Pandora's Curse - v4

by Jack Du Brul

  Her exhaustion was deeper than simple fatigue. She fingered the knot on her head again and decided that she had a mild concussion. Hope of rescue was the only thing keeping her going. It would be so easy to just lie back and let the inevitable overcome her.

  “To sleep is to die,” she said aloud, mesmerized by the little tin of fire next to her. “To sleep is to die.”

  She kept repeating the mantra, unaware that each utterance was a bit quieter, her voice more slurred and the pauses longer. She fell asleep with only ten minutes of heat remaining. When that second can burned out, the temperature in the chopper crashed to the ambient temperature of the Greenland ice sheet: minus fifteen degrees Fahrenheit — nearly fifty degrees below freezing.

  Something woke her an hour later. She found frost coating the front of her parka, and her body had stiffened. She didn’t dare open her eyes to look at her hands. She could feel they were frostbitten, as were her ears, the tip of her nose, and her cheeks. She felt more tired than she could possibly imagine and knew that she was dying. She’d survived the crash and the first few critical hours only to succumb to exposure.

  She sniffled once and winced. Her nasal membranes were frozen. Still, she could detect a faint odor, a musky fragrance that was completely out of place with her predicament. It smelled like a man’s aftershave, something subtly masculine and diluted with the scent of the wearer himself. Anika smiled at the smell. It was like a last treat before she died.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Dr. Klein, your smile makes you look like a pixie.”

  The voice galvanized her. She opened her eyes and saw a grinning man next to her. He had entered through the shattered cockpit. The noise she had heard must have been him crawling into the hold. She was too emotionally wasted to react to his presence. She merely looked at him in the glow from his flashlight, studying the planes of his face and how his gray eyes were shielded by dark brows. Ice glittered in his hair like gems. He was handsome in every sense of the word.

  “Looks like you’ve built quite a nest for yourself in here,” the man said, noting the blankets piled on top of her and the cans of Sterno she’d neglected to keep lit. “If you want to stay, I’ll understand, but I think you’d be more comfortable in the Land Cruiser. The heater’s cranked and the base camp is only about an hour away.”

  “Who are you?” Anika managed to ask.

  “Philip Mercer at your service. Other than that touch of frostbite on your face, are you all right?”

  Anika was thankful that her face was frozen so she could not show her shock. This was the very man she was looking for! Yet she was in no condition to question him. She had no idea who he was or whose side he was on. But if he wanted her dead, he wouldn’t have driven through the storm to rescue her. Meekly she held out a hand. When she tried to say thanks, her lips couldn’t form the word.

  A minute later, Mercer had lifted her from the chopper and led her to where the Toyota was idling nearby. He got her buckled into the passenger seat before swinging around to the driver’s side. By the time he stepped into the rugged, cross-country vehicle, Anika was sound asleep, her head cocooned in the hood of her parka.

  Without the need to replace a tire that had shredded about two miles from where he’d seen Anika fire the second flare, and with the storm all but over, Mercer made it back to the camp much quicker than the drive out. The whole time he was behind the wheel, he couldn’t get the gratified smile off his face. Anika Klein would not join the list of people he felt he had failed.

  The following morning, Mercer roused Ira Lasko at sunup, and the two of them commandeered one of the Sno-Cats to return to the site of the crash. The couple hours of sleep had done nothing to alleviate his exhaustion, so he let the former submariner drive while he dozed in the passenger seat. Ira navigated by driving in Mercer’s tire prints from the night before, which were already being obscured by the constant wind. Because the tracked vehicle was much slower than the Land Cruiser, it took them two hours to reach the downed helicopter.

  “We there yet?” Mercer asked, blinking sleep from his eyes when Ira tapped him on the shoulder.

  “I told you to pee before we left, young man,” Ira quipped.

  “I didn’t have to then.”

  The humor vanished from Ira’s voice when they saw the helicopter sitting forlornly on the ice like an overturned insect. “Hard to believe anyone survived that.”

