The Void

CHAPTER 15

Morag took off a glove and placed a finger against the helicopter window — even through the double-layer insulated glass it was so cold it stung her fingertip. She pulled it back and blew on it before jamming it back into her glove.

She looked down at the plains of dry, brown grasses. Some caribou meandered about as they flew over, a few patches of snow were like blinding white oases, and from time to time a wind flurry would lift some flakes that danced madly across the uninviting scrubby landscape.

Upon departure she had maintained her furious indignation at Alex Hunter and his team, but when they turned away she had winked at Calvin, and nodded at his camera. Calvin had raised his eyebrows and shook his head, but she mouthed with her teeth clenched, start fucking filming with all the silent force as she could muster. The cameraman had looked pained, but surrendered. He snuck out another spycam and held it rolled in his fist. He began to record some film in the chopper, panning it over the faces of the HAWCs. He then carefully lifted it to capture the NASA crew as well.

Morag felt extremely confident. She’d worked with military types before; a few yes sirs, no sirs, and the occasional smile, and you could wrap them around your little finger in no time. She hoped.

She looked again at the group in the massive chopper’s hold. All the men could have been cut from the same block of cold, hard iron: rock-like stubbled jaws, multiple scars, and eyes that were so alert, they looked like birds of prey. The one called Garcia looked Spanish, had the thickest hair she had ever seen on a human being, and was missing a small piece of his left eyebrow.

The two female HAWCs, Casey Franks and Anita Erikson, looked like they could easily hold their own with the tough-looking men. For one, Casey was probably just as heavily muscled, and Morag noticed that the guys gave her due respect, as there was a ferociousness about her that was intimidating, even to them. She reminded Morag of a spring-loaded bear trap — keep clear or lose an arm. Adding in a scarred face did nothing to humanize her in any way. She looked tailor-made for the job.

The other Special Forces woman, Erikson, was taller and leaner, with brown hair pulled back tight and Nordic-sharp cheekbones. Her voice carried a hint of a Germanic accent and Morag noticed that from time to time the woman’s eyes went to Alex Hunter. Morag smiled; there was some interest there. An old flame maybe or just hopeful.

She followed the woman’s gaze to the HAWC leader. She knew what Erikson was looking at — Morag also liked the look of him. Alex Hunter was big, brutally handsome, and definitely a take-charge kinda guy. If she could win him over, she’d have them all saying “cheese” before they knew it.

Casey Franks turned in her seat and leaned a forearm on its back to stare for a few seconds.

“So, news-chick, what’s your story?”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Morag shot back with a grin.

The HAWC woman sneered, or maybe smiled. It was hard to tell as up close Morag could clearly see the scar running from chin to up past her eye that pulled her cheek into a sneer.

“Deal — you first,” Casey said.

“Okay.” Morag nodded. “Well, I’m Morag O’Sullivan, and I’m a journalist who works the major news desk at the Los Angeles Times. Calvin there is our gun cameraman.”

Casey never even looked at him, and didn’t seem interested in him or his story in any way.

“Your turn.”

“Casey Franks, soldier and stone-cold killer.” She grinned, meaning it.

Morag raised her eyebrows. “Must look good on a resume.”

“Does on the ones that count.” Casey motioned with her head to the peaks looming up in the distance. “So, climbed before?” she raised her chin. “And I’m not talking about in some swanky gym where you play on colored lumps of plaster stuck on a wall.”

Morag snorted. “Listen GI Jane; I’ve been up Mount Rainer, 14,411 feet. Higher than where we’re going now.”

Casey nodded. “That’s just a fucking steep hill for tourists. What else you got?”

Morag leaned forward. “And for fun, I climbed the wall of the El Capitan in Yosemite — the hard one.” Morag sat back. “What about you?”

Casey grinned. “I know that El Capitan face — I free-climbed it.”

Morag grunted. Free-climbing was where you went up with nothing but fingertips, toes, and a heart as big as Texas. It was obvious this was one pissing contest she was not going to win.

Morag smiled. “Not going to give an inch, are you?”

Casey shook her head slowly. “Got to tell you, girl; you act pretty ballsy. But out here you’re nothing. You shoulda stayed at home this time.” Casey turned back around.

Morag eased back in her seat. “Yeah, well, my mom always said, ‘fly free, girl’. That’s what I’m doing.” Morag felt like shooting back something else more cutting, witty, or brutal, but had nothing. She gave the back of Casey’s head the finger and turned to the window again to silently fume.

