by Jack Du Brul
“What happened?” His voice crackled with the authority he’d intentionally hidden from the others.
Marty paused, looking Mercer in the eye. For an instant he resisted answering, knowing that he was supposed to be in charge and should be demanding explanations. Yet he had rushed here, pushed by instinct, to report their discovery to the man who was the natural leader of the group. He could not sustain Mercer’s steady gaze, and rather than resentment, his voice was filled with gratitude.
“When we went into Camp Decade this morning, Bern Hoffmann and I found there had been a cave-in overnight. Part of the roof collapsed in the main corridor, right beyond the area that was already partially blocked by snow. Remember where we had to crawl to get to the barracks and officers’ quarters?” Mercer nodded. “Just past there, about ten feet of the hallway was filled floor to ceiling with ice and snow. We were using shovels to clear away the mess when we found Igor at the bottom of the pile. He must have been right under the avalanche when the ceiling let go. He was frozen solid.”
“Show me.”
Outside, the sun was hidden by clouds so thick there were no shadows. The wind was a raw force that knifed its way through the few gaps in Mercer’s Arctic clothing. He drew his hood tighter and refastened the Velcro at his sleeves to prevent the icy air from reaching inside his gloves. He snapped a lead from the safety line to his coat and began trudging across the snow toward Camp Decade’s entrance. It was impossible to hold a conversation in these conditions, so Marty walked silently in his footprints.
Mercer’s mind raced with speculation. Because Igor had the room next to his, Mercer had heard him leaving the dormitory in the middle of the night. Assuming he was headed for a late-night snack or possibly a romantic encounter, Mercer had quickly fallen back asleep. When he awoke, Igor wasn’t in his room and Mercer guessed he’d already gone to the mess for breakfast. He put the incident out of his mind, working instead on a problem he’d discovered with their subsurface radar survey.
Now the Russian meteorite hunter was dead, killed by an avalanche that shouldn’t have happened in a section of the camp he had no right to be in. Mercer couldn’t shake the feeling that, had he questioned Igor last night, Bulgarin wouldn’t be dead this morning. There were a great many deaths on Mercer’s conscience, mostly trapped miners he’d been unable to rescue, but there were others too. Soldiers. Refugees. Friends. And even without knowing the full truth yet, he added Igor Bulgarin to the list.
Behind him, Marty shouted for him to slow down but Mercer ignored him, lengthening his stride in a futile race to reach the Sno-Cat poised above the tunnel. A race Igor had already lost.
Mercer didn’t pause before climbing into the waiting bucket and lowering himself into the ice. Marty would have to recall the makeshift elevator when he reached the ’Cat. He leapt from the bucket as soon as it touched bottom, his boots splashing through accumulated meltwater.
“Hold on,” Marty called down from the rim of the shaft.
“Start the topside pump,” Mercer shouted savagely. “There’s too much water down here. You should have done it first thing this morning.”
When he reached the second set of doors, he heard the low thrum of a portable generator running somewhere in the maze of the complex. Mercer cursed under his breath, fury sparking behind his slate eyes. He checked his watch and calculated that Marty and Bern had been working down here for a few hours.
At the first intersection he turned right and saw the glow from several portable spotlights rigged to the ceiling farther down the corridor. The sound of a small generator grew with each step toward the light. So did the reek of exhaust.
The young German didn’t hear Mercer approach. He was at the far side of the generator shoveling chunks of ice and compacted snow into an empty office. Mercer grabbed up a flashlight left on the floor next to the portable generator and flicked off the gasoline-powered engine. The floodlights dimmed to orange before failing completely. The beam from Mercer’s flashlight was nearly swallowed by the darkness.
“Who’s there? Who shut off the generator?” Hoffmann peered into the flashlight.
Mercer fought to keep his anger in check. “Get the hell out of here right now. This drive is fouled with carbon monoxide.” Unconsciously Mercer switched to the vernacular of hard-rock mining, where a tunnel was called a drive.
