Days of Night

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Days of Night Page 27

by Jonathan Stone


  So their only chance is to wait for Heller to get cold. Too cold to defend himself vigorously. Too cold for him to attack them.

  He realizes that’s exactly what they’re doing.

  “Almost time to strip, Joe Heller.”

  Waiting for him to become weak enough, docile enough so they can remove his ties without any risk. So he’ll strip and do what they say. They’ll walk him out there naked or ride him out there naked on the ATV. He’ll stumble around out there. He’ll be fairly hypothermic already, halfway to delirium, mentally incapacitated.

  It won’t take them but a few minutes.

  He feels the cold surrounding him.

  What would Paul do?

  Invoking his old partner. Master of deceit. What would Paul do? How would he work around this? Paul ruined his career, but he was his partner, and when he wasn’t a criminal, he was a great cop. What would Paul do? Can Paul save him?

  Heller feels his descent beginning. Feels the drop of temperature, feels the cold surround him, invade him, and feels himself starting to not feel it anymore.

  Welcome to the end of the earth, Hobbes greeted him on his arrival.

  And then it was the end of the earth.

  And then, it turned out, it wasn’t—though he’ll never get to share the good news with Hobbes.

  And now it’s the end of the earth again.

  But this time, just for him.

  A short while later, Pritchard and Dolan return to the shack—a small storage shack at the edge of McMurdo.

  When they enter the dark shack, they see Heller’s limbs shivering and shaking.

  “Shit, are we too late?”

  “Jesus, it’s happening fast.”

  Pritchard shines the penlight in Heller’s eyes.

  He sees Heller’s pupils dancing wildly around the dark room.

  Pritchard and Dolan both notice that his breathing is rapid, shallow.

  “Cut the ties,” says Pritchard. “You’ll have to help him get his clothes off. He’s already lost motor control.”

  Dolan takes out a pocketknife.

  Pritchard watches, the Glock in his hand.

  Dolan has to hold down Heller’s shivering legs and feet to cut the plastic ties around his ankles.

  Freed up, his legs and feet shiver and shake rapidly, uncontrollably, even more.

  It makes it harder for Dolan to cut the ties around Heller’s shivering wrists and shaking hands and fingers. It’s frightening, gruesome looking. Heller’s contorted fingers. Wrists bent back extremely. They have to work fast.

  As soon as the ties are off Heller’s wrists, the terrible shaking suddenly stops.

  Stops completely.

  Enters a new stage, apparently.

  Dolan finds himself pulled suddenly, forcefully against Heller’s body. Spun around suddenly, his back now against Heller’s torso.

  The pocketknife he has been holding is suddenly in Heller’s hand, against Dolan’s neck.

  Both of them are facing Pritchard. A stunned, confused Pritchard holding the Glock.

  The shack is tight. Dark. The beam from Dolan’s helmet is now pointed at Pritchard, of course. Suddenly in Pritchard’s eyes. Pritchard blinks.

  What would Paul do? He’d fool you. Completely fake it.

  Make you believe he was suffering from hypothermia when he wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  The shack is tight enough, dark enough that one hard shove from behind Dolan lands Dolan hard and sudden against Pritchard.

  Hard and sudden enough to knock Pritchard down backward.

  Surprised, confused, the thin beams of light swinging wildly, Pritchard inadvertently fires the dangerously cocked Glock into Dolan’s chest.

  The sound of the discharge in the tiny shack is enormous, disorienting; the flash is blindingly bright. Certainly disorienting for someone who has never seen a firearm discharged. Not quite so disorienting for someone with thirty years’ police experience. Experience in tight, dark spaces, waiting for a drug deal to go down, for a suspect to show. Shoving Dolan so hard against Pritchard, Heller was half expecting the shot.

  And when they collapse together, Dolan onto Pritchard in the tight, dark shack, it’s Heller’s chance to grab the Glock.

  Pritchard starts struggling to get out from under Dolan . . .

