Pandora's Curse

GEO-RESEARCH STATION, GREENLAND

Mercer was sitting on his bed, going over the computer maps from their survey, when the dormitory’s main door crashed open. Though his room was at the far end of the structure, he felt a noticeable temperature drop.

“Mercer! Mercer!” Marty Bishop shouted. “Are you in here?”

“Back here,” Mercer called.

“Thank God. Igor’s dead.”

Stunned by those words, Mercer’s guts gave a hollow slide. Igor dead? Injury or even death wasn’t unheard of in the dangerous world of polar exploration, but Igor Bulgarin? He was the most experienced person in the camp. Somehow, Mercer was not surprised it was the big Russian. Coming on the heels of their discovery of Major Delaney yesterday and Mercer’s findings this morning, he knew something was very wrong with this entire expedition. It being Igor who died seemed like the appropriate third link in a chain of bizarre events.

Quickly, before his thoughts became clouded, Mercer set aside his personal feelings of loss and suspicion. There would be time for that later. His relaxing, don’t-need-to-be-in-charge vacation was over. Marty’s coming to him in such an obvious panic meant that the leadership of the Surveyor’s Society team was about to shift to him. Mercer didn’t hesitate. He owed it to Igor and he owed it to the Surveyor’s Society. He was on his feet and zipping up his coat by the time Bishop appeared at his bedroom door.

“What happened?” His voice crackled with the authority he’d intentionally hidden from the others.

Marty paused, looking Mercer in the eye. For an instant he resisted answering, knowing that he was supposed to be in charge and should be demanding explanations. Yet he had rushed here, pushed by instinct, to report their discovery to the man who was the natural leader of the group. He could not sustain Mercer’s steady gaze, and rather than resentment, his voice was filled with gratitude.

“When we went into Camp Decade this morning, Bern Hoffmann and I found there had been a cave-in overnight. Part of the roof collapsed in the main corridor, right beyond the area that was already partially blocked by snow. Remember where we had to crawl to get to the barracks and officers’ quarters?” Mercer nodded. “Just past there, about ten feet of the hallway was filled floor to ceiling with ice and snow. We were using shovels to clear away the mess when we found Igor at the bottom of the pile. He must have been right under the avalanche when the ceiling let go. He was frozen solid.”

“Show me.”

Outside, the sun was hidden by clouds so thick there were no shadows. The wind was a raw force that knifed its way through the few gaps in Mercer’s Arctic clothing. He drew his hood tighter and refastened the Velcro at his sleeves to prevent the icy air from reaching inside his gloves. He snapped a lead from the safety line to his coat and began trudging across the snow toward Camp Decade’s entrance. It was impossible to hold a conversation in these conditions, so Marty walked silently in his footprints.

Mercer’s mind raced with speculation. Because Igor had the room next to his, Mercer had heard him leaving the dormitory in the middle of the night. Assuming he was headed for a late-night snack or possibly a romantic encounter, Mercer had quickly fallen back asleep. When he awoke, Igor wasn’t in his room and Mercer guessed he’d already gone to the mess for breakfast. He put the incident out of his mind, working instead on a problem he’d discovered with their subsurface radar survey.

Now the Russian meteorite hunter was dead, killed by an avalanche that shouldn’t have happened in a section of the camp he had no right to be in. Mercer couldn’t shake the feeling that, had he questioned Igor last night, Bulgarin wouldn’t be dead this morning. There were a great many deaths on Mercer’s conscience, mostly trapped miners he’d been unable to rescue, but there were others too. Soldiers. Refugees. Friends. And even without knowing the full truth yet, he added Igor Bulgarin to the list.

Behind him, Marty shouted for him to slow down but Mercer ignored him, lengthening his stride in a futile race to reach the Sno-Cat poised above the tunnel. A race Igor had already lost.

Mercer didn’t pause before climbing into the waiting bucket and lowering himself into the ice. Marty would have to recall the makeshift elevator when he reached the ’Cat. He leapt from the bucket as soon as it touched bottom, his boots splashing through accumulated meltwater.

