The Ice Cap and the Rift

By Marshall Chamberlain

Revised 2nd Edition of Book II in the Ancestor Series of adventure thrillers fom a "Foreword Reviews," 1st Place Award Winning Author:

A Comboquake rakes across the submerged twenty-five hundred mile ribbon of the Atlantic Ridge, threatening disaster on three continents. At the north end of the Ridge, a fifteen-mile long rift tears into Iceland’s largest ice cap, spewing a curtain of steam five hundred feet in the air. Advanced satellite imagery reveals the dissection of a large cavern eleven hundred feet down the ragged crevasse, containing objects and structures frozen in the ice that shouldn't be there.

The UN’s Institute for the Study of Unusual Phenomena (ISUP) and its new director, John Henry Morgan, geologist, ex-marine, are cast into the aftermath of the largest single shift ever recorded in the Earth’s crust and the strange anomalies left in its wake.

When it’s discovered the cavern was occupied 180,000 years ago and contains a perfectly preserved hi-tech habitat and a travel machine, ISUP’s benign scientific expedition to study the origin and contents of the cavern turns chaotic.

Ferreting out the existence and significance of the discoveries, nations and terrorists mount sophisticated operations to acquire technological treasures for their own purposes.
The ISUP organization finds itself at the convergence of clandestine assault from several fronts. Acts of deceit and violence cascade into escalating brutality. Lives are expendable, a scenario that has plagued the human race throughout the chronicles of time.

Frantic action streams across the globe, crossing oceans and air lanes: Prague; London; New York; Washington, D.C.; Libya; France; Spain; Iceland; China. As factions grapple for power, survival of the ISUP scientists lies in their choices of whom to trust, how to utilize mysterious new technologies, and whether to seek assistance from an esoteric source claiming domicile in the Pleiades, a star cluster of the Taurus constellation.
__________________________________

Marshall Chamberlain weaves a magnificent adventure into plausible reality, transporting readers into unique realms of danger and suspense. Stalwart characters meet avarice and violence head-on in Book II of the Ancestor Series of adventure-thrillers. The Ice Cap and the Rift is spellbinding and scientifically mysterious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marshall Chamberlain
• Release date: Oct 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311966407

Marshall Chamberlain

Marshall Chamberlain is a man focused on his passions, with no time for pets, lawns, plants, puttering around or companion compromises. He has a master’s degree in Resource Development from Michigan State University and a graduate degree in International Management from the Thunderbird School near Phoenix, Ariz. He was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and spent many years in investment banking, venture capital and even a stint as a professional waiter. He is obsessed with preparedness, survival and independence. This combination of traits and an unconditional openness to life have led him to all manner of adventure and authoring the Ancestor Series of adventure-thriller. The first book was "The Mountain Place of Knowledge," released on December 15, 2013; it was the first of three books in the series. Chamberlain’s primary worldview is simple but profound—“I’m in awe of the magnificence of this world.” To discover more about this above average man, visit his website: www.marshallchamberlain.com. Or, contact him at: [e-mail]

Book preview

Back Cover

Acclaim

"I love ‘what if’ tales laced with a touch of sci-fi…they

stimulate the imagination…forcing us to not only

question reality, but grapple with difficult

answers. That’s Marshall Chamberlain’s

specialty and he does it with…

style and finesse."

―Steve Berry, New York Times Best Selling Author

"A tense, driving thriller, reminiscent

of the Indiana Jones books."

―An Enthusiastic Proofreader

"An astonishingly descriptive tale of adventure and

Intrigue…If you can only read one series

this year, this is the series

you want to read."

―Lee Ashford, Top Goodreads Reviewer

"Reads like a story-driven political thriller with a Sci-Fi twist…

reminiscent of Tom Clancy…From the get-go he manages

to arouse intrigue…Chamberlain lends his world both

a sense of credibility and mysticism."

―The Indie Mine Blog

"Cataclysmic world ending scenario…thick with science

and exploration…a book I could not put down

…awesome apocalyptic thriller."

―Krystal Larson, Live to Read Blog

I loved this book…It is very hard to put down.

―Glenda Parker, Fiction Writer

"Every page was full of intrigue and mystery…page turning well into the night

…very fast paced."