  Mercer just grunted and opened the ’Cat’s door. Other than a few bits of debris, the snow around the crash site was a clean white blanket that hid the violence of what had happened. But when he looked closer, Mercer saw footprints that circled the downed helo and then vanished off to the north. For a split second he thought that the pilot hadn’t been killed in the crash and he had abandoned him out here last night.

  He knew that couldn’t be true. He had seen the chunk of rotor blade sticking through the man’s neck and the frozen blood that coated his flight suit. The pilot had been dead long before he’d found the chopper. Because the footprints were nearly buried by snow he couldn’t tell where they originated or what size feet had made them. It was possible Anika Klein had made them, but that made as much sense as the dead pilot pulling a Lazarus act. She had been near death herself.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Ira asked when he saw what Mercer was studying.

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Mercer admitted. “Did someone beat us out here this morning to check out the crash?”

  “I didn’t see any tracks besides yours, but it’s possible. Maybe they left right after you got back.”

  “But why?” The pilot’s body was still strapped in his seat, his recovery being the principal reason Mercer and Ira had come out.

  “Something on the chopper they didn’t want discovered?” Ira offered.

  Lifting his feet to clear the powdery snow accumulated on the ground, Mercer started following the trail of prints. He was back at the crash site in just a few minutes. “They disappear about fifty yards away, blown clean by the wind.”

  “What about a stowaway?”

  “I was thinking that myself.”

  The helo had a rear door that opened at the back of the cargo hold. It was sealed now, but it was possible someone had exited through it following the crash and closed it afterward to hide their presence.

  “Given her injuries and the noise generated by the storm, Anika might not have heard anything,” Ira said after examining the door. “But we don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You think someone could still be alive out here after twelve hours?”

  Mercer considered the question. “Given the right gear, yeah, they could, but they’d be in for one hell of a long walk.”

  “You want to go look for him?”

  “Not in the slightest,” Mercer growled. “He wanted to get away so badly he’d abandon an injured woman. I say let the son of a bitch keep going. Let’s load up the pilot’s body and anything else we can stuff in the Sno-Cat and get back to the base.”

  They were ready forty-five minutes later. The pilot had been wrapped in a plastic tarpaulin, and every square inch of the Sno-Cat’s cargo area was filled with boxes of perishable food, Anika’s luggage, and anything else they felt was needed back at the camp. Despite his earlier vehemence, Mercer steered a zigzag search pattern for the first hour of the drive while Ira scanned the monotonous surroundings through a pair of binoculars. They saw no footprints or track marks left by another Sno-Cat. If it had indeed been a stowaway who had walked from the helicopter, he wasn’t headed toward the research station.

  Ira put away the binoculars and reached for the mail bucket, shuffling through the parcels and envelopes looking for anything addressed to him. He sniffed appreciatively at a letter from his wife that still carried traces of perfume she must have sprayed on the paper. “Sorry, nothing for you. Doesn’t appear that anyone loves you.”

  “Did you check for names that didn’t sound quit
e right?” Mercer asked. “Remember my last letter was sent to Max E. Padd.”

  “Ah, here we go.” Ira held up a large envelope. “It’s from Arlington, Virginia.”

  “That’s me.” Mercer winced when he asked Ira to tell him the name.

  “Juan Tzeks Withasheep.”

  It took Mercer a second to decipher Harry’s lame joke. Want sex with a sheep.

  “You’ve got one warped friend there, Mercer.”

  “Tell me about it. Open it up and let’s see what he sent.”

  “A confirmation for your new Playgirl magazine subscription, a couple receipts from a strip joint in Washington, another envelope forwarded from Munich, and a police citation for a noise-ordinance violation.”

  Mercer wondered what was in the envelope from Germany and was about to ask Ira to open the envelope when he remembered the mysterious e-mail he received before leaving for Iceland. This must be the material the lawyer said he was sending for his unnamed client. He thought it was best if he opened that in private. “When our communications are back up, I think I’ll call the Arlington police to report a squatter has taken over my house. That’ll show the old bastard.”

