With a wave back, the pilot gently applied more power to the engines. Slowly, the helicopter edged forward and began to climb up into the sky. The deafening sound of the rotor blades cutting through the air quickly disappeared, replaced with silence.
Mitchell watched the helicopter as it disappeared from sight behind the tall ice-covered peak before heading back out to sea. He took comfort from the fact that it would be on standby on the Southern Star’s helipad, ready to come pick them up should they need an emergency extraction. Help was only fifteen minutes away.
“Here,” said Jackson as he handed Mitchell a pair of metal crampons for his boots.
Mitchell sat down on his rucksack and attached the crampons to the bottom of his boots. With their sharp metal teeth, the crampons were essential for walking about on the glacier. Mitchell stood up and stomped his feet into the ice. It was like being glued in place.
Mitchell looked over at Jackson and said, “Okay. Nate, you and McMasters can set up camp while Maria and I get the radar up and running.”
“Sounds fair,” replied Jackson as he zipped up his dark-blue, down-filled parka.
Unlike Jackson, Mitchell had already undone his heavy down parka and pulled off his fleece toque. He had grown up on a farm in Minnesota, where it got cold in the winter and stayed that way for months at a time. Even without the sun shining down on the glacier, the temperature was hovering around freezing. As far as Mitchell was concerned, it wasn’t cold, not even close. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that McMasters had also removed some of his clothing. Only Jackson and Maria thought that it was cold outside.
Mitchell helped Maria set up and then calibrate the ground-penetrating radar. It took an hour. In that time, Jackson and McMasters erected their bright-orange, four-person tent and packed away all the unnecessary stores under a red plastic tarp, secured by long metal pegs to the ice. With everything set, Mitchell suggested that Jackson put some rations on to cook while he and Maria took the radar for a test drive over the closest metal debris buried under the ice. Jackson didn’t have to be told twice. He eagerly grabbed a box of military rations, selected four meals, and soon had them cooking.
Mitchell and Maria dragged the sled over to a long flat stretch of ice about fifty meters from their camp. Maria reached down and switched on the GPR. It instantly came to life. An image of rocks ten meters below the surface of the ice came up on the radar’s view screen.
“How far into the ice can this model penetrate?” Mitchell asked Maria as he looked down at the image on the screen.
“Up to fifteen meters,” she replied. “I’m hoping that the recovery vehicle isn’t that deep, or we’re going to be digging for days.”
Mitchell cringed. “Well, let’s hope that it’s resting just below the surface. I’m in no mood to spend days digging through the ice only to find that we’ve found an old stove or a pile of rusted food cans.”
“It shouldn’t come to that. When we find something, I can take a picture of it, and using the software on my laptop, I can make a 3-D image of it for us to study. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot what we’re looking for once we find it.”
“I like your optimism,” said Mitchell.
Maria said, “I don’t want to be out here a minute longer than I have to. You gentlemen may like crawling about and getting dirty. I, however, think that staying in a four-star hotel is roughing it.”
Mitchell chuckled. “Come on, let’s give this thing a try before lunch.”
With that, they plugged a route into the GPS mounted on the sled and gently began to push the sled over the ice. At first, nothing interesting appeared on the screen, but then, one after another, long, jagged pieces of metal began to appear. Maria took a picture of each and recorded its location with the GPS, in case they wanted to come back later and dig up what they had found.
“What do you think those are?” Mitchell asked as he studied the images on the screen.
“Hard to tell; could be pieces of the heat shield,” said Maria as she studied the image on the screen. “I won’t know until I take a better look at the pictures on my laptop.”
“Lunch is served,” called out Jackson.
“Come on,” said Mitchell. “Let’s grab a bite to eat and take a look at what we’ve found on your computer.”
Maria saved what she had on her flash drive, switched off the GPR and followed Mitchell back over to their tent. She crawled inside, found her laptop, and turned it on. She grabbed a folding chair, opened it, and sat down. While she waited for her laptop to boot up, she gladly accepted her boil-in-the-bag meal from Jackson. Maria smiled when she saw that it was her favorite, Mediterranean chicken.
“What have you got?” Mitchell asked Jackson as he checked out his meal of chicken fajitas.
Jackson grinned and then said, “Chili and beans.”
“Well, ain’t that special. I know how your stomach reacts to spicy food. So my man, you’re definitely sleeping out under the stars tonight,” said Mitchell.
“How come I got stew?” grumbled McMasters, looking unenthusiastically down at his meal.
“Luck of the draw,” replied Jackson.
“Okay, I see how this is going. I’m making supper tonight and we’ll see what you get,” said McMasters, eyeing Jackson.
Maria opened the file on her flash drive. She grabbed her glasses, set them on her nose, and enlarged the images taken of the debris under the ice, studying each one in detail, trying to see if there was anything recognizable about the objects. She sat there with a scrunched-up face, scrutinizing the pictures, when it hit her. Something else had crashed on the island. Looking over at Mitchell, she said, “Ryan, I hate to say it, but we may have a problem here.”
Mitchell placed his meal down, walked over beside Maria, and looked down at the images on her laptop screen. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Maria pointed at the screen and said, “These pieces of metal are too deep in the ice to have landed here forty-five years ago. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that whatever is down there crashed on the island sometime in the 1920s or early 1930s.”
“I don’t remember Jen saying anything about a plane crashing on the island,” said Jackson.
“Neither do I,” replied Mitchell.
“It’s a nuisance that we could do without,” said Maria. “However, I’m confident that I will be able to tell the difference between the probe and the plane’s debris by the depth at which it’s found in the ice. Unfortunately, with two objects buried under the ice, it’s going to slow us down somewhat.”
“By how much?” asked Mitchell.
“At least two, maybe three days more than anticipated,” said Maria, wishing it wasn’t so.
“Wonderful,” muttered Jackson as he shoveled a spoon full of chili into his mouth.
Mitchell grabbed their satellite phone and called Captain Serrano to let him know that they had set up their camp and that they might need a little more time on the glacier than originally envisioned. After that, he got in touch with Jen and told her the same thing. Before he ended the call, he asked her to look into any reports from the twenties and thirties relating to airplanes that had been reported missing in the area around Bouvet Island.