Dry Ice (9 page)

“A storm system just erupted out of nowhere about two hundred miles ahead of us,” the officer said, shouting over the deafening white noise of the engines. “It’s big. We don’t have enough fuel left to climb above it or go around it, so we’re going to go through it. It’s not going to be fun. Put on your survival suit and then stay strapped in.”

Tess just stared at the man. “What?”

A look of unmistakable exasperation crossed the officer’s face. “Turbulence,” he shouted, and pointed to the other occupants of the stripped-down cabin.

They were all in various stages of putting on and fastening the closures on their neon-orange survival suits.

Tess’s stomach dropped to her knees, or would have if she’d been standing. She swallowed hard. They were well past the BSR. And survival suits were only to be put on if there was a chance of a water landing.

Water landing.

That’s what the pocket-sized pilot had said during her quick pre-flight briefing at the airport.

Right. As if Captain Cheetah Girl up there in the cockpit is Chesley Sullenberger and the wild, stormy, iceberg-filled Southern Ocean below us is the Hudson River on a good day.

Tess knew the sick anticipation growing inside her was pointless. The first officer was on his way back to the cockpit. Were it not for the bulky layers of cold-weather gear plus survival suit, the man would have looked like Tarzan as he grabbed the overhead straps and half-walked, half-swung his way up the aisle of the already pitching plane.

Grimly determined to think positive thoughts, Tess reached beneath her seat and pulled out the vacuum-packed bundle that contained her survival gear.

Shaking hands and a rolling floor did nothing to ease the task of dressing herself. She was already ensconced in the bulky regulation ECW—Extreme Cold Weather—gear she’d put on at the airport. The parka, big clumsy white “bunny boots,” huge mittens the Icers called bear claws, and a balaclava would now be topped by survival gear—the ultimate Antarctic fashion statement.

After Tess had suited up, she got up and weaved her way along the short aisle to strap herself into a different seat, opposite the second flight crew. Their faces gave nothing away, but the casual, joking ease they’d displayed earlier in the day was gone, replaced by a quiet intensity that Tess knew ought to reassure her.

It didn’t.

Tess’s fight-or-flight instinct was in overdrive as the mild bumps and drops that had followed the first officer’s warning grew into lurches and leaps that quickly became downright terrifying. Heart-stopping plummets ended with a jolt when the aircraft hit masses of air seemingly as solid as concrete. Then a steep ascent rolled to a halt with a shuddering motion followed too quickly by a twisting, tumbling, roller-coaster dive.

Eventually, and without warning, the rising and diving stopped and the plane began to roll sideways, nearly perpendicular, first one way and then immediately the other, as if manic angels were playing see-saw on the wings. With each abrupt motion, Tess’s full weight was thrown against the straps bisecting her chest, then slammed against the hard seat-back. She brought her heavily padded hands up to clasp her neck, bracing it against whiplash. Her guts were in complete rebellion. Her body’s sense of equilibrium was gone.

The bare walls of the cavernous fuselage ensured that Tess heard every squeal and creak as the tortured metal frame of the plane fought against the vicious combination of ninety-below-zero temperatures, screaming, churning winds racing around them at hundreds of knots, and near-constant lightning strikes. She knew the pilots would be coping with zero visibility, and while there were no other planes to collide with, the mountain ranges could be a problem.

She swallowed hard and wished she’d fastened the anchoring straps even tighter.

Finally, it seemed that the bucking and heaving were diminishing, and Tess wondered if her senses had been blunted by terror. She wiggled her fingers and toes, and focused on small visual details just to reassure herself that she wasn’t hallucinating.

She wasn’t. The turbulence, which had seemed to last forever, was abating. Feeling like she was awakening from a nightmare of epic proportions, Tess let her hands drop to her lap and slumped against the wall with her eyes closed, letting out a relieved breath. She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but she didn’t open her eyes until the flight was truly stable once again. Then she looked at the officers belted into the webbed seats across the narrow aisle from her. One of them caught her eye and grinned, then shouted—mouthed, really—“Are you having fun yet?”

