Frozen Solid: A Novel (31 page)

She remembered reading a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a climber, buried in an avalanche, who produced a turd, waited for it to freeze solid, and used it to dig himself out. But even if she managed that, she wouldn’t be able to reach it inside the suit.

She was beginning to shiver. Her teeth were chattering. A cold, empty space was opening in her chest.

This would not be a quick death. She had read accounts, none apocryphal, by stranded mountaineers who froze into comas, thinking right up to the point of unconsciousness that death was certain, then waking to discover that they had been rescued. It would be slow and increasingly painful for a long time; then would come numbness, everything growing weak and dim, and a long, gentle falling away from the last light.

Her rational brain grasped that. Then, like birds startled from a tree, thoughts and images began to fly from her mind. The lovely, burnt-honey smell of horses. Taps at her father’s funeral. Her mother’s hands, small, but rough and strong. And people she loved, her mother and father, two brothers, best friend Mary Stilwell down in Florida, Don Barnard.

And Bowman. For all the others she felt sadness but not regret; she had lived with them as fully as she could, knowing that loving and being loved were life’s greatest gifts. But with Bowman, regret did come. So much would be left undone between them: the moment when she might have said, “I love you,” another when they might have exchanged vows, and then all the other possibilities—including even children. She was thirty-one. Still young for a scientist, and certainly not old for a mother.

One thing left undone was especially troubling. Bowman came
from a ranch in Colorado and had grown up horseback. She came from a horse farm in Virginia and had as well. And yet they had never ridden together, had never shared the experience of melding with half a ton of pure beautiful power. Both had recognized how special it would be. They had talked about it so often that it had become a kind of personal idiom with its own definite article: “When are we going to do The Ride?” But they had never made it happen.
She
had never made it happen.

She remembered Merritt’s talk about how it became harder and harder to stay away from danger. She knew it was true. She had worked in BSL-4 labs with the most lethal pathogens known to man and had loved every minute of it. Eventually even that had become routine, and she’d asked Barnard to put her in the field, where even greater risks reopened the adrenaline spigot.

She yelled then, not specific words but a raw and guttural howl. Breath and energy finally ran out, and she fell silent. She looked up, but no lights stirred green and purple around the black bowl of sky, no meteors cut white streaks, and no stars twinkled, as if even they had frozen to death.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and waited for the same fate.

GRAETER PICKED UP A DART, ALIGNED THE BARREL BETWEEN THE
thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, cocked his arm back. Shook his head once and put the dart on his desk. Where the hell was Leland?

A moment later, his door banged open and a Dragger barged in. At least he thought it was a Dragger, given the grease-smeared overalls and black bunny boots. But it was a Beaker in Dragger’s clothes. And not just any Beaker. It was Hallie Leland.

“What are you doing in that outfit?” he asked. “In fact, what are you doing here? I was trying to find you.”

She told him how a gust of wind had rushed across the ice, wobbling her in the frozen suit. How she had shifted her weight to that side, tilting the suit a fraction of an inch more, then shifted the other way, back and forth like pumping on a swing to go higher, until finally she’d felt herself tilting and falling and hitting the ice, cracking the suit.

She told him about Fida: “I think Guillotte killed him and left him
down there to make it look like a suicide.” Then she recounted what had happened in the dive shed. He stood.

“I’ll find Guillotte. And I hope the son of a bitch tries to fight.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, gathering up his badge folder and gun, “then I can shoot him a dozen times.”

DOLAN KNOCKED ON GERRIN’S FRONT DOOR. NO ONE ANSWERED
. Taylor had gone around to cover the rear of the house. Dolan pounded with the heel of his fist. Inside it must have sounded like thunder. Anyone would have heard.

“Well, easy way or hard way,” Dolan said. He had brought a crowbar for just such an eventuality. Motioned for Bowman and Barnard to stand back as he got ready to drive the bar’s straight end between the door and the jamb.

“Hang on,” Bowman said.

He stepped to the door and took a stainless steel device from one pocket. Dolan started to say something but stayed quiet and watched. Bowman laid the thing over the door’s lock set and touched a sensor on its side. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then the sound of metal moving against metal and a distinctive click. Bowman repocketed the device. Dolan stared at him.

