Dog Training The American Male (39 page)

VOSTOK

Part
II of
The LOCH

by

NY
Times
best-selling author

STEVE
ALTEN

PROLOGUE

Davis Station, East
Antarctica

Latitude 68 degrees 35'S,
Longitude 77 degrees 58' E

2 March

Thomas Nilsson
definitely had his “monk-on.”

“Monk-on” was Antarctic slang for
being in a foul mood, and the fifty-one year old marine biologist’s temperament
fit the bill. His day – if you could call four hours of sunlight a day – had begun
twenty hours and eighteen hundred miles ago back at McMurdo Station with a
“Dear John” e-mail from his wife. Keira had begun the transmission with
“You
know how I’ve been telling you unhappy I’ve been,”
and ended with
“I
sold the house. Your belongings are in storage; I left the dog with your
mother.”

Twenty two years of marriage . . . deleted
in an e-mail.

In Antarctica, they called it
being “chinged” and it happened a lot among the scientists and support
personnel stationed at McMurdo and the other thirty-seven international bases
located around the continent. It wasn’t enough to work in the coldest, driest,
windiest, and most isolated environment on the planet . . . getting
here was so difficult that accepting a research grant meant leaving your loved
ones for a minimum of six months . . . or longer, if you
were crazy enough to winter on the ice.

Like most of the four thousand
visitors (there are no indigenous people in Antarctica) Thomas Nilsson’s six
months had begun at the start of summer, which ran from late September through
February. In Antarctica, the difference between winter and summer was literally
night and day. When the vernal equinox arrived on March 20, the sun would disappear,
casting the continent into six months of frigid darkness, with temperatures
plunging as low as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Nilsson was scheduled to fly
out on one of the last C-130 transports and had been counting the hours until
he would see his nineteen year old daughter again, could take his first hot
shower of the new year, and made love to his wife.  

Now he had to settle for two out
of three.

For twenty minutes he stared at
the laptop monitor, contemplating a response. For inspiration, he rolled up his
left sleeve and glanced at the tattoo on his forearm.
Contemptus mortis,
pulchra vulnera amor laudis.
Contempt for death, beautiful wounds, joy for
victory.

Keira had just stabbed him in the
heart; his only response was to find a way to make the wound beautiful. His
base commander knocked and entered moments later. “Hey, Tom. Heard you’re the
newest member of the
Ching Club
. Been there twice myself. My
condolences.”

“You tell Shaffer the next time
he hacks into my e-mail he’ll wake up bound and gagged in his long johns out on
the ice.”

“It’s a rough gig. The strong
relationships survive; the weak crumble. I remember my first winter – ”

“Paul, another time, okay?”

“Right. I actually came by with
an assignment. Got a transmission this morning from the Aussies. They’re in
desperate need of a marine biologist out at Davis. You’re one of the few remaining
eggheads left on the ice. There’s a cargo transport leaving in twenty minutes
if you want the gig.”

“Davis? On Prydz Bay? That’s
clear across the continent. And why the hell do the Aussies need a marine
biologist? I thought they’re studying the Amery Ice Shelf.”

“A Tasmanian team apparently
discovered a fossil or something frozen in a fissure and needed an opinion.”

“Field work? In this weather?
It’s gotta be fifty below outside. You know me, Paul, I’m a city mouse. Ask the
Russians stationed at Progress or Vostok to send one of their beakers, those
guys have anti-freeze in their veins.”

“The Aussies don’t want to
involve the Russians on this one. You’d score me serious points with Scripps if
you manned up and took the job. Won’t cost you any time on your homeward bound;
I’ll have the Chalet director fly you out of Davis as soon as you’re through.” 

***

The flight had
been a rough one. For
four hours the C-130 transport had been buffeted by Katabatic head winds, along
with its flight crew and lone passenger who was strapped in back with the
cargo. Their trek had taken them east over the Trans-Antarctic mountains, then
northeast over the East Antarctic dome circle – the coldest, most desolate
region on the planet until the plane had mercifully set down on an ice field
along the coastline of Princess Elizabeth Land.

Davis Station was located on
Vestfold Hills, an ice-free stretch of geology facing Prydz Bay located just
south of the Amery Ice Field. Two other stations shared this gravel-covered
rise; Progress Base, operated by the Russians and Zhongshan Station which was
run by the Chinese. The Australian base functioned as both a scientific
research center and a staging area; its primary focus – to study the effects of
global warming on the Amery Ice Field.

Thomas Nilsson disembarked from
the rear of the massive C-130 aircraft on wobbly legs, stepping from the
relative warmth of the cargo hold into an ice box, the predawn temperature a
snot-freezing minus forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. The scientist was bundled in
loose-fitting multiple layers of clothing that covered every inch of his flesh,
from his battery-heated thermal long-johns to his fleece trousers, sweater,
jumpsuit, and parka. Two pairs of socks, two pairs of boots, a pair of
skin-tight gloves covered in elbow-high mittens, scarves, head gear, and tinted
goggles – and still Thomas Nilsson felt the icy wind penetrating his bones.

It was just after seven in the
morning, the night sky conceding a sliver of gray light on the cloud-dense
eastern horizon. To the north, Prydz Bay remained frozen as far as the eye
could see, its surface reflecting the emerald-green Aurora Australis that
danced across the charged heavens like a slithering ethereal serpent.

