“Computer models recommend three iron-thermite blasts with seven-second intervals between each—the first two containing twenty-seven units of thermite, and the last blast containing just twenty-five. This should take us down between ninety-eight and one hundred feet and leave little residual water. The risks are that if our team under the ice is too close to the burn zone and we are out by just a few feet we’ll cook them. They must be under cover before ignition.”

Hicks paused for a few seconds and rubbed his chin.

“Go on, Captain.”

“There is one more thing. If there are any shallow deposits of petroleum in the vicinity we could light up the whole area. If there’s a big deposit, it could either go off like Hiroshima or create a burn hole that could continue to combust until it is capped or exhausted. Either way, it isn’t going to be a very well kept secret for long.”

“Better make sure you just burn the ice then, Captain.”

“Yes sir, we can do that.”

Alfred Beadman, the Chairman of GBR, was ushered into the room. Hammerson nodded to the chairman and then turned to Private Everson and glared. “Any contact yet?”

Hammerson already knew the answer to his own question, as he asked it just as low-level background noise emanated from the speaker in the centre of the enormous command room’s oak desk. He just wanted to keep the pressure up on the communication team.

“Nothing yet, sir.”

Everson was listening in as the communication team did everything they could to boost the signal and raise a response. The good news was that it wasn’t plain white noise which meant no communication. There was just the soft hiss of non-contact; someone was there, they just weren’t answering yet.

The Russian president looked at the security brief containing the transcript of an intercepted message from the Vostok base at the Antarctic. The Russian base contained some of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment in the Southern Hemisphere, and anything outside of a frequency hopper could be trapped, decoded and digested by the Russians at about the same time as the legitimate receiving party.

The Americans were preparing an extraction from the ice; their mission must have succeeded. That idiot Petrov had failed him one too many times.

Volkov squeezed the briefing paper in his fist, compressing it ever smaller as he mentally sifted through his options.

He spoke to the officer without turning. “I need an extraction from the southern ice. There is a man I want brought back here within twenty-four hours.” Volkov turned his watery stare on the young man. “See to it.”

The Russian president watched the officer leave then opened a desk drawer and removed a small black phone. He dialled a long number and waited as the signal was coded and bounced to the other side of the globe. He spoke softly when the connection was made.