“Didn’t Mr. Bishop tell you? Igor’s dead.”
“And you will be too if you don’t get out of here.” Mercer grabbed Bern by his collar, heaving him to his feet, where he swayed for a moment, pressing his gloved hand against a wall to hold himself steady.
“Whoa.” He slammed his eyes as a blinding headache raged inside his skull.
“Your lungs are full of gas. Didn’t you smell it?”
“Ja, but I thought we’d be okay.”
Bern could barely stand, so Mercer continued to drag him by his jacket, maneuvering him toward the exit. In the spill of light coming from the surface, his face was gray and his eyes weeped. The fresh cold air made him cough in fits so powerful that he vomited.
“Marty,” Mercer yelled up the shaft. “Where’s Ira?”
“During breakfast Greta asked him to help fix the engine on one of the Sno-Cats.”
That explained why these two had been so stupid. Ira Lasko would have known not to run a generator inside the base. Because carbon monoxide was heavier than air, the gas had pooled where the men were working and had been slowly suffocating them. In a sense, Mercer saw that Igor Bulgarin had saved their lives. Had Marty not gone to get him, he and Hoffmann would have been asphyxiated as they attacked the blockage, and their corpses would have been found next to the Russian’s.
“Go get him and tell him we need to rig wiring into the base for lights. Then come down here and give me a hand wrestling the generator back topside.”
Marty didn’t argue. Bringing the Honda generator into the tunnel had been his idea. Listening to the Geo-Researcher’s racking coughs, he knew what a deadly mistake that had been.
Mercer turned to reenter the facility, clamping a hand on Bern’s shoulder. “Just stay here and keep taking deep breaths to clear your lungs. In a few minutes Marty’ll give you a hand getting back to your dormitory.”
The floor of the hallway was covered in water melted from the snow that had broken into the base. He didn’t know how many BTUs the little generator pumped out, but it was more than enough to cause a pretty good flood. Once they had the sump in the main shaft drained he wanted a hose snaked in here to get rid of this water too. It would refreeze soon and make working conditions dangerous.
He moved slowly as he neared the cave-in, stepping over the silenced generator and the shovels and other tools brought down to clear the passage. In the sharp beam from the light, he could see the gaps in the roof, where the relentless pressure of snow had broken through the structure. It was logical that this would be the area that let go — part of the ceiling had already collapsed in the years since the camp had been abandoned. And yet he couldn’t think why it had failed at the very instant Igor Bulgarin walked underneath it. The odds were too long. He studied the twisted metal and jagged teeth of torn plywood, wondering if Igor had done something to the roof to precipitate the failure.
That made no sense either. And what was Bulgarin doing down here in the first place?
He trained the flashlight on the body. Igor lay facedown on the floor, wearing his blue parka with the hood pulled down. The lower half of his body was still buried under the ceiling-high snow. Although Marty and Bern had removed much of the snow around him, Mercer could see where blood had stained the ice near the back of his head. He knelt to examine the spot. It looked like a large slab of ice had hit him at the base of his skull. He could see a thin but deep depression in the bone under his matted hair. Depending on the force, it could have easily been a killing stroke.
Mercer had seen enough head wounds to know how much they bled, and there wasn’t enough blood to make him believe that Igor had survi
ved the blow. The first impact had most likely killed him instantly. He hadn’t suffered. For that Mercer was thankful. He could easily imagine Igor’s agony if he’d slowly frozen to death in the dark.
“Hey, are you all right?” Ira Lasko had approached silently, only announcing his presence after Mercer stood and brushed off his gloves.
“Yeah,” he answered. “How are Marty and Bern?”
“Marty’s lungs cleared when he went to get you, but Bern’s back in his room, sicker than a dog. He’ll be fine in a few hours.” Ira’s expression soured. “It’s my fault. I never should have let them come down here alone. Marty doesn’t have the common sense of a Boy Scout.”
“He said you were fixing one of the Sno-Cats.”