“Hold on,” Marty called down from the rim of the shaft.

“Start the topside pump,” Mercer shouted savagely. “There’s too much water down here. You should have done it first thing this morning.”

When he reached the second set of doors, he heard the low thrum of a portable generator running somewhere in the maze of the complex. Mercer cursed under his breath, fury sparking behind his slate eyes. He checked his watch and calculated that Marty and Bern had been working down here for a few hours.

At the first intersection he turned right and saw the glow from several portable spotlights rigged to the ceiling farther down the corridor. The sound of a small generator grew with each step toward the light. So did the reek of exhaust.

The young German didn’t hear Mercer approach. He was at the far side of the generator shoveling chunks of ice and compacted snow into an empty office. Mercer grabbed up a flashlight left on the floor next to the portable generator and flicked off the gasoline-powered engine. The floodlights dimmed to orange before failing completely. The beam from Mercer’s flashlight was nearly swallowed by the darkness.

“Who’s there? Who shut off the generator?” Hoffmann peered into the flashlight.

Mercer fought to keep his anger in check. “Get the hell out of here right now. This drive is fouled with carbon monoxide.” Unconsciously Mercer switched to the vernacular of hard-rock mining, where a tunnel was called a drive.

“Didn’t Mr. Bishop tell you? Igor’s dead.”

“And you will be too if you don’t get out of here.” Mercer grabbed Bern by his collar, heaving him to his feet, where he swayed for a moment, pressing his gloved hand against a wall to hold himself steady.

“Whoa.” He slammed his eyes as a blinding headache raged inside his skull.

“Your lungs are full of gas. Didn’t you smell it?”

“Ja, but I thought we’d be okay.”

Bern could barely stand, so Mercer continued to drag him by his jacket, maneuvering him toward the exit. In the spill of light coming from the surface, his face was gray and his eyes weeped. The fresh cold air made him cough in fits so powerful that he vomited.

“Marty,” Mercer yelled up the shaft. “Where’s Ira?”

“During breakfast Greta asked him to help fix the engine on one of the Sno-Cats.”

That explained why these two had been so stupid. Ira Lasko would have known not to run a generator inside the base. Because carbon monoxide was heavier than air, the gas had pooled where the men were working and had been slowly suffocating them. In a sense, Mercer saw that Igor Bulgarin had saved their lives. Had Marty not gone to get him, he and Hoffmann would have been asphyxiated as they attacked the blockage, and their corpses would have been found next to the Russian’s.

“Go get him and tell him we need to rig wiring into the base for lights. Then come down here and give me a hand wrestling the generator back topside.”

Marty didn’t argue. Bringing the Honda generator into the tunnel had been his idea. Listening to the Geo-Researcher’s racking coughs, he knew what a deadly mistake that had been.

Mercer turned to reenter the facility, clamping a hand on Bern’s shoulder. “Just stay here and keep taking deep breaths to clear your lungs. In a few minutes Marty’ll give you a hand getting back to your dormitory.”

The floor of the hallway was covered in water melted from the snow that had broken into the base. He didn’t know how many BTUs the little generator pumped out, but it was more than enough to cause a pretty good flood. Once they had the sump in the main shaft drained he wanted a hose snaked in here to get rid of this water too. It would refreeze soon and make working conditions dangerous.

He moved slowly as he neared the cave-in, stepping over the silenced generator and the shovels and other tools brought down to clear the passage. In the sharp beam from the light, he could see the gaps in the roof, where the relentless pressure of snow had broken through the structure. It was logical that this would be the area that let go — part of the ceiling had already collapsed in the years since the camp had been abandoned. And yet he couldn’t think why it had failed at the very instant Igor Bulgarin walked underneath it. The odds were too long. He studied the twisted metal and jagged teeth of torn plywood, wondering if Igor had done something to the roof to precipitate the failure.

That made no sense either. And what was Bulgarin doing down here in the first place?