Glad for any sign of emotion from them, Tess gave him the most genuine smile she could manage, pointed to the filled sick bags nestled inside a clear red plastic bio-bag on the seat next to her, then gave a thumbs-up. The fliers across from her laughed for a second, until the moment was destroyed by the distinct sensation of the plane descending.

No.

Falling.

Tess lurched sideways, toward the front of the plane. The huge crates and containers tethered to the floor and walls in the rear of the cabin strained at their thick straps as momentum and gravity conspired to push-pull them forward.

Tess could breathe only through her mouth, half gasping, half gulping as she tried to combat the painful popping in her ears and ignore the uncomfortable pressure in her chest, the sensation of her stomach in a freefall.

Tess knew they shouldn’t be descending—not this fast and not this soon. She didn’t know how long they’d been enduring their aerial hell, but it couldn’t have been long enough to get them to the installation. Past experience told her that the plane’s fuel was measured precisely so that the aircraft typically landed with every fuel tank empty. Which meant there was no room for error. No room for detours. And there was no place to make an emergency landing. Even if they were over land, snowdrifts and crevasses littered the millions of square miles of the continent’s empty, lifeless interior. Where they existed, landing strips were primitive: plowed ice fields that had to be cleared just before the planes touched down, scraped free of any drifts created by the endless and powerful winds.

But Tess was certain the Ilyushin was nowhere near a landing strip. It seemed far too soon. If they weren’t still over water, then, at best, they were near the huge ridge of mountains that bisected the continent.

We’re going to die.

To retain some semblance of sanity, Tess made herself recite every scientific and mathematical table she could remember, from the table of elements to the list of prime numbers. Just when she was certain she’d entered a state of hypnotic hysteria, she felt the plane shudder hugely, as if some giant hand had smacked it. Seconds later, the plane bounced. Hard.

Tess closed her eyes and screamed, knowing she’d never be heard over the ear-splitting squeals of the braking engines and anguished shrieks of straining metal. Wherever they were, they had to be hundreds of miles from any outpost of civilization.

She braced herself for the impact of the plane hitting the ground and breaking apart. The air on the Plateau, if that’s where they were, would be thin, frigid, hard to breathe. It would rush into the broken, ruptured body of the plane, swamping them. Its freezing dryness would paralyze her lungs, but it would take a few minutes for her heart and brain to succumb. She’d be aware she was dying.

The second bounce was just as hard as the first, but not as high. The third came faster and was smaller still, and was accompanied by the distinct and unpleasant sensation of the aircraft fishtailing wildly.

Tess opened her eyes to see the flight crew across from her giving one another tight but clearly relieved smiles. There was even some nervous laughter as they began unstrapping themselves.

They were on land. The plane was definitely slowing as it coasted drunkenly along some surface that was hard enough and smooth enough—so far—to support it. With luck, it was the runway at TESLA. If not, then they were just lucky to be alive and intact. Damned lucky.

With hands shaking so badly from a combination of cold and fear that she could barely make them obey, Tess peeled off her heavy outer mitts. Every joint in her hands ached from being clenched in fists for so long. She forced her fingers to unbuckle the safety straps that held her in place. Cautiously pulling the foam earplugs from beneath her fur-lined hood and knitted hat, she listened to unfiltered sounds for the first time in hours.

The wind was howling, but the louder sound now was the high-pitched banshee wailing coming from engines in full reverse thrust.

“Where are we?” she shouted, her voice unnaturally loud in the stripped-down cabin.

A member of the backup flight crew shrugged. “I’ll take Antarctica for a thousand.”

Tess ignored the sarcasm. “Are we where we’re supposed to be?”

The others looked at her and just blinked.

Right. Like they have any more information than I do.

She gave them a tight smile. The flight crew were on their feet, checking loads and preparing for debarking as if there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the flight or the landing. They even kept their balance as the plane skidded and swayed as it skated along the surface of the southern continent.

The engines were slowing. A few minutes later, the first officer emerged from the cockpit. White-faced and with fresh tracks of icy tears on his cheeks, he looked at Tess.

“Ma’am, we’re at TESLA Base.”

CHAPTER
6

“Incoming aircraft. All available personnel to the airstrip. Repeat, incoming aircraft. All available personnel to the airstrip.”

