Beneath the Ice (19 page)

“So you think it’s safe for her to carry
on?” Perry asked his friend.

“What choice do you have?”

Perry let that fact circulate. “All right.
She shouldn’t go out alone—”

“I’ve already her told her that,” Gwen
interjected. Her words carried an edge.

Perry saw a strained look on Gwen’s face.
“What’s wrong?”

“I told you, she has—”

“I was talking about you,” Perry said. “Are
you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She looked away.

Perry reached out and
touched her shoulder. “What’s hap
pened?”

“Nothing. I just had an argument with my
brother. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

She sighed. “I suppose it’s the stress. The
plane going down, you boring through the ice to drop a machine in
undisturbed water, my brother’s attitude and . . . and . . .”

Perry felt Gwen’s shoulders soften and saw
her head fall forward. He could hear her sniffing. He searched for
words and found none. Instead, he pulled her close and wrapped his
arms around her. He had a fleeting thought about how ludicrous they
must appear to Gleason: two people clad in sterile, protective
garments, intertwined in an embrace.

“I feel so stupid,” she said between
sniffs.

“No need,” Perry reassured her. “Either we
deal with our emotions, or they will deal with us.”

“Not very scientific of me,” she said.

“Scientists have hearts and souls, too.”

Gwen pulled back and laughed. “How does one
blow one’s nose while wearing one of these suits?”

“Very carefully,” Perry suggested,
smiling.

She pulled away. “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m
not usually given to tears.”

“There’s no one here to shame you over
that.” Perry looked up and was surprised to see someone standing a
few feet away.

Griffin stared back with an unmistakable,
disapproving scowl. “Isn’t this sweet?”

Gwen spun around. “What are you doing in
here?”

“We hadn’t finished our conversation,” he
said bitterly, “although it seems pretty much over now.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Perry
said, “but it’s wrong.”

“What’s that?” Gleason asked.

“I know what I just witnessed, Mr.
Sachs.”

“Grif, you need to shut up,” Gwen said. “I
warned you about your mouth—”

“People?” Gleason stood.

Perry was getting angry and doing his best
not to show it. He had had all of Griffin he wanted. “Do you have
something to say, Dr. James?”

“Shut up!” Gleason shouted. “Listen. Does
anyone else hear that?”

Perry stopped and listened. A low rumbling
had worked its way into the building. It was getting louder.

“Is that what I think it is?” Gwen
asked.

“It sounds like a plane,” Perry said,
sprinting for the air lock.

Chapter
16

Tia felt two
emotions
when the skids of the Casa 212
touched down on the ice: relief and excitement. Relief because she
had grown weary of being confined in an aircraft, and excitement
because of what lay ahead. Behind her, five men released their seat
belts and stood, preparing themselves for the coming
mission.

Tia looked out the window and saw two domes,
one larger than the other, a covered walk between them, and two
rectangular buildings on either side of the smaller dome.

She also saw several
people pouring out of the structures to greet
them. They were expecting something, and she knew why. The
C-
5 had been brought down in sight of the
camp. Such a tragedy would certainly garner great attention, and
someone would send a plane to check on those left at the
site.

That’s what they expected.
What they didn’t know, Tia thought
, was
that the world believed everyone was on the plane and that all were
dead.

The Casa had flown over the crash site, and
she had seen the carnage, the crater, and the scattered bits of
metal that served as grisly ornaments on the ice.

She looked at their
smiling faces. A couple applauded.
Ironic,
Tia thought.

“They look happy to see us,” one of the men
said. “Shall we disappoint them?”

“Yes.”

Perry watched the oddly shaped
craft pull to a stop fifty feet from
the
Dome. The airplane was white and bore no logos on its
exteri
or. It was moved by a pair of
turboprops mounted to wings attached over the passenger
area.

“That’s a type of cargo plane, isn’t it?”
Gleason asked.

“It’s a Casa 212,” Perry
said. “I rode in one about a year ago. It
can carry passengers or cargo. There’s a loading ramp in the
tail sec
tion.”

