Ice Station Death

by Gustavo Bondoni

  The doctor looked at Javier for guidance, and the colonel shrugged. “Lucky break, isn’t it?”

  “Always be prepared,” Breen replied.

  They filed in behind the doctor, past the operating room where blood-stained blue sheets gave mute witness to the drama that had unfolded within to a hall with beige painted walls where a rolling hospital stretcher bed held the woman from the ship. She was still as pale as when the men had found her, but her eyes were alert and the panic had subsided. She smiled wanly at the doctor as he approached.

  Breen exulted. Up close, it was clear that he had the correct woman. The photos from Military Intelligence looked exactly like the girl on the bed. “Hello,” he said in Russian.

  The woman looked up sharply. “You speak my language?”

  “And some others,” Breen said with a smile.

  “Is that Russian?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Ask her if she’s allergic to any medicines or antibiotics.”

  Breen did. “She says she isn’t.”

  “Ask her if she knows her blood type.”

  “O positive.”

  “Good.”

  “Let her know that her arm is going to be all right, but that she’s going to have a nasty scar. I’m supposed to fix sailors that fall off cranes, not people mauled by tigers. Also, ask her what the hell bit her.”

  Breen informed her of the condition of her arm, which appeared to make her reasonably happy, but when he asked about the animal, her eyes went wide and she refused to speak further. She just sat on the bed, shaking her head. At length, she began to cry.

  Faced with her agitation, the doctor threw them out. “I’ll call you if I need you,” he told Breen.

  The colonel stepped in. “Call me any time he’s talking to her,” he said.

  Breen smiled. The Argentines might be trusting souls, but they weren’t stupid.

  ***

  To Javier’s surprise, the doctor knocked on his door a few minutes later. He was carrying something in a cloth bag. The man had taken a shower and changed into his uniform, and the haggard look was gone from his features.

  “I thought you should see this.” He held up the bag. “I didn’t think you’d necessarily want to share it with the American.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “The thing our patient was holding in her hand. You told me you couldn’t pry it away, so I took it while she was under sedation. I cut the cloth off and cleaned it up.”

  The doctor pulled down the bag. Inside was a squat round metal container packed in ice. He unscrewed the top and let Javier look inside.

  It contained a clenched human fist, torn off raggedly at the wrist. Pale white skin and blond hair growing from the pores; a large hand, a man’s hand.

  Javier swallowed. “Cover that up. And don’t let anyone get near her unless I’m present. I’ve already discussed it with the Captain. Do you have any idea what did that?”

  “No more than you do. A piece of large machinery, maybe. Do you think she fed the crew into the processing plant?”

  “Alone? She doesn’t look big enough to have overpowered everyone… but the truth is I don’t know. The salvage crew up from Ushuaia should be able to give us a better picture of what’s in there.”

  The doctor walked away, grisly prize safely covered once again and Javier sighed. He had written half of the report he’d have to send in already… but he knew that he was about to kiss his on-ship holiday goodbye. It was time to get back to work.

  ***

  “You’ve been picking at your food all through dinner,” Camila said, pushing the unoccupied chair away from the two-person table Javier had selected and sitting down on it uninvited. Anyone would have been able to tell that the Colonel wanted to be alone with his thoughts. She wouldn’t be particularly welcome, but she suspected he’d be too much of a gentleman to object.

  “Thanks for noticing,” Javier replied.

  “I’d never neglect our fearless leader.”

  That earned her a sour look. “I thought we were past that.”

  “We are. I wouldn’t be here if we weren’t. I really was watching you, and I really am worried. You’ve been staring out that window for an hour. I mean the Weddell Sea is fascinating when you first come in and realize that the little white mountains out there are pretty much the same as the icebergs that sank the Titanic, but after a while, every iceberg looks the same… and this is supposed to be an icebreaker after all. It shouldn’t sink.”

  “That’s what they said about the Titanic,” he replied with a lopsided grin.

  She laughed in spite of herself. This guy represented most of what was wrong with Argentine society. He was where he was because of his family, not his ability… but he still seemed like a good guy. She really should push aside her natural disgust and give him a chance. As her grandmother always said, exceptions confirmed the rule. “Seriously, what’s the matter? Was it the Korean ship and the injured woman?”

  “That has to do with it, although I’m really more worried about the rest of the crew than the one we actually rescued. As far as we could tell, all the lifeboats were still on board, so yes, I’m worried about them. There aren’t many places for the crew of a ship to go in these waters, especially since the lifeboats were all still aboard, as far as we could tell.” He looked away as if there was something more he wanted to say but checked himself at the last moment. “But even more than that, there’s something bugging me about the fact that Base Belgrano hasn’t made any contact with us. Yes, I get the fact that their satellite uplink is down. But shouldn’t someone on the base have had a backup satellite phone? I mean, it seems like a basic precaution to take if you’re going to Antarctica, doesn’t it?”

  Camila laughed.

  He looked irritated. “What?”

  “Is that what you’re thinking? Satellite phones?”

