She’s frustrated. She points out the side window, saying, “They could be there. They could be right fucking there!”
Bear looks ahead into the darkness, watching where they’re going even though nothing has changed in days. Snow drifts have buried the ice. The drifts are visible as slight undulations. The treads of the snowcat crush them as they pass. Beyond that, what little they can see is utterly featureless.
“We could conduct a couple of passes,” Bear says. “Lucille’s good for it.”
“I want to,” Jazz says. “But what I want is fucking irrelevant. We might as well be at the bottom of the ocean. If we run out of juice and have to abandon the cat, we’ll be dead within an hour.”
Dmitri is still trying to reach the Russians at Vostok Station.
“Восток, говорит американская экспедиция 104. Мы идём на север, в вашем направлении. Наши навигационные возможности ограничены. Просим помощи. Приём.”
Seconds later, the radio crackles back to life but no one is expecting a coherent answer.
“…Американ… ...вычайная ситуация… Жди…”
“Ah, it’s more of the same,” Dmitri says even though no one asks him to translate. “They can hear us, but they can’t get full sentences from us. They’re responding with terms like, stand by, emergency. Things like that.”
“We are not standing by,” Jazz says. “If we stay out here, we die.”
For Nick, it’s astonishing to see how Jazz has talked herself out of her initial idea of sweeping the plateau looking for Vincennes. He suspects her experience is overriding any wishful thinking, which gives him confidence in her decision. The journey to Vostok means a few more days stuck in this tin can, but he thinks she’s right.
Bear asks, “What happened to Vincennes?”
“Oh,” she says. “It could be something as simple as a guide wire came loose on the main antenna. Damn thing falls in the storm and—boom—they’re off the net. I saw one crumple at McMurdo. It ain’t pretty. Crushed the roof of the maintenance shed. It wouldn’t be a problem if we had a decent GPS signal.”
“Vostok it is then,” Bear says, only he’s no longer looking out the windshield. He’s turned to face Jazz. Bear is trying to show his support for what is a frustrating decision. It’s then Nick sees something ahead of them in the darkness.
Someone.
There’s a man out there, looming in the headlights, just off to the passenger’s side of the vehicle. He’s standing knee-deep in the snow.
Dark eyes stare blindly into the storm.
Frozen arms reach for the lights.
Nick leans over the seatback, grabbing Bear by the shoulders as he yells, “Watch out!”
Bear
Bear slams his boots on both the clutch and brake. Lucille comes to a sudden halt. He reduces the throttle to an idle and puts the snowcat in neutral.
“What the fuck,” slips from his lips as they stare out of the windshield at the frozen figure caught in the headlights. Another fraction of a second and Lucille would have crushed him beneath her right-front tread.
For what seems like an eternity, no one moves. The rumble of the engine behind them is the only proof that time continues to unfold. Jazz is closest to the man, sitting over by the passenger’s door. Dmitri is behind her, but he’s barely breathing. Nick is seated behind Bear. He leans forward, whispering, “Is he dead? He’s dead, right?”
Slowly, Jazz nods, but her eyes never leave the frozen corpse standing before them on the icy plateau.
Snow curls around the man’s legs. Icicles hang from his outstretched arms. It’s as though he’s reaching for something from a shelf at head height, only there’s nothing there. His eyes are open, staring into the distance. His skin is pale. It’s almost as white as the snow rushing past the headlights. Ice clings to his cheeks. His hair is spiky. It’s as though it froze while wet.
He’s clothed, but he’s not dressed for the weather. A lab coat flickers with the wind, but it’s mostly frozen, moving only at the tips. The man’s wearing jeans and a collared shirt with a flannel pattern.
His fingers seem to reach for them, longing for the light.
Bear mumbles. “How the hell does someone die like that?”
“Dee, you’re with me,” Jazz says. “Bear, you and Nick stay here.”
Jazz reaches beneath the front seat of the snowcat and pulls out a pistol set in a holster. A thick black belt has been wrapped around the gun. Magazines sit in pouches on the belt. She hands it to Dmitri. His eyes never leave the dead man. With seasoned skill, he slips the gun from the holster and removes the magazine. First, he checks the chamber is empty. Then he quietly ejects five rounds from the magazine and slips them back into the magazine, ensuring they’re free to move.