―Patricia Stathham, A Top Goodreads Reviewer

"A weaving of plausible reality into a magnificent adventure, The Ice Cap and the Rift

transports readers into unique realms of danger and suspense. In spellbinding

and scientifically mysterious action, stalwart characters

meet avarice and violence head-on."

―The Grace Publishing Group

Title Page

The

Ice Cap

And the Rift

A Novel

Marshall Chamberlain

Book II in the Ancestor Series of Adventure-thrillers

The Grace Publishing Group

Fort Myers Beach, Florida

Copyright

A Grace Book

Published by The Grace Publishing Group

12 Oneida Drive

Fort Myers Beach, Florida, 33931

www.gracepublishing.org

at Smashwords.com

The Ice Cap and the Rift-2nd Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events

are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given

away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase

an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was

not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own

copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright 2014 by Marshall Chamberlain

Grace Books is a trademark in use by Marshall Chamberlain since 1999.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2014912815

ISBN: 978-1311966407

Second Edition: 2014

10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1

Contents

Front Cover

Back Cover

Early Acclaim

Copyright

Title Page

Contents

Prologue

1-Iceland: December 25th

2-Comboquake: December 26th

3-Vatnajokull Ice Cap: December 31st

4-5-Prague

6-Dry Ice Six

7-Cambridge University: January 2nd

8-China

9-10-London: January 5th

11-Engineers Land

12-Elevator

13-Prague: January 8th

14-Morgan Arrives: January 9th

15-16-Suprises: Same Day

17-To the Rift: January 10th

18-Falling Ice

19-Prague: Same Day

20-To Alpha: Early Afternoon

21-Ti Shou Lin

22-The Cave

23-24-The Tunnel

25-The CIA

26-Game Plans

27-Inside the Dome: January 11th

28-Control Station

29-The Garage

30-The Vehicle

31-Ti Shou Lin

32-Confrontation: Early Afternoon

33-Sleeping: Late Afternoon

34-The Visitor

35-Strategy

36-Ti Lin: Same Day

37-Prague: January 13th

38-Cape Town: Previous Day

39-China: January 13th

40-The Arab Connection: January 14th

41-The Triad: January 23rd

42-Plans: January 27th

43-44-Compromised: January 28th

45-Dry Ice Three: Same Day

46-The Community

47-Hof Bay: January 29th

48-Shift Change

49-50-On the Way: 0420

51-The Transfer

52-New York: January 30th

53-Washington D.C.: Same Day

54-55-Bravo Room

56-Cornufi

57-59-Bravo Room

60-Escape

61-Bravo Room: 1600 Hours, Same Day

62-Half Way Home

63-Yashir Facil

64-North Africa: February 2nd

65-Prague: Same Day

66-67--Bayonne: Same Day, Early Morning

68-Bravo Room: 1015 Hours D.C. Time

69-Bayonne

70-Bravo Room: 1100 D.C. Time

71-Tripoli

72-73-The Baker

74-Options: 1300 Hours D.C. Time

75-Pamplona: 0300 Hours, February 2nd

76-Lumberjack

77-78-Pamplona: 0640 Hours

79-Bravo Room 0130 Hours D.C. Time

80-Pamplona: 0635 Hours

81-Yashir Facil: 0740 Hours

82-Bravo Room: 0150 Hours D.C. Time

83-Morgan

84-Prague: February 6th

Epilogue

The Apothecary

Book Description

Excerpt

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Connect with Me on Social Media

Epigraph

"The history of civilization on this Plane of Demonstration is

foggy mist in the process of clearing."

–Brother Sao of the Pleiades

Prologue

Belize Aftermath

Following several weeks of diplomatic maneuvering, the United Nations announced an accidental explosion had taken place at a developing mountain-site park in Belize . The accident took place during an incident investigation requested by the Belizean government. The announcement was short and stale, arousing little media interest. The battle at the site and loss of life had been pushed under the rug.

The Chinese had levered a position of acceptance in the Security Council, admitting possession of the scepter taken from the Belizean mountain. They claimed it fell into their hands through the black market and proposed continuing study of the instrument under their tutelage with monitoring by the United Nations. Their real leverage had been derived from deployment of secret laser weaponry at the mountain site. They set a time and identified a target located in a meadow near the park development, blasted a fifteen-foot crater, and revealed for the first time advanced satellite laser capabilities. U.S. CIA Director, Dick Murray, was the only formal U.S. witness to the event, an event brokered by the UN’s Institute for the Study of Unusual Phenomena (ISUP) through confidential negotiations with a Chinese intelligence officer assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Washington, D.C.

