Black Ice (14 page)

The previous searches had revealed nothing, but, this time, he locked onto two crystal pinpricks of light.

He rapped on the window of the mess room where the others were enjoying their mid-morning coffee break.

‘Incoming! Lauren and Sean on the horizon!'

Minutes later Frank's colleagues were with him, hastily donning their protective clothing as they gathered in front of the base.

‘Let me see.' Mel took the binoculars. ‘How long before they're here?'

‘Twenty minutes at a guess,' Frank told her. ‘Switch the floodlights on, will you? Give them a target to head for.'

The inhabitants of Capricorn waited in a state of nervous anticipation as the two specks of brilliance gradually crept towards them. As usual, the business of judging Antarctic distance had proved fickle; the snowmobile headlights had been much further away than Frank had estimated. His guess of twenty minutes proved to be far off the mark, and it was almost an hour before the first of the machines came roaring up, Lauren blinking with the intensity of the base floodlights, beaming with delight to see her comrades.

‘Welcome back and well done!' Frank gave Lauren a big hug as she stiffly dismounted the snowmobile. ‘I can't say how delighted we all are to have you back!'

The second machine pulled in, Sean driving with Fitzgerald riding pillion behind him. The two men dismounted, Sean greeted and hugged by the team members, Fitzgerald warmly welcomed with handshakes and smiles.

‘Welcome to Capricorn!' Frank told the explorer. ‘This place must be a sight for sore eyes, I imagine.'

‘You could say that,' Fitzgerald conceded. ‘I can't say we've had the most comfortable journey.'

Mel turned to the two sledges, on which Richard and Carl had been transported for the last three days.

‘How are the patients?' she asked.

Richard poked his head out of his sleeping bag, blinking in surprise at the intensity of the artificial light which struck his face.

‘Are we here?' he asked groggily. ‘Is this the base?'

‘It certainly is,' Mel told him. ‘You're safe now.'

‘That's good,' he said, simply, ‘that's really good.'

‘They're both heavily sedated,' Lauren told the medic quietly. ‘They've both been in a lot of pain, and lying in those sledges for three days is no joke either. They're going to need quite a bit of care.'

‘What about the other one?' Mel gestured to Carl, who showed no sign of movement.

‘He's worse than the journalist. I haven't managed to get much out of him at all; he's extremely debilitated.'

‘OK. Let's get them into the clinic right away.'

Lauren and Mel began the delicate task of transferring the two injured men onto stretchers and the others hurried to help them. Sean, meanwhile, unhitched the snowmobiles and ran them over to the maintenance shed, where he immediately began to service them. Lauren watched him go with pride; typical of Sean, she mused, to think of the machines before himself.

Personally, she was looking forward to two things now the six-hundred-mile journey was over: a decent warm drink and a shower. From the doorway of the base, enticing aromas wafted, the familiar reassuring smells which were a part of the fabric of the place. Lauren could detect the distinctive tang of freshly ground coffee, the hot, yeasty fog of Murdo's morning baking session. They called her, made her want to be back inside the mess room of Capricorn—to reassure herself again that it was still real, to enjoy the camaraderie of her team, the jokes and good-natured piss-taking which were a part of the character of the place. Instead, like Sean, she got stuck into the tasks at hand.

Carl and Richard were the obvious priority, and they were quickly transported into the clinic where both were rapidly assessed by the doctor.

‘You patched them up pretty good,' Mel told Lauren as she examined the temporary splints and dressings. ‘I'll deal with the journalist first. Why don't you take some rest?'

But Lauren refused to leave, staying to assist Mel through the hour-long operation to X-ray, administer anaesthetic and then set and plaster Richard's two broken legs.

‘He was lucky these weren't compound fractures,' Mel observed. ‘He's escaped serious infection by the looks of it, but I'll still put him on a course of penicillin to be sure.'

The skeletal Carl was next, his frostbitten face and hands bandaged and treated with zinc cream and iodine before he collapsed without a word into a bunk.

‘He's lost a dangerous amount of weight,' Mel observed quietly to Lauren, ‘and he seems in shock. Has he been like that since the rescue?'