At the same time, Jazz retrieves an M4 Carbine from beneath the front seat. She checks the breach and the magazine, ensuring the first few rounds are loose and not frozen in place. She pushes the magazine up into the heart of the rifle. Both guns click softly as they’re cocked.
Outside, the man hasn’t moved.
“Ready?” she whispers with her hand resting on the door handle.
“Ready.”
Without another word, they both exit the vehicle in a fraction of a second, moving like ghosts, barely making a sound. One moment they’re there, seated within the cab of the snowcat, the next, they’re outside standing on the metal treads with the doors closed behind them.
Jazz drops into the snow.
Dmitri leans against the front door, steadying his aim as the storm buffets him. He hasn’t raised his jacket hood, so his hair is tossed around by the wind. There’s no time to worry about the cold. He peers down the barrel of the Glock with his gloved finger on the trigger. Nick’s fired enough guns to know that’s a bad position to be in. Even without the cold, firing a weapon while wearing gloves is crazy as there’s no way to feel the tacit feedback as tension mounts on the trigger. Dmitri could pop off a shot without meaning to.
Jazz wades through the snow, making her way forward of the treads. She keeps the barrel of her M4 pointing at the corpse stuck in the ice. Even though she’s barely ten feet away, she peers down the scope, examining his shoulders and chest.
Jazz edges closer and taps his frozen hands with the barrel, looking for a response. Nick is pretty sure he’s dead, but, okay, he’d do the same. She uses the barrel of her M4 to shift the man’s jacket, checking both sides of his chest, pulling it back far enough to see his shoulders. All the while, Dmitri never moves. If Nick didn’t know better, he’d swear Dmitri was frozen too. The barrel of Dmitri’s gun never wavers.
Slowly, Jazz comes up beside the frozen corpse. She circles around him, staying away from his outstretched arms. Her M4 is pulled hard into her shoulder, but she’s no longer pointing it at him. She’s directing her aim out into the shadows behind him, looking into the darkness. If there’s anything else looming out there, she wants to know about it in advance. With one hand, she reaches back, feeling for and then searching his jacket pockets. She retrieves something, shoving it in her back pocket.
Nick’s expecting her to retrace her steps, but she continues past the frozen corpse, stepping forward as though she were negotiating a minefield. To his horror, her outline disappears from the lights of the snowcat. With the wind and snow howling across the plateau, all Nick can see is a shadow turning from one side to another, scanning the distance. Dmitri still hasn’t shifted his sight from the man.
Jazz returns, climbing into the cab of the snowcat. Dmitri seems reluctant to take his aim off the corpse, but he too withdraws to the relative warmth provided by Lucille.
“What the fuck was that?” Bear asks as Dmitri rubs his ears, trying to get some warmth back into them. He was only out there for a minute or two, but the skin is already bright red. He pulls a woolen beanie over his head, sitting it low over his brow as
he shivers. He’s still got the gun in his right hand. There’s no way in hell he’s putting that down.
“That,” Jazz says, holding up a smartphone with a pouch stuck to the back of it containing several cards and IDs. “That’s Lee Lao Chan, from China.”
“He’s a juror?” Nick asks in alarm.
“A scientist,” Dmitri says, shocked to hear that name. “He specializes in quantum mechanics. What the hell is he doing out here?”
“I dunno,” Jazz says, turning the IDs over in her hand.
“What happened to him?” Nick asks.
Jazz shakes her head.
“How the hell did he die standing up?” Bear asks.
Jazz shrugs.
“Wait a minute,” Dmitri says. “This means we’re close. Think about it. He’s from Vincennes. He can’t have gone far dressed like that.”
Bear says, “This is good, right? I mean, not for him, but they’ve got to have search parties out looking for him. He’s a scientist. They’re going to go ape-shit with him missing.”
“Yeah, I dunno,” Jazz says with the M4 set between her legs. The barrel is pointing up at the roof of the snowcat. “I was using an infrared scope out there. I should have been able to see for at least a hundred yards in all directions—even with the storm.”