“It works with high-end locks and old ones,” Bowman explained. “They have enough steel in the tumblers. Not as messy.”

“How in hell did you—?” Dolan started.

“Don’t ask,” Barnard said.

Dolan glanced at him, nodded. “Copy that.” He keyed his radio, raised Taylor. “We’re in. Hold your position.”

He drew his service weapon, eased the door open, and stepped inside.

“U.S. Marshals,” he shouted. “We have a warrant to search these premises. Anyone here present yourselves or be subject to arrest for obstructing federal officers.”

No response.

Dolan went to the back door and let Taylor in. Barnard and Bowman waited while the marshals cleared the first floor. They followed them upstairs and waited in the long hall while the marshals looked into every room until only one, at the far end, was left. The door was closed. Dolan motioned for them to approach.

There were no more rooms. The house did not have a basement. Taylor eased the knob around, pushed the door open gently. The two marshals went in first, separating immediately, weapons up.

The red dots of their laser sights centered on the forehead of the small, dark-skinned man sleeping with a pair of noise-canceling headphones on.

Dolan turned on the ceiling lights.

Taylor, beside the bed, prodded the sleeping man’s shoulder. “Dr. Gerrin. Wake up. We have a warrant,” he said.

The man’s eyes opened slowly, went wide at the sight of two big men aiming guns at him. He sat bolt upright. Started to speak, realized he still had the headphones on, yanked them off.

“Dr. David Gerrin, we have a duly authorized warrant to search these premises,” Taylor began.

The man’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but no words came.

“You can stop,” Barnard said.

“What?” Dolan and Taylor looked back at him.

“It’s not Gerrin.”

THE DIVE SHED WAS STILL LIT, AS HALLIE HAD LEFT IT. MERRITT LAY
where she had fallen, her face a stove-in, frozen red mess.

“Like she got hit by a fifty-pound bullet,” Graeter said.

“Must have missed Guillotte,” Hallie said.

“If he’s not here, the son of a bitch must be back in the station.”

They hurried outside, ready to jump on Graeter’s idling snowmo. Both stopped at the same time.

“What is that?” Hallie asked.

“A Cat D9,” he said. “Nothing else sounds like it.”

But it was not a Cat D9 they saw materializing out of the gloom several hundred yards away. It looked, in fact, like the face of an advancing black wave, just visible against the ice. “What the hell is that?” Graeter said. “And who’s running the Cat?”

“Guillotte. Has to be. He’s killed the lights.”

“Why would—” Graeter started to ask. Instead he exclaimed, “That’s a fuel bladder he’s pushing. He’s going to blow up the station.”

“We need to get him off that machine,” Hallie said.

“He’s locked himself into the cab for sure. And that glass is designed
to protect operators in rollovers and landslides. Forget bullets. We’ll have to evacuate the station before he reaches it.”

“No phone, no radio comms—remember? The Dark Sector. We can get there, but that still won’t leave enough time to get everybody out.”

“Son of a
bitch
.”

“I have another idea,” she said.

“What?”

She took the first aid kit from the snowmo’s emergency box and used it like a brick to smash the headlight and taillights.

“We’re going stealth,” she said. “You drive.”

“
GET OUT OF BED. KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM.
” Dolan’s voice was neither harsh nor courteous, just barely civil. He and Taylor weren’t pointing their weapons at the man, but neither had they holstered them.

“Yes, yes. Of course.” The one who was not David Gerrin was wearing blue flannel pajamas with white stripes. His terrified expression, as he climbed out of bed, suggested that he was accustomed to dealing with very different kinds of police.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Barnard said.

“It is Muhammed Kandohur Said.”

“Who is he?” Dolan asked Barnard.

“I am Dr. Gerrin’s executive assistant,” Said answered for himself, regaining a fraction of composure.

“Where is Dr. Gerrin?” Barnard asked. “And why are you here?”

