Polar Quest

11

For the second time in a day, the air around LV Station filled with the roar of engines. Less than ten hours after talking with Barnett and Jolley, a Twin Otter arrived from McMurdo. This time, an LC-130 circled the station, checking the condition of the runway. A scorched crater in the ice marked the spot where a similar plane had recently crashed.

‘Will you look at that?’ the pilot said to his cockpit crew as they passed over the wreckage.

The pilot lined up the Hercules and set it down on the ice. As he taxied back toward the station, a pair of helicopters landed nearby.

Kilkenny stepped out of the station to greet the new arrivals. A thickset man emerged from the passenger door of the Hercules and quickly walked toward him.

‘You must be Kilkenny?’ the man asked.

‘I am,’ Kilkenny said, extending his hand.

‘Major Don Saunders,’ the officer replied with a grip that was firm even through the gloves. ‘Other than get my crew down here ASAP and check in with you, my orders are a little light on detail. I assume this has something to do with that wreck at the end of this skating rink of a runway? Mind filling me in on what’s going on?’

‘Sure thing, Major. If you care to step inside, I can lay everything out for you.’

‘Wonderful,’ Saunders said, delighted. ‘So, what’s the story? That plane out there crash on takeoff?’

‘Something like that,’ Kilkenny replied. ‘This isn’t going to be your standard crash investigation.’

‘Oh, how’s that?’

‘First, this entire operation is classified.’

‘That’s one thing that was made clear to me before I left.’

‘Second, your team is going to be working on two separate crash sites. You saw one at the end of the runway. The other is about thirty miles from here. The cause of both is already known.’

‘How can you possibly know what caused these two planes to crash?’ Saunders asked dubiously.

‘I never said they crashed. The first was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile.’

‘An SAM, here?’

‘Yeah, and it wasn’t a Stinger, either. Something with a lot more range and a bigger bang.’

‘What happened to the one at the end of the runway?’

‘I attempted to force the pilot to abort his takeoff by shooting out one of its engines. It didn’t work out.Both of the planes you’ll be working on bore Air Force markings and the number 33498 on the tail. The one at the end of the runway was a fake.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what the hell happened here?’

‘In a nutshell, a military force flew here in a pair of planes similar to the one you just came in on. They seized this station, killed the two people who were working here, and stole their research. Then they shot my plane down, about thirty seconds after I jumped out of it. I caught up with them just as they were getting ready to leave. You’ve seen what’s left of one of their planes. The other escaped.’

Saunders thought for a moment, then nodded his head. ‘So what are my objectives?’

‘In the case of the aircraft brought down by the SAM try to locate the wreckage and retrieve any remains of the crew. Those men deserve to be brought home.’

‘Absolutely. What about the other one?’

‘Different matter,’ Kilkenny replied. ‘You are to recover what you can of the aircraft. We need to know everything about that plane and its cargo. In that wreckage is evidence we’ll need to nail the bastards responsible for this attack.’

‘I’ll do what I can. Do you know where the other plane is?’

‘I can get you close.’ Kilkenny brought up a map of the area on a high-resolution monitor. ‘Skier-98 was hit about here.’

‘Got any idea about altitude and speed?’

‘When I jumped, she was at thirty-five thousand feet and had slowed to one-hundred-thirty-five knots. She was a little over four miles above the top of the glacier, flying on this vector toward the station, into a slight head wind.’

Saunders ran through the math in his head, estimating the dispersal pattern and the rate of fall of the debris. He rapped one of his thick knuckles against the monitor. ‘If I swagged this right, what’s left of your plane ought to be right around there.’

‘Swagged?’ Kilkenny asked.

Saunders fished a note card from his breast pocket and scrawled down the coordinates.

‘Silly Wild Ass Guess,’ Saunders said with a grin. ‘It’s a technical term.’