Deep Ice (3 page)

Two

The bullet that had cut through Henry’s parka into his radio might not have entered his chest, but, when he woke the next morning, the pain in that spot was severe enough to make him examine himself with a small mirror. After some agonized probing, he decided the small round red mark had been made by the radio’s antenna post slamming into his skin. Around the spot was an alarmingly large purple bruise. The glow of the morning sun filtering through the orange nylon of his tent didn’t make his wounds look any prettier. He checked the two others and found the one on his arm was already healing but the one on his side was still bleeding. Luckily he still had his medical kit in his main pack, and so he was able to close the wound and bandage it. Finally convinced he had sustained no permanent damage, he got the dogs in order and set off once more towards Scott Base at McMurdo.

He crossed half the remaining distance by mid- morning, and began trying to remember the track he’d taken out of Scott. The power of nine dogs could get him over most obstacles, but, with only four dogs and limited food, he grew more apprehensive with each new wrinkle he saw in the white landscape that loomed before him. Some of the cracks in the ice, while minute compared to the ice shelf as a whole, still presented formidable obstacles to his team. And matters were made even more difficult without the luxury of a lead dog to scout the terrain.

But, as the afternoon wore on, he began to gain confidence that he’d see his friends at Scott by the next morning. It seemed almost as if the dogs knew they were headed home for a little red meat and some R & R. They tucked into the task of pulling the sled like champions, and all he had to worry about was hiking alongside and keeping up with the sled. Twice the team got too far ahead of him and he had to call them back.

But most of the trip was uneventful, if arduous.

To the magnetic south – really slightly to the northeast – of his position he could see the smoking plume of Mount Erebus, a volcanic peak located on a peninsula of its own making at the eastern edge of the Ross Shelf. Pilots look for Erebus as a signpost heralding the approach to Williams Field. At first it seemed so far away that he wondered if he was heading in the wrong direction, but by midafternoon he was confident he was recognizing ice berms and up- thrustings he’d passed on the way out of McMurdo the previous week.

Henry called the place “Lower Alaska” because of the overwhelming American presence there. And it amused him to recall the way most Americans visiting the place were surprised to find out that the Ross Sea and its huge ice shelf are under New Zealand’s jurisdiction; they seemed to think they’d come to
National Geographic
’s southern amusement park or a hefty US military base established to protect whales, seals and plankton.

He thought about his friends at Scott Base. If he was lucky, Janet would still be there. He tried to remember when her flight out was scheduled. They’d said their goodbyes, but maybe she hadn’t gone yet. While never a ladies’ man, Henry still had a knack for attracting women. His thin six-foot-four-inch frame and prematurely grey hair seemed to draw women to him. But he rarely took advantage of this, particularly since Tess and the kids, ten-year-old Patricia and five-year- old Francis, had died. For whatever reason, when Henry had lost his family he had distanced himself even farther from humanity. Perhaps he didn’t date because it would have felt as if somehow he were cheating on his family, or perhaps he was afraid of ever losing loved ones again.

Janet Petri had asked him out a number of times before he’d consented, and he’d kissed her only once. He’d met her at the airport mess hall in the spring. She’d managed to show up at a dance with a real daisy ring in her auburn hair. He’d said something stupid about his mother being allergic to daisies and she’d said something wonderful. “Are
you
?” she’d asked with a warm smile.

“Not so far,” was the response Henry was remembering when Shep suddenly howled an alert. Henry halted the team and rushed to the front, bracing his side as he pushed through the snow. Shep was a big grey malamute the meteorologist sometimes called “a pup”, though the dog was more generally described around McMurdo as a monster. But even this enormous dog couldn’t have jumped over the fissure that lay in their path. Henry was astonished at its size. All he could do was stare blankly into the blue-black abyss.

“Where’d your deep ass come from?” he asked in disbelief. As if mocking him, his voice echoed back from deep in the ice.

It must have widened during the past week. No doubt his team had crossed it during the outward journey without even noticing it. He shivered at the thought as he stared down at the crack. The other side was at least a sled and a half’s length away, he reckoned. The malamute whined as it paced nervously at the rim of the crevice. Henry grabbed his binoculars and scanned the distance along the crack in each direction. Whichever way he chose to search for a crossing point looked like a gamble.

