by Bryan Dunn
“Whatever Harry found must be huge,” Lieutenant Cushman said.
“Harry said think of Shaquille O’Neal, only bigger.”
“No shit?” Lieutenant Cushman said, trying to get his mind around a creature that large.
“Harry said it sort of looked like –”
Nowhere Man was cut off by Harry’s voice streaming out of the radio.
“Hey, Nowhere – do you copy?”
Nowhere Man keyed his radio. “Hey, Harry… Yeah, I copy loud and clear.”
“We’re just about ready to get your girlfriend out of the ice here.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny, McNills.”
“I thought you might like that,” Harry said with a laugh. “So, how are you guys coming with the field lab and tank?”
Nowhere Man looked up and saw that the tent had been erected and equipment was already being moved inside.
“We’re on top of it and banging it hard. Everyone’s assholes and elbows around here. We’re almost ready, Harry.”
“Sounds good. As soon as you’re finished, scare up some warm bodies and get over here. We’re going to need all the help we can get loading this big bastard into the sling.”
“Roger that. See you in fifteen, Harry.”
Nowhere Man pocketed the radio, turned to Lt. Cushman and said, “Cush, you finish the tank, get some help and place it in the tent – then fill it three quarters full of fresh water.”
“What in the hell for?” Cush said, shaking his head.
“How the hell should I know? Maybe they figure after few thousand years it needs a bath.”
“Right,” Cush said and began tightening another screw.
Nowhere Man walked over to the tent, joining the Navy engineers.
“Listen up,” Nowhere said, inspecting the tent. “I need a couple of you guys to go with me and help them remove whatever it is they found over there across the iceberg.”
The Navy guys glanced at each other and then in unison raised their hands, all of them volunteering to go. None of them wanted to stay and keep setting up base camp.
Nowhere Man smiled. He knew exactly what was going on. “You, and you,” he said, pointing at the two biggest guys.
One of the unselected engineers sighed loudly and said, “Oh, goodie, more for us to do.”
“Yeah, life’s a bitch,” Nowhere Man said, then motioned to the two volunteers. “C’mon, let’s go see what they found.”
Chapter 30
Meanwhile, back at the excavation site, everything was positioned and ready for the extraction. The hose with the power nozzle was looped up and over the top stage of the scaffolding, and Harry was pulling up some extra hose to take the strain off the line.
Harry had insisted on being the one to carve the creature out of the ice. He argued that since he’d found it, it was only fitting. But it had been impossible to keep Amy off the scaffolding. She would act as Harry’s backup. Not that he had any complaints. He had seen firsthand how capable she was.
Harry continued to haul up lengths of hose hand over hand until he was able to make a few coils at his feet. If he had to move higher up the ice wall, he’d have plenty of line.
Amy stood next to the ice wall taking a few last shots with her digital camera, doing her best to document the creature in situ.
Lockwood paced below, holding an unlit Montecristo cigar, waiting for the right moment – when the creature was safely out of the ice – to light up the celebratory stogie.
Tech Sergeants Sloan and Wilbanks stood at the ready, waiting for Harry’s signal to fire up the deicing equipment.
Harry moved up next to Amy and stared at the creature. “I don’t get it. Why do we have to put this thing in a tank – I mean, why not just carve it out of the ice and throw it into the helicopter and take it home?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“The thing is frozen solid. It’s going to take days to thaw out.”
“In a word – necrobiosis,” Amy said, finishing a shot and looking at Harry. “From the minute we’re born, the main thing we do is decay. It’s like when metal artifacts are recovered from the bottom of the sea after hundreds of years – the very first thing they do is submerge them in water to stop oxidation, to stop them from rusting. Of course, this creature won’t rust – but the moment it begins to warm and thaw in an oxygen rich environment, it will start to decay. And if it’s dead, it’ll rot. The best chance we have of preserving it is to immediately arrest any cell damage and retard the decomposing process.”