  “Oh, that’s mean.”

  “If you knew some of the crap he’s pulled over the years, you’d know he’s getting off light,” Mercer replied.

  There was a crowd waiting for them when they got back to base and halted the Sno-Cat near the mess hall. Not everyone was happy to see them. Werner Koenig and Greta Schmidt stood apart from the others, scowling. Leading the group who cheered them on was Marty Bishop and a much recovered Anika Klein.

  “Let’s keep those footprints to ourselves,” Mercer said when he killed the engine.

  “People find out all the secrets we’re sharing, they’re going to get jealous,” Ira said in a singsong voice.

  Mercer threw open his door. “Mail call.”

  Greta Schmidt pushed through the crowd to confront Mercer. “That is the second time you have taken a vehicle without authorization,” she snapped.

  “Which makes it two times I’ve done your job,” he replied with a mocking smile. He noted that again it was Schmidt, not Koenig, who was the most upset by his foray, and he wondered exactly which one was running the expedition.

  “Relax, for Christ’s sake,” Marty boomed. “He saved Dr. Klein’s life last night.”

  “I am aware of that, but there are procedures. Discipline must be maintained. I am going to report you all to the Surveyor’s Society with the recommendation that you be airlifted back to Iceland immediately. This is no place for cowboy heroics.” She stormed off.

  “Your rescue was ill-advised, but appreciated.” Werner shook Mercer’s hand when Greta was out of sight. “I don’t think I will be able to stop her from ordering your evacuation. I’m sorry.” He followed in her wake.

  Marty turned to Mercer. “Don’t sweat it. When we have the radios up again, I’ll square it with my old man.”

  “Thanks, Marty,” Mercer said. “But I doubt it’ll make much difference. With the chopper crash coming so close to Igor’s death, I won’t be surprised if Geo-Research has their entire operation shut down by the Danish government.”

  Neither man had noticed Anika Klein had moved close to them and overheard what Mercer had just said. “Igor Bulgarin is dead?” she cried.

  Mercer turned, stunned that no one had told her and guilty that he’d mentioned it so casually. Even though she was in moon boots, the top of her head was below the level of his chin. Her eyes were wide with shock and he was struck again by how much she looked like a mythical imp. A tough, resilient imp, to be sure.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Klein. I didn’t know you were there,” he stammered. “Yes, Igor died in an accident yesterday morning.”

  She just stared at him for a moment, her gaze wary. “I didn’t know.”

  “It came as a shock to us all,” Marty said, extending his hand. “I’m Martin Bishop. I head up the Surveyor’s Society contingent here.”

  “Anika Klein,” she replied absently, her mind far away from social niceties.

  Mercer took her hand when she offered it. “I doubt you remember much from last night. I’m Philip Mercer.”

  “I remember,” she answered cautiously. “You came out to get me. Thank you for what you did. That was brave.”

  “It was foolish, but you’re welcome.” He studied her for a second. “Looks like it wasn’t frostbite after all.”

  Anika touched her cheeks and nose where the color had returned to near normal. “If you’d been any later, it would have been.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.” She didn’t seem like someone meeting her rescuer, Mercer thought. She seemed almost afraid of him.

  “What’s that?” Anika pointed to the manila envelope in Mercer’s hand.

  “Huh?” The odd question threw him. “Oh, it’s just some junk mail from a friend.”

  Unlike the night before, this time Anika couldn’t hide her surprise. She eyed the package for a long moment before dragging her focus back to Mercer’s face. “You probably want to go read it. I’m sorry for delaying you.”

  “No, actually I’d like to talk with you. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Anika stiffened. “Yes, I’m fine.” Then her shoulders sagged just a fraction. “That’s not true. I have a vicious headache, and I keep thinking about the pilot. Tell me more about Igor’s death. How did it happen?”