“And?” Bear asks.
“Nothing. Either he’s a long way from base, or no one’s out looking for him.”
“That makes no sense,” Bear says. “They should be turning over every icy rock on the plateau trying to find this guy.”
“He’s been out here a long time,” Dmitri says.
“I’m not sure about the scope sensitivity,” Jazz says, “but there’s no residual body heat coming off him.”
“He’s frozen?” Nick asks. “As in frozen solid?”
Jazz says, “There wasn’t any difference between him and the background.”
“How long does it take for a body to freeze like this?” Nick asks, only his choice of words is telling. Body. He’s scared. What he means to ask is, how long did it take him to freeze? But the implication is that him could become me, and that’s something he can’t face.
“With this wind chill?” Jazz says. “I don’t know. Hours? Maybe a day or two?”
Dmitri says, “Assuming he came from Vincennes, we have at least a general direction as it should be somewhere behind him.”
“If he hasn’t walked in circles,” Bear says.
“He can’t have walked that far,” Jazz says.
“What are we going to do with him?” Bear asks.
“Nothing.”
“We’re just going to leave him there?”
“For now. Once we find Vincennes, we’ll tell them where he is and they can dispatch a recovery team.”
Jazz rummages around beneath the bench seat, pulling out a backpack. She digs into it, retrieving a helmet with night vision goggles raised high. She places another handgun on the seat between her and Bear, along with a tablet computer. The tablet is surrounded by thick, rugged plastic, making the screen appear ridiculously small.
Jazz points beyond the dead man, saying, “I saw a faint glow on the horizon. It might be Vincennes.”
“So we head over there,” Bear says, readying himself. He’s got his boot on the clutch and one hand on the gear shifter, ready to reverse Lucille and head around the body.
“No,” Jazz says. “Dee and I will scout it out on foot. I want you to stay here with Nick.” She looks at Dmitri, saying, “You up for this old man?”
A wicked grin breaks across Dmitri’s face.
Jazz hands him the helmet along with a throat mic, saying, “This is an integrated warfare unit. It’ll broadcast back here. You use the night-vision goggles. I’ll stick with the infrared scope.”
Dmitri doesn’t bother taking off his beanie. He pulls the helmet over the thick wool. Once the throat mic is stuck below his jaw, he says, “Testing one, two.”
“Coming through clear,” Bear says, looking down at the tablet. He plugs it into a port on the dashboard. Nick leans forward, wanting to get a good look at the screen. Video streams in from both the helmet and the rifle scope. Two audio streams show up as squiggly lines at the bottom of the split image.
Jazz leans over, pointing at the controls on the tablet, saying, “You can switch between ambient noise and the throat mics, depending on what’s easiest to hear.”
“Got it.”
Dmitri pulls the zip on his jacket, ensuring it’s all the way up to his chin. He wraps the hood of his jacket over the helmet, closing it up. With the night vision goggles down in front of his eyes, an eerie metal cylinder protrudes from the fur lining his hood, making him look like an alien machine.
Jazz says, “We’ll go in side by side. Ten meters apart. If there’s any action, break wide and provide cover.”
“Understood.”
“Action? What action?” Bear asks.
Jazz shrugs.
“What about us?” Nick asks.
Jazz replies, “If we’re not back in ninety minutes, head for Vostok. Under no circumstances should you try to follow us. Is that understood?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Bear says. “Understood.”
She hands Bear the other gun, a nine-millimeter Glock Nick knows all too well.
Bear swallows a lump in his throat.
Jazz turns and kneels on the seat. “Can you pass me that black bag?”
Nick reaches over to one of the packs in the storage area. He wrangles a duffle bag from the bottom of the pile and hands it to her.
“Thanks,” she says, pulling on the zip and dumping the contents on the seat. In between bits of survival gear are dozens of small flags wrapped in bundles held together with plastic ties. Bright day-glow orange pennants are attached to long thin metal wires. Jazz grabs a handful, tucking them under her arm, and zips up the bag, hoisting it over her shoulder.
