Blood and Ice

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

December 26, 3 p.m.

KNEELING IN THE SNOW beside Charlotte, Michael tried to ascertain the damage.

“It's not bad,” Charlotte said, sitting up and wincing. “It's a flesh wound.”

“I'll help you back to the infirmary.”

“I can get there myself,” Charlotte said. “Go get Eleanor!”

But when she tried to stand, her knees buckled, and Michael had to sling an arm around her waist to get her back up the ramp and into the infirmary. As he lowered her into a chair, and followed her instructions to bring the antiseptic, antibiotics, and bandages, he heard the jingling of the harness on the dogsled passing by outside. Glancing out the window, he saw Sinclair in his red-and-gold jacket, standing on the runners. He'd pulled a ski mask over his head and goggles covered his eyes; apparently, he'd learned quickly about how to weather the Antarctic. Eleanor was huddled low in the bright orange cargo shell, her head down and her hood drawn tight, as the sled whooshed past.

“Tell me that was Santa Claus heading home,” Charlotte said, saturating a cotton pad in antiseptic.

“He'll head for the old whaling station,” Michael said. “There's nowhere else he can go, especially with a storm coming on.”

“Get rolling,” Charlotte urged him again. “But get a gun first from Murphy.” She cringed as she applied the pad to her leg. “And take reinforcements.”

Michael gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder, and said, “Anybody ever tell you not to take on a man with a sword?”

“You never worked the night shift in an ER.”

Michael ran back down the hall, but instead of alerting anyone else, he made straight for the garage shed. Gathering a posse could only take time, and a gun could always wind up injuring the wrong party. Besides, he knew he could catch up to them on a snowmobile-the only question was if he could catch up to them before Eleanor was fatally exposed to the ice.

The snowmobile in front was a yellow-and-black Arctic Cat, and he jumped into the saddle, checked the fuel gauge, and revved the engine. The vehicle burst out of the shed, skidding wildly on the slick snow, and Michael was nearly thrown free. He had to slow it down, at least until he'd made it out of the base, but as he came around the corner of the administration module, he nearly ran over Franklin, who jumped out of the way in the nick of time.

“Go to the meat locker!” Michael shouted at him over the roar of the engine. “Check on Lawson!”

Michael hated to think what might have happened there. But if Sinclair was free, it couldn't be good.

Once past the main quad, Michael took a firm grip on the handlebars and gunned the engine. With one hand he had to tighten the hood around his head to keep it from blowing back. Far ahead, he could see the red of Sinclair's uniform and the blazing orange of the sled, as the dogs raced across the snow and ice. Please, he prayed, let Eleanor's skin be covered.

Michael could see that Sinclair had harnessed the dogs in pairs instead of fanning them out on wider leads, and he knew that doing so was particularly dangerous under the current conditions. With the dogs bunched together, the weight of the whole sled could cross onto a fragile snow bridge all at once, and if the bridge gave way, the dogs first, then the sled itself, could be dragged straight down into the bottomless crevasse below.

For that matter, Michael could plummet into one, too. That was why he tried to stay on the same path the sled had already taken. But it wasn't easy. The silvery glare off the terrain was harsh and penetrating, and the scrum of snow and ice thrown up by the front runners of the Arctic Cat kept flying back, sticking to the windshield and coating his goggles.

Even as the distance between them closed, Michael began to wonder what he could do when he did catch up. He racked his brain, wondering what was likely to be in the snowmobile's emergency compartment. A first-aid kit? Some nylon ropes? A GPS? A flashlight?

And then he remembered the last essential item sure to be there-a flare gun!

Sinclair would never know the difference between that and a real gun.

The sled was turning slightly, toward the coastline, and Michael could see Sinclair's head turning, aware now that he was being pursued. Though the sun glinted off his goggles and golden epaulettes, and the scarlet flaps of his jacket whipped out behind him like a fox's tail, the black ski mask made him look less like a soldier than a burglar on the run.

The sled was rounding a coal-black nunatak, and the danger there was even greater, especially as Sinclair wouldn't be aware of it. Crevasses often formed around the base of such rocky outcrop-pings, and increased in number and depth as the glacier field approached the sea. Sinclair was continuing to bear toward the water, no doubt because it made navigating easier. In Antarctica, it was as hard to judge distances as it was direction-there was seldom any landmark to rely on, everything looked the same for hundreds of miles sometimes, and the sun, which on that date was very nearly straight overhead, offered no help either. Your shadow clung as close to your heels as an obedient dog.

