Hard Line

by Pamela Clare

  “I’m sorry I called you mercenaries. Do people ever shoot at you?”

  “Oh, hell, yes.” Jones chuckled. “I took a round to the chest in Mazar-e-Sharif.”

  Segal cracked open a bottle of water. “A lot of Cobra boys got hit on that one.”

  That operation had happened shortly before Thor joined the company. But this conversation wasn’t helping Samantha. “There won’t be any bullets flying when we land. The cold is the only real threat to us on this operation.”

  While Thor answered Samantha’s questions about the selection process for Sirius, Jones and Segal drifted into a discussion about the movie The Thing and the possibility of finding space aliens or dinosaurs frozen in the Antarctic ice.

  Samantha stared at Thor. “Only six guys make the cut each year?”

  “That’s only if they can find six guys who qualify.” Thor would forever be grateful that he’d made it. He wasn’t sure where he’d be otherwise. Two years on the ice had helped him put Afghanistan behind him. It had saved him. “The year I joined, only five men made it. The last was cut at the end after losing his temper.”

  “That’s really strict.”

  “When you’re out on the ice for four months at a time with one other person and a team of sled dogs, you can’t afford to be emotional. They only take people who can keep their heads in a crisis.”

  “You must be very level-headed.”

  He was—most of the time.

  Jones pivoted in his seat. “This dude is ice cold. You’re talking to the great-great-grandson of a god. He’s a direct descendant of Odin, you know. That’s what the official Danish genealogical records say. I’ve seen the PDF.”

  “Odin? The Norse god?” Samantha looked up at Thor.

  “Yes. Obviously, it’s not true.”

  “Ask him about the time he denned with a mama polar bear, because that’s real.”

  Thor laughed at the shock in Samantha’s eyes. “He’s exaggerating. I—”

  The pilot’s voice cut him off. “I just got a report that a plane lifted off from Vostok a short time ago. Radar shows them heading for the crash site. They’re farther out than we are, but you’re going to have company.”

  Samantha exhaled as the plane came to a stop, her hands still gripping the arms of her seat, her knuckles white. It had been a rough landing, but at least they hadn’t tumbled into a crevasse. “Good grief!”

  Wind buffeted the small aircraft, its propellers still running.

  She stood, put on her hat, hood, snow goggles, mask, gloves, and headlamp, the satellite schematics tucked inside her parka. “What about the other plane?”

  Thor rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder, his gaze meeting hers. “Let us worry about the plane. You focus on the satellite.”

  The men moved quickly, pulling out rifles and putting on masks, headlamps, goggles, and gloves.

  “Rifles over your shoulders. Pistols holstered.” Thor took a rifle and the steel lockbox out of his gear bag. “We’ll set up the tent on her windward side to create a windbreak and offer some shelter.”

  Lev grabbed a large duffel bag. “I’ve got the tools. Jones, grab the tent.”

  Thor turned and shouted to the pilot. “How much time can you give us?”

  “It’s minus eighty with a wind chill of minus one-ten. No more than twenty minutes, if that.”

  Samantha’s stomach knotted.

  Twenty minutes. What they were asking of her seemed impossible, and yet she had no choice but to get the job done. If any of the plane’s systems froze, they would die. If they got caught in the storm, they would die. If she didn’t retrieve the components, lots of other people might die.

  You can do this.

  If she could access the components, that is.

  “I’ll go first and make sure the ice is stable.” Thor opened the door, letting in a gust of frigid air. He walked a path to the satellite and back, then returned for her and helped her down the stairs.

  She pulled her hat down over exposed skin that burned, turned on her headlamp, and looked out on devastation.

  The satellite’s various antennae and solar arrays were strewn across the snow in a thousand shattered pieces, the main body lying there like a battered corpse. The clean-up crew had a big job to do next summer.

