Pandora's curse m-4

by Jack Du Brul

  She simply said, “Thank you,” because there was no phrase that fully expressed her gratitude.

  “You’re welcome,” Mercer said because any other reply would have betrayed how much he wanted to kiss her. Anika fell asleep with a trace of a smile on her lips and he wondered if she already knew.

  ON THE ICE

  The following morning, Mercer found Marty Bishop standing over the graves the team had dug while he was investigating the Air Force Stratofreighter. The others were preparing for the trek, packing everything from sleeping bags and extra Arctic clothes to a cooking stove, propane cylinders, and as much food as they could carry. There had been a few arguments over items individuals felt they had to bring — Marty’s videotapes for his father, Erwin Puhl’s thick journal, even Hilda’s personal recipe book. Mercer won them all. They stripped themselves to the absolute essentials, and even then they were dangerously overloaded. Only Magnus, the Icelandic pilot with the broken arm, would walk unencumbered. Mercer made up for him by carrying the heaviest pack at sixty pounds.

  “I didn’t really know her,” Marty said when he felt Mercer’s presence. Ingrid’s tombstone was a piece of metal with her name scratched on one side.

  “Doesn’t matter. For a few days she was part of your life. That’s more than enough time to feel grief.”

  “We were just having some fun, you know. It would have ended as soon as we got to Iceland.” He wiped his cheeks with a glove. “I would have walked away. Now I can’t.”

  “No, you can’t,” Mercer agreed. “She’s going to be with you for a long time. Nothing is as casual as we’d like to think. Especially people.”

  “I’ve never spent much time thinking about consequences.”

  “I have a feeling you’ll be thinking of nothing else for a while.” Mercer put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll give you a couple more minutes. Then we have to go.”

  “Thanks.”

  While the fog had lifted, the tracks Mercer had left on his trip to the C-97 had been nearly obliterated by Greenland’s constant wind. For this, he was grateful. It meant that by tomorrow there’d be no trace of their trek, no trail Rath could follow. They reached the Stratofreighter before noon and spent a couple of hours burying what pieces of wreckage were exposed. No one wanted Rath to make the same discovery Mercer had about Major Jack Delaney.

  Because he knew the route to the plane, Mercer led, but when they started the long march to the air shaft, each member of the team took a turn at point. Trailblazing in the deep snow was exhausting work that only he and Ira could maintain for more than an hour at a time. Anika spent the day behind the leader, keeping track of their course with a handheld compass taken from the DC-3’s emergency kit. When not at the head of the column, Mercer walked with Marty as he helped Magnus. Anika had found a balance of painkillers to keep the aviator alert yet comfortable for the march. He was young and strong and could maintain their pace despite being unbalanced by his slinged arm.

  Protected in the latest foul-weather gear, they had no problem handling the cold. It was exhaustion that slowly ground them down. Because of her size, he’d expected Hilda to have the greatest difficulty, but it was Erwin who needed the most encouragement. By five, the group had covered only a third of the distance, and their pace was a quarter of what it had been when they’d commenced. Mercer’s plan to spend only one night in the open wasn’t going to happen.

  Rather than push them beyond their level of endurance, he decided to find cover for the night. Mercer was at point when he made the decision and he veered toward the jagged mountains on their right, hoping to find protection from the strengthening wind. It would have been too much to hope for a cave, but a natural windbreak would have been sorely welcome.

  It took another hour of marching to stumble across a V-shaped outcropping of rock that would shield them from the gusts. Gathering storm clouds created a false twilight. Taking a lesson from sled dogs, they began to burrow individual holes in the snow on the rock’s leeward side.

  “Not like that,” Anika cautioned when the work began. “We need to double up to share body heat. We won’t survive the night if we don’t.”

  She had removed her tinted goggles and her eyes met Mercer’s as the group began to pair off. The invitation was there but she had a duty to her patient. “Magnus, you’re with me.”

  The pilot was ashen from the ordeal but managed a cocky grin. “I knew breaking my arm would have a benefit.”

