Now, if only his companions would see reason. They needed to get out of there.
But even Javier had agreed that the proximity of a bolt hole too small for the nothosaurs to enter was more important than putting distance between themselves and the nest.
Chapter 14
“All right. We’ve dithered long enough. Let’s get back to the base,” Breen said. The clock in his head, honed by years spent in unfriendly territory, was telling him that time was nearly up. Something or someone would find them soon… and none of the people or things roaming the ice were friendly.
His companions stood. Grudgingly, but they stood. “Why the base?” Smith asked.
Javier replied. “Because the base has a radio and a generator.”
Breen nodded. “That, and the fact that the base is pretty much the best place to organize a helicopter pickup. We don’t really need the radio,” he held up his phone. “I’m in contact with the US government, and they’re trying to help.” Breen had been thinking hard about it. There were only two realistic potential pickup spots: the base and the icebreaker. While there were more people on the Irizar, it also appeared to be the large creature’s primary target and therefore nowhere near ideal for a rescue. That opinion could change, though; he hadn’t yet had a chance to evaluate the situation at the base.
“Have they contacted Buenos Aires?”
“I suppose so. They don’t tell me those things.” Breen knew they were probably putting everything in place before speaking to the Argentines, and that the only rescue they could legitimately be expecting was in the form of the US Navy… but there was no need to tell his companions this. It was unlikely to make them happy. “Even if we don’t use the radio, the base is the right place to go.”
Javier said: “Good thinking. We can hold off the small ones, and the big one appears to be much more interested in the Irizar than in us for some reason. It’s weird.”
Natasha’s head snapped up and she gave a startled look. “It’s not weird,” she said.
“What?” Javier asked.
“What Breen said… it’s not weird. It’s just another thing that makes perfect sense.”
“To you, maybe,” Javier grumbled under his breath, just loud enough to be heard.
Natasha went on. “Think of it this way. Pretend for a minute that you’re a monster big enough to eat whales and dominate the ocean for miles around. You’d pretty much feel that the ice is your domain.” She looked around like a teacher in a class of dull students gauging whether she had everyone’s attention. Her file said that she’d done some teaching, so perhaps it was just her usual way of pontificating. Breen found it very irritating. “What would you do if a great honking ship comes, engine noise blaring, into your ice patch. Animals defend their territory.” Another look around. “In fact, we were already thinking this way when we tried to study them from the fishing ship. We had equipment to create sound waves we thought they could hear.”
Breen had heard her territoriality theory already, but this was new to him.
“So that was the stuff at the prow?” Javier asked.
“Yes. It’s like a big speaker that used the ship’s hull to cast sound deep into the ocean.” Now Natasha’s demeanor changed and she cast her eyes down. “We were expecting them to come up to the ship and swim around, not to climb aboard in the middle of the night and grab the crew. And we didn’t see any sign of the big one.” She shuddered. “That was a good thing. I think it’s probably because we were using sound pitched a bit too high. A good engine grunt like the Irizar’s sounds a lot more like the monster’s roar.”
“So if we keep the Irizar’s engines off, it won’t attack?”
Natasha looked doubtful. “I’m not sure. It already knows where the icebreaker is. I don’t think it will just leave it alone. But it might be worth a shot.”
“This is all very interesting, but it’s not getting us anywhere,” Breen said. “I’m going to the base. Anyone who’s coming can come. Anyone who isn’t, can stay.” Of course, if the woman decided to remain behind, he would be screwed… but he didn’t think so. Unless he was reading her completely wrong, she’d go wherever Javier went, and Javier was with him on this one.
So he began the trek in the direction of the red buildings. The first thing he did was to climb the small rise hiding them from sight. It was decent cover, but had the disadvantage of hiding everything else from them at the same time.
The base was visible across a few hundred meters of flat, unthreatening-looking ice. If nothing untoward befell them, they should be there in a few minutes. But you really couldn’t count on that. Nothing but untoward things had been befalling them since they crossed the Antarctic Circle.
He set out across the plain, only glancing back once to verify that the rest of the team was coming. Javier and Natasha were nearly beside him while the Australian, Smith, was a few feet further back, walking with a dazed expression… but coming.
As they crossed the open field, he gripped the FAL hard. It was the only real defense they had against the small nothosaurs unless one counted Javier’s handgun.
About halfway to their objective, Breen nearly threw himself to the ground, startled by movement to his right.
He looked in that direction and was relieved to realize that the movement was just the Russian plane taxiing for takeoff.
While the ideal solution would have been to overpower the Russian commandos and force the pilots to get them out of there, there was no way to do that. Even if darkness had fallen, the Russians would have posted sentries with night vision goggles or, even better on the ice, infrared. It was academic; night wouldn’t fall for weeks.
So, while not the perfect solution, removing one enemy from an already confusing battlefield represented a welcome simplification. At least now, no one should be shooting at them. The creatures would have to physically reach them before any harm could be done.