“Okay, I got it,” Harry said. Then he added, “You had me at necrobiosis.”
Harry grabbed the hose, placing one hand over the valve handle just above the stainless steel nozzle, then pointed it at the ice. He studied the slick wall, unsure of where to begin his cut. “Okay, how am I going to do this?” he said, thinking out loud to himself.
Amy’s head snapped towards him. “Harry,” she said in an anxious tone, “I thought you said you could handle this?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, raising a hand to allay her fears. “Really. I can do this, no problem.”
“Harry, if you screw this up –”
“Don’t worry,” he said, cutting her off. “I was just thinking out loud. Geez...”
He studied a hairline fracture, a fault line that ran horizontally across the ice wall about a foot above where the creature was lying. Reaching out, he touched the slick, icy surface, then ran a finger along the hairline fracture. He looked at Amy, gave her a reassuring wink, and yelled down to Sergeant Sloan.
“Okay, let her rip.”
Sergeant Sloan pulled the cord on the generator, and as it roared to life, Harry felt the hose swell in his hands.
Using the hairline fracture as a guide, he aimed the nozzle at the ice, pulled open the valve, and a hot stream of water carved into the wall.
He worked the water back and forth, letting it cut deeper and deeper into the ice. Clouds of steam billowed up, filling the air, turning Harry and Amy into ghostly shapes that appeared and then just as quickly disappeared like phantoms in the mist.
After Harry had carved three feet into the ice across the entire length of the creature, he reduced the pressure and moved the jet of water slowly downward. Then he began to winnow the ice away from the creature’s body.
When he had broken through into the chamber, exposing the creature’s back, Amy yelled, “Stop,” and moved forward to cover the exposed portion of the creature with some kind of space blanket material.
The sound of the generator was suddenly drowned out by a dull thumping. And Nowhere Man’s Black Hawk swooped overheard, flared its nose and dropped onto a small, flat patch of ice that had been hewn out of the iceberg to create a makeshift LZ on the otherwise jagged surface.
Harry continued to direct the stream of water back and forth across the chamber, exposing more and more of the creature. As each new section of hair and hide was exposed, Amy was right there tucking the blanket around it.
Nowhere Man and the two Navy engineers ducked beneath the spinning blades and hustled over to meet Lockwood, who was still pacing beneath the scaffolding like an expectant father.
“How’s it going, doctor?” Nowhere Man asked, joining Lockwood at the base of the wall.
“So far, so good. You’re just in time to help us position the sling.”
Sitting on the ice next to the scaffolding was a heavy canvas sling, the kind they use to transport large marine animals.
“We need to get it up on top of the scaffolding,” Lockwood said, pointing to the top stage.
Nowhere Man nodded, then instructed the two Navy engineers to each take a side of the sling. With Sergeant Wilbanks’s help, they began to work it up the outside of the scaffolding.
Harry removed one last little cornice of ice, shut the water off, and yelled down to Sloan to cut the pump. Then he turned and stared at the yawning hole he’d made in the ice wall.
Amy moved up, and she and Harry stared in at
the creature that was now balancing on a narrow pedestal of ice – entirely swaddled in what could’ve passed for a giant sheet of aluminum foil.
“You did it, Harry,” Amy said, giving him a hug. “Pandora’s Box is officially open.”
Behind them, Nowhere Man swung a leg over the top rail of the scaffolding, looked inside the gaping hole at the creature, and said, “Nice job, Harry. You found a giant baked potato.”
Harry turned, looked at Nowhere Man, and said laughing, “I told you you wouldn’t believe it.”
“What’s with the aluminum foil?”
“It’s for thermal protection,” Amy said. “And it’s not aluminum foil.” Then she crawled in next to the creature. “Harry, give me a hand with these straps.”
Harry joined Amy and together they worked two thick nylon straps around the creature’s body, cinching them tight to secure the protective blanket.
