by Andy Lucas
‘The months of full darkness, in winter, would give us plenty of time,’ agreed Fiona, ‘but I haven’t given up hope yet. How long do I have?’
Josephine considered her options. ‘Look, if there’s no sign of the gold yet but we have the samples of both Scorpion and Dark Tide then there’s no reason for you to stay at all. Do you have someone who could wrap things up there for us?’
‘Definitely. A good man called Yucel. He can be trusted to tidy up everything and get rid of any evidence that ARC was here.’
‘Good. Then I want you back immediately. You should be able to get back before I have my surgery, which will put my mind at ease, knowing that you’re in charge of things while I’m out of it.’
‘How can I get out?’ she asked. They had planned to be extracted as a single group, utilising a recently purchased seaplane acquired specifically for a different task but accidentally also perfect to retrieve them from the ice.
‘The plane is already on its way to you,’ said Josephine. ‘It will be with you in a few hours. I will arrange for another mid-air refuelling so there will be no need to stop on the flight back here. I had planned to leave it with you for a few days but it’s best that you get on board and fly straight back.’
‘I look forward to feeling warm again.’
‘Then it’s settled. Offer your man whatever bonus you think is appropriate and make your preparations to leave. Once the scene has been cleaned up, I will send the plane back to get the rest of them out. Just make sure you bring the vials with you when you come,’ she added. ‘I have already used most of the agent we found in Uruguay and I need a new supply to complete our plan.’
The call ended and Fiona lost no time pulling Yucel to one side and making him an offer that he could not refuse. He readily agreed to take over the mopping up operation, with no qualms about dispatching the scientists. He’d always known that he and his team would be the ones doing the killing but that’s why the money was so good. Cold blooded murder was on his CV.
19
The grief inside the dormitory was a terrible thing to witness and Pace could only stand back and watch as a stammering, stuttering Marigold told the remaining eight scientists of their colleague’s brutal killing.
All were New Zealanders, of mixed ages, races and disciplines, but they had shared the common hardship of enduring months alone together, isolated from the outside by darkness, frozen seas and impossible flying conditions.
A couple wore white lab coats but most were in jeans and sweatshirts. Tears flowed openly and one of the young men had to be physically prevented from hammering on the door, demanding revenge. After he eventually calmed down, he realised that it would have just given their guards an excuse to kill another one of them.
Pace was already feverishly examining ways they could escape and paid little heed to the tears but did listen when he was properly introduced to everyone. The only names that stuck were two of the older men. One was of a similar age to Pace but carried an extra hundred pounds of pure muscle than he did. His name was Sharpe; an expert on ice deposition and coring who’d passed the months of dark evenings by pumping iron and punching bags in the well-equipped gymnasium.
The other person who stood out for Pace was a physicist, in his early fifties, who sported an Elvis haircut from his seventies era. Long, collar-length dark hair was edged with thick sideburns that came all the way down to his jaw line, although his hair was heavily streaked with grey throughout. His dark green eyes radiated intellect, with just a hint of sadness. He went by the name of Thatcher and was clearly the next in seniority after the doomed Hansol, as shown by the way he quickly seized control and calmed everybody down to the point of rational thought and discussion.
‘Options? What can we do?’ he asked, urging them all to sit down on a number of nearby beds. ‘We have no firearms here and, even if we did, we are civilians who would not stand a hope against these people. However much they are to be despised for what they’re doing to us, they’re clearly experienced soldiers.’
‘And what are they doing?’ asked a lanky, fresh-faced scientist who wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with Greenpeace slogans. He looked about thirty years old and wore his blonde hair in a near-bald crew cut. ‘Why are they here? We have nothing of value.’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Thatcher, turning to Pace. ‘Perhaps our new companion has the answer?’
All eyes turned to him, widening expectantly. He took a moment to balance the inner arguments about exactly how much detail to give them but decided that he needed to be fairly brutal if he was to win their support, and then convince them to try an escape.