“Greta grabbed me at breakfast. Said they needed help with a clogged fuel injector. Dieter and a guy named Fritz are still working on it. What happened here?”
“Hanging wall let go.” Mercer used a mining term for the roof. Then he swept the flashlight to show where the ceiling had collapsed. “Igor was right underneath it. When the snow came pouring in, it looks like a chunk of ice caught him in the head. He didn’t have a chance.”
“This place has been pretty secure for fifty years. What could have caused it?”
“We did,” Mercer answered.
“Come again?”
“We caused it. The climate down here had been stable until we entered the base. By us moving around and the heat we gave off by working and breathing yesterday, it’s likely that the ice above this area shifted just enough to rip through the roof.”
“So Igor was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing down here in the middle of the night?”
“I heard him leave his room, and I think it was more like early morning than late night,” Mercer corrected. “But I didn’t know he was coming down here, nor do I know why.”
“He could have come down anytime he wanted with one of us,” Ira remarked. Like Mercer, he’d seen too much death to be rattled.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Mercer agreed absently, noticing that Igor Bulgarin’s arms were stretched out in front of him as though he’d been walking with his hands touching the ceiling. He wondered if that was an important detail and decided it probably wasn’t.
“The body?”
Mercer looked at Ira, understanding what he was asking. “It’s possible he wanted to check it out, but why would Igor be interested in a dead pilot? And why come down here secretly?”
“Booze?”
“That was my first thought,” Mercer said sadly. He didn’t like to think the worst of Bulgarin. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he’d fallen off the wagon, so he came here to get drunk.” He bent to pat down the body, but couldn’t feel the distinctive shape of a bottle. “Could be he stashed it someplace when he decided to leave.”
“Lot of ground to cover to prove it.”
Mercer flashed the light down the tunnel to make certain Marty hadn’t returned yet. He felt that Ira, with his experience on submarines, could handle what he was about to say, but he wasn’t sure about Marty. He spoke in a low voice. “We’ve got another problem too. It’s not important why, but I brought a Geiger counter with me from Iceland.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.
Ira made a gesture with his hand for Mercer to continue. Mercer was correct about the former Navy man. Nothing got to him. “When we were using the radar sled, I also made a radioactivity map of the facility. None of the radiation I detected was dangerous. It was mostly ambient background noise, but there was an area that spiked a bit. I assumed it was where the old reactor had sat. On another hunch, this morning I compared the radar sled readings to those from the Geiger counter and found that the spike occurred over the room with the pilot’s body, nowhere near the old reactor site.”
That got a reaction. “The body’s hot?”
“Call it warm, yeah.” Mercer nodded. “Just enough to tickle the counter now, but back when he died he would have been glowing like a neon sign.”
Ira knew that radioactive contamination didn’t cause a person to physically glow but he understood what he was saying. He looked at Mercer skeptically. “You’ve got some pretty accurate hunches.”
Mercer shrugged and told him about Elisebet Rosmunder and her son’s search for the downed C-97 and his subsequent death from cancer. “I guess you could call it more of a warning than a hunch,” he concluded.
“If there was something that radioactive on the plane, the government wouldn’t have stopped until it was found,” Ira said after giving the problem a moment of thought. “There was quite a flap when the Air Force lost a couple of nukes from a bomber off the coast of Spain in 1966 and again when an armed B-52 crashed over in Thule in 1968. I remember for that one they hauled off nearly a million cubic feet of ice, snow, and debris. No, the Air Force would have moved heaven and earth to locate that plane and clean up any spill.”
Mercer regarded Lasko for a minute. “You could be right. I don’t know. But the evidence suggests that the C-97 was carrying radioactive material that leaked when the plane crashed, poisoning Jack Delaney and later killing Stefansson Rosmunder.”
“So what do we do?” Ira asked.
“Finish unburying Igor and bring his body to one of the cold laboratories and then try to contact the Air Force again. Maybe the communications are back up.”