  She lowered her head against the wind and walked over to the mangled remains of the satellite. It was badly damaged, looking nothing like the images she’d memorized. She tried to orient herself, their headlamps the only source of light. “That must be where the thirty gigahertz antenna connected. This held a solar array. That must have been where the dual subreflectors attached to the module.”

  Thor walked beside her. “Where do you want to set up?”

  She pointed. “Over there.”

  Thor motioned to the others. “Let’s get that tent set up!”

  The men struggled to complete their task in the wind, while Samantha opened the tool bag, the wind chill already penetrating her layers. A blow torch would have made this easier, but they were unreliable in this cold. She took out a hammer and chisel, which she used to punch through the aluminum alloy paneling until she’d made a big enough opening for a close-quarter hacksaw.

  “Like this,” she heard Thor say.

  He seemed to be in his element here, more so than the others.

  “I think you’ve done this before,” Malik said.

  “A thousand times. Tighten that down. There. We’re good.”

  The tent did make a difference, sheltering her from the worst of the wind.

  Thor told Malik and Lev to shelter inside. “Do what you can to stay warm, so you’re good to go when that plane arrives.”

  She kept sawing, the blade slicing through metal. But she needed to go faster. She couldn’t spend ten of their twenty minutes just getting into the module. Unfortunately, aluminum was one metal that gained strength in extreme cold.

  The saw blade snapped, unable to take it.

  “Damn.” She bent down, rummaged through the tools for a replacement blade.

  “What can I do?”

  “The blade broke. I need a new one.”

  “All you’re doing is cutting open this paneling, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Thor gave her something—hand warmers. “Get inside the tent. Activate those if you need them. We’ll handle this part of it. We’re good at wrecking shit. Come on, boys, let’s rip this open.”

  She stepped inside the tent as Malik and Lev stepped out, her breath turning to ice crystals that danced in the light of her headlamp. Through a crack in the tent flap, she saw the men using the hammer and chisel to punch out a large opening in the panel.

  A few minutes later, Thor ducked his head inside the tent. “You’re on.”

  She stepped out and peered into the module, adjusting her headlamp. The GPS unit was there behind wires and internal supports. She reached into the bag for the wire-cutters and a battery-operated drill. But in these heavy gloves, her fingers weren’t nimble enough to do the job. “I have to take off my gloves.”

  Thor stood beside her. “Activate those hand warmers. You’ll be able to work for only a minute or two at a time.”

  She shook the hand warmers to start the chemical reaction, slipped them inside the pocket of her parka, and pulled off her gloves.

  The air was so frigid it felt like plunging her hands into hot steam.

  She bit back a gasp at the pain and did her best to focus, only too aware that the clock was ticking.

  “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” Thor’s voice was calming.

  She cut through one set of wires and searched for the screws that held the GPS unit to the supports, her fingers already growing stiff.

  Thor took the drill. “Take a rest. Tell me what to do.”

  She shoved her hands into her pockets, the hand warmers almost unbearably hot. “See that metal box just beneath that electrical node? That’s what we came for—that and the unit just beside it.”

 
He looked inside, studied the situation. “Got it.”

  He positioned the drill, the small device whirring as he removed the first bolt. Then Thor looked up at the dark sky. “Here they come.”

  Samantha heard it, too—the sound of an approaching airplane.

  5

  Thor shoved his hands into his pockets to warm them and watched the plane circle overhead. “Segal, you speak Russian, right?”

  “Enough to get by. Come on, Jones. We’re the welcoming committee.”

  Thor didn’t need to tell them what to do. He’d worked with them for three years in many different situations. He trusted them not to allow anyone to come near Samantha or the satellite.

  Samantha struggled to position the drill for the next bolt. “This battery isn’t going to last long in the cold.”

  “Worry about that when it happens.”

  “What if they point guns at you or start shooting?”

  “They’re not going to open fire. They can’t be that stupid. They’d be proving their guilt. Besides, we have bigger problems right now. The wind is picking up. Just focus.”