‘They are here,’ Pace said, ‘because yours is not the only scientific base on this island, or the nearby ice sheet.’
‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ said one of the young women, running her hand absently through curly locks that hung down in jet black swirls, to rest on her shoulders. Hispanic in ancestry, her features were very fine and delicate, as was her diminutive frame. In fact, Pace thought she would have looked perfectly at home on the front cover of Vogue.
‘I’m not talking about McMurdo,’ he explained himself further. ‘Out there’, he jerked his head towards the large window, ‘on the edge of this island and butting closely to the ice sheet, is an abandoned base that the British used, way back during the First World War.’
‘There is no such base here,’ refuted Thatcher. ‘Scott Base has been here since the fifties and thousands of expeditions, treks and searches have taken place in that time. If it was here, it would have been recorded.’
‘It isn’t too hard to hide something in an area of virtually permanent ice and snow, especially when it’s dark for months at a time.’
‘I have never heard of a British base here, from that period. It’s preposterous,’ Thatcher argued. ‘You must be mistaken.’
Pace felt very sorry for the man but now was not the time for sympathy. That could come later, if they survived.
‘Don’t be so arrogant, Thatcher,’ he snapped. ‘You asked me for the information and I’m giving it to you. Just because you don’t like what you’re hearing, doesn’t mean it is not true, get it?’ He edged the last words with steel that had several of the scientists standing back up from the beds, uncertain and wary. ‘I thought scientists would have more open minds.’
Thatcher regarded him, went to say something, then thought better of it and allowed the moment to pass. ‘Okay. My apologies. Go on.’
‘Thank you. Now, the reason you’ve never found this place is because it was created as part of a secret weapons program that the British were running, where they were experimenting on a number of very dangerous toxins. They clearly did not want to do this at home so they established several covert testing centres around the globe, well out of harm’s way.’
‘What kind of weapons?’
‘Nothing that matters now,’ Pace lied fluidly. ‘What does matter is that they outsourced the whole thing to scientists from overseas, although they ran it with a few of their own people. These scientists needed to be very well paid for their services, and their silence.’
‘Money?’ Thatcher snorted. ‘This is about money?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Pace. ‘The British government sent large sums out to these bases, at regular intervals, as payment for services and in exchange for finished weapons. All of it was top secret and, even today, you’ll find no trace of it in any archive so don’t try to Google it.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why they’re here, and prepared to kill us,’ said the Hispanic woman, who introduced herself as Stacey Mortos.
Pace drew in a deep breath, making sure that he had their full attention by theatrically releasing it in a thoughtful sigh. ‘It seems crazy, I know, but this wasn’t a small operation. The scientists abandoned the base nearly a century ago. I don’t know why, or where they went. I don’t know if they took the money with them but these people believe that it’s still hidden, somewhere in the facility
. They will stop at nothing to obtain it.’
He failed to mention anything about the vials, Scorpion or Dark Tide, whatever the hell that was.
‘Won’t any money from those days be worthless now?’ asked the muscular figure of Sharpe, rubbing a chin full of untidy stubble with one palm.
‘Not the way it was paid. Paper money would have been too difficult to use. It would have had to have been in British currency and the British government wanted nothing that could easily trace their experimental weaponry back to London. So,’ he paused for effect, ‘they paid in gold ingots.’ Another pause. ‘Tons of them.’
Even to Thatcher, the truth of Pace’s words came over clearly. People had been murdering each other for gold since the dawn of time and it was no different today. If there were tons of lost gold hidden out there on the ice, hijacking Scott Base and using it as an operations centre made perfect sense, he hated to admit.
‘Have they found this place yet?’ asked Thatcher.
‘Yes. I was sent here by the McEntire Corporation, with a friend of mine, to try and find it. We had a rough idea of where to look but then I happened to stumble upon it by accident.’
