Beneath the Ice (10 page)

Perry was a man of
prayer—spontaneous prayer. His faith had seen him through the best
times and the most miserable. He had no formal time each day when
he prayed, but his mind was heaven directed always. He was praying
now, but there were no fine words, no beautiful phrases. The
tragedy had reduced him to the most basic of all prayers, the kind
of intercession that was rooted in
abysmal
despair and grounded in shock. “Dear God . . . dear God . .
.
dear God . . .” They were just two
words, monosyllabic, but they said more than most preachers could
intone. It was a plea from the heart, from where soul was stitched
to emotion. It was simple; it was needy; and it was
genuine.

Perry felt his parka tighten. Griffin, who
rode on the seat be-hind him, had once again tightened his
grip.

“It does no good if you
kill us on the way there,” Griffin shout
ed
over the noise of the gas engine and the roar of the
wind.

“Minutes may mean lives,”
Perry shouted back.
Minutes may mean
lives.
Did he believe that? Was he so
naive as to think anyone could be alive in the inferno that lay
ahead?

Perry pressed on, fighting the growing wind,
battling his own fear. He turned and saw Jack to his left and less
than three feet behind. Jack’s face, covered with goggles, his head
encased in the parka hood that had been pulled down tight to
prevent its slipping, told Perry that the jovial giant was intent
on getting to the site. His jaw was tight, his lips pressed into a
tight line, and his chin pressed forward. Perry had seen the look
before, and it gave him some comfort. Jack was a jokester, but he
was also the bravest man Perry knew.

Behind Jack was Commander Larimore. Perry
could see none of his face. Larimore had his head down and pressed
into Jack’s back, using the big man as a shield against the
unforgiving wind.

Perry’s skull felt as if it were about to
split open. His breathing was labored, made all the more difficult
by shock and wind so cold it threatened to freeze his lungs solid
with every inhalation. He should slow down. He knew that, but
images of men in pain lying unprotected on the ice field refused to
let Perry go.

Perry stepped up the pace.

The column of smoke widened as they
approached. The wind was no one’s slave, not even that of a burning
cauldron of jet fuel, and it pushed the noxious mixture around,
spreading it like tar on the open air. Perry tried to judge the
distance, but the borderless expansion of white made it
impossible.

The smoke had taken on a life of its own,
its folding, seething billows shaping itself into frightening
images. For a moment, Perry thought he saw a gigantic face peering
down at them from the top of the column—a devilish face with a
wicked sneer. It was as if the fire mocked them, as if it were
greedy for four more lives that were willingly giving themselves
over to its clutches.

The wind picked up loose ice crystals and
began painting the air with sparkling flecks of white, which rode
the rising breeze—white diamonds of ice, a black curtain of smoke,
and a crystal blue sky.

Easing up on the accelerator, Perry watched
as what had been a column of smoke now morphed into an obsidian
wall. Black snow joined the ice dust, thickening the air. A moment
later Perry realized he was seeing not black snow but soot from the
plane fire. The air was cooling the roiling smoke so that if fell
back to the surface.

Perry’s gut twisted as he approached the
wreckage. He slowed the snowmobile to a crawl and let his eyes
survey the destruction.

Pieces of the aircraft
were scattered in a long stretch as far as Perry’s eyes could see.
Most of the metal was unrecognizable, but some pieces were too
large to miss. The tail section lay upside down,
half its height driven into the ice. Packing
crates lay in splinters. Wire,
hydraulic
line, cable, and aluminum skin from the fuselage
were strewn about. Perry pressed on until he came
to a crater in
the ice. Fracture
striations radiated from the impact point across the ice surface. A
wad of sheet metal and titanium ribs filled the crater like the
carcass of a prehistoric bird to be dined upon by
others.

The fire burned too hot for Perry and the
others to approach, but he could see that the impact crater had
been enlarged by burning fuel and material. Perry tried not to
dwell on the fact that that material included human flesh.

Steam rose from the pit and mingled with the
black smoke.

“The smoke is turning gray!” Larimore
shouted.

