Cold Flood (Kea Wright Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “When a glacier surges,” Kea continued, hoping she didn’t look too ridiculous, “the excess ice and changes within the internal structure changes the drainage network beneath the glacier. It switches from the conduit system to a distributed one. This happens when the ice moves faster over an irregular ground surface. Small cavities between the ice and the ground develop narrow links between them, perpendicular to ice flow.”

  Kea pressed her palms together, applying pressure. “The resulting increase in water pressure, combined with the reduced friction caused by the presence of the basal cavity system, may actually increase the sliding of the glacier over the bed. Since it’s moving faster, this sliding maintains the pressure that permits the linked cavity network that preserves the increased water pressure. This loop is preserved until the wave hits the front of the glacier, then it collapses.”

  “In my job,” Andrei began after a moment’s thought, “new technologies are taking the same approach to big data. Rather than try to process millions of records all at the same time on one machine, the data is divided up into tiny chunks and processed across several boxes. Distributed. Very efficient and very powerful.”

  “Nature usually has the solution if you’re willing to look for it. She’s had a few billion years head start.” Despite herself, Kea found herself studying Marcus in the distance. “It’s interesting to see the results after enough pressure is applied. You never know what might happen...” She turned back to Andrei. “Is that what you do at Corvis? Big data?”

  Andrei gave a noncommittal shrug. “This and that. I’m an engineer, but we all dabble. You mentioned that at the end of a surge, another flooding event occurs?”

  Kea nodded, amazed at his lack of subtlety at dodging the question. “When the surge reaches the front of the glacier, large volumes of water may be released in a jökulhlaup. That flood may also excavate ice canyons and transport large ice blocks. As a result, it isn’t just volcanically generated events that can cause jökulhlaups.”

  Andrei appeared to consider the implications. “With all these things going on all the time, all creating similar features, how do you know if you’ve had a surge or a volcanic flood?”

  “You just have to take the time to piece the puzzles together,” Kea responded.

  “Yes.” Andrei nodded again. “Like I said, you are detectives, all of you.”

  “Not really,” Kea sighed. “More like historians, of the rock kind.”

  It was well past noon before they made their way through the interlacing networks of streams and eventually found an area where they could climb up onto the main body of the glacier. Even up close, the ice was freckled with black specks of ash and dirt. Cobbles, embedded in the ice, were dropping into the dirt, melted out by the warmth of the morning sun.

  They came to a rise where Jon stopped and placed a tentative hand on a large black pile of mud and ice about a meter high. He looked askance at Kea.

  “Dirt cone,” Kea nodded at the irregular muddy mass of ice that squatted before them. It resembled a termite mound about to tumble on its side. “As the dirt melts out of the ice, it can collect and actually serve to insulate the ice. Melt occurs at different rates given the amount of debris, causing the irregular shapes.” She reached out and wiped the brown, slimy film of grit with the tip of her glove, exposing the ice beneath. “Even a thin layer of dirt or ash can serve to insulate the ice, slowing the melting process.”

  “It certainly makes it much more difficult to see where you’re going,” Jon commented. “It’s more like the surface of an alien planet than the snowfield I’d imagined.”

  “This next bit is a little tricky.” Kea pointed to a massive ridge of gravel that rose out of the ground before them. Over ten meters in height and hundreds long, the ridge snaked away from the lake, burrowing into the lip of the glacier like a worm into an apple. “The melting has been more rapid than we expected in this area. Stick to the path as best you can.”

  The ridge was an esker, a landform composed of sand and gravel deposited within or beneath the ice by meltwater channels. Laid down at the height of the 1996 flood, the ice had retreated around it, leaving only the sediment, now hundreds of meters thick, standing above the landscape. Atop the esker’s head lay the main checkpoint and the site of most of their scientific studies.

  As they approached, she saw that Marcus’ group had already reached the esker’s summit. She heard his voice drifting down as he droned on about his favorite topic. “Unlike a river, eskers are made of sediment deposited under the ice, but above ground. Now that the ice is gone, you can just drive a backhoe up and dig away, no need to mine anything. There’s been a lot of interest recently in the thousands of eskers in Canada, because they may contain large quantities of gold...”