Outside, she saw that they were now rising over the peaks, and felt the helicopter skid in the air as a particularly heavy gust blew them sideways a few dozen feet. The pilot corrected quickly, but she knew he was contending with wind spurts of around 100 miles per hour, and updrafts, side drafts, and downdrafts blasting up and around the fiercely uneven geology.

Looking at the formidable peaks, she could almost hear the tectonic plates crashing and grinding together, continuing to form the mighty up-thrusts that were like monstrous sharpened teeth rising thousands of feet into the sky. Morag shivered and not from the cold this time.

In no time, dark featureless granite gave way to blinding white snow, and then they lifted higher, and into the clouds. Morag’s mind drifted back to her hectic news desk, then to warm cocktail bars and sandy beaches.

“Five minutes, people.”

Alex Hunter’s voice made her jump, and she turned to watch some of the HAWCs prepare the drop ropes.

The drop ropes.

A small voice in her head finally agreed with Casey Franks, and she knew this might just be the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

Alex went and sat up next to the pilot. Outside, the snow mercilessly spattered against the cockpit’s Plexiglas. He saw the retrieval spike extending out before the nose of the chopper — a fifty-foot rod that ended in a y-shaped fork — it would be used to grab the samples from the air that Anne Peterson would be collecting and sending up. That was unless the wind blew them all the way to the Arctic Circle.

He didn’t like the chances of recovering the samples. But NASA and the military were interested in whatever it was down there that seemed to be transforming an environment as hostile as this one. If it was something benign and manageable, it could mean a solution to reclaiming deserts, or even future planetary terraforming.

He watched the pilot wrestle with the stick as the helicopter jumped and bucked around them. Alex realized he didn’t even know the pilot’s name. He leaned forward. “Hunter.”

The pilot nodded, but continued to stare dead ahead. “Vincenzo — beer and football lover, pilot, and certified lunatic.”

Alex smiled and looked out at the maelstrom around them. “Lunacy helps in places like this.”

“Oh yeah.” Vincenzo grinned. “Coming at us from every direction. I correct one way, and then we get pounded from the other way.” He bared his teeth for a moment as the chopper dropped about fifty feet. He turned to look briefly at Alex. “We get clobbered by one of those super-gusts close to the face, and we’re bugs on a windshield.”

Alex grunted, feeling for the guy. Pilots tended to be as cold as ice, so for him to even mention his concern meant he was worried to all hell.

“Hopefully we’ll be in a wind shadow closer in. And if not…” Vincenzo shrugged.

Alex understood. “The ropes we’ve got will get us down eighty feet. We can drop all at once — you just need to hold us in place for a single minute. Can you do it?”

“Hell or high water I’ll do it.” His eyes flicked to Alex again. “But might not be me that determines how long you’ve got.”

“Yeah, I get it.” Alex then pointed. “There.”

Vincenzo turned back. The peak still rose hundreds of feet above their heads, but on the wall of the mountainside, there was a ledge of stone about twenty feet wide.

“Jesus. That’s where you want me to drop you?” The pilot whistled. “One minute hang time, right?”

“All we’ll need.” Alex got to his feet. He laid a hand on the young pilot’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

Vincenzo smirked. “Hey, you get the hard job. Once you send up the samples, I get to go home.” His face became serious. “Drop and release; I hang around for the package until I’ve used my fuel budget, then I’m outta here.”

Alex nodded, and headed back to the rear cabin. He held up five fingers, and his HAWCs immediately went into action. There were eight drop ropes, three each side, and two from the huge ramp-like rear door. They had a tension strength of over 1,000 pounds, and their winches could lift a small car if need be. Weight wasn’t the problem, but speed was, so for the civilians it meant doubling up as the only way to get down quick.

Alex planted his legs in the bucking chopper and faced the civilians. “Our drop lines are eighty feet only, and our pilot is going to have a devil of a time keeping us steady and in place. We have sixty seconds to drop to the ledge and disengage.”

He looked at their faces. All sat with wide eyes and he bet, racing hearts — good — adrenaline improved alertness and reaction times.

“We will be doubling up — you will all be coming down strapped to one of my soldiers. This is—”

“I can drop by myself if…” Morag had her hand up.

