Blood and Ice

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

December 8. 10:00 a.m.

“NOT POSSIBLE, not possible, not possible,” Murphy was saying as he strode down the corridor and into his cluttered office in the administration module. Michael was close behind, with Darryl lending support.

“It's not only possible,” Michael insisted yet again, “I saw it, with my own eyes. Right in front of me!”

Murphy turned around and said, in a tone meant to convey sympathetic concern, “Look, this was your first time diving in polar waters, right?”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“It can be an overwhelming experience, and that goes for a lot of people, not just you. The water temperature, the ice cap above, the unfamiliar critters-you said yourself you had a close encounter with a Weddell seal.”

“Are you suggesting I mistook a seal for a woman frozen in the ice?”

Murphy paused, to let things cool down.

“No.” Then, “Maybe. You probably weren't keeping track of your time, or your oxygen levels. I'm sure you've heard of rapture of the deep-maybe you had a touch of it down there. I had a guy who swore he saw a submarine, and it turned out to be a nice big pressure ridge. You were just lucky you came to your senses and got out while you could. And as for you,” he said, speaking to Darryl, “you should have been keeping better tabs on him. You were dive buddies-that means keeping an eye on each other and staying close.”

“Point taken,” Darryl said, looking sheepish. “But the fact remains, he brought up the wine bottle. It's in my lab now, thawing. You can't deny that the bottle exists.”

“It's a big leap,” Murphy said, falling into his high-backed swivel chair, “from a frozen wine bottle to a woman-wrapped in chains yet-stuck inside a glacier.”

Michael hated to add this, but he felt that he had to. “And she might not be alone.”

“What?” Murphy exploded.

“There might be someone else frozen with her.”

Even Darryl, who hadn't heard that part, hesitated.

“Is that all of them then?” Murphy replied. “Or maybe they were all getting off a bus, and the bus is frozen inside the glacier, too.”

There was a temporary standoff while Murphy unrolled an antacid and popped it into his mouth.

“You got pictures of the seal?”

“Yes,” Michael said, knowing where he was going.

“And the sea spider? And the scale worms? And the trunk the bottle came from?”

“Yes.”

“So why no pictures of the ice princess?”

“I was too scared.” The words were like ashes in his mouth, and even as he'd been hauled up into the dive hut, he had wondered how-at the most crucial moment in his career-he could have failed to get a photo. The shock, coupled with the urgent necessity to surface, had just been too great. And though he knew it was a pretty good excuse, he still felt an unrelenting disappointment in himself-a disappointment that could only be cured by going back down again.

“Why don't we just settle this the easiest way possible?” Michael said. “Let me go back to the scene of the crime.”

“It's not that easy.”

“Why not?” Michael asked, as Darryl chimed in with, “I'll go, too.”

Murphy looked from one of them to the other. “You may think that we're off in the middle of nowhere, with nobody looking over our shoulders, but you're wrong. Every single thing we do here, I have to write up and report to the NSF, or the U.S. Navy, or the Coast Guard, or, believe it or not, NASA. See that?” he said, pointing to an unwieldy tower of papers and forms stacked in wire bins on his desk. “That's just one week's worth of crap I've got to fill out and file. And every dollar of what we do has to be accounted for. You know what it cost to send that auger out onto the ice, and prep the dive hut, and prime all the gear?”

“I'm sure it's plenty,” Michael said, “but that's why we need to do this quickly. Everything's still in place. I can go down tomorrow-and with a little help from Calloway and the right equipment, we can even get the body out of the glacier somehow. Jesus,” Michael said in exasperation, “this could be a monumental find.”

“Don't you mean a monumental story for your magazine?” Murphy retorted.

There was nothing more to say for the moment. Murphy chewed on his antacid, and Michael and Darryl exchanged a long frustrated look.

Murphy blew out a weary breath. “Where's Calloway?”

“I saw him in the rec hall,” Darryl said.

“Tell him to get over here,” Murphy said, busying himself with some papers on the desk blotter. “Now.”

Michael knew enough not to say another word. And so did Darryl.