The deadpan message that came at him through the speaker of the small walkie-talkie hanging from his belt made Greg’s breath catch in his throat, his hands freeze on the keyboard.

The storm hadn’t brought down the plane. Tess Beauchamp would arrive at TESLA.

He gave his body and his brain a moment to absorb the shock, and then immediately put aside the routine administrative paperwork he’d been completing. He sought another application, one of his own design, the one he’d mockingly named Dedication. His fingers tapped in his passwords in short, rapid staccatos. Seconds later, the program he thought he’d never have to activate opened on the screen before him. It represented years of ingenious tinkering and, for the last few months, serious, meticulous craftsmanship. As it should. It was, after all, his legacy.

*   *   *

“Repeat, incoming aircraft. All available personnel to the airstrip.”

The calm voice coming through the speakers of the small radios carried by everyone in the installation was at odds with the absurdity of the message.

Nik Forde, assistant research director for TESLA, felt his heart stop for an instant. A plane making an unannounced landing at TESLA at this time of year? The spectrum of possible bad scenarios had no end.

He looked over at Dan Thornton, who was the installation’s chief pilot, general mechanic for everything from the antenna arrays to the iPods, and an inveterate player of bad practical jokes. Dan was standing by one of the base library’s huge, heavily draped windows. It faced the airstrip, the arrays, and, beyond them, the millions of square miles of ice sheet that made up the continent’s vast, empty interior.

“Is he joking?” Nik demanded.

The burly Irishman shook his head at the reference to his fellow countryman Cormac O’Neal, who managed TESLA’s fleet of vehicles and filled the role of air traffic controller when needed.

“Not that I know of,” Dan replied, grabbing the radio clipped to his belt. “Cormac, it’s too early in the morning for this shit. What the fuck are you up to? Hallucinating?”

If there was a way to work crudeness or cursing into a sentence, Dan always found it. Dan considered it part of his Irish charm. Nik figured it was more likely just the result of having grown up on the streets of Cork.

“Would you ever just shut your hole, Thornton?” came the barked interruption from Cormac. “I’ve a positive ID. It’s an Ilyushin cargo plane with Flint’s call numbers, and it’s Carmel at the controls. She’s fully loaded. Equipment and personnel. I just talked to her and confirmed it on radar. She’s approaching the hundred-mile mark.”

Nik frowned. Carmel McTeague was Flint’s senior pilot. She knew how dangerous—how stupid—it was to fly to the Ice at this time of year. He got up from his chair and walked over to Dan.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, why didn’t you—?” Dan began, still holding the small walkie-talkie radio near his mouth.

“Because I only just got the call, that’s why,” Cormac roared. “I didn’t know to expect her. But she’s aiming for us and she’s going to touch down damned soon. So, she’s going to need to find the fucking runway. She’s come through a storm that would scare the balls off St. Peter, and if she’s pushing tin with anything more than guts and fumes, I’ll eat my fucking underwear. So get your big, fat, freckled arse down here, Thornton. Grab anyone else who’s nearby. I need a crew out there to get the runway plowed and the cones up so Carmel has a chance in hell of finding the Ice before it finds her.”

Dan, Nik, and everyone else in the room were already heading toward the stairs at a trot.

“Buggery bollocks, Cormac. It’s the end of April. What’s she doing coming here now?” Dan barked into the receiver, not willing to concede any ground for the sake of mere politeness.

“Ask her when she gets here. If she gets here.” The terse reply ended the conversation.

Everyone in the facility who was conscious had heard the conversation, and two scientists and nine support staff were in the ready room pulling on their ECW gear and grumbling when Nik, Dan, and the others entered the room.

Changes to the routine were not welcome at TESLA at the best of times. And an unannounced visit at this time of year was nowhere near the best of times.

“Does anybody know who’s coming in?” Nik asked the room in general.

“How the hell would we know? Ask Greg,” Mick Fender, who ran the growth station, aka the greenhouse, sputtered, his always thick Brooklyn accent deepening to near incomprehensibility in anger as he pulled on his layers. “The flight window closed nearly two months ago. Who in their right mind would be flying here now? No one, that’s who. No one with a God-damned brain in their head, anyway. And now we all have to go risk our asses to get them. God—”