Pandora's curse m-4

by Jack Du Brul

  “The radios are dead, aren’t they?”

  “Could be the solar-max effect. We’ve been having problems for a while.” The attempted reassurance sounded flat.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Mercer replied grimly. “How far are we from Iceland?”

  “About two hours with this head wind.”

  Mercer doubted they had that much time. “Not an option. What’s the closest airport?”

  “Kulusuk is a bit closer, but we’re flying northeast to avoid a storm front we were told about at your research base. In a few minutes Iceland will be closer.”

  The trap had been set and they’d flown right into it. There was no storm. It was another fabrication, like the Danish evacuation order. Okay, Mercer, think. They didn’t have time to damage the engines or contaminate the fuel supply, so how would you crash a cargo plane with perhaps the greatest safety record in history?

  The answer was as obvious as it was chilling.

  A bomb.

  “There’s no storm front,” he said, forcing the terror out of his voice. “Keep on course for Iceland, but be prepared to turn back because we may not have the time.”

  Mercer returned to the cabin and prodded Ira, who had slumped against a skeletal frame member as if it were a pillow. “Wake up. We could have a problem.”

  “Stewardess forget your drink?”

  “I think there’s a bomb on the plane.” Mercer didn’t care that the others heard him. They would know soon enough.

  Their search was systematic and quick. After checking under all the seats and behind any removable panels in the cockpit and cabin, they began shifting the stacks of cargo in the rear of the plane. Marty and Anika were helping by this point while everyone else had been ordered to their seats, their frightened stares never leaving the searchers.

  Mercer unhooked the netting over the last cargo pallet, a neatly stacked pile of boxes at the very rear of the hold. The cabin’s heaters couldn’t overcome the chilling drafts, and yet he was covered with sweat. It felt like a lead weight had settled in his stomach. He checked each box thoroughly before lifting it from the stack to hand to Ira. Had the bomb been motion activated, the plane would have exploded as soon as it began moving across the ice, so his biggest concern was a booby trap around the device.

  Ira and Anika were carefully examining the tape seals on the boxes to see if any had been opened but they hadn’t found anything. Mercer reached the last carton. He nearly missed the filament of wire running from a tiny hole in the cardboard to a bulkhead, where it had been glued to the steel. It was an anti-tampering wire designed to detonate the bomb if the box was moved.

  “Got it!” he called, both relieved and sickened.

  The tape on the box’s lid had been slit open. Ira held the box steady while Mercer lowered himself until the top of the carton was at eye level. Gingerly he opened one flap, mindful that there could be another trip wire attached to its underside. It appeared clear, so he opened the other side. Anika gave a startled gasp, and he nearly jostled the box.

  Rath had made a hollow in one corner of the container by removing a bundle of paper towels. In their place was the bomb. It consisted of six dynamite sticks bundled with tape and a high-tech detonator held in place by wires and more tape. The trip wire attached to the plane disappeared into the side of the activator, so Mercer couldn’t tell how it was pretensioned. Cutting the wire or moving the bomb could conceivably obliterate the plane.

  The LED numbers spinning backward in a window at the top of the device read sixty-eight minutes, twelve seconds. Eleven seconds. Ten seconds.

  “You can deactivate it, right?” Anika asked hopefully. “You’re a mining engineer. You know all about explosives.”

  “Ah, no.” Mercer’s voice caught in his throat, and he had to swallow heavily to clear it. “I don’t know the first thing about bombs. Ira, any suggestions?”

  “Land.”

  “Marty, go tell the pilot we have a bomb on board and we’ll never make it to Reykjavik. Have him turn back to Greenland.”

  “What happens when we return to the Geo-Research camp?” Anika asked. “Rath’s trying to kill us now. What’s to stop him from just doing it later?”

  Mercer made sure that Ira had a firm grip on the box before he stood, bracing himself as the DC-3 went through a steep banking turn. “Because we’re not going back to the base. Give Ira a hand packing stuff around the bomb so it doesn’t shift and pull the trip wire. We’re not out of this fight yet.”

