Outpost (7 page)

The
refinery was equipped with UV lamps and sunbeds to help combat winter
depression. Ghost hung lamps over a bunch of grow-bags. Convection heaters kept
the room subtropical. The plants had grown tall and strong. It looked like a
room full of forest bracken.

'Does
Rawlins know about this place?'

'Frank
is a pragmatist. As long as the refinery runs right, he's happy.'

'So
what exactly is it you do on the rig?' asked Jane.

'Critical
systems technician. Glorified caretaker.'

Ghost
took a tobacco pouch from his pocket. He rolled a joint.

'Do
you smoke?'

'Now
and again,' lied Jane. She didn't want to admit her sheltered life.

He
lit the joint and passed it to Jane.

'Mad
Dog blend.'

She
inhaled. Giddy headrush. She felt her world implode.

Ghost
wriggled on surgical gloves. He stripped leaves and bagged them.

'I'm
going to miss you, girls,' he told the plants.

'You
have names for them?' croaked Jane.

'This
is Beatrice.'

'You're
not really a people person, are you?'

'Humans
piss me off.'

Jane
cleared out the chapel. She boxed the cross, the candles and the communion
wafers. Ghost helped.

'I
hope you don't mind,' said Jane.

'What?'

'The
only religious space on the rig is Christian.'

'I
don't give a shit. I worked at a gas plant in Qatar for ten years. Religious
police everywhere. I had to apply for a licence to drink beer.'

Rawlins
had told her to use one of the rooms in the main accommodation block as a
church.

'Take
out the bed and the TV,' he said. 'Improvise an altar. The men need a special
place to sit and think. Some kind of meditation space.'

'Okay.'

'Make
yourself available. The lads will need to talk.'

'Maybe
I should say a prayer each morning in the canteen.'

'Good
idea. I think everyone would appreciate it.'

Jane
felt useful for the first time in a long while. Part of her was glad the
Japanese tanker hadn't stopped. If they were rescued and taken to the mainland
her new family would disperse and she would be alone again.

The
corridors of the main accommodation block were choked with men and bags like a
coach party checking in to a hotel. Rawlins suggested they draw numbers from a
cup.

Nail
and his gang announced they would take the top floor. They played loud music.
They threw mats in the corner of the canteen and laid out dumbbells. Nobody
argued. Nobody wanted to be near them.

Jane
set up her chapel. She dragged furniture into the corridor. She put a table
beneath a window and laid out two candlesticks and a cross. She played Gregorian
chant. She left it on Repeat.

She
took a room on the ground floor. Ghost lived next door. She could hear him
through the wall. She heard him cough. She heard him move around.

Rawlins's voice on the PA: '
Reverend Blanc. Dr Rye. Meet me
in the observation room right away.'

Jane
took the spiral stairs to the observation bubble. Rawlins was at the
microphone. Sian was at his side.

.
.
eyes are open but we're not getting much sense out of him
.'

'Nothing?'
demanded Rawlins. 'Does he know his name? Does he know what year it is?'

'He
can't speak. He's stopped shivering. His eyes are open
.'

'Can
you get him warm? His arms and legs?'

'We've
wrapped him in everything we've got.'

'All
right. Hold on a moment.'

'What's
the problem?' Dr Rye joined the group. A thin woman in her fifties.

'They
didn't want to camp,' said Rawlins. 'They talked it over and decided to keep
walking. They reckoned they had enough batteries to keep their flashlights
going through the night. They were crossing an inlet by boat. Alan, the guy
with frostbite. He fell through the ice.'

'How's
he doing?'

'Several
shades of fucked. Pretty much comatose. A dead weight. He won't be going
anywhere under his own steam. And his buddies are pretty far gone. I can't get
much information out of them. They're cold, disoriented and ready to give up.
Jane, when you spoke to them before, did they mention where they planned to
cross to the island?'

'Darwin
something. Darwin Sound? Darwin Point?'

'Stay
on the radio. See if you can raise them again. Get a fix on their location.
Landmarks. Anything.' Rawlins turned to Rye. 'Punch has been out on the ice,
right?'

'Yeah.
He's used the bikes. We drove down the coast last summer.'

'Okay.
You, him, Ghost. You're the rescue team. Get your gear. You leave in one hour.'

Jane
and Rawlins stood on the helipad. It was dark. Rawlins fumbled at his radio
with gloved fingers.

'Hit
the lights.'

Floodlights
slung beneath the rig flared bright. They lit struts and girders. They lit pack
ice collecting between the legs of the refinery.

Punch,
Ghost and Rye stood on the east leg docking platform. They pushed floating ice
aside with a boat hook. They winched the inflatable zodiac down into black
waters. Ghost climbed into the boat. They threw him backpacks.

Jane
wanted to tag along, but knew she would be a liability.

Punch
and Rye climbed into the boat. They wore so much padding they moved slow and
clumsy like astronauts. Ghost pull- started the outboard. The zodiac pulled
away from the rig, weaved between plates of drifting ice, and was lost in
darkness.

'I
need to talk.'

Gus
Raglan. A short, stocky man with a barbed tattoo round his neck. He caught up
with Jane in the corridor outside her room. He looked furtive.

'I
need to talk things through.'