As if on cue, a flat panel below the tail
began to descend. Perry felt an odd sense of disquiet. He had been
expecting a plane. One was not due for several weeks, but after the
C-5 crashed, he had been sure someone would send out a search
party. Still, something didn’t seem right.

“Where are Sarah and Gwen?” Jack asked.
“Don’t they want to greet our new friends?”

“Women are smarter than men,” Dr. Curtis
said. “They’ve probably stayed inside where it’s warm.”

Perry looked at the round archaeologist and
smiled. “You al-ways did prefer hot weather.” Condensation floated
from his lips.

“Maybe they’re setting up the barbecue,”
Jack quipped. “I could go for some London broil. It would be the
hospitable thing to do for our guests.”

“Fine with me,” Gleason said. “Just so long
as I don’t have to stand outside and watch you cook it.”

Perry caught a glimpse of Griffin and found
the same scowl he had seen chiseled into the man’s face.

“Let’s not be rude, gentlemen,” Larimore
said. “Let’s say hello to our new arrivals.”

“
Come on, come on,” Gwen said. “The men are
already out there.” She slipped on her parka and began working the
zipper. Sarah felt no desire to move faster.

“We’re women. Aren’t we supposed to be
late?” Sarah asked.

“No need to perpetuate a false stereotype.
I’m late only half the time.”

“How did he take it?” Sarah asked.

“What?”

Her stomach churned. “You told Perry about
my narcolepsy, didn’t you?”

“I told you I was going to,” Gwen said.
“It’s not something you can keep secret in a place like this. Now
put on your coat. I must say, you’re not showing much
enthusiasm.”

“Why should I?”

“Because we’ve been cut off from the world.
Our radios are useless. That plane means we’re a good deal
safer.”

Sarah felt as if she were melting. “That’s
what it means to you.”

“What else can it mean?”

“I may have to return on the flight. The
project is going to go on without me.” She heard her voice
crack.

“No, it isn’t,” Gwen said.
She stepped to Sarah and pulled her parka closed and zipped it like
a mother would do for a child. “I
didn’t
say anything about sending you home and neither did
Perry
. He’s concerned about you, as he
should be, but I don’t think he’s going to send you packing. After
all, the cryobot is your baby.”

“Gleason can run it.”

“Yeah, well, I think you’re worrying about
something that isn’t going to happen. Now let’s go.”

Sarah watched Gwen turn toward the door. She
followed and felt the slap and sting of the world’s coldest air.
Gwen stopped midstep and gasped.

“What?” Sarah asked and peered over Gwen’s
shoulder.

Gwen took a sudden step back and closed the
door. “What do we do?”

Sarah’s words came quickly. “We can’t help
them now. We hide.”

The first man emerged pointing a weapon at the group.
It was such an unexpected sight that Perry was uncertain he was
seeing it correctly. Perry recognized the weapon as a
military-issue submachine gun—an MP-5. That gun alone could mow
down he and the others before a word could be spoken. Four men and
one woman followed the first man, each armed with the same
weapon.

They wore white parkas that blended
perfectly with the snow and wore dark goggles that shielded their
eyes not only from the environment but the view of their captives.
They moved with confidence and in a pattern that suggested planning
and training. The men fanned out, their weapons leveled at Perry
and the others. Perry knew he was facing professionals, and he
didn’t feel good about it.

“Not what I expected,” Jack said. “Do you
suppose they have the wrong address?”

“I don’t think so,” Perry said.

The smallest of the group, the woman,
marched toward them. “Line up!”

They complied. She walked before them,
eyeing each one through her dark goggles like a general inspecting
his troops. She moved back down the line and stopped in front of
Jack. She gazed up at him.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Jack said.

She swung the butt of her weapon in a fierce
arc, connecting with the side of Jack’s head. He staggered back a
step, and she sprang forward, this time jamming the barrel into the
big man’s stomach. He doubled over, and she brought a knee to his
face. Jack fell backward to the ice, his head bouncing once. He
didn’t move.