  Anika spoke to Hilda, and the chef began expanding her burrow so it would have room for the three of them together. She then whispered to Mercer, “I’ll make sure she doesn’t sneak over to you while you’re asleep.”

  Even with the added snow insulation, the night was miserably cold. If not for their deep exhaustion, none of them would have slept. Sometime after midnight, the wind reversed directions and quickly stripped the snow cover from their dens. They scrambled to dig new ones on the other side of the low ridge. This time they hollowed out one large chamber and slept in a tight, uncomfortable ball.

  At daybreak, it took several minutes to tunnel back to the surface through the two additional feet of snow that had accumulated above them. They continued onward after a meager breakfast of protein bars and snow melted on their single stove. The wind was driving at their backs. Behind them, their footprints vanished like a jetliner’s dissipating contrail, scoured away by the relentless gusts. Hour after hour they marched north, mindlessly following the person in front of them. It was a demonstration of faith in Anika as their navigator and in Mercer as their leader.

  That was why he pushed himself the hardest, taking point when the snow became deeper or the trail more difficult. The responsibility was a weight the others didn’t carry, and for him it was far heavier than the overloaded pack on his shoulders.

  At eleven they came across the first really tough terrain. The ice was broken with pressure ridges that had to be climbed and long crevasses measuring at least fifteen feet deep. While some could be jumped, others had to be crossed by descending into the glacier and climbing up the other side, with ropes slung to assist Magnus. Most polar expeditions carried lightweight ladders to cross such formations but Mercer and the others didn’t have the luxury. Their pace was cut in half.

  Yet no one complained openly. Their frustration and pain were evident in every movement, but no one said they’d had enough. These five men and two women, strangers until a few days ago, were willing to suffer indescribable agony and deprivation for one another because the others were willing to do it for them.

  Surrounded by ice and bitter cold, few of them expected the raging thirst they felt. Not only were they sweating from the exertion, dangerous in itself, but every breath expended precious fluids because the air was desert dry, devoid of all but a trace of humidity. They kept canteens close to their bodies to prevent them from freezing, and still they had to stop every couple of hours to boil snow to replenish them. When they found shelter that evening, an hour later than the first night on the ice, Mercer estimated they hadn’t yet covered the second third of their trip.

  Erwin Puhl seemed to be suffering the most from the exposure. The wind had found a chink in his face mask so the tops of his cheeks were showing frostbite. When Anika had him remove his boots, several toes were an unnatural pale white.

  “Don’t play hero,” she said angrily as she began to work on him. “If your feet freeze, call a halt to warm them again. If you get severely frostbitten, we won’t be able to carry you.”

  “But our pace is too slow as it is,” Erwin countered through gritted teeth as pain splintered his warming toes. “I won’t be the one to let the others down.”

  “You will if we have to leave you,” Anika snapped as she rubbed the blood into his feet.

  High above, the clouds that had hidden the sky for two days finally cleared. The night exploded in a dazzling display of northern lights, dancing curtains in an otherworldly light show. On the scientific level, Mercer knew the ribbons of color were
a result of the solar wind striking certain molecules in the atmosphere — red for nitrogen, violet for ionized nitrogen, and green for oxygen — but it was the aesthetics of the borealis that made him gape with the others. The aurora was visceral, pulsing and seemingly alive.

  They watched the show for five minutes before Mercer realized the wind had died.

  The pitaraq is a gravity-driven wind. It starts from south and then there is calm. You have about ten minutes to find shelter. It was Igor Bulgarin’s voice Mercer heard in his head.

  “Everybody, find cover! Now!” Mercer was in motion even as he spoke.

  Like the previous night when the wind had shifted, their hideouts would be on the wrong side of a ridge when the pitaraq struck. Mercer dumped the food he was cooking, cinched his pack, and lunged over the rocky crest. He tumbled down the other side until he landed in deep snow. Quickly he began to dig, scooping out armfuls of snow in a frantic race. A few seconds later, the others joined him. Mercer didn’t bother to explain his actions. His frenzied digging was enough to galvanize them. They tunneled into the snow, burrowing toward the protection of the rocks. Mercer had no way to judge how deep they needed to be. Even when he heard a gentle whisper of wind whistling across the entrance to his tunnel he continued mining snow, trying to pack it behind him as he dug downward.

