Exit Alpha (22 page)

‘It’s how Wolf set it up. Bodyguards are trained to do it. Soldiers know they might have to.’

‘But I expect she hoped that . . .’ She wiped her face.

Pat squirmed in the wheelchair. The sustained-release morphine tablets couldn’t cope with pain peaks so she was self-injecting when she needed it. Tomorrow a Beta doctor had agreed to let her drift off. The kindest way. DEATH IS AN ASPECT OF LIFE.

Rhonda said, ‘I need to look at the sea for a while. Will you come or is the pain too bad?’

‘I’ll give it a burl. You’ll have to hoist me into the car.’

Rhonda drove her to the beach, a deserted stretch south of Beaumaris, got her out of the car and supported her so she could walk. Her shoes, sinking in sand, seemed not attached to her at all. She clung to the big woman, feeling her affection and strength.

Rhonda eased her to the sand, sat heavily beside her, stared out to sea twirling a lock of hair around her finger. Her hair had gone completely grey in a year. ‘What we’ve come to.’

‘Chin up. Good for the neuro-bloody-peptides.’

‘I’m going to miss . . . your tmesis.’

‘My what?’

‘The way you split words with “bloody”.’

She felt love for the marvellous woman. So heroic, yet so British she dared not express affection in words.

‘I’ll miss you too, love.’ She hugged her. ‘But never say die. God, why do I say that when they’re putting me down tomorrow?’

Small breakers crumped on the shore. Two seagulls faced the wind like boats in a storm. A lone fisherman further up the beach was driving a plastic pipe into the sand to make a stand for his rod. It was all so matter-of-fact. The world didn’t care at all, she thought. The world never cared, just went on. And when people died, events closed over them as if they’d never been.

She plucked the scarf close about her head. Waves of pain were coming back. ‘Well, we’ve given it a good bloody go. Wolf’d be proud of us, you know. And you could still win out. Except I won’t be around to see it.’

‘Time,’ Rhonda grunted, ‘the teacher that kills its pupils. Talk about adding calamity to disaster.’ She glared at the waves, her strong face haggard with grim lines. ‘Look at us. Two ghastly old clackers . . .’

‘. . . who’ve been steering the world together.’

That made her smile. Then the frown came back. ‘So it’s Vanqua. His anhedonia once inspired my irrational pity. He may live in a cloud of blight but I pity the bugger no more.’

‘At least you know it’s him.’

‘But why this stupid, pointless vendetta?’

‘Search me.’

Rhonda stared out to sea. ‘I can’t promise you Ray will survive. There’s a chance they’ll get him too.’

‘Won’t he suss the tip-off?’

‘Yes. But probably too late.’ The big woman picked up a strand of dried seaweed. ‘You . . . love him, don’t you?’

‘Much as I’ve loved any bloke. Thank God he can’t see me now.’ She stared at the buffeted seagulls, salt air on her skin, salt tears on her face. ‘He owes me a thousand bucks, the bastard. Funny to think I’ve . . . I’ve had the only time with him there was.’

Rhonda grunted, ‘I loved someone once.’ The words seemed torn out of her. ‘Most dangerous thing in the world.’ She wrenched the seaweed apart.

T
he high penetrating whine of the Hercules was getting on Cain’s nerves. The quip was that Lockheed had solved the aircraft’s noise problem by putting it inside the fuselage.

He stood at the starboard side paratroop door, staring out the small window, wondering about the icebreaker. He’d spotted the red-painted ship thrusting through the pack ice. Normal enough. What wasn’t normal was the tower. Ahead of its chopper landing deck, dominating the superstructure, was a column like a king-post that rose even higher than the funnel. Some kind of antenna? No. Far too strongly built. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have helped stability. The smooth-bottomed vessels rolled badly and seas down here could be huge.