Michael was torn between quickly overtaking the sled-and forcing a confrontation on the unstable ice-or waiting until he had reached the solid soil of Stromviken. But that was Sinclair's stomping ground, and who knew what other advantages he might be able to call upon once he got there?

The sled was slowing down a bit, because it had to. Michael could see the chunky blocks of a serac field rising up from the ground, like the tines of a giant fork sticking up from the earth. The dogs were snaking their way through the obstacle course, and Sinclair was bent far forward over the handlebars, urging them on.

Michael wiped the snow and ice from his goggles and lowered his head below the windshield. Wispy white clouds were draped like muslin across the sky, muting the sunlight and dropping the temperature another few degrees; Michael pegged it at about thirty below zero. The snowmobile was rapidly closing in on the sled. He was near enough that he could see Sinclair's sword slapping at his side and Eleanor's head, tightly bound in a hood, poking up from the shell.

Sinclair, hearing the roar of the Arctic Cat, turned again and shouted something Michael could not hear, though he doubted it was an offer of surrender. If there was one thing he knew about Sinclair, it was that the man's will was indomitable.

But then, with no warning, Michael saw the snow beneath the sled begin to crumble. There was a wild, terrified yelping from the pack and, as Michael watched in horror, the snow bridge collapsed, and the lead dogs disappeared. Each of the pairs behind them, barking madly but yoked to the same harness, were dragged into the widening chasm. The sled, too, rocking like a canoe in the rapids, its blades screeching across the ice, was pulled sideways toward the crevasse.

Michael steered to one side of a looming serac and hit the brakes, skidding to a halt. When he leapt off the snowmobile and lifted his goggles, he saw the sled teetering on the edge of the crevasse, with Sinclair pounding his feet on the claw brake, and barely holding on. Michael knew that the fissure could run in any direction there-it could be under his own feet even then-but he had no ski pole to gauge the snow with. All he could do was approach at an oblique angle and hope for the best. He yanked open the snowmobile's storage compartment and grabbed the rope and tackle, but before he could go ten yards, the back end of the sled rose into the air like the stern of a sinking ship, with Sinclair still clinging to the handlebars, and after hesitating there for a second or two, slipped from sight.

“Eleanor!” Michael cried, throwing all caution to the winds, and stumbling across the patchy snow and ice, slipping and sliding most of the way. When he neared the edge of the crevasse, he went down on all fours and crawled to the rim, terrified at what he might find.

The crevasse was a deep blue gash in the ice, but the sled had fallen only ten or twelve feet before becoming wedged between its narrow walls. The dogs dangled below it, like terrible ornaments, the ones that were still alive twisting in their collars and harness, their weight and frantic struggles threatening to dislodge the sled altogether.

“Cut the leads!” Michael shouted. “And the towlines!”

Sinclair looked up uncertainly from his perch on the rear of the sled, then drew his sword and started hacking at the tangled lines that were within his reach.

Eleanor was still huddled in the shell, her face entirely covered by the hood.

First one, then several, of the dogs’ bodies dropped away, caroming back and forth against the icy walls and thumping, with hard wet splashes, onto the unseen floor of the crevasse. A few agonized howls echoed up from the bottom of the blue canyon, but then they too died away.

Michael hurriedly wrapped the rope under his own arms, then tied a loop and lowered it into the chasm.

“Eleanor,” he said, lying on his belly with only his head and shoulders extended over the edge, “I want you to slip this rope over your shoulders and then tie it around you.”

The loop hung down like a noose above her head, but she was able to peer out from under her hood, reach up with gloved hands, and grab it.

“Once you've done that,” Michael said, “I want you to climb out of the sled, as carefully as you can.”

Sinclair hacked at another lead, and another pair of the hanged dogs plummeted into the purple depths. Even so, the prow of the sled, jammed at a slightly lower angle than the back, slipped another foot or two down.

“I've tied it,” Eleanor said, her voice muffled by the hood.

“Good. Now hold on.”

He would have given anything for some kind of anchor-a rock, a snowmobile, something to fasten the rope around-but all he had was his own body. He sat back, dug the heels of his boots into the snowpack, then pulled up, his bad shoulder already complaining.

“Use your feet, if you can, to grip the wall, and push off it.”

