In Cold Pursuit (25 page)

Cupcake shook her head. “It was still blowing, kicking up fresh snow, and all we had in mind was getting him to safety. Fat lot of good that did him.”

“Has anyone been back out there to take a look?”

“I don’t know.”

“I stopped by Science Support Center on the way over here and checked out a snow machine. How about you show me the spot?”

Cupcake thought a moment, then nodded. “Just let me put away these tools. But there’s one thing I’ve got to tell you. Something that’s bothering me.”

“What’s that?”

Cupcake turned and looked at the scientist. “You’re right, it was Dave who was with me when I found him. Aw hell, Dave found him, not me. I was all but along for the ride. He …”

“Spit it out, Dorothy. Time’s wasting, and you would not believe how much is riding on this.”

Cupcake’s usual tough-girl expression twisted with concern, then anger, then fear. Finally, she stared at the floor. “I do not like to rat out my coworkers, but…well, it was spooky. I’m not making any accusations, but Dave just drove right out there—it was miles—and—” She snapped her fingers. “There he was.”

Skehan nodded, encouraging her to say the rest.

Cupcake said, “It was like he knew exactly where to look.”

V
ALENA FELT THE COLD SLICE THROUGH HER.
S
HE
wrapped her arms tightly across her chest, trying to squeeze away the cold. “The man I’m replacing
died?”

“Oh, yes,” Hilario said. “Didn’t even make it to Christchurch. Died on the plane. You’ll excuse us, it’s going to be a while before we’re going to feel like driving anywhere.”

Edith lifted her head and shoved a leather glove across her nose, sniffling. “No, I say we get going. There’s nothing like a job to do to get things off your mind, and we can honor Steve by doing that job well. I’ll take the first shift on his—the Challenger.” She headed for the rig. “Come on!” she called over her shoulder. “We’re falling behind schedule.”

Hilario turned toward Valena and gestured toward the door to the Delta.

Taking hold of the grab handle mounted on the side of the cab between the two doors, Valena climbed back up into the cab and settled herself in the right front seat, which featured torn olive drab plastic upholstery over a brick of foam rubber. She felt oddly shaky. She hadn’t known the man who had died, but she was walking in his shoes.

“Mierde,”
Hilario said, rubbing his hands together to warm them as he settled himself into the driver’s seat. “The man had a family, you know? And he had us.”

Valena did not know what to say, so she said nothing.

“This sort of thing really shakes people up around here.
Es verdad.
They’re still talking about that Air New Zealand flight that crashed into Erebus back in 1979.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Well, like Edith said, we shall honor our man. They’re going to do a memorial for him on Sunday, when we all have the day off. Meanwhile, it’s business as fucking usual.” He thumped the steering wheel, and then added, “
Perdona. Mi lenguaje.”

“No te preocupre.”

“Right. Now, how you suppose this thing works?” He switched on the ignition, opened the heater up full blast, then wriggled out of his jacket.

Trying to bring up lighter topics, Valena asked, “Why’s this thing called Flipper?”

Hilario shrugged. “Aw, it used to belong to the Fire Department, but they got to practicing maneuvers one day.” He grabbed the huge, flat-mounted steering wheel and pantomimed turning it all the way to the right. “Rolled it. Guess you can only turn so sharp in one of these things, unless of course you’re going some kind of reasonable speed. So we cut the box off it and here it is, the pride of Fleet Ops.
Bella
, eh?”

“Simply gorgeous.” She felt the cab rock and turned to her right just as a large face appeared at the window beside her. It scared her and she jumped.

“Aw, don’t get so excited,” said Hilario. “It’s only Willy.”

It was another man dressed in the light brown Carhartt canvas ECWs. He was a big guy, as young as she or perhaps younger, but not blessed with even a single detail of physical beauty. He greeted her with an expression as lively as a cucumber, while banging on the door with one gloved fist.

She opened the door. “Hi,” she said, trying to be friendly.

The man stared at her.

“Don’t mind him,” said Hilario. “He don’t talk much. I guess he thinks you’re going to sit in back so he can ride shotgun. Rank has privileges. You’re the fingie.”

Valena shoved some gear aside and moved to the back seat. Wee Willy lumbered into the cab. He was almost as big and about as pleasant as a bear who had just awakened from hibernation. With a motion like a bricklayer dropping his hod, he occupied the seat Valena had just exited, then turned,
reached past her, and began digging through one of the flight lunches. Feeling her eyes on him, he fixed a glare on her.