He trained the flashlight on the body. Igor lay facedown on the floor, wearing his blue parka with the hood pulled down. The lower half of his body was still buried under the ceiling-high snow. Although Marty and Bern had removed much of the snow around him, Mercer could see where blood had stained the ice near the back of his head. He knelt to examine the spot. It looked like a large slab of ice had hit him at the base of his skull. He could see a thin but deep depression in the bone under his matted hair. Depending on the force, it could have easily been a killing stroke.

Mercer had seen enough head wounds to know how much they bled, and there wasn’t enough blood to make him believe that Igor had survived the blow. The first impact had most likely killed him instantly. He hadn’t suffered. For that Mercer was thankful. He could easily imagine Igor’s agony if he’d slowly frozen to death in the dark.

“Hey, are you all right?” Ira Lasko had approached silently, only announcing his presence after Mercer stood and brushed off his gloves.

“Yeah,” he answered. “How are Marty and Bern?”

“Marty’s lungs cleared when he went to get you, but Bern’s back in his room, sicker than a dog. He’ll be fine in a few hours.” Ira’s expression soured. “It’s my fault. I never should have let them come down here alone. Marty doesn’t have the common sense of a Boy Scout.”

“He said you were fixing one of the Sno-Cats.”

“Greta grabbed me at breakfast. Said they needed help with a clogged fuel injector. Dieter and a guy named Fritz are still working on it. What happened here?”

“Hanging wall let go.” Mercer used a mining term for the roof. Then he swept the flashlight to show where the ceiling had collapsed. “Igor was right underneath it. When the snow came pouring in, it looks like a chunk of ice caught him in the head. He didn’t have a chance.”

“This place has been pretty secure for fifty years. What could have caused it?”

“We did,” Mercer answered.

“Come again?”

“We caused it. The climate down here had been stable until we entered the base. By us moving around and the heat we gave off by working and breathing yesterday, it’s likely that the ice above this area shifted just enough to rip through the roof.”

“So Igor was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Yes.”

“What was he doing down here in the middle of the night?”

“I heard him leave his room, and I think it was more like early morning than late night,” Mercer corrected. “But I didn’t know he was coming down here, nor do I know why.”

“He could have come down anytime he wanted with one of us,” Ira remarked. Like Mercer, he’d seen too much death to be rattled.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Mercer agreed absently, noticing that Igor Bulgarin’s arms were stretched out in front of him as though he’d been walking with his hands touching the ceiling. He wondered if that was an important detail and decided it probably wasn’t.

“The body?”

Mercer looked at Ira, understanding what he was asking. “It’s possible he wanted to check it out, but why would Igor be interested in a dead pilot? And why come down here secretly?”

“Booze?”

“That was my first thought,” Mercer said sadly. He didn’t like to think the worst of Bulgarin. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he’d fallen off the wagon, so he came here to get drunk.” He bent to pat down the body, but couldn’t feel the distinctive shape of a bottle. “Could be he stashed it someplace when he decided to leave.”

“Lot of ground to cover to prove it.”

Mercer flashed the light down the tunnel to make certain Marty hadn’t returned yet. He felt that Ira, with his experience on submarines, could handle what he was about to say, but he wasn’t sure about Marty. He spoke in a low voice. “We’ve got another problem too. It’s not important why, but I brought a Geiger counter with me from Iceland.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.

Ira made a gesture with his hand for Mercer to continue. Mercer was correct about the former Navy man. Nothing got to him. “When we were using the radar sled, I also made a radioactivity map of the facility. None of the radiation I detected was dangerous. It was mostly ambient background noise, but there was an area that spiked a bit. I assumed it was where the old reactor had sat. On another hunch, this morning I compared the radar sled readings to those from the Geiger counter and found that the spike occurred over the room with the pilot’s body, nowhere near the old reactor site.”

That got a reaction. “The body’s hot?”

“Call it warm, yeah.” Mercer nodded. “Just enough to tickle the counter now, but back when he died he would have been glowing like a neon sign.”

Ira knew that radioactive contamination didn’t cause a person to physically glow but he understood what he was saying. He looked at Mercer skeptically. “You’ve got some pretty accurate hunches.”

