There were huge icebergs everywhere.
“Damn,” he said. “More than I figured for this time of year.”
She felt the Widgeon respond again as he shoved in more power and slipped safely over the back of an iceberg as big as a two-story house, then banked sharply left, right around another equally huge one, holding the fragile amphibian five to six feet above the icy surface at sixty knots.
Another large line of ice floes was just ahead, coming fast, and he popped up a few feet to see over the top. With the opposite end of the glacial lake approaching less than a quarter of a mile away and no room to turn around, Scott chopped the power once again and pushed the Widgeon over the top of another large chunk of ice, dropping the hull into the lake. He yanked back on the yoke, creating an impressive flare of water on both sides as the aircraft decelerated toward another large iceberg that sat just ahead and much too close.
April could see the angular facets of the iceberg in great detail now as it loomed in front of them. She could see the needle of the airspeed indicator still hovering above fifty miles per hour. There were no anchors to throw out or brakes to push, only the suction of the water as the aeronautical hull of the Widgeon slowly sank into the water and became hydrodynamic, killing the forward speed. It wasn’t happening fast enough.
We’re going to hit, April thought, the realization merely a fact to be stated. She leaned forward instinctively and buried her head on her knees, bringing her arms around her head, aware of a vague thought that maybe they would be slow enough to survive an inevitable impact with the ice wall ahead.
Time dilation took over, the feeling of time slowing down in the midst of a crisis reaching new heights. The seconds ticked by with agonizing sloth as she waited for impact, tensing her body, listening to the diminishing sound of the water pounding on the hull until it, too, had subsided.
A sudden quiet replaced the cacophonous sounds of seconds before, and still she waited as the Widgeon’s forward speed through the ice-laden lake all but exhausted itself, the kinetic energy ending with an anticlimactic thunk and a slight shudder as the nose bumped gently, harmlessly, into the ice.
April heard Scott exhale. A nervous burst of laughter followed, causing her to unfold quickly from her brace position and take stock of the reality that they’d survived.
“Wow!” he exclaimed.
“Wow, what?” she managed.
“I wasn’t sure we were going to stop in time. Whew!”
April looked at the twenty-five-foot-high iceberg soaring above their nose, words failing her for a few seconds.
“You okay?” Scott asked.
She turned to him, emotionally exhausted, and weakly flailed her right hand in the general direction of the iceberg. “Other than the fact that I think both the Air Force and you were just trying to kill me, yeah. Other than the fact that we’re sitting God knows where in the middle of an icy lake in which no sane pilot would have tried to land, and from which we won’t be able to take off. Yeah. Sure, Scott. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He grinned. “Quite a show, huh?”
She looked around again, out the windscreen and the windows on each side. The overcast above them was darkening.
“Scott, we’ll never get your airplane out of here, and if you haven’t noticed, it’s already nightfall.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re stuck! I mean, what do we do? It’s cold out there!”
He was nodding, a more appropriate look of seriousness crossing his face as he looked around. “Yeah, takeoff will be a challenge.”
“A challenge? How…? Where…?”
He was grinning again, and the expression fed her growing anger.
“Damn you! How are we going to get out of here? Huh? It’s nightfall, there are armed fighters trying to shoot us down, my family will think I’ve been killed, and…”
Scott reached out and tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.
“Don’t touch me!”
He withdrew his hand. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m serious, McDermott. What do you propose we do to survive, let alone get back? I was out here trying to help my dad, not give him a heart attack when he hears I’m missing.”
“April, calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m very calm. Considering what you just put us through, I’m incredibly, awesomely calm.”
“Then listen to me, okay?”
“Do I have a frigging choice?”
“Not really.”
She folded her arms, trying to retain some professional control. She was the client, after all. And for all his on-again, off-again help, she had apparently retained a maniac. “Go ahead.”
“I had a good reason for not complying with that fighter pilot’s orders, April.”
“I’d love to hear it,” she said, shaking her head.
“Whatever’s going on out here is very clearly a military project, and classified. Probably top secret classified.”
“So?”
“I’ve already told you I think whatever they’re doing is tied in to what happened to your dad. Remember?”
She nodded.
“Okay. If I had followed them back to Elmendorf like a good little pilot, not only would I be out of the ball game and unable to help you get a camera back on your old man’s plane, you’d be out of the game as well. Hell, they might even lock us both up for awhile.”
“You’re trying to tell me you almost got us killed to protect me?”
“And your mission, yes.”
She turned to him, nursing the scowl on her face. “You know, you’re so full of it, McDermott. You must think I’m a brainless bimbo.”
“No, I don’t think you’re brainless,” he said, almost under his breath.
“Oh. Just a bimbo, huh?”
“No, no, no! I misspoke. I don’t think you’re either a bimbo or brainless.”
“Right.”
“A real babe, perhaps,” he said with a smile.
April shot him a scathing look. “Enough of that!”
Both palms went in the air. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
She leveled an index finger at him, sighting along it as if it were a gun. “No, the real reason you ran from those fighters up there is very simple. No one tells Scott McDermott what to do. Right?”
“Now, wait…”
“Am I right?”
He sighed. “Okay, maybe a little of that is true, but, honestly—”
“Honestly? I’m not sure you know the meaning of that word.”
“Hey. Let me finish, okay?”
She paused, staring him down, before responding. “Go ahead.”
“The truth is, I was very irritated at their trying to ensnare me illicitly when I’d been surgically careful to stay out of their restricted area, and… just as I said… I knew if they’d grounded us, you’d never get the wreck videotaped. Besides, tonight told us a lot.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“April, that aircraft that almost hit us was coming out of their restricted area.”
“Were the fighters chasing us by mistake, then? You’re saying they should have been chasing the jet?”
He was shaking his head as her eyes flared in sudden understanding and her arms came unfolded. “Oh my God! You’re saying that jet was coming out of the restricted area because it was part of whatever they’re doing!”
“Exactly. He came out at an angle, but that’s where he came from.”
April sat back heavily. “And the same restricted zone was created on Monday night when my folks were there, but then it didn’t extend to the surface.”