Hello Folks (again)- I had so much fun writing the last story that I decided to try my hand at something a bit lengthier. I basically roughed out an episode length story line, but be forewarned...this is going to take me some time.

Again, with all the dialogue I get bogged down a little, so let me know if I lose anyone in all the banter to the point where people don't really know what's going on. I can always do some re-writes to clear up any word piles that I might inadvertently dump onto readers.

As always I appreciate feedback, both critical and/or motivational.

Cheers- El

Under The Cover of Ice

:: The Team- War Room ::

Mac looked at his partner as they nearly raced down the hallways of the Foundation. Mac thought it bizarre how, as they slid around each corner, there seemed to be some by-standard carrying an overly large stack of loose papers that they managed to narrowly miss every time.

"Jack I told you not to take Sepulvida Boulevard, but you just had to get your Java Juice."

The older man shot back, "Hey, I didn't know 'Her Highness' would blow her dog whistle right as I pulled into stopped traffic. Come on man. Cut me a little slack. You would have thanked me later if we had actually made it to Java."

A little breathless Mac made it abundantly clear that that would never have happened. "Jack there is no way you will ever get me to drink kale through a straw. You are SO delusional sometimes."

They rounded the last corner and slowed to a jog as the door to the War Room came into view.

Mattie was going to kill them. They were so late.

As Jack opened the door for them to enter, Mac managed to catch the edge of his boot against the door frame and stumble as he made his first few steps into the room.

Mattie greeted the two agents with a death stare that would make Clint Eastwood proud.

"So glad you two decided to come in to work today. What the hell took you so long?"

She immediately held up a hand. "You know what, don't answer that. Just sit down and try not to look like two chickens caught in four way traffic."

He and Jack fumbled around each other awkwardly trying to take their seats before Mattie could go into a full blown tongue-lashing about what it meant to be 'on-call'.

Once everyone was settled down Mattie addressed the room. "Now that we are all here, we can finally start going about doing our jobs."

Despite her diminutive size, the director of operations for the Phoenix foundation could intimidate a full grown tiger into flopping belly-up to act as her personal fireplace rug. Mac took note that she was particularly riled up this morning- more so than what he and his partner's tardiness would typically warrant.

Something was up.

The fiery director walked around the room passing out file folders earmarked with various categorical tabs and then returned to her position at the front of the room.

"What I just handed you are exact duplicates of a dossier for an assignment offer sent to me by the assistant to the Secretary of Energy earlier this morning. Take a look while I give you a summary."

She turned to the large screen at the front of the room and tapped in a few codes that accessed the encrypted files associated with the project. Continuing to face the screen she began to lay out all the details.

"The Strategic Environmental Assessment and Control Office, otherwise known as SEAC, reached out to our agency following a loss of communication at 0100 hours with a civilian staffed science station they were backing in a remote location on the Sermersuaq Ice sheet."

Without even looking behind her she added "Jack…that means Greenland."

Jack rolled his head towards Mac sitting catty-corner across from his own leather chair and gave a nonplussed 'seriously' look over the rims of his aviator glasses.

"The station itself was mobilized three weeks ago to investigate a recent flare-up in a rather baffling radiation footprint that US government satellites have been monitoring since the initial discovery July of last year."

She tapped another key on the screen and a low resolution satellite image of what looked to be a crescent shaped crevasse fracturing across a field of ice appeared. Mac was a little taken aback at how out of place the deep gash appeared against the pure white landscape of the ice.

"The radiation spike appears to correlate with the sudden emergence of this 1500 x 600 meter depression as shown by these primitive satellite photos. The SEAC analysts determined the crevasse to be a natural fracture due to movement in the ice. But, and I quote, as 'a precaution', they decided to go ahead and initiate a plan to set up an ice coring program and a series of field based monitoring stations in order to investigate the duel radiation + collapse phenomenon. Geologists, glaciologists, and nuclear engineers from both Berkley and Cal-Tech were recruited via the DOE's Nuclear Energy program to be part of the investigative team. Individual dossiers for the personnel currently manning the station are included in the back of your individual folders."

Again Mattie tapped the screen and another image replaced the last. This one showed what looked to be an aerial view of Greenland's eastern coast. A long swath of land was curiously obscured by a hazy smear, like a massive white dust storm.

"According to the head of the SEAC operations, a recent bout of bad weather known as a Piteraq is responsible for knocking out the station's field antenna that was their sole means of broadcasting to their Satellite Comms System. As Piteraqs are very sudden and very destructive with over 250 km/hr winds, SEAC has concerns that more than just the antenna may be damaged. Because of this, they request that we send in a team capable of not only getting the communications system back up, but also of trouble shooting any other equipment damage we might find. They gave us until noon to accept or decline the contract."