They reached the wrecked base and Javier led them in a beeline to a small cubical building set beneath some kind of enormous red sphere. The building had once had a metal door, but the top half had been torn away. Everything was covered in blood and one of the creatures filled the opening.
“Look! It’s attacking them,” Javier said, pulling his Browning from its holster. “We can still save them.”
Breen put a hand on his arm. “Wait. Look. That thing isn’t moving. Nothing is. I think it’s dead.”
Javier peered at it. “You may be right. Let’s go see if anyone’s alive in there.”
They approached cautiously. The creature was completely immobile, but what if it was just resting? He held the assault rifle at the ready, just in case.
They got within ten meters when the Russian plane flew overhead. The sight of the monster combined with the roar of the engines touched something primal within him and it was all Breen could do to avoid running away in a panic. The feeling only passed when the drone of the aircraft dwindled into the distance.
Javier appeared unaffected. The colonel was the first to reach the opening. He squeezed his head into the space between the creature and the doorframe. A second later, he pulled it back out. He cursed in Spanish and turned back to them. “It’s dead all right. Someone shot the hell out of it… but there’s no one left in there. I don’t think any of them survived. Blood all over the place… and pieces.”
“If none of them survived, then who did the shooting?”
“I don’t know. My guess would be on your friends in black.”
Breen put his head in the opening. Javier was right. Even in the dim light that entered around the creature’s neck and from a chink in one upper corner, he could tell that the ground was painted red, and it didn’t take too much imagination to predict the color of the spatter stains on the wall a couple of gobbets on the floor… he didn’t look at those too closely. The air smelled of blood and, just slightly of urine. He pulled out again.
“I suppose this is the strongest building on the base?” Breen asked.
Natasha broke in. “They’re not eating anyone. Didn’t you see the bodies. They’re harvesting warmth for the nest.” Natasha, after her initial reaction back in the cavern, appeared to have become engrossed in the mystery of the creatures, to the point where the human suffering around her no longer held any importance. That was actually a good thing. Better to avoid having anyone go into hysterics at the wrong moment.
“Let’s go somewhere else, then. I’d rather be inside.”
“Which building?” Javier asked. “None of them are safe from the creatures.”
“Let’s use one with a north-facing window. That way, we can see if anything is coming. As long as they don’t catch us napping, we should be able to stay safe.”
Breen thought of how the Russians, a mere four men, had held back not only the myriad small ones but also the big bastard using nothing but assault rifles and suffering minimal casualties. He fumed. He was sure someone had known something, or at least suspected something… but no one had told him what he might run into. They just sent him off with good wishes and orders that basically amounted to “keep your eyes open.”
The result was that the US’s only asset on the ground had essentially been rendered useless except as an observer because he was too busy running from a bunch of lizards. Big lizards, granted, but lizards. Humans had shown, in the course of their history that the size and strength of the creature in front of you made little difference if you were ready for it. He assumed the Navy didn’t send its SEALs into shark-infested waters without at least telling them that there was a possibility of running into big fish with teeth, but that was exactly what Military Intelligence had done to Breen.
He’d give them that particular piece of his mind when he got back, in writing, in triplicate and with everyone who needed to be copied in, copied. But that would come later. Now, he needed to get out alive, and try to get as many of the people with him, as well as whatever was left of the crew of the Irizar out, too.
They selected the cafeteria, not only because it had the necessary window, but also because it still had an intact door and there was no blood or interior damage. The room was about ten meters by five with three tables and a counter, all made of white plastic. The floor and walls were wood and the roof sloped to either side from the centerline. Chairs were stacked against a wall, and the cafeteria also held a couple of microwave ovens. A door in one end opened onto a small kitchen area.
“All right. We should probably try to find the generator. In the middle of summer, we probably aren’t in much danger of freezing to death, but we’ll be much more comfortable if we can use the lights.”
“I still want to try the radio,” Javier said. “Maybe I can raise one of the other bases.”
Breen would have preferred to avoid that, but he didn’t want conflict, not yet. Things might come to that later. They might not. “That’s fine by me.”
“All right. Then let’s see where the generator is located.” To Breen’s surprise, the Colonel walked to a map on the wall and stared at it for a few seconds. He stabbed his finger on one of the squares depicted. “Here we go. This is the machine room. I assume the generator is there, but we should probably find the fuel first. The generator wouldn’t have broken, but it could very easily have run out of fuel.”
“Who’s going to search?”
“I’ll go,” Javier said. He turned to the Australian. “Clark, do you want to help?”
The big man shrugged. “I guess,” he said.
“Good. Breen, I’ll leave Natasha in your hands.”
Breen nodded and watched them leave. He wondered if he should try to take off with the girl now, and save himself trouble later… but he hadn’t heard back yet about when the rescue would be ready, and where it would be centered. It was probably better to stick together for now.