  Shaking her head, Kea followed the others as they threaded their way through the maze of smaller ridges that crisscrossed the area, making a beeline as best they could for the esker. Fractures filled with sediment during the flood created a honeycomb of intersecting angles they had to navigate. She held back from lecturing the others, aware that they needed to concentrate on their footing as, on either side of the ridge, the shallows were filled with deposits of sand, icy water, or large pools of goop. She paused to watch Marcus and the others wind their way across the terrain.

  “Now that’s a murder,” Derek said as he joined her at the edge of the ridge.

  “Sorry?” Kea asked in alarm, shifting so that she was further away from the edge of the ridge.

  “Them lot,” Derek nodded back at Gary, Andrei, and Amirah who were coming up from behind, picking their way carefully across the fracture-fills. “Flock of crows. You know, a murder.”

  “Corvis…” She frowned for a moment before realization dawned. “That’s the constellation of the Crow, right?”

  “Bunch of munters,” Derek observed.

  Kea wasn’t aware of that particular New Zealand slang word but got the impression that it wasn’t complimentary. Now that he was so close to her, she was struck by the shaggy brown hair atop his head and the spikes of red scruff that sprouted from his chin. Tall and improbably thin, he appeared composed and confident, a stark contrast to the fidgety shadow that she had observed ranting at Max yesterday.

  He’d be quite handsome, Kea thought, if I hadn’t seen him go Tonya Harding on Max.

  Derek leaned in closer over her shoulder, as if to get a better look at the glacier. She pulled back reflexively, but still caught a whiff of his cologne, thick and musky. She stepped aside and cleared her throat, making a show of cleaning her glasses. As attractive as he was, there was something about him that set her on edge. Perhaps it was his display from earlier that seemed so at odds to the aspect he presented now. Or perhaps she had glimpsed something in his eyes, a hunger that she found unsettling.

  She wanted to move further away from him but needed to find out more of what was at the heart of the rivalry that might pose a threat to the safety of her expedition. “You’re one of the T3 crew then?”

  “Just the last year or so.” Derek pulled out his sunglasses and popped them on, their silvery surface hiding his dangerous brown eyes.

  She averted her gaze and instead kept a careful eye on the volunteers as they made their way toward them. Bruce seemed to be enjoying himself, his arms splayed out like wings as he moved across the tops of the thin ridges. Erik and Jon were moving more sedately, with the ‘crows’ trailing behind. For once, she regretted not taking the lead as she saw Julie and Cole struggling with their gear at the end of the line.

  “Only a year?” Kea knew technology jobs were plagued by high turnover, but it made his loyalty, or anger at least, hard to grasp. “Forgive me for saying so, why all the hate towards the… crows?”

  Derek turned his head sharply to consider her. While his eyes were still hidden, Kea wondered if he worked out that she eavesdropped on his conversation with Max yesterday. Hastily she added, “I can’t help but notice your teams go out of their way to avoid each other
at every opportunity. With all the stares and glares, I feel like I’m chaperoning a junior high dance, with boys on one side of the gym and girls on the other.”

  Derek shrugged, shifting his gaze back toward the ice. “We had a contract thing fall apart recently. Plus, they didn’t tell us they were coming on this trip as well.”

  “So, you’ve all worked together in the past?” Kea noticed that Bruce nearly took a swan dive off one of the ridges but was relieved to see that he was just fooling around. While some of the pools were only a few feet deep, the dark water in others held hidden depths, as well as other dangers. Not to mention frigid temperatures.

  “In a way, yeah, but we all tend to work remotely.” From his voice, Kea couldn’t tell if the situation depressed him or was a tremendous relief. “This was the first time I’ve met some of them.”

  Kea couldn’t help it. Her mouth dropped open in astonishment. “You’ve never met them before?”

