack of a better word, alien. The only witness account we have is some hikers heard a ‘sonic boom’ type noise.” He noticed their expressions of disbelief. “It gets weirder. The UCO then tumbles almost six miles and ends up half buried in a snowdrift several miles southeast of Mt. Miller.”

  “Where is it now?” Shelby asked. Empty?

  “Still there, exactly as the searchers found it. No one has moved it. If it caused a two-hundred-eighty-thousand-pound aircraft to disintegrate in midair…”

  “And split an eighth-mile-wide glacier in half,” John added, considering more and more this was what happened. The UCO had somehow created the huge Little Okpilak rift. How and why remained elusive, like everything else having to do with the UCO.

  The lieutenant nodded. “Yes. A lot of ifs, but that thing isn’t moving until we get some answers.”

  “And Goliath?” Shelby wondered aloud. An odd sense of loss touched her, as if she’d lost someone dear to her. It was strange, she realized, and she would never have admitted it to anyone else.

  Mendle shook his head. “We have to presume his body was destroyed by whatever destroyed the plane.”

  Shelby motioned to his computer. “Any photos yet? I’d like to see if any primate remains exist inside the UCO.”

  An airman knocked on the door. “Flight plan filed and approved, Lieutenant.”

  Mendle nodded and gazed back at Shelby. “I’ll do better than that.” He rose. “You can examine it yourself. We take off in two hours.”

  Just enough time to pack some necessary items and they were in the air. The HH-60G Pave Hawk search chopper rose straight up and then veered southeast. Shelby wore a headset along with everyone else. She had a seat to herself while across the narrow cabin, John sat next to Mendle. She listened to the pilots conversing about flight technicalities—weather, course coordinates, altitude, RPMs—and quickly tuned the jabber out. Below her, the base dropped behind and she could see how really wild the surrounding countryside was—in every direction all she saw were muskeg bogs, marshes, and large tracts of unfettered boreal forests. It was as beautiful as it was a little scary. Alaska really was the “the last frontier.” In the distance she picked out Fairbanks and, further south, Denali’s snowcapped peak.

  Mendle’s voice broke in, drowning out some of the static, addressing her more than John. “The ice fields are about three hundred fifty miles and with an air speed of just under one-eighty, we’ll arrive in about two hours. Sit back and enjoy the view. We’ll be passing over some of the most pristine and desolate territory in all of Alaska.”

  The flight went smoothly until they reached the eastern border of the Bagley Icefield. Here the chopper encountered some mild turbulence.

  As if sensing her unease, Mendle explained, “The wind vortexes off the Chugach Mountains create some interesting weather conditions. Should smooth out shortly.”

  It did, and Shelby marveled at the mountainous jagged terrain and wild winding rivers below, easily visible at their cruising altitude of ten thousand feet. Numerous peaks, she noted somewhat nervously, rose well above their flight path.

  Mendle pointed out pertinent landmarks. “To the east is the Canadian border and that high peak is Mt. St. Elias, over eighteen thousand feet, second highest peak in Canada and the US, Denali ranking number one.”

  John added to the tour by quickly naming off five large glaciers within their lines of sight. Ninety minutes into the flight Shelby picked out a herd of caribou grazing a high pasture of wild grasses. Colored patches of wildflowers dotted the landscape in the shadows of the mountains.

  Fifteen minutes later the Pave Hawk began its descent over a wide expanse of white—the Bagley Icefield, 127 miles long and six wide.

  Shelby easily picked out the crash investigation site. As Mendle had intimated, the broken cargo plane appeared to be spread out over a large area of flat ice. As they descended lower, though, she could see much of the ice was anything but smooth—numerous craggy broken boulders jutted through looking like the fractured bony remains of giants, especially adjacent to the seracs where the ice folded and buckled upward. A large tent structure had been set up and Shelby counted several other helicopters on the ice as well as four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles.

  The Hawk contacted the landing site with a gentle jolt. The twirling rotors shut down and Mendle indicated it was safe to exit.