With U.S. support, the Chinese were able to put a hold on the mountain-site park plans organized through the cooperation of Belize and the UN’s Institute for the Study of Unusual Phenomena (ISUP). The United Nations agreed to study the matter and restructure the park project for international participation. Until a plan was approved, entry into the mountain’s interior was prohibited without the presence of an appointed Security Council representative.

***

The U.S. military was locked in emergency mode. How had the Chinese managed to launch offensive satellites undetected? Where were they, and what defenses could be brought to bear? The problem was confounded by the inability to monitor space from space. With so much junk floating around in orbit, the task was daunting, but adjustments to the Star Wars satellite defense system were underway to enhance its detection capabilities to three hundred and sixty degrees within a year’s time.

The Chinese had been prepared, covering the source of their laser emissions by utilizing reflecting relay points mixed with space debris, rendering the beams impossible to trace. Until the threat was neutralized, the Chinese at their leisure could quite literally blackmail the world.

To make matters worse, irrefutable evidence, gathered by the CIA from the mountain-site attack in Belize, confirmed the use of shadow technology by the Chinese, forcing an all-out U.S. commitment to develop its own invisibility capabilities as well as countermeasures against the technology.

One

Iceland: December 25th

Cambridge University maintained a sophisticated seismic recording station in the Canary Islands. Over the last five weeks, its instruments had registered increasing numbers of disturbances as far away as the Azores and Cape Verde Archipelagos. The only common geologic denominator was the meeting of tectonic plates in the Atlantic Ocean along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Sent by Cambridge’s Department of Earth and Astronomical Sciences, Dr. Marion Soffle, a hardy outdoorsman used to a variety of field conditions, was collaborating with Icelandic geophysicists to determine if their recorded tremor data would correlate.

***

The Vatnajökull Ice Cap was an enormous mass of undulating whites and grays, stretching away in a vastness of 8100 square kilometers and nestled between volcanic mountain peaks. Under the ice cap, 950 meters thick in some places, lay an intricate series of caldera lakes sustained by melt water from geothermal heating. Scientists knew that increased volcanic activity caused the temperature and level of the lakes to rise, producing overflow, dangerous icecap sloughing, glacial stream flooding and the possibility of major eruptions. Constantly measuring the volcanic activity was of paramount importance to the safety of Iceland’s population

***

Two specks moved east over the surface like tiny orange bugs. Speeding along at twenty-five miles per hour, two Ski-Doos churned out white rooster tails in the fresh snow. They dodged fumaroles and boiling mud pits surrounding the recently erupted Grimsvoltn Caldera and headed toward a distant seismic recording station built into the protruding side of Mt. Breidubunga. The old station was constructed in the early 1930s by the British and hadn’t been upgraded to connect to Iceland’s digital monitoring system or integrated into the UN’s international network.

Lars Hansson, from the Icelandic Hydrological Service, and Dr. Soffle were making an unscheduled visit. Monitoring stations throughout Iceland had been registering increasing tremor activity in the network of calderas underlying the ice cap. Because the old station was nearest to the center of activity, retrieval of its tapes could be important to understanding what was happening.

Quivers under the Ski-Doos jockeyed them about like toys, and the two geologists knew the screeching and grinding from below were spider veins punching through the ice.

This is not good, Dr. Soffle barked into his helmet radio, barely avoiding a collision with the other Ski-Doo. The activity is increasing. I hope this is worth it. The tape should tell the story. What do you think, Lars? Should we turn back?

It’s not much farther, but it’s not where I thought I’d be spending Christmas, my friend—it’s curious. The temperature data doesn’t support a change in volcanic activity. There’s no reason to believe the lakes are causing this. The activity has registered over the entire country. Something unusual is building.

They struggled through several more waves of shuddering before reaching Mt. Breidubunga’s rocky edge. A fifteen-minute climb brought them to the station. Hansson quickly unlocked the metal door, and the two scientists knelt in the confined space inside the weatherproof box.