‘Convenient,’ muttered one of the scientists seated on a distant bed.’
Pace ignored him and continued. ‘I was there when they found it and I barely escaped with my life. I spent hours lost in a blizzard before they caught me and brought me here.’
‘What about your friend?’ Stacey queried.
Pace could not keep the hurt look out of his eyes and everyone astute enough saw his pain. ‘I don’t know. We split up and tried different directions. That was a couple of days ago, I think. I’ve lost track a bit.’
‘Why is the McEntire Corporation sending people down here to search for a secret government building? They’re a civilian company, I think even bigger than Virgin now? That fat little CEO is always on the telly, or hot-footing it around the world on business.’ Pace was impressed that even here, Doyle McEntire was well known, although he’d hate to be the one to tell him that he was fat.
‘The McEntire Corporation often helps out the government with projects that involve ecology or conservation,’ explained Pace. ‘Doyle McEntire is a huge believer in supporting the planet, as a way of off-setting his business success. He started by making all Corporation businesses carbon-neutral last year and with funding charitable events like Race Amazon.’
‘That’s where I recognise you from,’ said Stacey suddenly. ‘James Pace, of course, from Race Amazon! That’s you, isn’t it?’ Pace nodded.
‘Race Amazon was a disaster. Many people were killed,’ he explained. ‘But we ran it a second time and all the sponsors made good on their promises. We raised millions of dollars to help protect the rainforest.’
‘That’s true,’ concurred the Greenpeace-shirted scientist. ‘The McEntire Corporation has funded events to preserve coral reefs, ocean species, endangered snow leopards and a few others that escape me at the moment. For a big businessman, Doyle McEntire seems to have a heart.’
‘That still doesn’t answer my question,’ dug Thatcher. ‘This isn’t a charity event. Why did you get sent here?’
Pace knew the question would come and he chose his words carefully, hoping that people would swallow it without asking too many additional questions.
‘At the moment, several nations are arguing about who owns the rights to Antarctica. Oil and gas drilling are imminent.’
‘Don’t we know it,’ said Stacey bitterly. ‘As though they haven’t already screwed up the rest of the world, mankind is now determined to destroy this pristine ecosystem to make a quick buck.’
‘The British government asked the McEntire Corporation to do them a favour. If they’d come down here in any kind of official capacity, it would have rung alarm bells with other nations and the spotlight would have glared on their activities. Believing the government to be trying to steal a jump on them with oil testing, perhaps, security services from a dozen nations would have quickly discovered the truth about the old base and that could have huge political implications back home.’
‘Another Westminster scandal? I can see how that would not go down well in Downing Street,’ nodded Sharpe.
‘Doyle McEntire was already going to send me down here anyway, once the sun came up,’ he smiled, ‘because he wants to become involved in conserving Captain Scott’s famous base hut. It just meant pushing up the timetable a little and sending people down in semi-darkness, with the co-ordinates we’d been given.’
‘How did you get here?’ asked Thatcher, becoming more inclined to believe Pace’s story. ‘Boat? Plane?’
Here, Pace decided to tell them the truth and he proceeded to tell them everything about the boarding and sinking of the Sea Otter and their lifeboat escape.
As his audience listened, hanging on his every word, he told them of the helicopter’s appearance and how their lifeboat was riddled with bullets from the air.
By the time he finished with their self-inflated, survival suit marathon to shore, nobody in the room had any doubt about his courage, or how sad he was at the unknown fate of his good friend, Hammond.
Obviously, he omitted the part about the Sea Otter’s valiant captain managing to fire torpedoes at the attacking ship and sinking it, as well as the entire radio conversation he’d had with Fiona Chambers before their lifeboat had been destroyed. As far as they knew, he was as unfortunate as them and had simply blundered into a desperate situation with his friend.
