Vostok

by Steve Alten

  And here I was complaining about a twenty-hour sub ride.

  West Antarctica occupied the landmass below the peninsula and was separated from the larger eastern region by the Transantarctic Mountains, TAM for short. It possessed two immense ice shelves: the Ronne and the Ross, the latter being home to McMurdo Station and its four airfields, owned and operated by the United States.

  East Antarctica was the largest of the three regions and spanned two-thirds of the continent. It stretched from the TAM clear to the eastern coastline and encompassed the South Pole. A desert of ice, East Antarctica was the coldest, most desolate location on the planet.

  Being in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica’s spring and summer, and its extended hours of daylight hours, were the reverse of Scotland, running from October through February. Darkness arrived in March, and the temperatures plunged another forty degrees. The mean annual temperature at our East Antarctica destination was minus fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit. We could hope for summer highs in November and December approaching zero degrees.

  The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was a boneshattering minus 135.8, recorded in East Antarctica… at Russia’s Vostok Station.

  After twenty hours in the air, the last plane ride of our first leg of travel touched down at the Presidente Carlos Ibáñez del Campo International Airport in Punta Arenas, Chile, just after seven o’clock in the evening. Exhausted, True and I collected our luggage and stepped outside into the frigid night. A taxi took us to the Blue House, a hostel Ming’s assistant had booked us into for our stay. The moment my head hit the pillow, I passed out. Not even True’s grumbling snores could keep me awake.

  The southernmost city in the world, Punta Arenas is known as the gateway to the Chilean Antarctica. Perched on a hillside overlooking the Straits of Magellan, the Spanish town is a mix of colonial architecture and low-rise buildings with colorful metal roofs. Miles of gridded streets face the sea. Windswept grasslands and sheep ranches sprawl to the east, spectacular fjords and glaciers to the west.

  True and I rolled out of our beds around noon, more from hunger than a restful sleep. Following the advice of the hostel owner, we bundled up in our ski jackets and wool hats and walked along the wide avenues past street vendors until we arrived at a stone building that was home to la Luna, a popular tourist spot. True ordered the crab casserole while I had scallops stewed in a garlic sauce, and we drank until we were tipsy.

  The night and its drop in temperature arrived early. We shopped, checked out the seaport, and ate dinner in a pub where True attempted to bridge the language gap with our Portuguese waitress. Reminding him we had a noon flight, I returned to our room alone and called Brandy from a land line. Forgetting about the time change, I woke her from a sound sleep and caught hell for being drunk.

  Two days down, 182 to go.

  My first official trepidation of the trip began when I walked across the runway beneath a low ceiling of dark clouds and saw the twenty-six-passenger Aerovías DAP seaplane rocking with the weather. A rough take-off and instantly it seemed we were flying over the Magellan Strait and Tierra del Fuego Island past Cape Horn. We dipped and rose with each gust, the pilot momentarily derailing our thoughts of crashing by pointing out a stretch of shoreline that was known as a whale graveyard, the bones of the dead leviathans cast up on the rock-strewn beach by the heavy currents.

  The winds grew nastier as we flew over the Drake Passage, one of the more volatile waterways in the world. It was here that the depths dropped in excess of sixteen thousand feet—roughly the distance Ben Hintzmann and I would soon be plunging through ice. True and I watched the turbulent surface. We saw whales breaching and schools of dolphin torpedoing through the deep blue sea as, high overhead, our plane pitched against the elements. Before long, small islands of ice began appearing below, progressing into frozen sculptures of towering white and turquoise and blue, carved by the wind and shaped by the water. These were followed by flat city blocks of snow that quickly occupied the horizon.

  After a harrowing five-hour flight we descended to King George Island.

  Located seventy-five miles north of Antarctica, King George Island was the largest of the South Shetlands, an island chain that extended away from the peninsula into the Southern Ocean. Still in its final weeks of winter, King George’s surrounding seas remained fragmented with tabular acres of ice undulating beneath an early evening overcast sky.

