“Nate, how’s it coming?” called out Mitchell, knowing they had seconds before someone else took over the machine gun.
“Gimme a couple more seconds,” replied Jackson. Rivers of sweat poured down his brow as he frantically worked to enlarge the opening.
McMasters looked over his shoulder at the wounded door-gunner and swore. He ripped off his headset, jumped out of his seat and moved over behind the machine gun. McMasters quickly checked that it was still good to go, and then took aim at Jackson.
“Okay, I’m in!” yelled Jackson, trying to be heard over the deafening sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades cutting through the air right above them.
“Go ahead, get inside!” called out Mitchell as he fired off one last long burst at their tormentor.
McMasters saw Mitchell aiming up at him. His stomach dropped. He barely had time to duck back inside the when the fusillade of bullets struck his side of the helicopter and ricocheted back and forth inside the open crew compartment.
Without waiting to see if he hit anything, Mitchell tossed the empty M4 to the ground, turned around and dove for the open hole dug into the ice. Nate’s head disappeared just as Mitchell, sliding across the icy surface, went feetfirst into the hole. Almost right away, the light from above began to diminish, making the mad scramble down inside the wrecked aircraft treacherous.
With his heart racing, McMasters jumped back behind the machine gun. His blood was up. With his hands gripping the door gun, McMasters looked down and was stunned to see that his prey had disappeared.
“They went down into a hole,” called out the pilot.
McMasters hung out the door and cursed when he saw the hole Jackson had dug into the ice. Swinging back inside, he pulled back on the machine gun’s trigger, sending a stream of bullets down into the ice. He knew that he was wasting ammunition, but he didn’t care. He was blinded by his anger. A couple of seconds later, realizing that he wouldn’t hit a thing that way, he swung about and asked for every hand grenade that they had on the helicopter. Four grenades were quickly handed over to McMasters. He ordered the pilot to hover over the hole while he pulled the safety pin from the first grenade and tossed it down into the opening in the ice. He hoped that it would slide down into Mitchell and Jackson’s refuge. A couple of seconds later, the grenade exploded, sending a plume of ice shooting up into the air.
McMasters swore; the first grenade had harmlessly exploded on the surface.
“What the hell was that?” called out Jackson, as he made his way through the obstacle course that once was the fuselage of the doomed plane.
“Don’t worry about that, just keep climbing down,” replied Mitchell, praying that McMasters didn’t have plenty of grenades with him.
Above, McMasters dropped another grenade. Like the first, it detonated on the surface. However, the next two fell straight down inside the hole, one right after the other. With a sadistic grin in his face, he waited for the grenades to explode.
The sound of the grenades bouncing from side to side as they tumbled down inside the tail section made both Mitchell and Jackson let go of whatever they were holding onto and let themselves fall down into the dark abyss. A second later, with a deafening roar, the first grenade exploded, sending metal splinters and debris flying through the air. The second grenade didn’t immediately explode and continued to fall.
As McMasters watched, a plume of black smoke escaped up through the ice. He took pleasure from Mitchell and Jackson’s certain demise. He had planned to put a bullet through their skulls; however, resting for eternity in an icy tomb would do nicely. He ordered the pilot to land their helicopter. McMasters was the first onto the ice. He dashed over and quickly examined the probe. He was relieved to see that it hadn’t been hit when his door-gunner had foolishly opened fire. McMasters slammed the lid down, secured it, and waved for one of his men to help him drag the container over to the helicopter.
Two minutes later, with the container secured to the floor of the helicopter, McMasters ordered the pilot to maneuver towards nearby Olav’s Peak. A large, overhanging slab of ice on the side of the peak soon came into view. McMasters let loose with the heavy machine gun, sending a torrent of bullets into the ice. Within seconds, the shattered ice broke free and raced downwards. With a deafening roar, a river of ice and snow swept towards the hole where Mitchell and Jackson had met their fate. McMasters watched intently as the avalanche erased any sign that they had once been there.
Satisfied that there was nothing more to do, he sat back in his chair as the ice below the helicopter faded away to be quickly replaced by the cold, dark waters of the South Atlantic. He looked over his shoulder at the two dead bodies of his men lying on the metal floor beside the probe. McMasters didn’t feel anything for their deaths. He knew that their sacrifice had not been in vain. With the cargo he had on board, he was about to help shape the future of mankind, one that would see plenty more death and suffering before it was all done.
13
If they hadn’t been as deep as they were inside the plane when the second grenade went off, both men would have been killed in the deadly blast. Mostly protected by the spare metal chairs in the radio compartment, Mitchell and Jackson survived. As it was, all they got was an uncomfortable ringing in their ears and a few superficial cuts on their hands and faces from the razor-sharp grenade fragments that had ricocheted around inside the wreckage. Neither man could believe their luck.
Inside the gloomy interior of the plane, Mitchell was about to tell Jackson to dig out his flashlight when he heard a noise. At first, it sounded like the surf crashing against the shore on some faraway beach. However, the rumbling sound grew louder by the second. Mitchell barely had time to call out a warning before the sea of ice and snow swept over the hole, instantly burying their way out under meters of ice. The light from above vanished in the blink of an eye.
After a few seconds, the terrible noise faded. The only sound they could hear was their own ragged breathing.
Jackson turned on his flashlight. He looked over at Mitchell and said, “If this was the backup plan, I’m glad we didn’t go with the original one.”
“I’d planned for us to overpower the guards and then force the helicopter pilot to fly us to our ship,” replied Mitchell.
“On second thought, I like that one better than this one.”
“Me too,” replied Mitchell glumly.
“I sure as hell hope you have another plan in that head of yours,” said Jackson, moving the light around inside their icy tomb. Debris littered the floor of the fuselage. Jackson bent down, picked up a map, and saw that it was of Antarctica, dated 1918.
Mitchell let go of the chair he had been using for cover, wiped away the blood from a cut across the back of his left hand, and continued climbing down until he came to the wrecked cockpit. “Nate, give me your light,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell took the light and shone it about. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the light illuminated the frozen body of a pilot, slumped over the controls of his plane. He was covered in about an inch of ice; however, Mitchell could clearly see the man’s blond hair matted to his head. Moving the light around, he saw why the poor man had been unable to save himself: his legs were badly mangled and trapped under a piece of metal that had crushed them against his chair.
“Poor bastard,” said Jackson over Mitchell’s shoulder. “That’ll be us if we don’t find a way out of here, and fast.”