The Dying of the Light: Interval (33 page)

I raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why’s that?”

Shaw said, “I’ve been thinking since I woke up. There’s something off about this whole thing. First, they don’t tell you about our expedition at all. Even though it was six years ago, you’d think they’d have at least said
something
about it. Second, you haven’t been able to get them on the radio. If it were me, and I was waiting for a rescue, I’d be sleeping in the Shack day and night just in case someone called. Why weren’t they there? And third, my wife was the Area Director when I left. If Atkins hasn’t mentioned her, then something’s up, and I’d rather wait and see what it is than spoil the surprise, if you know what I mean. Did you ever talk to anyone but Atkins?” he asked.

I thought back to the conversations, and realized that we hadn’t. “Now that you mention it, we never did. It was always him we went through. I mean, initially our call was answered by Dr. Tanner, but after that it was all Atkins. Although he did mention someone once…” I racked my brain trying to think of the name. “Warner! That was it.”

Shaw’s face turned dark. “
Jack
Warner?”

“No idea. Atkins just said Dr. Warner, said he was in charge but unavailable, and then we just kept talking to him because he was there. Why? Is that important?”

“It could be. Warner was always a bit of a wild card, always thought he knew better than we did. If he’s in charge, then there’s been a lot of changes… and who knows what’s happened to Jenny. No, better not to mention my name at all. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

The radio crackled, and Anderson’s voice came through. “
Rescue Two, Rescue One
Actual.”

Myers responded for us. “
Rescue Two
, go ahead.”

“What’s the status on McMurdo?”

“We… uh, one sec, sir,” Myers said as Shaw took down the spare headset and plugged it in.

“Shaw here, sir.”

“Well, good morning, Major! I was beginning to wonder if you were going to sleep the whole way.”

“Thank you, sir. No, sir, I’m fine now. I’ve asked Sergeant Myers here to keep my name out of the report to McMurdo, if that’s all right with you, sir.” He went through all the reasons again for Anderson.

“Sounds reasonable to me, son. I was hoping to do this before we left, but I’ll just have to do it now. Major William Shaw, you are hereby granted a field promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, and are now in operational command of
Rescue Two
.”

I could see Shaw was surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Not at all. You’re long overdue, in my book. Go ahead and have Myers get in touch with the station, per your instructions. We don’t want to show up without warning and not have a place to land. Oh, and I’d like for you to take the lead position, Colonel. Seems only right that your bird come back home before we land ours. “

“Thank you, sir. I’ll let you know what they have to say.”

“Roger that.
Rescue One
, out.”

Shaw looked at me. “I got the impression you were in command, sir.” Even though I still didn’t have any rank or insignia, the men on this mission kept deferring to me anyway—something another military man would pick up on automatically.

I shook my head. “Nope. Strictly a civilian, just along for the ride. The bird’s all yours, Colonel.”

Shaw turned to Myers. “All right, time to wake those folks up. And remember, don’t mention me or the mission. You never found this bird.”

Myers nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, setting up the link.

“Now to figure out how to deal with Warner,” Shaw said. I’ve seen more dangerous looks on men—Henry Gardner sprang to mind—but for all that, I was pretty damned sure that Jack Warner, whoever he was, was about to have one helluva bad day.

Chapter Fifteen

McMurdo Station

Jim Atkins looked at the hard drives in front of him on the narrow bed in his quarters. These small devices held the data which, if the AEGIS people were correct, in turn held the potential salvation of the human race. How precious these few scraps of metal and plastic were, and how vulnerable. He’d managed to hide them all these months, safe from the prying of both Jack Warner and Tatiana Zavrazhny—even from Sabrina Tanner. Fortunately, he’d been able to convince Warner that the communications expert was much more useful alive, even as a security risk. He’d also managed to impress upon her the necessity for secrecy, and as much as she found what they were doing as distasteful as he did, she couldn’t find a way out, either. The fact that she now slept a few inches away from him every night made that a little easier to bear.