  Dressed in thermal underwear, jeans, gloves, wool caps, sunglasses, and our expedition jackets, True and I stepped off the plane into the elements and realized our attire was barely serviceable for the “Antarctic tropics,” let alone what awaited us at Vostok. Trudging over a pebble-covered frozen dirt runway in our boots, we hurried past two abandoned Russian amphibious haulers on our way to the airport terminal, the skin over our exposed faces tightening painfully as it froze.

  Gasping for breath, I paused. Up on the hill to our left, overlooking the airfield, was a Russian Orthodox Church that appeared like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. True nudged me and pointed to our right.

  We were being watched.

  Penguins. Ten to fifteen of them stood on the packed snow like a welcoming party. From their markings I surmised they were chinstrap penguins. As we watched, three more suddenly popped out of an unseen ice hole in the water straight onto their feet, standing with their wings extended as they cooled off from their swim.

  Unlike the penguins, True and I were not doing well in the freezing cold. Ducking against the wind, we continued across the unpaved airfield to the airport terminal.

  Waiting for us inside was a fit-looking man in his twenties. Around his neck hung an I.D. badge that read Caner Gokeri—Davis Station.

  “Caner? Zachary Wallace. This is my associate True MacDonald. Are you our liaison?”

  “Yes, sir. And it’s pronounced John-Air Go-Carry. It’s a Turkish name. There’s a Hercules C-130 transport on loan from the Uruguayan Air Force waiting to take you to Davis Station, but before you board I’ve been instructed to outfit you for the weather.”

  “Glad you said that. It’s pretty damn cold outside.”

  Caner smiled. “This is balmy compared to where you’re going. Summer runs from mid-November through mid-February on the ice, and even then you’ll be lucky to hit minus twenty. If you gentlemen will follow me, I’ve borrowed one of the lounges to get you suited up.”

  Caner told us he was a graduate student in the United States studying marine biology and was a fan of my work. He had been at Davis Station for a year, earning his keep as a cook while completing research in the environmental sciences. “Most of the people working at ice stations have college degrees, yet few of us ever end up doing scientific work related to our field of study. More important than publishing a research paper is just being here. There’s simply no where else like it.”

  We followed him through the near-deserted terminal and down a corridor, stopping at a closed door labeled AUX-3. Keying the lock, he led us inside.

  The smell of breakfast hit me first, the aroma coming from heated trays of food occupying a foldout table. Laid out on several other tables were neat piles of clothing and an assortment of gloves and boots. “This is ECW gear—Extremely Cold Weather clothing, designed especially to handle prolonged exposure to the elements. In addition, I personally customized a few items based on my own experiences on the ice. Vostok-cold requires extra care. For instance, I sewed fleece patches onto the quad section of your thermal underwear.”

  “What in God’s name for, lad?” True asked, his mouth stuffed with scrambled eggs.

  “There’s a condition we call ‘Antarctic thigh,’ which is severe frostbite of the quads. It’s caused by walking into the wind. And the wind gusts will also take your gloves and mittens, which is why I’ve sewn on elastic loops that connect them to your ski jacket. I also added kangaroo pouches in your thermal layers to store batteries and snacks. The key to staying warm out on the ice is layering your clothing loose enough to
create insulating pockets of air. Too tight and you get frostbite. Go ahead and eat. Then we’ll repack the belongings you’ll be taking with you into Antarctica-friendly duffle bags.”

  An hour later we had stuffed ourselves with food, used the bathroom, and had completely reorganized our gear, eliminating most of the clothing we had brought from Scotland. Caner had us stow these items in our suitcases, which would be locked away at the airport and reclaimed in six months when we passed through on our return trip home. In its place were an assortment of lighter weight thermal undergarments and waterproof leggings, baggy pants shells, fleece trousers and sweaters, and two bright-orange jumpsuits designed to deflect the wind. We packed everything in duffle bags except for what we’d be wearing on the flight over. Stripping down to our boxer shorts, we redressed in layers, zipping ourselves up in the orange jumpsuits. On our feet we put two pairs of socks and double-lined rubber-insulated boots, and on our hands skin-tight gloves and elbow-high mittens. A wool scarf, wind-shielding snow hat, and tinted goggles completed the outfit, sealing every inch of exposed flesh on our bodies.

