Beneath the Ice (11 page)

Moments crept by, then he felt something
across his shoulders. He didn’t need to look up to know his friend
Jack had put his beefy arm around his shoulders. It said more than
any poet could.

Perry took several deep breaths then said,
“Someone contact base and let them know what we found.”

“I’ll do it,” Griffin said softly. It was
the first time Perry had heard the man speak in a whisper. He
stepped several yards away, and Perry watched as he put the
handheld radio to his lips, then raised it to his ear to hear
better.

“You okay, buddy?” Jack asked, shouting
against the wind.

“No,” Perry admitted. “I
don’t think I’ll ever be the same.” He
looked along the field of debris. To his left he could see
the invert
ed tail section, to his right
the conical nosepiece lying on the ice like a rounded
pyramid.

“None of us will ever be the same,” Jack
said.

“That’s for sure,” Larimore added.

“There’s something wrong with the debris
field,” Perry said, forcing his mind to work on facts instead of
stewing in emotion.

“Yeah, I noticed that, too,” Jack said.

“I know crash reconstruction is a specialty
best left up to FAA and NTB types, but the pattern of debris is . .
. unexpected.”

“What do you mean?” Larimore asked. “How
should it look?”

Perry glanced up and down
the rubble again. “At first, I thought
the
crater was where the plane hit, but that can’t be. The tail section
is behind the crater, and the nose section is on the leading edge.
If the C-5 had nosed in, then I’d expect to see the front end of
the plane in the hole or at least having created a long
gouge.”

“But the front of the plane is in the front,
and the back is in the back,” Jack said.

“Meaning?” Larimore pressed.

“That it came apart in the air,” Perry
replied. “The debris runs out to the side more than I expected. And
the bodies . . .” Images of bodies ripped into pieces and falling
to the ice inundated Perry’s brain. “We didn’t find a single intact
body. Not one.”

“It blew up in midair?” Jack said. “Is that
what you’re saying?”

“Exactly.”

“There weren’t any explosives on board,”
Larimore said.

“None that we know of,” Perry countered.

Griffin jogged over to join the others.
“Something is wrong, guys. I can’t raise the base. My walkie-talkie
is dead.”

Perry examined his radio.
“I know I turned this on when I left.” He checked the power switch.
It was in the
on
position but the indicator light was dark. He brought it to
his lips. “Check . . . check.” Nothing. “We should be hearing that
over your radios.”

The others quickly checked their units. All
of them were silent.

“I don’t like this,” Griffin said.

“Neither do I.”

“It gets worse,” Jack said. “The wind is
picking up. Going back we’ll be driving into a headwind. It was
hard enough when it was behind us; I don’t think we can make it
going head-to-head with it.”

“Which was my initial concern,” Griffin
retorted.

“Well, we can’t stand out here,” Larimore
said. “I can’t feel my feet as it is.”

“We didn’t bring shelter,” Griffin
complained. “If you had listened to me—”

“We’ll have to make shelter,” Perry said.
Then it occurred to him. “Follow me.” Without wasting a moment,
Perry mounted his snowmobile, Griffin behind him.

“Where are we going?” Griffin asked.

“You’ll see.” Perry accelerated and moved
toward the distant end of the debris field. Moments later, he
stopped by the inverted nose section of the downed C-5. It towered
above the flat ice. The front landing gear skid lay ten yards
farther along.

“What are we doing here?” Griffin asked.

Perry waited until Jack and Larimore joined
them. “If we can find an opening, we can use the nose section for
shelter against the wind.”

“
Great idea,” Jack replied and dismounted. It took only a
minute
to find a tear in the skin large
enough to crawl through. Perry was relieved. He had no desire to
dig through the ice to tunnel underneath. Fortunately, the opening
was on the leeward side. Wind wouldn’t be pouring in, but it would
make itself known.

Perry crawled in. The others followed. It
was dark, but without the wind pounding them, it felt warm.

“A metal igloo,” Jack said, as he crawled
through. “Any port in a storm as they say.”