“What do you think, dudes and dudettes? Is it eeny or meeny? Your call’s as good as mine.” He patted Shep. “Which way do we go?”

As though taking a cue, Shep bounded off to the right, barking at the other dogs and pulling them along with him. The sled lurched and Henry, swearing from pain, followed along, trying to hold onto it.

#

They had to go more than a mile before the fissure narrowed enough for Henry and the dogs to cross it. But they managed the crossing without incident, and soon he was once again headed towards McMurdo. At last he caught sight of a plane circling in the distance. He recognized it as an Otter, a light plane rigged for ice landings and takeoffs. “McMurdo comin’ up, you varmints,” he said. “Start putting in your dinner orders.”

It was several hours before Henry and his team could actually see the buildings of the base in the distance. The sun was starting its shallow dip towards the horizon.

By nightfall, with a full moon to light the snow, they finally arrived.

Sam Amunsen and Josh Wallis were outside the Administration building when the weary dog team came to a halt in front of it. Henry limped towards them, out of breath. The two men recognized him immediately.

“Gibbs!” said Josh. “Is that you? What’d you do, eat your dogs?”

Sergeant Josh Wallis was the first person Henry had met when he’d come to Antarctica. He was a lifer who’d grown up in a little backroad town in Mississippi and one of the few blacks stationed permanently at McMurdo. Henry was completely exhausted, and had been for the past two hours, but he’d figured that, this close to home, he might as well continue. It would have taken as much effort to set up camp. He’d rested briefly, eaten the rest of his granola and milk, and made one last big push.

Distances can be deceiving on the ice, and it had taken him much longer than he’d expected to reach the base.

Now he stumbled towards his friends, too weak from exhaustion and loss of blood to say anything. He stood before them for a moment, swaying slightly. When he tried to speak nausea overtook him, and he vomited.

Josh jumped out of the way. “Jeez, Henry, what kind of a greeting is that?”

Sam noticed the blood on Henry’s parka. “Holy shit, Josh. Henry’s been shot!” He reached for Henry’s arm to steady him.

Henry straightened up and tried to speak but the blood drained from his head. All he could say was, “Fuckin’
faux
-Norwegians.”

Then he collapsed.

#

He awoke in a hospital bed with a half-empty plasma bottle hanging over him. A nurse was adjusting the intravenous line that led to his arm. He looked around the room and was surprised to see, behind the nurse, three American military brass standing silently. Stone statues.

“Now that the patient is finally awake, nurse, we would appreciate your finishing up so we can ask some questions,” said the elder officer. “I’m General Anthony Hayes,” he continued to Henry. “This is Lieutenant Commander Kai Grimes of the Navy SEALs, and this gentleman on my right is my assistant, Lieutenant Embry Hazelton.”

The nurse looked at the general and he nodded. She left the room immediately.

“Can you tell me what happened, Gibbs?” asked Hayes.

Henry nodded. “Nice to meet you, General. It’s not customary for the military to investigate crimes, is it? I mean, aren’t you folks supposed to keep a low profile around here?”

Hayes smiled. “Usually.”

Henry lifted his bandaged arm and glanced at his chest. “I guess some folks are touchy about the weather,” he said with a smile. “Seems a bit extreme to shoot a person over it.” He laughed nervously, but the pain in his chest forced him to stop. “It only hurts when I. . .”

“Laugh?” said the general, but he didn’t smile. He seemed gravely concerned. “Tell me what happened, please.”

Henry put his head back, closed his eyes and thought for a moment.

“Gibbs?” repeated the general.

“I’d been a week out on the shelf, with my nine dogs. I’m studying the aurora – a meteorologist, you know. Anyway, my radio went out and I couldn’t get it working, so I saw this group of. . .
faux
-Norwegians, and I asked them for a weather report.”

“ ‘
Faux
-Norwegians’?” said Hayes. “What do you mean?”