The equipment looked like a Reuters ticker-tape. A six-inch-wide roll of tape wound on a spool every time readings were taken. The only technological innovation was the solar power cells charging the batteries. The station was scheduled for updating and integration into Iceland’s volcanic recording network, but the remote location made it last on the list. It had been maintained and kept functional because the deep hole drilled at its creation came closest to the principal magma bed underlying the island.

Hansson pulled the metal chain on the sixty-watt light bulb affixed to the wall and shut the door on the wind. Let’s take a look at the last four or five days.

They stooped on the cement-slab floor, relieving themselves of their bulky helmets and heavy mittens. Dr. Soffle pulled a clipboard and a folder from his duffel. He spread three graphs out on the floor, one from the monitor in the Canary Islands and two from stations at opposite ends of Iceland.

Hansson unrolled the last foot or so of the station’s recording tape, tore it off the roller, and stretched it flat on a clipboard, securing it with a rubber band at the bottom. The relative record blocks were similar, except the intensity was far higher here, and tremor frequency and strength had dramatically increased in the last eight hours.

The ground shook and the old steel record-station creaked. Dr. Soffle’s eyes met Hansson’s, terror written across his face. Lars, it’s not like any pre-quake activity I’ve ever seen. The frequency pattern in the groups is consistent, but the groups are random. And look, the strength here is ominous. Something’s going to give. We better get the devil out of here.

And it’s going to happen right here, Hansson said, helping Dr. Soffle stuff the record graphs back into his duffel. We’ve got to alert Interior at Reykjavik. We should be able to raise the park station at the edge of the ice cap by the time we get half way across. They can relay us to Reykjavik.

***

From afar, they looked like racers coming down the slope of Mt. Breidubunga into the bowels of the ice cap. As far as the eye could see, steam and pumice issued forth from hundreds of new blowholes and old fumaroles, leaving yellowish orange debris-markers and gray-black projectilate on the snow pack. The ice cap was breathing.

The Ski-Doos whined full out passing the halfway point. They had traversed through two more sets of ferocious tremors, and the sound of the cracking ice was horrific. They were riveted to their vehicles, hanging on for dear life.

Behind them in the distance, arising from the talus-laden ring around the Grimsvoltn Caldera, a tearing ribbon serrated its way through the ice toward them. The horrendous sound was like the shriek of a tornado. It gobbled the snow and ice as it tunneled downward, leaving a gaping black crevasse hissing and spitting out yellow steam.

What in God’s name? Hansson screamed into his helmet. Can anybody hear me?

His voice was too loud. It sounded like gibberish to Dr. Soffle. Lars, turn off to the left, he yelled, and then he nudged Hansson’s Ski-Doo to get his attention. Get out of the way, he screamed and nodded left.

Hansson looked quickly to the left and jerked the vehicle right.

Steam obscured the vicious tear as it clawed toward them, cracking like lightning. Both turned away from it, but the fracturing was encompassing them. They looked back; the wake of the splitting ribbon was now a ragged, hundred-foot open mouth coming for them like the blast of an atomic explosion.

Go back to the right, Lars. Dr. Soffle looked over his shoulder. Hansson wasn’t there.

Two

Comboquake: December 26th

ed, come take a look, Sgt. McDermott called from across the work area. The photos from the third pass are coming through."

Deep within the labs at the National Reconnaissance Office, the two-man, aerial reconnaissance team had been at it throughout the night. NRO satellites had picked up a gaping fissure forming on Iceland’s Vatnajökull Ice Cap. Massive tectonic plate movements over the last nine hours at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean were giving birth to the feature.

Fixed photo images representing the rift’s development were laid side-by-side in stereoscopic pairs on the refracting table. Air Force Master Sergeants Ed Lacey and Spider McDermott had been sitting at computerized view stations, examining the videos from the two previous satellite passes. Even though the equipment could pick up the writing on a Coke can, the weather had been a problem. High clouds and heavy snow affected the clarity. The third pass was expected to be perfect.

Sgt. McDermott, sleeves rolled to his elbows, removed the third-pass photos from the processing equipment and laid them in pairs on the viewing table.

Sgt. Lacey slid out of his chair, anxious to examine the new pictures. He cleaned the accumulated oily residue from the nosepiece of his glasses and peered at the first pair: a small-scale overshot. What the hell’s going on here? he mumbled. It’s clearer now—better conditions.