  Derek shrugged. “Video chat mostly. We’re developers, coders. Not much with the chinwag. Very introverted. I mean, a couple of us have met, and we’ve all met Max...” he trailed off and seemed reluctant to expound further on the topic, his eyes fixed on the volunteers who had almost reached them. “To be fair, it’s a bit tricky to hang out at the water cooler from six thousand miles away.”

  “Not much different from the online courses I teach,” Kea conceded. “But then again, they never have to make a trip to get here. How are you handling the jet lag?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. I’m sure,” he added with a cheeky grin, “I’ll be up all night.”

  Kea gave him a withering look. As a result, she completely missed what happened next. A yelp of alarm caused her to turn and catch a glimpse of Erik losing his footing. He launched out his arms to try to steady himself, nearly knocking Gary straight in the chest. The older man either ducked out of the way in time or caught part of the blow and stumbled to his knee. Erik’s arm continued its path as he fell, knocking out Andrei’s leg from underneath him.

  Kea could only watch helplessly as Andrei tumbled head-first in slow motion off the narrow ridge and vanished out of sight. Erik and Gary managed to remain atop the ridge, albeit on their hands and knees, scrambling to find purchase.

  Her heart racing, she leaped from ridge to ridge back along the way she had come. She came as close as she dared and helped Erik stand upright. Below, Andrei stood waist-deep in a pool of gloop. He must have fallen face-first as he was entirely covered in the muck. Seeing Kea’s face, Andrei gave a thumbs-up to indicate he was okay.

  Hearing peals of laughter, Kea turned to see Nadia cackling at her father’s predicament, snapping pictures with her phone. Surprisingly, Cole was already helping Andrei out of the pool, and Julie was pulling out her waterproof emergency bag with spare clothes that all the leads carried.

  Kea made herself take a series of long, calming breaths, doing her best to stop from ranting like a lunatic. She had only lost her temper on an expedition once before when a handful of students had ignored her warnings and wandered out onto an area of thin ice and nearly got themselves killed. When she bellowed at them, rather than be terrified, they regarded her quizzically, as if she were a mewling kitten caught in the rain. It was only after that she realized her words had come out in the wrong order and were mixed with flecks of spit.

  Calm, she reminded herself. Keep calm. Accidental, surely?

  She studied Erik’s face, but found she couldn’t read his expression. Max, however, who was watching from a vantage point a few ridges over, was radiating joy. Revenge, it had seemed, had been delivered.

  On Andrei? Or was it meant for Gary?

  Andrei would be cold and wet, but otherwise unharmed, she reasoned. Where he had fallen, the gloop was shallow and not exposed to the frigid waters of the lake.

  Not that anyone would have known that, she thought.

  Certain that Andrei would be okay, Kea retreated to the safety of a wider ridge that merged with the back of the esker. She remained there and counted off volunteers as they passed, shooing Derek along, lest he try to hit on her again.

  Following the last of the volunteers up the slope, she was relieved to see that the team had safely reached the summit of the esker. They were already on their second snack break as Tony and Marcus started setting up the research gear. She took out her own lunch and munched, mentally gauging her inner demons.

  Food first, establish calm, then reprimand.

  On her right, Tiko chomped noisily on an apple. She had spread out her jacket so she could recline on the ice and soak up the sun. Reynard had done the same, using his cap to cover his brow. Beyond him, Lexie took a deep breath from her asthma inhaler then lit up a cigarette.

  Shaking her head in amazement, Kea finished her sandwich and rummaged around in her lunch bag for a candy bar. She noticed that Jon had sat down beside her and was systematically consuming two sandwiches at once, stacked upon each other like a layer cake. Crumbs and bits of cucumber filled the air, winding up more on his face than in his mouth. Somehow his slovenly behavior did nothing to detract from his handsomeness. He was simply too ridiculously hot to be real.

  She tried to focus on her own food and not openly ogle him.

  “That poor bastard.” Derek was watching the sky, the snack bar in his hand forgotten.

  Kea followed his gaze and saw a gull wheeling in an arc across the blue sky. A larger, darker bird shot toward it and slammed into the gull, sending feathers scattering. The gull cried out, its wing damaged. It flew on, but the beat of its wings was irregular, twitching. It appeared to be rapidly dropping in elevation, plummeting towards the earth.