  The plan was a desperate one, but as Mercer reached his seat he felt there was a slim chance of hope. Because the DC-3 was equipped with skis, he wasn’t worried about landing. What concerned him was the amount of time they might be stranded on the ice. Once the bomb went off, he doubted there would be enough of the plane to protect eleven people from the elements. He had to find them shelter. Mercer had a location in mind, but finding it depended on a man who’d been dead for fifty years.

  He unfolded the map he’d recovered from Major Delaney and studied the figures the airman had penciled in. Mercer’s immediate urge was to tell the pilots the heading Delaney had used to reach Camp Decade from the crash site. Finding the wreck would have been a simple geometry equation.

  And it would have been wrong.

  A fact largely ignored by modern navigators because of global positioning satellites and other artificial aids is that the magnetic North Pole is not a stationary point. It can migrate up to fifty miles in a single day and averages a northwestern drift of approximately nine miles every year. Earth’s iron core, which generates the magnetic field, is slightly out of phase with the rotation of the crust, creating this observable movement. To find the plane, Mercer had to factor fifty years’ worth of drift to Delaney’s heading, a difference of about four hundred and fifty miles.

  With a calculator and a pen, he did the math as quickly as he could, aware of the bomb’s remorseless countdown. He could do nothing about Delaney’s estimate that he’d walked three hundred kilometers to reach the abandoned Air Force facility. Once they established themselves above his route and began backtracking, Mercer could only hope they would spot his plane. Erwin had said a few days ago that the region around where Mercer believed the C-97 had crashed had less snow cover now than at any time in decades. That was just one of the many lucky breaks they would need.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. It was Erwin Puhl. “Anything I can do?”

  “Get Marty’s sat-phone.”

  Erwin shook his head. “Marty already tried it. He can’t get a lock on any satellites. It’s the solar max.”

  “In that case, are you a praying man?”

  “I am now.”

  “Me too.”

  The pilots didn’t question Mercer’s orders when he told them the new course to fly because he was the only person who had an idea how to save them. He returned to the rear of the plane, where Ira, Marty, and Anika had buried the bomb under as much cargo as they could pack around it. It was a makeshift redoubt, but any bit would help. “How much time?”

  Ira checked the timer on his digital watch. “Forty-five and a half minutes.”

  “We’ll be feet dry over Greenland again in fifteen and over our target area a couple minutes after that.”

  “Doesn’t give us much time,” Marty pointed out.

  “If we don’t find Delaney’s plane, we’ll still be able to put down and hope there’s enough of this one left to sustain us.”

  “We pulled some of the better food stores, camping supplies, and cooking fuel away from the bomb,” Ira explained. “We can each grab an armload when we make a run for it.”

  “Good idea. I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Don’t thank me. It was Dr. Klein’s idea.”

  Mercer smiled at Anika. “Intelligent, brave, and quick thinking. Do you have any faults?”

  “I get drunk on a single glass of wine.”

  “You call that a fault?” Mercer chuckled, trying to reduce the gloom that
had permeated the cabin. “I call that a reason for a weekend together in the Napa Valley.”

  Anika made a face of mock horror. “Ugh. You Americans sicken me. The Loire Valley or nothing.”

  The banter didn’t last. The enormity of their situation overshadowed everything. Once they cleared the ramparts of the Greenland coast, Mercer had everyone at a window watching the snow and ice and rock below. Even though they had a few more minutes before reaching Delaney’s reported path, he wanted them accustomed to the rough topography so they were better prepared to spot anything anomalous.

  To intercept Delaney’s route, they had to fly thirty miles into the hinterland before swinging north-northeast, back toward the coast at a shallow angle, their altitude reduced to a thousand feet above the ground. Hunched between the pilots’ seats with the Geiger counter in his hands, Mercer estimated they were about forty miles south of where the plane went down.

  Watching the terrain scroll under the DC-3, everyone kept a lookout for a flash of sunlight striking a metallic surface or any unnatural straight edges, like a wing. As Erwin had predicted, there wasn’t anywhere near the amount of new snow here as had been around the Geo-Research camp. Large patches of bare rock appeared at irregular intervals, jagged peaks that showed above the ice. There were still enough snow-covered sections to land the plane, which also meant there was an increased possibility that the C-97 had been buried as deeply as Camp Decade. They’d know soon.