Perry nodded in the
darkness and struggled with the irony that surrounded him. Not long
before, this piece of fuselage had been part of the deathtrap that
took the lives of six of his men, six Sea-bees, and the C-5’s crew.
Now it was the one thing that separated them from death. It was
like making a lifeboat out of the
Titanic.

“
Who would do this?” Gwen asked.

It was the third time Gleason had heard it,
but he said nothing. The woman was controlled but well stretched
into her fear zone. It was normal. It was to be expected. Gleason
wasn’t sure if he was telling himself that to feel better about
Gwen or to comfort himself about his own fears.

“We have no way of knowing,” Sarah said. “At
least not right now. What we need to do is remain calm and focus on
the problem.”

“Who made you queen?” Gwen groused. “For all
I know, you’re the one who did this. You said it yourself . . . you
know electronics.”

“You’re a better suspect than I am,” Sarah
said. “You and your whiny brother have made it clear from the
beginning that you’re opposed to the mission. Makes me wonder why
you’re even here.”

“Because we didn’t know you were going to
puncture the ice sheet. Had we known, we would have turned it down
flat.”

“Feel that strongly, do you?” Sarah
prodded.

“Absolutely.”

“Strongly enough to do something about it?
Strongly enough to—oh, I don’t know—destroy our communications
equipment?”

“How dare you!”

“Easily. You’re the biologist. It would be
easy for you to obtain enough acid to do this.”

“You sniveling little—”

“Enough!” Gleason had tolerated all he
could. He was shocked by his tone. A quiet man, he had trouble
remembering the last time he raised his voice. “If you ladies want
to duke it out, then take it outside. If not, let’s pull our
collective brains together and think this through.”

“What is there to think
about?” Gwen complained. “My broth
er may
be on the ice with someone responsible for not only sabotaging our
radios but bringing down an airplane full of people.”

“Maybe,” Gleason agreed, “maybe not. The
perpetrator may have been on the plane.”

“And killed himself?” Sarah interjected.

“It’s been done before, and that’s assuming
the crash was intentional. It may have been an accident.”

“Do you really believe that?” Sarah
asked.

Gleason frowned. “As much as I want to, no.
Arguing isn’t going to unwind time. We need information. We need
communication.”

“You’re right,” Sarah admitted. She turned
to Gwen. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m more on edge than I realize.”

Gwen stood silently, fire smoldering in her
eyes. Gleason saw Sarah shrug then turn her attention to him.
“Maybe we can build one good radio out of the ones we have here.
You know, piece one together.”

“Perhaps,” Gleason said, “but we need to do
something else first.” He started for the door. “We need to find
out if we are alone or if someone chose to stay behind.”

“I suggest we stick together,” Gwen said.
Gleason noted that her words were missing some of their former
heat.

“Agreed,” Gleason said.

“No argument here,” Sarah added.

Gleason led them from the communications
cubicle.

It seemed wrong to Perry. The discomfiture was rooted
in emotion; he knew that. Still, taking shelter in the damaged
remains of the C-5’s nose section—a nose that had been amputated
only a few hours before—struck Perry as a cruel irony. The shelter
was needed. The wind continued to race, to scream, to claw with
invisible fingers at the four men who huddled among wires, cables,
metal struts, and things too difficult to identify with the meager
light that puddled in through the sheet-metal tear.

To insulate themselves from the ice floor,
Perry and Jack had gathered bits of broken crates from outside and
carried them back into the makeshift shelter. Each man sat on some
arrangement of wood.

The sun was still up, hovering over the
horizon like a balloon that had lost too much helium to climb any
higher. It would stay up not for hours, but for weeks. Since
arriving in Antarctica, Perry had not seen the sun set. He was glad
it wouldn’t be setting today.

The sight of wreckage and dismembered bodies
haunted Perry’s thoughts. He tried to push them away, to perform a
mental, emotional exorcism of the demon images, but his normally
disciplined mind failed. The images would be with him forever.

“I think I accounted for all my men,”
Larimore said. He sat crossed-legged on several pieces of wood. His
head was down, his shoulders slumped. The body said it all. “Best I
could tell anyway.” His words sounded like a whisper against the
wind’s clamor.

Perry looked at the man. “Did you know them
well?”

