The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (39 page)

“Hold still,” he urged and maneuvered the penlight closer.

Her memory sharpened. She had crawled from the smoking wreckage of the C-130, dragging the unconscious Padrone behind her. She had stayed close enough to the heat generated by it to keep them alive. The rest came back to her in splotchy recollections. Figures had emerged out of the white, emerged from a huge beast belching diesel smoke. It was a Snowcat, a larger version of the kind of vehicle used at mountain ski resorts. Someone had seen the crash. Someone had come to save her.

Someone from Outpost 10.

They raised her and Padrone by stretcher into the Snowcat and laid them out flat. Danielle recalled propping herself up enough to see what they were approaching out the front windshield. There was a complex of buildings all but lost in the storm and the harsh whiteness of the landscape. Outpost 10 was smaller than she had expected, with a central structure of three stories flanked by two others of one and two stories respectively. From the outer edges, long narrow buildings reached out far ahead of the complex into the Antarctic snowscape, looking much like arms extended from a chest and head. They were housings for the incoming oil lines, she assumed. This must have been where the pipes rose from underground to join up and utilize the vast pumping power of this one facility.

As the Snowcat had drawn closer, Danielle saw the installation more clearly and heard the nonstop grinding of gears turning to keep the pumps active. There was no gate, just a single road plowed through the buildup from the storm, amidst the frozen, sloping tundra, leading toward the main complex of buildings. They drove up to a garage door that opened for them automatically. Before they pulled inside, Danielle managed to sit up higher and saw a number of Quonset huts containing a variety of heavy construction equipment. Work on Spiderweb, she guessed, was still going on. There would be a lot of people stationed here, and that would work to her advantage in the hours to come.

Hours … Did she have that long left now? At least Outpost 10 hadn’t been overrun yet. Reason for hope, though not much
.

“Can you hear me?” the doctor asked her.

Danielle tried to speak, but no words emerged. She could feel her lips moving, struggling to form sounds, and in the process more memories came flooding back to her, mostly of the complex itself. She remembered passing living quarters, dining halls, recreation rooms, and many arrows pointing to the base’s technological centers. It reminded her somehow of a school, so ordered and symmetrical.

“Can you hear me?” the doctor repeated.

“Yes,” Danielle managed finally and tried to form new words.

“Louder, please.”

“How … am I?”

“You lost nothing to frostbite, but you came close.”

“What about the pilot?”

“Unconscious but stable. Came out of it a bit worse than you so far as injuries go. He must have overshot McMurdo in the storm.”

“No … I wanted to come here.”

“What?”

She knew what she had to say next. “Outpost … 10.”

The doctor pulled back at that and might have been about to move away when Danielle found the strength to latch on to his arm with her still numb fingers.

“What time is it? What day?”

“Thursday morning. Coming up on three
A.M.
”

“Your leader. Bring him … to me.”

“I was just on my way to get him,” the doctor said, freeing himself from her grasp. “I’m sure he’s got some questions of his own.”

Danielle’s senses sharpened by the minute as she awaited the arrival of Outpost 10’s leader. The nurse maintained a constant vigil in the chair at the foot of her bed, and she assumed the doctor had made sure a guard was stationed outside the door as well.

Finally she heard voices in the corridor, and then the door to the small ward she alone occupied opened. Danielle saw the wheelchair before looking at the man occupying it. He had thick salt-and-pepper hair that showed only slight signs of thinning, and large brown eyes. The bulging bands of muscle in his arms and chest were offset by a pair of withered legs that dangled uselessly to the floor. Their eyes locked as he made his way over to the side of her bed, almost level with her head from his wheelchair.

“The name’s Farraday, miss. You can call me ‘Commander’ for short.”

“You’re in charge here, I assume.”

“Surprises you, doesn’t it? Surprised me, too. Hire-the-Handicapped Week, right?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I just had to be sure before we talked.”

“The only thing you’ve got to be sure of, miss, is that you’re in one hell of a mess. This place isn’t supposed to exist, in case you didn’t realize.”