Mercer shrugged and told him about Elisebet Rosmunder and her son’s search for the downed C-97 and his subsequent death from cancer. “I guess you could call it more of a warning than a hunch,” he concluded.

“If there was something that radioactive on the plane, the government wouldn’t have stopped until it was found,” Ira said after giving the problem a moment of thought. “There was quite a flap when the Air Force lost a couple of nukes from a bomber off the coast of Spain in 1966 and again when an armed B-52 crashed over in Thule in 1968. I remember for that one they hauled off nearly a million cubic feet of ice, snow, and debris. No, the Air Force would have moved heaven and earth to locate that plane and clean up any spill.”

Mercer regarded Lasko for a minute. “You could be right. I don’t know. But the evidence suggests that the C-97 was carrying radioactive material that leaked when the plane crashed, poisoning Jack Delaney and later killing Stefansson Rosmunder.”

“So what do we do?” Ira asked.

“Finish unburying Igor and bring his body to one of the cold laboratories and then try to contact the Air Force again. Maybe the communications are back up.”

“What about Delaney?” Ira turned, hearing someone approaching down the corridor. It was Marty.

“We’ll keep that to ourselves,” Mercer said quickly. “The body’s not hazardous to handle, but until we hear from the military, he should be off limits.”

“Agreed,” Ira said out the corner of his mouth before addressing Bishop. “Bern okay?”

“He took some aspirin and is asleep right now.” Marty Bishop looked ravaged by guilt. His eyes were dull and he spoke as if each word caused him pain. “Mercer, ah, listen, I, ah… It was my idea to bring the generator down here. This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I had talked to you or Ira first. I nearly got us killed.”

“You’re right,” Mercer said mildly, not letting Marty flinch from his responsibility. “It was a stupid thing to do and you two were lucky. This hallway is probably still full of fumes, so for the next twenty-four hours I want the entire facility off-limits.”

Mercer caught Ira’s eye, making sure he would agree with the lie. The base would be safe in just a few hours.

“That’s a good idea,” Lasko agreed. “That should give us the time we need to notify the Air Force too.”

“Okay,” Marty said. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while myself. I feel like shit.”

“Go on ahead. We’ll take care of Igor.”

Two hours later, Igor Bulgarin’s body had been placed in one of the cold laboratories. Mercer and Ira had also wandered through Camp Decade, looking for evidence that the Russian had gone there for a drinking binge. Other than some old bottles hidden fifty years ago in the enormous garage, they found nothing. Neither man was surprised. There were tens of thousands of square feet of rooms and passages and closets where Igor could have hidden an empty liquor bottle. Giving up, they used a length of chain and a padlock from the Sno-Cat to secure the base’s main doors. No one would be able to enter Camp Decade without them knowing it.

Mercer and Ira met up with Erwin Puhl in the mess hall. The German scientist was still in shock over Igor’s death. He sat in an almost catatonic state, his eyes unfocused and unblinking. He hadn’t even bothered removing his parka or gloves. A cup of coffee in front of him had gone cold. The only words he’d spoken were, “My brother.” It was obvious that he and Igor were a lot closer than anyone thought. He seemed inconsolable.

Greta Schmidt was at the back of the hall, speaking with some of her people. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, she approached the table.

“Dr. Puhl?” Erwin looked up into her blue eyes. The juxtaposition of her vibrant beauty and his desolation was unsettling. “I just learned how long you and Dr. Bulgarin have known each other. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend. I am very sorry for you.”

Erwin said nothing but continued to stare at her. His lower lip quivered. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “As soon as we reestablish communications with the Njoerd, I’ll have a helicopter sent to remove his body and make arrangements to have him flown back to Moscow.”

“St. Petersburg,” Erwin said softly. “He was from St. Petersburg.”

“Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten?” She glanced at Ira and then her gaze settled on Mercer. “Is it safe for your people to be working in Camp Decade?”

“It will be,” Mercer replied. This was the first sign of any tenderness he’d seen from her, and it was surprising. “I’ve closed it for twenty-four hours to let the gas fumes dissipate and to let the avalanche that struck Igor settle. Tomorrow we’ll go back in and shore up the ceiling where glacier movement has weakened it.”