  The front edge of that storm system was moving closer.

  Samantha removed a bolt and stuck her hands inside her pockets again. “One of the bolts is hidden beneath a twisted strut. We’re going to have to cut through.”

  “I see it.” Thor replaced the blade of the saw and began cutting through the strut as the plane landed and came to a stop. He focused on the job and left the intruders to Jones and Segal. The sooner they had these components in their hands, the sooner this would be over. “That’s one done.”

  But his exposed fingers couldn’t take more.

  It was Samantha’s turn again.

  From some distance behind them came a man’s voice in heavily accented English. “We are from Vostok Station and have come to help.”

  Samantha shook her head. “Right.”

  “Don’t worry about them. Just focus on that GPS unit.”

  Segal chuckled. “The six of you flew out here in dangerous conditions from four hundred miles away to help—and you’re carrying weapons.”

  That was Segal’s way of warning Thor that they were outnumbered—and that the Russians were armed.

  “You have rifles, too, I see. You are military, yes?”

  “We’re not military, no. The rifles are just to protect us from polar bears.”

  “There are no polar bears in Antarctica.”

  “We were misinformed.”

  Segal was lying. The Russians were lying. Everyone knew it.

  That was international relations in a nutshell.

  Meanwhile, Samantha had stopped sawing, her hands in her pockets again. “This is taking too long.”

  “We’re almost there.” Thor glanced at his watch. “We’ve got eight minutes.”

  “Who is in that tent?” the Russian asked. “We are happy to help if you are having trouble. You must get back into the air soon, yes?”

  “Thanks, but we’ll manage.” Segal sounded like he was enjoying this. “There’s a storm headed this way. You might want to worry about your own safety.”

  “What are you saying?” The Russian sounded truly surprised.

  “Didn’t you know? We’re going to be racing to get back ahead of it.”

  Thor took over once again, cutting through the strut in a second place and removing it from the module. He tried to pull the GPS unit out, but it was attached to something on the other side. “It’s still bolted in somewhere, and my hands are too big to get back there. When you can feel your fingers again, see what you can do.”

  Samantha drew her hands out of her pockets, reached inside the module. “It’s bolted into something. There’s no way the saw will fit in here. Maybe I can shatter the casing and retrieve what’s inside. They didn’t tell us to bring this back in one piece.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  She retrieved the hammer and chisel and gave the alloy casing that surrounded the GPS unit a few hard blows. “I’m in.”

  She dropped the tools and fought to free the component’s internal workings. When she drew her hand out again, Thor’s headlamp caught it.

  Blood frozen on her palm.

  He took her hand. “You cut yourself.”

  She stared at her palm. “I didn’t feel it.”

  “Get your hands in your pockets, and step back into the tent. I’ve got this.”

  He reached inside and ripped out chips, circuitry, and some kind of processor, dropping them in a steel lockbox. “Is that everything?”

  He stepped back, slid his hands into his pockets, his fingers completely numb.

  Samantha looked. “I think that’s it.”

  She unzipped her parka, drew out the schematics, and stepped back into the tent and out of the wind to study them. “Yes, we’ve got it.”

  “I’m going to escort you back to the plane and get you and the components safely onboard again.” Thor put on his gloves, locked the steel box, and shouldered the bag of tools. “If they’re going to make a move to steal this, they’ll do it now. Once you’re out of the cold, we’ll break the tent down and join you.”

  “I understand.” She put the hand warmers in her gloves and slipped her hands inside them. “Be careful.”

  “We will.” Thor stepped around the side of the tent, cold wind hitting him hard.

  There, not twenty feet away, stood six men with headlamps, their path blocked by Segal and Jones.

  Samantha focused on taking one step after the other, relieved she’d done what she’d been sent to do. Now that she wasn’t distracted by the job, the cold had become unbearable, the shelter of the plane seeming so far away. But it wasn’t over yet.

