“Yeah.”
“Why do you want to know about them?”
Alexis smiled. It was coy and quickly replaced with genuine surprise. “Don’t you see the similarities?”
“No.”
“They have a love for each other but their position keeps them apart. By your words, Genevieve is a jack of all trades on board the Maria Helena, whereas Tom is a pilot and in charge of deep sea operations.”
Sam smiled. “You think Tom and Genevieve are romantically attached?”
“No, not at all.” She grinned. “I know they are.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Those two would make the least likely of couples.”
“So you haven’t noticed then. What are you, blind?”
“Trust me,” Sam said. “Genevieve is a stunning woman, but she’s not interested in men currently. I can tell you that for a fact.”
“How could you possible know what she wants?” Alexis burst out with laughter. “Christ! She rejected you, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t just reject me, she rejected everyone. She’s been through a lot and the last thing she wants or needs right now is Tom Bower.”
“Why aren’t you happy for him?” Alexis asked.
“No, I’d be happy. She’s a great catch and he’s a great guy, but that doesn’t make it true.”
“The fact she rejected you doesn’t make it untrue.”
Sam never got the chance to argue his case. Up ahead, a yellow aircraft with a single propeller came into view on the horizon. It flew towards them just above the Taylor Valley. It was flying slowly, and Sam had no way of telling what it was until it got closer.
“We’ll need to have a raincheck on the debate.” Sam looked for anywhere to hide in the barren valley. “It looks like we have company.”
Alexis looked at the plane in the distance. “Any chance it’s a rescue plane coming to look for us?”
Sam shook his head. “Not a chance. There’s a rescue team at McMurdo Base and it uses a Sea King Helicopter.”
“So we’re in trouble.”
“It would appear so. Let’s hope it just wants to make a pass first to see who we are before it gets rid of us the same way it got rid of your friends back at the Pegasus.”
The plane flew directly towards them. It was the first time Sam got a better look at its double wings. Sam pushed the throttle fully forward and tried to cajole the hovercraft to beat its maximum speed.
Alexis looked up as it approached. “Is that a biplane?”
“Yeah, a de Havilland Hornet Moth,” Sam said. “Tom and I learned to fly on one of those.”
The biplane passed them and then made a wide turn and circled back in front of them. For a moment Sam thought it was going to keep going and simply report on their position. It then circled back again, dipped to the left and descended into the Taylor Valley — and flew directly towards them.
“What the hell’s it doing here?”
Sam watched as the biplane descended to mere feet off the valley’s floor. “Beats the hell out of me, but right now it looks like its pilot wants to play a game of chicken.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Alexis held on to the hovercraft’s stabilizing handles. “What will happen if that things hits us?”
“I have no idea. It’s probably light enough the damned thing will probably bounce off our inflated skirt.” Sam looked at the pilot’s eyes as he approached. The aircraft was coming in slow by modern aviation standards — probably about 75 knots at most.
“It’s not turning and there’s not a lot of room in the valley!”
“Jesus Christ!” Sam swerved the hovercraft to the left. A split second later the Tiger Moth increased its pitch and made a rapid climb. Sam hit the dashboard. “What the hell was that about?”
“I have no idea,” Alexis said.
Sam moved the steering wheel to return the hovercraft to its original direction, but nothing happened. He stared at the dashboard. The lights behind the instruments were no longer lit and none of the electronics worked.
He’d already seen the stone ventifact protruding from the ground ahead. There was nothing Sam could do to avoid it.
“Brace!” he yelled.
The hovercraft hit the smooth boulder at eighty-four miles an hour. Part of its skirt gripped the stone hard as it flew over the stone — sending the hovercraft rolling like a cartwheel until it came to a harsh rest in the middle of the valley.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Sam felt a small trickle of something warm running down his forehead. He smelt the acrid whiff of blood first, before tasting the salty iron on his top lip. He shoved a handful of tissues on his forehead and was relieved to feel it was only a minor laceration. Sam’s mind then turned to Alexis. He hadn’t heard a sound from her yet.
He dropped the tissues and tried to find her within the dust filled cabin of the hovercraft. Sam reached down and felt her hand grip his. “Alexis! You alive?”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m alive. You?”
“I’ll live.” Sam climbed to the bedding compartment behind the driver’s seat which was now upside down. He felt around and found his sniper rifle. “Let’s get out of this thing before that biplane comes around for a second look.”
Sam used the butt of the sniper rifle to break the glass panel in the side of the hovercraft and then climb out. Alexis followed a moment behind. Sam could already see the tiger moth approaching for a second fly over. It had circled around and was now descending into the Taylor Valley once more.
Alexis crouched behind the smooth boulder. “Will this thing protect us from whatever it is he’s shooting at us?”
Sam removed the casing of his M40A5 sniper rifle. He opened the bipod and mounted the rifle before attaching the magnified scope. With his right eye he stared at the approaching yellow aircraft until a clear view of the pilot came into its crosshairs. “Well that depends.”
“On what?”
Sam settled into a comfortable firing position. “On what they’re firing.”
Almost in response to his question, the pilot began spraying the hovercraft with a barrage of bullets from a hand held machinegun, which fell short by sixty or more feet. The distance was decreasing rapidly as the biplane approached. Sam breathed in and then slowly exhaled. Halfway through the process he paused, neither breathing in or out.
He squeezed the trigger.
Before the loud report from the sniper rifle was heard, Sam watched the pilot’s head obliterate into a spray of blood and bone. The tiger moth dipped and descended to the ground in a steep and uncontrolled dive past them. Ten feet off the ground its elevator changed position and the aircraft naturally tried to climb, failed, and then crashed into the ground fifty feet behind them. It slid along the rough surface of the valley’s floor before coming to rest with its wooden propeller being split into kindling as it struck the valley’s wall. There was no explosion and the entire thing remained eerily silent.
“Now what?” Alexis asked.
Sam shrugged. “Now we shoot a flare into the sky and hope to hell that Genevieve can still fly the Sikorsky Night Hawk.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
It took an hour for Genevieve to reach them with the Sikorsky Night Hawk and another two days for the Maria Helena to reach the Antarctic Solace inside the Weddell Sea. Sam had told Matthew that he didn’t care if it destroyed the 44,000 horse power twin diesels he wanted to reach the Antarctic Solace as soon as physically possible.
When the Antarctic Solace came into view, Sam noticed a pitch black battleship moored alongside. Large plumes of dark smoke permeated the horizon where three boiler towers from the battleship released pressure. At that distance, he couldn’t see a flag and hoped to hell it was one of his and not the enemy’s. He used the binoculars to get a better view of the Antarctic Solace. Mounted machineguns were now manned at several locations along her upper decks. Sam studied the men on watch. They wore the desert uniforms of the US Marine Corps. On their right shoulders a small image of the American flag proudly identified them as U.S. soldiers.