“Werner and I have already discussed calling the Surveyor’s Society and asking them to cancel your expedition. In light of Dr. Bulgarin’s death, we feel the base may be too dangerous.”

The gentleness she’d just shown Erwin had vanished. There was a challenge in her voice. Mercer responded in kind. “That will be up to Marty Bishop’s father and Charles Bryce. You can’t order us to leave.”

“I can, Dr. Mercer. And if it becomes necessary, I will.” She executed a military-style snap turn and stormed away.

“Talk about Beauty and the Bitch,” Ira mumbled.

“It might be best if we did leave,” Erwin said. “Igor’s death…” His voice trailed off.

“Not even when Brunhild there tells me to,” Ira snarled, nodding as Greta retook her seat at the other end of the mess hall. “I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”

“Neither do I,” Mercer agreed. “But I’m beginning to wonder what our mission really is.”

He spent the remainder of the day with his Geiger counter, traversing the snow piled on top of Camp Decade to get a more accurate fix of any radiation readings. Mercer didn’t expect to find anything new, but he needed the hours of solitude. He tried to put what had happened in some sort of perspective and found there wasn’t any. Igor was dead and no amount of thought would change that fact. He could only hope that, when he discovered why the Russian had gone to Camp Decade, he would be able to dispel his misguided feelings of responsibility.

Every few hours Mercer returned to the mess hall to inquire about the communications problems. Each time he was told that they had only received broken transmissions from the Njoerd and absolutely nothing from the office in Iceland. The technicians doubted that their own signals were getting out and all agreed that the problem would persist for a few days at least.

It was at dinner that the first clear call came through. Mercer and the rest of his team were trying to keep Erwin’s mind occupied by playing lazy games of poker over stale coffee when the short-wave transceiver in the corner of the room burst to life. Even through the squawking distortion of static, everyone could hear the hysteria in the voice.

“…ayday! Mayday! Geo-Research base camp!.. eo-Re… rch… camp!.. is inbound helo from Njoerd. I am… ixty kilometers east. Turbine is… ailing. We are… oing down!”

The comm officer scrambled to get his headphones on. Around him a dozen people clustered shoulder to shoulder. “Inbound helo, this is base camp. We understand you are sixty kilometers east of our location and are declaring an emergency.”

“…ank God!” the pilot of the helicopter screamed through the ether. “Storm approaching. Tried to beat it. Engine o… heat. I can’t keep us in the…”

Mercer pulled Werner Koenig away from the group of anxious listeners so his voice wouldn’t disturb the radio operator. The Geo-Research supervisor was shaken by what he was hearing. Not wanting to add to Werner’s distress, Mercer spoke calmly, reassuringly. “You still have Sno-Cats out there, right?”

“Yeah.” Koenig couldn’t tear his eyes away from the radio, his concentration on the drama that was unfolding too quickly for him to comprehend. “There are two teams on the ice.”

“Where?” When Werner didn’t answer immediately, Mercer grabbed his arm, allowing his voice to rise slightly. “Where?”

“Ah, team one is coming in from the south.” He looked at his watch. “They should be here in another twenty minutes.”

“And the other team?”

Werner suddenly understood why Mercer was asking about the ’Cats. He sounded miserable because the answer was one he did not want to give. “They’re due west of us, maybe fifty kilometers away.”

“Damn it.” Any chance of a successful rescue depended on each second Mercer could gain. “Where’s your rally driver, Dieter?”

“He’s with team two. What are you going to do?”

Thinking furiously, Mercer’s brain shifted back to the pilot’s strident call. “…titude down to one thousand feet. Dr. Klein says… smoke… air vents.”

That did it. His moment of hesitancy evaporated. There was a passenger on board. The pilot had made the choice to fly through a storm, but Anika Klein was different. She was simply along for the ride. Deep down he knew he would have gone even if the pilot had been alone. “Ira, get on the other radio and keep me updated. I’ll be in the Land Cruiser.”

