‘Simple. Everything becomes its own opposite. All it takes is time.’
‘Oh Jesus.’ She turned her head away.
‘Sorry, petite soeur. Sometimes it’s better not to ask. Got to go. I’m on kitchen detail.’ He turned her head back gently. ‘Remember, no combat-ready unit ever passed inspection. Now I suggest a nice hot shower before dinner.’
A brave smile.
TRAINING LEADS TO COURAGE. He’d never seen her smile. On her pre-Raphaelite face it looked odd.
He kissed her hair. ‘I feel I’ve just met you.’
He left to help the pope with the meal.
The men came in for dinner, exhausted and ravenous. Stripped of outer clothing, they became basic types who seemed remarkably well behaved, although the smell of food and the warmth provoked their banter. But when Hunt joined them, they were gobsmacked to be confronted with such a superb-looking woman in that void. Their talk trailed off and they ate in uncomfortable silence.
‘So,’ Cain said to break it, ‘we still don’t know what you’re doing. What’s the tower for? What’s this “Baby” thing on the chairs? And who’s this?’ He pointed to a framed photo on the cooking alcove wall showing an impressive man wearing a naval commander’s uniform. The caption read: ‘Kapitänleutnant Martin Dietrich, commander of L.22 and L.42.’
‘Dietrich?’ Reilly exploded. ‘One of the greats.’
‘So what did he do?’
‘What didn’t he?’ The man’s bombast revealed everything but facts. ‘Martin Dietrich — the World War One Zeppelin commander.’
The pope’s lopsided smile. ‘That construction outside is for… an airship?’
‘It’s a docking mast for Baby. She’s circling the world via the poles. Surely you’ve heard?’
Cain scratched his head. ‘Baby’s a blimp?’
Reilly stiffened at the slur and his Greek chorus darkly muttered. Cain had once suffered a like reaction when he’d called an enthusiast’s model railway a ‘train set’. ‘She’s not a rubber cow. She’s a ship. Rigid frame, high-tech, high gross gas cell volume. Internal cabin. Bow thruster. Carbon fibre construction. Vectoring ducted propellers. Latest diesel rotary engines. Fibre optic fly-by-wire. Computer-assisted stabilisation…’
‘Then why does she need to land here?’
‘It’s difficult for an airship over the poles. The altitude. The cold. Need a ground crew standing by. We’ll top up her helium, her fuel. She’s stripped down for the flight. No showers or amenities on board. Water’s heavy, used mainly for ballast and 40 per cent antifreeze, of course. And their galley’s just a cook-top. So we’ve got everything they need.’
‘And who’s Patrick Flynn?’ Hunt said.
‘Well may you ask, dear lady,’ Reilly, charmed by her beauty, was delighted to digress. ‘As you might know, the old country’s now reversed the diaspora. The wild geese are flying home. New tax breaks. The wooing of high-tech industry. And when Flynn moved his company to Dublin, he became our greatest software genius.’
‘And his hobby’s airships?’ Cain asked.
‘Hobby? Good God, man. Crusade!’
He’d blotted his copybook again.
‘The twenty-first century will be the century of the airship. And with luck, you might have the privilege of seeing Baby tomorrow. That’s if wind-speed’s below 30 knots so she can dock. But our base met officer’s forecasting over 60. We might have flogged ourselves ragged for nothing, mightn’t we, lads?’
His men made a disappointed sound.
‘Still,’ he slapped his knee, ‘we shall see.’
Cain was hoping for a whiteout or blizzard. Anything to stop the choppers coming in.
50
BABY
It began as a distant drone unlike the sound of a conventional aircraft. Far across the snow at the docking tower, the ground crew gave a ragged cheer.
To avoid further alarming their hosts, Cain and Hunt hung the M–4s by their combat straps beneath their parkas and placed the remaining mags in inside pockets. Then they went out to see the ship arrive. It looked enormous, even from a distance, upper half white, lower red. And for a long time it seemed to hang static in the sky. But it steadily came closer, holding just below the cloud cover, crabbing into the crosswind, fighting drift.
Even the pope came out to watch. As he shuffled over to join them Cain was relieved to see he wore full Antarctic kit.
They left the encampment, taking the priest’s arms to help him along, and followed the blizz line to the tower. The old man was as thrilled as the ground crew. ‘What a magnificent sight.’
Had the weather been better, it would have been spectacular — a majestic craft with sun glinting off its hide, its great height and length set off against the blue. But the sky was grey and visibility decreasing.
‘I’ll try and get you on board it,’ Cain told the pope. ‘If EXIT attacks us, they’ll kill you.’
‘I’ve had my life,’ John puffed.
‘That’s all very well. But you can’t even get your breath. Your legs are bad. You’re hurting. And I want you out of here.’
The giant shape approached, losing altitude.
Hunt said, ‘It’s enormous.’
Its size and slowness gave the impression of absolute calm and lack of haste.
As it made a slow sweep around to come up into the wind they could see its features clearly. The line of windows in the lower side. The protruding half-gondola near the nose. The vectored thrust engines on outriggers with their propellers in circular ducts. The side thrusters and, at the stern, huge rudders and elevators.
Ropes were dangled, ballast vented and a tricycle undercarriage lowered from the belly that had incongruous swivelling wheels. Almost immediately it was retracted as if they’d decided it was too dangerous to land. This had to be the vulnerable time — the great shape a wind trap, at the mercy of gusts and turbulence.
Reilly, standing near the tower, yelled commands into a field radio and gave signals to his men who lumbered after the ropes. Soon the thing hung above them like a cloud, the ribs of its frame clearly defined through its envelope.
As its low-revving main engines ticked over, the bow thruster roared. Slowly the great cigar approached until the connection on the front of its nose mated with the cup device on the tower. As clamps closed and the nose was secured, the whine of the bow thruster died.
But in the blustery wind, the tail began to lift. The ground crew hauled on the ropes like ants while the big rear thrusters swivelled on their outriggers until their ducts were almost vertical, the props inside them facing down, correcting aerostatic lift with dynamic. Slowly the ship levelled again.
Then a wind-shift buffeted the envelope and it began to swing. Two of the crew on the ropes were dragged in an arc across the snow. The strong tower’s guy-wires snapped taut on the windward side.
Cain watched uneasily. The engines still ran. Could they feather the big props? He didn’t know. The ship swung around its mast. Hoses with end couplings dropped from the belly.
Reilly called instructions through a megaphone. ‘Ease her. Connect fuel and gas lines.’
In the thin air, the undermanned, exhausted ground crew fought to service the ponderous ship. Someone on the supply sled had the compressor going. Others pulled hoses towards the connections dragging through the snow.
Through an open hatch underneath, a winch lowered a man to the ground. He unhooked as a quad bike hauling a sled full of webbing-cinched stores arrived under the craft. A man on the sled loaded the hook with stores and the first consignment went up. A tag fluttering on each batch probably listed the weight.