Freezing Point

by Karen Dionne

A hundred yards to his left, a dark mass hugged the surface like a low-lying cloud. He slowed and lifted his visor. The mass seemed to undulate; shifting and changing shape as though it were alive. He lowered his visor and shivered. There was a malevolency emanating from the cloud, a vague sense of something evil that made his heart race.

  He sped up. Inexplicably, the cloud-mass matched his speed. He slowed, and it did the same. Enough, he told himself, and opened the throttle wide. It was his imagination, a trick of the weather; a mirage, an illusion of distance and light. There was nothing to be afraid of; no reason for his heart to go into overdrive.

  He powered forward, then glanced back. The cloud-mass was gone.

  Two minutes later, he executed a neat bootlegger’s reverse outside the pumphouse and killed the engine. He hung his helmet over the handlebars, tugged on a wool cap, and stood up. Immediately a wave of vertigo doubled him over as effectively as if he’d been punched in the gut. He sat down and counted off his heartbeats while he waited for the dizziness to pass. Then he got to his feet again, slowly, and hung on to the handlebars for support. He let go, took a tentative step, and then another, staggering toward the pumphouse with his arms out for balance like a drunk.

  By the time he reached the door, his shirt was soaked with sweat. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed, then pushed again. Strange. He didn’t remember the door being so heavy.

  Then he looked down. Of all the—He hadn’t even turned the handle. What was wrong with him? His eyes were all blurry, and his head felt like it was going to explode. He wondered if Eugene had spiked his water, maybe with that date-rape drug, PCB. No, that wasn’t right. PBB. PCP?

  He opened the door and stepped inside, groping for the light switch, and inventoried the room. Chair. Table. Another chair. Wastebasket—

  Phone. That was what he was looking for. He needed to use the satellite phone. But who was he supposed to call?

  He stumbled back outside, hoping the fresh air would clear his head. As he lurched toward the snowmobile, his feet tingled like he was walking on needles. He sat down on the seat and fumbled on his helmet, then reached for the key.

  What next?

  Turn the key. No, the other way. Okay, good.

  Now what?

  The throttle. Something about the throttle.

  He twisted the throttle, and the machine took off. It smashed into the pumphouse and flipped.

  He lay on his back and tried to figure out what had happened. He was on the snowmobile, and now he was looking at the sky. His helmet was gone, and the ice was cold. His legs hurt. Something was sitting on them, something heavy.

  Think.

  Get up.

  Go back to the op center. Get help.

  He raised himself on his elbows. He couldn’t see his legs. The snowmobile was on top of them, and the headlight was shattered.

  He was in for it now. John was gonna kill him for wrecking the machine. John? Why did he say John? Ben was gonna kill him. Who the hell was John?

  He lay back down and looked up at the clouds. Something was moving. He squinted. It was Sally, sitting in a rocking chair, with a baby at her breast.

  She’d had the baby! Why hadn’t anyone told him? Was it a boy or a girl? He hoped it was a girl. Sally wanted a boy, but he wanted a daughter. Emily, they were going to call her, after Quentin’s grandmother—that is, if Sally hadn’t gone ahead and named her something else—

  “Sally! Over here!” He smiled and waved. “Look down here! It’s me!”

  She stopped rocking and looked. Quentin’s lip trembled as he lowered his hand.

  Why was Sally crying?

  Chapter 22

  Ben clicked off the satellite phone and set it down carefully on Quentin’s desk. He took off his glasses and folded the stems inward, then laid the glasses alongside the phone and rested his head in his hands. His stomach churned. Two calls to Donald in the span of as many hours, one conveying the best of all possible news, the other the absolute worst, left him feeling raw. Bad word choice, he corrected himself, considering the condition in which they’d found Quentin’s body. He shuddered. Accidents happened; he knew that; the world was a dangerous place. Across the centuries, history had proved that undertakings of a magnitude such as theirs were not without risk. Still, he’d never expected death to make an appearance here.

  Quentin was dead. Worse, he’d met his end in the most appalling way imaginable. Ben pictured the mutilated body wrapped in bedsheets and stored in an unheated shed and felt like throwing up.

  “You didn’t tell him about the rats.” Behind him, Susan’s voice was heavy with accusation.

  He turned around. The others were clustered behind her in an anxious knot. Eugene’s normally ruddy face was pale as powder, Phil’s lower lip was bitten red from the effort not to cry, and Toshi’s frenzied blinking said he was struggling against the same. Susan was holding up better than the rest, no doubt because of her NASA training, but Ben was willing to lay odds that inside, she, too, was a wreck. He ran his hand over his head. It was hard to believe this demoralized group was the same team that two hours earlier had pulled off the engineering coup of the decade.