And what a surprise
that
had been
, he thought.
I never would’ve expected
—

His reverie was interrupted when the base communications alarm went off, again. He hurriedly stuffed the drives, safe in their protective cases, into his slim pack and snugged the straps down tight around his shoulders as he put it on. No way was he letting these out of his sight now, especially not when the AEGIS people were on their way.

He pulled his sweater on over the pack and grabbed his jacket from the chair. Once he put that on, only someone who did some close-up investigating would even know he was wearing it. And that’s just the way he wanted it.

Atkins ran into Warner as they arrived at the Shack’s door, and both men smiled fake smiles as they entered the building. Sabrina was at the controls and looked up as the men entered. Her face betrayed her dislike for Warner, but only for a moment as Atkins came through the door behind him. That smile of hers still knocked him for a metaphorical loop, and he found himself grinning like an idiot in return, until Warner spoke. “I’m sure we’re all very happy, but what’s going on?”

“They’re coming!” Sabrina said. “The AEGIS people! They’re—”

“Repeat,
AEGIS Rescue Two
to McMurdo Station,” came the transmission from the room’s speakers. “Come in, McMurdo Station.”

Warner grabbed the microphone from Sabrina before she could hand it to him, thrusting it at Atkins. “They’re used to talking to you,” he said. “Find out how long we have. There are… preparations to make.”

Atkins sighed and took the mic as Warner left the building.
Preparations, indeed
.

“
AEGIS Rescue Two
, this is Dr. Atkins. Go ahead,” he said, wondering at the name.
Two? What happened to the first one? Do I even want to know?

“Dr. Atkins, this is Sergeant Myers. We’re about four hundred miles out, and we’ll be ready for landing in about an hour or so. Are you folks ready down there? We tried to reach you when we were at Christchurch, but got nothing.”

Atkins glanced over at Sabrina, but she shrugged. “Nothing’s come in, Jim. Not that I’ve seen.”

Atkins remembered Warner’s comment just before leaving, and suddenly had a sneaking suspicion. He spoke to Sabrina quickly without activating the mic. “Can you check the logs? See if anyone’s done anything that would prevent us from seeing their transmissions.”

He could tell she was pissed as she followed his line of reasoning, and she began swearing under her breath as she moved to comply with his request. He blinked at a couple of her chosen expressions, never having thought of her as a particularly foul-mouthed person, and grinned.
Looks like I have a lot to learn. I mean, I knew Aussies could swear, but
wow
.

“Are you there, McMurdo?”

“Yes, sorry,
Rescue Two
. We’re looking into the problem with our equipment now, it could be that it’s just old and outdated.”

There was a snort from Sabrina on the other side of the room.

Atkins went on, “We’re ready for you here. The Ice Runway is done and waiting.” He gave the coordinates and other landing information and glanced her way as Sabrina caught his eye, pointing at a computer monitor. She mouthed the words ‘found it,’ and he sighed. He’d been hoping it wasn’t the case, but he was hardly surprised.

“Great, McMurdo. Have your people standing by. We’ve got a bit of a surprise for you.
Rescue Two
, out.”

A surprise? Just what I need,
he thought, moving over to Sabrina’s side. Though he heard it, he paid no attention to the announcement about the imminent arrival of the plane over the PA system. “What have you got?”

“I’m still cleaning it up a bit. Give me a hand, will you?” She pointed to the chair at the next station, then began giving him rapid instructions.

Meanwhile, Warner unlocked a shed some distance from the Hub, throwing the doors wide and motioning for Duncan to back up the truck. He’d disabled the backup sensor, so there weren’t any loud beeps for any Nosy Nellies to hear. Not that anyone ever came to this side of the station anymore.
No reason to
, he thought.
All filled with spare parts and equipment we can’t spare the power to run—not that any of it works anymore, anyway
.

Or, at least, that’s what everyone had been told.

Duncan turned off the engine as the truck settled into place, stepping out of the cab and adjusting his gloves and jacket. It might be bright sunshine, but that just meant you’d freeze with a nice view. It was still damned cold.