Then it was their turn, with Thatcher, Shape and Stacey taking it in turns to relate how their normal day had been turned upside down by an emergency landing request for use of their ice strip. It had not yet been prepared to receive aircraft but the pilot had refused to take no for an answer. The aircraft had landed and the base had fallen within fifteen minutes. The scientists had all been locked up together in one of the dormitories, with a promise that they would not be hurt if they behaved themselves.
‘That woman then came and spoke to us all,’ said Stacey. ‘She said they needed the base for a couple of days and that they would leave everything intact, including us, when they left. She refused to say who she was or what her men were doing. She just made it clear that if we caused trouble, we would suffer. So we haven’t done anything,’ she added, almost embarrassed now at their inaction.
‘The question isn’t what we’ve done so far. It’s what we’re going to do now,’ decided Pace. ‘I understand why you didn’t resist and you were right not to. They would have killed you where you stood. Now, though, doing nothing isn’t an option.’
‘Because of Hansol?’
Pace nodded in reply to Stacey. ‘Hansol is dead so now they don’t have the luxury of leaving any of us alive after they leave. Why leave witnesses when they don’t need to?’
‘You think they’re going to kill us?’ wailed Marigold, suddenly tearful again.
‘Without a doubt,’ he answered, meeting Thatcher’s gaze head on. ‘If we don’t save ourselves quickly, we are all going to die.’
Thatcher knew instinctively that Pace was telling the truth. Both of them also knew that any escape attempt was likely to mean taking casualties.
‘I agree with James,’ Thatcher nodded solemnly. ‘We need to get away from here. But where in hell are we going to run to?’
20
Lady Luck decided to give Pace an invaluable boost ten minutes into furtive, whispered discussions about how they could get away. Footsteps outside the door alerted them to a visitor, whereupon the huddle broke up into several smaller conversations with everyone trying their best to look natural. Marigold’s tear-stained, swollen cheeks added an unexpected element to the picture of frightened captives, fearful of their fate after learning of Hansol’s execution.
The door was unlocked from the outside and pushed inwards. Two mercenaries stepped inside, automatic rifles levelled and fingers itching on the triggers. Satisfied there was no threat, they stepped aside and another figure was
jostled roughly into the dormitory. Pace’s heart lit up at the sight of another brightly yellow survival suit.
‘Max! Thank God!’
Yucel gave Hammond a vicious shove in the back, sending him tumbling forwards, where Pace and Thatcher caught him. His knees buckled and it became immediately clear that he was in a bad way. His frost-bitten face was almost unrecognisable, with blackened eyes and two fat lips, courtesy of his captors. Hammond was a dangerous fighter and he had not allowed himself to be taken easily. Without a weapon, he’d managed to knock out two of the team of mercenaries, sent out to the dive shack to collect him after he’d used the telephone and been connected directly through to the Scott Base communications room.
The shack was only three hundred metres from the main complex of buildings, where the shore of the island met the ice sheet. In the storm, Hammond had gotten himself turned around and lost his bearings. What he hoped was McMurdo Station was Scott Base, and the enemy.
Not that Pace knew any of this at the time. All he saw was a badly battered friend and he shot Yucel the nastiest look he could muster. Yucel, who had been one of the five men eventually needed to overcome Hammond, was himself nursing a badly bruised right eye but he still managed a sarcastic, challenging wink back at Pace.
‘I won’t forget this,’ Pace promised. ‘You and I will have words one day and you’re not going to enjoy the conversation.’
‘Is that after you’ve killed Miss Chambers?’ he sneered. ‘For an unlucky sonnovabitch, you make a lot of threats. I’d be careful that we don’t give you the chance to prove how tough you are.’
‘Haven’t you lot got some treasure to find?’ Pace shot back, barely able to contain himself despite the guns pointed in his direction. ‘I’d get on with it if I were you. You and your men might be having it all your own way at the moment but the daylight is getting longer all the time. In a few days, the outside world will be flooding in. If you’re all still here when that happens, my guess is that you might find yourself up against people who can shoot back.’