Alex’s voice rose. “This is not negotiable.” He glared for a moment and Morag just shrugged. “NASA team: Russell Burrows with Mister Monroe. Scott McIntyre with Mister Dunsen. Anne Peterson with Ms. Franks. Morag O’Sullivan with me, and Calvin Renner with Mister Knight. Mister Samuel Reid will take all your gear — anything you forget to give him, stays on the chopper.”

Sam loomed up behind him like a huge wall, and nodded once.

“Any questions?” Alex looked along their faces again. They probably had hundreds, but kept them behind their teeth. He checked his watch; it was time.

In moments, the HAWCs had attached their drop lines and lashed their respective civilians to themselves. Morag was strapped to the front of Alex and tried to adjust the tight cords, but failed.

“Hard to breathe.” She winced and looked up and over her shoulder at him. “I hope this isn’t where I get accidently dropped off.”

“Don’t give me any ideas.” Alex’s mouth might have just lifted a little at the corner. “All you need to do is follow my instructions.” He looked over her head to his team. “Visors down and hook in.”

Morag watched as Alex touched his neck and like magic, a dark scale-like hood telescoped from somewhere on his neck up and over his head and was then followed by a shield moving down over his face. He suddenly looked artificial, assembled almost, like a robot.

“Um, do I need my facemask to breathe?”

“Just your goggles; save your oxygen for when we’re in the crater. We just need vision for the drop and landing — you’ll see why.” He reached up, and with a solid clank, hooked his drop-line to an overhead winch and turned to look over his HAWCs. She felt his chest swell.

“HAWCs, we are go.”

Sam Reid bellowed in response. “Muscle up!”

Alex turned back to the rear of the bucking chopper. “I can’t hear you!”

“HUA!” roared the group, and formed into lines.

Jesus Christ, what have I got myself into? Morag wondered.

Alex punched a large button on the wall, and the rear and side doors whined open. Morag immediately threw her hand up as a hurricane of wind and snow particles were flung in at them like stinging white shrapnel — this is what Alex had meant by protecting their vision on the way down. Without eye cover, they’d be blinded.

She turned again to look up at Alex’s face. She could just make it out behind the visor and saw that the granite-hard jawline looked to carry a small smile. Where she was shitting herself, she bet he was looking forward to it. She saw him speak softly behind his visor, possibly to the pilot one last time. He held up a hand and slowly lowered the fingers one by one.

Morag’s heart smashed in her chest as he went from three down to one, and then he was running for the ramp, taking her with him. His HAWCs followed. She screamed as Alex leaped into space.

Morag shut off her scream and snapped her mouth shut as the cold stung her teeth and hard bits of ice and snow hurt her mouth. She was blinded and deafened by the screaming wind — and this was supposed to be the sheltered side of the mountain. The combined weight of each HAWC and passenger was probably between 400 and 450 pounds but still the wind tossed them around like corks.

She felt Alex twisting and trying to maintain his position as they dropped rapidly toward what she expected was the rock ledge. But they surely had no hope of seeing it among the flying snow. Every now and then the helicopter would jerk them, like a fly fisherman trying to sink the hook in a trout, and they’d swing wildly one way then the next.

She didn’t know how far they’d dropped or how long they’d been dropping, as her fear made every atom of her being become tunnel-focused on their landing. In another second, the huge face of the cliff loomed right in front of them and she saw the ledge, but horrifyingly, they were nowhere near where they needed to be and were fast coming to the end of their rope.

Alex locked off their drop line to stop their descent, and she wondered whether he was in communication with the pilot, trying to get him to swing them closer. She could dimly make out other bodies hanging like fruit from slender threads waiting for the right time to cut loose.

Then it came, the chopper yawed toward the cliff face as the wind slowed by a few dozen miles per hour. They swung at the ledge and Alex got ready to release them — fifty feet, forty, thirty, twenty. Momentum was with them when suddenly the chopper started to pull back. But it was too late now; they were committed.

‘Fly free, girl,’ she heard her mom whisper. It gave her strength.

Alex punched the release on his tether and let gravity and momentum do the rest. They flew the last twenty feet toward the rock ledge, but way too fast. She knew at this speed, she’d be obliterated against the stone. Unlike the soldiers, she wasn’t built like a tank or wearing an armored suit.

