Beneath the Ice (34 page)

“Way to go, boys,” he said, knowing no one
could hear him. Perhaps they were reeling him in. It made sense.
They had lost contact with him, so their only course of action was
to bring him up.

He wished they’d do it faster.

“
That’s not going to work,” Griffin said to
Jack.

Jack continued to pull on the cable, putting
the strength of his back into it. “I’m not leaving him down there.”
Utter terror pushed the searing pain from his wounds aside. A
greater pain had replaced them.

“I understand, but this is a waste of
time.”

Jack grunted and pulled on the cable with
all his might.

Griffin frowned. “Listen to me, Jack. You’re
an engineer; do the math. If that cable weighs as little as two
pounds per foot, then you’re trying to muscle ten tons. And even if
you can move Perry to the bottom of the hole, you won’t be able to
lift him. He weighs 180 and is wearing a suit that weighs at least
that much. Do you really think you can tow him up a two-mile-long
shaft?”

“I’m not giving up on him!”

“I’m not asking you to,” Griffin said.

“Then what?”

“I’m asking you to think like an
engineer.”

Jack lowered his head and, with a reluctance
conquered only by will, released the cable. He had managed to pull
up several feet of the cable, which snaked down the hole the moment
he let go. Griffin was right, and it pained him to admit it.
Footsteps behind him made him raise his head. It was Gleason,
looking as white as the ice he stood upon.

“Sabotage,” he said, his breath coming hard.
“Something’s been done to the generators. I can’t get them
restarted, and even if I could, the cables have been cut in at
least three places.”

“Who would do that?” Griffin wondered. “Why
would someone do that? It’s suicide.”

Jack’s mind was spinning
like the wheels on an Indy car.
Think.
Think.
“Look for simple answers to hard
problems,” he muttered.

“What?” Gleason asked.

“Something Perry always says. Look for
simple answers to hard problems.” He paused. “Even if we get the
generators going, we can’t run the power through severed lines.
Perry will freeze by the time we get things running again, if we
can get them running.”

He looked around the
Chamber—there was nothing that would
help.
His mind took a quick inventory of everything he had seen in the
camp. He shook his head. Nothing. Nothing. He forced his
mind to reevaluate the situation again. “We have
two choices:
Either we get power to Perry,
or we get him up here fast.”

“That’s been taken out of our hands,”
Griffin said.

“I want answers!” Enkian strode to the three
men, his face red with rage.

“I got nothing but questions myself, chief,”
Jack said. Then he stopped. He quickly explained what Gleason had
found. “I’m assuming there are those in your personal army that
know something about engines. Find them and get them to work on the
generators.”

Enkian didn’t move.

“You do want your precious brick, don’t
you?” Jack said.

Enkian growled then called for Tia, who
jogged to his side. “Get some men working on the generators.”

“Don’t let anyone work alone,” Jack said.
“Put people in groups of three or four. Our saboteur is still
around.”

“You can’t be suggesting that one of my own
did this?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, because
I know my crew didn’t. It’s our man down there. There isn’t one of
us . . .” He paused then shook his head. “When was the last time
anyone saw Larimore?”

“He went to the head,” Gleason said. “A
guard went with him.”

Jack looked at Enkian. “Is your guard
back?”

“I’ll know soon enough.”

“One more thing, pal,” Jack said. “I need
your pilot, and I need him now.”

“No one leaves.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jack said. “Just
get me your pilot.” He turned to Gleason. “Gleas, I need a few
things.”

“Give me a list.”

“‘
A friend loves at all
times, and a brother is born for adversity,’”
Perry said into his helmet. His breath fogged the
faceplate.
Without the circulating fans
operating at speed, the mist stuck, obscuring a large portion of
his vision. He tried to relax, to slow his breathing. Of one thing
he was certain: If he died down here, it wouldn’t be because Jack
and Gleason had failed to try. His life was in their hands now, and
he was content to leave it there and with God.