The men turned and began dragging bodies out of the shed, throwing them haphazardly into the bed of the truck, until they began to run out of room, at which point Warner climbed inside and began stacking them. He tried not to look at the faces, their frozen-solid stares mocking and accusing him. Finally, Duncan brought out the last one—only a partial corpse. The saw marks from their most recent trip last week still looked fresh, though he couldn’t stomach looking at it too closely.

As Warner jumped down and began pulling a tarp over the bed, Duncan threw in the saw and other implements necessary to their work.

It was easiest to use a saw when cutting a slice off a frozen body, they’d found.

Duncan helped him tie down the tarp and shut the shed door as Warner got behind the wheel, starting up the rumbling engine. Neither man said a word as they drove out onto the ice of Winter Quarters Bay, stopping at a sheltered nook in the ice crags.

“Here’s good,” said Warner.

They stepped out of the truck.

Duncan said nothing as he began untying the tarp from his side, then climbed inside to start pushing the bodies out.

Warner reached for the first as Duncan pushed the frozen man his way, and he had a moment’s pause as he recognized Dr. Jackson Monroe, one of the first of what the others had melodramatically started calling
the Lost
.

“Problem, Doc?” asked Duncan as the other man paused as well.

His eyes
, thought Warner.
It’s like he can see me, like he can see straight into me
… He coughed and shook his head. “No, no. Just got… distracted… for a moment there.”

“All right,” Duncan said, pushing the dead communications specialist once more. “We’d better hurry. Wouldn’t want to be late.”

Warner took a deep breath and pulled Monroe’s corpse towards him, wincing as the hand he’d grabbed for leverage broke off cleanly, with a sound like a snapping twig. Duncan looked up, then shook his head. “Careful, Doc. Don’t want to leave anything behind.”

“I know what I’m doing!” Warner replied, only a little hysterically. After all, it wasn’t every day you dropped thirty—
twenty-nine and a half
, he reminded himself—bodies on the ice to keep people from finding out just what was in the “dietary supplements” you’d made mandatory.

“What I don’t get is why we’re bothering to do this at all,” said Duncan quietly as he moved the next body into place.

“That’s because you’re not seeing the bigger picture, Mr. Duncan. What if they wanted to check the place out? What if they needed some piece of equipment we haven’t touched in five years that was out there? Better safe than sorry.”

Duncan nodded. “I suppose so. Let’s just hope we can keep the rest of this quiet.”

“You and me are the only ones who know. How much more quiet can it be?”

“I think you’re forgetting Jennifer,” Duncan said.

“Shit.” Warner stopped his work to straighten his back and sigh.

“Exactly. And there’s no time to deal with it now.”

“Can you take care of it, though? I have to deal with Atkins.”

“
Deal
with him, or deal with him?”

Warner glowered. “There’s no need to kill him, Harold. He doesn’t know about… about
this
,” he said, indicating the pile of bodies.

“Are you sure? Absolutely sure? If he does, he’s a liability.”

“I know that! Don’t you think I know that? I’ll take care of him, you take care of her!” Warner looked down at his radio. “Change your radio to frequency seven, just in case I need to get hold of you.”

Duncan sighed and made the adjustment. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

Atkins and Sabrina had their answer. “It’s clever,” she said, unable to keep a slight tone of admiration from her voice. “He hid his tracks really well.”

“Yes, but what did he
do
?” Jim had never been particularly interested in the more esoteric details of computer security, preferring to deal with intrusion problems the old-fashioned way—by not leaving the data physically accessible. He shifted the pack on his back just to reassure himself.

“The short version?” she asked.

“Please.”

“He turned off the alarm and erased the incoming messages, then erased the logs that showed he erased the messages, then got rid of
those
logs, too.”

“So we
did
get their signal. Or, at least,
he
did.”

“Yep. But why would he hide it? Because of the lottery?”

“Either that, or he wanted to delay us finding out for some reason. Something he’s doing.” Atkins swore. “I just wish I knew what he was up to.”

“Atkins, report to my office,” said Warner, the radio startling them both.