  “There was a cave-in inside Camp Decade,” Mercer said. “He was struck by falling ice. We don’t think he suffered.”

  Anika immediately grasped the part of the story that had bothered Mercer since the accident. “What was he doing there? He was a meteorite hunter.”

  Mercer was right about her resilience. A helicopter crash last night, a delayed rescue that left her half dead, and now the shock of her team leader’s death and still her mind cut incisively. “We don’t know,” he admitted.

  Ira Lasko had been helping others unload the Sno-Cat during the conversation. They were done except for one item, and he approached the trio. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. Mercer, do you want me to put the pilot’s body in the cold storage lab with Igor’s?”

  “Yeah, that’ll be fine.”

  “I just spoke with Erwin,” Ira continued. “The radios are still out, so there’s no word yet from the Air Force about the body you found in Camp Decade.”

  “Another body?” Anika’s eyes bored into Mercer.

  “An Air Force pilot lost in the 1950s. He’s still down in the camp where we found him.”

  “I’d like to examine him.” Her voice had firmed as she came to grips with the past few minutes, regaining the professional edge she used in the emergency room.

  “Camp Decade is sealed until we shore up some of the roof,” Marty said. “We feel it’s too dangerous to go down there.”

  In an effort to impress her, Marty was trying to reclaim his control over the group by answering her request. Anika wasn’t fooled. She’d already realized that Philip Mercer was in charge of these men. She addressed him directly. “I would consider it a favor if you would let me examine him as well as the body of Igor Bulgarin.”

  “I can let you see Igor, but the base is off-limits for a while.” He doubted her examination would detect that Jack Delaney’s corpse was radioactive, but until he had some answers, no one was getting near him.

  When she was disappointed, Anika had the habit of sucking on her lower lip. While not a calculating gesture, it had a certain effect on men.

  “Before the Air Force comes,” Mercer relented, “I promise you a chance to check him out.”

  “Thank you. May I examine Dr. Bulgarin in a couple of hours? I’d like to get something to eat and then sleep for a while longer.”

  Mercer rolled back his glove to look at the Tag Heuer slung around his wrist. “I’ll meet you right here at 2:30.”

  Marty Bishop followed after Anika when she started off for the mess hall, leaving Mercer alone with Ira Lasko.


  “What do you think, Ira?”

  “I think that’s one tough little lady,” he said thoughtfully. “And I also think she’s one scared lady too.”

  “I noticed that as well. Any guess why?”

  “No idea.”

  “This whole thing has been screwy since the word go. I shouldn’t be surprised that our latest addition is a mystery too.”

  “Why does she want to examine Igor?” Ira asked. Mercer had no immediate answer. “I wonder if maybe she knows something about his death. Like why he was in Camp Decade when he shouldn’t have been.”

  “How would she know that when we don’t?”

  This time it was Ira’s turn to remain silent.

  Yesterday, this trip had seemed like a great vacation for Mercer and he’d been enjoying himself. But since Igor’s death, that had all vanished and his frustration had mounted. He’d paid little attention to the small inconsistencies since his arrival here, and now they plagued him. He doubted that Anika Klein would shed any light on what was happening. In fact, her demeanor and requests added to his concern. “This trip is one snafu after another,” he muttered.

  “Amen. You think the Danes are going to pull us?”

  “I hope to God they do.”

  GEO-RESEARCH STATION, GREENLAND

  At the appointed time, Mercer saw Anika approaching the mess hall from the direction of the dormitories. She was bundled in a red one-piece Gore-Tex snowsuit with a hood pulled tight around her face. With her back to the wind, snow dusted the knapsack over her shoulder. For the past hour he had been sitting with the radio operator trying vainly to get a message out to Reykjavik. Other than static and a burst of conversation that sounded like it came from the Njoerd, they had received nothing. The electronic interference from the sun’s massive coronal ejections ensured the base was completely isolated. When he saw Anika through the steam-clouded window, Mercer thanked the radioman, pulled on his parka, and stepped out into the gale.