‘He hasn't said a word,' Lauren told her. ‘It's like his mind has closed down with the stress and trauma.'

Lauren made sure that both men were given soup and tea, and only then did she make her way to the mess room, where she flopped gratefully into one of the easy chairs. The luxurious sensation of sitting on the soft fabric was heaven after the six days of constant jarring motion on the snowmobiles. The room seemed particularly colourful after so many days of unrelenting ice. The simple patterned rug on the wooden floor—opposing quadrants of yellow and red weave—now looked extraordinarily exotic, whereas before she had hardly noticed it.

Across the room Fitzgerald was helping himself to tea from a flask. Lauren couldn't help noticing that he poured his drink into Mel's personal mug—clearly marked with her name—even though Murdo had put out plastic cups for the new arrivals. Then he crossed to the long table and began to demolish the huge plate of sausages and potatoes Murdo had served him.

‘D'yae wanna eat?' Murdo called over from the galley.

‘Not right now,' Lauren lied. ‘I'll wait until Sean comes in later.'

‘You really should come and join me, my dear,' Fitzgerald called over to her. ‘This is simply delicious.'

‘I'll hang on for Sean.'

‘Coffee?' Frank broke her reverie, standing before her with the percolator steaming in his hand.

‘You bet.'

Lauren sipped the coffee slowly, wincing a little as the hot liquid brushed against her wind-chapped lips.

‘So,' she asked Frank, ‘what's new?'

Frank handed her a sheaf of papers, tightly packed with names and fax numbers.

‘What's this?'

‘Calls from the press while you've been away,' Frank told her. ‘Your little rescue mission has stirred up more media interest than you'd believe. The radio's been red hot all week, and our sponsors have been taking a lot of heat back in London. I tell you, there's nothing quite like a rescue to get the ratpack jumping up and down.'

‘I'll deal with these in the morning.'

Sean came in and flopped down next to Lauren, every bit as tired as she was.

‘Hey, Sean,' Lauren told him warmly, ‘you were really tremendous on the rescue. I wouldn't have wanted to be out there without you.'

Sean smiled back. ‘Oh. Well, I enjoyed it too. Now we're back, I guess we're going to start with the drilling right away?'

‘If you're up to it,' Lauren told him. ‘I'd like to fire up the plant this afternoon. I want to try and claw back the days we've lost, so it might mean some twenty-four-hour sessions if that's all right.'

‘Fine by me,' Sean told her. ‘I'll keep her running all winter if you want.'

‘Thanks…' Lauren handed Sean a coffee. ‘You want some food?'

A stab of memory hit Sean. He still had that packet of emergency biscuits from the plane. He patted his right-hand pocket, feeling the bulge.

‘Hey … I've got some biscuits. I clean forgot about them.'

He pulled out the distinctive military-green packet and sipped his coffee, opening up the biscuits as he did so. He gave one to Lauren, and then began to eat one himself, only then noticing that Fitzgerald had fixed his attention on him with unusual intensity. Sean tried to ignore the stare, but it quickly became irritating.

‘What's up?'

‘Nothing…' Fitzgerald returned to his normal inscrutable smile as he watched Sean toss the green paper of the biscuit wrapper into a nearby wastebasket. ‘Nothing at all.'

30

‘You'd better talk to De Pierman,' Frank reminded Lauren. ‘Our sponsor's getting a little hot under the collar, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh God. I really don't need a lecture from Alexander right now, but I guess he deserves an update.'

Lauren followed Frank through to the radio room where he patched her through to London. By good fortune, De Pierman was in his office. His secretary put Lauren through.

‘Alexander, it's Lauren calling from Capricorn.'

‘Lauren! I've been waiting for you to get in contact.'

‘Sean and I got back this morning. The rescue was a complete success. We brought back the three survivors—namely Julian Fitzgerald, Carl Norland and Richard Leighton, the
Daily Mail
journalist. How's it been your end?'

