North of the Barents Sea, deep within the Arctic Ocean.
The pitch-black sea was cleaved apart by gray-white floes. Hurricanes whipped up salty, damp sea mist and howled across the icy ocean, where visibility was less than eight hundred meters.
In this frozen hell, where even Polar Bears curled up in their dens, a massive warship ablaze with lights was breaking through the ice floes, advancing slowly yet steadily. Like a gigantic axe, the steel vessel split the ice sheet apart, forcibly carving out a route of its own through this realm ruled by ice and snow.
"Report. Current position: above the Mendeleev Ridge. Water depth: 1,200 meters. Distance to the North Pole: 234 nautical miles."
"Weather conditions continue to deteriorate. Visibility: 800 meters. Temperature: minus thirty degrees Celsius. Ice layer has thickened significantly."
Inside the ship, Russian calls rose and fell one after another. The seasoned Russian crewmen were operating the warship with trembling caution.
During an Arctic winter, there were only a handful of ships daring enough to venture this deep, often separated from one another by hundreds of nautical miles. That meant that if a maritime disaster occurred, the earliest rescue would arrive ten hours later—in an icy sea at minus thirty degrees, that was no different from a death sentence.
Atop the bridge stood a man codenamed White Wolf, motionless as an ice sculpture. The AK-47 assault rifle on his shoulder seemed frozen to his cold-weather gear. Sea mist had condensed into a thin crust of salt over his body, yet he had not moved an inch in two hours.
Behind him was a warm steam vent. The high-temperature vapor formed a faint thermal barrier around him, barely warding off the bone-piercing wind. It was the only thing allowing him to endure such an extreme environment.