Eternity Base

Chapter 9

Conner stole her hand down Devlin’s stomach and started to slowly caress him awake. His eyes opened about the same time he was hard and she pushed aside the covers to straddle his body.

“You have to leave before everyone else is awake,” she whispered as she lowered herself onto him.

“Good wake-up call,” Devlin replied, his hips rising in rhythm with her strokes. After a few minutes he swung a leg out and they rolled over, Devlin assuming the upper position. Conner wrapped her legs around his back and was just beginning to build toward orgasm when an insistent rapping at the door distracted her.

“Stop,” she hissed at Devlin, who was himself just reaching a point of no return. Conner put both hands on his chest and pushed. Devlin’s eyes were unfocused with pleasure. “Stop!” Conner insisted. “Someone’s at the door.”

Devlin came to a unsatisfying halt and she rolled out from underneath him. Throwing on a robe, she went over to the door. She waited until Devlin had grabbed his clothes and snuck into the bathroom before cracking open the door.

Her sister, Sammy, stood there with a man behind her. She pushed in without saying a word and the man followed, shutting the door behind him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Conner exclaimed as she tightened the belt on her robe.

The man with Sammy held up a hand and pointed at Devlin’s shoes next to the bed and then at the bathroom. “Is someone in there?”

Conner blinked and tried to sort out her thoughts.

“Is there someone in there?” Sammy repeated the man’s question.

“What business is it of yours?” Conner replied, astonished at what was happening.

Sammy shook her head. “This is no time for games. We need to talk. Now.”

“Devlin, come out,” Conner called.

Devlin came out, his hastily thrown-on shirt still unbuttoned.

“Who are you?” Sammy asked.

“Who’s he?” Conner retorted, pointing at the man with her.

“This is Dave Riley. He’s a friend of Colonel Pike’s.”

Conner frowned. Pike had been an associate of their dad’s. If Riley was involved with Pike, that meant he was involved in some sort of spook work. “Devlin, meet my sister, Sammy. Sammy — Devlin. He’s with Our Earth.” The two shook hands. “Now tell me what you’re doing here.”

Riley shook his head. “We need to keep this as tight as possible.”

Conner rolled her eyes. “I trust Devlin.”

“It doesn’t matter if you trust him,” Riley replied quietly. “It’s Sammy’s life that’s on the line.”

“What do you mean ‘life on the line’?” Conner asked.

Sammy looked at Devlin. “Are you here to help my sister find Eternity Base?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then he can stay.”

“I recommend against it,” Riley urged. “You have to consider the legal aspect of what’s happened.”

Sammy laughed. “I think it’s a little too late for that.”

“Would someone tell me what the hell is going on!” Conner demanded.

Sammy grabbed a chair and sat down. “I suggest you all get comfortable. It will take a while.”

Conner checked the clock next to the bed. “We only have an hour before we have to head out to the airfield for our flight to Antarctica.”

Sammy nodded. “I’ll be done in twenty minutes. You need to hear this before going any farther.”

She launched into a description of what had happened to her from the moment she’d faxed the photos and ended her tale with their arrival in New Zealand only an hour previously.

When her sister finally fell silent, Conner ran a hand through her thick hair. “You have no idea who this man you killed worked for?”

Sammy shook her head. “Most likely the government, which is why Riley and I are here. The only way we can get out of this is to find the base and subsequently figure out who built it and why it is so important that someone is willing to kill to hide its existence.”

“This is hot. Real hot.” Conner’s mind was already running, trying to figure new angles to the story. “Since you escaped, we’re a step ahead of them. That means we’ve got to keep moving.”

“Maybe not,” Riley said.

Conner swung her head around and looked over at Riley, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He’d kept quiet until now. “Why do you say that?”

Riley looked up at her. “Because the man your sister killed said that you were not his problem. That says to me that whoever he worked for knows about you and this news team. So you might not be a step ahead.”

Conner shook her head. “No. We have to be. You say you were kidnapped in the morning. We were in the air by six that evening.”

“We caught up with you,” Riley noted.

Conner met his eyes. “You got my sister here safe and sound. That was what you were paid to do and you did it. This is no longer your concern. I’ll take care of things from here on out.”