“A group of about twenty men. They were flying a Norwegian flag, but none of them – at least, not the three I spoke to – spoke the language. They were military. I mean, they had uniforms. And they were drilling.”

“They shot you?” asked the general.

Henry nodded. Then he related his encounter in detail, offering his suspicion that they’d shot him because he’d realized they weren’t Norwegians. As he spoke, the general’s assistant, Hazelton, took notes on a clipboard.

“Excuse me, General,” said Hazelton. “May I ask a question?” When Hayes nodded, the lieutenant continued, “What exactly did you say to these. . . Norwegians?”

Henry related his conversation, telling them about his grandparents’ little joke. As he spoke, Hazelton carried on scribbling on the clipboard.

“Then they just shot you?” asked the SEAL, Grimes, when Henry had concluded his story.

“Maybe they thought I’d steal their radio?” Henry said with a pained smile. “I can’t figure it out.”

He told them how the bullet had been stopped by the radio in his pocket, but the man didn’t seem impressed.

“We are looking at the radio,” said Hayes. “Good thing you held on to it. Evidence.”

After a few more questions, they had Henry show them on a map the approximate position of the attack; then they thanked him and left.

Soon the nurse returned, carrying a tray. Henry noticed she wasn’t smiling any longer.

“Why so gloomy?”

She seemed surprised by the question. She brushed a lock of brown hair away from her eye and looked at Henry.

“Shit. . . am I going to die?” asked Henry in a panicked voice.

She put down the tray and picked up a syringe.

“Time for a little antibiotic, Mr Gibbs. And, no, you’re not going to die.”

“Then what are you talking about? What haven’t I heard? Tell me.”

“I was talking about the terrorists,” she said.

“The ones who shot me? Are you saying I was shot by terrorists?”

The nurse shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m talking about the broadcast. . . you know, the one from the UN.”

Henry struggled to make sense of their conversation. Gradually he realized something big was happening.
World News Tonight
stuff.

He looked at her gravely. “I just got here off the ice. I was shot by strangers. I don’t have a single clue what’s going on.”

She did a double-take for a moment, then blinked.

“Oh, heck, I’m sorry.” A coy smile. “I thought everybody knew about the terrorists who planted the bombs in the ice. It’s been on the news since yesterday.”

He stared at her blankly. “Bombs in the
ice
?” His mind searched through the details of his encounter with the false Norwegians. “Planted the bombs in
what
ice?”

“If it’s the Ross Shelf, we may have to pack out of here soon,” she said. “That’s why the Navy’s here.” She looked around the room. “Gee,” she added, “I hope it was okay to tell you that.”

He was shaken by the news, but not enough to forget his humour. “If the whole world knows it,” he said, laughing, “then one more person won’t matter much. Besides, the brass learn about their universe on a need- to-know basis.”

The nurse gave him a wan smile and left the room.

Alone, he examined his surroundings. The place was a wing of the main hospital, and typical of all McMurdo’s buildings: well insulated simple A-frame structures. The hospital’s decor, as at many other polar bases, was strewn with pictures of the rest of the world and incongruous motifs, with palm trees and flaminggoes a dominant favourite. This room had gotten the palm trees: light green trees over a darker green background. He noticed there was a phone on the table at his bedside and, more importantly, a TV facing him. A remote lay next to his pitcher of iced water.

Grabbing the remote, he switched on the television. Vanna was turning Ms on the big board.

Henry began changing channels. An old Dick Van Dyke show, a nature special about kelp, a movie – he recognized it as
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
– Alan Burke talking about watches,
McMurdo Events for Wednesday
. . . but no news reports on any channel.

“Shit!”

Watching the events schedule scroll up the blue screen, he finally decided the thing was running on automatic. He wished there’d been a window – anything that would have given him some clues to what was going on. Finally he pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, and stared at the tube leading to his arm. He wanted to rip it out and take a walk. He was sweating. By anyone else’s standards the room would have been comfortable, but to him it was intolerably hot.

The door to his room swung open again and the general and the SEAL came in.

Hayes was startled to see Henry sitting up. “Feeling better already?”

He grabbed a chair and moved it next to the bed.

Commander Grimes, the SEAL, did likewise.