Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

Valena continued along the trail, now setting the flags with the pike, now learning to use the hand augur to make a hole where the wind had blown the snow away from the ice. The wind increased incrementally, blowing in a bank of clouds that nibbled at the distant mountain range, gradually devouting it. She hummed as she worked, satisfied by the physical exertion and by proving herself a worthy member of the team.

A quarter hour later, the growing rhythm and harmony of the work were shattered by the sound of the Delta’s engine stuttering and screaming. Valena turned and watched in horror as it wallowed into a soft patch in the trail. Willy gunned the motor and cranked the wheel hard left and right, making things infinitely worse. The huge vehicle flexed wildly on its point of articulation, digging itself deeper and deeper into the snow while Edith collapsed onto the load and hung on for dear life. The wheels spun faster and faster, the frame thrashed, and the entire machine sank down and down into the snow, digging itself in past its mammoth hubcaps.

Hilario whipped his snow machine around and thundered toward the Delta, hollering for him to stop, waving his arms. Wee Willy either could not hear or was not listening, and kept the monstrous beast thrashing. Finally, as the axles began to disappear, he stopped the vehicle, climbed out, shambled twenty feet off the trail, and sat down in the snow. He did not move or speak but instead just sat there, staring off across the ice.

Far down the trail, Dave turned the Challenger around and made a slow approach, ready to smooth the trail once the Delta was freed.

Valena got off her snow machine, walked over to the Delta, and began to kick loose snow away from around the wheels. “Got a shovel?” she asked Edith, who was very slowly climbing down off the load. “I’ve seen this kind of problem before on my grandfather’s farm. Dead of winter, he once got a tractor trailer stuck out in the pasture. We dug away the loose stuff, got a low-angle slope, set the vehicle in granny gear, and drove it on out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Hilario, producing a shovel from underneath the back seat of the Delta.

They took turns digging.

Wee Willy sat and stared away to the south.

After taking her second turn with the shovel, Edith said, “I’ll be back in a minute. I’m ChapStick dependent, and I left it in my other ball gown.”

Valena asked Hilario, “Why do you guys let him get away with this crap? I don’t see Dave letting him get away with this. For that matter, why am I doing this for him?”

“You? You’re just a show-off. Dave had his fill of Willy long ago. Me, I don’t get excited about Willy ‘cause I figure he got dropped on his head somewhere along the line. And Edith? She’s just shaping her charge. She’s pretty even-tempered, and she knows that no matter how much this may look like a simple job of ramming flags into the snow, each and every moment it’s also a matter of survival. Somebody gets twisted a little too tight out here, sometimes it’s better to give them a chance to cool off.” He laughed. ‘And we all know there’s plenty of cooling off you can do around here.”

“Yeah, but why not send along a stronger team member?”

Hilario laughed again, with an edge this time. “The Boss sent him along as sort of a morale booster. Hah. Total waste of a perfectly good boondoggle, if you ask me. I think he just wanted him out of Mac Town before someone murdered him. Okay, your turn with the shovel again.”

With the snow excavated into a ramp, Valena had the pleasure of driving the Delta out of the rut Wee Willy had made, and Dave got to work with the Challenger and goose filling in the hole. When they were ready to proceed again, Edith took a turn at the wheel of the Delta and put Wee Willy on the top of the load tossing flags, and Valena and Hilario went back at it with the pikes.

The wind continued to rise. Clouds now filled the southern horizon. Streamers of snow wailed past them at an angle to the trail, immediately smoothing the tracks left by their vehicles.

By 1750 hours, they were climbing the lower slopes of Black Island. With relief, Edith made her call to Mac Ops while Dave dropped the goose from the Challenger and Hilario and Valena put the covers on the snow machines. They had set ten miles of flags, and they were a half-hour ahead of deadline. Wee Willy climbed along the side of the cab and heaved himself inside. Hilario climbed into the Challenger with Dave, and Valena joined Edith in the Delta for the ride up the steep pitch of bare rock road that led to the station.

Edith gave Valena a pat on the shoulder. “You’re a real trooper,” she said. “You didn’t have to do anything but drive, but you busted your butt for us all afternoon. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Okay, then, next stop, Black Island Station. Hold onto your hat; the wind here knows no mercy. The food’s amazingly good for a dry camp, and if you don’t mind a little coarse language, the station manager’s a kitten, but the bunkhouse… well, it’s not my fault, so I won’t apologize.”

Valena realized that she was grinning. She was the happiest she had felt in years.

IN MCMURDO, TED FINISHED LOCKING UP THE BLASTING equipment for the day and indulged himself in a regal stretch, pulling the front of his Carhartt parka taut. It had been a good day. The afternoon’s blast had gone off text-book perfect, the heavy equipment operators tasked to him had moved the rubble quickly and efficiently, and Wilbur had not pissed him off even once. It was time for a quick shower, a hearty dinner, and a shot or two of good whiskey. The only blemish on the day was the crushing news that the man who had turned up lost on the ice was dead. On second thought , Ted decided, I’ll make that four shots from my secret stash of single malt.

As he started down the hill toward his dormitory, Ted spotted the unmistakable form of Cupcake coming uphill toward him. There was a man next to her, a beaker by the look of him: big red, black wind pants, beard. Cupcake raised an arm and waved to him, the sort of stop-where-you-are motion that says, You’re the guy we’re coming to see. What now! Ted wondered.

“Ted!” Cupcake called out. “Wait!”

Ted hadn’t realized that he had begun sidling toward an escape route until she spoke. “Who’s your friend?” he asked.

“This is the Padre,” she said.

The man stepped forward quickly and offered a gloved hand to be shaken. “Jim Skehan. Glaciologist out of DRI.”

Ted tensed. Having someone offer the answers to McMurdo’s first two questions of acquaintance caught him off guard. It indicated trouble, somehow. Why was it important what the guy did or where he was from? And then the dime dropped and he realized that this man must be a colleague of Emmett Vanderzee’s. What in hell was Cupcake up to now? He waited for her to explain herself.

Ted waited.

Skehan watched him wait. Something about the glaciologist’s face bothered Ted. Skehan’s almost expressionless mug, perhaps, or was it the laser-sharp eyes that floated in that impassiveness?

Cupcake said, “Okay, enough with the alpha dog act, fellas. Woof, woof, now you’re friends.”

“Father Jim?”

“He’s a Jesuit. Get over it. “Father Jim and I have been out to the place where we found Steve,” she said. We found something important out there. We found tracks.”

Ted’s eyes shifted to Cupcake. “After that blow?”

Skehan said, “Even a footprint compacts the snow just a little, moving it from snow toward ice. And more importantly, the layers are disturbed by anything that transits over the snow. Maybe you’d have a hard time finding penguin footprints out there, but anything as heavy as a man, or certainly a vehicle, will leave a trace. Then, unless the wind scours down below the level of compaction, you can still see the tracks. If they get buried, you can cut a small trench to find them.”