by Andy Lucas
It should have been a fairly easy walk but after an hour he was sweating from exertion, realising that somehow he had missed his target. The repetitive trudging of his own feet lulled his senses into a monotonous rhythm so it did not dawn on him straight away that the ground had stopped rising and falling, instead becoming as flat as a proverbial pancake.
When the realisation finally struck, and he turned around to check the way he’d just come, the ice was flat behind him for as far as the eye could see. He was no longer walking over ice and snow covered ground, he was on the ice sheet itself.
Without a compass, Hammond might have been in trouble. This was an annoyance but nothing dangerous, he reasoned. If he maintained his heading, he would still shortly arrive at the water. Then he would need to decide if he’d missed civilisation to the east or the west. He would not be able to afford a mistake at that point. The sparkle of the water caught his eye after another fifteen minutes and it spurred him on.
There was no need for him to walk right up to the edge of the ice sheet and he halted a hundred feet back from the dark, grey water.
‘Now, which way?’
His hope of spotting some sign of life was immediately dashed. The ice remained unbroken and flat all around, with the exception of a couple of rifts where the pressure had buckled the ice sheet and it had risen up on itself, in several small areas, to create glistening pillars of ice towering twenty or thirty feet high. They were beautiful; especially one that was made of three interlocking slabs of ice, forced upwards together and twisted to create a bluish, translucent spiral.
It was breathtaking and Hammond could not help but take a moment to admire the phenomena. All alone, at the edge of the Ross Ice Sheet, in sub-zero temperatures, he felt strangely peaceful and calm.
Then he shook off the sense of awe and scanned the horizon again, straining his eyes for clues about which way to walk. He should have been able to see the rising landscape, where the ice sheet met the land of Ross Island. Visibility had dropped a little, as the snow began to thicken again but it was still clear for nearly half a mile. He knew that he’d walked far further in the storm than he had imagined.
‘Right, Max,’ he resolved. ‘You’ll just have to guess.’ Deciding to strike out eastwards, he wasted no more time waiting around. Whistling to keep up his spirits, as thousands of castaways had over the centuries before him, he pulled his hood tighter.
Being on the edge of the ice shelf, where it met the frigid sea, the thickness of the ice was not constant. What most people did not realise was that the ice layer that covered Antarctica often ran to a depth of one mile, locking in over seventy percent of the Earth’s fresh water. Stumbling into a lethal crevasse was always a risk.
Hammond was very aware of the risks, having nearly lost a couple of climbing buddies on a trip to the North Pole a few years before. Up at the top of the world, as opposed to the bottom where he was now, he’d been more concerned about the risks posed from marauding polar bears but death had nearly surprised them out on the ice when the lead man had been swallowed up by a deep crevasse, disguised by a thin crust of fresh snow.
After a short while, with visibility suddenly shut back down to a few metres as another storm pounced upon him. His pushed on until his concentration was broken, eventually, by a large black object materialising out of the blizzard ahead of him.
The black shape regarded him with disinterest, through beady eyes that weighed up the strange creature carefully. The penguin had seen enough humans already in its fairly short life and knew not to be afraid. They often came close to the colony but never hurt any birds. If it had been a leopard seal, it would have made a waddling, sliding dash for the water’s edge.
Suddenly, Hammond was surrounded by hundreds of penguins. Inadvertently walking straight into a sizeable colony of Emperor penguins, Hammond slowed his pace even further, hoping not to frighten any of them. Rarer in Antarctica than the smaller, more common Chinstrap or Gentoo breeds, these impressive penguins were surprisingly large. He had seen Emperors in a zoo but never in the wild. They stood to his hip, with their distinctive yellow neck rings marking them out from other species.
With the weather deteriorating fast, Hammond was unable to gauge the true extent of the colony but it was large enough for him to have to navigate very carefully between, and around, multiple huddles of the birds. They did not move to avoid him because at least a few had the tell-tale signs that they were guarding an egg between their feet.
Hammond did not realise it but these were all male penguins. The females had laid the eggs and then returned to the sea, months before, leaving the males to incubate them. With the dissipating of the Antarctic winter, they would soon return and relieve their mates, allowing them to finally break from a four-month fast and replenish their much weakened strength.
Two key things stopped him being too overawed by such an encounter. The first was the urgent, pressing need to find human help. The second was the stench of so many droppings coating the ice. Hammond put his head down further against the rising wind and pushed on through the colony, leaving them behind after a couple of minutes.
The storm worsened but Hammond fought against it, leaning into the teeth of the gale and panting hard with the constant, heart-pounding exertion. He knew he would need to be right on top of McMurdo Station in such weather before he would see anything. He kept moving, squinting ahead through stinging, bloodshot eyes.
Despite his focus, he nearly walked slam into the side of a low-rise building before pulling up short, cursing. Seeing the human structure, his stomach lurched with excitement and a rush of energy helped shake off his lethargy.
Olive green in colour, it was only thirty feet long and was little more than a converted ship container, made from steel panels bolted together. The wall he came upon was solid, with no windows or doors, so he slowly began walking around it, half hoping to bump into an adventurous scientist at any moment.
