Atlantis Found (55 page)

“Pretty nice today, with no wind. Last I looked, it was fifteen degrees below zero.”

“At least I won’t have to send for ice cubes for my tequila,” said Pitt.

The domed building, which was 80 percent covered with ice, protruded only five feet above ground. The living and working quarters were a maze of rooms and corridors hacked under the ice. Cash led them into the dining area next to the kitchen and ordered them a hot lunch of lasagna from the station cook before producing a half-gallon bottle of Gallo burgundy. “Not fancy, but it hits the spot,” he said, laughing.

“All the comforts of home,” mused Giordino.

“Not really,” Cash said, with a grim smile. “You have to be mentally deficient to want to live this life.”

“Then why not take a job somewhere with a milder climate?” asked Pitt, noticing that all the men he’d seen at the station were bearded and the women had forsaken makeup and coiffures.

“Men and women volunteer to work in polar regions because of the excitement of pursuing a dangerous job exploring the unknown. A few come to escape problems at home, but the majority are scientists who pursue the studies of their chosen expertise regardless of where it takes them. After a year, they’re more than ready to return home. By that time, they’ve either turned into zombies or they’ve begun to hallucinate.”

Pitt looked at Cash. He didn’t have a haunted look in his eyes, at least not yet. “It must take strength of character to subsist in such a bleak environment.”

“It begins with age,” Cash explained. “Men under twenty-five lack reliability, men over forty-five lack the stamina.”

After waiting patiently for a few minutes, while Pitt and Giordino ate most of their lasagna, Cash finally asked, “When you contacted me from Argentina, did I hear right when you said you wanted to cross the ice shelf to Okuma Bay?”

Pitt nodded. “Our destination is the Destiny Enterprises mining operation.”

Cash shook his head. “Those people are security fanatics. None of our scientific expeditions ever got within ten miles of the place before being chased off by their security goons.”

“We’re quite familiar with the goons,” said Giordino, relaxing after filling his stomach.

“What did you have in mind for transportation? We have no helicopter here.”

“All we’ll need is a couple of snowmobiles,” Pitt said, looking into Cash’s face. The expression in the ice station chief’s eyes was not encouraging.

Cash looked pained. “I fear you two have flown a long way for nothing. Two of our snowmobiles are in maintenance, waiting for parts to be flown in. And the other four were taken by scientists to study the ice around Roosevelt Island north of here.”

“How soon before your scientists return?” asked Pitt.

“Not for another three days.”

“You have no other transportation?” asked Giordino.

“A bulldozer and a ten-ton Sno-cat.”

“What about the Sno-cat?”

Cash shrugged. “A section of one track shattered from the cold. We’re waiting for a part to be flown in from Auckland.”

Giordino looked across the table at his friend. “Then we have no choice but to fly in and hope we find a place to land.”

Pitt shook his head. “We can’t risk jeopardizing the special force mission by dropping in out of the blue. I had hoped that with snowmobiles we might have covered the distance, parked them a mile or two away from the mining compound, and then crept in unobserved.”

“You fellas act like it’s a matter of life or death,” said Cash.

Pitt and Giordino exchanged glances and then both looked at the station chief, their faces set in grave expressions. “Yes,” Pitt said severely, “it’s life and death to more people than you can possibly conceive.”

“Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“Can’t,” Giordino answered simply. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to know. It might ruin your entire day.”

Cash poured a cup of coffee and contemplated the dark liquid for a few moments. Then he said, “There is one other possibility, but it’s highly improbable.”

Pitt stared at him. “We’re listening.”

“Admiral Byrd’s Snow Cruiser,” Cash announced, as if he was launching a lecture, which indeed he was. “A jumbo four-wheel-drive, larger than any vehicle built in her day.”

“When was that?” Giordino queried.

“Nineteen thirty-nine.” There was a pause. “It was the inspiration of Thomas Poulter, a polar explorer, who designed and built a monstrous machine he hoped could carry five men and his pet dog to the South Pole and back. I guess you might call it the world’s first really big recreational vehicle. The tires alone were over three feet wide and more than ten feet in diameter. From front to back, it measured fifty-six feet long by twenty feet wide and weighed thirty-seven tons fully loaded. Believe you me, she’s some vehicle.”