  He flipped on a flashlight, and glittering snow crystals reflected the light like jewels. For an illusionary moment he felt safely cocooned in the snow’s embrace. His breathing was ragged and his hands felt stiff and frozen. He’d dug his tunnel without his gloves. He donned them, massaging his fingers to get the blood flowing again.

  “Can anyone hear me?” His voice was deadened by the weight of snow.

  “Yes,” Anika replied. She sounded like she was many yards away but was doubtlessly much closer.

  “Can you reach me?”

  “Yes, I see your light through the snow.”

  That was the last voice Mercer heard for the rest of the night, even when Anika bored her way to him and Ira and Erwin found them a short time later. A few feet over their heads, the millions of tons of air that had been blowing northward to form a massive high-pressure area came back in a screaming fury. The transition from a dead calm to a hurricane-force gale was measured in seconds. Snow and ice that had accumulated for years was whipped away, exposing rock that hadn’t seen the surface in decades, if ever.

  The noise was a banshee cry that scraped along nerves like an electric current. Even though they were screened by layers of snow, it was still impossible to speak into the shrieking onslaught. Anika burrowed into Mercer’s arms, her body pressed to him as if he could somehow protect her if the wind found them. Ira was mashed to Mercer’s other side and by the other man’s movements Mercer could tell he was clutching one of the others. Marty was on the far side of Anika, lost in Hilda’s panicked embrace.

  No power on earth could sustain the amount of energy the wind carried for very long, and after five minutes Mercer was certain the storm had expended itself. The sound seemed to be fading.

  He could just barely hear Anika crying.

  Then the true wind hit them. The first gust had merely been the prelude to the actual pitaraq. Driven by its own weight, the collapsing high-pressure front acted like water, pouring across the ice, ripping away everything in its path at a speed approaching a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Torn and tortured, the glacier’s surface came alive with raking barrages of snow and ice and rock. They could feel the ground shudder as large chunks of ice slammed into the wall of rock protecting them. Ice cracked like exploding artillery shells. Mercer pressed his gloves to his head, trying to save his hearing from the sound of ten thousand steam whistles erupting at once.

  It went on without letup for an hour. Then two. Then three. Screaming just above them with a rapacious hunger unlike anything they had ever heard. Nestled below the surface, Mercer knew that if the wind found them he’d never know it. They’d be pulled from their burrow and tossed miles before the act could register. It would be a quick way to die, and by the fifth hour he was wondering if death would have been preferable to the relentless fear of surviving the storm.

  Slowly, slowly it began to register that he could hear Anika again. She was mumbling, a prayer perhaps, but what mattered was that her voice could be heard above the storm’s screech. Mercer sagged in relief. He pulled her face from where it was buried under his arm. Her eyes were enormous, and yet he could see determination in them.

  “The wind’s dying.”

  She nodded in understanding, barely able to hear his voice. Her grip relaxed to a hug that in any other circumstance Mercer would have enjoyed. He reached across her and felt for Marty’s hand, giving him a reassuring squeeze before turning so he could speak to Ira.

  “Think we can chance digging ourselves out?” the submariner asked before Mercer could pose the same question. “Erwin’s on the other side of me, and it turns out he’s claustrophobic. I don’t want to be here when he regains consciousness.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He held on until about an hour ago and then he freaked out. I had to put a choke hold on him.”

  Mercer was impressed by the unorthodox cure. “You learn that trick in the Navy?”

  In the glare of the flashlight, Ira flashed a wry smile. “Actually I did. The current captain of the attack sub Tallahassee owes his career to me for getting him over his fear of cramped spaces.”