“We’re ready for the sling,” Amy said, backing out of the cavity.
“Yes ma’am, coming right up.” Nowhere Man leaned over the rail and, with the help of the men below, dragged the sling up and over the top and onto the scaffolding floor. After Harry cleared the hose, he and Nowhere Man positioned the sling below the edge of the hole.
It ended up taking four men to slide the creature out of the ice wall and secure it in the sling.
After much discussion, they decided to lift the creature directly off the top of the scaffolding with the helicopter, as it was too risky to try to lower it to the ice below.
Nowhere Man shook his head, not liking what he was hearing. He knew just how tricky an evac it would be – but couldn’t see any other way to safely remove the creature.
It would be a delicate operation as the helicopter would have to come very close to the sheer ice wall. One misstep or gust of wind could send the Black Hawk’s rotor into the ice instantly shattering the blades and sending the big machine crashing onto the iceberg.
Back in the Black Hawk’s cockpit, Nowhere Man warmed up the turbines and ran through his preflight checklist.
Behind him, strapped into the crew compartment, were Amy, Lockwood, and the two Navy engineers. To save precious minutes, they would return with the creature and rush it into the safety of the lab, minimizing the time it would be exposed to the elements. Crouched next to the crew compartment door, Sergeant Wilbanks readied the hoist.
That left Harry and Sergeant Sloan on the scaffolding to hook the cable to the sling after the helicopter was in position. It was late afternoon. A little breeze had lifted off the Atlantic and was now sweeping over the iceberg.
Harry looked at the dazzling blue sky and bright yellow sun – but something inside told him the weather was changing. Springtime this far north only meant more weather – and many more storms before an all-too-brief summer break.
Harry gave the sky one last look, then turned to Sergeant Sloan. “Did you guys check the weather this morning?”
“Sure did,” Sloan said. “Nothing in the five-day forecast.”
Harry nodded and they both watched as the Black Hawk lifted off and circled to take position over the scaffolding.
Harry and Sloan gathered up the two sides of the sling and lifted the thick wire cables that the helicopter’s hoist would hook onto.
Harry pulled out a radio, keyed the mic and began to speak. “All set, Nowhere. Be advised, there is a little breeze lifting off the water.
“Roger that, Harry. We’re making our approach now. Let’s do this in one shot.”
Harry flashed a thumbs up and watched as the helicopter slowed to a hover. The hoist cable was already paying out toward the scaffolding.
A few moments later Harry and Sloan were blasted by rotor wash. The cable swept by the edge of the scaffolding just close enough for Sloan to reach out and grab the end of it. Fighting the powerful blasts of air from above, Harry and Sloan looped the hoist cable through the wire handles in the sling, then radioed to Nowhere Man that the connection was made.
Inside the Black Hawk, the crew compartment filled with a high-pitched whine as the winch began to spool up, lifting the creature safely off the scaffolding.
Harry and Sloan let their eyes follow the sling as it dangled beneath the helicopter, making slow turns in the air as it swept across the iceberg toward base camp. When the chopper had disappeared from view, they climbed off the scaffolding and began repositioning the deicing equipment to free the kayak and harpoon from the base of the ice wall.
As Harry positioned the hose he thought, this is going to be child’s play after the nail-biting task of removing the creature. A half-hour later, Sloan crouched next to the freed kayak with the harpoon raised over his head as Harry captured the scene with his camera.
Chapter 31
Night fell over the iceberg. The sky was black and moonless and dusted with stars.
Four small tents circled around a larger tent that housed the field lab. The whole area was illuminated by gas lanterns, shrouding the camp in a ghostly glow. Lit from the inside, the khaki-colored tents looked like giant Mexican luminarios that had impossibly been scattered across the end of an iceberg drifting in the pitch black North Atlantic.
Off to one side, squatting on the ice, the Black Hawk loomed out of the darkness like some menacing beast. The night air was calm, and small waves could be heard lapping against the iceberg as laughter and soft voices filtered out from the tents.