She broke free from the shell and her body instantly swung against the ice. He heard her groan, then saw the toes of her black boots grip the surface. He coiled the rope around his arm again, and pulled harder. He could feel the tendon straining, and the thought- not now, don't snap now -endlessly repeated in his head.

She had come up a yard or more, but her feet suddenly slipped away from the ice and dangled in midair.

“Michael!” she cried, hanging above the sled and the chasm that yawned below. Michael dug his heels in deeper, but he could not get enough traction; he was slipping toward the fissure himself, his arms shaking almost uncontrollably. Just as he thought he couldn't hold her up for another second, he saw Sinclair stretch forward over the handlebars, put his hands, still encased in thick gloves, on the bottoms of her boots, and push her up. Although the lieutenant's face was obscured by his black ski mask and goggles, Michael could well imagine his fear and anguish. But Eleanor rose, just enough that Michael could grab the rope encircling her and haul her the rest of the way out of the crevasse.

She crawled onto the snow, gasping for breath, only her green eyes, wide with terror, visible under the tightly drawn hood.

“Stand up!” Michael said. “The ice!” There was snow on her coat, snow on her mittens, snow on her boots. With the back of his hand, he brushed as much of it away as he could, then quickly steadied her on her feet.

“The rope,” Michael said. “I need the rope.”

But it was cinched so tightly around her, he could not get it free. Michael dropped his head back over the rim-the sled had slipped farther down, and was tilted at an even-more-precarious angle- and stretched his good arm out as far as he could. “Stand on top of the sled,” he said, “and try to grab my hand.”

Sinclair could barely move without the sled sliding again, its blades grating on the ice. He swept his goggles and ski mask off, then, after carefully unfastening his sword belt, held it out and let it fall.

“Quickly,” Michael said, “before it drops any more!”

Sinclair gingerly stepped off the back runner, and onto the hard orange shell. With his arms extended like an acrobat's, he inched closer, his boots squeaking on the slick surface of the shell. He reached up and put his gloved hand into Michael's. Their eyes met.

“Hang on!” Michael said, but Sinclair's weight on the front of the sled was too much, and with a sickening crunch it started to give way.

“Don't let go!” Michael begged, though he himself was being drawn over the rim. The breath in his throat was as raw as a blowtorch, and the ice and snow under his arm started to crumble.

A fine white powder drifted down into the crevasse.

“I've got you!” Michael insisted, but as he stared into Sinclair's face, a few flakes of falling ice wafted down onto the young lieutenant's moustache, then his cheeks, and a look of confusion crept across his features. He started to speak, but a pale frost crackled across his lips, draining them of all color. His tongue became a stick of wood. A glassy sheen rippled across his jaws, then raced down his neck so fast and so hard that his body went rigid, and his fingers loosed their grasp.

The sled made a grinding noise and dropped another foot or two.

“Sinclair!” Michael said, but the only thing that still looked alive in him were his eyes, and then they, too, were marbled over by a tide of ice. His body managed to stay upright for only another moment before the sled suddenly broke free and plunged, prow first, toward the bottom of the blue crevasse. There was a terrible screech and clatter, and finally a shattering crash, as if a crystal chandelier were exploding into a thousand tinkling pieces. Echoes welled up from the jagged walls, but the chasm was too deep for Michael to see any sign of Sinclair, or the wreckage.

When the reverberations died, Michael called his name. Several times. But there was no sound other than the whisper of the wind finding its way into the freezing canyon.

He raised his arm, numb and aching, out of the hole, and rolled over onto his back. His lungs felt as if they would burst. Eleanor was standing where he had left her, her back to the wind and her arms wrapped around herself. Her head was down, the hood of her coat drawn tight around her face-nothing of her skin exposed to the elements.

“Is he gone?” she said, her voice barely audible from under the hood.

“Yes,” he said. “He's gone.”

The hood nodded solemnly. “And I must not even cry.”

Michael clambered to his feet.

“My tears,” she said, “might turn to ice.”

He went to her, and put an arm around her waist. She was suddenly so weak he felt she might have fallen to the snow herself. Perhaps willingly. As he gently guided her around the edge of the crevasse-now and forever an unmarked grave-she paused, and under her breath said something he could not make out. He did not ask what it was-it wasn't for him to know-nor did he see what she had pressed to her lips, before she let it fall into the blue chasm. But when it twirled down, glinting gold and ivory, he knew.

With the polar sun hanging lifelessly above them, they picked their way back through the ragged field of frozen seracs.