He had more luck as he turned the corner and investigated the building’s narrow, fifteen-foot front. There was no window but a solid, single door beckoned him with delightful familiarity. It had a standard handle that bore no lock. He tested it and it pushed down smoothly. If the wind had not been screeching at him, he would have heard it click open.
Feeling the door give, he wasted no time in stepping through it and closing it quickly behind him, shutting out the foul weather instantly.
The building was pitch black inside and Hammond quickly fumbled for his survival beacon, switching it to its constant mode in exactly the same way that Pace had done. In such a confined area, the light was dazzling and showed him everything he needed to see. The most important thing he saw was a light switch just inside the door. He tried it, without really expecting much, and was rewarded by the flickering into life of several overhead, fluorescent tubes.
Then he had to blink a couple of times to check that he wasn’t hallucinating. The building was set up like an oceanic dive room.
The walls were lined with racks, each holding yellow and blue painted scuba tanks, various dry suits and other assorted diving paraphernalia. Two large air compressors sat in one corner, near to a small metal table. There was nothing else there.
The steel floor was carpeted with special rubberised matting throughout, with the exception of a small circular area in the centre. Measuring barely six feet in diameter, it resembled an old-fashioned well, complete with wooden cover and a heavy-duty winch rigged on an A-frame bolted down over it.
Hammond accepted what his eyes told him and was just beginning to wrestle with the question of why people were clearly diving under the ice when his heart froze, mid-beat.
On the wall to his left, adjacent to a green, plastic first aid kit, sat a bright red telephone.
Tearing off his gloves with his teeth, breath coming in gasps as the shock of this possible lifeline, he snatched it up and could not suppress a whoop of delight to hear the system automatically connect to a pre-set number.
He
waited, heart calming. Would anybody answer? And if they did, who would it be?
16
Solomon Munambe had initially spent days beside himself with worry over the lost journalist, Deborah Miles, but events were now overtaking him at such an appalling rate that he had long-since consigned her to his mental back-burner.
Another plague outbreak had hit and this time it was far larger, decimating the wildlife over ten square miles of game reserve. Thousands of animals had perished of the same aggressive strain and the problem was getting out of control as his limited game staff struggled to prevent sick animals moving into new areas, thus spreading the disease.
Animals lay dying in terrible agony within a day of becoming infected, littering the ground with their twisted corpses. Some had fallen into waterholes and Munambe knew that this could spread the disease to any healthy animal that came there to take its evening drink.
He had just come back from a private meeting of government ministers, who had given him full authority to do whatever he needed to do, as long as the outbreak was contained and any new ones quickly extinguished. He had briefed them fully, leaving nothing out except any details of ARC.
The company might well have been involved but some of the men sat around the table had personally authorised the building of the ARC facility and, for all he knew, might run straight back to them with any suspicions that he raised.
‘It is better that they think we suspect nothing,’ Munambe explained to his ever-trusted assistant, Kaoni, who sat in an old wooden chair across the desk from him. Both men were sipping at glasses of mint tea in an attempt to cope with the sweltering heat of the early afternoon. Kaoni was one of the few others who were up to speed on the serious nature of the unfolding disaster.
‘What more can we do, sir?’ asked Kaoni. ‘There are only a few park rangers and we can’t swamp the reserves with hundreds of extra people without drawing attention to what’s going on.’
‘I know,’ agreed Munambe thoughtfully.
‘You realise that the rangers are having to shoot a lot of the infected animals before they spread it too far afield? Killing wildlife that they’ve spent a lifetime protecting is breaking their hearts.’
‘Again, I know,’ repeated Munambe. ‘This new strain of plague must have come from somewhere. A dormant strain perhaps? A mutation? Perhaps Deborah was right when she suspected ARC?’
‘It does seem a bit of a coincidence that both outbreaks are in areas near to their facility,’ agreed Kaoni. ‘Are we still sending a team in to get her out? They’re clearly involved in something illegal, to snatch her.’
‘We don’t know they’ve got her. She might have just got herself lost in the sand dunes.’ Munambe did not believe his own words.
‘Unlikely, sir. We both know they’re keeping her prisoner at their facility. We only need to know why.’
‘I can’t really spare any bodies to go barging into that facility at the moment, not now. Our only option is to launch a surprise anti-poaching operation in the infected areas. It will allow us to flood soldiers into the reserve without unsettling the press or undermining tourism.’
‘That’s probably the only way to keep things quiet,’ Kaoni agreed. ‘But you still can’t leave a foreign national held against her will, on our own soil.’
Munambe knew his assistant was right, in both a moral and practical sense. He wanted to rescue Deborah and he was very angry at the sheer impertinence of ARC for running roughshod over his country’s laws. He was also very mindful of how well connected ARC was. Proof was needed before he could act decisively, which he didn’t have.
‘I’m going to need all our resources to contain this nightmare,’ he conceded. ‘I’m afraid that Deborah Miles will have to wait it out for a while longer. She knew what she was getting herself into, after all.
