Deep Ice (5 page)

He turned back to Henry. “We’ve got three gunships ready to nail your ‘Norwegians’ as soon as we know a possible search area. Twenty men carrying heavy equipment shouldn’t be too hard to find. Meanwhile I have NORAD and NASA looking into satellite imagery to see if anything’s on film.”

Henry nodded. “You know, General, it might not be a bad idea to have some artist try to reconstruct what these. . . terrorists. . . I saw looked like.”

“I’m afraid we’re ahead of you on that. You’re scheduled to talk to a sketch artist being flown in by jet from Washington.” Hayes laughed. “It should be the ride of his life. To save time we decided to use an F-18 to get him here. Mid-air refuelling – the works. We even put a diaper on him.”

Everyone joined in the laughter but Henry. All he could manage was a vague smile, and then his mind drifted back to his encounter. Over and over he relived it, trying to etch the faces into his mind. Somehow he could forgive the strangers for shooting
him
, but he couldn’t forgive the murder of his dogs. The dogs had been just innocent bystanders.

Finally the trail came to an end. Henry looked to the south and spotted the ice hill. “This is it, General Hayes,” he said. “Put her down right here.”

#

The place looked deserted.

As Henry walked over the area, the horror of his encounter with the terrorists returned to him. He wondered how Shep would react if he were here.

The general had already found something. He held it up for Henry to see.

“My granola wrapper,” said Henry. “There should be two.”

The general waved and pointed, then walked a few paces and picked up another. “Here’s number two!”

Henry and Hayes had been alone for about twenty minutes. The Cobra, under orders from the general, had gone hunting the terrorists’ trail. Henry could still see it as a black dot above the horizon.

The general deployed a balloon, anchoring its tether to the ice. Boosted aloft by a small canister of helium, the orange bubble grew until it was twice as big as a basketball and then lifted into the sky. Henry noticed a small instrument package the size of a hand grenade hanging beneath the balloon; he assumed it was a radio beacon.

Hayes took a can of spray dye and marked a gigantic magenta “X” in the snow where the Cobra had landed. That done, he tossed the can away and walked towards the spot where Henry recall ed seeing the terrorists’ drilling rig.

It was clear the
faux
-Norwegians had tried to erase the evidence of their work, but they had done only a superficial job of it. Henry assumed they were more interested in getting out of there quickly than in covering up their tracks completely, probably because they reckoned, without any witnesses to identify to the spot, the evidence would soon be lost forever as Antarctica’s weather covered the site in snow. He smiled grimly at the thought that the terrorists’ careful planning was being thwarted by a witness they’d not expected to survive:
him
. Henry Scott Gibbs of the Antarctic, back from the dead.

The general called to him. “I found something, I think. Come here!”

He trudged over and found Hayes cautiously digging into the snow.

“Bingo!” said the general. He pulled up a thin red wire whose other end led down into the ice.

As soon as Henry saw the wire he felt a chill go through his body. “I wouldn’t pull on that, General. It might be. . .”

“A booby trap. Yeah, I thought of that. I think what we have here is an antenna wire, though.” Hayes took a radio from a pocket in his green parka and pressed the transmit button. “This is General Hayes, Cobra One,” he said. “Grimes. Come in!”

His radio crackled for a moment, then the voice of Kai Grimes said, “Found something, sir? Over.”

“We have the spot, Grimes, I think. I want all the experts here now.”

Tucking away the radio again, he took Henry by the arm and ushered him back to the big red “X” in the snow.

Within fifteen minutes they were leaving the site of Henry’s encounter. He looked back one last time to see the place where Sadie lay but, before he could find it, the Cobra accelerated and his neck snapped back into his headrest.

Outside the window was a blue-and-white blur. He peeked at the speed gauge and wondered if they could real y be doing over a hundred knots already. His head swam. A moment ago he’d been looking at the graves of his dogs. Now it was just a memory. A place he’d never see again. There was nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the ride back to McMurdo and try to forget the sorrow of a world without Sadie.

But something was happening.

Sparks flew from behind a dash panel and the Cobra engine coughed.

He glanced back at the site and saw a sight he couldn’t explain. The ice was glowing as though a massive flashbulb had gone off deep within its depths.

“My God!” said Hayes. “It went off!”