“We’ll leave breadcrumbs,” she says, grabbing her M4 by the handguard wrapped around the barrel.
“And we’re just going to stay here?” Bear asks, pointing at the corpse swaying in the gale-force winds. “With him?”
Jazz opens the door, saying, “He won’t bite. I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jazz climbs out onto the treads of the snowcat as Bear repeats his point, yelling at her, “You don’t know that!”
She smiles, slamming the door. Dmitri climbs out the rear of the vehicle. The two of them drop to the snow and move around in front of the snowcat, ignoring the human popsicle. They begin wading through the snowdrift into the darkness.
“Comms check,” Jazz says.
“You’re coming through clear,” Bear replies, looking at the black and white infrared display in front of him. Nick rests his arms on the back of the seat, peering at the screen, fascinated by the image.
Jazz pushes a flag into the snow and ice, working it down to the point the madly flapping plastic is barely clear of the drift. Off to one side, a slight green smudge marks Dmitri moving in parallel with her.
“Goddamn, it is cold out here,” Jazz says.
“I make it negative sixty-two,” Bear says in reply. “Subtract another thirty with the wind chill.”
“Continuing on.”
Within twenty yards, they’ve disappeared into the storm. The video feed continues coming through, but it doesn’t show anything beyond the haze of snow and ice tearing past them.
After several flags and at least a hundred yards, Bear says, “We’re starting to lose you.”
“Say again?” Jazz replies.
“Video is breaking up. Audio is patchy.”
“Again?”
“We’re losing you in the storm.”
It seems Jazz doesn’t care as she replies, “Copy that.”
The fuzzy images begin to break up, coming in static strips and then pixelated chunks before finally they die.
“Jazz?” Bear says, talking into a microphone attached to the tablet. “Dmitri?”
>
Nick is quiet.
Up until now, the howling of the storm didn’t bother him, but as the wind intensifies, he finds the cacophony of noise unsettling. The cabin rocks. Somewhere outside, a loose strap flaps, occasionally flicking against the sheet metal. As the wind shifts, the gusts catch the windshield wipers, causing the aluminum supports to vibrate.
Waves of snow and ice buffet the cabin, being driven at them by the ferocity of the storm. It’s as though a giant has grabbed Lucille. He’s got his hand over the cab and is shaking it. Within the cabin, odd things rattle. Nick hunts them out, shifting a ski pole away from the rear deck so it’s no longer resting against metal.
Bear looks at his watch. He starts a timer.
“What are you doing?”
“You heard the boss,” Bear replies. “Ninety minutes and we are getting the fuck out of Dodge.”
“You’re going to leave her?”
“You’d rather stay?” Bear asks, gesturing to the corpse standing a few feet from their ice-covered tractor treads. “You realize that’s us, right? If we stick around here, we’re as dead as that guy.”
“But—”
“But nothing.”
Bear buries his head in his hands, pushing his palms up against his eyes as though he’s trying to clear a migraine.
“I am not cut out for this shit,” he says, looking back at Nick.
“But you’re a soldier.”
“I’m an engineer. I’m the guy that sits back at base fixing things. I don’t do,” and he points at the dead man as he adds an emphatic, “This!”
“Who does?” Nick asks. For him, it’s a serious question.
“Jazz. Dmitri. They’re both special forces. They love this shit.”
That’s something Dmitri never mentioned to Nick, but it’s no surprise given his physique. The idea of him pushing paper at the UN always seemed a little absurd. Nick has no doubt he really did work as an attaché for the Russians at the UN, but it was clearly a cover.
“You know why they assigned Jazz to this expedition, right?”
“No,” Nick replies.
“She’s the heroine of the Himalayas. Oh, she won’t talk about it, but it’s true. A couple of years ago, she was working as a US military advisor in India. Only she didn’t train shit. It was a cover. Her team was there holding an advanced outpost, watching the conflict between India and China. Technically, she was supposed to be embedded with the Indians, but both sides knew the US had ground assets as informal peacekeepers. The idea was to try to stop two nuclear powers from going to war over a fucking glacier.
Jury Duty (First Contact) Page 13