“She sounds overly elaborate,” said Pitt, “for a vehicle designed to travel to the South Pole.”

“She
was
that. Besides a grand control cabin raised on the front, it had its own machine shop, living quarters for the crew, and a galley that also performed double duty as a photographer’s darkroom. The rear end housed storage space for a year’s supply of food, spare tires, and enough fuel for five thousand miles of travel. Not only that, she was supposed to have carried a Beechcraft airplane with skis on her roof.”

“What did such a monster use for power?”

“Two one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower diesel engines linked to four seventy-five-horsepower electric traction motors, which could feed power to all or any one of the wheels individually. The wheels could all be turned for a crabbing movement and sharp turns, and even retract when crossing a crevasse. Each wheel alone weighed six thousand pounds. The tires were twelve-ply and made by Goodyear.”

“Are you saying this gargantuan machine not only still exists, but is available?” asked Pitt incredulously.

“Oh, she exists, but I can’t say she’s available or that she could travel across sixty miles of the ice shelf. Sixty miles may not seem like much distance, but after the Snow Cruiser was completed, shipped to the Antarctic, and unloaded at Little America Three, not far from this station, her designer’s best-laid plans went down the sewer. The engines had the power, but Poulter had miscalculated the gear ratios. The behemoth would do thirty miles an hour on a level road, but couldn’t pull her mass through ice and snow, especially up a grade. Given up as a white elephant, she was abandoned. In later years, she was covered over by the ice, lost, and forgotten. It was always thought that as the ice shelf moved toward the sea, the Snow Cruiser would eventually be carried away and dropped in the deep when the ice floe melted.”

“Where is she now, still buried under the ice?” Pitt inquired.

Cash shook his head and smiled. “The Snow Cruiser is about two miles from here, dangerously close to the edge of the ice shelf. A rich old mining engineer got it into his head to find and rescue the vehicle, then transport it back to the States for display in a museum. He and his crew discovered it thirty feet deep in the ice and spent three weeks digging it out. They built an ice tent around it, and the last I heard actually got it running.”

“I wonder if they’d let us borrow it?”

“Never hurts to ask,” said Cash. “But I think you’d do better selling a basset hound on eating broccoli.”

“We’ve got to try,” Pitt said firmly.

“You got Arctic clothing?”

“In the plane.”

“Better get it on. We’ll have to hike to where the Snow Cruiser sits.” Then Cash looked as though he’d suddenly thought of something. “Before I forget, I’ll have a couple of our maintenance men throw a cover over your plane and set up an auxiliary heater to keep your engines, fuel, and hydraulic systems warm and the ice off the fuselage and wings. Leave a plane set for a week and she’ll start to disappear under a buildup of ice.”

“Good idea,” Giordino acknowledged. “We may have to use it in a hurry if all else fails.”

“I’ll meet you back here in half an hour and I’ll lead you to the vehicle.”

“Who is the old guy who’s heading up the salvage operation?” asked Pitt.

Cash looked lost for a moment. “I don’t really know. He’s an eccentric cuss. His crew usually calls him ‘Dad.’ ”

 
WITH Cash in the lead, they walked a trail marked with orange flags across the ice for nearly an hour. After a while, Pitt could see figures moving about a large blue tent surrounded by a series of smaller orange polar tents. A light snow was falling and forming a thin white blanket over the tents. Strange as it seems, the Antarctic rarely experiences a heavy snow.

There was almost no wind, but not having yet built an immunity against the icy temperatures, Pitt and Giordino felt cold beneath their heavy Arctic clothing. The sun blazed through the remnants of the ozone layer, and the glare would have dazzled their eyes but for the darkly coated lenses of their glasses.

“It looks nice and peaceful,” said Pitt, taking in the majestic view of the landscape. “No traffic, no smog, no noise.”

“Don’t let it fool you,” Cash came back. “The weather can change into cyclonic hell in less time than you can spit. I can’t count all the fingers and toes that have been lost to frostbite. Frozen bodies are found on a regular basis. That’s why anyone who works in the Antarctic is required to provide a full set of dental X rays and wear dog tags. You never know when your remains will have to be identified.”