The wine bottle rested in a small tank of tepid seawater, on the counter in Darryl's marine lab. With its icy coating gone, the label was revealed, but the ink had been so smudged that it was nothing but a blur. Darryl peered into the tank, as if watching a live specimen that might surprise him at any moment, and Michael paced up and down, wondering what else he might need to do to persuade Murphy.

“Give it a rest,” Darryl advised him. “He's a bureaucrat, but he's not stupid. He'll come around if he hasn't already.”

“And what if he doesn't?”

“He will, trust me.” Darryl sat back on the stool and looked at Michael. “I'll tell him I need to go down again to collect more samples-he can't refuse a beaker-and at that point, what's the difference if he lets you go down, too?”

Michael considered it, but he was afraid it wasn't fast enough. “What if she's gone?”

“Gone?” Darryl said, incredulously.

“I mean, what if I can't find her again?”

“A glacier that size isn't going anywhere soon,” Darryl replied, “and I know exactly where you were. I can orient it from the dive and safety holes.”

Down deep, Michael felt the same way. Something told him he'd be able to find the girl again, no matter what.

He came back to the table and studied the bottle in the tank. “When do you think we can take it out?”

“What? You need a drink?”

Michael laughed. “I'm not that thirsty. What do you think it is?”

“I think it's wine.”

“But is it sherry or is it port? From France, or Italy, or Spain? And what century-the nineteen hundreds? The eighteen hundreds?”

Darryl had to ponder that. “Maybe if we can bring up the chest you saw, that will help date it.” He paused. “The girl might help, too.”

Despite their friendship-or maybe because of it-Michael had to ask the question. “You do believe me, don't you? That I saw her, in the ice?”

Darryl nodded. “I'm the guy who studies sponges a thousand years old, and fish that don't freeze in freezing water, and parasites that purposely drive their hosts crazy. If I'm not your guy, who is?”

Michael took what comfort he could from Darryl's show of support- and Charlotte, too, had assured him that she would vouch for his mental health-but the night, nevertheless, was a long one. He ate a big meal of chicken, black beans, and rice-it was as if he could never get his inner furnace hot enough to banish the chill of the polar sea from his bones-and tried to distract himself in the rec room. Franklin was banging away at a Captain and Tennille song, until Betty and Tina tired of their nightly Ping-Pong game and decided to watch a DVD of Love Actually on the big-screen TV A couple of the other base staff, playing gin rummy in the corner, groaned when the movie came on.

Michael ducked outside to the core bin to check up on little Ollie. The light in the sky was faint, obscured by a thickening scrim of clouds, and the wind was blowing especially hard. He had to kick some snow away from the crate and, as always, he had to look hard to find Ollie tucked away in the back. He knew Charlotte was right-that if he took the bird inside, it would never adapt to its natural life again-but it wasn't easy to leave him out there. The temperature was already at fifteen below zero. He took his paper napkin from his pocket and shook out the shreds of chicken and a big ball of rice that he'd smuggled out of the commons. He pushed them into the crate, on top of the wood shavings, said, “See you in the morning,” to the little gray head staring out at him, and went back to his room.

Darryl was already asleep, the bed curtains drawn around his lower berth. Michael got ready for bed, taking a Lunesta first; he had enough trouble sleeping under normal circumstances, and the present situation was anything but. He did not want to turn into one of those guys who staggered around the base like a zombie, suffering from the Big Eye. He turned out the light and climbed up into his bunk in a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. He checked his fluorescent watch-it was ten o'clock sharp-when he pulled the bed curtains closed and tried to relax enough to let the sleeping pill do its job.

But it wasn't easy. As he lay there in the dark, the bed curtains enclosing him like a coffin, he could only think of the dive… and the girl in the ice. Her face haunted him. He rolled over and punched the foam pillows a couple of times, hoping to get more comfortable. He could hear Darryl gently snoring down below. He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on his own breath, on letting the tension flow out of his muscles. He tried to think of something else, something happier, and his thoughts of course turned to Kristin… to Kristin before the accident. He remembered the time they'd entered a couples-only chili-eating contest, and won first prize… and the time a cop had caught them going at it in a parked car and threatened to give them a ticket… or the time they'd flipped their kayak three times in as many minutes in the Willamette River. Sometimes it seemed like they'd always been taking on challenges, or getting into scrapes, together. They'd been friends as well as lovers, and that was why losing her had opened such an achingly huge hole in his heart.

