by Pamela Clare
She stared at him, her exchange with him yesterday evening coming back to her.
Are you lost?
I was just watching the aurora.
Enjoy the view, but don’t stay out too long. The cold sneaks up on people.
It’s not too bad right now.
He hadn’t been trying to act tough. He was accustomed to the cold.
He went on. “The biggest difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic is the humidity. Greenland is humid. We sometimes got a meter and a half of snow in twenty-four hours. Here, it’s very dry, and we’re at a much higher elevation. The wind is worse, and the temperatures are more extreme. This is your second winter here, right?”
She nodded, still taking in what he’d told her.
A meter and a half of snow in a single day? Wow.
“Please feel free to speak up if you believe we’re missing something. You have more experience here than we do.”
Samantha appreciated his willingness to listen to her, but he was the expert. “I’ve spent my time here inside the safety of this station, apart from my daily walks to and from the Dark Sector lab. When it’s really cold, Patty and I…”
Her words trailed off, pain lancing through her when she realized what she’d said.
“We’re sorry about your friend.” Thor’s gaze was warm with sympathy. “It’s hard to lose someone.”
Samantha’s throat went tight, his compassion taking her by surprise. “Thanks.”
Thor gave her a moment, then he went over the plan in detail. They would fly in a Twin Otter with a ferry tank to the crash site. While the pilot kept the plane running, Thor, Malik, and Lev would assist her in removing the components in any way they could and locking them in a special steel lockbox. Then they would board the plane with the package and fly back to the station.
“We won’t have a lot of time once we get there—not even a half-hour. We don’t want our fuel to freeze.”
The butterflies in Samantha’s stomach went into a frenzy. “That’s not enough time. If I were removing those components in a lab, I’d give myself an hour.”
What the hell did they expect from her—miracles?
Thor’s gaze met hers. “We’ll be right there, doing whatever we can to help. Also, your body mass is lower than ours, so you’ll lose heat faster. You need to layer up more than usual and be alert for signs of hypothermia.”
“When do we leave?”
“Our plane left McMurdo two hours ago. It should be here by ten. That gives you an hour to get ready.”
Samantha had to say it. “You said you welcomed my advice. Here it is. Your guns and muscles and military experience won’t save us if things go wrong out there. Wait until spring to retrieve these components when it’s safer to fly.”
Thor stood, closed his laptop. “I wish we could.”
Thor waited with Jones and Segal near Destination Alpha—the station’s main entrance—for Samantha, his mind focused on the task ahead of them. Not only would they need everything to go right, they would need a bit of luck, too.
Thor had flown in a prop plane over Greenland. He knew what they were facing.
“The flight will be rough.” He spoke quietly, doing his best not to be overheard. “You two got your motion sickness patches?”
Jones chuckled. “I’m not the one who gets sick.”
“Fuck you.” Segal glared at him.
Thor had his in place, and he’d made sure Samantha got one, too.
He spotted her walking down the long hallway in her red NSF parka, a bag of gear, food, and extra clothing slung over her shoulder. She had almost reached them when the man who’d accused them of being mercenaries ran up behind her.
“Did you know they sent Patty’s body back to the States?” He looked enraged.
“I found out after she was already gone.”
The man raised his voice, his face going red. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Samantha touched a hand to his arm. “I’m sorry, Lance. No one told me, either.”
“Sorry to be so angry, but I never got to say goodbye.”
“None of us did. I need to go.” Samantha walked on, leaving Lance behind.
Then Lance spotted Thor and seemed to put two and two together. He grabbed Samantha’s arm, turned her to face him. “You’re not going with them, are you?”
“Yes. The NSF asked me to do this.”
“That’s crazy. Do you know how dangerous this is?”
“I don’t have a choice, Lance.”
“Bullshit!” Lance turned his anger on Thor, Jones, and Segal, stomping over to them. “If you soldier boys want to risk your lives over a satellite, fine. But you’re not taking Samantha on that plane. She’s a scientist, not a tool of the military.”
Thor ignored him, met Samantha’s gaze. “Are you ready?”
But Lance didn’t back down. He strode up to Thor, pointed a finger in Thor’s face. He was a good six inches shorter than Thor, but, oh, he was angry. “You are not taking her out on that plane. You have no idea what it’s like out there.”
“Is that so?” Thor understood the man’s rage but didn’t like his attitude.
Samantha stepped between them. “He knows, Lance. He’s got a lot more experience surviving in these conditions than you or I.”
“What do you mean by that?”
But Hardin must have heard the shouting. He came down the stairs from the administrative offices. “Back off, Lance. Sam is in good hands.”
Lance got in his face. “Why did you send Patty’s body back without letting me say goodbye?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Hardin looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t authorize that. Are you sure?”
From outside the station came the sound of a small plane landing.
“Let’s move out.” Thor shouldered his gear.