The lights of Davis station
beckoned to the west.

Nilsson slung his duffle bag over
his right shoulder and double-timed it across the runway, targeting the nearest
building. Like other Antarctic bases, Davis was a community of color-coated
rectangular metal buildings linked by generator lines, antiquated sewage
systems, and roads crushed into the snow by four-wheel drive vehicles – the
difference here being the snow had receded to a brown gravel-covered earth.

A relentless gale whipped across
Prydz Bay, pelting the marine biologist with
crawlies
– powdery snow
particles. Snow blew across Antarctica far more than it fell from the sky, the
frigid temperatures keeping it dry and loose, the wind moving it back and forth
like a neurotic decorator. By the time Nilsson reached the drab olive building,
every nook and cranny of his clothing was packed with the stuff, forcing him to
degomble
– a term defined as the act of rigorously brushing off before
entering a building, thus preventing a future meltdown and sorry mess inside.

Nilsson tugged open the door,
passed through an anteroom that helped prevent the loss of heat, then entered
the facility. After stripping off his headgear, goggles, gloves and parka, he
set out to locate his contact – a Dr. Soto.

The research center appeared
empty. With winter nearly upon them, Davis’s population dropped from a hundred
scientists and support personnel to about a dozen. Nilsson was about to give up
his search and move on to the next building when he heard music coming from
behind closed double doors situated at the end of a corridor.

A sign read:

COLD
LAB. KEEP DOORS CLOSED.

Nilsson entered a heavily air
conditioned chamber connected to a freezer vault. There were four stations set
up with long tables to accommodate ice cores, a cutting tool to shave samples,
and a microscope. The lab was deserted, save for a female scientist in a white
lab coat and gloves was reloading an ice core into a tubular plastic zip-lock
bag.

When Thomas saw the woman, his
first thought was that he had mistakenly crossed the wrong air field and
wandered over to Zhongshan Station. She was Chinese and quite stunning – a legitimate
ten, not an
Antarctic-10,
which was really a five anywhere else in the
world. She was in her late twenties, perhaps her early thirties – it was hard
to tell with Asians – her long hair brown and wavy, her skin more tan than pale
from having spent the summer months “bronzing” out on the ice.

“Dr. Soto?”

“Ming Soto, yes. You are the
marine biologist?”

“Thomas Nilsson. What’s the
emergency? You find the Abominable Snowman or something?”

“Sorry. What is Abominable . . .?”

“The Yeti. It was a joke . . . never
mind.”

“Joke? Ah . . . very
funny. No, not Yeti. Tell me Thomas Nilsson, what do you study in Antarctica?”

“Emperor penguins.”

“I see. Nothing larger?”

“You mean like whales?”

“Yes, like whales.”

“Sorry. Just the penguins.”

“What about Loose Tooth? You know
about this?”

“Your whale has a loose tooth?”

Her expression soured. “You make
‘nother joke?”

“What? No– ”

“Loose Tooth is an ice rift.” She
shook her head repeatedly as if to erase the conversation from her brain. “We
have a chopper waiting; I will explain on the way.”

***

Thomas Nilsson held
on to the seat in
front of him as the AS-350BA “Squirrel” flew with its nose down against the
wind, the single-engine five passenger helicopter’s soaring over Prydz Bay en
route to the Amery Ice Shelf.

Seated in back next to Nilsson,
Ming nevertheless had to use her headset to be heard over the thunderous
rotors. “For the record, Doctor, I am with Zhongshan station. Australia and
China are working together on this discovery.”

“But not the Russians?”

“The Russians control Vostok.
There may be a conflict of interest.”

“I’m sorry . . . what
does Vostok have to do with the Amery Ice Shelf? The lake’s a good eight
hundred miles away.”

“True, but what lies beneath the
ice are interconnecting rivers and lakes . . . let us start
at the beginning. Antarctica’s land mass is covered by a dome-shaped glacier.
Gravity is actually pulling the ice into the ocean by way of the continent’s
ice shelves. As these ice shelves reach the coastline their bottom sections hit
seawater and melt faster, causing sections of the flow to crack – a natural
process known as rifting. Global warming has accelerated rifting. Last year,
Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 355 gigatonnes. A gigatonne is a
billion metric tons. Three hundred and fifty-five gigatonnes is enough to raise
global sea levels by 1.3 millimeters. That may not seem like a lot, but add
Greenland’s ice sheet, mountain glaciers, and the melting polar caps – all
multiplied by the present rate of acceleration and your winter home in sunny
Florida may be underwater by the time you are ready to retire.”

“My winter home is in Scottsdale,
Arizona. And just so there’s no misunderstanding, I have no intention of remaining
on the ice through the winter. Where are we headed?”

She removed a folder from a mesh
pocket behind the pilot’s seat in front of her and opened it, handing him a
satellite photo.

“This the Avery Ice Shelf. It is
over four hundred kilometers long . . . about two-hundred
and fifty miles. We’ve been studying this highlighted area – a twenty-nine
kilometer-long rift nicknamed ‘
Loose Tooth.
’ The first rift appeared
seventeen years ago and consists of two longitudinal-to-flow crevasses. Two
transverse-to-flow rifts formed years later. The fissures were opening at a
rate of three to four meters a day but the rift has recently accelerated. We
anticipate
Loose Tooth
will calve into Prydz Bay within the next five to
seven years.”