  “Well, yes. I mean we have twenty of them on board this ship… why not on the base? I know there’s satellite service down there. Argentina has a bird to relay messages, and I imagine everyone else with a base in Antarctica probably has their own as well. No idea how it works, but I assume they’re available for emergencies.”

  “You’re not really getting the nature of backup plans. When technology fails, your backup should be something just as effective but foolproof.”

  “So… flares?”

  “Don’t be silly. Radio.”

  He looked shocked. “Of course. How could I be so stupid? It’s been bugging me since we left. I’m just so accustomed to no one using radio anymore, except on an actual field of battle or on maneuvers. If they don’t have the juice to reach Ushuaia or Buenos Aires, all they need to do is to call in to any of the nearby stations—ours or anyone else’s—and they would relay the message to us.”

  There was a long pause. Camila studied him and, after a while, came to a conclusion. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

  He looked surprised. “Of course, why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’re supposed to work for the government. I… well, we’ve all been discussing this. All the scientists, I mean. Well, not Breen; the real ones. We thought you were covering up some awful secret so we wouldn’t demand to go back home. We’d come to the conclusion that the base had been hit by some disease and we were here to ship the survivors back out… and to pretend it never happened.”

  “I don’t think anyone would do that. I actually think it’s more likely that the radio’s been broken for years and no one sent them a replacement because the Kirchners stole all the money for it.”

  She almost allowed herself to be drawn off topic. The Kirchners were a husband and wife who’d been presidents of Argentina over the course of twelve years. The rampant corruption in their regime, and the barefaced stealing of billions of dollars had allowed the right to win the previous elections. She hated the fact that they were corrupt on a scale never seen before in Latin America, but the sheer smugness of the people
who used it as a way to attack everything on the left raised her hackles to the point where she wanted to defend them despite knowing just how criminal they’d been. It was a close thing, but she managed to bite back her reply.

  She swallowed back her reply. “So, Occam’s Razor?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That the simplest explanation is likely the truth.”

  “Until I saw that ship, I would have said so. But now? I’m not sure.” He held up a finger. “A base in Antarctica suddenly goes offline.” Another finger. “Then, right at the same time, the crew of a Korean fishing boat disappears,” a third, “and the only survivor we pull off the boat isn’t a Korean man, not even a man at all, which is how these ships are usually crewed, but a Russian woman.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Not much point in trying to keep that a secret. A lot of people saw her. No one would mistake her for an Asian of any sort.”

  Again, despite the openness about the woman, Camila got the feeling that he was holding something back. She chided herself for being paranoid and letting her prejudices get the better of her.

  “Isn’t that a bit much for it to be coincidence? I’m thinking there might be something going on.”

  “You think the Russians attacked our base? Why would they do that?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. But to be completely honest, I also have no clue what we might be sailing into.”

  “You really know how to comfort a girl.” She joined him in looking out the window at the slate-grey sea dotted with ship-killing pieces of ice. “At least one thing is certain: we’ll know for sure tomorrow.”

  Chapter 6

  Ice. Lots of it, gleaming in the sunshine, reflecting into her eyes. Camila located her sunglasses in one of the pockets of her jacket and popped them on. She stared out over the expanse.

  It was a plain of stark beauty. She knew the frozen crust hid all kinds of life, from the smallest krill to the whales that ruled the sea. But it was an invisible kingdom, impossible to surmise from above.

  “They say it’s only three kilometers to the mainland,” Ernesto said. “I certainly can’t see it. All I see is that water over there. We should just have sailed in.”

  “The captain says that the water is too shallow over there and that it covers a couple of nasty ridges. He maintains that the only safe approach is through the ice,” she replied. Then she grinned, the excitement of knowing that Antarctica was just an hour or two away, even if they decided to leave the ship and hike, was the most exciting thing she’d ever felt. “But I think he just wanted an excuse to play with his icebreaker.”

  “That open water over there is supposed to be right next to the base.”

  “I know. The plan is to unload over the ice as close as we can get to land and then use the base’s bulldozer to drag the luggage the final few hundred meters.”

  “Do you think they’d let us walk?”

  It was a fine day, if very cold—what did she expect, it was Antarctica after all, not Tahiti—and Ernesto’s idea sounded good to her, but she assumed there would be some impossible-to-ignore protocol involved with the changing of the guard at the Antarctic base. She shrugged. “I’ll ask. In fact, here comes the person I should ask right now.”

  Javier was smiling so broadly that his teeth were a real danger of blinding her even more than the reflection on the snow.

  “Someone’s happy,” she remarked.

  “And so are you,” Javier replied without missing a beat. “They just told me that the winds are calm enough that the helicopter can fly civilians.”

  “So?” Camila asked, trying to keep outwardly cool despite her rising excitement.

  “So the captain has decided that, as honored guests, the science team will be allowed to fly into the base and perform the official turnover ceremony.”

  “Really?” She certainly hadn’t been expecting that. She believed her team was seen more as a nuisance than as honored guests where the honor actually meant something. “What do we have to do?”