“Samantha, stop! Nothing on that satellite is worth your life!”
“We’ll bring her back.” Thor and the others put on their masks, goggles, hats, and gloves, grabbed the duffle bags, and left the shelter of the station.
It was sixty-eight below, cold enough to suck the breath from Thor’s lungs even with the mask. They walked quickly over the ice to the waiting Twin Otter, its propellers still running as a team of fuelies worked fast to get it in the air again.
Samantha fell in beside Thor. “I’m sorry about Lance. He’s upset about Patty’s death. We all are.”
“You don’t need to apologize for him. He doesn’t bother me. We were told not to expect a warm welcome.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jones muttered from behind his mask. “This cold is unreal.”
Thor chuckled. “It’s colder where we’re going.”
The pilot, who’d been watching for them, opened the door. “Let’s move, people! As soon as we’ve refueled, we take off.”
Thor let the others go first, and then helped the pilot retract the stairs and lock the door. He and the others took off their gloves and masks and stowed their gear. All but two sets of seats had been removed to make room for the ferry tank, which would fuel the plane when its main fuel tanks ran out.
“The plane isn’t pressurized. I’ll activate the oxygen system when we pass twelve thousand feet.” The pilot checked to make sure they had stowed their gear properly. “We’ll be flying into a stiff headwind, so the flight out will take close to three hours. It should be faster on the way back.”
The pilot made his way to the cockpit, calling back to them over his shoulder. “Strap in. This will be a rough ride.”
They buckled their safety belts, Samantha in the window seat, Thor in the aisle seat where he could stretch his legs. Then the plane began to move.
Samantha’s face was pale, her hands clenched around her gloves.
Thor couldn’t blame her for being afraid. She was a scientist and didn’t have their training. She wasn’t accustomed to danger. She’d been asked to risk her life to solve a problem not of her making, and she had agreed.
He tried to reassure her but assumed that she was too smart to fall for platitudes or bullshit. “We’ll have a steep climb when we first take off, and the flight will be rough. I know this isn’t what you wanted, Samantha, but I admire your courage for agreeing to be part of this mission.”
“I regret it already.”
4
Samantha drew a breath, tried to calm her nerves as the plane accelerated down the skiway. She needed to be logical about this. Freaking out wouldn’t add a single moment to her life. The NSF and US government had sent people they believed were up to this task. She had to trust that they knew what they were doing. If she—
The plane lifted off, its nose pointing sharply skyward.
She gasped, grabbed Thor’s hand.
Warm fingers closed over hers, a strange awareness tingling through her. “Are you afraid of flying?”
Embarrassed and a little alarmed, she drew her hand away. “Only in the middle of austral winter.”
Get a grip!
None of the Cobra guys seemed nervous. From the impassive expressions on their faces, she could only assume that taking extreme risks was routine for them.
You can worry when they start to worry.
Unexpectedly, that thought helped to calm her.
She reached inside the inner pocket of her parka and drew out the schematics for the satellite, studying them to keep herself busy. It wasn’t the schematics that got her mind off her worries, however, but the fact that Thor was sitting beside her. She was oddly mindful of his presence. His long legs stretched into the aisle. His shoulders were so broad that they encroached on her space—not that she minded. His scent was pleasingly male. She even imagined she could feel his body heat.
You’re being ridiculous.
Sure, it had been a long time since she’d been with a man, but macho tough guys weren’t her type—even if she did find him attractive.
Focus.
She willed her gaze to meet the page. How she approached removing the components depended entirely on how the satellite had landed. For all she knew, the parts she needed to remove were too high off the ice for her to reach. Or perhaps they were buried in the ice as a result of impact.
While the plane jerked and bobbed through turbulence, she pored over the satellite’s design. The GPS and tracking components were surprisingly similar to the SPT’s GPS. Of course, there was always that chance that the crash had mangled the module, making the parts harder to remove. She could only wait and see.
The pilot’s voice came over the PA system. “We’ll be passing twelve thousand feet in a few minutes. I’m activating the cabin oxygen system.”
A mask dropped out of the overhead compartment just in front of Samantha. She did what flight attendants taught passengers to do, pulling the tubing down, slipping the strap over her head, and positioning the mask over her mouth and nose.
She studied the schematics for a few more minutes, memorizing the internal connections, then slipped them back into her coat pocket.
“So, it’s a piece of cake?” Thor’s words were muffled by his oxygen mask.
“I could do it with my eyes closed.” She looked up to find Thor watching her, and her pulse skipped.
He didn’t look away but seemed to study her, his gaze warm. “What made you want to become an astro… astrophys … astrophysicist. That’s hard to say.”
“How do you say it in Danish?”
“Astrofysiker.”
“I don’t know. That seems harder to me.”
“Danish isn’t easy to pronounce.”
She answered his question. “My mother was a high school science teacher, and my father teaches biology at UC-Berkeley. They bought me a small telescope for my tenth birthday, and I fell in love with the stars.”