  “Skua,” Marcus said, barely glancing up from unpacking his box of equipment.

  “There’s another one,” Jon pointed as the gull was again attacked, this time from a second large brown bird.

  “It’s mate,” Kea explained. “They hunt in pairs.”

  “They’re huge.” Lexie deftly lit another cigarette, her attention riveted on the scene above.

  “The Great Skua,” Marcus nodded referring to the large brown birds with the white streaks across their plumage. “They can have a wingspan nearly four feet across. They’ll wear the gull out with their attacks and drive it further from the coast. Eventually, it will tire, and then they’ll have their lunch.”

  “Brutal.” Erik was lying on his back, his jacket spread out on the ice beneath him. His eyes were hidden by shades, his expression unreadable.

  “Do skua ever attack people?” Bonnie asked Kea.

  “You should be fine as long as you don’t get too close to their nests,” Kea added, remembering some of her own encounters on the sandur. “If that happens, they tend to dive at your head, often from behind.”

  Bonnie frowned at the sky, not reassured. “What do you do then?”

  Kea shrugged. “Duck.”

  “It’s... fantastic. Simply fantastic,” a voice wheezed above Kea’s head.

  She craned her neck and saw Bruce standing beside her, sweat pouring off his forehead. She had been keeping a watchful eye on him throughout most of the hike, concerned that he would overexert himself. Now, however, she saw an expression of awe stenciled across his face.

  Kea envied that. She always had and always would love working out here, but she missed that moment when the land first took her breath away. Turning back to the others, she could see variations on all their faces, although Jon and Erik were doing their best to be nonchalant about it, casually taking pictures with their phones. Bonnie, it seemed, was doing her best to chat up Erik, while Julie stood by, a disapproving scowl stenciled on her face.

  Kea offered Bruce a pouch of granola. “Feeling better?”

  “Sleep does wonders.” Bruce smiled back but waved away the food. “I’ll be very sore tomorrow, but it’ll be worth it.”

  Kea looked across the ice to Max and Derek. Their heads were bent in conversation and they seemed to be ignoring the vista around them. “Everything okay in
T3 land?”

  Bruce followed her gaze and just snorted. “As good as it gets.” He turned back to look out to the sandur, as if to block his coworkers from his vision. “We just need a few days off. Just a few.”

  “Amen to that.” Kea felt like she could use a good three months off after this trip.

  “You up for more hot cocoa tonight?” Bruce asked hopefully.

  “Work permitting,” Kea nodded. “I just have to have a throw down with a colleague.”

  “Naughty.” Bruce edged closer, taking off his baseball cap to whisper in her ear. “Who’s the lucky one?”

  “That’s not what I meant you moron.” Kea shook her head when she realized he was kidding. “Shut up,” she laughed. She felt normal again, in control, ready. She packed up her trash and other belongings and stood in front of the group.

  “Okay guys,” Kea rallied her best angry teacher voice. “Last night, we gave you a safety brief for the camp, and this morning, we gave you a brief before we left about how to be safe during fieldwork.”

  For all the good it did.

  “Now I heard rumors of an incident last night,” she paused for effect, scanning the ranks. Expressions of confusion and curiosity stared back. She wondered, not for the first time, if the incident had occurred at all. She pressed on. “Just now there was a minor accident,” she nodded to Andrei who now wore an oversized tie-dye t-shirt, “but one that could have been much worse.”

  The team looked bewildered. It was as if she’d announced a pop quiz to a freshmen lecture hall.

  Either they were excellent actors, she thought, or they really have no idea what I’m talking about.

  “Whatever is going on, I don’t care,” she continued, her confidence slipping away. “It stops now. We are in a hostile environment up here and will be for the next week. If this continues, any of it, if we suspect anything is going on between your two groups, then we’re off the ice and done for the season. We work together or not at all. Am I understood?” She heard her own voice waver and crack as certainty deserted her. The group looked around as if she were, quite possibly, losing her mind.