Jack walked over to where Leah, Garrett, Juan, and Marko stood. “You all regretting you got yourselves involved in this mess now?”
Leah frowned. “What’s this about the tire being filled with propane gas, making that flying wreck into a guided missile?”
“I never promised you a Caribbean cruise.” Jack glanced back at the Caribou, where Chase and Rooster were busy looking over the undercarriage. “Chances are we’re going to crash on landing and end up like the Russians anyway.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Climber? Well, it won’t work,” she said. “I’m getting my gear out of Paulson’s flying Mile-High Club — before the soldiers lock it up.”
“Man, do you know how to push her buttons,” Juan said with a chuckle.
“It’s a gift,” Jack replied dryly. “You guys grab your gear and get it stowed on the Caribou. It you need to use the bathroom facilities, I suggest you do it now.”
“What kind of toilet do they have on the Caribou?” Leah asked suspiciously.
“A tube and a bucket,” Jack replied with a straight face. “But that’s gonna seem plush compared to what we have on the ice.”
CHAPTER 44
The roar of the Caribou’s twin engines vibrated throughout the ancient cargo plane in a manner that made Leah’s teeth rattle. She sat in the cargo hold, her coat zipped up to her chin, a wool hat pulled down to her eyes and a thick set of plugs firmly inserted in each ear.
Pallets containing aircraft spare parts, tools, survival gear, clothing, food, and more were tightly packed into the aircraft’s belly.
To Leah, it looked like a mountain of gear, although she’d overheard Jack telling Paulson that it was the minimum, and if they got into any real trouble, it wasn’t going to be near enough.
Ridley, whom she’d instinctively liked from their first meeting at the airport, slept on blankets lying against the cargo alongside his two airplane mechanics: Angus Lyon and Orlando Perez.
The mechanics had both been polite but distant, as if having a woman along on the salvage could be bad luck. They wore insulated coveralls covered in a combination of grease and what looked like various shades of paint. Underneath wool caps, each had a full head of hair, although Leah doubted whether it had ever been washed.
Garrett, Juan and Marko sat on aluminum nylon web seating, pointing occasionally at the pile of gear, then back at Leah, poking each other in the ribs and laughing. Leah flashed her “I’m not impressed” look while they grinned like a trio of Cheshire cats.
Leah climbed over the tied-down gear to reach the cockpit and stuck her head between the two pilots. Directly below, the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego ran like ribbons across the islands.
Jack pointed down to a small stretch of land. “Cape Horn.”
“How cold will it be when we get there?”
“Probably five or ten degrees above zero. If it’s any warmer, we’ll have trouble.”
She leaned forward. “How can warm weather be bad?”
Jack pointed toward the floor of the aircraft. “The Caribou doesn’t have skis. We’re counting on cold weather to keep the ice hard enough for a safe landing.”
He leaned forward and shouted into Chase’s ear, knowing cargo pilots suffered serious hearing loss. “How is the weather holding up?”
“I’m in contact with the Chileans at Bernardo O’ Higgins Base,” Chase replied. “The skies are broken and scattered at 15,000 feet with light winds.”
“What about inland?”
“Forecast to be clear, but I’m more worried about Bernardo O’ Higgins.”
“Why?” Jack asked.
“Because if the weather goes bad at Bernardo and we’re unable to land, this will be a one-way trip with an unhappy ending.”
Rooster pointed out the cockpit window and down at the angry whitecaps and blowing foam. “You go down in that and you can kiss your ass goodbye.”
Paulson laughed and slapped him playfully on the shoulder.
Leah grimaced, then crawled back out of the cockpit. “What kind of idiots joke at the thought of crash-landing in a frozen ocean?” she muttered. “I will never understand men.”
CHAPTER 45
Rooster’s bearded face appeared over the top of the strapped-down cargo. He signaled they should all take a seat and buckle up. The pilots were making an approach into Bernardo O’ Higgins Base on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Chase brought the Caribou in low over the iceberg-filled bay toward a stretch of ice lined with empty fuel barrels painted black.
He made a low pass over the ice runway dubbed the “skyway,” searching for the windsock indicating wind direction. Once he determined the best approach, Chase piloted the Caribou into a standard left-hand pattern, aiming the nose of the Caribou for the ski way.
Just as the wheels touched the ice, he gunned the engines and flew down the entire length of the ice strip with the tires barely kissing the surface.
Leah gripped the nylon strapping tightly.
Jack leaned over and shouted, “They’re just testing the surface of the ice. It’s normal. Nothing to worry about. If the ice is solid, they’ll bring it to a stop next time around.”
With a bang, the Caribou hit the ice on the second time around and Chase quickly reversed the pitch on the propellers as the aircraft’s tires settled onto the rock-hard surface. The airplane came to a quick stop in a thick cloud of ice crystals.
“Yaaahooo!” Paulson shouted. He slapped a less-than-enthusiastic Mac Ridley on the back and shoulders.
“Get ready for a real dose of cold,” Jack warned.
A blast of cold air drove through the aircraft as the hydraulics opened the cargo ramp at the rear of the aircraft. Leah’s first view of Antarctica was of an overwhelming white brilliance. The sky was clear, a dazzling blue. The next sensation was of intense penetrating cold that immediately worked its way to the bone.
Each step she made on the ice made a crunching sound. In an odd way, she thought, it sounded as though she were violating it.
She looked up and saw a number of steel and aluminum buildings and saw British and Chilean flags cracking in the breeze from separate poles. She heard what sounded like a pair of diesel engines revving up from behind the Caribou. Leah was shocked to see two bright orange snowcats nearly a quarter of a mile away. In the Antarctic environment, without the distractions of city traffic, crickets and trees rustling in the wind, either sound traveled farther or her senses craved something familiar.
The air tasted crisp, except for the tinge of aviation fuel and exhaust fumes wafting from the weary Caribou. The creaky nature of the old cargo plane was accented by the popping sounds of the engines as they cooled and the metal contracted in the subfreezing temperatures.
It served as a sobering reminder that the margins for safely in this alien environment were razor thin. All that stood between her demise in the grasp of this colossal ice monster was the Caribou and a thousand worn-out components.
A look out on the endless horizon of ice of nothingness brought the reality of Antarctica into true focus: They were the virus.
Antarctica, in all her vindictive glory, bristled with antibody-like defenses. Howling hurricane force winds, a penetrating bitter cold beyond human comprehension, deep icy crevasse traps, thousands of miles of desolation and man’s own insufferable arrogance.
She shivered at the realization.
Paulson apparently had no such concerns. He crawled over the cargo, his face covered in a wide grin and strutting like a barnyard rooster. “Hey, there’s my gas,” he said, pointing toward the snowcats approaching the Caribou.
The snowcats towed sleds stacked with fifty-gallon fuel barrels rolled in tandem, toward the Caribou. The billionaire jumped off the ramp and walked out to meet the vehicles, Chase Parker right behind him.