Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

Valena said, “It’s a huge project that involves about twenty different PIs. Before you go to the expense of flying in that huge rig and setting up the building that will house all that brainpower, you do some test drilling to make sure the condition of the ice is what you expect. So there would have been drilling last year, just not the big rig yet.”

“But let’s get back to the high camp,” said Cupcake, popping the top on another beer.

Valena, said. “So the guy showed up there instead of WAIS Divide, and he got sick. And you were there working with explosives, Ted?”

“No, Emmett had a drill going getting shallow test cores from that location, but he also wanted to get some bigger block samples, and that’s where the other muscle and I came in. But then suddenly here’s this guy from New York at high altitude, and he hadn’t come up in stages like you’re supposed to. Emmett told him to sit tight and rest, not exert himself until he was acclimated, but he was one of those macho types who just couldn’t stand himself unless he was breaking a sweat. Said he was really fit, shouldn’t be a problem. He’d been in the military, said he could handle it fine. He was a real piece of work, all cocksure and not listening to reason.” He shook his head. “Things got off to a bad start, lots of arguments.”

“About what?”

“Guy stuck his bare hand on one of Emmett’s ice samples, for a start.”

“He didn’t!”

Cupcake asked, “Why’s that a big deal?”

Valena said, “The whole point is to get uncontaminated data. The ice is like a big deep freeze that keeps past climate records intact. The instant you introduce modern contaminants—well, then it’s worthless. We only handle the ice samples with special gloves. When someone puts bare hands on them, it’s as if someone spat in your beer.”

Cupcake curled her upper lip in disgust.

Ted said, “Yeah, so it went downhill from there. Things get pretty intense when you’re camped out there on the high ice together, even at the best of times. It’s cold, and the cold intensifies the effect of the thin air, and you’re doing dangerous work handling machinery, and then here’s this chucklehead breathing down the good doctor’s neck, and bugging the help with what he liked to call ‘interviews.’ Hell, I call it cornering people and bugging them until they blow their tops. Schwartz popped off at him pretty good, Sheila looked like she was going to hit him with a fry pan before the first meal was done, and even cool Cal was cutting a wide margin to avoid him. It just wasn’t right. You have to be able to depend on each other in a place like that, and this guy’s shown up looking for a fight.”

Valena said, “Was he trying to argue that the climate isn’t warming?”

Ted said, “Yeah, there was a lot of arguing about a story for the Financial News.”

Valena said, “Emmett probably wanted to take the guy to the source and show him how the work was done and maybe correct some of his confusion, open a healthy dialog. It was a reasonable idea.”

Ted said, “Yeah, it would have been reasonable if the guy had been inclined to listen, but it sounded to me like he was going to write an exposé on what a waste of the taxpayer’s money Emmett’s efforts were. But he got sick.”

Cupcake said, “It was altitude sickness, right?”

Ted nodded. “That’s what they tell me.”

“You’d left by then,” Valena prompted.

“I’d pulled out to come back here just a couple hours before he started showing symptoms. Caught a ride in one of the Twin Otters they had moving through the area; they’re your smaller ski plane. It had stopped to pick up some fuel from the cache. That was the other reason some of us were there. We were digging up fuel barrels that had gotten buried in the snow. Damned windy place.” He shook his head. “The storm came in really fast, just barreled down off the plateau, a particularly nasty herbie.”

“That’s a hurricane-force storm,” Cupcake explained to Valena. “They usually come from the south. Air pours off the big ice sheet that covers East Antarctica. You can get sustained winds up to a hundred miles per hour, and the gusts…”

Ted nodded. “Laurence Gould, who came here with Admiral Byrd in 1929, wrote about a wind so strong that when he reached up and grabbed the strut of his airplane, it blew him out like a pennant. And he was not a small man.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Emmett radioed in that evening to say that Sweeny was in real distress. They got the doctor from the hospital here on the horn at Mac Ops, and they decided that it had to be altitude sickness. They couldn’t evacuate him, as there was no way they could land any kind of aircraft. Visibility was down to zero, a total white-out blizzard. So the flyboys got creative and sent in a Herc to drop supplies.”

“LC-130 Hercules,” Cupcake explained. “The Hercs are the big workhorses down here. They carry the heavy loads in and out of field locations, haul everything that goes to Pole, and they make all the flights from here up to New Zealand during the times when the ice runways are too soft to land wheeled aircraft. The Herc’s got skis they can lift up, so’s they can land on wheels up in Cheech.

“And they’ve got some damned fine pilots,” Cupcake went on. “They’re career officers from the Air National Guard. Great guys.”

Ted said, “Anyway, they figured they’d fly over Emmett’s camp, drop a parachute with a Gamow bag and other medical supplies. A Gamow is like a pressure tent. You put the guy in there, pump it up, and it’s like bringing him down to sea level. Fluids in the lungs clear. He lives.”

“But he didn’t live,” Valena said. “Because they couldn’t find the camp in the storm.”

“Oh, the plane found the camp,” said Ted. “Problem was, the camp couldn’t find the chute. When you’re in condition 1—zero visibility—the dictum is, don’t go anywhere. Stay in your tent, or your vehicle, or your building, wherever you are. You’ve noticed the monitors by the main exit doors?”

Valena nodded. She had seen the lighted overhead signs that scrolled the information. “They’ve said ‘condition 3’ each time I look at them.”

Cupcake said, “That means clear and no restrictions. Condition 2 is watch out and pay attention, get to where you’re going and don’t mess around. Condition 1 is stay put. Don’t go out. Remember that.”

“Yes, ma’am. So they had a total howler.”

Ted continued, “Yeah, and Emmett ordered everyone in camp to stay put, not that anyone was foolish enough to go out. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Of course, the newspaper holds this against him, because they’ve never been in such conditions. The toughest thing they’ve ever had to do is cross Fifth Avenue to buy a cruller.” He shook his head vehemently. “That asshole had no business coming down here.” He finished his beer. “You got another of these, Do-roddy?”

Cupcake pointed at the little fridge. “You know where to find it.”

Ted popped another open and drizzled several ounces into the maw between his whiskers. Belched. “‘Scuse me. Yeah. So they wait for the first break in the weather—things are only up to condition 2, and ragged at that—and out they go.” He shook his head. “Didn’t find it. Storm closed in again. Back to the tents.” Ted fell silent. “They had to wait until the storm abated. Took another two days. First chance, a Herc came out and loaded them up. Sweeny was frozen solid by then. I saw it land. They brought the body out in its sleeping bag. Hell of a long sleep that boy was in for.”

Everyone was silent for a while.

Ted sighed. “They held him overnight in the ice core storage unit over by Crary Lab and then shipped him out in the cargo hold of a C-17. It didn’t matter that he was an asshole. If you lose anyone down here for any reason, everyone feels like they’ve had a hole torn in them, and in a very real sense, everyone is accountable.”