‘It was fine to begin with—the first few days gave us quite a bit of positive publicity as you set out on the rescue. Then the lack of news set the media looking for a spin on the story … and the spin happened—unfortunately—to be me and my oil operations.'

‘Oh.' Now Lauren could hear the clipped anger in De Pierman's voice.

‘This is rapidly becoming a pain in the neck, Lauren. I've got press men camped—and I mean literally camped—outside my offices here, I've had photographers on motorbikes tailing me through the streets. I don't think I've had a straight hour I could concentrate on my work since this bloody rescue scenario came up. My involvement with your project was on the understanding that I was promoting serious science, not feeding some sort of tabloid frenzy.'

‘Can't you explain to them that you're nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the base?'

De Pierman tutted in frustration. ‘You think I haven't tried that? But that's not the way the media work; my name's on the Capricorn website as the sponsor, and that makes me fair game in their eyes, especially with a profile like mine. When they can't speak to you, they turn to me … and, because I've got no new news for them, they begin to get pissed off. Listen to this little gem from
The Times
at the weekend. It's only a diary piece, but you can't imagine what trouble it's caused me…'

Lauren could just hear the rustle as De Pierman opened a newspaper.

‘It's a piece called “The Slippery Slope”: “Oilman Alexander De Pierman is treading on thin ice with his latest venture, a drilling operation in the very heart of Antarctica. According to the Antarctic Treaty, only genuine scientific bases may be established, but some scientists both here and in the USA have already questioned the objectives of Capricorn commander Lauren Burgess, suggesting that her project has only a slender chance of success. De Pierman is no fool, he knows that Antarctica is the last great reserve of mineral wealth. If Capricorn's scientific objectives prove to be a front, De Pierman could find himself in contravention of the Antarctic Treaty and looking at a fine of up to fifty million dollars.”'

‘God, I'm so sorry, Alexander; the last thing I ever wanted was for your name to be dragged through the dirt.'

‘There's more … there's a feature on the front page of the
Mirror
today: “Scientists pull off daring rescue in Antarctica”. Your name's all over it … and, unfortunately, so is mine. Again. They know you're expected back at Capricorn today so I guess you're about to be deluged.'

Lauren looked down the seemingly endless list of journalists' calls which Frank had fielded in her absence.

‘We already are,' she told him wearily. ‘It would take me a week to respond to the list I'm looking at here.'

‘So, let that explorer—what's his name, Fitzgerald? Get him to sort out the press while you get on with the science. That's what it's all about after all.'

‘My feelings entirely.'

‘When are we likely to get some results? Something to put these rumours to rest.'

Lauren sighed.

‘We can't hurry it, Alexander. If we push the drilling too hard, we run the risk of screwing it up completely. We're scheduled to reach the lake sometime in August, and even that is assuming we don't get any technical glitches.'

‘August? That's months away.' De Pierman sounded despondent. ‘Look. Do the best you can. Give me some good news to play with, a progress report in a few weeks' time, anything positive. I need ammunition to keep the environmental lobby off my back.'

‘We'll do our best.'

‘I'm depending on you, Lauren; don't let me down.'

‘I won't,' Lauren told him earnestly, ‘and thank you for hanging with this, Alexander; it will all be worth it when we break through to the lake.'

The radio line went dead.

Lauren stretched her arms in the air, turning her head to try and ease some of the stiffness in her neck. The pressure. Lauren could feel the tension running through every fibre of her body.

‘Frank?' she asked. ‘Do you sometimes feel like you want the rest of the world to roll over and die?'

Frank contemplated this with a puff on his pipe.

‘I think I got to that point by about the hundredth radio call from the press,' he told her. ‘I was almost tempted to pull the plug, it got so bad. And today's no better; we've had more than twenty calls this morning.'

Right on cue, the radio signalled an incoming transmission.

‘This is Sarah Armitage at Reuters in London. Can you give us an update on the rescue of Julian Fitzgerald?'

‘I can do better than that,' Frank told her as he saw the explorer arrive at the doorway. ‘The man himself has just arrived at the base.'

Sarah sounded like this news was about to give her a telephonic orgasm.