The events that led to the catastrophe, in retrospect, were so small, so incremental. He kept thinking that if only one little thing had changed, one little thing had been done differently, the outcome would have been completely altered. If they hadn't assumed that the climb on Mount Washington would be such a cakewalk, they would have planned their expedition better. If they'd set out on schedule instead of arriving at the trailhead later than expected, they wouldn't have been in such a hurry to get cracking. If they'd taken the time to study the route diagrams, they wouldn't have wound up on such a treacherous part of the cliff face just as dusk was beginning to fall. And if he had only held her back, just a little, none of it would have happened.

But reining her in was something he hated to do… and something that Kristin would never tolerate even when he tried.

They were dressed for Alpine climbing, in light clothes, and carrying a minimal amount of gear-enough for one overnight on the mountain. And Kristin thought she'd spotted the perfect perch on which they could spend the night-a flat ledge that jutted out like a card table another fifty yards or so above their heads. Michael volunteered to go first, with Kristin belaying him from below, but she said it would be safer to have him do the belaying. “I'm not sure I'm up to stopping you in the middle of a free fall,” she'd said.

But Michael had known that wasn't really it. Kristin always wanted to be the one who forged ahead first, who planted the flag that others would then aspire to reach.

They'd roped up, and Michael had driven a couple of nuts and cams into a jagged seam in the rock that zigzagged its way all the way up to the ledge. The climbing guidebook showed this very seam, though to Michael's eye the real thing looked a lot less direct than it did in the diagram. And the rock, to his consternation, seemed more friable. As he'd hammered in the hardware, flakes and grain of the stone had come away too quickly and easily. He'd mentioned it to Kristin, who was already moving, like a spider, up the cliff, but she'd sort of brushed it off, and he hadn't made a federal case of it. One more thing that he wished he could do over.

It was getting late in the day, but the view was perhaps more extraordinary than ever. For much of the early climb, they'd just been hiking through a pine forest, then scrambling over mild slopes of consolidated pumice. But the climber's trail had disappeared under the snowpack, and for the past couple of hours they'd been working the rock itself, searching for toeholds, finger grips, fissures sufficient to hang on to for a few seconds and catch a needed breath. Even though the temperature was still mild, the air was thinner, and the afternoon sun was sending its long beams over the crests of neighboring Mount Jefferson and Three-Fingered Jack. Far, far below lay Big Lake, and the parking lot where they'd left his Jeep.

A spray of loose stone rattled down the cliffside and Michael looked up, shading his eyes with one hand. He could see Kristin's legs, in stretch fleece shorts, scraping at the wall, then one of her feet catching hold on a tiny protuberance. Of just such little bits of luck were successful ascents made.

“You okay?” he shouted.

“Yep.” Then he heard her hammer driving home a nut.

He adjusted the 10.5 mm rope around his shoulder, and bit into a high-protein bar. He could hear his mother's voice telling him he'd spoil his appetite for dinner.

“There's a seam here, and somebody's already left a hex in it!” she called down. There was nothing like coming upon free hardware.

“You think it's secure?”

He could see her tug at it. “Yeah, it is-must be why they left it.”

And again, a distant alarm bell had gone off in his head; he made it a point never to trust anyone else's work-especially when it was someone he'd never even met. But he did not insist that Kristin replace it. He was anxious, too, to reach that ledge and start setting up for the night; it promised to be a very romantic sunset.

She'd placed another of her own nuts into the crooked seam, and started inching up again. He made sure she had just enough slack, and he could see her groping for a handhold, when suddenly something went awry.

“Damn!” he heard her mutter, and a second later even more of the rock came scuttling down the cliff and pattered on the top of his helmet. Dust blew into his eyes, and before he could do anything to clear his vision, the rope went loose-terribly loose-and he heard a pinging sound-nuts and pitons and hexes popping out of the rock-and Kristin screaming as she hurtled past. Instinctively, he had braced himself, clutching the rope, but the rapidity of her fall was too much-the anchor-pieces he'd hammered in held for no more than an instant before jerking free, the rope around his shoulder had fastened like a tourniquet, and he'd been whipped around, half-blind, just in time to see Kristin swinging headfirst, like a wrecking ball, into the cliff below. Her scream had stopped dead, and even as he felt his shoulder pop out of the socket in a blazing shot of pain, he'd managed, though he still could not imagine how, to arrest his own fall. He'd been dragged to the very edge of the narrow strip he'd been standing on, and lying flat, hanging on to the lifeline, all he could hear was the creaking of the rope and the grinding of the rock that was fraying it.