The pilot instinctively pulled up the nose of the Cobra. It wobbled slightly and the motor whined. “EMP, sir! Switching to secondaries.”

“No way!” yelled Henry. Then he held his breath.

The chopper swayed in the air as the tail rotor faltered. The dash lights went out. The pilot frantically pulled on the stick, fighting his lurching machine, switching toggles with the other hand.

The engine whined again, and kicked in.

Henry felt the helicopter begin to stabilize. At last he took another breath.

The pilot yelled, “Hold on, General, I. . . I really have to punch it!”

He flipped another switch and pushed the stick forward. The chopper’s turbo-boosters cut in with a roar.

For once the general was speechless. He stared helplessly at the pilot, his jaw agape. The chopper accelerated again but Henry didn’t feel it. His mind was numbed by what he saw when he looked back at the site.

A vast bulge had formed in the ice. It lifted slowly and ominously, glowing yellow-orange.

Then the bulge fragmented and became a titanic column of white steam, rising up to fill the blue sky. The helicopter continued to accelerate. Henry glanced at the pilot. Besides helmet and goggles, all he could see of the man’s face were teeth clenched behind drawn lips.

Kai Grimes put a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

“You’re doin’ great, man,” he said, “just keep it up!”

Henry glanced back at the explosion.

Something was coming towards them.

By the time he realized what it was, the shock wave had hit them.

#

If the Cobra had been anything but a machine designed for nuclear war, the helicopter would have been destroyed. But it had battle armour and its vital electronic systems were triplicated and heavily shielded. When the shock wave hit, the copter swayed like a pendulum under its main rotor, but it still managed to keep flying.

A stabbing glare filled the cabin, making everything and everybody in the chopper look like paper cutouts.

The general looked at Grimes in disbelief. “I. . .”

Nothing else came out.

Grimes patted Hayes’s leg. “It’s okay, sir,” he said.

“We’ll make it.”

The Cobra pitched slightly to one side and began to rotate while the pilot fought to keep control. Henry caught another glimpse of the blast site. A classic white mushroom cloud was rising into the sky. Even in daylight its centre seemed to glow with fire.

He remembered movies he’d seen of nuclear blasts in the Pacific. Nothing else on this earth looked like that. He realized now that no film could ever do the sight justice. Even though this explosion was smaller, the sheer size of the rising column of smoke overwhelmed him. Intimidated by the enormity of it, he lowered his eyes.

Then he noticed the crack in the ice. Unlike any crack he’d ever seen before, this one gaped clean and wide, like a jagged gash in the ice shelf. It grew slowly but visibly, in long spikes branching out across the ice.

“Holy shit!” he bellowed. “The ice is breaking up!”

Grimes gasped as he looked out his window. “Shit! I see it!”

Seated where he was, Hayes was blind to what Henry and Grimes were witnessing. His eyes remained fixed straight ahead as the exploding ice sped towards them ever faster and the Cobra continued to accelerate.

They were pushing a hundred and fifty knots. Seemingly about to say something, Hayes was suddenly dumbstruck. In front of them, a blue-black line shot off towards the horizon. It made an unearthly sound, not at all like one would expect cracking ice to make. The din filled the air. The ice below them visibly quivered. The chopper vibrated to the weird resonance. Henry estimated they’d been no more than five or six miles away when the bomb detonated. Now the damage it was doing to the ice shelf was graphically apparent. The rumbling of the ice persisted, easily dominating the sound of the Cobra’s engines.

He looked at the gauges on the dash of helicopter, then tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“McMurdo, sir.”

Henry patted the man’s shoulder again. “Just follow that crack, I guess.”

The pilot seemed to recover a bit, his shoulder muscles relaxing. He looked back at Henry and managed a smile. “Been following crack all my life, sir.”

“Haven’t we all?” said Grimes. Everyone laughed but the general.

Their strained laughter was drowned out by the thundering ice.

Somewhere deep within the ice, titanic forces were radiating outward from the blast site through the entire shelf, which was beginning to come apart as cracks opened and penetrated miles into its interior. All around the steaming crater – more than a mile across and a thousand feet deep – the radial fissures in the shattered ice travelled outward forming a gargantuan spider’s web. It seemed as if the entire Ross Ice Shelf would crumble.

But, just at the point when Henry thought the roaring would never stop, it did.