  He’s forced back down by the extra weight of Heller’s boot on Dolan’s back, pinning him there beneath Dolan.

  In the narrow beam of his own helmet light, Pritchard can see the Glock pointing down at him.

  He smiles up at it.

  “We both know you won’t shoot me,” says Pritchard. Trying to shift, but immobilized, beneath Dolan. “Only in self-defense, and I have no weapon,” says Pritchard, still smiling, and Heller can, once again, see Pritchard’s version so clearly:

  Dolan is dead.

  Heller’s prints are on the Glock.

  First, he shoots Dolan, then tries to shoot me.

  We should have all paid attention, Hobbes, sir, when Heller fell on the stairs that first time. Classic effects of T3. Obviously a serious sufferer. Add in the fuzzy thinking of hypothermia. He’s not used to these extreme conditions . . .

  He should never have had a Glock, Hobbes, sir. He forced us out there. He was convinced we were keeping the comm tower from working. Classic T3 paranoia and delusional thinking, Manny, you know that . . .

  There in the tight darkness, Dolan’s body starts to lift toward Heller.

  For a disorienting moment, Heller thinks Dolan is levitating, reanimating.

  The cold and dark are having their effect.

  His mind is suddenly feeling cloudy, somehow tightening up at its edges, constricting. His thoughts are going fuzzy on him, softening, leaking, starting to float around him. T3? Hypothermia? It would make sense in this frozen shack that it’s now setting in . . .

  Heller watches motionless, while Pritchard pushes Dolan up off him . . .

  Maybe to race for the door and the ATV, leaving Heller stranded here in the cold, unoccupied fringes of McMurdo . . .

  Or maybe, with no other choice, to reach for, tussle for the Glock . . .

  The Glock Heller won’t use.

  I want to, but I can’t.

  Dolan’s mysterious words coming back to him. Words of pained powerlessness.

  I want to, but I can’t.

  Because he’s too much a cop. Locked in the tight black box of the rules. The rules that forced him to turn in his own partner. Sacrifice department friendships, and then his marriage. Come alone, to the end of the earth.

  Frontier justice.

  Antarctic justice.

  The problem for him being that word: justice.

  I want to, oh, I want to, but I can’t.

  And then, in the next second, it’s suddenly the Glock he will use.

  In a lesson, an insight that cuts sharply through the softness of his thoughts.

  A lesson, an insight that does not come from Paul but from Pritchard.

  Pritchard, pushing up off the floor.

  Something Heller has learned from him.

  The hard way.

  Twice.

  Pritchard, who now has Dolan off him . . .

  Is standing up, gathering his legs under him . . .

  His helmet light dancing wildly against the walls . . .

  In a descending haze of hypothermic, polar T3 dizziness and confusion, Heller hears voices.

  A voice of resignation: I hope you don’t have to use it. But if you do, you’ll be wiser with it than me . . .

  A voice of darkness: One time ain’t enough . . .

  Blinking purposefully, pushing the dizziness back, Heller leans in . . .

  Slams Pritchard across the back of the head with the butt of the Glock.

  One blow.

  One time is enough.

  Pritchard crumples back to the floor.

  Head and limbs go slack.

  Suddenly silent.

  Suddenly motionless.

  There in the tigh
t, cold dark.

  The bewildering butt end of the earth—

  Calling out to him, instructing him somehow to use the butt end of the gun.

  Contrary to all his training. All his years of crouching at targets, patrolman’s stance, firing thousands of practice rounds.

  Contrary to everything drilled into him as a cop.

  The Glock’s other end.

  Using it like a thug, not a cop.

  But that’s the end where justice could begin.

  You gotta adjust your thinking.

  Heller drags Pritchard out of the shack to the ATV. Still running.

  The violence and effort have shaken Heller into alertness. Got his metabolism running. His juices returning.

