Alex pointed his sonar up at an angle from the bottom of the doorway, as close to vertical as he could get it. In a few seconds he was able to read his depth from the surface.

“Very good. Only about a hundred feet.”

Alex removed a short, wicked-looking black blade from a hidden sheath on his thigh. The knife was one of several that he carried as standard equipment in the field. It was a modified K-bar, shortened and strengthened from its normal seven-inch length but still with the recognisable bowie features that U.S. Marines had carried into battle for generations.

He crouched down for a moment, looking up at an angle towards the outer rim of the door frame and then swung his arm. The blade connected with a squealing crunch and dug in about two inches. Alex could feel the juddering impact all the way up his arm. Hard as iron was right, he thought; a blow that powerful should have sunk the blade to the hilt. Like a machine he kept swinging his arm, occasionally changing hands to balance the impact and also share the fatigue across his shoulders. After twenty minutes he had a hole dug into the centre of the door frame ice approximately a foot in depth and diameter.

“How long to get us to the surface?” Aimee had her arms folded and was looking at him with a worried look on her face.

“Can I help?” Matt had also decided that one man, even one with superior strength, was going to take a very long time to get to the surface digging through a hundred feet of iron-hard blue ice.

Alex sat back for a moment and drew some deep breaths. He smiled at the three of them. “I estimate it would take me about twelve days to dig us up and out to the surface. If I had a dozen grenades it would definitely speed things up a bit. But no, I definitely do not plan to spend nearly the next two weeks digging through ice. I only need to get a hole dug so we are out from under the stone lintel. Then hopefully my comm unit headset can get a signal out. It doesn’t have a very long range, but I’m betting my superiors won’t have given up the search for us yet and if there are military choppers in the vicinity they will be carrying some armaments that can cut through the ice. And yes, Dr. Kerns, I would be delighted if you could take over for a few minutes.”

Alex saw Monica slumped against the wall and Aimee resting her hands on her knees, watching him with a puzzled expression. She was at the point of collapsing from exhaustion and he could tell she wondered how he kept going.