“Its existence is known to more people than
you
realize.” She paused. “What about the troops? Have you heard from them? Are they coming?”

Commander Farraday looked both puzzled and angry. “What troops?”

“You mean you haven’t …” Danielle stopped. Clearly there was no reason for her to complete the thought. It was just as she had felt all along: something had gone wrong on the Ferryman’s end, and it had become her lot alone to stop the Hashi from taking Outpost 10.

“I think you’d better tell me exactly who you are,” Farraday said.

“I’m someone who wants to see your installation saved, Commander.”

“What?”

“Can we talk alone?”

“Whatever suits you, miss. Neither of us is going anywhere for a while in this storm.” Farraday raised one of his muscular forearms to indicate that the nurse and doctor should leave. When the door was closed behind them, he spoke again. “If you know what this place is, you know the kind of trouble you’re in by coming here. We picked you up half dead after your plane crashed. Maybe we should have let you die.”

“It might not matter,” she said, almost too softly for him to hear. “Is your radio functional?”

“What? No. Wait a minute, what does that have to do with—”

“Then it’s just us against them.”

“Us against
who
? What in hell are you babbling about?”

Danielle lifted herself up to a sitting position. She was looking down at Farraday now. “This installation is about to come under attack,” she said flatly.

Farraday almost laughed. “In the middle of an ice storm? Miss, nobody is going to have any more luck getting here than you did.”

“Unless they come in a submarine.”

“Submarine? I’ve had just about all I can—”

“How far are we from the Ross Ice Shelf?”

“Seventy miles. But that’s over the Transantarctic Mountains. Hard for a sub to negotiate those babies.”

“Yes, they’ll have to come up through the shelf and find another way here.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

She looked at him harshly. “It’s a new Jupiter-class super-Trident, the prototype for an entire fleet. The people coming here hijacked it, along with its twenty-eight atomic missiles. They’re going to use them to destroy the Spiderweb pipeline, Commander. They’re going to blow it and the continent to hell from this very spot.”

Farraday wheeled himself closer. “Maybe I should get you a shrink. We’ve got real good ones down here. Lots of people need them. Might be the air, some say. I’m hoping your story can be attributed to that too.”

“What would you like to know about your installation, Commander?” she challenged him. “Would you like to know how many barrels of oil a day your vacuum pumps suck up along the pipeline? Would you like to know the locations of your storage dumps? Would you like me to point out your major drilling sites on a map? They compose something called Spiderweb, but unless we do something they won’t be there tomorrow.”

Commander Farraday was staring up at her in shock. “And you’ve come all the way out here to warn me?”

“Not just warn. Help.”

There was a long silence during which Farraday sat transfixed in his wheelchair, wondering what his next words should be.

“Accepting your help,” he said finally, “presupposes that I believe this incredible story of yours.”

“There’s more. I left out the details. I was only trying to get you to listen.”

“Tell me everything.”

Danielle’s tale was interrupted on several occasions by individuals needing Farraday for something or other. Not once was the commander short with his people, and Danielle could tell from their stares that their respect for this crippled leader was as intense as their love for him. She wondered how long a tour lasted for these people of the ultra-secret Outpost 10. A year? Maybe two? The longer it was, the more responsibility would fall on Farraday’s shoulders to maintain a pleasant atmosphere. Here at the bottom of the world she supposed tempers could run hot enough to keep everyone warm.

“My God,” was all Farraday could manage at the end. “I don’t know what to make of it all. I don’t know what to say.” He paused. “Assuming I believe you, what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“Defend your outpost, Commander. With no help coming from the outside, it’s our only chance.”

“I’d love for you to tell me what to defend it with.”

“This is a Defense Department installation, isn’t it?”

“Only as far as funding is concerned, miss. If we’re found out here, we’ve got another cover prepared entirely, and to make sure it holds, our weapons cache is well within limits set by the Antarctic Treaty. We’ve got approximately fifteen guns: six sidearms, six M-16s, and three shotguns—if they’re all functioning, that is. The only soldiers here are six Marines who do a nice job of breaking up fights and maintaining a presence for the one hundred and twenty-five workers we have at anytime at the outpost.”