  The wind blew in gusts, and though Shelby guessed the temp was somewhere in the fifties, it still felt cold surrounded by all the white ice. No one seemed to be talking much and when they did it was in low, somber tones. Three air brethren had died here and the atmosphere was reflective of everyone’s mood.

  She observed most of the searchers gathering the pieces of plane in buckets and hauling them to the reconstruction tent, though how in the hell anyone could reconstruct this, she didn’t know. She couldn’t help thinking of the unfortunate airmen flying the ill-fated Globemaster. She hoped they’d died instantly and didn’t suffer. From the looks of the debris field she guessed they never knew what hit them. Similar thoughts drifted to the huge ape.

  Mendle guided them to the tent and introduced them to the lead investigators. After a brief update—still no cause determined and nothing was ruled out—the NTSB official turned his attention to John and Shelby. “Your main interest lies about a mile south of here. I have a couple of snowmobiles ready.” He pointed out a younger airman. “Sergeant Mike Dewar will lead you. Dr. Astor and the SETI exec are already there.”

  “This way, folks.” Dewar drove his own snowmobile and Mendle took the single rider while Shelby hopped on back behind John on the two-man.

  She straddled her seat and moved close. “You do know how to drive one of these, right?” she half joked.

  He grinned. “You’re forgetting I grew up in Alaska.”

  They were off. In no time they zipped past the last yellow flags indicating the furthest wreckage thus far collected and zoomed past house-sized chunks of ice seemingly sprouting from the terrain like boulders she’d seen at Joshua National Park in California. Only these were a dirty white and sparkled under the sun. In the air she detected the sweet smell of conifers but the nearest tree line seemed miles away.

  “That’s Mt. Miller.” John pointed out a low ragged grey peak. “There they are.”

  Minutes later, they pulled up beside a large snowdrift, Shelby guessed at least three stories high. She dismounted, carrying her pack with her.

  Astor stood with a tall thin woman dressed in alpine ski wear—black pants with a brig
ht orange jacket—and another man in civilian hiking clothes. Several airmen in fatigues and using shovels had cleared a wide path into the base of the drift. Some equipment lay spread out on the ice—a Geiger counter she recognized, the other pieces she didn’t.

  The astrophysicist smiled at Mendle, but to Shelby it didn’t seem genuine. “Didn’t know you were bringing Dr. Hollister. I wanted a geologist to take a look at these rocks we found inside the UCO.”

  Mendle only commented, “Shelby wanted to see firsthand what happened to Goliath.”

  It was the woman who spoke. “Hi, I’m Jean Simpkins, President of SETI, and this other gentleman is Max Bonds, representing NASA’s interests.” The woman was quite striking with her blonde locks and thin angular face. Shelby estimated her age mid-forties. The NASA man looked like he sat behind a desk much of the time, a paunch and double chin.

  Interests? So the UCO turf war was brewing. The introductions complete, Shelby asked, “Any evidence Goliath survived the fall?”

  Astor chuckled. “Survived? Dr. Hollister, something already dead doesn’t survive anything, whether ape or alien.”

  Shelby bit off a sharp riposte, instead saying, “Poor choice of words. I meant any remains survive.” She felt John nudge her toward the path.

  The others followed. Max Bonds caught up with Shelby. “You were alluding to the Eielson video, Dr. Hollister—NASA has had several experts in anatomy and physiology examine it. The overriding consensus is the heat of the laser beam caused well-preserved ligaments to contract and then relax. Simple postmortem reactive spasm.”

  Except the fist was already contracted, then opened, then contracted again. Opposite reaction. Shelby noted how Bonds and the SETI exec seemed to agree with everything the astrophysicist said, nodding in unison with Astor while the woman brushed her long blonde hair from her face. The explanation was certainly more rational than the alternative—that Goliath had actually been alive in some form of suspended animation all these thousands of years.

  She descended the makeshift ramp surrounded by snow made soft and mushy from the mid-fifties temps. And stopped with a start. “That’s the UCO?” Even Mendle and John seemed taken off guard.