  “I gathered that there isn’t really a ceremony per se. We just have to walk up to them and say ‘congratulations, you’ve been relieved. Our ship’s over there—you can go back home!’, and we automatically become their favorite people. Oh, and we need to give them this.” He opened a bag to show a bunch of candy bars.

  “Snickers?”

  “Apparently, it’s become a bit of a ritual. From what I was told, if we don’t have the chocolate, they are within their rights to throw us into the sea for the penguins to eat.”

  “You’re much too big for the penguins to eat,” she said.

  The men were rolling out the other chopper, and the banter subsided as she rushed madly to get her team together.

  Everyone was in his or her cabin except for Clark Smith and Anna Götthelm. Ingrid, however, smiled impishly when asked about her sister. “There’s a small space with an amazing view of the sea behind the second lifeboat. They like it there. But,” she smirked, “Make sure you make a lot of noise. Otherwise, you might see something you would have rather not seen.”

  “Ugh.” Then she smiled back at Ingrid. “Although they are both rather attractive people. Maybe I’ll go in quietly and watch for a while. Should help ward off the Antarctic chill.”

  Ingrid made a face. “Whatever floats your boat.”

  Camila played it straight. She spotted the nook—an ideal hiding spot, well hidden from view—and called out to her two missing scientists. They emerged, flushed and blushing. Clark couldn’t quite keep himself from scowling, while Anna looked embarrassed.

  They soon forgot their discomfiture, though. As soon as they learned the reason for the untimely interruption, they darted off to grab a few things in their cabins.

  “Just a backpack,” Camila called after them. “We can come get the rest of our stuff when the Irizar arrives.”

  Last of all, she located Breen, who gave her one of his false little smiles and told her that he was staying on the ship. She shrugged and told him to suit himself, secretly pleased that the agent of imperialism wouldn’t be coming.

  Minutes later, they were airborne, and Camila wasn’t certain if she was more excited to be living a lifelong dream or to be taking her first trip on a helicopter. Initially, the ride was what held her attention… and especially the incredible noise the machine made.

  Javier and Clark were the only members of the crew who appeared to take the chopper ride in stride. She assumed that military types were always flying around everywhere, and maybe Australian universities had more money than their Argentine counterparts. For whatever reason, they were both impassively facing forward while the women oohed and aahed and pointed out ice floes and Antarctic landmarks memorized from a map.

  In moments, they were over the open stretch of water, and she could see the rocks of the coast poking out under the snow cover. She was surprised when a group of red buildings came into view on a small hill near the open water. “Look!” she cried. “Is that the base?”

  “Of course it’s the base. What else would it be out here?”

  “It’s just that I thought it would be further from the water.”

  “Actually, it would have been last year. There was a big glacier that separated off from the shelf—it was in all the papers. All the mappers had assumed there was rock down there, but it was actually just ice.”

  “Well, now it’s a seaside base.”

  “Still a few hundred meters away from the coast, but closer than before.”

  They circled the base once, giving the science team a good look. The complex was much bigger than she’d expected. Aside from the big red cube in the center, there were several other buildings, some squat rectangular shapes, others long half-pipes of metal. A large Argentine flag fluttered in the wind.

  Two tracked snowplows—one with a bulldozer mounted on the front—and two covered vans, also tracked, were dotted around the base. A sort of wooden sled with runners was on its side near one
of the vans.

  “There’s the source of our problems,” Javier said, pointing to a fallen latticework structure. “The main antenna mast is down.”

  “So are the rest,” Clark pointed out.

  “That must have been some storm.”

  “Yeah. The buildings don’t look too badly damaged, though. That hangar over there was crushed, but the rectangular ones look OK.”

  “Would the wind crush a hangar?”

  “The winds here in Antarctica can get pretty nasty,” Camila told them. She was surprised they didn’t already know this. When she learned that her petition had been granted, she went online and read everything she could about the white content. The very first thing she looked at was the weather—after all, the first thing one needs to know when going to a new place was what clothes to bring along—and she soon discovered that Antarctic winds had been known, albeit infrequently, to hit speeds of nearly three hundred kilometers an hour. Yeah, something being blown about at that speed could crush a hangar or anything else you might put in its path.

  The wind wasn’t blowing on that day though, and the pilot brought the chopper down to a soft landing about forty meters away from the nearest building. She assumed there was some kind of concrete helipad there, but it was invisible under the snow.

  They dropped onto the snow. Camila found herself tensing as if, just because they were standing on Antarctic soil, the temperature should have dropped well below what it was on the ship. But no, the temperature was the same; in fact, she didn’t even think it was cold enough to freeze water out, not by a long shot. She estimated it must have been near ten degrees centigrade.

  “Where is everybody?” Javier asked.

  Camila shrugged. “Probably inside.”

  “That’s strange. They should have heard the helicopter coming from miles away. Why aren’t they out here to get their chocolate? And besides, there should be someone outside.” For a moment, he looked like her image of a professional soldier, formed by a hundred Hollywood movies. His tan coat and steely eyes were probably a front, though.