  He slings Pritchard across the front seat, gets on in back—just as Pritchard described Dolan doing for Heller, saving him after his first “fall”—and heads toward the light and warmth of McMurdo.

  BOOK THREE: DAY

  76.

  The first C-130 of the season swoops down out of the northern sky, steadies its mild wing roll, and lands without incident—and with much fanfare—on the McMurdo runway.

  A ceremonial cheer goes up from the assembled 153 surviving residents of McMurdo winter. It’s a half-century tradition to bundle up and gather outside in the finally rising sun of early September, to herald the first arrival of supplies—palettes of fresh milk, butter, eggs, fresh fruit—and, most of all, to greet the first of the busy season’s fresh personnel.

  Hobbes and Heller stand together, watching silently.

  As soon as the reassuringly constant flow of messages from Pritchard and Dolan had stopped for several days—“having communications issues, but we’re okay”—the Russians had traveled over from Vostok station, over a hundred miles away, to see if everything was okay. A parade of winter tractors, checking on their Antarctic neighbors, not knowing exactly what had happened. They had received concerned calls from United States Antarctic Program (USAP) headquarters in Centennial, Colorado, conveyed to Moscow via both diplomatic and scientific community channels. Not knowing exactly what was occurring or had occurred, alarmed at the sudden cessation of communication, and wondering then about the veracity of the previous communication, the Russians had come armed.

  Of course, if they had ventured over several days earlier, their American colleagues might not have allowed them in, fearing contagion from a catastrophic global pandemic. The Americans would probably have been armed themselves. Who knows exactly what would have occurred, although one likes to think that scientific heads would have prevailed.

  As it was, the Russians were welcomed in. They had brought their team of comm experts, given the reported communications equipment issues, who restored all satellite and Internet connections in less than an hour. The flip of a few switches, the restoration of a small component that had already been found in the suite of Daniel Pritchard and Patrick Dolan. Hidden at the back of a terrarium, actually, beneath one of the bunks, a terrarium teeming with snakes, slithering thickly over it, which had to be destroyed to get to the component safely.

  (Privately, later, some of the Russians laughed at the whole thing. Most shook their heads, amazed. The way the entire McMurdo winter-over community had been hoodwinked by a couple of radio techs. A couple of very disturbed radio techs. That would never have happened at Vostok, they said. They maintained more tech support than the Americans. They felt a little flush of superiority over the Americans, a flush of pride at their more rigorous and rigid system. Although deep down, they knew it could have happened to them too. It could have happened to anyone.)

  The initial amusement and amazement were soon subsumed in the sobering discovery and spreading understanding of what had occurred at McMurdo during the winter-over. A second poisoning. The base doctor bludgeoned. A botanist, Cohen, killed in an argument. Dolan, one of the radio techs, inadvertently shot by the other. Four dead. Five, counting the first poisoning of a scientist the previous winter. A hefty death toll, when for all the previous winters at McMurdo, there had been none. The riskiest conditions, it turned out with ringing irony, were within the warmth and presumed “safety” of McMurdo’s walls. The greatest risk wasn’t the harsh landscape. It was other humans.

  The murders of that winter-over captured their moment of media attention, as does any murder story. This one had, for the media, the extra appeal of potential victims being stuck there, trapped, for long months of continuous night. Fish in a barrel. A dark, cold barrel. It captured imaginations, lived on a little longer than the next murder story, because of the setting—the inherent mystery and drama of Antarctica, for most people. Many of the “survivors” were interviewed subsequently. What did it feel like? Were you terrified? Could you sleep?

  (It was noted, of course, how it was in such contrast to the experience at Amundsen-Scott, the smaller base a thousand miles to the south, relying on the same communications system. The forty winter residents of Amundsen-Scott had remained comfortable, snug, secure, well fed, as in any other winter. Quietly doing their projects. Unfazed, unchanged. The communications disruption was actually cheered by a number of them, it turned out. A welcome quiet. A happy hibernation. Curled in for the long night. The “good” sibling station. The well-behaved sibling station.)