  Slinging our bags over our shoulders, we grabbed our new ski jackets and followed Caner outside to an awaiting four-wheel-drive jeep, its rear axle sporting triangular-shaped traction belts, its front outfitted with skis. He drove us to another runway where a C-130 transport was being loaded through its rear cargo hold. Maneuvering around pallets of supplies, he parked as close as he could to the open entrance.

  “This is as far as I go, gentlemen. Find a seat on board and try to catch some sleep. Oh, and be sure to remove your boots. This is a lightly pressurized transport plane, and your Wellington boots, unlike your feet, aren’t designed to expand.”

  Accepting his parting gift—a set of earplugs—we exited the jeep and made our way up the ramp with our gear and into the body of the military-outfitted Hercules. We passed the in-flight bathroom (a port-a-potty strapped to a cargo palette at the center aft of the plane) and located two vacant spots on rows of bench seating that faced one another. Stowing our gear, we removed our boots and sat, leaning back against a wall of webbed straps like paratroopers. Our window—one of only six in the cargo hold—was a mere four inches in diameter.

  True leaned over and punched me on the shoulder.

  “Ow. What was that for, you big lummox?”

  “That was for marrying my sister and gettin’ me stuck on this ridiculous trip.”

  Men in beards as thick as True’s filed in along either side of us, squeezing us in like sardines. Some were private contractors, a few were scientists, and none seemed especially happy to be on board.

  Another twenty minutes passed before the cargo hatch was closed. A few minutes later the plane rumbled across the gravel and dirt tarmac, gaining lift on its massive wings. The noise from the Hercules’s four engines sent True and me on a pocket-to-pocket search for our earplugs.

  For the next third of a day, we slept and woke in our throttling, pitching funhouse of steel and humanity. I cursed my bladder, which forced me to inch my way through rows of dozing bodies only to enter a tilted toilet shed of sloshing urine and excrement, wedging myself in as I peeled away three layers of clothing just to free my organ and pee—all while the cargo hold rose and plunged beneath me like a bucking bronco.

  Three times I repeated that journey, four hours I slept, and True punched me twice more before we mercifully landed at Davis Station on the eastern coast of Antarctica.

  7

  Davis Station, East Antarctica

  Barely awake, I grabbed my gear and followed True down the rear exit ramp of the aircraft, only to have my unprotected eyes assaulted by a brilliant hazy-white wonderland of ice. Seconds later, a forty-mile-an-hour gust of minus twenty-seven-degree wind blasted us in the face with a flurry of frozen crystals and abominable cold.

  True turned to me and I could read his thoughts: Welcome to East Antarctica—asshole.

  The two of us struggled to position our goggles on our faces as the other passengers pushed by, shaking their cloaked heads at our lack of preparedness.

  Once I could see through my tinted eyewear, I stepped down from the plane and onto the frozen runway to get my bearings. Prydz Bay was to my left. I knew it was the bay because there was a massive tanker frozen in its icy grip. Beyond the ship were jagged hills that I learned were actually the tops of icebergs. Had the vessel not been there, the alabaster geology would have looked no different than the rest of our surroundings, and I wondered if any rookie expeditioners had ever taken a wrong turn off the base and simply walked out to sea.

  To my right was the plane’s exodus—sixty-plus passengers making their way to a series of lime-green-colored metal buildings connected by an enclosed walkway.

  I followed True, using his girth to shield me from the wind.

  Waiting for us inside, checking names off of his clipboard list, was the Davis Station flag officer, a senior geologist named Kyle Trunk.

  “Names?”

  “Zachary Wallace and True MacDonald.”

