Leviathan(46)

“I will start the generator,” Thor rumbled, moving to the door. “I use it for light sometimes.”

Connor pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the radio, a 1960s-era shortwave. He read the frequency band—3,000 kilo-hertz. “Great,” he muttered. “It doesn't get any weaker than that.”

He heard the gas-operated generator start up in the lower level of the tower, and he twisted the power output to maximum, watched the power red-line. He opened the receiver, twisting the signal dial to test frequencies. He received only a haze of static crackling, overloading. In another moment Thor came through the doorway, watching expectantly.

“Does it usually sound like this?” Connor asked, sweating in the heat of the room.

“No.” Thor shook his head. “I used it once when I broke my leg in a fall. It was not like that.”

For another long moment Connor twisted the dials, receiving nothing but haze. “This isn't right,” he said. “They must be using some kind of electromagnetic countermeasure. They're jamming the signal.”

“Yes. They would do that.” Thor paused. “Tell me what I can do.”

“We need a boat,” Connor whispered. He flipped the radio on its face, quickly removing the screws on the back. “I've got to get Beth and Jordan and the rest of my crew off this island. And you, too. Something is very wrong in that cavern, and I don't think any of us are safe here.” A pause. “I know we're not.”

Connor tossed the back of the radio aside like a Frisbee.

Thor asked, “If they are jamming the frequency, what can you do?”

“Blast through it. That's the easiest way to defeat it. All they're doing is throwing a lot of cross-current electromagnetic activity into the air. But we've got something on our side. We're pretty far from the Ice Station and we've got the mountains between us and the base, so that's going to cut off some of their signal. But then again, this old radio doesn't have much power.” He glanced around. “Do you have any wire?”

“Wire?” Thor scowled.

“Yeah, wire.”

“What kind of wire?”

“Any kind of wire.”

Without a word Thor turned, descending the stairs. And Connor was working on the back of the radio again, removing a transistor. He uncoiled the wire wrapped around the loop stick, stretching two feet of it from the back. Then he looked around Thor's chamber, saw an empty aluminum foil package. Quickly he wrapped the foil tightly around the loop stick wire and tore off another piece of foil to connect both transistors. He knew that the aluminum around the transistors would allow for a slightly higher flow of electricity, and the aluminum wrapped around the loop-stick would intensify the frequency.

Trying to recall everything he had learned about shortwave radios during electronics school, Connor removed the mesh cover from the microphone and disconnected the ground and hot wires. Then he used his knife to strip the insulation from the hot wire and attached it to the handle of Thor's cast-iron frying pan. Last, he stripped the insulation from the ground wire and laid the wire to the side. Now, he knew, whenever he touched the ground wire close to the iron handle beside the hot wire, there would be a short, intensified blast of Morse code. And that was exactly what he needed, because where electromagnetic jamming could confuse a multiplexing frequency like a voice, a single-pulse frequency like Morse code could usually be blasted through. Thor entered the chamber, holding an old coil of electrical wiring in his hands. His face was amazed, as if he had shocked himself by finding it.

“That's good enough,” Connor said. Instantly he began stripping the rubber insulation from the dusty coil of 14-gauge wire.

“What are you doing?” Thor whispered intensely, bending forward.

“I'm setting up a broad wave antenna. They used to call it a whip antenna in the old days.”

“Why?”

“Because a whip antenna will throw a hard signal in a straight direction instead of just sending it out all over the place. The whip will give the Morse code better range and power.” Connor glanced out a long rectangular window. “Which direction is Reykjavik?”

“It is there.” Thor pointed inland.

Connor stared. “What?”

Thor nodded. “Yes, Connor, Reykjavik is to the south. We must broadcast back over the island and the mountains in order to reach it. We will have to broadcast through the Ice Station and the jamming. If we put the signal straight out to the ocean, we will be sending it into the Arctic Circle.”

For a moment Connor was silent. In his urgency he hadn't even thought of that. “What about oil tankers?” he asked. “Or ice breakers? Would we reach one if we sent the signal into the Arctic Circle?”