Riley’s face was expressionless. “She’s not out of danger until we figure out who was behind the attack on her. In fact, I would say that she’s in more danger now than if she had gone with me to the safe house in North Carolina like the colonel wanted.” He shrugged. “But my staying or going is not up to you. It’s up to Sammy.”

“I’d like you to come with me,” Sammy said, looking at Riley.

It was Devlin who objected now. “We’re going to be tight as it is flying down there. We appreciate your warning, but you two really have nothing to offer our expedition.”

Sammy finally showed some of the temper that Conner had been so familiar with as a child. “These people tried to kill me because I gave you this story! You two are acting like this is some academic problem. This is real shit. I don’t—”

“Hold on!” Conner stepped up to her sister, placing her hands on her shoulders. “Take it easy, Sam. I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve taken us off guard.” She looked at Devlin. “Can we fit them on the plane?”

Devlin looked decidedly unhappy but reluctantly nodded.

“All right. Let’s get our stuff together and we’ll head out to the airport in fifteen minutes.”

“Roger, Aurora Glacier. Passing point of no return and coming in. Out.” Swenson turned in his seat to face the seven passengers and yelled over the whine of the engines. “Weather is satisfactory all the way, so we’re continuing on.”

Conner didn’t know whether to be relieved or not as she squirmed in the copilot’s seat. It was amazing how such a simple thing could push all other thoughts out of her mind. The urge to urinate had crept over her an hour ago and was now overriding all attempts at higher level cognitive thinking.

She twisted her legs for the fortieth time, taking care not to hit the copilot’s peddles on the floor. At least she had more space up here than the six people in the back. They sat among a jumble of equipment with scarcely enough room to move an elbow. Surreptitiously, she unbuckled her seat belt, hoping that would ease the pressure.

“Here,” a quiet voice whispered in her ear. Riley slipped her a camouflage-patterned poncho liner and a large lidded plastic jar. She turned her head, but he’d already slumped back with his eyes closed. The other four men and her sister also all seemed to be sleeping. She glanced over at Swenson, who was quietly whistling to himself, eyes fixed forward.

Conner’s face was beet red as she briefly debated what to do. The laws of physiology made that determination for her. If she didn’t do it, she knew she’d probably wet her pants well before the remaining four hours of flight were up. She draped the poncho liner over her lap.

It was a difficult process with all the layers of clothing, but she felt much better when done. She screwed the lid on the jar and placed it between her feet on the floor of the plane.

Two hours later, Swenson’s voice intruded on the numbing roar of the plane. ‘There’s Antarctica.”

Conner, along with the others, peered out the right side. “That’s Cape Adare,” Devlin announced.

Dark peaks, streaked with snow and ice, poked through the low-lying clouds. To the left, through a few gaps in the clouds, the sea ice stretched as far as the eye could see.

As they continued south, they flew parallel to the coast, and the ocean turned into the Ross Sea. More peaks appeared, and Devlin called out the ranges as they went by: the Admiralty Mountains, the Prince Albert Mountains, and, finally, the Royal Society Range.

Swenson began to drop altitude as a single massive mountain appeared straight ahead above the clouds, set apart from the others to the right. “That’s Mount Erebus,” Devlin pointed out “Aurora Glacier Station and McMurdo are both set on the base of Erebus on the far side. It and Mount Terror make up most of Ross Island. Captain Ross — for whom the island, the sea, and the ice shelf are all named — christened both mountains after the two ships he used to explore the Antarctic.”

“There isn’t a long runway,” Swenson told them as they descended. “We land on the Ross Ice Shelf itself because it’s the flattest thing around. The reception party should have marked out a reasonably good stretch for us. We don’t need much,” he added in way of encouragement.

Conner watched the slopes of Erebus come closer; then they punched into a thick cloud layer and the view was blanketed. She remembered reading in her notes that an Air New Zealand DC-10 had crashed into Mount Erebus in 1979, killing all on board. She started tapping her fingers against the side of the plane as it was buffeted by the wind. Waiting for the clouds to break, she started imagining a wall of snow-covered stone appearing out of the gray ahead.