She told him how she’d taken that telescope out every night the sky was clear, her father standing beside her as she made observations. “It was all silly stuff—lunar craters that looked like faces or new constellations that I invented. My father was so patient, standing there with me each night, helping me become proficient with the telescope.”
“He must be proud of you.”
She nodded, feeling strangely light-headed, her fingers tingling. She’d never flown in an unpressurized aircraft before and hadn’t known to expect this. If the others could deal with it, so could she. “My brother is a propulsion engineer for NASA. We’re a family of geeks, I guess. How about you? How did you end up in Greenland?”
“I’ve always loved the outdoors. My father was a forester, and I worked for him during the summer when I was a teenager. My mother taught English in the primary school. I went to the gymnasium—that’s our high school—in the math and science line, and then studied mechanical engineering in Copenhagen for two years. I needed to do something more physical, so I left the university and joined the Danish Army.”
She listened, his accent soft and charming, as he told her about his time in the Huntsman Corps, the Danish Army’s special forces unit. But his words seemed to slow down, her thoughts unraveling.
Black spots.
They danced before her eyes.
It was hard to listen, so hard to stay awake.
“Samantha?” Thor’s face swam before hers. He looked angry. “She’s hypoxic.”
He pulled her mask off her head and replaced it with his own, holding it over her nose and mouth, reclining her seatback. “Just breathe, Samantha, deep and even.”
Someone shouted to the pilot that her O2 wasn’t working.
The reply was lost to her as her eyes drifted shut, her mind hovering on the brink of unconsciousness.
“Nej, for helvede.” No, damn it! “She’s losing consciousness.”
Why hadn’t he noticed she was in trouble sooner?
The pilot’s voice came over the PA once more. “I brought six tanks—enough to get us all there and back, plus two spares.”
Jones removed his mask, unbuckled his safety belt. “I’ll go check the tanks.”
He started toward the back of the plane, where the O2 tanks hooked into the system, his steps unsteady thanks to almost nonstop turbulence.
Segal stood, too. “I’ll help.”
Thor focused on Samantha. They needed her mind to be clear when they landed. Without her, this mission would fail.
Seconds ticked by, and still, she didn’t open her eyes.
Was his oxygen also not working?
No, her color was starting to come back now, her breathing steady. Then her eyes fluttered open, confusion on her pretty face.
“What…?”
“You became hypoxic. How do you feel?”
“Headache. A little dizzy.”
He realized he was hovering over her, only inches away from her face—close enough to kiss her. Some part of him liked that idea—the same part of him that had liked it when she’d grabbed his hand.
Hva’ fanden? What the fuck?
He sat back, irritated with himself. “You should have said something.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it was just … low air pressure. I didn’t know.”
She’s never done this before, remember?
She looked up at him, clearly worried. “What about you? You need oxygen, too.”
“I’ll be fine for a little while. Jones and Segal are trying to fix the problem.”
If they couldn’t find the cause, they would have to share O2.
“What were we talking about? You were telling me something.”
“You asked about my time with the Huntsman Corps in Afghanistan.”
“Yes. Right. I remember. Did you see combat?”
“Our job was to go after high-value al Qaeda and Taliban targets, which meant we got into a lot of firefights.”
“That sounds scary.” She seemed more alert now.
“Fear comes from not knowing. Training offsets fear. If you know how to react and have confidence in yourself and your comrades, there’s less room for fear.”
Of course, terr
ible things still happened. They’d lost men on his last deployment, good soldiers blown apart by an IED. But Samantha didn’t need to hear about that—or how far he’d gone to avenge his friends.
“I can’t imagine having people shooting at me.”
“I can’t imagine working with a giant telescope. I’d be afraid I’d break it.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy. “If you know what to do, it’s not scary.”
“Exactly.” He couldn’t help but grin.
She’d made his point for him.
Her eyes crinkled, her smile hidden behind her mask. “I see what you did there.”
Jones and Segal made their way back to the front.
“It was a bad regulator. We found a spare.” Segal sat, buckled in, put on his mask.
Jones did the same. “It should be working now.”
Thor took Samantha’s mask for himself, letting her keep his. “If you feel tingling, dizziness, confusion—anything at all—tell me right away. You’re essential personnel on this mission. We need you to be clear-headed.”
“Right.” She raised her seatback upright once more. “Thanks—to all of you.”
Jones turned, looked back at her, a smile on his face. “That’s why we’re here. Our only job is to get you safely in and out.”
“Is that what private security companies do—keep people safe?”
That wasn’t the whole story, but close enough.
“We’re not hired to fight, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He saw on her face that’s exactly what she’d wanted to know. “If the person we’re protecting is attacked, we fight back. Most of the time, we act as a security team for traveling CEOs and government officials, though we helped in a hostage rescue recently.”
“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.”