“Seven soldiers, Commander. You mentioned you were in the Army as well.”

“Sorry, miss. Corps of Engineers going back to Nam. Never did see real combat. I volunteered for this command because it was mostly administrative and far enough from the rest of the world to help me forget a little about all the things I can’t do anymore.” He gazed down at his useless legs. “Drunk driver crossed the center line six years ago.”

Danielle kept her mind on the subject at hand. “What about calling McMurdo for reinforcements?”

“Even if we could get through to them in the storm, they would never be able to get help out in weather like this. I’ve seen storms last a week this time of year, and this one’s barely a day old.”

Danielle put it together in her head. “Fifteen weapons against a force I would estimate as at least four times that number.”

Farraday wheeled himself closer. “With a nuclear sub you really figure they’ll try and take us assault-style?”

“They haven’t got a choice. They’ve got to take the installation intact, but they’ll be expecting their attack to take us totally by surprise. We can make that work for us.”

“With fifteen guns, miss?”

“There’s more, Commander. It’s just a question of finding it.”

Farraday wheeled himself down the long corridor that connected the one-story wing housing the infirmary to the main three-story complex. Danielle walked by his side, still fighting to shake off the effects of her extended stay in the bitter cold.

“The complex seems too small for all that has to be done here,” she commented.

“That’s because most of the living quarters and recreation areas are underground, within the ice. Helps for insulation and makes it so we don’t stick out too much.”

Above them the corridor was lined with windows shaped like portholes which showed the signs of being battered by the ice blizzard raging beyond. Every time the wind gusted the whole building seemed to tremble as the cold made its best effort to penetrate the walls.

“I’ve got ideas for some things we can do,” she told him. “But I don’t know how to implement them.”

“If they’re good enough, I’ll take care of the implementation. We’re an engineering outpost, remember? We’re pretty good at creating things out of nothing fast.”

“I’ve got to see the outside. I need to have an overview of the layout to see if the things I’ve got in mind will work.”

“You can see better from the inside looking out.”

Danielle followed Farraday into an elevator which took them to the third floor of the main building. Once out of the elevator, the commander led the way down another hall and around a single corner, which brought them to the complex’s observation deck, featuring a wall formed of insulated glass two feet thick. There was some distortion as a result, but with the storm Danielle wasn’t able to see much anyway. The front of Outpost 10 was as white and thick as the rest of the landscape.

“What have you got for heavy equipment?”

“Besides the Snowcats, plenty of loaders and dozers, all made especially for our lovely climate. It means that about half of them are malfunctioning at any given time.”

“Half will be enough.”

“For what?”

But Danielle’s mind was already moving on another track. “The oil does come through here from the wells en route to the storage dumps, doesn’t it?”

“Of course. Why?”

She looked out at the dead white beyond the window: it was perfect camouflage. In her mind she was getting her bearings straight and trying to figure out the most logical route of approach for the Hashi after they cleared the mountains. They’d be best off moving with the wind instead of against it, which meant a frontal assault. All that stored away, she turned back to Farraday.

“We need to set up lines of defense utilizing the skills and resources available to us. For the first line of defense, we’ll have the element of surprise on our side. For the others, the enemy will have regrouped and will be expecting a fight. That means we’ve got to get plenty of them fast while we save our best cards for last. It’s our battle. We’re the only ones who can win it. Commander, how fast can you assemble all installation personnel and have them ready for duty?”

“About the same time it should take you to explain to me what exactly they’ve got to do.”

“Ah, Mac, how good of you to join us,” Jones said when the trio of guards led McKenzie Barlow up to the bridge.

Mac had been sitting behind his desk when the door to his quarters opened minutes before. He had started to reach for the knife but pulled his hand back when he saw the guards enter instead of Jones. No sense in trying to smuggle it out. And sure enough the bastards searched him thoroughly before escorting him up to the bridge.