Zodiac Station

Thirty-five

The crewman sat on the bed with red welts burned around his wrists. White threads stuck to his cheek where Santiago had ripped off the surgical tape that Anderson had used to gag him. None too gently, Franklin guessed.

‘He said he needed the head.’ The crewman rubbed the back of his head and winced. ‘Next thing I knew, I was tied to the chair with my own belt.’

‘He can’t have gotten off the ship.’ Franklin looked out the porthole, almost by reflex, as if he expected to see Anderson running by. ‘Get the Doc up here to check that bump on your head, and pipe General Emergency. I’m going to the wheelhouse.’

Word spread fast on the Terra Nova. All his officers were already on the bridge, waiting for him. Glad it wasn’t them who had to take the PA.

‘All hands, this is the Captain. We have an escaped detainee aboard our ship. His name is Tom Anderson. He may be armed and he is certainly dangerous. I’m initiating a lockdown, and a search of the ship as per our evacuation drill. Use extreme caution.’

He paused, then added: ‘If you can hear this, Tom Anderson, I advise you to surrender yourself. You cannot escape.’

He hung up the mic and turned to Santiago.

‘Get the helo airborne and fly a SAR pattern centred on the ship.’

‘You think Anderson could have run for it?’

Franklin shrugged. ‘He got here, didn’t he?’

The wheelhouse emptied. Franklin sat down in his chair, staring out the windows at the panorama of ice. Anyone who made captain had learned to listen to his ship: even up here, he could hear the urgency of his order spreading through the Terra Nova. A faster rhythm, the vibrations of doors slamming and boots running. He could pick them out like an astronomer reading the stars through the fluctuations of radio waves. And all the while, beneath everything, the sawtooth rise and fall of the prow obliterating the ice.

‘There’s a good lead ahead,’ said the bosun’s mate on ice watch. ‘We should be able to get some speed up soon.’

Franklin nodded. He looked at Eastman. ‘What happened then? After the explosion?’

Eastman shivered. One of the crew brought him a space blanket and wrapped it over his shoulders, a silver cloak that made him look like some alien overlord.

‘They lit up Zodiac like the fourth of July. Oil barrels packed underneath, and all the blast cord we used for seismic work. With everyone packed into the mess for Thing Night, no one had a chance. Even if they’d survived, all the ECW clothing burned up in the Platform. So did the radios, the Iridium phones. Anderson took care of everything. If Kennedy and I hadn’t gone out when we did, no one would ever have known.’

‘Shit.’ What else could you say?

‘A disaster like that ought to be impossible. We keep emergency supplies cached all around the base — food, clothing, radios. That was the first thing we looked for, even while the Platform was still burning. All gone. Anderson must have cleaned them out.’

‘Survivors?’

‘The Platform was burning so hot, you couldn’t get within fifty feet of it. Fuel drums exploding, throwing off pieces of metal — rip your head off. One cut Kennedy’s arm. No one could have survived.’

He stared at Franklin, like it was the most important thing in the world.

‘No one could have survived.’

‘Got it.’

‘I don’t know what bad things you’ve done in your life, Captain, but if you ever die and go to hell, it can’t be worse than that. The Platform burning, the snow in the smoke. Me and Kennedy running around like chickens, digging up the caches, one after the next, finding everything gone. We must have spent a half-hour trying to get the snowmobiles started before we figured out Anderson had taken out the spark plugs. At that point, we were pretty fucking sure we were gonna die. And not quick, like the others, but slow, hungry and cold.’

The space blanket crinkled and rustled.

‘The weirdest thing was, it all happened in broad daylight. You think bad things happen at night, and maybe the sun’ll come up and things’ll get better. We didn’t even have that.’

He took a cup of coffee that someone had poured him.

‘Anderson came back with his Russian friends. A couple of snowmobiles — they must have stashed them someplace else. Looking for survivors, I guess. Me and Kennedy hid in the mag hut, only place that was intact.’