“Bad as that.”

“The windchill is the big killer. People have taken a short hike only to be overtaken by high winds that block out all vision, and they freeze to death before finding their way back to the station.”

They trudged the final quarter of a mile in silence, stepping over the crusted, wind-carved ice that thickened and compressed as it went deeper. Pitt was beginning to feel the tentacles of exhaustion, too little sleep, and the pressures of the past few days, but the thought of falling into a bed never occurred to him. The stakes were too high, fantastically so. Yet his step was not as energetic as it should have been. He noticed that Giordino was not walking lively, either.

They reached the camp and immediately entered the main tent. The initial sight of the Snow Cruiser stunned them almost as much as when they’d viewed the Wolfs’ gigantic ships for the first time. The great wheels and tires dwarfed the men working around them. The control cab that sat flush with the smooth front end rose sixteen feet into the air and brushed the top of the tent. The top of the body behind the cab was flattened to hold the Beechcraft airplane that had not been sent to Antarctica with the big vehicle back in 1940. It was painted a bright fire-engine red, with a horizontal orange stripe running around the sides.

The loud sound they had heard when approaching across the ice came from a pair of chain saws held by two men who were cutting grooves in the massive tires. An old fellow with gray hair and a gray beard was supervising the crude method of cutting tread into rubber. Cash stepped up to him and patted one shoulder to get his attention. The old man turned, recognized Cash, and gestured for everyone to follow him. He led the way outside and then into a smaller tent next door that contained the galley, with a small cookstove. He offered them chairs around a long folding metal table.

“There, that’s quieter,” he said, with a warm smile, as he stared through blue-green eyes.

“This is Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino with the National Underwater and Marine Agency,” said Cash. “They have an urgent mission for the government, and hope you can help them carry it out.”

“My name is a bit strange, so my crew, who are all forty years younger than I am, just call me Dad,” he said, shaking hands. “What can I do for you?”

“Haven’t we met before?” asked Pitt, studying the old man.

“It’s possible. I get around quite a bit.”

“The Snow Cruiser,” said Pitt, cutting to the heart of his request, “is it in any condition to drive to the South Pole?”

“That’s what she was built to do, but if you’d have asked that question sixty years ago, or even a week ago, I’d have said no. On dry land it proved a remarkable machine, but on the ice it was a dismal failure. For one thing, the tires were smooth and spun ineffectively without friction. And the gearing in the reduction unit was all wrong. Driving her up a slight hill was like an eighteen-wheeler semi and trailer attempting to pull a load up the Rocky Mountains in sixteenth gear. The engine would lug itself to death. By changing the gears and cutting treads in the tires, we think we can demonstrate that she might have lived up to expectations and actually reached the Pole.”

“What if she came up against a crevasse too wide for her to drive over?” inquired Giordino.

“Thomas Poulter, the cruiser’s designer and builder, came up with an ingenious innovation. The big wheels and tires were positioned close to the center of the body, which left an overhang front and rear of eighteen feet. The wheels were capable of retracting upward until they were level with the underside of the body. When the driver came to a crevasse, he lifted the front wheels. Then the rear-wheel traction pushed the forward section over the crevasse. Once the front wheels were safe on the opposite side, they were lowered. Finally, the rear wheels were retracted and the front then pulled the cruiser to the other side. A very ingenious system that actually works.”

“Where did you find sixty-year-old gears that would fit the reduction unit?”

“The unit, or transmission, was not the only one built. We analyzed the problem and how to fix it before we came down here. The original manufacturer is still in business and had a bin of old parts buried deep in their warehouse. Fortunately, they had the gears we needed to make the necessary changes.”

“Have you tested her yet?” asked Giordino.

“You’ve arrived at an opportune moment,” replied Dad. “In the next hour, we hope to run her out onto the ice for the first time since she came to rest in 1940, and see what she can do. And just in time, too. Another couple of weeks and the ice floe would have broken and carried her out to sea, where she would have eventually sunk.”