“I am house-sitting for him,” Said answered. “As for his location, I am not sure I should …”

Dolan reached behind his back and brought forward a pair of handcuffs. “You can answer questions here or go with us.”

Said’s face lost what little poise it had regained. Where he had
come from, Barnard thought, the phrase “go with us” probably implied a one-way trip to some medieval hellhole.

“He has left on vacation.” Said’s eyes were fixed on the handcuffs, which Dolan held out between them, the lower cuff swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

“Where?” Barnard asked.

“I do not know that,” Said blurted. He tore his eyes from the handcuffs to look at Barnard. “I honestly do not. Please believe me. Dr. Gerrin did not say, and it was not my place to ask.”

“He left you no way to get in touch with him?”

“No. I did ask about that, but he said he wished to relax on his vacation. Leave work behind, as he put it.” Barnard looked at Bowman, and they both exchanged glances with the marshals.

“We’ll still search,” Dolan said. “The warrant is for the premises. Owner doesn’t have to be present for us to execute it.”

Barnard turned back to Said. “Did Gerrin say how long he would be gone?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘You should expect some visitors.’ I thought he was talking about friends.”

GUILLOTTE LOVED OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY. IN THE FRENCH
Army, he had wanted to be a tank driver, but they’d used him for close-in killing instead. That was really his true calling. Regardless, he also found sexual pleasure in sitting atop all that roaring, throbbing power. And it was so easy, even with his right thigh aflame with pain where one of the tanks had struck a glancing blow. Right now, he had little to do but sit in the Cat’s comfortable, high-backed operator’s seat and input minor course corrections with the left joystick. The machine’s gigantic blade protruded a foot on either side of the bladder’s sled, so keeping it centered and moving forward was no problem.

The hard part would come later: triggering the emergency signal, then managing not to freeze to death waiting for the Twin Otter. The pilot would have his own challenges, landing on an ungraded iceway lit only by a few flares. If that plane crashed, though, its pilot would be the lucky one. He would die too quickly to feel anything. Guillotte, on the other hand, would freeze to death, unless he found some way to kill himself with less pain and more speed.

He hummed “La Marseillaise,” gazing up at the southern lights,
thinking of nothing in particular. He had never felt regret or remorse, guilt or pity, so he did not care that the station and everyone in it were about to be incinerated, nor that Triage was wrecked. He had not much cared whether the plan worked or not, really. He knew that Merritt, Blaine, and Doc were true believers in the Triage cause. He, Guillotte, believed, too—in the money he was being paid. For him it was a job of work, nothing more.

He gave the throttle lever a hard push forward, but it was already jammed against the travel stop. There was nothing to do but sit and wait for the behemoth to crawl to its final destination. Really, there was no rush. The station certainly wasn’t going anywhere. He would push the fuel bladder underneath it, between two sets of stilts. Then he would open one of its valves and let gasoline run far enough that when he lit the long, liquid fuse he would not blow himself up along with everything else. He was looking forward eagerly to this part. Few people are ever privileged to see such an explosion. Here in the black polar night, it would be even more spectacular. Like standing close to the sun.

He nudged the left joystick gently, correcting the dozer’s course a few degrees right, and settled back to enjoy the remainder of the ride.

GUILLOTTE COULD NOT HEAR THE SNOWMOBILE AND SAW IT ONLY
as a vague shape angling in and then creeping along beside the bladder’s front end a hundred feet ahead. He saw very clearly three red flares ignite in rapid succession and describe small arcs through the air before landing on the bladder’s broad, flat top.

His first thought was to jump over the blade onto the bladder while the dozer kept moving, but the possibility of his bad leg causing him to slip and fall beneath the machine dissuaded him. Instead, he stopped the Cat, clambered down, and limped forward, planning to hop onto the bladder and throw the flares away. It was never easy to hurry in bunny boots, and his injured thigh slowed him even more.

The bladder’s top was shoulder-high, and its sides were rounded and as slick as black ice. Guillotte jumped and jumped, trying to claw his way up. With two good, strong legs, he might have made it. But his legs were skinny and weak, and one was hurt. He kept sliding back down, and before long, his legs had no more jumps in them.