Valena began to have doubts about just how much fun the trip was going to be.

Hilario fired the ignition. He sang, “We go cruisin’ in the ma-chine!” swung the wheel, and off they lurched.

McMurdo Station flowed past in a tumble of steel and black road metal as they rumbled down the slope that led to the edge of the sea ice. At the transition onto the ice, Hilario stopped the Delta next to a cluster of snow machines and heavy equipment that was parked there.

Wee Willy lurched up off the seat and began to empty himself out the door.

‘“Hasta luego, amigo. Vaya con dios,”
said Hilario.

Wee Willy did not reply. Heaving himself down out of the door frame, he dropped onto the ice and shambled off toward one of the snow machines, leaving the door open to the breeze.

Valena slammed the door with rather more force than was necessary.

“Oh, you’ll get used to him,” said Hilario. “Or not.”

The snow machines were bigger and more utilitarian versions of what Valena would have called a snowmobile at home. They had the usual setup of skis in front and a single track behind and a saddle in the middle right behind motorcycle-style controls. But beyond that, they differed from their streamlined northern cousins in a matter of studied inelegance. As Wee Willy pulled the canvas cover off of one, she could see that the front cowling was one big, charmless expanse of blaze orange. The seat was a single slab of black plastic. And toward the back of the vehicle, a simple plywood box had been added to carry gear.

The heater in the cab had risen from pleasantly warm to full roast, so Valena cracked the window a few inches and shrugged off her big red parka, then turned and packed it onto the backseat, rearranging the duffels and equipment stowed there so that they wouldn’t shift en route. “What’s this?” she inquired, picking up a tube of fake fur that hadn’t been there before.

Hilario let out a sardonic chuckle. “That’s Wee Willy’s hand warmer. His ma gave it to him.”

“Oh.” She put it up on the backseat.

The Challenger pulled up next to them, and Valena watched as the fifth member of their party climbed out of a jump seat in its cab and climbed down the steps to the ice. “Is that Dave?” she asked Hilario.

“Yeah. Good guy. Drove out there and found Steve.”

Valena realized that it was the man who had stared at her in the hallway outside the galley the evening before. Her heart sank.
I’m replacing a man who died, one of the team glares at me, and another just plain stares
, thought Valena.
This is going to be a long trip.

Dave crossed to one of the snow machines, checked its number against the tag of his ignition key, brushed the snow off its canvas cover, removed the cover and folded it neatly, then stowed it in a compartment. That done, he swung a leg gracefully over the saddle and lowered himself onto it. He stuck the key into the ignition and began clearing snow off other parts of the machinery.

Edith’s voice crackled over the radio that was mounted in the ceiling of the cab. “Mac Ops, Mac Ops, this is Challenger 283, how read?”

“Mac Ops copies, go ahead.”

“This is Edith Tanner. We are five souls in four vehicles—a Challenger, a Delta, and two snow machines. Contact is the Boss. Destination Black Island. We will traverse to KOA, then start setting flags at the edge of the dead zone. Intend overnight at Black Island Station and return tomorrow by eighteen hundred. Over.”

Dave completed his snow-clearing task, set the primer and the choke, switched on the engine, and, with a few quick compressions of the hand-grip throttle, revved it to a level past which it kept running on its own. Then he set to adjusting his cuffs so that they would not become wind scoops.

“Mac Ops copies. Call from KOA before you enter dead zone, but in any case I want to hear from you by sixteen hundred, over. And you be careful, okay?”

“We will. Challenger 283 copies. Over and out.”

“Mac Ops out.”

Edith maneuvered the big Cat into place in front of the goose, which was an eight-foot-wide hydraulically operated grading blade mounted on a trailing chassis that was supported by skis. Once the machine was in position, she climbed down the steps out of the cab to secure the hitch and connect the hydraulic lines.

Dave continued to adjust his clothing, now pulling his polypropylene neck gaiter up over his nose, cinching his hood tight against his cheeks, and then putting a pair of goggles over the top. Last, he replaced his gloves, adjusting their cuffs over the cuffs of his parka.

Valena asked Hilario, “Why’s he wearing red instead of tan?”

“It’s a matter of preference. Most of us are more used to smearing grease all over tan. OF Dave here works as hard as the rest of us but somehow stays cleaner.”

“Oh. What’s the dead zone?”