The tugging he had felt earlier had stopped
a minute after it had begun. Perry had waited for it to resume, but
it didn’t happen. That’s when he chose to make his way back to the
entry point, to the hole. It had taken battery power to run the
propellers, but he had been patient and the current helped.

He wondered why he bothered to make the
trip. He had no idea how being near the entry point to the lake
would aid him, but it was something he felt he needed to do.
Perhaps he wanted to be as close to his friends as possible. Or
maybe they would lower something down the shaft. What that might
be, he couldn’t imagine.

Perry floated. Perry waited.

Once he had followed the line back, he
clamped a manipulator hand on the cable and went limp, trying to
conserve oxygen. He was on his back, the ice ceiling inches from
his head.

The journey had brought bad news. He had
used more power than expected. That puzzled him until he realized
that he was not only moving himself but towing a quarter mile of
cable be-hind him.

He waited. And waited.

Something squirted by his helmet, startling
him. It disappeared then returned. Perry smiled.

“Well, hello,” he said to the small fish
that hung suspended near his visor. It was only an inch long, as
white as the ice, and had no eyes. A ribbon of bioluminescence ran
from gill to tail.

It
moseyed over the plastic shield, occasionally pecking at the
smooth
surface. It made Perry’s eyes
cross. “You like my heads-up display? The amber lights, is that
it?” He admired the beauty of

the tiny fish and wondered how a fish
without eyes could sense light. Some light-sensitive organ, he
imagined. “I know someone who would like to meet you,” he said.
“Her name is Dr. Gwen James. Of course, she’s a biologist, so she
might want to cut

you open.”

The fish swam away. “Was it something I
said?” He giggled. The comment was funny, but Perry had reduced the
airflow in the suit as much as possible. He was getting
light-headed. He shivered, and his bones hurt in the marrow.
Another muscle spasm. Another pain. His lungs protested the lack of
air.

Waiting was such grueling work.

“
Got it,” Gleason said as he tightened the last
nut on the large U-bolt he had placed around the support cable.
Gleason slid it up and down. “That should hold.”

Jack glanced at the work. Gleason had raced
with Jack to the utility shed that held tools, spare parts, bolts,
screws, wires, cable, and other supplies left over from the
construction of the two domes and two support buildings. They
wasted no time in cobbling together the new means of raising Perry
to the top.

“We’re ready on my end,” Jack said. He
looked over his shoulder and checked once again that the steel
cable he had pulled from the shed ran unobstructed from the gantry
through the Chamber and out the loading door, which had been
propped open.

A rumble reverberated its way into the dome.
It was a sweet sound to Jack.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”
Griffin asked. “It looks a little iffy to me.”

“I’m open to other ideas,” Jack said. “Got
any?”

Griffin shook his head.

“How about prayer?” Dr. Curtis said.

“That hasn’t stopped, Doc,” Jack said.

“Let’s get on with it,” Enkian said. He
stood just a few steps away, his eyes never leaving Jack and the
others. Several of his armed men stood behind him.

Jack raised a hand radio to his mouth. It
had been given to him by Enkian, something Jack knew he wouldn’t
have done if Perry wasn’t hanging on to something he wanted. “Radio
check,” Jack said.

“I’ve got you,” the pilot’s voice came
back.

Jack walked to the open
door and looked out into the dim light.
The Casa 212 airplane Tia and her crew had used sat a
short

distance away. His first
thought had been to take power off the
plane’s electrical system, but Enkian refused to let him
dismantle anything. The next best thing was to attach a cable to
the back skid and run it to the steel ring around the support cable
that was hooked to Perry’s suit.

“This is a lousy way to do business,” he
grumbled to himself. He raised the radio again. “Slowly. Please
make it slow.”

The props began to roar, and the aircraft
moved forward a few inches, then a few feet.

Gleason joined Jack. “Now all we have to do
is hope the tow cable holds.”

“And that the pilot doesn’t taxi too fast,
or too far, or that Perry doesn’t hit the hole at an angle . .
.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this
frightened,” Jack admitted.