Jane
looked for a room to use as a confessional. She picked the utensil cupboard at
the back of the kitchen. A steel room full of pots and pans. It had thick walls
and a strong door. People could speak and not be overheard.

Jane
put a couple of chairs at the back of the cupboard. She sat with Gus. Frying
pans hung overhead.

'So
what's on your mind?'

'My
brother. His wife. She and I . . .'

'How
long?'

'Three,
four years. I asked her to leave him. Asked her a million times. It's
difficult.'

'Does
your brother suspect?'

'I
think he chooses not to know.'

'How
would he react if he found out?'

'He's
a placid guy. But I'd lose him. I'd lose him as a friend.'

'Have
you thought about the future?'

'It's
great when we're together. But each night she's with him, and I'm alone. Shit,
they might both be dead for all I know. I'd like the chance to put things
right.'

'What
do you think, deep down, you should do?'

'I
took this job to get away. I keep thinking: This isn't me. I'm better than
this, you know?'

Ghost
steered the outboard motor. They cut through chop. Punch sat in the prow of the
zodiac. He swept the shoreline with a spotlight. He lit a lunar landscape.
Jagged rocks coated in ice.

'There.'
He pointed. A concrete jetty. Snow-dusted steps.

Ghost
detached the outboard motor and laid it on the jetty. They hauled the boat out
of the water.

'I'll
come back for the motor,' he said.

They
carried the rubber boat up the steps and set it down in front of massive steel
doors set into a rock face. Ghost released a padlock and chain.

'Go
inside,' he told them. 'I'll fetch the outboard.'

Punch
and Rye dragged the zodiac through the doorway into a cavernous silo. Wind
noise dropped to silence. Punch took off his goggles and mask. He shone the
spotlight on the walls. They were in a wide tunnel that receded downward into
bedrock. The walls glistened with moisture. There were rails in the floor. The
wall signs were Russian.

'What
is this place?' asked Punch. 'I thought the island was uninhabited.'

'You've
been ashore, haven't you?'

'Just
ashore. Never here.'

'The
Soviet Navy used to dump old reactors on the seabed. Each time they
decommissioned a nuclear sub they simply cut off the tail section and dropped
it in the Barents Sea. There are about twenty of them down there, all rusted
and barnacled. This was going to be their new home. Salvage teams were going to
bring them up and bury them in salt for a quarter of a million years.'

'That
explains the skull on the door.'

'It's
the same the deeper you go. Skulls on every wall, every door, etched in cadmium
steel. Future generations will get the message. Bad shit. Keep out.'

Rye
pulled a dust sheet from a couple of red Yamaha Viking Pro snowmobiles. She
checked them over.

'Keep
the light on me.'

She
opened a long wooden box on the floor and took out two Ithaca pump-action
shotguns. She racked the slides a couple of times to check the action. There were
wooden shelves propped against the wall. She opened a carton of twelve-gauge
ammunition and slotted shells into the breech. She slid the guns into leather
sleeves strapped to the bikes.

'For
bears,' she explained. 'We keep them here. Rawlins doesn't like weapons on the
rig.'

Ghost
staggered through the bunker doorway carrying the outboard balanced on his
shoulder. Rye helped him lower it to the floor.

Ghost
fuelled the bikes from a jerry can. Gasoline spiked with isopropyl alcohol to
prevent freezing. He checked the oil. He gunned the engines to check they
worked. He took a radio from his backpack.

'Shore
team to Rampart, do you copy, over?'

'Rampart
here.'
Jane's voice.
'Glad you're safe.
'

'We're
at the bunker. Any word from Apex?'

'
The
guy is still transmitting,
off
and on, but he sounds delirious. I can't get a precise location from him.
You'll just have to head for Darwin and see what you can do
.'

'Okay.
We'll get our stuff together and head out at sunrise.'

'There's
another storm-front heading this way. A bad one. We can see it on radar. A
solid wall of ice coming down on us like an express train. I reckon it will
take you seven hours to reach Darwin, three or four to reach the cabin. If you
leave now you might make it before the storm hits'

'
Shit
.'

'It's
down to you guys. Rawlins says you should forget it and come back to the rig,
but the decision is yours
.'

Ghost
turned to his companions.

'Quick
vote. I say go.'

'Go,'
said Punch.

Rye
thought it over.

'No,'
she said. 'They're close to dead. We don't actually know where they are and a
storm is moving in. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's a bad idea.'

They
took Rye's medical kit, half her food and left her behind.

The
snowmobiles had a top speed of a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, but
Ghost throttled down to fifteen while they drove in darkness. Punch followed
his tail-lights. His boots barely reached the footrest.

Franz
Josef Land was a chain of volcanic archipelagos. A series of pumice islands
capped with permafrost. There were jagged boulders beneath the ice ready to rip
the skids from the snowmobiles.

They
should have arranged a signal, thought Punch. If his Yamaha stalled, Ghost
would drive on heedless.

The
sky began to lighten. The cold, blue light of an Arctic dawn. They cut through
drifts sculpted into strange dune shapes by an unrelenting wind.

Ghost
accelerated. Punch revved and kept pace.

Jane
fixed breakfast for the crew. She made porridge. Punch had left a plastic spoon
on the desk of his kitchen office. There was a note taped to the spoon.

Sixteen
level scoops of oats. Five and a half litres of water. No sugar or honey. No
waste, no second helpings, no alternative food
.