That would have been the end of it if the telephone on his battered old desk hadn’t chosen that very moment to jangle on the hook, the ringing drawing a sigh of anguish from Munambe. It was bound to be more bad news.
He picked up the phone and listened for a moment, nodded, then hung up. Kaoni shot him a politely questioning look.
‘More problems, sir?’
Munambe shook his head, scratching absently at an imaginary itch on the tip of his nose. ‘No. That was the head of the national security council. This is a man,’ he explained quickly, ‘who has never spoken a word to me in the eight years he’s been in office, even when we’ve had issues with security. Now, he’s just rung me himself to tell me to expect a call from someone else within the next ten minutes. I must be ready to cooperate with whoever is going to ring because, apparently,’ he added, ‘this person can help us with both of our problem.’
‘Sounds very secretive.’
‘It does,’ he agreed. ‘I only hope that whoever rings me will genuinely be able to help. Someone who has a few hundred extra staff, who can be shipped in to all the affected reserves; each with the handy ability to work in fierce temperatures while wearing protective clothing.’
Despite everything, both men allowed themselves the luxury of a brief smile before Kaoni made his excuses and left the office, heading for the little kitchen a couple of rooms down the corridor. Although curious about who might be about to call, he had to make calls of his own to check up on the progress of the containment operation.
He also needed to make sure he made some sandwiches and fresh tea. They had both slept at work for the past three days and he guessed that tonight would be no different. Food and drink would keep their strength up.
Left alone, Munambe pondered events for perhaps the hundredth time that morning. If the plague outbreaks were a naturally occurring phenomenon, it was bad enough but if there was a human element involved, either accidental or deliberate, then he wouldn’t be able to keep the news from spreading for much longer.
The cover story of anti-poaching would only hold for a while. The media were tenacious, he knew first-hand, and it wouldn’t take long before some nosey reporter managed to get a satellite image of dead animals or arranged a private plane flight over the rotting corpses, despite the blanket no-fly zone that had been introduced over fifty square miles of game reserve.
Although he was expecting it, Munambe’s throat still tightened involuntarily when the phone rang again a couple of minutes later. Snatching up the receiver, he held it to his ear expectantly.
‘I would like to speak with Solomon Munambe,’ stated a male voice immediately.
‘Speaking.’
‘You are Munambe?’
‘Yes, I am. I was told to expect your call.’
‘Good. That will save us a great deal of time.’
‘Not really,’ countered Munambe. ‘I haven’t been told anything else. Not who you are or why you’ll call. Other than that you might be able to help me with a couple of,’ he chose his next words very carefully, speaking them slowly, ‘domestic problems.’
‘That’s very politically worded, Munambe, but I know everything so let’s not play games.’
‘What do you know?’
The voice on the other end paused for a breath and, for the first time, Munambe noticed a high-pitched buzz in the background. The connection was crystal clear and he had taken enough flights to recognise the sound.
‘I know that you’re struggling to cope with the second outbreak of a terrible strain of bubonic plague, which is killing animals and any people it infects within a day or two. You’re doing your best to keep a lid on it to save the tourist revenue but you’re not sure where this deadly new strain has come from.’ A pause. ‘Unless you consider your suspicions that ARC are somehow involved, which you haven’t been able to action yet because too many government ministers took bribes from the company to green light planning permission on their new desalination plant, built on your Skeleton Coast.’
‘You are very well informed,’ Munambe admitted. ‘As I said, these are domestic, internal matters that we are sure we will be able to deal with. However,’ he
conceded quickly for fear of chasing away any potential assistance, ‘any help would be useful in containing these issues quickly.’
‘That’s why I called you.’
‘What help can you offer the Namibian government, Mr...?’
‘McEntire. Doyle McEntire.’
Munambe was stunned. This was the second time that he had heard the McEntire name; the first being from Deborah Miles when she speculated about the Corporation’s possible involvement with ARC. That seemed like years ago now.
‘I am honoured to speak with you. I know how busy you must be, Mr McEntire.’
‘Never too busy to help fight an ecological or humanitarian disaster. It’s one of the things I like to get involved with to balance the business side of life.’
‘Like you did with that charity race in the Amazon a few months ago,’ Munambe agreed. ‘It’s a rare thing for big business to be so philanthropic.’
‘Look, let’s get down to it,’ McEntire dispensed with any further pleasantries. ‘I have my own offices and associate companies all over the globe, including Africa, which is one of our largest emerging markets. Tell me what you need, exactly, and I will have it there as soon as I can.’
‘Bodies,’ Munambe replied emphatically. ‘Experienced rangers if you can get your hands on them. Ex-military people would be helpful, as they will need to be able to shoot.’
‘Shoot?’
‘We can’t allow infected animals to roam into uninfected herds. They have to be stopped and infected animals can’t be allowed to suffer either.’
‘That isn’t a problem. How many do you need?’
‘As many as you can spare.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Powerful antibiotics, in vast amounts. This strain seems resistant to penicillin but some of the more expensive antibiotics, especially a couple of the newer ones, do work. Trouble is, we don’t have many doses in the country at the moment and we need to be able to undertake mass treatment in case this disease spreads to the cities.’