“Me either.”

The plane moved forward, and slowly the
support line began to feed over the gantry pulleys. The feed drum
was locked down so only the cable that was strung over the support
frame moved. The ring slid smoothly along the line as the plane
taxied forward.

Jack returned to the shaft and watched as
the line began to feed upward. “Hang on, my friend,” he whispered.
“Hang on.”

Chapter
30

The darkness around
him thickened,
pressing in on his dive
suit. P
erry’s chest expanded as he
struggled to pull oxygen from the air. He had reduced the oxygen
flow as much as he thought he could stand and remain conscious.
Consciousness was proving to be
the
problem. Several times he had drifted into the darkness of his mind
only to pull himself out by a sheer act of will. He raised the
control panel and elevated the airflow. His head was pounding as if
a demolition ball were swinging in his skull.

The fish was still there with its running
lights of color streaming along its side. The creature hovered just
above his face shield, lit by its own light and the meager
illumination from the heads-up display projected on the edges of
the plastic. Scripture came to mind. Before leaving on the mission,
Perry had been studying the book of Job. It was fascinating,
puzzling, and profound, the story of undeserved suffering.
“ ‘Speak to the earth, and let it teach you; and let the fish
of the sea declare to you.’ ” He smiled. “Is that what you’re
doing, little buddy? Declaring the power of God?”

A spasm quaked through him, making his
aching muscles pro-test and his joints scream in pain. His jaw
shook uncontrollably. The cold was winning.

The batteries were dying
faster than expected. Maybe it was the d
epth, or the cold, or bad design; Perry didn’t know. Nor did
it matter. Death was coming in the blackness, its arms stretched
out like tentacles. Perry didn’t fear it. He had no desire to die,
but he knew that all men faced it. It was just that he never
expected to die this
way, alone under
miles of ice. Another thing bothered him: Death would free him, but
his friends were still in danger. That truth ate at him like
acid.

Perry looked up, but with
his lights off there was nothing to see. He strained his eyes and
noticed an area of black that was a shade lighter than the rest. It
was round. It took a moment for his
sluggish mind to realize he was looking at the bottom of the
hole he had passed through when he entered the lake. The light from
above was minuscule, and he would not have recognized it had he not
been bathed in darkness for so long.

“So near, yet so far.”

He shuddered again, coughed, and wondered
what heaven was like.

Then he felt a tug.

Jack hovered by the opening, his mind miles below the
ice sheet. Few things upset him. He had faced danger, been gravely
injured—far worse than the ribs and grazing gunshot wound he now
sported—and been close to death a few times. All part of life’s
experience to him. It was watching others suffer that tore his
soul, especially those close to him. Perry Sachs, his closest
friend, was out of reach and dying, maybe already dead, and he
could do nothing but wait and try to exorcise the recurring image
of finding a corpse in the dive suit. He stood motionless, doing
the hardest work of his life: waiting. It took all his willpower
not to fall to his knees and start ripping at the ice with his
hands. It would be a useless act, but it seemed better than
standing and staring down a very long hole in the ice.

A tear ran down his dark cheek, but Jack
felt no embarrassment.

Gleason approached. “He must be free of the
water by now. That will help.”

Jack nodded. “The plane?”

“Still taxiing straight and true and slow.
This was ingenious, Jack. I never would have thought of it.”

“Griffin brought me around,” Jack replied.
“I just hope what we’re doing is enough.”

“We’ll know soon, buddy. We’ll know soon. If
anyone can survive, it’s Perry. He’d survive just to annoy
Enkian.”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, that’s Perry all
right.” He lifted his head. Sarah sat at the computer, waiting for
it to come back online. Enkian had several men working on the
generators. Jack hoped they knew what they were doing. Gwen and
Griffin stood off by themselves. Gwen stood slump-shouldered,
looking like a deflated balloon. Dr. Curtis was near the middle of
the Chamber, pacing in a tight circle.