Beneath the Ice (2 page)

“Looks like you finished up just in time,
Doc,” Russo uttered, the camera pressed to his eye. “How many shots
do you want?”

“Fill the memory stick,” Hearns answered. “I
can study them later . . .”

“Hey, Doc. What’s that?” Russo didn’t
explain. He didn’t need to.

Hearns pressed the
zoom
button and
tightened his shot. He closed his eyes and shook his head. It had
to be wrong.

“Do you see it, Doc?”

“I see it. I just don’t believe it.”

“It sorta looks like—”

“Lieutenant, take us closer to that dark
object,” Hearns ordered.

“The one in the crevasse?”

“Yes.”

The helicopter dipped and banked. “Make it
quick, Hearns. You got sixty seconds . . . no more.”

“We’ll leave when
I
say,” Hearns
barked.

“Unless you plan to come
yank the stick out of my hand, we’ll leave when
I
say.”

“Then put me down,” Hearns said. “You can
send another chopper after me.”

“That’ll cost me my commission. No can
do.”

Hearns swore but kept the camera taping.
“Lower.”

Nothing happened.

“Listen, Larsen!” Hearns
shouted. “If Kong cleaves, the small
er
piece is certain to roll, and we’ll lose sight and access to
it.”

“And you wanted me to set down,” Larsen
said. “What is that thing, anyway?”

“I can’t be sure unless we get closer,”
Hearns admitted. “I don’t want to speculate.”

“I’ll speculate,” Russo said. “It looks like
a building.”

“Impossible,” Hearns said. “It’s close to
fifty meters down in the crevasse, maybe more. Ice builds up at two
centimeters per year. Do you know how old that makes the
object?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that, Doc,”
Russo said, “but it still looks like some kind of building to
me.”

Russo was right. It looked like a
building—and a large one at that. That was nonsense. It had to be.
Researchers had found fossil trees and other plant life in
Antarctica but nothing showing a human presence—and buildings were
distinctly human things.

“It’s an optical illusion of some kind,”
Hearns said, “but we need a closer look. Lieutenant, I insist you
put us down.”

“I’ll pull closer—I’ll hover over it—but I
will not set down. Is that clear?”

“Yeah, it’s clear,” Hearns growled.

“How close do you want me to get?”

Hearns thought for a second. “I’m worried
about what the rotor blast might do. If you get too close, then the
props will kick up ice particles, and we won’t be able to see
squat.”

“Roger that,” the pilot said.

“Pull just a little closer, but be prepared
to pull away if I say—”

Even over the noise of the helicopter’s
engine, Hearns heard the crack, the rumbling, the shearing squeal
of tons of ice rubbing against tons of ice. It was if the earth
itself had split open. Hearns felt his heart tumble to a stop then
skip back to life. Thirty meters below them, the ice chasm widened
and deepened. Kong was now two icebergs. The berg shuddered before
Hearns’s eyes, and then the smaller section began to roll on its
back like a dying whale.

“Up!” Hearns shouted. “Take us up. I need
more altitude to keep my eye on it.”

The helicopter shot up fast enough to make
Hearns feel sick. He pushed the nausea away and focused on the dark
object.

“We’re losing sight of it,” Russo said.

“Veer north,” Hearns said. “Quick, man!”

The object disappeared from sight, and
Hearns felt ill again.

“I’ll stay this course until we’re feet wet,
Doc. Maybe you can see where it went under—if it went under.”

“It went under,” Hearns whispered.

“How can you be so sure?” Russo
wondered.

“Because Kong didn’t cleave down the middle.
It’s only half a mile or so to the berg’s edge. That means that the
new berg is top heavy. It rolled. The ice we can see now used to be
under water.”

“You want me to keep going or not, Doc?” the
pilot pressed.

“Yes. We’ll drop a die marker and come back.
Maybe we’ll find something.”

Hearns turned off the camera and stared at
the ice below.

No matter how hard he
tried, he couldn’t deny what he had seen.
Maybe it’s better this way,
he
thought.
Maybe it’s best if we don’t
know.