  The scientist’s hazel eyes took their inventory. “Well, well, so the hotshot marine biologist and his Scottish lackey have finally—”

  The flag officer never got out the word arrived. Having spent most of the last seventy-two hours cramped on planes while he was forced to remain sober, True was in no mood for a fraternal tongue-lashing.

  Smiling, he grabbed a fistful of the man’s crotch and squeezed hard. “Now, who are ye callin’ a lackey, laddie? Don’t ye ken who I am? I’m the prince of Scotland, and it would be best for your future kin if ye bloody well treated me as such.”

  The scientist’s face flushed purple as he gurgled a frightened, “Sorry.”

  True released him. “Now be a good boy and show us to our rooms. I’m in need of a shyte, shower, and sleep.”

  Kyle Trunk backed away. “Davis rations its water supply. Showers are limited to one per person every three days for a maximum duration of three minutes.”

  “Three minutes? Tha’s barely enuff water tae clean my pecker. The bloody place is surrounded by ice. Why don’ ye jis melt it?”

  “We have to conserve fuel. There’s a bar in the Rec Room across from the mess hall. Why don’t you let me buy you gents a drink when I’m through checking in guests?”

  “We’re only staying the night,” I said, stepping between Kyle Trunk and True. “Our destination’s Vostok.”

  “Change of plans. We have you scheduled to stay at Davis for two weeks. Captain Hintzmann’s orders.”

  I found Ben Hintzmann in the mess hall eating lunch, the chin hairs of his beard specked with cream drippings from the bowl of New England clam chowder he was gulping down.

  “Hey, Doc! Welcome to the ice. You look ‘episched.’”

  “Episched?”

  “Sorry, I’ve been out here way too long. ‘Exhausted, finished, dead and done for.’ It’s Antarctic slang. Hope that transport you rode in on was carrying fresh fruit and veggies. We had none of it this winter, and yours was the first plane of spring. I’d kill for boiled potatoes and carrots.”

  “The dude with the clipboard and attitude said we’re not flying out to Vostok for two weeks. Why not?”

  “Consider it a blessing. The weather out there makes Davis look like a fall day in Manhattan. There were delays in erecting the dome, plus the crates with the Valkyrie units only arrived two days ago. While Ming organizes her team, I’ll teach you how to pilot the Barracuda here in Prydz Bay.”

  “The Barracuda? Is that the name of our submersible?”

  “That’d be her, a narrow three-man acrylic vehicle featuring two Valkyrie lasers, one mounted on each flank. The generators necessary to power those puppies will remain on the surface, attached by fiber-optic cable, but the Barracuda will house miniature fuel cells capable of powering one four-hour laser burn—enough to get us topside in case of an emergency. Feel better now?”

  I smiled. In fact, I did feel better… a lot better. The possibility of having ou
r sub detach from the Valkyries’ power supply unit had been among my worst fears. Apparently, Hintzmann’s too. He had addressed it, and now I could rest more easily.

  “I’m feeling episched, so I’m going to bed. Wake me in a day.” Stealing Ben’s soup, I raised the bowl to my lips and drained it, then headed off to my living quarters, a private room negotiated by my Highland “lackey.”

  Thirty hours later, True, Ben, and I stood on the frozen waters of Prydz Bay beneath “manky” skies. Manky was Antarctic slang for overcast weather, apparently a common occurrence along the coast. A team of Chinese technicians from nearby Zhongshan Station used six-foot-long bog chisels to test the thickness of the sea ice before bringing out the Barracuda. “More than three whacks to get through and it’s safe to walk on,” Ben informed us. “Less than three and you double-time it back to where you came from.”

  After ten blows the ice failed to crack open, forcing the Chinese to use their chainsaws to open a twenty-by-fifteen-foot hole to access the sea.

  Ben expected our days inland at Vostok would be “dingle”—good weather, good visibility. “On a dingle day it’s time to play; wake up to a mank and the day will be dank.”

  Worse than a mank was a “hooley”—an Antarctic blower, also known as a katabatic wind. Formed when cold air descends onto the ice cap, it spreads along the ground like a relentless snow-blowing storm and can last for days.