“The water from the melting ice is
smothering the fuel,” Griffin said. “In the end, the ice wins. The
ice always wins.”

“The debris field has to be a mile long,”
Jack said. “Maybe we should split up.”

“Too many hazards,” Perry said. “We stick
together. Jack, you and the commander move fifty yards off our
flank, and Griffin and I will search closer. We’ll circle the
debris field once, then again more slowly. You know what we’re
looking for.”

“I know what we’re going to find,” Griffin
said.

So did Perry.

The sound of cracking ice and crackling fire
was unnerving. The rain of black soot and ice particles made Perry
feel as if he were driving a snowmobile on a distant planet’s
surreal landscape.

Checking Jack’s position to his right, Perry
pressed on. He steered around a jagged piece of fuselage then
around a small pool of jet fuel. Twenty feet ahead he saw something
he recognized—a chair. Coming up from behind he could see the
shoulder straps still in place. Perry stopped the snowmobile and
dismounted. With Griffin close behind, he approached the chair and
stepped to its front.

Griffin bolted. A moment later, Perry heard
him vomiting. Perry closed his eyes and tried to drive away the
image of the headless, legless torso strapped to the seat.

Gwen James paced around the Dome’s communication
cubicle. Anxiety ran roughshod through her. The sight of burning
wreckage in the distance had shaken her to the core, but hearing
her brother volunteer to accompany Perry to the site had shaken her
more. Griffin was a smart man, an intellectual, and brilliant in
his field, but he was no hero.

Worse, Gleason sat at the communication
table trying to make contact with the outside world, but nothing
was working.

“Is the power on?” Gwen asked.

“Yes,” Gleason said patiently. “It was the
first thing I checked.”

“This can’t be right,” Gwen said. “The
system was working this morning. How are we going to reach others
for help if our radio doesn’t work?”

“One thing at a time,” Gleason said. “Why
don’t you try one of the walkie-talkies while I work on this?”

“The handhelds aren’t designed to work with
that kind of range. You’re just trying to keep me busy.”

Gleason looked up from the communication
console and made eye contact with Gwen, and then he looked at
Sarah, who stood to one side observing. “What I’m trying to do is
contact McMurdo Station. I know the handheld radios won’t reach
that far, but they might reach Perry and the others. They may be
too far away, they may not. I know only one way to find out.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Sarah asked.

“No, I’ll do it,” Gwen snapped. She felt a
moment’s guilt for her rudeness, but patience wasn’t a family
virtue. She stepped to a wood rack—a simple plywood board with
dowels attached to its surface. The rack held six walkie-talkies.
Four were gone, carried by Perry and the others. She snatched up
the first one, turned it on, and keyed the mike. “Griffin, this is
Gwen. Do you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Griffin, this is Gwen at base. Do you hear
me?”

More nothing.

“It’s not on,” Sarah observed.

“Of course it’s on,” Gwen shot back. “I
turned it on.”

“There’s no red light,” Sarah added.

Gwen turned her attention
to the top of the radio. The power light was dark. She tried
the
on
switch
again but the light remained cold. She grabbed the other handheld
and activated the power switch. It, too, was dead.

“I don’t like this,” Sarah said. “Something
stinks.” She moved toward Gwen and took one of the radios, then
pulled the plastic back cover off to reveal the empty battery
compartment. She looked at Gwen.

Gwen’s heart flipped. She
followed Sarah’s example and stripped
off
the cover of her walkie-talkie. The battery compartment was
empty.

“Could someone have forgotten to put
batteries in?” Gwen wondered. That didn’t seem right. Everything on
an expedition like this was checked and double-checked.

Gleason turned and faced the women. “I know
we brought more batteries for those things.” He searched the small
room and found nothing. “I saw them in here before.”

Gwen’s chest tightened. “But you have power
to the main radio, right?”

“Yeah,” Gleason said. “At least the light is
on, but I’m not getting output.”

“The satellite phone . . .” Sarah
suggested.