McDermott arranged the last photos on the table and joined Lacey at the overview pair, taking a turn peering through the viewer. Man, it’s ten times as wide and twice as long.

They set up two more photo pairs in separate viewing stations and moved down the line.

Look at the steam, McDermott said, backing off the last station.

Lacey leaned over the viewer. Yeah, and this is the change in six hours. I’ll go for the director. You better start working on a master slideshow. He’ll want it all yesterday.

***

Labeled the Comboquake, it affected the twenty-five-hundred mile extent of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Reykjanes and Midocean Ridges straddling Iceland. This submerged mountain range stretched from a few miles off the south coast of Iceland to about three hundred miles south of Cape Town, South Africa, boasting many peaks that dwarfed Mount Everest. It represented the meeting edge of the geologic plates responsible for the present shapes of North America, Europe and Africa.

The heaviest earthquake activity was detected along the northern half of the Mid-Atlantic and the full lengths of the Reykjanes and Midocean-Ridges. Initial Richter Scale readings from 6.2 to 7.7 registered over 102 reporting stations, providing data on hundreds of major epicenters along the plate borders. Aftershocks were still taking place.

Major structural damage was being reported across Iceland and the Atlantic Archipelagos, making up the Madeira, Azores, and Cape Verde Island chains. Tsunamis had been expected along the coastlines of Europe, Africa and North America, but sympathetic canceling had occurred. The development of waves from the sheer number and dispersion of earthquake epicenters had affected each other, limiting the height of coastal wave development to less than thirty feet.

A pattern of precursors had been absent. The overall seismic record was devoid of clear warning signals, limited to the anomalies recorded in Iceland and several Cambridge University measuring stations. Geologists were mystified as to why the combination of events was so sudden and wasn’t hundreds of times more destructive.

Three

Vatnajökull Ice Cap: December 31st

at eight thousand feet above sea level, a dry freeze perpetually engulfed the Vatnajökull Ice Cap. Sixteen temporary residents lived on its surface. Constant daily winds piled fresh white blankets of snow against the hastily-constructed, tiny base camp known as Dry Ice Six, a speck on the barren gray-white landscape two hundred and fifty miles east of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Half a mile from the camp, a swirling wall of raging steam clouds rose skyward from a cavernous, half-mile wide, fifteen-mile long rip in the ice cap. Five hundred feet in the air, the steam updraft crystallized into sleet and fell back like a massive fountain, sheeting the ground fifty meters on each side of the rift and layering its ragged walls with glistening ice.

At the edge of the rift, the temperature was a constant nineteen degrees Fahrenheit. An equilibrium was reached seventy-five meters down the gaping crevasse, where the pelting sleet turned to rain and the walls were free of the crusty ice. At great depth, the structure had torn close to the magma pool responsible for Iceland’s volcanic origin.

Forty-eight hours after the Comboquake, without regard for the substantial dangers present from volcanic instability, the American government had inserted U.S. Army Rangers on the Vatnajökul Ice Cap. Their mission was to maintain control of a three-by eighteen-mile rectangular perimeter enclosing the rift and establish operational outposts for arriving UN scientists to install volcanic monitoring equipment.

The government of Iceland had welcomed the immediate U.S. assistance and UN participation, placing the country under martial law and preparing the population for potential evacuation.

U.S. satellite communications were established in day two. Within five days, the Dry Ice Six headquarters and three sub-bases were one hundred percent operational, with Dry Ice Six located at the rift’s midpoint along one side of the rectangular perimeter, and Dry Ice One, Two and Three at the midpoints of the remaining sides. Rangers equipped with motorized snow-sleds traversed the rugged ice-field terrain patrolling the area, and a Huey reconnaissance helicopter provided air support.

The British Royal Air Force had assisted by lifting-in tractor-crawlers, bulldozers and engineering personnel to carve a makeshift airstrip on the ice for cargo plane traffic. U.S. C-130s brought in supplies, diesel generators, component pieces for two twenty-four by eighty-foot prefabricated buildings and a platoon of Navy Seabees.

