Dry Ice (10 page)

“That’s enough, Mick. Carmel is flying the plane. She wouldn’t do it if it weren’t important. It has to be an emergency. No one would authorize it otherwise.” The voice of reason was Kendra Ballew, the station’s physician. “The important thing now is to get them on the ground safely. The runway hasn’t been plowed since the last flight out.”

Nik kept his mouth shut and reached for his second layer.

“Doesn’t make sense, Kendra. An
incoming
emergency? Outgoing, I might understand—”

“It doesn’t matter why they’re coming, they’re here,” Dan boomed, closing down all arguments. He already had on his second layer of insulated clothing and was pulling on the third. “If we don’t get the cones up so she can land, no one will ever get off that plane alive and then we’ll never find out, will we? Now just shut up, lads, and get your arses out there.”

The room was quiet then, but the level of annoyed tension persisted as everyone concentrated on dressing for the trek out to the runway, where the plane was supposed to end up if it didn’t get blown off course or flip over on approach. Or just crash.

The East Antarctic Polar Plateau was hostile and unforgiving on a good day, so it was only sheer random luck that the dark sky above them was clear and blazing with stars. Just a few short hours ago, the frigid, deadly whiteout they’d been enduring for three days had ended, with the front that brought it in moving toward the coast. From what Cormac had said, the plane was coming through that same storm. Nik didn’t want to think about it. Flying a plane through such weather was a suicide mission.

Nik concentrated on pulling on the huge, clumsy, but warm bunny boots. Getting the airstrip ready for the incoming plane wasn’t going to be easy. The snowdrifts would be many feet thick and frozen into a solid mass. Just being outdoors was dangerous at this time of year. Nik had come to consider the cold almost a living thing, an invisible dragon with an odorless, burning, desert-dry breath that first seared, then paralyzed every bit of living tissue it encountered. It killed quickly, without mercy or conscience.

The ersatz ground crew finished suiting up and left the warmth and safety of the habitat for the garage space beneath it: a vast area mostly open to the elements. As fast as they could move in their layers of insulation, teams of station residents unplugged the polar vehicles from the heaters that kept them at the ready, and climbed in.

All of the vehicles, whether they moved on skis or tracks, had powerful headlights and rooftop strobe lights, all of which the drivers flipped on as they moved out. The convoy advanced toward the blue-ice runway more than one hundred yards away.

Keeping a firm hand on the joystick of the lumbering Delta—essentially a tractor with a multi-person cabin—Nik switched on the vehicle’s global positioning system and the infrared head-up display on the dashboard. He was rewarded by only a faint blur on the screen. Even a hot engine stood little chance of projecting any significant heat signature in air so frigid. It was a grim joke that even with infrared equipment, during a South Pole whiteout only the magma pool of a live volcano could be seen clearly. If you were standing next to it.

It didn’t take long for the convoy to arrive at the airstrip. Two members of the crew fired up the large JCBs, which were fitted with enormous snowblowers on their fronts, and began to chew up the drifts and blast the snow nearly one hundred feet from the runway. The rest began hauling out the reflective cones that would mark the edges of the cleared strip. The cockpit crew would be wearing night-vision equipment to help them see every speck of light available in the dark landscape.

Snow cleared and cones set, the crew reunited near the hangar, a grim and unwelcoming reception committee. Minutes later, the blinking wing lights of the Ilyushin appeared in the sky, growing larger as the plane approached a little too low and a little too fast. Its touchdown was rough, with a few hard bounces and some fishtailing, but no major mishaps. Its engines screaming in full-throttled protest, the plane taxied to a stop breathtakingly close to the hangar.

Then, the pilot coaxed the huge machine into the brightly lit building at a crawl. Leaving it parked on the runway wasn’t an option. The heat generated by the friction of the tires during the landing was just enough to melt the ice under them. Had the aircraft been left where it stopped for any length of time, the frigid temperatures would have caused the meltwater to solidify around the twenty-four huge tires immediately, embedding the huge cargo plane in the ice at the business end of the installation’s only runway.