How long he stayed that way, he could never tell. And he had only the vaguest recollection of looping the rope around a block of stone, then running it through a fresh piton, hammered home with his one good hand. He called down to her, but there was no reply. He dug into his gear, found the emergency whistle, and blew on it as loudly as he could, but the sound simply echoed off the surrounding cliffs.

Before he could even think about hauling her up, he had to attend to his left shoulder, and with no one there to help, he would have to try to knock it back into place on his own. With the rope secured, he considered his options, and the only one looked like a flat wall of stone behind him. He lined himself up parallel to it, then- after taking a deep breath-bashed himself up against it. The arm exploded in pain, but it did not fall back into the socket. He dropped to his knees and vomited the remains of the high-protein bar he'd eaten. When he could stand up again, he wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand, then took another look at the side of the cliff. There was a section where the wall swelled, like a pregnant belly, and he thought that it might be possible, if he could stand the pain, to use that swell to massage the shoulder back. He approached it gingerly, trying to gauge the best way to use it, but he also knew that he had to move fast. Kristin was still swinging at the end of a rope, above a thousand-foot fall to the pine trees below.

He braced himself against the rock, laid his shoulder on it, and pressed hard-then harder; he could hear the popping and grinding of the joint, as the parts sought to regain their proper places, and though the pain was excruciating, he kept thinking only of Kristin, and pressed up, then down, then sideways. With each motion, he felt the parts realigning, until, like the pieces of a puzzle all of a sudden falling into place, he heard the shoulder click back to where it belonged. He gasped several times, and waited, terrified, to see if it would hold… but it did. His entire body was drenched in sweat.

He took a swig of water from the bottle in his backpack, then began the laborious process, a few inches at a time, of hauling Kristin up to the ledge. He had tried calling to her again and again, but ominously there had been no answer. He prayed that she had only been knocked unconscious and would come to her senses soon. But when her head appeared above the rim, and he saw that even the yellow safety helmet had been pulverized as if by a giant mallet, he knew that things were bad. Very bad indeed.

Once he had her body all the way up, he unfastened her harness and removed her backpack, which had ripped open in the fall; everything, including their cell phone, had spilled somewhere far below. He checked her heartbeat and her breathing, then unfurled his sleeping bag and laid it over her. He felt his own body going into a kind of delayed shock, and he stopped to take four Tylenol from their first-aid kit, then tried to eat another protein bar to keep his energy levels up. But his mouth was so dry he could barely chew, and he wound up just breaking it into pieces and washing them down with sips of water. He debated trying to give Kristin some water, but he was afraid of making her choke. Instead, he simply elevated her head on a mound of dirt and gravel he'd gathered, and waited.

The last rays of the sun were tingeing the Western Cascades a pale pink, and Big Lake, far below, was as black as obsidian. He remembered thinking that it was a beautiful sight, and that Kristin should really sit up and enjoy it. She loved sunsets, especially when she was off in the wilds somewhere; she used to say that she slept better under the stars than she did at the four-star hotels where her family sometimes stayed. The stars that night were out in profusion.

But the temperatures were dropping.

Michael made a windbreak out of whatever loose rocks he could assemble, then tucked his nylon jacket carefully around Kristin's head, leaving her shattered helmet in place. Her face was blissfully unmarred, and she looked peaceful. Not in pain. And for that at least he was grateful. Until the first light of dawn, when it would be possible to begin the descent, he would just have to stifle his own fears, hunker down and try to keep her as warm as possible. For what it was worth, he blew on the whistle one more time, and as the sound faded away among the surrounding peaks, he scrunched up next to her under the sleeping bag, and whispered in her ear, “Don't worry-I'll get you home. I promise I'll get you home.”