“Check on Jack,” she panted.
Marko clipped a safety line to the anchoring screw and crawled toward the lip of the crevasse.
“Jack! Are you okay?”
Someone was shouting, but it sounded miles away. Jack blinked, and then felt a throbbing lump growing on the right side of his head. After falling into the crevasse, his momentum had swung his head against the ice wall.
“You okay?” Marko repeated.
Jack looked up and saw Marko staring down at him from the surface, some fifteen feet above. “Watch that first step,” he croaked. “It’s a doozy.”
Marko turned to Leah. “He’s conscious.”
She crawled toward the lip of the crevasse. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jack replied. “Send me down a rope with a carabineer on the end.”
Marko scrambled back toward his own pack and pulled out a length of line. He dropped it down into the crevasse, and Jack secured his gear pack.
“Do you want me to pull it up?” Marko asked.
“Just hold the weight for now. I want to get my spare axe.” Jack removed his ice axe from the rear of the gear pack, making sure to put the safety lanyard around his wrist in case he dropped it. “Okay, take the gear.”
Jack pushed off the wall and swung himself toward an ice shelf protruding two meters out from the wall. The second push brought him close enough that he jammed his axe into the ice and pulled himself on to the ledge. “Do you have me secured?”
“I sunk two screws deep in the ice. Are you going to use a jumar to climb out?”
“Give me a second to catch my breath,” he said. “I thought for sure I was headed for the bottom.”
“Don’t thank me,” Marko called down. “Leah saved both our asses. My axe sprung out, and she got a solid bite. Otherwise we’d all have gone down.”
“It’s getting cold up here, Climber. Move your butt,” shouted Leah.
A bead of sweat ran down his nose and hit his glove with an audible splat. Jack stopped and felt his forehead. It was damp with sweat. He peered down into the darkness for a moment. “There’s a flashlight in my pack. Get it out and sling it down to me.”
A moment later, a small flashlight clipped to Jack’s line slid down to his position. Jack fumbled with the switch and aimed the powerful beam down into the crevasse. He saw what appeared to be the bottom at least fifty meters below. A glint in depths caught his eye.
“Something’s reflective, could be coming from the bottom of the crevasse.” He removed his glove and held his hand out, palm down. “There’s definitely heat rising up.”
“How can that be?” Leah pushed herself further over the ledge.
“I don’t know.” He swung the light up and looked around the walls of the crevasse. “I’m coming up.”
“We should check it out,” she said bluntly when he climbed out of the crevasse. “It might be a kind of clue.”
“I figured you would,” Jack said. “I want to secure a couple more ropes first. We’ll use the ice ledge as a staging area. Marko, I’m sending you down first. Secure two ice screw anchor points on the wall.”
Marko climbed into a harness and set up a rappel system. He eased himself down into the opening of the crevasse and within a minute stood on the ledge. Jack lowered him a small gear bag, from which Marko pulled out several stainless steel ice screws resembling regular household wood screws, except they were nearly a foot long and three-fourths of an inch in diameter.
“Got it,” said Marko.
Jack double-checked Leah’s harness and then grabbed her arm. “You guys wait for me on the ledge. I’m securing a couple of back-up lines first. Then I’m gonna give Paulson a call.”
Leah rappelled down the steep, icy walls, pushing off every few feet with the steel-tipped crampons.
Marko helped swing her over toward the ice ledge. “Nicely done.”
“Let’s get to the bottom.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Jack?”
“Let him have all the fun?” Without another word, she rappelled off the ledge, pushing off the ice every five feet. She hit the bottom with a thud and slacked off the line.
“I’m down.”
The bottom of the crevasse felt flat and relatively wide. She unhooked and stood clear of the dangling line, then pulled a flashlight from inside her parka and lit up the nearest ice wall. When she turned the beam to the far side of the crevasse, her mouth dropped open in shock.
CHAPTER 56
“Come in, Tortugas base,” Jack called.
Garrett stepped out from under the wing of the Las Tortugas and pulled the radio from his coat, fumbling with it through thick gloves. He held the radio up and pressed the transmit button.
“How are you guys doing over there?”
“We’re only about a third of the way up to the base of Thor’s Hammer, but we’ve found a crevasse.”
“A big one?”
“Deep and I don’t think it’s due to shifting ice. There’s warmth coming up from the bottom.”
“Can you work around it?”
“We’re climbing down to take a look.”
“Be careful. Even I know those ice crevasses open and close in a flash.”
“What’s happening with the plane? We heard the engines rumbling.”
“We found out why the Russians didn’t get the B-29 out of here. The test engine blew oil all over the ice, and us. The mechanics have the inspection ports open but if they have to remove the cowlings we’re not going anywhere. How’s Leah? Giving you any trouble?”
“I’ve got her occupied,” Jack replied. “Right now she’s dying to rappel into the crevasse.”
“When do we get to join the adventure?”
“Get your release note from Paulson and come on over.”
“You’d better check up on Leah. It sounds like she’s been on her own for at least five minutes — and you know that spells trouble.”
CHAPTER 57
When Leah illuminated the ice wall, she found out to her surprise that it wasn’t ice, but a metallic surface. The exposed portion extended up from the floor for three meters and appeared to measure three meters in width.
“What’s happening?” Marko asked.
“I found something; maybe an old plane crash,” Leah replied between deep breaths.
“I thought Jack said it only snowed like two inches a year. How can there be an airplane under a hundred feet of ice?”
“Get your butt down here and see for yourself.”
Jack crawled to the edge of the crevasse and looked over, expecting to find Leah and Marko standing on the ledge. Instead, all he saw were ice-screw anchors and two ropes leading toward the bottom of the crevasse.
“What the hell are you two doing?” he shouted.
Leah said, “I found what looks like an airplane wreck, a big one.”
“Stay right where you are; don’t move.” Jack swung himself over the lip of the crevasse and fast-rappelled.
“Something is melting the ice,” Leah said when Jack hit the bottom of the crevasse. “It’s coming from down here; feel the warmth.” She pulled his ungloved hand down to a six-inch gap between the slush and the bottom of what appeared to be a portal that had been jammed in a semi-open position. More of the opening remained hidden by feet of semi-soft ice.
Jack instinctively recoiled as warm air brushed up and over his hand. He hesitated and then began digging at the base with gloved hands. In less than a minute, he had increased the six-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the ice by half a meter.
“Give me a hand here,” he said.
Five minutes later, they had dug a hole underneath the entryway large enough to crawl into and examine the interior. Jack dropped to his stomach, pulled himself underneath. He illuminated the space with his flashlight.