  There were still the six Russians behind her—double the number of Cobra men. If she, Thor, and the others got safely aboard the plane, they still needed to take off and make it back to the station so the pilot could get back to McMurdo alive.

  Too cold now to be afraid, she took one step after another.

  Thor tucked an arm through hers, steadying her, helping her to go faster. “Keep moving. You’re almost there.”

  As they neared the plane, the pilot opened the door and lowered the stairs. “I was about to come after you. We need to go—now. That storm is moving in faster than we thought it would.”

  “We’ll get the tent and be right back.” Thor helped Samantha up the steps, setting the bag of tools and the steel lockbox near her feet.

  Then the stairs came in, and the pilot shut and locked the door.

  Warmth.

  The suddenness of the temperature shift left her feeling disoriented.

  “I’ll grab you a heated blanket.” The pilot disappeared toward the front.

  “Thank you.” She peeled off her gloves with stiff fingers, took off her goggles and mask to find her eyelashes covered with frost.

  Shivering, she walked with wooden steps to her seat, took the blanket from the pilot, and wrapped it around her parka, tucking it beneath her chin, the warmth heavenly.

  Outside her window, Thor, Malik, and Lev faced off with the Russian team. The six men finally turned and trudged back to their plane. While Malik kept watch, Lev helped Thor take down the tent. Then the three men ran toward the plane.

  The pilot opened the door again, lowered the stairs. “Let’s go!”

  The men climbed aboard one at a time, stowed their gear, and stripped off their masks, their eyelashes and Malik’s beard white with frost.

  The pilot raised the stairs, went to close the door. “We’ve got company!”

  In a heartbeat, Thor and the others had their rifles in hand.

  Samantha’s adrenaline spiked.

  A Russian, still masked, walked up to the door, hands raised, speaking in panicked English. “Our plane—its fuel line is frozen! Please, take us back with you.”

  Thor, Malik, and Lev shared a glance, their expressions hard.

  “It could be a ploy, a way to grab the package,” Jones sa
id.

  Segal spoke to the man in Russian, then turned to Thor. “This guy is scared shitless. I think he’s telling the truth.”

  Thor seemed to consider this.

  Samantha had to say it. “If he’s telling the truth and we leave them, they’ll die, and the world would rightly blame us.”

  There was no one else to come along and rescue them out here.

  Thor turned to the pilot. “Can the plane carry seven more?”

  Seven? Of course. The six men, plus their pilot.

  “Fuck.” The pilot let out a gust of breath. “We don’t have enough oxygen for everyone. You’ll have to share. The extra weight means we’ll use more fuel and take longer to get back—if we get back. Can you control them?”

  Thor seemed unruffled and in command of the situation, his confidence reassuring. “No problems there.”

  “Then get them on board. We needed to leave five minutes ago. Our propellers and fuel line might freeze, and then we’re all dead. I’m going to get us moving.”

  “Take this and lock the cockpit door behind you.” Thor handed him the lockbox with the components. “Segal, tell our new friends we’re taking their weapons. They’ve got thirty seconds to get aboard.”

  Lev shouted something to the Russian, who motioned to the others.

  Samantha watched, pulse racing, as desperate men scrambled across the ice, running toward their only chance at survival.

  But what if they were lying? What if they had concealed weapons and hijacked the plane? What if they killed them all and simply took the plane?

  One by one, the men climbed on board, handed their rifles to Malik and Lev. When the last one had made it, Thor pulled up the stairs and secured the door. Samantha noticed that he still had his pistol, as did Malik and Lev.

  They weren’t taking any chances.

  He shouted to the pilot. “Let’s go!”

  Lev and Jones stowed the rifles. Then Segal spoke to the Russians, who sat on the floor alongside the ferry tank with no safety belts. From Lev’s gestures, Samantha could tell he was explaining that they would have to share oxygen. The Russians nodded and began taking off their goggles and masks. And there among them was Vasily.