He stared into the cup of coffee. ‘I thought we were dead when Anderson opened that door.’

‘He found you?’

‘If I hadn’t busted my leg, I’d have launched myself at him. Instead, I just huddled in the corner. I swear he looked right at me.

‘Then he went away. It’s dark in there, and bright outside; maybe he didn’t see. We heard some shots—’

‘My crew found a shell casing.’

‘Then there was some shouting. I don’t know what that was about. After a while, I heard a snowmobile start up. I dragged myself to the door and peeked out, saw someone heading out on to the ice. Big guy.’

‘Not Anderson? He’s big.’

‘Not like this guy. I don’t know where Anderson had gone, couldn’t see him. After that, nothing happened for a while. I almost went out, but I didn’t like the fact I hadn’t seen Anderson or Greta leave. And I was right. After an hour, something like that, I heard the Sno-Cat come back. Greta poked around a little — didn’t find us — and then she rode off on the second snowmobile, following the tracks.’

‘Any clue where they were going?’

‘My guess? Evac. The Russians must have a ship someplace near here, maybe one of their nuclear-powered ice-breakers, and they’d gone to rendezvous with it.’

Franklin glanced at Santiago.

‘Nothing on the instruments.’

‘So you saw Greta and this other guy leave. How about Anderson?’

‘Yeah.’ Eastman scratched his beard. ‘I thought about that a lot. Best I can come up with is he jumped on the snowmobile somewhere I couldn’t see him. I didn’t exactly have a widescreen view, shitting my pants behind that door.’

‘But you survived.’

‘What saved us was their stupidity. The one thing they forgot. Went to all that trouble to sabotage the snowmobiles, then forgot they’d parked the Sno-Cat right in back of us. I mean, how stupid can you get. Not a lot of gas, but enough to run the heater a couple of times a day. And he’d left survival gear: food, sleeping bags, even a box of matches for the stove.

‘We holed up in the cab and sat there right up until we heard your helicopter flying in.’ He bared his teeth. ‘You know how boring being terrified can get? If I ever play another hand of gin rummy, I’ll slice my fucking wrists.’

A light blinked by the phone. Franklin let Santiago take it. When he turned around, he didn’t look happy.

‘XO says they finished searching the ship. No trace of Anderson.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘There’s a mustang suit missing from the locker. Also, they found a rescue line tied off on the deck rail.’

Franklin got out of his chair and walked to the back of the wheelhouse. He looked out astern, at the blue scar the ship had left behind in the ice.

‘What’s our speed, Helmsman?’

‘Four knots, sir.’

‘Anyone here think a guy can jump off a moving vessel, surf a piece of broken ice and get on to the main pack without falling in?’

No one answered. Franklin found a pair of binoculars and looked through them. Staring at all that ice and cloud, you couldn’t even be sure you had the focus right.

‘Might be trying to fake us out,’ Santiago suggested. ‘Get us chasing ice while he sits tight in the lifeboat with a bottle of Scotch.’

‘You think anyone on this ship would have missed an open bottle of Scotch?’

‘You think we could have missed a guy built like a linebacker?’

‘Look again.’

He sat back down, lost in thought. The phone rang. He snatched it before Santiago could pick it up.

‘You got him?’

‘It’s the radio room, sir.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘The helo just called in. They found something on the ice.’

‘Patch them through.’

A click, and the sound changed. Static, throbbing rotors, and the pilot’s voice coming through the cold air.

‘No sign of Anderson, but we got that radio beacon. Fifteen miles north of your position.’

‘Is the ice stable? Are you able to land?’

‘Yes, sir. We set down and had a look. Signal’s coming from inside of a tent.’

‘Anderson?’ The minute he said it, he knew that couldn’t be right. No way could he have gone that far across the ice so fast.

‘I …’ A flare of static. ‘… ought to come … see for yourself, Captain. And bring the Doc.’