  He put his glasses back on and squared his shoulders. “No, I didn’t tell him about the rats, and I expect you to do the same.”

  “Why?” she persisted. “I’m sorry, Ben. I don’t like to question your authority, but Gillette’s the boss. It’s not right to withhold facts.”

  “I’m not withholding information. Donald will get a full report eventually, but now is not the time. Don’t forget, Donald was Quentin’s brother-in-law. It’s bad enough to have to tell him Quentin’s dead without including the details. Besides that, Quentin’s widow is six months’ pregnant. She just lost her husband. You want to be responsible for her maybe losing the baby as well?” He held out the phone.

  Susan scowled and shook her head.

  “All right, then.” He turned to the others. “The supply ship is leaving within the hour to bring Quentin’s body to Punta Arenas, and from there, the body will be flown home. Meanwhile, we have a tanker that needs filling.”

  “We’re going ahead?” Phil blinked his surprise. “I thought . . . I mean . . . well, considering what just happened, I figured—”

  “That we’d pack it all in? Believe me, I feel as badly about what happened as you do, but there are far too many dollars and man-hours invested to quit now. People need our water; quite literally millions of them. Besides, we just got the satellites turned on.”

  “But what about us? If the supply ship leaves, and then the tanker leaves—”

  “We won’t be stranded. The captain’s giving us his pilot and helicopter. We’re only a few miles from the Antarctic Peninsula. There are any number of research stations within range. If necessary, we could pile into the helicopter and hop over to Raney Station or McMurdo, but that’s just a contingency. The supply ship will be back in a week.” In truth, the captain had told Ben that with winter weather setting in, it would take “at least” a week to make the trip. He’d also cautioned that the helicopter would be useless in bad weather, but under the circumstances, a little judicious editing seemed prudent.

  Eugene shook his head. “I don’t like it. Not one bit. Phil’s right: We should get off while we can.”

  Susan snorted. “Or what? You think the big, bad rats are going to hunt you down?”

  Eugene turned on her. His eyes were slits. “They ate him, Susan. The rats ate him. You wanna be here when they decide it’s time for another meal?”

  “We don’t know that the rats killed Quentin,” she said. “Most likely they found his body after he was already dead. Rats are opportunists; scavengers, not predators. Given a choice, a scavenger will always take the easy way out.”

  “Exactly. Which do you think is easier: taking down an elephant seal, or dragging my buddy Phil here out of his bed?”

  “Holy crap.” Phil covered his mouth.

  “Enough,” Ben said.“We’ll hold
a memorial for Quentin on Sunday. If anyone wants to offer a few words, let me know. Meanwhile, I’ll only say this once: Get back to work.”

  Chairs creaked as the team members swiveled around to their stations. Ben leaned back and exhaled. He felt like he’d just averted a mutiny.

  He opened Quentin’s desk drawer to look for names of people he should contact or personal effects that should go back with Quentin’s body. Inside was Quentin’s wallet. He picked it up. It opened to a picture of Quentin’s wife. Ben frowned, then went through the contents: 200 American dollars, 10,000 Chilean pesos, a receipt for three bottles of whiskey from a duty-free store, a Visa card, and an American Express, with a dog-eared business card tucked behind it. He extracted the card, then tapped it thoughtfully against his lips.

  Why was Quentin doing business with an explosives expert?

  Chapter 23

  Los Angeles, California

  “So you think plastique is the way to go.”

  “Aoo—yes. Definitely.” Ramon Yellowhorse laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the park bench, stretching his legs in front of him and closing his eyes as if there were nothing more important on his mind than catching a few rays.

  “It’s completely stable,” he went on in a low voice, his face still turned toward the sky. “You could use it as a baseball bat if you wanted. Plastique won’t explode on impact—not even if it’s exposed to flame. The only thing that’ll set it off is a blasting cap.”

  “How much will you need?” Beside him, Rebecca Sweet mirrored his affectation with her shorts turned up to her thighs and her ICE SOLDYNE T-shirt knotted beneath her breasts.

  “How much destruction you want?” Ramon smiled as he ticked off the possibilities. “A quarter pound of C4 rolled into a cigar shape and placed along a steel I-beam will cut it as easily as a torch. A pound of C4 at all four corners of a building will take it down. One hundred pounds will breach your ship’s hull, and two or three will break its back.”

  “Nizhóní. Excellent. Let’s go with door number three.”

  “In that case, four divers carrying twenty-five pounds each will do.” He grinned. “Be sure to save yourself a ring-side seat. Water increases plastique’s concussive effect.”

  “How will you set it off?”

  “As long as it’s waterproofed, any kind of remote-control electrical detonator will do.”

  “And detection?”