Mercer was at the door before anyone realized he’d moved. He didn’t bother with the moon boots. His sneakers would have to do. He thrust his arms into a lightweight outer jacket that was the topmost coat on the rack near the exit.

“Dr. Mercer!” Greta Schmidt shouted, running toward him. “I forbid you to go. We will organize a proper search.”

“And when you’re done you can follow me,” he snapped, jerking the zipper to his throat. “Ira, you with me?”

The wiry mechanic had already muscled his way to the short-range set they used to coordinate communications with the Sno-Cats. “Move your ass.”

“No! You will wait.” Greta grabbed Mercer’s sleeve in a fierce grip that felt like it went all the way to the bone. “This is a wasted gesture. Wait until we know where they land. Going alone is suicide.”

Mercer had just a second before two more Geo-Research workers joined her. Though he had never struck a woman, he was sorely tempted to break that rule. Why couldn’t she see that the only chance the pilot and Anika Klein had was if someone left now?

He yanked free and reached the door. The pressure of wind slammed it open when he turned the handle. The wind was a solid force that made him stagger back until he got better traction, hunched his shoulders and bulled his way forward. The blowing snow and gathering dusk swallowed him.

Despite her fury, Greta made no move to follow. She slammed the door closed again, her body shivering with just that brief contact with the frigid gusts. She stepped over to Ira, her expression one of ill-disguised contempt. “That was the most stupid thing I have ever seen.”

“No need to tell me,” Ira said with a smirk. “But at least he’s doing something. Get your damned search party ready and follow him.”

A few minutes later, Mercer came over the radio. “Ira, you there?”

“Nice and snug,” he drawled. “How about you?”

“I’m going to need the Jaws of Life just to get my testicles to drop. According to the thermometer in the cab it’s fifteen degrees below zero out here. Any word from the chopper?”

“They’re still in the air and still heading this way. Pilot said the GPS puts him twenty-one miles due east. How’s your speed?”

“I’m pushing it now. Doing twenty.”

“Take it easy out there. I don’t think Greta’s gonna stop for you if you get stuck.”

“She’ll never see me,” Mercer replied with a grave-yard chuckle. “Visibility’s pure shit. I can’t see more than fifty feet in front of me.”

“How do you expect to find a crashed helicopter?” Ira asked, alarmed.

“Tell the pilot to have Dr. Klein fire a flare just before they crash.” He didn’t need to add that neither would likely be in any condition to do it afterward.

“Roger, good idea,” Ira was shouting into the microphone because Mercer’s transmission kept fading. His radio had much less power than the chopper’s. “I’m telling the comm officer to relay your message now.”

It took two minutes for the pilot to acknowledge the request. But even if they were able to do it, Ira had doubts that Mercer would see the flare. The helicopter was down to three hundred feet and Mercer was still between five and ten miles away.

Ira kept his misgivings to himself. “Mercer, the pilot will comply. He estimates he can hold her aloft for another five minutes.” He heard nothing but static. “Mercer, do you copy? Over.”

There was a small window above the radio sets. It was dark, but with the floodlights on, he could see how the wind raced first in one direction and then another. The captured snow and ice looked like it was caught in a tornado. Ira estimated the gusts at forty miles per hour. He prayed Mercer brought back the pilot so he could kill the stupid son of a bitch for daring to fly in this kind of weather. No resupply mission was worth it.

“Mercer, do you copy? Over.”

The comm officer was listening hard to his own earphones, talking with the pilot in easy tones despite the fear they all heard from the speaker.

“…ifty feet… iring flare now.” It was a cruel twist of atmospherics that the last seconds of broadcast from the helicopter came in so crisply that it sounded like the pilot was in the room with them. His scream was piercing enough to shatter crystal.

“Mercer, chopper’s down! Chopper’s down! They fired the flare. Did you see it?” Ira mashed the earphones to his head. “Mercer, are you receiving? Over.”

Nothing.

He tried again every thirty seconds for the next half hour. And the results were always the same. Mercer was gone.