Beneath the Ice (14 page)

‘All of you,’ Luca called, ‘get your down jackets and trousers on now.’

‘We haven’t got trousers,’ Joel replied, rummaging in his rucksack. ‘Only these.’

He pulled out a crumpled jacket, the fabric already covered in a layer of wet snow. Luca could immediately see it was made by one of the cheaper brands, with only a thin fill of protective down feathers.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, taking it from Joel’s grasp and dusting off some of the snow. He knew that as their guide it was his responsibility to have checked their clothing before leaving, but thanks to Dedov’s urging it had all happened in such a chaotic stampede. He cursed, already wondering what else he had overlooked.

‘So this is it? Your only insulation layer?’ he asked. Joel nodded.

‘OK, put ’em on. But for Christ’s sake, keep moving. You have to keep your core temperature up.’

As Luca spoke, Katz nodded vaguely as if the instructions were for the benefit of someone else. After a moment more he clumsily moved towards his rucksack and begun fumbling with the clips. Each took him twice as long as normal to open, and Luca could already see how close to hypothermia the man was.

Moving nearer, Luca saw that all the venom had drained from Katz’s expression, to be replaced by a kind of lost bewilderment. His eyelids were half-closed as he desperately fought wave after wave of tiredness. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a moment, but if he did it would be a sleep from which he would never awaken.

Taking his own down jacket and trousers out of his rucksack, Luca zipped them over Katz’s frame, sealing the Velcro flaps tight. He had used both on Everest years before and knew how warm and restorative the down was, trapping every last trace of body heat beneath its thick layers. The only drawback was that the clothing was so bulky it made it almost impossible to do anything while wearing it. But, as Luca looked across at Katz and watched him slowly sway from side to side, he realised that the scientist was long past doing anything meaningful anyway.

Finally turning to survey the rest of the drill site, Luca saw the two Ski-Doos Joel had mentioned parked a little way off. Both had had their windshields snapped off during a previous storm, while the nearest one had been rolled on to its side by the wind. It lay with its tracks up, the snow around it stained yellow by the fuel leaking from its tanks.

‘We need to check that those are working,’ he shouted.

‘Andy’s the man,’ Joel replied, causing him to glance up. He was sitting a few feet away with his body curled up into itself, arms wrapped around his knees.

‘We have to get the gen-set working first,’ he managed, glancing towards the generator. ‘Then I’ll take a look.’

‘OK,’ Luca said. ‘Come on, everyone. Keep moving.’

With an audible groan, Andy pulled himself on to his feet and set off towards the neighbouring container, while Joel and Luca swung Katz’s arms over their shoulders and moved off towards the drill tower. As they staggered forward they passed scores of empty kerosene barrels, half-concealed beneath the blowing snow. Now that he was aware of them, Luca could see more barrels littered over the entire site in vague and dirty piles. The Russians had simply drained their contents then discarded them without further thought. To them, the prize was the pristine water hidden within the lake. The surface surrounding it was just another part of Antarctica, and to be treated as such.

‘Animals,’ Joel said, kicking the nearest barrel as he passed. It gave a hollow clang.

‘Fuel for the generator?’ Luca asked.

‘No, they use it to lubricate the borehole and stop the ice from re-freezing. Just wish they didn’t leave the site like a complete shithole.’ He paused, straining under the weight of Katz on his arm. ‘Guess the main thing is that they didn’t contaminate the lake itself.’

Luca moved closer, his face tilting sideways against the wind.

‘So how do you stop the kerosene going back down the pipe and into the lake?’

‘They plug the bottom with an inert liquid called Freon then do the last section with a heated drill bit,’ Joel shouted. ‘They may be a bunch of complete piss heads, but when it comes to this kind of stuff, the Russians are the best in the world.’

Reaching the main tower, he helped Katz sit down on one of the scaffolding supports, where he was part-sheltered from the wind.

‘I’m all right,’ Katz breathed, the extra warmth of the down clothing already starting to restore him a little. He then nodded towards the seal plate covering the borehole.

‘Come on, Joel. Get it open.’