  Far ahead he could see a fjord carved deep into the ice sheet, protected on all sides by sheer mountains. A quick guess put the plane wreck just south of where the narrow bay terminated. Mercer checked his watch. They had ten minutes before he would call off the search and order the pilots to land. He’d cut the margin as close as he could, balancing the need to locate the wreck with the time it took to find a safe landing site.

  “Mercer!” It was one of Erwin’s teammates, Wilhelm Treitschke, seated immediately behind the lavatory. “Ahead about four kilometers, just before that rock that looks like a shark fin.”

  Looking out the windshield, Mercer spotted the feature Will described and concentrated on the shadow staining the clear ice in front of it. For an instant he thought they’d found it. The size was right and it had an airplane’s cruciform shape, but as he looked closer, he could tell it was just a rocky projection that hadn’t quite broken through the surface. His mouth turned bitter.

  “Good eyes, but that’s not it. Keep looking.”

  A minute later, the copilot hit Mercer on the shoulder with the back of his hand and pointed. “There!”

  Near where a wall of mountains rose before falling off into the fjord was a piece of debris sticking up from the ice like a tombstone. Battered and bent by decades of glacial movement, it was still recognizable as a section of an aircraft’s wing. There was another piece of wreckage sitting on top of a low ridge of stone maybe a hundred yards from it.

  The shape of the mountain looming over the wreck indicated that the plane had had the added misfortune of coming down in an avalanche channel. He imagined that when the C-97 crashed in the 1950s, its impact must have triggered an avalanche that buried it, hiding the wreckage from both air and ground searches. But now, with temperatures on the rise and record low snowfall, the aircraft had melted out of its frozen tomb. Since this part of Greenland went largely unexplored, it was possible the plane had lain exposed for years.

  The dial on the radiation monitor hadn’t twitched since he’d turned it on but Mercer was still concerned that the old plane was contaminated. He’d earlier instructed the pilot that if they did find the aircraft to land no closer than three miles from it. He looked at his watch again. Two minutes remained on his search timetable, which gave them only twelve minutes to land and get clear of the DC-3.

  He tapped the pilot, pointed to the ground, and went to the rear to strap in. “We found it,” he announced as he reached his seat. “We’re landing now. Everyone, tighten your seat belts.”

  He sat next to Anika in the last row of seats, accepting a bundle of clothes to use as a cushion when they assumed the head-down crash position. “I’m scared,” she said as the pitch of the engines changed.

  “You shouldn’t be. What are the chances that you survive a helicopter crash only to die in a plane crash?”

  “How can you be so calm?”

  “I’m faking it. Don’t forget, this plane is designed to land on ice and snow, and the pilots know what they’re doing. We’ll be fine.”

  A moment before the landing, the copilot ordered the passengers to brace themselves. Mercer tucked his head into his lap, grabbing the back of his thighs as tightly as he could. He knew the landing would be rough and he thought he was prepared.

  He wasn’t. None of them were.

  Flared nose up, the DC-3 skimmed the ground for a moment, its skis hissing and banging across the uneven surface. Then one of them hooked into a hardened piece of ice. The plane slammed hard, a jarring impact that nearly tore the fuselage apart. No longer moving in a straight line, the aircraft skipped and skidded, scrubbing off airspeed in a rapid deceleration that pitched the tail high. Amid the screams of the passengers was the explosive sound of the windscreens imploding. A solid wall of snow filled the cockpit and erupted through the connecting door. The two seats behind the bathroom tore free from the floor and launched themselves into a bulkhead. Wilhelm Treitschke and his companion, Gert Kreigsburg, were crushed against the metal wall, their necks snapping in identical pops.

  As its momentum expended, the tail of the DC-3 dropped to the ground in a wrenching crash that bent the airframe and blew open the rear hatchway. The plane finally came to an uneven stop. The lash of cold air whipping into the cabin revived Mercer. He looked behind him. Ira had done a remarkable job securing the cargo. Despite the violence of the crash, the stack of crates hadn’t shifted under the netting and pulled the trip wire.