The lumbering Ilyushin with its odd, windowed nose came to a clean stop, neatly fitting into a tight gap between the installation’s resident Twin Otter and Dash 7 aircraft. The massive doors fronting the building began sliding shut the instant the plane’s tail cleared the entrance, but the wind continued to make its presence known with eerie, high-pitched whistles even after the building had been sealed off.

Nik pulled the Delta as close to the plane as he could manage and radioed the other convoy drivers that he had parked, waiting in the cab until every other driver had done the same. As much as they were a necessity on the Ice, the heavy service vehicles nevertheless posed a danger. Someone stopping their vehicle without warning or, worse, getting out of it before everyone else had stopped, could be an instant casualty. At this time of year, the station couldn’t afford to lose a vehicle or a life. After the last one checked in, the drivers began piling out of the vehicles to make their way to the plane.

The presence of the Flint AgroChemical logo beneath the cockpit’s starboard window confirmed that it was clearly a planned arrival, as Cormac had insisted. Which begged the question of why no one had been informed days ago. The impending arrival of a plane at any time of the year, especially now, was enough of a diversion to qualify as the news of the day for several days running, yet no one had heard so much as a murmur about this one.

The chief on the ground signaled for the pilot to open the aircraft door. A moment later the first survival-suited person clambered down the steel ladder, standing upright on the hangar’s gravel floor for mere seconds before his legs gave out and he collapsed in a heap at Nik’s feet.

That wasn’t an uncommon reaction overall, and after a landing like the one they’d just endured—and the flight had probably been a doozy—Nik considered it understandable. At least no one was hysterical. Yet.

Nik helped the guy to his feet—he was tall, taller than Nik himself—and out of the way. Duffel bags were being flung out the door past the others who were climbing out of the plane. Moments later, the flight crews abandoned the huge plane to the tender mercies of the ground crew, who would off-load its cargo and get the Ilyushin ready for its eventual return trip—whenever that might be.

Nik shook his head as he climbed aboard the Delta for the trek back to the installation. It was a fool’s errand to make the trip to TESLA at this time of year in the first place. Flying out could well be more dangerous. He shut the vehicle’s door and, loaded with its human freight, the convoy began its slow return trip to the station.

*   *   *

Piotyr, another of the installation’s science team, had the honor of driving the big Delta back to the habitat. Nik climbed into the backseat with three of the new arrivals. One of them was the first one down the ladder, the guy Nik had hauled up off his ass. He hadn’t said a word or even moved since settling into his seat. He just kept his hands in his lap and his head down. Nik was willing to bet that beneath all those layers of ECW gear the guy was as tense as a bowstring. Or possibly unconscious.

We’ll go with option one.

“So, it’s just a sight-seeing trip, then?” he said—well, shouted—over the noise of the Delta’s engine.

He watched one of the two shorter visitors smile tightly from behind a balaclava. The other laughed.

“Yeah, quite the dawdle.” It was a feminine shout.

“Carmel? Is that you?”

The hooded head bobbed up and down.

“What are you here for?” he yelled, smiling at her. “It has to be something important.”

“Delivering her,” Carmel replied, nodding her head toward the bowed, silent figure next to him, “and some equipment. Some mail. Some food.”

Her?

Nik blinked. A curious and not altogether pleasant sensation began in his stomach. He didn’t know too many women who were that tall. In fact, he only knew one: Tess Beauchamp.

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?” he asked.

The two women looked at each other, then back at him.

“What are you talking about? We were expected. The flight plan was approved.”

Oh, really?
Nik forced a smile. “I must be out of the loop.”

“Yeah.”

“How was the flight?” he asked.

“The worst I’ve ever experienced,” Carmel said bluntly. “I’ve been flying heavies for ten years and bringing them to the Ice for six, and that’s the worst damned storm I’ve ever driven through.”

“Maybe you should take a different route home,” he replied with a grin, making the pilot shake her head. He bent forward and lifted the furred edge of the tall woman’s hood. “You okay in there?”

The hood moved up and down minutely.

“Welcome to the Big Chill. This isn’t quite the welcome we usually give VIPs. Actually, we call them DVs down here. Distinguished Visitors.”