As Joel began hooking up the main winch cables from the tower, Luca stared into Katz’s face, amazed to see the change in him. A spark had returned to his eyes and instead of the usual contempt, the prospect of completing years of scientific research had given rise to a new emotion – excitement.

‘Three years,’ Katz said, his voice just cutting above the wind. ‘Three years of research and only now do we get to see what’s down there.’

He leant forward as if trying to peer down the borehole and catch sight of the water within.

‘This is like exploring another planet,’ he said, ‘except this one’s our own. If we find life down there, it’ll be over twenty million years old.’

It was all the affirmation Joel needed. As he connected the last of the steel cables, he gave a loud whoop.

‘What do you think twenty-million-year-old water tastes like, Katzy?’ he joked as he engaged the gearing in the tower and the seal was raised from the ground with a low hiss. Luca stared from Joel’s excited face to the very ordinary-looking five-inch borehole he had just exposed, marvelling at how abstract a scientist’s emotions could be.

Katz gave a thin smile, his chin just visible above the fold of his jacket. ‘At the amount this extraction cost, that’d be an expensive glass of water.’

Joel’s smile widened. As excited as he himself was, he was amazed to see the change in his team mate’s attitude. While he continued working there was a low rumble from behind them, and Joel turned to see that Andy had got one of the Ski-Doos working. They heard the engine rev a few times before he drove over to join them at the tower.

‘Does the other one run?’ Luca called across to Andy as he pulled to a halt.

‘Got to refuel it, but it doesn’t look too bad.’

Before going back to work, Andy came and joined the others for a moment. Standing side by side, they stared at the top of the borehole. Each of them could sense a new energy in the group. It was palpable, as if they had all been given another chance to start their relationships afresh.

Twenty minutes later, the first of the yellow piping had been fed through the main calibres on the tower and was being lowered into the ice. It slowly unravelled, descending metre after metre into the depths of the glacier like the body of a giant snake.

Andy, Joel and Katz went about their tasks in near silence, only shouting above the wind to give a quick order or to instruct each other in some way. They were all entirely focused on the job in hand, ignoring the steadily building wind and the fog of blowing snow. They all knew that this was it – the culmination of years of research – and worked with the exactitude of professionals.

Joel had taken a Panasonic Tough Book laptop from his rucksack and plugged it into the sensor panel by the main generator housing. He crouched in the shadow of the wind, every once in a while using the thumb of his gloves to wipe the screen free from the blowing snow. He had pushed his goggles up on to his forehead, wedging them over his sweatband as he peered at the raw data being fed back from the pipe’s nozzle sensors.

As they worked, Luca suddenly remembered to check his watch. He cursed, realising that he was twenty minutes late for his scheduled call. He pulled the battery from a breast pocket of his warm thermal layer and quickly clipped it in place at the back of the satellite phone. He could just hear the electronic dial tone above the howl of the wind. As soon as it connected to GARI, he shouted down their coordinates. Sergei the radio operator barely had enough time to note them down before Luca signed off and cut the line again. His fingers were too cold for him to waste time on relaying anything other than the most vital information.

Another hour went by before Joel shouted across to Andy to slow the pipe’s descent. The sound of the generator lowered a pitch as, a few seconds later, Andy shut off the reel and the massive pipe wheel clunked to a halt. Joel craned his neck, face only an inch from the blurry screen as he double-checked that they had passed the Freon barrier and that the end filter was now in the waters of the lake.

‘Watch the pressure!’ Katz barked. ‘Don’t let it spike.’

Far from annoyed at being given such an order, Andy only nodded. Any pressure surge, even a minor one, could blast the Freon liquid back up the pipe and contaminate their samples.

‘Ready?’ Katz shouted, holding his arm up as if about to start a race. He had already taken from his rucksack three stainless-steel cylinders about a foot long and laid them by the side of the piping container. These were the sterile collection tubes, and screwing the first on to a custom-built tap on the end of the flow pipe, Katz turned to Joel for confirmation.

‘Wait,’ Joel shouted. He wiped the screen again, obviously hesitant to give such an order.

Katz didn’t hurry him. They all just stared across the driving snow, knowing that everything depended on the next few seconds.

‘OK!’ Joel said, finally nodding his head. ‘Go!’

