Walking backward out of the cockpit, I straddled the sub’s tailfin, the ice cracking all around me. I undid the loop and secured the end of the rope to the tail assembly, then climbed back inside the sub and resealed the hatch.

So far, so good. Now for the rough part.

Climbing up to the middle seat, I leaned over the bow seat and unwound the rope from Ben’s corpse. Blood poured from the severed femoral artery as I dragged his remains into my cockpit before heaving him into the rear seat next to Ming.

I fashioned a noose out of the end of the rope and slipped it over Ben’s head first, then Ming’s, binding them chest to chest.

Then I searched for my axe.

God forgive me.

I popped open the hatch. Positioning both bodies on the edge of the sub’s chassis, I slit Ming’s belly open with the climbing spike, gagging as I eviscerated her.

The deed done, I lowered the two bleeding corpses over the side, guiding them past the tail assembly before releasing them.

The 310-pound flesh missile free-fell twenty feet before striking ice. I heard muffled crackling sounds as I hurried to reseal the hatch.

Strapping myself in my middle seat, I waited.

Eighty-seven feet…

If the ice had not fully formed, there was an outside chance the remains of my two companions could plunge all the way to the end of the rope. In that case, the tail assembly would snap and they’d drop another ten to fifteen feet into Lake Vostok, igniting a geyser of water that would free me from the borehole.

I wasn’t counting on that.

The minutes passed slowly. I had all but given up when I felt the sub reverberate. The moment passed. Then something struck the ice sheet from below with a tremendous wallop.

Seconds later, a geyser of frigid lake water raced up the shaft and plowed into the Barracuda.

I waited until the pressure equalized. Then, having already shifted the propeller shaft into reverse, I maneuvered the sub backwards down the flooded borehole.

The two corpses floated up and struck the tail assembly. I drove them back down the shaft, my eyes shifting from the depth gauge to the aft camera.

Descending to the bottom of the ice sheet, I pushed the bodies through the hole. They fell six feet into the lake and floated away while I kept the Barracuda inside the borehole and waited, my eyes focused on the video monitor.

A dark mass passed below.

It had not been the combined weight of the two bodies that had cracked the ice, it had been the Livyatan melvillei. Lured to the hole by the blood and innards pouring out of the bottom of the ice sheet, the ninety-foot, fifty-ton Miocene sperm whale had breached, bashing its enormous skull against the opening of the partially clogged shaft.

Now the bull wanted its meal.