Polar Quest

‘Didn’t we already drink the one bottle you smuggled in back in December?’

Collins appeared in the doorway of the research wing with two coffee mugs filled with Great Western. ‘Yes, but then I found this while I was rummaging around in the wine cellar. Of course, we can’t just let it go to waste.’

Nedra and Collins tapped mugs and sipped the effervescent liquid.

‘Mmmm,’ Nedra purred.

‘And for our final meal here at LV, I’ve prepared some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.’

Nedra forced a smile. ‘Sounds delicious.’

‘I know,’ Collins said with a sigh, ‘but when we get to New Zealand, I’m taking you out for a great meal at the finest restaurant in Christchurch.’

‘I’d settle for a long hot bath, room service, and a week of passion in a five-star suite.’

‘I’ll see what I can – ’ Collins paused. ‘Do you hear that?’

A low distant rumble started to resonate through the station: the mechanical throb of engines.

‘Yeah,’ Nedra replied. ‘It sounds like the plane.’

‘They’re early. Something must’ve changed the schedule.’

‘The last weather report I saw looked fine, but I won’t complain if they get us home sooner.’

‘Your sandwich is in the kitchen. I’m going to go out and meet our ride.’

Collins climbed down to the lower level, donned his gear, and stepped through the air lock. Outside, the wind blew down steadily from the glacial highlands, and the drone of the plane’s engines thundered all around the station.

A cloud of powdery snow and ice crystals flared from the broad skis beneath the LC-130, billowing behind the plane like the dust trail behind a car on a dirt road. The plane grew larger as it approached, sliding down the icy runway, and finally came to a stop just short of the station. The pilot taxied the aircraft closer, then turned so that the tail ramp faced the station door.

The plane’s engines slowed, but kept running – it was too cold to risk shutting them off. As Collins walked over to the plane, the side door dropped to become a stair and a man dressed in a white hooded snowsuit quickly descended from the plane.

‘Kilkenny?’ Collins asked expectantly, but he was unable to discern the man’s identity.

Duroc reached out, grasped Collins’s offered hand, and yanked him forward with a violent jerk. Collins stumbled, tripping as he tried to regain his balance. Duroc pivoted at the waist and struck him in the temple with the palm of his hand, dislodging the goggles from the engineer’s face. Collins dropped to his knees as Duroc twisted his arm behind his back.

‘Cooperate, and you and your wife will live,’ Duroc said, pressing the barrel of a Glock 9mm pistol against Collins’s cheek. ‘Do you understand, Mr Collins?’

Collins nodded groggily, still dizzy from the blow. As he lifted his head, Collins saw five more men emerge from the plane, each dressed in white camouflage suits and cradling submachine guns.

‘Secure the station,’ Duroc ordered.

The soldiers approached cautiously, even though they didn’t expect any resistance. Their intelligence reports indicated that only Collins and his wife occupied LV Station and that neither was armed.

‘Nedra!’ Collins shouted as the soldiers swept into the air lock.

Duroc struck Collins on the side of the head with his pistol and the engineer collapsed to the ice, unconscious.

Four soldiers thundered up the spiral stair to the main level, then broke into two-man teams to check the hall-ways while the fifth man covered the stairs from the air lock.

‘Philip?’ Nedra called out from the kitchen.

She had just refilled her mug with champagne when a soldier swung around the edge of the doorway, his machine gun held shoulder high, the barrel and the man’s eyes locked on her face.

‘Hands on your head! Now!’ the soldier shouted.

Nedra slowly set the bottle on the counter and placed her hands behind her head.

‘I have the woman,’ the soldier called out, the thin wire of a lip mike curled around his cheek to the corner of his mouth.

Duroc glanced down at Collins’s prone body as he listened through his earpiece to the reports of his men inside the station. He checked his watch; less than thirty seconds had passed since he’d stepped out of the plane and the station was his.

‘Fouquet, Cochin,’ Duroc said into the tiny microphone nestled at the corner of his mouth.

‘Oui, Commander,’ both men replied.

‘Come outside and collect the other prisoner. Secure both in their sleeping quarters for interrogation.’

Overhead, the second LC-130 circled LV Station and began its descent. Duroc smiled, pleased with how well the mission was proceeding. If everything continued to develop according to his plan, no one would ever know they had been here.

5 JANUARY 31 Skier-98 (#ulink_fb2ea805-cc3f-589a-8214-33b9404a33e0)

‘Ten-minute warning,’ the pilot announced, his voice clear over the speakers imbedded in Kilkenny’s helmet.

‘Roger,’ Kilkenny replied.

The cargo hold of the LC-130 reverberated with a low steady drone. On her wings, four massive Allison engines beat the frigid air with the combined pulling power of fifteen thousand horses in a synchronized effort to keep the sixty-ton plane aloft. Designated Skier-98 by the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing, she was one of a handful of specialized heavy-lift aircraft servicing some of the coldest and most remote places on Earth. From October to March, Skier-98 plied her trade between New Zealand and Antarctica.

The hold of the Hercules was empty save for Kilkenny and the two crewmen who now stood on either side of the personnel door. All three men were breathing from portable oxygen systems, the air in the depressurized hold far too thin and cold at this altitude to sustain them.

Kilkenny’s presence on board was the direct result of some Pentagon muscle-flexing by the man in charge of the navy’s special warfare group and Kilkenny’s former commanding officer, Rear Admiral Jack Dawson. When Dawson learned of Kilkenny’s involvement with NASA’s project at Lake Vostok, the admiral used his considerable influence to quietly add an equipment test for the navy to the project task list.

Kilkenny stripped off the NSF-issue parka and stood in the center of the empty hold to stretch his muscles. The matte gray suit that covered his body like a second skin felt thin and light. Other than his face, which was concealed by a helmet, not a square inch of Kilkenny was exposed, and vulnerable points on his body were protected with molded panels of Kevlar.

The suit – called SEALskin by the company working with the navy to develop it – incorporated the latest in combat electronics, chemical and biological warfare protection, and exceptional thermal control. Under laboratory conditions, the suit had performed well, but Kilkenny’s old C.O. wanted to see just how well it would fare in more realistic settings. Antarctica, in Dawson’s mind, was the perfect place to see if SEALskin could keep a man warm.

The two crewmen in the hold with Kilkenny stared at him with puzzled disbelief. He didn’t blame them a bit, because he was about to attempt a HAHO (High-Altitude High-Opening) jump out the side of their plane at 35,000 feet and parachute onto the glacial ice below.‘I have contact with an inbound aircraft,’ the radar operator announced.

Sumner Duroc glanced down at the image on the radarscope. ‘Range?’

‘Eighty kilometers.’

‘Keep tracking.’

What intrigued Kilkenny about this jump, and the reason he agreed to do it, was the location; Antarctica was the only continent he had never parachuted onto. Only a few people had ever attempted a jump over the southernmost continent, and three of the most recent to do so became so disoriented with altitude sickness that they never opened their chutes and plummeted to their deaths at the South Pole.

‘Sixty-five kilometers and closing,’ the radar operator called out.