Andy increased the pressure and the generator gave a low rumble. The minutes passed as they waited for the first of the water to rise through the pipe. Katz hovered by the sample tubes, eyes switching between the dials on the extraction board and the pipe running into the ice. Luca watched the absolute concentration on his face. His gloves were off as he double
-
then triple-checked the freezing metal cylinders, but he was anaesthetised to the cold. Everything depended on the next few seconds.

‘Hundred feet,’ Joel shouted, watching the rising liquid displayed on his laptop. ‘Ready?’

‘Set,’ Katz shouted over his shoulder.

‘Twenty. Ten,’ Joel counted down. ‘Watch that pressure, Andy.’

A red light lit up on the extraction board as the first sample of liquid was transferred into the cylinder. There was a pause, then the light switched to green. With well-practised dexterity, Katz carefully unscrewed the first cylinder and replaced it with the second. As he held it in his grasp, there was a wistful smile on his lips as his arms silently registered the new weight of the cylinder as if unable to believe that the lake water was truly within. The second cylinder was filled, then the third, before Katz signalled to Andy to lower the pressure once again.

Katz swivelled the last cylinder in his hand, checking the thermostat and the quantity gauge. Eight hundred and seven millilitres of lake water was contained within, holding at an ambient temperature of 1.7 degrees Centigrade.

‘It’s stable!’ he beamed, clutching the cylinder in his hands as if it were a trophy. Beside him, Andy opened a foam-packed Pelican case and, one by one, they placed the samples inside.

‘OK,’ Luca shouted. ‘Get the pipe out of the ground and let’s start sealing it off.’

Andy quickly scurried back to the main reel and, a few seconds later, the process was reversed and the pipe began to rise once more. Each man watched the ascent with arms clamped against their bodies for warmth, while the reel turned and turned. It was tortuous, the machine working at the same unhurried pace, oblivious to the rising wind that surged all around them now. Each gust was stronger than the last, making them stagger forward a few paces just to regain their balance.

Luca stared at his watch. The storm had advanced far more quickly than any of the forecasts had suggested and already they were dangerously behind schedule. He thought back to Dedov’s assurance that he would never risk one of his own men out in such weather and cursed the hollowness of the words. Why had Luca allowed himself to be seduced by the base commander’s shallow praise and empty reassurances?

The ground snow was rising higher now, almost to chest height, and as Luca looked down towards his feet, he could see only a swirling outline through the maelstrom. It was as if his lower body were little more than an apparition. The storm was advancing rapidly. One more hour and they’d be right in its teeth.

Then came a squall that seemed to last longer than the others. The noise rose louder, shrieking suddenly as the full impact of the wind sent them all collapsing forward, on to their knees. The main drill tower swayed, the reinforced steel resisting the wind with every nut and bolt, but it was not enough. The running calibres became misaligned, dragging the piping against the sidewall of the borehole.

‘Shut it down!’ Katz bellowed, wagging his arm towards Andy. The generator lowered in pitch as Andy stepped closer to the tower to inspect the damage.

‘Shit!’ he shouted, stepping up on to the first of the steel girders.

‘Can you fix it?’ Katz asked desperately.

Andy pulled himself closer and, dragging his goggles up from his head, stared hard for several seconds before turning back. ‘Yeah, but it’s going to take time.’

He jumped down and turned to Luca. ‘It’ll take a couple of hours at least.’

Luca shook his head. ‘We don’t have that long. Will it still work even if you just drag it up?’

‘Yeah, but we’re going to knacker the entire gearing.’

Luca stepped towards him. ‘Gearing?’ he shouted. ‘You’ve got to understand something. The storm is on us. Right now! And even with the Ski-Doos working properly, we’re going to struggle to make shelter.’

Checking his watch, he pointed towards the tower. ‘You’ve got thirty minutes, then I’m pulling the plug.’

Katz’s objections were drowned out by the howling wind as Andy ran across to the generator housing. With a low, graunching sound the reel began trailing upwards once more. He then moved back to the tower, standing almost directly above the pipes, and watched every inch move through the calibres. As he gripped on to the freezing metal of the drill tower for support, he was exposed to the full force of the wind.