Chapter
1

I
hope you’re
kidding,”
Perry Sachs said. He shifted in
his seat, trying to find a way to be comfortable dressed in
clothing far thicker and heavier than he was used to
wearing.

“Maybe I should have mentioned this before,”
Jack Dyson said. “You know how shy I am.”

Perry laughed. He looked
at his friend’s smiling face, lit by the overhead lights that lined
the C-5 Galaxy aircraft as it bumped along through the
twilight-tinged air. Jack Dyson was a tall, broad man who looked as
if he could have a stunning career in the NFL.
His black face was accustomed to smiling, and his eyes danced
with
humor. Too often those meeting him
for the first time assumed he
was a dumb
jock, as if a large body made for a small mind. The assumption
always led to their embarrassment. Jack was the
sharpest man Perry knew, and Perry knew and worked with the
brightest.

“Shy. Yeah, that’s you, all right,” Perry
replied. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had to draw you out of
the shadows.”

“I’m a sensitive soul,” Jack said. He turned
and looked out the window. “Sure looks cold down there.”

Pe
rry leaned over and looked past his friend. The light in the
cabin returned a thin reflection from the plastic pane. For a
moment, Perry’s own image distracted him. Gazing back was a
handsome man with hair one shade lighter than coal, weary blue
eyes, a nar
row face, and two days’ growth
of beard. At thirty-nine, Perry was easing into middle age. His
lean body stood six-foot-two—when he got to stand. Since leaving
Seattle a week earlier, he had been on one aircraft after another
until he had arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand, the day before.
After he’d grabbed a warm meal and six hours of sleep, Jack had
joined him, having taken his own series of red-eye flights from a
job site in Canada.

“Antarctica looks cold to
you?” Perry said. “You
are
a sensitive soul.”

“Even Canada was warm.”

“Spring is just ending in Canada, my friend.
Down here winter is just around the corner.”

“That I know,” Jack said. “Like I said, I
don’t like the cold, and it’s only going to get colder.”

“That’s why we have to work fast,” Perry
said, leaning back in his seat. “We have to leave before winter
sets in, or we’ll be stuck down here for more months than I care to
think about.”

A whining noise filled the long bay in which
they sat. “We’re descending,” Jack noted. He looked at his watch.
“Right on time. These flyboys are punctual.”

A voice came from behind them. “That’s
because the sooner they land this beast and unload, the sooner they
get to go back to McMurdo.” The passenger who’d spoken rose and
stepped into the narrow aisle formed by the cargo boxes that ran
the long axis of the aircraft.

“I thought you were sleeping, Commander,”
Perry said.

“I was, but that last bounce told me that I
had too much coffee—if you catch my drift. I’m gonna hit the head
before we land.” Commander Trent Larimore, United States Navy,
passed a hand over his thin face. Two years older than Perry,
Larimore had dark hair lightened by too much gray for a man his
age.

“Better make it quick,
sir,” a fresh-faced young man said, mak
ing
his way back from the front of the large plane. He was the
loadmaster for the trip. “The skipper wants everyone in their
seats. We’ve begun our descent.”

“Never fear,” Larimore
said.
“Semper paratus.”
He moved aft, leaving the young loadmaster
looking puzzled.

“Always prepared,” Perry translated.

The young man nodded and moved along the
aisle repeating the information about landing.

“I should have asked him for peanuts,” Jack
said. “He’d make a good flight attendant.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Perry replied. “You
might hurt his feelings.”

“I thought the navy handled these flights,”
Jack said. “Or at least the air force.”

“The navy used to, but they stopped in 1999.
These days the New York Air National Guard handles supply flights.
They were available, so we arranged a ride.”

“Frankly, I’m tired of riding. The sooner
they put wheels—I mean, skids—down, the better.”