Bisected by the rift, a large, open chamber at the three hundred and seventy-meter level was of serious interest to the Americans. Three-dimensional probing had revealed the bubble-like feature, and satellite scanners outlined familiar objects bound in the cave ice. Heat was issuing from an oblong-shaped anomaly the size of a barn. The Dry Ice Six base was a CIA operation.

Four

Prague: January 1st

two weeks had passed since John Henry Morgan’s return to Prague. He’d arrived from Belize, making a stopover in New York to file the UN report on the attack at the mountain site. He was still in the process of snapping into his new job as ISUP’s Managing Director when the organization was called on to marshal the resources necessary to analyze the impact of the Comboquake along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ISUP was also assigned responsibility for installing and manning the Dry Ice seismic monitoring stations and organizing an expedition to study the steaming, fifteen-mile long rift in the middle of the Vatnajökull Ice Cap.

From the many requests coming in daily, it appeared ISUP’s role of investigating unusual phenomena was enlarging exponentially, and Morgan would soon face the need for more personnel if ISUP were to be effective in carrying out its mission.

A desk and daily work routine had never been Morgan’s strong suit. He welcomed the opportunity to get into the action. His first move was going to be a visit to Cambridge University, where ISUP had instituted its first Project-Affiliate relationship. Dr. Ivan Shalard, the head of the Department of Earth and Astronomical Sciences, had volunteered Eddy Levitt, his Director of Field Research, to spearhead the expedition to the ice cap.

***

Morgan woke early, invigorated, and took the long way from his apartment on his run to ISUP headquarters. It started raining half way, and he was soaked by the time he hustled up the marble steps. He shook the rain off his baseball cap and gave the building and landscaping a once-over; he felt insignificant standing next to the structure’s massive, bulletproof glass face. The place was a hi-tech edifice, built like a granite-block museum to withstand a terrorist attack.

Peter Krowitz came off his pedestal behind the security console and unlocked the doors. Good morning, Doctor Morgan. He held the doors open, knowing full-well Morgan disliked an overt show of courtesy, and moved his massive frame aside.

What have we here? Morgan squeezed by and plucked lint off the officer’s creased shirtsleeve.

Must have come in the door with you, kind sir. You usually bring fallout with you, and you really should do something about that stringy mop hanging from that inane sports cap—a Dick Murray called on the secure landline. He wants you to call back when you get settled in for the day. He wouldn’t say what he wanted.

Krowitz had worked for Commander Kevin Barr at NATO’s anti-terrorism school before accepting the ISUP building security position. He was a pillar of knowledge and had welcomed the opportunity to retire from the military and lead a quiet life.

Commander Barr was an ex-Navy Seal and one of Morgan’s closest friends. Bringing NATO capabilities to bear, he and Krowitz had ISUP sewn together like a spy agency.

Thanks, Pete. The mop and hat stay. I’m headed for a hot shower, he said, thinking the CIA’s forensic analysis of the attack on the Belize mountain site must be finished or the Director of the CIA wouldn’t be calling.

Anything new from Doctor Rollins? Krowitz asked.

Mary Ellen’s flying into New York tomorrow from Belize—personnel paperwork. She should be here the next morning on the red-eye. She’ll be orchestrating the Comboquake study. I’m going to London to call on Cambridge and work on the Iceland expedition.

The go-ahead is close, is it?

We think it may be safe in a few days. The Cambridge scientists we sent to Iceland will make the call. Gotta go.

Morgan squeaked across the mottled-green slate floor toward the elevators, sneakers squeezing out a trail of wet footprints. He registered a quick glimpse of the high ceiling and vast open space of the ground floor. It always reminded him of a major New York bank.

***

Refreshed from the shower, Morgan dressed in tan cargo pants that converted to shorts and a short sleeve, muted green Patagonia field shirt. He poured a hot mug of coffee he had set to brew while he was cleaning up and scooted his recliner to a wall of windows overlooking the manicured grounds. Some patches of snow and ice on the lawn reflected the early-morning light, and movement along the streets beyond the building’s tree-lined border was absent. A few moments of temporary silence and lack of activity were welcome.

Murray was the next thing on his list, but first he needed to talk to Mary Ellen in Belize. He’d sent her back to the mountain site to oversee the CIA forensic team analyzing the attack and to get a feel for working with the military security at the site. Commander Barr was also there, playing mentor while he oriented the newly arrived NATO replacement force, his last duty as NATO’s Anti-Terrorism Director. Morgan had talked him into heading up ISUP security.