Inside the lab tent, a halogen spot illuminated a giant Plexiglas tank that had been positioned in it’s center. The lab was quiet and dimly lit with no one inside. A thin mist shrouded the tank, and gossamer tendrils of steam rose off the surface and ghosted through the air.
An electric motor clicked on, whirred, and a gurgling noise echoed from inside the tank. The mist began to lift and clear, exposing the tank filled with a greenish fluid with the creature was inside.
The gurgling sound got louder. The rest of the steam cleared and the creature was now plainly visible. It had a massive skull and heavy brow ridge, but the look was not really apelike – it was more primitive, more primal. The eyes were rolled back, revealing two yellow orbs. The mouth was a huge, terrible-looking thing, more fishlike than mammalian and filled with long, serrated teeth – the kind that could slice through hide and sinew and bone.
Thick white hair floated out from the body, revealing a sculpted torso and muscular hands with long fingers that tapered to knife-sharp nails. An I.V. bag hung on a stand, and a tube ran from the bottom into one of the creature’s arms.
There was another click. The gurgling stopped. And the mist puddled across the surface of the tank once more in an eerie shroud.
* * * *
Amy stepped out from one of the tents, quickly zipping the door shut to trap the warmth inside. Holding a lantern, she walked over to the field lab.
Sitting next to the entrance of the lab was the perfectly preserved kayak, and propped next to that, the long togglehead harpoon. Amy paused for a moment, reached down and touched the bow of the kayak, enchanted by the amazing artifact. Running her hand across the smooth animal-skin hull, she smiled to herself, then stepped inside the lab.
She hung the lantern up on one of the tent’s ridgepoles, then immediately went over to the tank to check the temperature readings.
After confirming they were all within the safety zone, Amy checked the I.V. The saline and glucose drip was running out, so she hooked up a new bag. She checked a monitor, made a note in the logbook that sat beneath it on a small bench, then went over to the tank and stared in at the creature, marveling at its size.
What are you? she thought to herself. Where did you come from? How did you stay hidden all these years? Can you really defy all we know about cryogenics? Could one of you really be alive?
Chapter 32
Lockwood sat inside his cozy tent, tapping away on a laptop he had propped on a makeshift desk consisting of two packing crates. Next to the laptop was a cut crystal tumbler filled with an amber-colored liquid, and standing next to
that, a bottle of sixty- year-old Macallan single malt scotch.
He took a gulp of scotch and as he was positioning his fingers to send another stream of type across the LCD screen, he heard someone say, “Knock, knock,” and…
Amy stepped inside.
“Amy…” Lockwood said sounding genuinely pleased to see her.
“I was just over at the lab and thought I’d stop by and give you an update,” she said, looking for a place to sit in the crowded tent.
Lockwood reached over and cleared some gear off the end of his cot and Amy took a seat.
“All the readouts look good. No change in brain activity. Body temperature is rising and should reach our target of 35 degrees Celsius by dawn.”
“Fine, good…” Lockwood said, tapping a key on his laptop. “I just finished the blood work on a sample from that remarkable creature, its ability to move oxygen through its organs is off the chart.”
“Makes Lance Armstrong look like a schlub,” Amy said with a laugh.
“If Lance Armstrong had this creature’s blood, he could win the Tour de France when he was ninety.”
Amy laughed again and said, “Yes, quite a specimen.”
“I wouldn’t want to go up against it in a javelin throw,” Lockwood said, leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head.
“What are the chances of it surviving? What are the chances of it –?”
“Waking from the dead?” Lockwood said, cutting her off. Then, “In my estimation, almost zero.”
“But you saw the mouse. You saw what happened with just a little of that thing’s blood protein.”
“Ah, the mouse… Super cooled for three hours, then revived. Remarkable, yes – but not a creature back from the dead after spending thousands of years entombed in a glacier.”