“What about Delaney?” Ira turned, hearing someone approaching down the corridor. It was Marty.
“We’ll keep that to ourselves,” Mercer said quickly. “The body’s not hazardous to handle, but until we hear from the military, he should be off limits.”
“Agreed,” Ira said out the corner of his mouth before addressing Bishop. “Bern okay?”
“He took some aspirin and is asleep right now.” Marty Bishop looked ravaged by guilt. His eyes were dull and he spoke as if each word caused him pain. “Mercer, ah, listen, I, ah… It was my idea to bring the generator down here. This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I had talked to you or Ira first. I nearly got us killed.”
“You’re right,” Mercer said mildly, not letting Marty flinch from his responsibility. “It was a stupid thing to do and you two were lucky. This hallway is probably still full of fumes, so for the next twenty-four hours I want the entire facility off-limits.”
Mercer caught Ira’s eye, making sure he would agree with the lie. The base would be safe in just a few hours.
“That’s a good idea,” Lasko agreed. “That should give us the time we need to notify the Air Force too.”
“Okay,” Marty said. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while myself. I feel like shit.”
“Go on ahead. We’ll take care of Igor.”
Two hours later, Igor Bulgarin’s body had been placed in one of the cold laboratories. Mercer and Ira had also wandered through Camp Decade, looking for evidence that the Russian had gone there for a drinking binge. Other than some old bottles hidden fifty years ago in the enormous garage, they found nothing. Neither man was surprised. There were tens of thousands of square feet of rooms and passages and closets where Igor could have hidden an empty liquor bottle. Giving up, they used a length of chain and a padlock from the Sno-Cat to secure the base’s main doors. No one would be able to enter Camp Decade without them knowing it.
Mercer and Ira met up with Erwin Puhl in the mess hall. The German scientist was still in shock over Igor’s death. He sat in an almost catatonic state, his eyes unfocused and unblinking. He hadn’t even bothered removing his parka or gloves. A cup of coffee in front of him had gone cold. The only words he’d spoken were, “My brother.” It was obvious that he and Igor were a lot closer than anyone thought. He seemed inconsolable.
Greta Schmidt was at the back of the hall, speaking with some of her people. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, she approached the table.
“Dr. Puhl?” Erwin looked up into her blue eyes. The juxtaposition of her vibrant beauty an
d his desolation was unsettling. “I just learned how long you and Dr. Bulgarin have known each other. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend. I am very sorry for you.”
Erwin said nothing but continued to stare at her. His lower lip quivered. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “As soon as we reestablish communications with the Njoerd, I’ll have a helicopter sent to remove his body and make arrangements to have him flown back to Moscow.”
“St. Petersburg,” Erwin said softly. “He was from St. Petersburg.”
“Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?” She glanced at Ira and then her gaze settled on Mercer. “Is it safe for your people to be working in Camp Decade?”
“It will be,” Mercer replied. This was the first sign of any tenderness he’d seen from her, and it was surprising. “I’ve closed it for twenty-four hours to let the gas fumes dissipate and to let the avalanche that struck Igor settle. Tomorrow we’ll go back in and shore up the ceiling where glacier movement has weakened it.”
“Werner and I have already discussed calling the Surveyor’s Society and asking them to cancel your expedition. In light of Dr. Bulgarin’s death, we feel the base may be too dangerous.”
The gentleness she’d just shown Erwin had vanished. There was a challenge in her voice. Mercer responded in kind. “That will be up to Marty Bishop’s father and Charles Bryce. You can’t order us to leave.”
“I can, Dr. Mercer. And if it becomes necessary, I will.” She executed a military-style snap turn and stormed away.
“Talk about Beauty and the Bitch,” Ira mumbled.
“It might be best if we did leave,” Erwin said. “Igor’s death…” His voice trailed off.
“Not even when Brunhild there tells me to,” Ira snarled, nodding as Greta retook her seat at the other end of the mess hall. “I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”