  The radio communication from McMurdo, though intermittent and fractured, had been so specific—detailing the specific components the radio techs were repairing, detailing the health conditions of specific patients, sending medical reports, updating supply reports, even communicating some birthday wishes. It had been so detailed, so comprehensive, so reassuring, that there had been no reason to worry. It was, after all, still better than the Antarctica of only a few years before, when there were no winter-over communications, and they were not as well equipped, so there was much more reason to worry.

  And anyway, Centennial command always dutifully checked the transmission images when the satellite passed over McMurdo. The satellite images always showed everything normal. All buildings lit. The smoke of cooking from the cafeteria. The exhaust plumes from the fuel and gas of heating. All the normal, plentiful projections of heat and light. The normal limited movement of orange parkas around the base in winter. All looking good from up here.

  The same satellite that Heller saw circling—silent, drifting, useless, he had thought.

  As it turned out, he was right. All that diligent satellite observation of them was pretty useless.

  The off-loading of supplies is efficient, as the first C-130 always is. Because all eyes are on it. Because everyone has extra energy, extra spring in their step. Glad to have made it through another Antarctic winter. Particularly glad, in this case.

  And once the off-loading is done, the loading of the C-130 begins immediately. The first round of the collected trash, to maintain a zero-tolerance waste policy. The first few personnel to leave the station and head back north to the world, a privilege won by lottery—again, a raucous tradition, always accompanied by good-natured teasing and ironic cheering.

  And then, what Heller and Hobbes are specifically standing out here to supervise, to confirm:

  Pritchard is brought out manacled. Led by Simmons, carefully flanked by three of Simmons’s staff. No sunglasses on Pritchard, Heller notices, so keeping his eyes closed against the rising sun’s brightness. No gloves. His head is exposed, his head wound still bandaged and wrapped. As is Heller’s. Pritchard faces forward, eyes to the ground, doesn’t look around him at all, as he is led to the plane.

  He will be heavily, carefully manacled aboard the plane. There is a seat already designated.

  The international bureaucracy has found a way, given the heinousness of the crimes. The fact that Lazo-Wasum was an Austrian national—normally a hurdle requiring cumbersome judicial proceedings—has worked unexpectedly in their favor. His murder was so clearly perpetrated in precisely the manner of Trish Wong’s, the Austrian judicial system waived its separate rights and drafted a document allowing Lazo-Wasum’s murder t
o be tried as part of a wrongful death suit alongside the two murdered Americans, Wong and Calloway. And the complex agreement from the Austrians allowed the American judicial team to insert certain prosecutorial powers they wouldn’t be entitled to otherwise. The cross-border, transnational Antarctic experiment usually impedes the administration of justice. But this new working document—unbound by previous rules or conventions—makes justice uncharacteristically swift. The rules of evidence, adequate legal representation, the right to a defense. All that has been streamlined in this new American-Austrian accord—thanks to the brutal nature of the crime. Murder as a rallying point, a place of common ground—not something Heller would have ever predicted of the scientific community of McMurdo, and Antarctica.

  When Pritchard has been settled into his seat, manacles and locks attached and tested, Simmons signals at the airplane hatch door.

  Joe Heller comes aboard to inspect the arrangements. To make sure Pritchard is fully secured in his seat. That no objects are near him.

  “He’ll be received by US Marshals when you land in Hawaii. Do not unshackle him. They’ll come aboard and do it.

  “No conversation with him of any sort, for any reason, for the duration of the flight. No getting out of his seat for any reason.” And then, turning to Pritchard, to say the one thing he’ll say directly to him, to deliver the last communication between them:

  “You’ll have to piss in your pants.”

  Heller heads to the hatch door. “You’re all set,” he says to the crew, to the pilots, as he ducks out and descends onto the ice again.

  Antarctica’s first, and only, acting peace officer.

 

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