Mattie turned from the screen and looked like she was about to commit murder.

Something was definitely up thought Mac.

The director spoke, "Someone tell me why I am so pissed right now."

The small statured woman stood there with her arms crossed and the agents looked at one another perplexed. After a few uncomfortable moments of silence, Mattie finally spoke again, "All these highly trained agents in one room, and NO ONE has an answer for me?"

"Jack!" she snapped, "You go first."

The older agent looked like a deer in the headlights. "Uh….what?" He looked to Mac for some sort of rescue, but the genius just shrugged his shoulders glad he wasn't the one on the hot seat. Jack's look of pleading turned to a scowl as he realized his best friend was leaving him for dead.

Turning back to Mattie with the look of a man resigned to high diving into a snake pit, he confessed. "Boss, you called on the wrong kid in class. I just punch bad guys in the face when you tell me to, remember?"

"Cut the crap," Mattie barked, "what is wrong with the picture that I'm painting you here Dalton?"

Mac looked at the Ex-Delta and the image of a tiger going belly-up flashed into his mind.

Jack cleared his throat. "Well, ok then. I guess the first thing is…never in my life have I ever seen a project dossier from a government agency as skin-and-bones as this thing."

He held up his copy of the files in the air for emphasis.

"Nothing is outright redacted in any of the documents, but if you pay attention to the content there is barely any information relayed at all in here. If this were a complete background report on a DOE project, there would be at least 300 pages of just bureaucratic red tape, probably in triplicate, and my arm would be about ready to fall off just trying to lift this thing."

He looked around the room at his team.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say they were trying to give the appearance of being transparent, but actually shoveling skeletons into their closets as fast as they can before the guests arrive."

Mattie let out a dramatic sigh, "Thank god Dalton, I was beginning to think we had gotten your resume for a valet position mixed up in our pile of secret agent applications."

Jack visibly puffed up in relief. He then cocked his head back and winked at the team behind him- all except for Mac, whom he reserved another scowl.

Mattie cut his preening short. "Save it for when you actually impress me Jack. Riley, you're next."

It was now Riley's turn to look a little flustered as she ran her fingers across her keyboard.

"Well the Piteraq story checks out, but there are some red flags that I'm getting on the digital images they provided. I mean, the latitude of the Arctic Circle isn't a hot bed for terrorist surveillance activity, but come on. I'd hope the DOE had better imaging capabilities than what they gave us and…wait..."

Her fingers continued to dance across the keys like lighting.

"Yeah….it looks like someone has messed with the digital time stamps. A halfway decent cover job."

She then added a little sarcastically, "…if you were trying to fool the high school principal. These pictures are far from up-to-date. It looks like they were taken over 3 months ago, not 3 weeks ago."

She looked back up at Mattie. "I'd have to agree with Jack that something fishy is going on. They are definitely trying to hide something."

Mac was intrigued. He too had had a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right. Deciding to preemptively add his thoughts to the conversation before his boss could set her sights on him, he spoke up, "Mattie, can you pull up the image showing the section of collapsed ice again?"

Mattie did as requested. Mac stood up from his chair and moved toward the screen to get a better look at the grainy picture.

"Something's not right about this fracture pattern to the ice. Ice sheets and glaciers follow the same laws of fluid dynamics as the lakes and rivers that we are more accustomed to seeing. Ice will flow from highs to lows due to gravity and because of this you create the same ripples and waves that you would see with any normal body of water. What you would expect with the topographic configuration of the rock and ice shown in this image would be laminar flow to the ice here in the center…"

He used his hands to mimic the flow of a river down the center of the icy valley.

"…whereas along the sides nearest these fins of rock, the ice would transition into a much more friction induced, and thus slower, turbulent flow. It's a behavior really driven by a simple equation called the Reynold's…"

Mac slowly trailed off mid-sentence as he became aware that the entire team had developed a glass-eyed expression. All except for Jack who was just staring at the ceiling slowly shaking his head.

Mattie snapped her fingers to get Mac's attention and blinked heavily for emphasis. "Mac. How about you try that again."

The blond look back to his teammates.

"Yeah. Sorry guys. So basically, if any cracks are forming at this particular location, they should be A. forming in sets and B. aligning parallel to the channel of ice. Not perpendicular like we see in the actual image. If this crevasse is natural, it isn't due to any movement of ice."