The hood moved upward slowly until a balaclava-covered face appeared. What skin he could see was very pale and the eyes, large and long-lashed, looked hollow and exhausted. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the Delta’s interior what color they were.

“I know. I’ve been here before,” the woman replied.

“Huh?” he said.

Ooh, brilliant reply, Nik old boy. Especially if it really is Tess of the Endless Legs, whom you haven’t seen in more than a decade.

The hood swayed side to side. “McMurdo. Wintered over about fifteen years ago. I’ve made a few shorter trips to other bases, too. Amundsen-Scott. Some others.”

“In that case, welcome back to the Ice. And welcome to TESLA,” he said, still not sure just who he was chatting with. “You’ll like it better here than at McMurdo. The food’s better.”

The hint of a smile appeared on her mouth. “Is that all?”

“Well, I’m here. People consider me an irreplaceable asset.” He stuck out his hand, still covered in the huge mitt. “Nik Forde.”

The woman brought her own mitt to touch his in the polar-gloved equivalent of a fistbump, but didn’t reply right away. He watched her eyes squint slightly, as if the face around them might have begun to frown. “I know who you are. It’s me, Tess. Tess Beauchamp.” Her eyes seemed to search his. “It’s nice to see you again.”

At the confirmation of her identity, Nik couldn’t react fast enough to hide his surprise. A twitch of her eyebrow let him know she’d noticed.

They’d started dating right before she’d had to leave HAARP—well, started groping might be more accurate, he admitted. Then she’d blown up at Greg Simpson and left under a storm cloud of epic proportions, and he’d never heard from her again.

Which means she probably has no idea that I owe my career to her.

Her abrupt and frankly jaw-dropping exit, not even halfway through her fellowship with Greg, had given Nik his chance. He’d been Greg’s second choice for the HAARP fellowship that year and had been paying his own way at the base just to get the experience. Greg had offered him Tess’s place and Nik had jumped at the opportunity. He’d dug into the work without questioning his decision, or his boss’s decision. Or contacting Tess, to let her know what had happened and to offer his condolences for the deaths of her grandparents.

Greg had worked him like a slave, which was the standard, accepted treatment for post-docs. Of course, when Nik had come back to work for Greg all these years later, the situation hadn’t changed much. Greg was still an asshole and a slavedriver.

“Why are you here?” Nik asked, for lack of anything better to say.

“Nik, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk now,” Tess replied stiffly, then paused. “My sinuses are imploding from the altitude and my ears are completely blocked. My throat is raw because I spent most of the last hour of the flight throwing up, and I think I might have broken a few ribs during the turbulence because the seat harness was so tight. I’m in no mood to chat.”

Nik nodded and watched her hood fall forward again as she bowed her head. He continued to stare at the garishly bright fabric as his brain churned with questions.

This didn’t make sense. Tess Beauchamp, headliner in the industry, recent Flint hire, and one of the people at the very top of Greg’s “people I loathe” list, makes an unannounced, late-season arrival on the Ice with an entourage in tow. At this time of year, it couldn’t be anything as casual as a courtesy visit or a victory lap. Besides, as second in command, Nik knew Greg hadn’t authorized any visitors—especially her—nor had he asked Connecticut for any backup or any new bodies. There were no openings on the team, no trouble, no one who had to be replaced, and yet the look she’d just given him had made it clear that
she
was surprised that
he
was surprised to see her.

Someone has to be on the way out.

And if Tess was the replacement, the candidates were few. With her background and stature in the field, she wouldn’t be sent down here just to be one of the team. She was a specialist’s specialist when it came to all things atmospheric. She probably had half the brass at the Pentagon, NOAA, and NASA, not to mention a few international agencies, on her speed dial.

Oh, crap. It has to be
me.

Recollections of all the stupid pranks he’d pulled, all the times he’d seriously pissed off Greg, galloped through his memory. Trying to figure out which incident had sent Greg over the edge made Nik wince. Then he frowned.

It can’t be me. Even if he wanted to get rid of me, there’s no way Greg would ever work with
her
again. No way in hell.