Free Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters by Alex Archer Page A

particularly tense. Annja could feel the ticking of the clock, literally measuring the hours left in Doug’s life if they didn’t succeed, and the anxiety that generated had her on edge the whole time. More than once she considered alerting the authorities, but something stopped her. She couldn’t have put her finger on precisely why, but she had the sneaking feeling that the kidnapperwould know as soon as she got law enforcement involved, and she didn’t dare risk Doug’s life.
    She passed the time playing cards with Paul in the breakroom, but her mind wasn’t on what she was doing and he repeatedly trounced her. Eventually she gave up her seat to Garin, allowing Paul to have a bit of a challenge, and she sat staring at the wall, wondering if she was doing the right thing. By the time Reinhold stuck his head in the doorway and announced they might have something, she was about ready to crawl out of her skin. She jumped to her feet and followed the German scientist back to the control room, Garin and Paul at her heels.
    At a word from Reinhold, the image from the drone’s forward camera that was showing on the central screen was replaced by something much more complex.
    Reinhold pointed at it. “What you’re seeing here is a three-dimensional computer model we’ve built with the preliminary data sent back to us by the drone. We’ve isolated the various magnetic fields recorded by the drone’s imaging equipment and assigned each of them a color. We then laid those colors over a topographic model of the rift valley itself.”
    The image in front of them was mostly gray, with a few blotches of dark red running throughout.
    “The gray color represents the baseline material of the mountains, mostly granite, dolomite and shale,” Reinhold said. He pointed to one of the veins of dark red running through it. “This dark color appears to be veins of hematite crystal, something the region isparticularly known for. So far, nothing is surprising or out of the ordinary.”
    He nodded at the technician manning the controls and the imaging began to slip down the screen, revealing more of the valley, just as if the drone were flying over it. Everything looked similar to what they’d already seen, until they reached the far end. At that point, a blotch of blue color appeared.
    “Initial measurements tell us that this anomaly is roughly fifty feet long by seventy feet wide and made mostly of a combination of iron, carbon and manganese. In other words, steel.”
    Reinhold looked at the trio with an expression of pride. “I would bet my professional reputation that this is your missing aircraft.”

Chapter 10
    Excitement was high as the team put on its cold weather gear and got ready to go out to the crash site. The plan was to take the Sno-Cats—Annja and Paul in one, Garin and Reinhold in the other—and see what condition the wreckage was in. Once they knew that, they could make more detailed plans for how to get at whatever it was they were supposed to recover from it.
    The Junkers Ju 88 had a length of 47 feet and a wingspan of 65 feet, which was roughly the same size as the anomaly Reinhold had picked up with his scanning equipment. That suggested the plane was actually intact, a rather surprising discovery but one Annja was excited about. Her research had told her that there were only two surviving Junker 88s in the world. Being able to add a third to that list would be quite a coup.
    At least something good might come of all this , she thought.
    At first, it was slow going. The terrain was a mixture of rocky ridgelines, boulder-strewed hills andlong fields of glacial ice complete with crevasses large enough to swallow either of their vehicles whole. The Sno-Cats, however, were perfect for this kind of trek. The vehicle’s four independent tracks moved up and down as well as side to side, allowing it to maneuver over, through, or around the various obstacles they encountered, while the high cab allowed excellent