“Oh, that’s where we’re behind Black Island and the radio can’t ‘see’ us. We have to go all the way around the south side of the island to get to the station that’s on it, because the ice is all screwed up on the north side, facing McMurdo here.”

“Why isn’t there a radio repeater?”

Hilario let out a rueful cackle. “Because there’s nothing out there, that’s why. What, you think a continent half again the size of the US with only, say, three thousand people on it—and that’s in summertime—has a radio antenna in every little place you might like to go?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then you suppose right. Look up there. That’s all we got between us and Black Island Station.” He pointed at the array of antennae on top of the building that housed Mac Ops and the Airlift Wing. “Black Island’s got the big satellite dish, but it’s there for telecommunications, not radio, and it ain’t looking south.”

“Where is it looking?”

Hilario rolled his eyes. “It’s pointed north. It looks at a
geostationary satellite over the equator. Damn thing is tipped up within four degrees of standing on its edge to see it. So you can do the math. It’s seventy-eight degrees south latitude, looking how many thousand miles north—that puts that satellite up pretty high, eh? Like, so the dish can see it over the curve of the earth?”

“Doing trigonometry in my head has never been my forte.”

Wee Willy had by this time finally made a match between his key fob and a snow machine number, had balled up the canvas covering on his machine and stuffed it into the wooden box mounted toward the back, leaving bungee cords dangling near the tread, and was having trouble getting it started. He cranked the ignition, hammered on the throttle, then stopped, waited a moment, kicked the machine, then repeated the whole routine, as if he could beat it into submission.

Dave sat adjusting his gear box, paying no attention to Wee Willy.

Edith opened the door to the cab of the Challenger and shouted, “Hey! You ever heard of the primer and choke, or what?”

Wee Willy shot her a scowl.

Edith hoisted herself out of the driver’s seat and started down the steps toward her colleague. She closed the distance between her vehicle and his, pushed him out of her way with one hip, set the primer and the choke, gave the starter a switch and a yank, gave the throttle a couple of pumps, held it until the machine revved nice and high, adjusted the choke, and then stepped back and waited.

Wee Willy gave no outward evidence of noticing that Edith had assisted him. He settled himself back on the saddle like a load of turnips and pulled up his hood. As an after-thought, he pushed his hood back again, dug at the throat of his parka until he found his neck gaiter and pulled it up to the bottom of his nose, pulled his goggles down to meet it, then pulled his hood over the top of the elastic. He took off his gloves to accomplish this, dropping both on the ice. The wind caught one and blew it five feet away. Wee Willy climbed off
his machine, galumphed after it, slipped and almost fell in the process of picking it up, then at last caught it and put it on, stuffing the cuff under the cuff of his parka.

“This is going to be a long trip,” said Hilario.

Edith had headed back to the Challenger. As she placed her foot on the bottom step and started to raise the other, she slipped and took a tumble off onto the ice.

Dave instantly hopped off his idling snow machine and rushed to help her up. “You okay? You scared me, Edith. We don’t need any more accidents around here.”

Edith brushed snow off her Carhartts. “It’s just like the Boss said. These bottom steps are all crammed with ice. He warned us about this in the safety meeting at the beginning of the season.” Edith headed back up the steps, placing her feet with greater care.

Dave moved in and kicked the steps free of ice, then turned and strolled back to his waiting snow machine.

“But both she and Dave came down without slipping,” Valena said, to no one in particular.

Hilario said, “She gets to rushing sometimes. Buckin’ for pro-mo-tion,” he said, singing the last word.

The Challenger, dragging the trail-grooming bar called the goose, swung out ahead of them and headed down the flag route that led out toward the ice runway. A snow machine shot out on either side of it, kicking up loose snow. Hilario swung in line behind them. They were off.

H
ILARIO LOOKED TO
V
ALENA’S EDUCATION AS A
D
ELTA
driver. “Watch and learn,” he said, pushing the mammoth snow-crawler into higher gear. “You gonna be driving this thing in less than an hour.” They began to roll faster. “This baby’s got five forward gears, automatic shift. You can start it out set in high gear and it’ll shift itself up there as it goes, or start in a lower gear and shift up when you’re ready, but you always got to downshift by hand, except you don’t have to work no clutch. Cardinal rule, don’t let it break traction. You feel the thing beginning to labor, or hear the engine speed slow, you downshift like this,” he said, demonstrating with an easy tug of the shift lever.