  As the pitaraq subsided, Mercer and Ira began to claw at the surface of their den, compressing the fallen snow to the side or beneath themselves as they expanded the burrow. In ten minutes they could kneel upright, and in twenty they could stand, using the hollows where they’d waited out the storm for the waste snow.

  “I feel like a goddamn mole,” Ira said.

  “You go a few more days without a shower, you’ll smell like one too.” Mercer felt they were almost to the surface. “Any idea about Magnus?”

  “I lost track shortly after the storm hit.”

  “While I’m digging, see if you can find him.”

  “You got it.”

  By Mercer’s watch, it was a quarter of three in the morning when the tunnel face collapsed on him. He thrashed against the snow and suddenly found himself free. He stood, quickly shaking snow off himself like a dog after a water retrieve, not realizing how warm the tunnel had become until he tasted the crisp Arctic air once again. In the dim light of a hidden moon he looked around. It appeared as if nothing had changed but the drift that had entombed them was substantially deeper and longer than it had been. Other than that, the snow ripped from the ice had been replaced by identical snow from farther up the coast. Even in the face of such an awesome force as the pitaraq, Greenland remained virtually unchanged.

  Erwin was the next to emerge, clawing his way out like a monster in a 1950s B movie, and then came the others. Marty was the last to crawl out of the hole. While Mercer dug, they had spent the past hour in a vain search for Magnus. Mercer feared the worst.

  A hundred yards south was another outcropping of rock similar to the one that had protected them. Its windward side was cleaned of all traces of snow. Mercer fished a pair of binoculars from his pack, but there wasn’t enough light to discern details on the ridge’s shadowed face. He told Ira to reorganize the remaining gear and started out, swimming through the snow as much as walking. Twenty yards from the crest he saw what remained of the pilot.

  The pitaraq had plucked Magnus from his tunnel like a raptor snatched its prey and slammed him into the rock. The wind had acted like a sandblaster, stripping him nearly naked and ripping away much of his skin so that frozen blood pooled around the crumpled body. From a distance, Mercer could see that the pilot’s skull had been flattened by the collision.

  Returning to the tunnel entrance, where the others had gathered, Mercer told them that the pilot had been killed by the storm. They slept for the remainder of the night in the tunnel, and this time Mercer didn’t make any excuses fo
r Anika not to rest in his arms. It felt too right not to let it happen. He drifted off with the memory of her lips on his cheek and her whispered “You saved six of us. Don’t think about the one you didn’t.” She knew he would take Magnus’s death personally.

  They emerged from their underground shelter when the sky was still a shimmering canopy of stars. By the looks on their faces, many of them had already come to grips with Magnus’s loss. Rather than dwell on their failure, they took strength from knowing the icy island had thrown the worst it had at them and they had survived. They had another twelve miles to cover.

  Just before they started out again, Marty took Mercer aside, his face a mask of shame. “I lost the satellite phone,” he mumbled. “I was testing to see if I could get a signal when the wind hit us. I managed to keep my backpack, but the phone… I’m sorry.”

  Mercer remained silent. There was nothing he could do or say to change what had happened. They had just lost their only means of communication, and the odyssey facing them had become doubly difficult. It was no longer enough to evade Rath until he abandoned his search for the Pandora cavern. Now they would have to trek back to civilization again.

  Once Anika had navigated them back to their original course, the pain-racked journey continued. Without cloud cover, the temperature dropped dramatically, and every breath was like inhaling acid. It froze tender lung tissue and caused nosebleeds if air was drawn through unprotected nostrils. Mercer had to continuously rotate his scarf when the fleece became clogged with frozen mucus and condensation.

  “Where’s that global warming we were promised?” Ira grumbled at lunch.

  The terrain eased some, quickening their pace, but it took its toll. Legs that seemed fresh following a break began aching after only a few steps and they constantly had to adjust their clothing as frigid air found tiny entrances, piercing right to the flesh before they could recover themselves. Urinating was done only when absolutely necessary. The women suffered the most during the act but the men made a bigger deal out of it. Ira had the best line when he described the process as making a “dickcicle.”