  “Not a problem. Detection would have to be visual. Unless someone gets suspicious and jumps over the side, there’s no way anyone will find it.”

  “And no one gets hurt, right?” Rebecca pointed her finger. “We’re talking structural damage only. Just enough to blow a hole in the side and release some of the water.”

  “Of course.”

  “Because we don’t want to destroy the ship; we only want to make a statement. I want to be sure we’re absolutely clear on that. No matter what the FBI thinks, we’re not terrorists.”

  “Understood.”

  “Radical times call for radical measures.”

  “I got it.”

  She pursed her lips. “Where will you get it?”

  He shook his head. “Better you don’t know.”

  He was right about that. Last August, when she and her crew had been caught down in Florida boarding a cargo ship carrying Brazilian wood, only the fact that she was pregnant had saved her from significant jail time. She looked at Pablo, asleep in his stroller, and as if sensing her concern, he began to cry.

  “What’s the matter, K’aalógii? Did you have a bad dream?” Rebecca fished between the baby’s diaper and the stroller for his pacifier. “Listen,” she said to Ramon as she wiped off the fuzz and stuck the pacifier in Pablo’s mouth, “I’ve got to go pick up Jesse and Joshua at preschool. Meet me here same time next week. Tell your people to get ready. And hazhóó ógo bidiní—tell them to be careful.”

  Chapter 24

  Raney Station, Antarctic Peninsula

  Elliot raised himself up on one elbow to watch as Zo lowered her jeans and sat down on her side of the bed. She took a bottle of insulin from the apartment-sized refrigerator that served as her nightstand, stuck in a syringe, and drew up half her usual dose. He frowned. Zo’s blood-glucose levels had been fluctuating wildly over the past three days, no doubt because of all of the stress. The whole station was in an uproar over Sam’s death, and who could blame them? Add in the fact that she was going to have a baby, and it was no wonder her diabetes was a mess.

  She detached the needle from the plunger and dropped the needle in the wastebasket, then returned the insulin to the fridge and switched off the lamp. She slid under the covers, keeping her back turned toward him as usual. He rolled onto his and stared up at the ceiling, the creaking bedsprings masking his usual sigh. At least now, he understood why.

  He’d figured it out three days ago. Zo’s physical and emotional distance, the way Roundtree was always hovering near—a blind man could have seen that the two shared a secret, and Elliot’s vision was clear. He wasn’t the only one who suspected an affair; he’d heard the whispers, seen the pitying looks.

  Then he’d caught a glimpse of Zo’s belly, and the answer appeared like the prognostication in a Magic 8 Ball. Roundtree confirmed his deduction when Elliot questioned him in the rec room the day Sam’s body was discovered and Zo’s rat disappeared. Elliot’s stomach had been churning ever since. The betrayal he felt at Zo’s months-long deception, combined with elation that at forty-seven he was going to become a father, mixed with fear for his family’s—his family’s!—health and safety, left him trembling and wet.

  He pulled up a corner of the blanket to dry his face, then tucked it beneath his chin. A sliver of light from the hallway spilled under the door. He watched Zo’s shoulders rise and fall evenly as she slept, and his eyes blurred. He understood how much her research meant to her, how hard she’d worked to get here, and why she’d lied rather than give it up, but if anything had happened—Just thinking about the possibilities made him feel ill. The women who came to Antarctica had to be tough—Jerri Nielsen’s courage in the face of breast cancer, and Michelle Eileen Raney, the first woman to winter over at the Pole, were two of many who came to mind—but the risk Zo had assumed without consulting him was inexcusable.

  Even so, he was going to miss her. Zo didn’t know it, but as soon as the icebreaker arrived to pick up Sam’s body, she’d be gone. He dreaded telling her; they rarely argued, and his decision was going to spark a terrible row. He’d make the same call for any of the women at the station, though he doubted she’d believe him. He sighed. He hated to think their last words would be angry ones. Then he reminded himself he was the one who had been wronged.

  At any rate, with the near-winter weather upon them, God only knew when the ship would arrive. He listened to the wind roaring around the building, shaking the windows and rattling the doors like a demon trying to get in, and shivered. The very conditions that demanded she be sent home prevented it.

  He rolled over with a long sigh and closed his eyes, then opened them again as a wave of dizziness made his head swim. He fumbled open the drawer to his nightstand and unwrapped a Werther’s, savoring the buttery sweetness while he waited for the dizziness to pass.

  It didn’t. Instead, a spasm gripped his stomach. He moaned. Hot. He was so hot. He threw off the covers as the bile rose in his throat. Swallowed, then swallowed again.

  As he leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed for the wastebasket, the light came on.

  “Elliot!” he heard Zo exclaim. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  Chapter 25