Perry took a step toward his friend, but the
woman pointed the barrel at his face. “First rule: Take out the
muscle.” She looked at Jack then back at Perry. “Are you Perry
Sachs?”

“Who wants to know?”

“First the muscle,” she repeated, “then the
brains.” She spun on a foot raising the other to deliver a
devastating blow to Perry’s midsection. Perry felt like he had been
hit by a car. Something hard hit the back of his head, and the
snowy ice came crashing up. A half-second later, Perry realized the
truth: The ice wasn’t rising; he was falling. He lay on the
surface, the ice cold on his face, and then white ice turned to
black.

Perry rolled onto his back and struggled to remember
where he was. The back of his head hurt, and the skin felt tight,
as if someone had surgically inserted a large rock between scalp
and skull. His hair felt matted, too. He reached up to touch the
sore area and noticed his hands were bound with a nylon tie. Things
were starting to come back to him.

“Good to see you moving, buddy,” a voice
said. “You had me worried.”

Perry blinked a few times and rolled to the
side. It was Jack. He was seated on a folding chair. Dried blood
clung to his ebony skin. Like Perry his hands were bound.

Perry struggled to sit up
on the floor, and his abdomen explod
ed in
pain. “I think we can officially say that we have been worked.” His
voice sounded weak in his ears.

“Yeah, and by a girl at that,” Jack
said.

“Help him to a chair,” a woman’s voice said.
Perry looked

up and saw a tall woman
with long black hair and a marble expres
sion standing a short distance away. She was still holding
the
machine gun. Two men hoisted Perry
from the floor and dropped him on a chair. The movement was painful
and the sudden rise from horizontal to vertical made his head pound
and his mind spin.

The fog in Perry’s mind lifted, and the
scene came into focus. They were in the Dome’s common room. His
team was all bound with the same nylon ties. Each was still in
their outdoor gear. The attackers, however, had shed their white
parkas. Perry counted five men and the one woman. Six in all. That
was how many he had counted leaving the aircraft.

“Would someone explain the meaning of all of
this?” Perry asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” the woman said. “Your
facility has been taken over, and you are being held hostage, left
alive by my whim.”

“I tried to tell them you
meant to return that library book,” Jack
said.

“Your jokes don’t hide your fear, Mr.
Dyson,” the woman said. “They make you seem small and petty.”

“Ah, just the look I was going for.”

“Shut up, Jack,” Griffin complained. “You’re
just going to make them angry.”

“You’d be wise to listen to Dr. James,” the
woman said.

“
You know our names,” Perry said. The pain was raising a
storm
of nausea.

“Of course I do,” she said with a sneer. “Do
you think I’d fly all the way down here without knowing who I was
going to face? We have very accurate intelligence.”

“We?” Perry said.

“Yes, and don’t bother asking.” She paused
and walked around the group. “I’m puzzled. I see Dr. James,
Commander Larimore, and you—” she studied Curtis— “you must be Dr.
Kenneth Curtis. You arrived after the others. True?”

“Yes,” Curtis said. He looked pale and
faint.

“There is Gleason Archer, and there are your
fearless, albeit inept, leaders, Perry Sachs and Jack Dyson.”

“I’d give her an A for that,” Jack said.
“Good memory.”

“We seem to be missing two people,” the
woman said. “Where are the ladies?”

No one spoke.

She sighed. “I am a very impatient woman.
There should be two female scientists here, a Sarah Hardy and Dr.
James’s sister, Gwen. I would like to know where they are.”

“They’re not here,” Larimore said.

“My intelligence sources say they are.”

“All right, I’ll tell you exactly where they
are,” Larimore said.

Perry tensed and raised his eyes to the
commander, who looked the other way.

“I’m listening, Commander. Make it
quick.”

“You go out that door and start walking that
way,” he said, motioning with his head. “You’ll find a big hole in
the ice and a lot of body parts lying around.”