He was wearing his inner gloves but had his hands in his parka pockets. The floor and skin of the hold felt like the inside wall of a freezer. The bird was pressurised, air conditioned. But it was colder back here. All the web-type folding seats along the sides of the aircraft were occupied by people from Beta — Department D technicians, research assistants, maintenance types. They’d told him they were the last to leave before the department was dismantled. They’d heard that D personnel worldwide were being recalled and sent south to the ice.

As a recently deployed agent he was one of them but had no firm information. He presumed Rhonda was already at Alpha. He’d asked after Pat but no one knew. So here he was, still dancing his strange history but glad about one thing. The pope would have been sent down, too. It meant the chance to see him again.

He stared down at the glare. Even at this height you needed sunglasses. The enormous, isolated icebergs he’d seen for some time were gone. Now floes and spreading pack ice made an unrelieved expanse of white. So beautiful. So treacherous. He’d never thought to see this again.

Karen Hunt emerged from the curtain-shrouded ‘honey pot’, her perfect body hidden by cold-weather gear. He watched her work her way forward unsteadily between the passengers and the palletised net-shrouded stores. She’d said nothing since coming on board and he’d stayed out of her way. He could imagine what she was feeling. If she wanted to talk, she would.

The transport lurched and banked. At this point, its magnetic instruments would be erratic and the crew would be concentrating on INS, radalt, probably GPS — if the third could be relied on. He’d heard there were dead spots on the continent and it depended where you were. Solar activity and ionospheric reaction compromised HF radio transmissions as well.

He moved back to his seat near the fuselage tanks, and ate the last muesli bar in his food pack. His digestion was back to normal, his body eighty per cent of what it had been. He was still prone to headaches, a little slow in his speech. He still limped but his left hand had come good.

He fiddled with his earplugs. The long, noisy flight had made him tired. A standard Herc flight would now be controlled by the Ice Tower at McMurdo. But the old EXIT four-fan trash can didn’t have that option. No aid. No support. No PAR at the open-snow high-altitude Alpha runway. And they might have to land in one of the blizzards that, down here, sprang from nowhere. But then you only flew for EXIT if content with a short and thrilling life.

He tried to doze but couldn’t. Restless, he climbed to the executive suite. Through the greenhouse of windows he saw a vast sheet of snow formed into wave shapes. He plugged in a spare headset, pointed down. ‘Did wind do that?’

‘It’s not there,’ the right-hand seat said. ‘Just shadows from the cloud layer.’

‘What’s weather like at Alpha?’ he croaked. The low humidity had dried his throat.

‘Crud. Crosswind with rotten visibility.’

It wasn’t good to land with drift. The C–130 landing-gear/ski-system conversion depended on complicated mechanicals and hydraulics. Side-stress could collapse it.

The navigator was using a periscope sextant, not quite sixteenth-century stuff but getting there. There was no en-route radar on the continent. Antarctica was one hell of a place to point an aircraft. Cain moved behind the engineer who was checking warning lights. ‘How’s she taking it?’

‘Not bad for an old lady over thirty.’

‘You’re lugging lots of juice. Fuselage tanks, external tanks . . .’

‘We’re topping up JP8 at Alpha.’

He ditched the headset and climbed back down the ladder, hoping the ‘A’ factor wouldn’t kill them.

As they descended through buffeting winds and instability the head loadie checked his human cargo, seeing that everyone was kitted up and had a balaclava on under his hood. Cain peeked through one of the small windows. Nothing but the white haze they needed to get under. There were rudimentary markings and approach lights on the snow. And the ARA. That was it.

He sat in the drumming fuselage imagining the tenseness on the flight deck. The passengers seemed trusting. For most it was their first time south. He braced, waiting for the jolt, his little knowledge a disquieting thing.

They lucked it in — touched, pounded, then taxied for a while to dissipate the heat of the skis and prevent them welding to the deck. It was no fun digging skis out and meant shutting down inboard engines. He waited for the arse to open, for the shock of the frigid air.

Back in the big white.

What now?

T
he reception committee were anonymous shapes with faces covered against wind chill. They lumbered about in the katabatic wind, shouting instructions.