Gwen knew right where that was and grabbed
it from its charger stand that rested on a small fold-up desk. As
with the radio, she activated the power switch and felt her heart
drop like a rock in a well. No power. She opened the back and again
found an empty place where a battery should have been.

“What’s going on here?” she asked, tears
welling.

She watched as Sarah raised the handheld to
her ear and shook it. There was a tinkling sound. “That can’t be
good,” she said.

Gwen shook the radio in her hand and heard
the same thing. She repeated that action with the satellite phone.
More noise.

“I need a screwdriver,” Sarah demanded.

“What are you doing?” Gwen demanded.

“I’m taking this thing apart.”

“You’ll ruin it,” Gwen protested.

“I think someone has done that for us.”

“I’ll open the radio,” Gleason said.

“Turn the power off first,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, that’s the first thing they taught me
at MIT.”

“Sorry, Gleason,” Sarah said. “I’m a little
edgy.”

“No sweat. I’m a little nervous myself.”

“I’m not sure we should be doing this,” Gwen
admitted, but she had no better idea.

“Let me work,” Sarah said.
“I’m a robotics expert, so I know cir
cuits. I know electronics.”

Gwen wanted to object, but her rational mind
told her Sarah was right. She watched as Gleason and Sarah stripped
the casing off the equipment.

“I don’t believe this,” Sarah said, holding
out the radio. “It’s been sabotaged.”

Looking at the radio Sarah held, Gwen could
see loose parts broken off from the circuit board.

“Same here,” Gleason said.

“How? Why?” Gwen asked. Her voice caught on
the words.

“Acid,” Gleason said. “It wasn’t enough to
take the batteries or clip the power cord. Someone wanted to make
sure the radios never worked again. I can see where some kind of
acid was squirted on the circuits. Let me see your radio.” He took
the handheld from Sarah’s hand. “Same thing. It looks like they
squirted the acid through the notch where the battery wires run
between the battery bay and the electronics.”

“Who would do that?” Gwen asked.

“That is the big question,” Gleason
replied.

Gwen’s knees went weak, and the blood
drained from her face. “That means . . . that means . . .”

“The plane crash was no accident,” Sarah
said, uttering the thought Gwen could not put words to.

“The others may be in trouble,” Gwen
exclaimed. “If we don’t have radios, then they don’t either.”

“It’s worse than that,” Gleason said. “If
the plane crash was intentional, I doubt the party responsible
would have boarded.”

Gwen looked at Gleason then blinked several
times. “You mean that the saboteur is one of us?”

Gleason nodded, and his face darkened.

Outside, the wind screamed
around the Dome as if in a fury of
pain.

Chapter
8

Perry felt sickened. Not by the gruesome sights—and
there had been plenty of those—but by his failure to find a single
survivor. So powerful was the crash that he had been unable even to
find a whole body. Body parts—arms, legs, hunks of flesh—were
abundant, but he’d seen nothing to give him a thread of hope to
cling to.

Leaning into the rising wind, Perry looked
into the faces of the others, each bearing the scars of shock. He
made eye contact with each one but said nothing. Nothing could be
said. It had been a fool’s errand from the beginning, but it had
been necessary.

Perry bowed his head. He could hear only the
sound of the wind whipping around his body and the thundering of
his own heart. Never had he felt so helpless; never had he felt so
sad. Thousands of miles to the north, wives waited to hear from
husbands, and children were eager to tell Daddy the latest news
from school and the neighborhood. Mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, and friends were a phone call away from horrific news—news
that would leave a scar not even time could remove.

And Perry felt responsible. No one would
blame him. No inquiry could ever say that he had been careless. But
the fact remained: Six of his best employees were dead, burned and
scattered across a desert of ice.

His throat tightened, and he felt broken
inside as if pieces of his being had frozen, shattered, and fallen
into an unrecognizable heap. Emotions bubbled. He was brokenhearted
and furious, depressed and despondent. He stood in the cold, in the
barrenness, unable to do anything else. Grief had paralyzed him,
welding his feet to the ice. Since his mind could not pray, his
heart did.