  Mercer unbuckled his lap belt and stood, swaying against a wave of nausea. The sounds assaulting his ears were pitiable. Several people were still screaming in pain and fear while others sobbed uncontrollably. Worse was the silence from the front of the plane. The wall of snow filled the door leading to the cockpit. Buried somewhere inside were the pilots.

  “We’ve got two minutes,” Mercer bellowed, hoping to galvanize the survivors with his voice. Each word felt like a hammer pounding against his temples. He ached everywhere. “Anyone who can move grab a bundle of supplies and get the hell away.”

  Ira Lasko was the first to find his feet. He had to lift Erwin Puhl from his seat and hold him steady for a moment before they each took handfuls of gear and disappeared outside.

  “Come on, Anika. You’re next.” Mercer tugged at her seat belt, freeing her.

  “I’m okay,” she said groggily, a trickle of blood escaping from her hairline, where she’d hit her head against the seat back in front of her.

  “We’ve got to add ‘lucky’ to your list of attributes. We made it,” Mercer said before turning serious. “Can you get out on your own?”

  “I think so.”

  It was clear that she couldn’t. “Ira,” Mercer yelled out, “I need a hand in here.”

  Ira dashed back to the plane to help Anika and unload more gear while Mercer went forward to check on Marty, Ingrid, and Hilda. He didn’t need to check the two meteorologists or pilots. Their fate was all too apparent.

  “Let’s go, Marty,” Mercer shouted when he reached his seat and then fell silent. Marty had pushed Ingrid back in her seat and was trying to get her head to remain erect. He couldn’t. The delicate bones in her neck were as pliable as rubber. She was dead. He looked up at Mercer blankly.

  Mercer’s voice dropped. “We can’t help her, Marty. I’m sorry.”

  “I think she looked up just as the plane hit.” He spoke with an unsettling monotone. “I even think I heard her neck break.”

  The clock was ticking. “Can you get out by yourself?”

  “Yes, I, ah, yes.” He stood and walked towa
rd the rear exit as calmly as a seasoned passenger coming off a regular flight. He was in shock.

  The heavyset Hilda, who Mercer recalled could move fifty-pound bags of potatoes with one beefy arm, was still folded over in the crash position, her arms dangling to the floor. He suspected she was dead until he saw that her shoulders were shaking. There were only a few seconds left.

  He roughly pushed her back in her seat and unhooked her belt. The woman neither helped nor hindered his efforts. She was unconscious. And she weighed about two hundred pounds. Bending so he could dig a shoulder into her ample belly, Mercer heaved her limp body into a modified fireman’s carry and strained to straighten again. His body had been pummeled by the accident and it protested every inch he rose but he managed to stand, staggering to find his balance.

  “Oh Jesus,” he groaned, moving down the aisle in a faltering lurch. “Did you have to sample every dish you prepared?”

  On the way out the door he grabbed his leather sample bag by its strap. Ira had returned to the plane once again and helped Mercer jump to the snow. Together they hefted the inert chef away. They made it fifteen yards before the beeper on Ira’s watch went off.

  “Down!” he shouted and fell flat, collapsing the woman and Mercer.

  The explosion was muffled by the cargo stacked around it, and its detonative energy was concentrated on the far side of the aircraft. Still the concussion hit with enough force to suck the air out of Mercer’s lungs. Bits of debris and a hail of snow pelted him as he lay over Hilda to protect her from the worst of the blast. The bomb was far enough from the fuel tanks that there were no secondary detonations, which had been Mercer’s biggest fear. He looked over his shoulder as the rumble died away.

  The entire tail assembly was twisted away from the remainder of the fuselage and the roof above the bomb had vanished. Such a blast during the flight would have dropped the DC-3 out of the sky like a brick. Thankfully, the explosion wasn’t powerful enough to completely destroy the aircraft. Enough remained to provide shelter until they were rescued. If they were rescued.