It was the middle of the night over there, but Morgan had to talk to her before he returned Murray’s call. She would probably be irate, but she was the best one to give him a current take. He didn’t expect much sharing from Murray.

Rolling over to his big mahogany desk, he adjusted the recliner parallel to the floor, pushed it out to full length, and punched Mary Ellen’s code into his e-phone. Upper-echelon UN staff had one as standard issue. Two and a half years ago, the phones were a complimentary gift from the CIA until bugging was discovered during the Belize fiasco. Now, ISUP had its own secure provider and dedicated satellite bands.

He hadn’t spoken with her

Reviews for The Ice Cap and the Rift

[sheriawilkinson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Ice Cap and the Rift by Marshall ChamberlainJohn Henry Morgan, a geologist and ex-Marine is the new director for the Institute for the Study of Unusual Phenomena (ISUP). He finds himself in an Ice Cap shift. There he finds an ancient cavern and a time machine. Soon a vast amount of countries are warring for this special gift. Human lives are at risk while John must try to keep the peace. Who can be trusted, who is the enemy? John is about to find out.An action packed adventure, filled with intrigue and never ending surprises. A cast of Characters, some are friendly, others are sinister and want to dominate. The story was very original, I can see The Ice Cap and the Rift a movie some day.Those who like adventure, drama, and thrilling suspense should enjoy this great read.

[DiDonovan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On the heels of Book One of the 'Ancestor' series comes Volume Two, The Ice Cap and the Rift, another spell-binding adventure that opens with a prologue summing up events that transpired in The Mountain Place of Knowledge and presenting another potentially world-altering disaster. Having the prior events summarized offers the rare opportunity for newcomers to become instantly familiar with the actions that preceded The Ice Cap and the Rift. (This summary approach provides the basics, yet retains enough mystery about these proceedings to offer the idea that Book One will prove equally compelling, inducing interest for newcomers to turn to the first adventure saga for more detail.)

In this case a 'comboquake' rolls up the Atlantic ridge and creates a fifteen-mile rift across an Icelandic ice cap, revealing a huge hidden cave and further challenges to humanity's existence.

As events unfold here, it becomes evident that competing national interests, new technology, possible otherworld involvements, and fresh dangers are at the forefront of an adventure that turns a strange scientific discovery into a cat-and-mouse game of politics and confrontation between competing forces.

Strong characterization, a healthy dose of scientific mystery, and violently conflicting political interests permeate what can only be described as an Indiana Jones-style action thriller, replete with satisfying twists and turns sure to satisfy readers of the action-adventure genre.

This audience will appreciate Chamberlain's attention to detail, his ability to build believable characters and political situations, and especially, his attention to keeping the mystery alive and the tension exquisite throughout the story line - no mean feat given that so many disparate threads are created, to be joined together at a later date.

[grampy-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

?The Ice Cap and the Rift? by Marshall Chamberlain is an astonishingly descriptive tale of adventure and intrigue, so real it pulls the reader right into the thick of the action. The way Marshall Chamberlain writes, you will smell the sweat and stale coffee in the CIA ?Situation Room?, feel the penetrating cold of the Iceland wind, and suffer the dry heat of the Libyan desert. His geographic descriptions are spot on, inserting so much reality into the story you won?t be sure how much is fiction and how much is true life. More importantly, you won?t care. ?The Ice Cap and the Rift? is the second book in his ?Ancestor? series, picking up shortly after ?The Mountain Place of Knowledge? ends, with many of the same characters now involved with an entirely different, but eerily familiar discovery. As with ?The Mountain Place of Knowledge?, international espionage, manipulation, and subterfuge play major roles in the outcome.?The Ice Cap and the Rift? is in a genre class all by itself. It is at once an Action ? Adventure ? Intrigue ? Natural Catastrophe ? Science Fiction (with aliens) story you will not be able to put down. I would call it a ?one of a kind? story, but so is ?The Mountain Place of Knowledge?. If you can only read one series this year, this is the series you want to read. Marshall Chamberlain is an author you will want to keep tabs on; his writing will assure him a place in the history books of tomorrow.