He and Hunt were told to wait while the rest were marched off. Then they were directed around a cargo sledge at the back of the plane. In five layers and 10 kilograms of clothing it was a struggle just to move and the effort of walking against wind carrying a duffel bag made him breathless. This wasn’t the coast but the high plateau and being dumped in this thin air was murder.

As he puffed around the high orange and black striped tail he glimpsed a similarly painted Hagg. The Hagglunds — a Swedish four-track-drive all-terrain vehicle — was parked front-to-wind to prevent the doors blowing off.

They slung their gear on the back seat and Cain left Hunt there with the luggage. He got out and climbed in the front to sit opposite the driver. Thankfully the heat exchanger was working. The man engaged the transmission and the rubber tracks churned snow.

They passed the other passengers trudging along a flag line — staggering in their survival gear, leaning against the blow. They were taking them toward the fuel farm. Why? Had they built pre-fabs there?

As they churned toward the entrance he tried a diplomatic ploy — floated an exploratory comment. ‘This is some business. How many down here now?’

The driver didn’t reply. Ominous. Cain glanced back at Hunt and saw she was wary, too.

The driver stopped at the entrance ramp. ‘Report to Vanqua at Command — immediate.’

They got out and the Hagg moved off.

The base was a lot deeper than in the old days when he’d been here. Newer ones were built on stilts to handle snow accumulation because older designs were progressively being buried. He slung his bag over his shoulder and followed Hunt beneath the dome to the guardhouse.

As they were processed, an addition to the rigmarole surprised him. They were relieved of their weapons. New orders, they were told.

Cleared, they crunched past familiar insulated metal buildings with small perspex box air-trap windows and thick doors secured by large levers — cool rooms that kept cold out, not in. They passed ops, the accomm block, the warm store, then entered the arched tunnel that led to the staff Command Centre. On the way he cautiously asked her, ‘Know anything about this deal?’

‘I know Ron’s down here. I know I’ll be crucified.’

But did she know about the sabotage — that she’d been spiked from inside EXIT? He doubted it.

Sound travelled in this place and there were pick-ups everywhere. He pointed to one wired beneath a pipe and was relieved to see her nod.

They reached Command annexe and got out of their freezer suits. It took minutes to de-ice and shed layers. When they entered the vestibule, Rhonda was waiting to greet them and he was surprised to see her hair was now completely grey. She looked haggard, worn, and her eyes were unnaturally bright.

Hunt glanced at her, biting her lip.

The big woman merely nodded.

Cain, more favoured, received a perfunctory hug. ‘Welcome, acclaimed campaigner. You look almost back to normal.’

‘Don’t feel it.’

‘Perfectly understandable. Right. Good egg.’

He found the silly-arse expression odd. ‘So what’s going on here?’

‘Incarceration, ordered by Vanqua. I’ve been relieved of command.’ She saluted the short corridor that led to his office door. ‘We active verbs are now separated by — not from — our auxiliaries.’

Hunt’s seamless frown. ‘Did you get my report?’

‘I did.’

‘And . . .’

‘Treachery, no doubt, by one with affections dark as Erebus.’

Was it a reference to the continent’s volcano? Hunt’s frown deepened as she tried to isolate the message from the medium.

‘Is John here?’ Cain asked.

‘In Block B.’

‘I can see him?’

‘You’ll have to ask our new master.’

‘What about Zia?’

‘He’s also down here, still breathing. The UK still haven’t signed off on him.’

A door opened at the end of the corridor and a tall man with sandy hair came through.

Hunt froze.

Zuiden. He grinned at Cain. ‘Hello, shitface.’ Then leered at Hunt. ‘And the super-bitch.’ He brushed past them like a favoured employee gloating over workmates who’d been fired.

They entered Vanqua’s office and the mournful surgeon CO rose to greet them. His immaculate sweater was hand-knitted and he still had the trademark tan. Be interesting, Cain thought, to see the meticulous one wintering over — to watch his skin become sallow, see him suffer from insomnia . . .