Perry agreed. He had tired of sitting and
was ready to exchange the crowded cargo plane for some open air. He
thought about the work before them, the task they had been retained
to do—something never done before. The familiar mix of anticipation
and anxiety stewed in Perry. It was a sensation he had come to
love, and one he had felt on many occasions. It was what made him
feel alive.

As vice president and senior project
manager, Perry had traveled the world for Sachs Engineering, an
international construction company founded by his father decades
before. Since 1975 Sachs Engineering had erected buildings and
structures across the globe, many for Western governments. Secrecy
was a valuable commodity, and Perry’s father, Henry Sachs, knew how
to market it. When a situation demanded nontraditional
construction—such as underground facilities—Sachs Engineering was
often the first called.

Perry had never known another job. He worked
on small, local projects while in high school and filled summers
off from college working in deserts, swamps, and on mountainsides.
He worked his way up through the ranks. Being Henry Sachs’s only
child bought him no favors. Dad insisted that advancement came with
experience, education, and production. That was fine with
Perry.

“Look at Gleason,” Jack said, nodding
forward. “I’ll bet he’s read that file a dozen times since we went
airborne.”

“Did you expect otherwise?” Perry asked, and
Jack shook his head.

Gleason Lane was the head techie of the
group. He specialized in making electronic equipment do more than
designers imagined. Like Perry and Jack, Gleason was an MIT
graduate. While Perry took a degree in architecture, and Jack a
degree in civil engineering, Gleason had studied computer science.
It didn’t take him long after graduation to realize that pounding
computer keys in a cubicle wasn’t for him. Perry arranged a field
job for him, something at which he excelled. His reputation had
made him a much sought after consultant.

“We’re asking him to do the impossible,”
Perry continued. “Of course, he’d be offended if we asked anything
else.”

“So what did you promise his wife this
time?” Jack asked. Perry and Jack had remained unmarried. They
traveled to places they couldn’t discuss to do work they couldn’t
explain—and not return home for six months. It was difficult to
keep a woman interested in that kind of relationship.

Gleason, on the other
hand, had married during his senior year in college and now had two
preteen children. Any time Perry required Gleason to leave home for
more than two weeks, he sent gifts to the family. Fortunately,
Gleason was seldom required to be gone as long as Perry and Jack.
He came in, did his work, and left. It took less time to set up a
computer system than it took to tun
nel out
a mountain or build a bombproof building.

“I sent the kids a new video game player and
got the missus a DVD recorder. That way she can record all the
shows she likes to watch with Gleason.”

“She’s an understanding woman,” Jack said.
“Not many around like her.”

“Feeling lonely in your old age?”

“Old? I’m a good deal younger than you,
Pops.”

“
Three months cannot be defined as ‘a
good deal younger,’ not even in your world.”

“Yeah? Well, at least I’m still pretty. You,
on the other hand . . .”

“The only thing pretty on this flight is
Sarah Hardy, and you ain’t her.”

“Ah, the lovely NASA robotics expert,” Jack
said with a smile. “Thinking of asking her out for dinner and a
movie?”

“For the next few weeks, dinner will be
coming out of a can or plastic pouch. And as for movies, I didn’t
think to pack a theater.”

“Just as well. You know how you are around
women.”

Perry looked at his friend. “And just how am
I around women?”

“You know, tongue-tied, intimidated,
and—let’s be honest—you can be a little irritating.”

“Not me, buddy. I’m as soothing as hand
lotion.”

“I believe last year a certain small-town
mayor named Anne Fitzgerald planted the palm of her hand on the
side of your face.”

“She tried, but failed,” Perry rebutted. He
had met Anne in Tejon, California, the previous year. She had been
a problem from the beginning, interfering with a project that Perry
was doing his best to keep undercover. Before it was all over, she
had saved his life and he hers.

“Do you still see her?” Jack asked.

“From time to time,” Perry said, but offered
no more. The truth was, there was nothing more to offer. She had
continued on with her mayoral duties, and he had gone back to
Seattle, then to Japan for an extended period.

“Did I miss anything, gentlemen?” Larimore
asked as he returned to his seat.