“Elise. Isn’t she really something?”
Alexis grimaced. “I think she’s a bit young for you, don’t you think?”
“Hey, I’m only thirty five!” Sam said. “And it’s not like that, anyway.”
“Really?” She didn’t believe him for a minute. “You two look very close. I saw you embrace her when she left, yet I failed to see you share the same sentiment with Tom?”
“We are very close. We’ve been through a lot together. It’s a long story. I love her, but not the way you’re thinking.”
“She’s easy on the eye.” Alexis looked skeptical. “Much less nerdy than I was expecting. How do you love her?”
“She’s more like my kid sister, or my adopted, overly intelligent child.”
“How old is she?”
“We think she’s in her early twenties, but it’s hard to tell.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“But she works for you? Come on, you must have her records on file?”
“Elise? No, she doesn’t work for me.”
“But you said…”
“I know what I said. The fact of the matter is Elise comes and spends time on board the Maria Helena because she feels like it. And in my line of work, there are periods of prolonged boredom filled with periods of craziness. We’re currently going through a long spell of craziness — so Elise stays around for the adventure. She doesn’t need the money — she just likes to see what happens next, I guess.”
“What’s her last name?”
“She doesn’t have one. Heck, I doubt very much if Elise is her first name, for that matter.”
“Does she have a passport?”
“Sure she does,” Sam said. “She just creates a new one, along with an entire past life, every time we enter a country.”
“Do you know what happened in her previous life?”
“How did she come to be living a life with no past, you mean?”
Alexis sat down in a chair. “Yes.”
“Her parents died and the government wanted her to do some work she wasn’t interested in — either because it didn’t stimulate her or because she didn’t believe it was the right thing. Either way, you can’t make a person like Elise do something she doesn’t want.”
“She worked for the government?”
Sam nodded. “Something like that.”
“I thought they could make anyone do what they wanted if it was in the interest of national security.”
“Not Elise. She just walked away.”
Alexis persisted. “And they didn’t try and stop her?”
“I’m sure they did, but it wouldn’t have helped. Elise is way too smart to get caught. As one of the greatest hackers of her generation, she just deleted every trace of her old life and created a new one.”
“How did you find her?”
“I didn’t. She tracked me down and when she did, I asked for her help. She’s spent the last few months aboard the Maria Helena.”
“She must be pretty smart.”
“Let me put it this way, she’s probably as smart as the rest of my crew combined and I only work with the brightest people in this industry."
Chapter Twenty Five
The Maria Helena dropped anchor in the McMurdo Sound. To the west Mount Erebus, the active volcano, stood silently dominating Ross Island at nearly twelve and a half thousand feet. Half a mile to the south, the sea confronted the Ross Ice Shelf, an impenetrable wall of ice. Just back from it a tourist ship with the words Frozen Magic written in purple lettering on her hull, rested at anchor. She was the only other vessel still inside McMurdo Sound so close to the oncoming winter, and along with the Maria Helena took the enormous risk of becoming locked in the freezing sea. To the south-east the transantarctic ranges filled the horizon with their imposing and majestic heights. They provided a strange contrast to every other high altitude mountain scenery in the world, because in Antarctica, where snow is ubiquitous, the high peaks were the only places barren of snow.
The water in the bay was icy still and crystal clear; the morning light fixed in a permanent dull gray, which they’d become accustomed to seeing. Sam breathed the fresh air which seemed infinitely pure and unaffected by the manmade pollution that now seemed more than a world away. A sound like the crack of thunder disrupted the otherwise serene environment, as the Maria Helena’s earlier bow wave caused a piece of ice the size of a five story building to break free of the Ross Ice Shelf and crash into the otherwise tranquil waters of the McMurdo sound.
Sam loaded a bag of food and medical supplies into the hovercraft. He checked that the additional fuel tanks, strapped to every spare place on board were filled completely and each intact. Even with the hovercraft’s recently installed long range fuel tanks an additional fourteen fuel containers would be required to reach the Pegasus station. Once there, Alexis assured him the science station would have plenty of fuel for the return trip. The hovercraft would be tested to its limits for endurance on this trip. He confirmed the antifreeze had been added to each container to prevent any deadly ice crystals from forming. “That’s our cue. Time to go, Alexis.”
Alexis slid inside the small hovercraft into the passenger compartment that Sam had occupied less than twenty four hours earlier, when Tom had rescued him. “I’m good to go.”
Matthew placed his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m giving you three days. Find the Pegasus and get back here. I hope you appreciate we’re in deep trouble here. Someone’s gone to great lengths to kidnap those passengers, and if the Secretary of Defense is telling you to be frightened, for once I suggest you listen to her.”
“I’m with you on this, Matthew.” Sam grinned. He’d never learned that some things were out of reach. “Whoever’s responsible for this don’t know where the Pegasus is, but they’ll be out there. I’m hedging my bet that we can find the scientists before Randy Olsen’s men find us.”
“You know you’re on your own if something goes wrong?”
“That’s not true. Alexis’s with me — and she grew up in Oregon, so she’s a pretty good shot. And we’ve got the radio.”
“Lot of good that’s going to do for you. What if we have another ionization storm and the radio goes dead?”
“We’ve got rocket flares.” Sam held up a bag of four red flares. The type that are launched by a rocket and send a red flash several hundred feet in the air, akin to the flash of fireworks at an altitude anyone onboard the Maria Helena would see. “If you see it, you know it means we lost the race and we need help.”
“What if you’re already on the other side of the mountains?”
“Then, we’ve already lost everything,” Sam replied.
“How do you expect Genevieve and I to come to your assistance?”
“Take the Sikorsky,” Sam suggested, looking at the helicopter.
“I thought something in its engine was still frozen?”
“Veyron wrapped her for freezing condition and installed a heater while Tom and I were stuck in the fake Pegasus station. She’s been slowly thawing over the past three days.”
Matthew shook his head. “Why don’t you take the Sikorsky instead of the hovercraft?”
“Because I checked on her systems an hour ago and there’s a couple of parts I can’t confirm aren’t frozen, so I don’t want to risk it — unless I have to.”
“Unless we have to, you mean?”
“Sure,” Sam replied, with his usual noncommittal insouciance.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Unless you forgot, I’m one of the best skippers you’ll ever meet, but I can’t fly a helicopter.”