Larimore shook his head. “No. Not really. It
was a new command for me, a new station. I knew their names, read
their files and proficiency reports, but hadn’t had time to get
close. You’re not supposed to get close to those under your
command. It makes it hard to send them into harm’s way.”

“Still, you’re human,” Jack said.

“Yeah, that’s the hard part.” Larimore
sighed. “I’ve never lost a subordinate before. Never. Working with
the equipment we do, there are bound to be injuries. I have had a
few of those, but no deaths. I’m afraid I feel . . . awkward.”

Perry understood. Like most men, he was
uncomfortable with certain emotions. Larimore was the same. Awkward
was a good word. What Perry was feeling—an emotional stew of shock,
sadness, grief, anger, and a dozen other emotions he couldn’t
identify—was impossible to describe. It was beyond definition, but
it was real.

“What about you?” Larimore asked. “From what
I saw, you were close to your men.”

Something stuck in Perry’s throat. “As close
as life would allow. Sachs Engineering has over a thousand
employees, so I can’t say I know every one of them. I chose these
six, however. I had worked with them before on one project or
another. They were the best and most trusted men I could find.”

“How trusted?” Griffin asked. His tone was
spiced with

suspicion.

“What do you mean?” Perry asked.

“I’ve been thinking,” Griffin explained. “I
think you’re right. Something isn’t right about the way the plane
came down. The crater is wrong, the debris is wrong, and the
bodies—” he shuddered—“the bodies are wrong.”

“So now you’re a crash expert?” Larimore
said.

“As much as anyone in this . . . place. Why
don’t you get off my back?”

“Someone needs to be on your back. You’ve
been nothing but a pain in our rear ends since we landed.”

“And you’re a pompous military elitist
who—”

“Say it, and they will be the last words you
utter!” Larimore shouted. He reached for Griffin but was cut off by
Jack’s outstretched arm, an arm that moved with unsettling speed
and grabbed a fistful of the commander’s parka. Larimore wasn’t
going anywhere.

“At ease, Commander,” Jack said evenly.
“When we get back to base, I’ll build you two a boxing ring. Right
now we need cooperation, not combat.”

Larimore settled back into his seat. “You’re
right. I’m sorry. This thing has me . . . I’m not myself.”

“I doubt any of us are,” Perry said. “Go on,
Dr. James, but keep the snide remarks to yourself.”

“Okay, okay,” Griffin said. “I’m not very
good in social settings.” He looked around the shelter and let slip
a small laugh. “If you can call this a social setting.”

“You were talking about things not looking
right,” Jack prompted.

“Perry said it earlier. It looks like the
plane blew up in midair. How does that happen? Planes like this
have been the workhorse of the Antarctic. Their safety record is
excellent. If there weren’t ex-plosives on board, then how did it
blow up?”

“A spark in the fuel,” Larimore
suggested.

“Possible, I suppose,” Griffin said, “but
while you were combing the field of debris for survivors—and
clearly there could be none—I spent a little time looking at what’s
left of the fuselage. This is way out of my field, but I know
enough physics to recognize a hole caused by an explosion.”

“You found such a hole?” Perry asked.

“More than one,” Griffin said.

“A fuel explosion would do the same thing,”
Larimore said.

“Fuel is kept in the wings, right,
Commander?” Griffin asked.

“Right.”

“The holes I’m talking about are in the
cargo and seating area. Furthermore, the metal skin is bent out,
not in.”

“That would mean the explosion took place in
the cargo cabin,” Perry interjected.

“Precisely,” Griffin said. “That’s the
problem. We have no need for explosives on our mission site,
therefore none should have been on the aircraft. I didn’t
requisition any. Did anyone here?”

“No,” Perry said.

“Then how does an explosion take place?”

“An explosion that would tear the craft
apart while it was flying,” Jack said.

“You see the problem.”

“You’re saying someone
maliciously planted a bomb on the C-
5 for
the purpose of killing all on board.” Larimore shook his head.
“What would that achieve? To keep the area pristine, we’re required
to cart off all waste. The only cargo was trash, leftover packing
material, empty crates . . . There was no scientific information.
Why destroy a plane that was essentially a flying garbage
truck?”