Suddenly the clouds parted and they were in the clear again. The plane was low now and Swenson banked hard left, over land.

“That’s McMurdo Station,” Devlin yelled. Conner pushed her nose against the glass and looked below. The sprawl of buildings and numerous large storage tanks surprised her; McMurdo was much larger than she had imagined. Somehow she had pictured the primitive settlement in the old science fiction movie The Thing: a few Quonset huts huddled in the snow. She guessed there were at least forty buildings down there.

“All right. Everyone buckle up.” Swenson swung out over the ice, flying very low. They roared over a snow tractor with a large red flag tied to the top. Swenson pulled up and did another flyby. A man on top of the tractor was holding a green flag pointing in a northeasterly direction.

On the third pass, Swenson finally dipped his wings down. With a hiss and then a steady rumble, the skis touched the ice, and a thin mist of snow plumed up on either side. Gradually, they slithered to a halt. Swenson turned the plane around and taxied it back to the tractor. Conner could now see that the tractor had a flatbed trailer hitched to it with several drums piled on top.

The silence as Swenson turned off the engines was as shocking as any loud sound. They’d lived with engine noise for eight and a half hours. As their senses adjusted, the steady whine of wind bouncing off the skin of the plane became noticeable. With the airplane’s heater off, the temperature immediately started dropping inside.

“Everyone bundle up.” Devlin was cinching down his hood. Conner made sure that everything was on before finally pulling the bulky mittens over her hands. She had arranged for the gear with Devlin over the phone and was very grateful he had followed through. What she called winter clothes back in Atlanta would not have done the job here.

Devlin had also come up with an extra set of gear for Sammy. The only one who did not need to be outfitted in New Zealand was Riley. He had pulled his own cold-weather equipment out of his duffel bag. He was wearing a Gore-tex camouflage parka and overpants that Conner was determined wouldn’t appear in any of their shots — much too militaristic. The three men and her sister were dressed the way she was — a bright orange parka and pants over a pile jacket and bib pants that zipped on the sides and the crotch. The polypropylene underwear next to their bodies would wick away any moisture from their skin. Large boots — Devlin had referred to them as Mickey Mouse boots — covered their feet, which were encased in thick wool socks.

Conner had not introduced Sammy as her sister but had identified Sammy and Riley as a security team sent by SNN. Her crew had taken that in stride, since all of them had worked with security personnel on various overseas assignments.

Swenson swung open his door and Conner took a quick gulp as a blast of cold air slammed into her lungs. Swenson scrambled out and Conner followed suit, her feet crunching in the snow. She’d never felt such cold. The air stung her face, the only exposed part of her body. Her skin rebelled, trying to shrink from the pain of the cold and she felt her muscles tighten as if somehow she might be warmer if she could make herself smaller.

The other members of the party piled out and stood looking around. To the north, Mount Erebus was a solid wall reaching up into the cloud cover. To the south, an endless line of ice disappeared into clouds that seemed to touch the horizon. To the west, the Royal Society Range blotted out the space between cloud and ice. The mountains looked amazingly close, as if you could walk there in an hour or two, yet Conner knew they were almost a hundred miles away. If they got nothing else from their trip here, they’d have some spectacular film footage.

The tractor kicked to life, drawing her attention away from the scenery. It roared up, treads clattering, placing the trailer alongside the plane. The driver, looking like a bear in his garments, waved down at them, pumping his fist. He seemed to be in a rush.

“Let’s off-load,” Devlin called out.

As they busied themselves transferring the gear from plane to trailer, Swenson used a sledge-hammer to drive pitons into the ice— one for each wing, one for the tail, and one for the nose. Rope attached to each piton secured the plane to the ice.

Once all the equipment was off the aircraft, Devlin gave Conner a boost up onto the wooden platform that made up the floor of the trailer. She tried to get as comfortable as possible among the bags and cases. The other members of the party climbed on board, and all grabbed on for dear life as the driver threw the tractor into gear and roared off toward the looming form of Mount Erebus.

Devlin leaned over and yelled in Conner’s ear. “Welcome to Antarctica.”