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Just when the first of the rolling cloud's icy white tentacles reached them with a feeling like needles being scraped across their skin, he spotted a dark chasm amid the white-tipped tundra of the lower slope of the glacier, up a natural winding trail carved by runoff.

"There!" he cried out, even though no one could hear him.

He steered toward the mouth of the cave, feeling the crunch of snow and ice beneath his boots without hearing it. He was aware of the others nipping at his heels, led by Bellows, the football player. He could feel the heat of panic and terror wafting off their bodies to challenge the frigid mist that had enveloped them.

Lees began blowing an emergency whistle as hard and loud as he could, so the team members would be able to follow if he was lost to sight. The grade leading up to the cave's mouth was steeper than he had expected, and he pressed on with no real concept of how close the rolling blanket of promised death was drawing toward them. Two of his charges went down, injured, but were quickly scooped up by rescuers. One of the rescuers, he saw, was Bellows.

They reached the mouth of the cave moments before the thundering force of the avalanche rolling down Mount Cooper was upon them. Lees maintained the presence of mind to herd the others into the cave before he lunged in after them, feeling a great wave of relief that all five were accounted for, though two were clearly hobbled.

The group lurched backward from the cave's mouth as the dark wave splattered with white rolled on just before them, sounding like piles of loose change jangling together. A few seconds more and they all would have been dead. The cloud pushed inside through the cave's mouth, freezing when it touched the team members' skin even through their clothes, which Lees knew would be damp, sodden, and quickly frozen. He and the other USGS professionals had all toted emergency heaters in their packs that would keep them alive long enough to await rescue. Those emergency, but powerful, Lixada propane heaters could provide comfort even in an icy environment like this for hours, especially if employed judiciously.

It was in that moment a rancid stench turned Lees' stomach, bitter and rotten at the same time, like a festering wound. He also detected a sound like a low, harmonic growl from somewhere well back of the cave's mouth—a trick of the wind, he hoped, since he couldn't contemplate escaping death by one form of nature, only to face it from another.

"Lights!" he ordered, through the near total darkness, the day beyond cloaked by the rolling pile of debris that measured in the tens of thousands of metric tons.

Four flashlights switched on almost immediately, catching Bellows and another one of the student interns still fumbling in their packs. Lees swung his beam toward the cave's rear where it fastened on something black, like a blanket of molten darkness.

The growling sound he still hoped was the wind grew deeper as his flashlight caught a massive, hairy shape directly in front of him.

PART ONE

National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.

—President John F. Kennedy

CHAPTER ONE

Icy Strait, Alaska

"Set depth at one-zero-two, zero bubble."

A twenty-year Navy veteran and a submarine captain for half of those, Captain Jack Fincic of the USS Providence SSN-812 had seen war up close and personal, often on missions no one outside a select few would ever learn about. He had faced off against Soviet subs, looking to make a name for themselves, and had been forced to sink one when it strayed dangerously close and refused to give way. But he found nothing as stressful as a new sub's initial training voyage where a mistake could lead, in this case, to a $6 billion loss of the Navy's newest, biggest, and fastest submarine ever built.

"Aye, sir. One-zero-two, zero bubble."