Mattie nodded and, back in her 'angry boss' mode, threw her file folder down onto the table in the center of the room. She had heard enough and felt like her point was made.

"So, now that you guys are all FINALLY clued in, I can just lay everything out in the open."

"What we have here folks is a fellow US government agency A. working under a GUISE of academic interest B. on foreign soil and is C. CLEARLY fumbling up an issue directly related to national security. I don't know how the DOE normally handles their sub-departments, but I'll be damned if Phoenix stands by and accepts this smoke and mirrors nonsense concerning an ambiguous radiation source. It's reckless in the extreme. Additionally, I don't like it when other agencies wantonly endanger my agents by withholding crucial information."

Everyone exchanged glances again as the full weight of Mattie's tirade sank in.

Jack leaned forward and pulled his yellow aviators down just enough to make direct eye contact with his boss. "Damn Mattie, now I'm pissed. So, what's the plan boss?"

Finally fed-up with Jack's aviator antics, Mattie lowered her voice and in the most intimidating soft tone she could muster purred, "Jack, take those ridiculous glasses off of your face before I do something with them you are not going to like."

Mac and Riley both struggled to hold back tears of laughter, afraid of bringing the wrath of their boss down upon their own heads. Mac actually had to cover his eyes and feign a couple of coughs to try to get himself back in control. Jack just paled a little and quietly replied, "Yes Ma'am."

A nice, warm tiger fireplace rug.

Mattie returned her focus to the topic at hand.

"SEAC is covering something up and I want to know what and why. In order to do this, we are going to give the appearance of accepting the proposed contract with the condition that we operate with complete autonomy throughout the entire operation. We'll let them know that we will be taking care of everything on our end. That will give us the latitude we need to launch our own investigation. Hopefully they'll take the bait."

Mac now fully focused again knotted up his eyebrows and thought for a moment. "I'm assuming that they didn't provide us with any imagery of the radiation footprint?"

Mattie's voice dripped with contempt. "Apparently the SEAC deemed that data to be too peripheral to the assignment to warrant being included." She looked with intensity at the young agent. "Mac, is there any way that what we are looking at here is an unsanctioned nuclear testing scenario?"

Mac looked back at the satellite image of the depression and shook his head. "No, even a small detonation test would generate the same spherical distribution of force as seen in the initial experiments at the Nevada Test Site. The collapse would be circular. But, to be sure, I'd have to be on the ground."

Mattie turned to Riley, "When is the earliest we can generate our own gamma photos of the science station?"

Riley hovered over her screen, "Looks like I can get tapped into the NASA Gamma Network or the Low Earth Orbit Military Network."

Mac spoke up, "NASA wouldn't work as those satellites are pretty far out of earth's atmosphere and we would have to contend with too much interference from solar radiation. Could you passively access the military system without showing our hand?"

"Yeah." Riley then looked up at Mattie, "That would give us our first images 6 hours and 20 minutes from now."

Mattie launched into full director mode and began barking a steady stream of orders.

"Do it and while you wait, keep digging into the rest of the dossier provided by SEAC. I want a list compiled of any other data discontinuities you find. Get Lisa from analytics to help."

"Bozer, you work on travel and logistics with the guys in the basement. I want a solid cover constructed for Mac and Jack within 24 hours. Due to the remoteness of the target facility, you and Riley will be staying here in LA with me so you have sufficient resources, but we have to make sure Blondie and Top Gun here have everything they need for the field."

Mattie then looked at both Jack and Mac. "You two are going to be the ground team. You'll have another set of agents to act as communications support based in a faux hunting camp we'll get set up 300 miles north of the city of Tasiilaq. When it comes down to the surveillance though, you'll be travelling inland alone to the science station. I'll be able to keep you under the radar for 24 hours before we'll have to resume our cover story of trouble shooting technicians. At that point, we'll have to send you back in through the front door so-to-speak."

"Is everyone clear on what we are doing here?"

Jack, having already forgotten his frustration with Mac earlier in the meeting, looked at his best friend with a huge grin on his face. Leaning over excitedly towards his partner, he held his fist out and boomed, "Hell's yeah! We're goin' to the North Pole brother!"

With enthusiasm equal to (if not exceeding) Jack's, the young genius reciprocated the fist bump and was about to say something when Mattie cut him off.

"Hey Abbot and Costello! We could very well be on a mission to prevent an international nuclear event. Could you two PLEASE act as if the fate of the world might be resting in your hands."

Hopefully that sets the stage well enough for an arctic adventure. To be continued...

Thanks!