***
Javier suspected that the fuel would be stored in one of the big hangar-like semi-cylindrical buildings. The one that had been torn to pieces had contained food, so that left the second.
He didn’t relish the idea of rolling a big drum of diesel over the slippery terrain to the machine shed, which, in an unfortunate twist, was located on a small hill. But that wouldn’t matter unless they could locate the fuel—of course, it would matter even less if the generator had been trashed by the nothosaurs. He led Smith towards the machine room first.
Firm pressure opened the door. Everything inside appeared to be in working condition. Unscrewing the generator’s gas tank with his gloves proved a little trickier than expected—he imagined the base’s crew complaining about this year after year, and being ignored year after year. The generator itself was a Mercedes-Benz unit that looked like something from the fifties… and probably was. Not a large motor, but more than enough to power a base that size.
They searched for fuel, but there was none in the machine room, so they headed to the big hangar.
“Javier,” Clark Smith said as they walked. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Is Anna really dead?”
“I took her pulse myself. She was dead.”
“Do you swear?”
For a second, Javier was angry. He was an officer and a gentleman, in a way that few people outside the armed forces of a select number of nations would ever understand. He would never lie about a thing like that. But he was also a human being, and recognized the suffering behind the question just in time to cut short the curt reply. “I do. On my honor as a soldier.”
Clark nodded. “Then I must be going insane. I know she moved. I saw it myself. And it wasn’t just because she was getting bounced around by the dinosaur thing. She was alive. She was trying to get away.”
“I don’t know what to say. All I can tell you is what I saw… I was in the tunnel already when the monster came in behind you. I didn’t get to see it.”
They reached the storeroom. The door was dented and damaged, with a small part of it pushed all the way in, but it didn’t appear as if the monsters had entered. It certainly hadn’t been clawed to pieces by the big one like the other hangar, probably because they’d smelled neither food nor humans within. They crawled inside and waited for their eyes to get used to the light.
The first thing Javier saw was a box with the unmistakable markings of the red cross on its side. He slit the cardboard open and pulled out a small metal case. He handed it to Smith. “Hold onto this, it’s a first aid kit, military grade… with stitches and some decent anesthetics. I hope we don’t need it, but if we find anyone who got out of that room, I’m pretty sure we will.” And much more than this… and probably a priest, he thought, but didn’t say. He went deeper into the storeroom. “Can you get that door open? I need more light.”
He heard Clark trying to push it out and, after much grunting and cursing, a shaft of clear grey light pierced the gloom. “There.”
At first, all the new light achieved was to remind Javier of how tired he was, of the fact that there was no night, that he might never see the moon and the stars again… or even a sunrise for that matter. One of the few perks of a soldier’s life was that getting up really early afforded some excellent views of the sky.
He shook his head to clear it and to snap out of his reverie.
The fuel was in drums, but at least there were a couple of hand trucks leaning against a wall, which meant they wouldn’t have to roll the things halfway across the continent. They were able to wrestle one of them up the hill to the machine room. Then they had to return to the storeroom to look for a hose or a pipe with which they could siphon the pungent diesel oil into the tank which, fortunately, was located under the floor, which made pouting possible without having to lift a heavy drum.
Once done, they took turns cranking the freezing generator until, with a sputter, multiple coughs and a cloud of black smoke, it came to life.
“What do we do now? Do we have to connect this t
o something?”
“I don’t think so. Let’s get back and see if the lights are on in the cafeteria.”
Clark laughed ruefully. “Or maybe just try this.” He flicked the switch on the wall beside the door and the fluorescents above them flickered on. “Always try the easier experiment first.”
Javier was in a much better mood as they made their way back to the cafeteria. For some reason, getting power back up made him feel that the prehistoric nightmares were being pushed back into the realm of imagination where they belonged.
But the joy lasted only a few moments. By the time they were halfway back, the wind picked up and was blowing snow into the air. The world turned grey and dark.
When they got back, the ice crystals were stinging their exposed faces, and Javier was sure the temperature must have fallen by ten degrees. They shut the cafeteria door behind them gratefully.
Breen wasn’t as happy. “We won’t be able to see anything coming through this soup,” he said.
“At least we have lights,” Javier replied. “Besides, they’re animals, but they’re not stupid. Why would they come after us in this weather?”
“I can answer that,” Natasha said. “The temperature drop will mean that the nothosaurs need more warm bodies for their eggs. The only good places around to get them are here and at the Irizar.”
“There are more people on the Irizar,” Breen said.
“That’s true. But we are much closer.”
“I suppose you’re right. And worse, I don’t think anything can land until this clears and the wind dies down.”
Javier had intended to get some rest on one of the tables, but now he was filled with a need to do something, anything. To get things moving again.
“I’ll go see if I can fix that radio.”
Ice Station Death Page 15