Fuck, she screamed in her own head, bracing herself, as Alex’s left arm tightened around her. Morag raised an arm, knowing it would be the first thing smashed, and also knowing that a broken arm, ten thousand feet up a freezing mountain could probably be a death sentence.

I’ll leave you behind, she remembered the HAWC leader saying.

She gritted her teeth as they hurtled toward the rock wall and ledge. Alex raised his free arm in front of her, and suddenly a three-foot disc of air swirled before them. They struck hard and Alex rolled them both, the shield taking most of the hard impact instead of their bodies. They continued to roll, and then Alex used the momentum to spring back to his feet and run hard at the cliff wall to move out of the way of the other soldiers who were coming in fast.

Every single one of them made it, using their shields, hitting hard, rolling and coming back upright. Morag still wore a grimace of fear and her heart was hammering. She exhaled in disbelief. She didn’t even feel like she was the same species as these super humans.

Alex disengaged his shield, unhooked Morag and then retracted his hood. “All right?”

She grinned up at him, still shaking. “That was intense.”

“This party has only just started.” He turned away to look to his team, probably counting them off. He then walked back a few steps to edge of the ledge and craned his neck to look up at the peak still a few hundred feet above them. To Morag it looked a sheer face of dark granite, but after a few seconds, Alex nodded.

“No problem.” He called his HAWCs in. “Erikson, Dunsen, Knight, you’re up. Let’s go, people.”

Morag noticed that the three HAWCs had somehow retained their drop lines, and like gymnasts, each ran at the wall, leaped, and clung on. Like spider monkeys, the three Special Forces soldiers started to climb and fast.

“Whoa.” Morag shook her head in awe. When she said she’d climbed before, she didn’t mean anything like this.

The HAWCs stuck carabiners in crevices, and hammered in pitons where they had to, and then threaded their rope through them as they went. In no time they were a hundred feet up, and Alex turned and shouted over the wind.

“Next up! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He turned to stare up into the swirling snow.

Morag followed his gaze, but could see nothing. But she suspected he was looking for their chopper which was waiting somewhere up in that mad blizzard. She didn’t envy the pilot for a second.

It was her turn next and she started up. The cold had already caused a thin layer of ice to form on the rope, making the soft elastic fibers slippery, and she had to concentrate every inch to stop from sliding back down.

Behind her on the rope, Alex was last in line and coming quickly, scaling easily, as if he was just climbing a ladder to change a light bulb. The wind still buffeted them, but at least in close to the cliff face it was less ferocious. She glanced up. Above her, she guessed, the lead climbers must be near or at the summit by now, and she turned back to the wall, focusing on the rope, on each grip-release-grip over and over again, edging upwards a few feet each time.

Morag didn’t want to look behind or down. Even though she had climbed peaks before and didn’t regard herself as having a problem with heights, if she saw even for a second the dizzying void below her, she might lock up. She simply could not let that happen while Alex Hunter was right behind her — she didn’t want his help. She was no damsel in distress — never was, never would be. She gripped, hard, cursed under her breath, and yanked herself up another few feet.

Minutes later, a hand grabbed the back of her jacket and roughly dragged her up and over the rim. She skidded forward on her belly, and then rolled over to suck in air. Her fingers were curled into painful claws and she blinked several times to make the flaring stars of exhaustion go away.

Steve Knight crouched beside her. “Okay?”

Morag sat up, still dizzy. “Yeah, yeah.”

The young HAWC slapped her shoulder. “You did well.”

He headed back to his group, where they stood on the peak’s edge, helping the last few climbers, while some stared down over the other side. She watched as Alex Hunter came up and over the rim, his face mask still up, and not even breathing hard. She looked around and saw that the only ones sitting or lying flat were the NASA team and Calvin Renner.

She struggled to her feet, and wobbled for a moment. All the HAWCs stood ready, and a few had strange-looking weapons drawn — odd, why? She joined them at the edge and stared down into the massive formation created by three mountains that had collided together in some distant primordial past to create a massive crater basin many miles across.

Beside her Sam Reid stood rock still and as she watched four lenses lumped the visor over his face. It gave the appearance of some sort of giant alien being staring down on the puny Earthlings below it.

Morag turned back to the mist-filled basin. The more she stared, the more the hair on the back of her neck rose. “Well, that’s not creepy at all,” she whispered. Like the boiling sea of another world. Suddenly she wished that Alex Hunter had tied her up and left her behind.