The rending of the great ice sheet tapered slowly to a halt. Soon all they could hear was the whine and chop of the engine as they cruised a hundred feet above the ice towards McMurdo.

No one spoke. They were all trying to get a grasp on the situation.

In the distance was the familiar cone of Mount Erebus. Henry gazed at it for a moment before he noticed that its usually steaming top now sported a sizeable cloud.

“What the. . .?”

“Whuzzat?” asked the SEAL, peering at him past the general’s stony presence.

Henry pointed at the horizon.

“Erebus,” he said. “I think it’s erupting.”

#

Once the Cobra had settled onto its pad at McMurdo and they’d clambered out, no fewer than four naval officers clustered around the general. He walked among them towards the HQ, nodding as each of them told him their news or asked questions.

Henry looked back towards the big ice. The explosion’s plume hung like a tall thunderhead in the distance. To its left Erebus was indeed erupting, a steady flow of grey cloud belching from its summit.

He heard the general call for Grimes, himself and the pilot to accompany him into the building. Pausing, Grimes turned to the pilot and shook his hand.

“You saved our asses, Rob.”

The pilot looked at the chopper and smiled. “It was her that did it, sir. Any other machine and we’d be toast.”

“You did a great job, Walters.”

Henry and Grimes hurried to join the general. Hayes looked around at the group around the door to the HQ building. “I trust you congratulated our pilot, Kai.”

“Indeed.”

“With all due respect, sir,” said Henry, “my dogs.”

Hayes frowned. “Your dogs?”

“They’re all I got, General. I need to see if Shep’s okay. It’s been two days since. . .”

The general nodded. “Come back when you’re done,” he said with a smile.

Henry turned and ran towards the kennels. As soon as his master came in sight, Shep bellowed a hello. In less than a minute Henry had the cage open and was hugging the huge grey-and-black malamute as though he were a long-lost love.

Josh Wallis came towards them from the generator building, waving cheerfully.

“Well, we’re down for sure. Generator’s fried.” The man eyed Henry. “Haven’t seen you since the other day.

Where’d the general take yer ass?”

“I saw it. Shit, Josh, I was right there. You won’t believe what it did to the ice.”

“Yes, I would,” said Wallis. “We felt it here, big-time.

Like a hefty shove or something. Broke every dish in the place.”

He looked at Shep and bent down to give him a pat on the head. “Poor dogs,” he said. “Ya shoulda heard ’em hollerin’.”

The two friends gazed at each other, and silence fell upon them. A moment later they were embracing.

“Shit, what a day,” said Henry into his friend’s ear. When they looked at each other they both had tears in their eyes.

He told Wallis about his experience on the ice. Wallis had heard part of the story from Liz. This didn’t surprise Henry: McMurdo’s permanent residents kept few secrets, and right now the base was fast becoming the focus of the eyes of the world.

When Henry had finished, Wallis just shook his head in complete disbelief. “And yer right in the muzzle of the gun, ain’t ya, Hank.”

“Shit, Josh, you know I hate that name. I prefer” – he struck a noble pose – “ ‘Henry Scott Gibbs of the Antarctic’.”

Wallis laughed out loud. “I can see that, Hank.” He punched Henry on his bandaged arm.

“Ow!” yelled Henry, punching Wallis back.

Shep jumped at both of them and barked. In a small way, if only for a moment, some sense of normalcy had been restored to Henry’s world.

#

As Henry said goodbye to Wallis and headed back to the main building, a swept-wing fighter jet streaked above the base and, dipping its wing, banked to come around for a landing. He guessed this must be the plane with the FBI sketch artist aboard, diaper and all. He watched the F-18A as it decelerated to land on the main runway, the same one used to land the big C-5As and most commercial flights. As the plane dipped lower he lost sight of it behind the buildings.

He realized the damage to the ice around McMurdo must have been minimal or the jet would never have attempted to land on the sea ice of Williams Field – the sea ice was relatively easy to smooth into a runway but the first to break up in summer. McMurdo had two airstrips, Williams Field on the sea ice and another, smaller runway on the ice shelf used as a backup during late summer. Since the F-18A didn’t reappear for another pass, Henry concluded the runway must be in okay shape. Soon, he figured, he’d be giving his description of the terrorists to a sketch artist.