Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“Right. What’s a Pisten Bully?”

“Tracked vehicle. Bright red. Says ‘Pisten Bully’ on the side in big, friendly letters. You can’t miss it.”

Valena took a hint and headed toward her office to pick up her gear. It took two trips to schlep it up the ramp to the door by the loading dock. She then moved it outside.

A cute little tracked vehicle waited below the dock. Valena jumped down off the dock to take a look. It was about twelve feet long and was composed of a cab with two bucket seats and a separate but attached back passenger compartment, which had two benches.

A husky man was approaching from the direction of the dorms. “Hi, there, Tractor Valena,” he said.

“Ah, Tractor Matt! Arrrr…” Valena replied, making the pirate gesture with bent forefinger.

“Arrr.”

“Say, are you our driver out to Cape Royds?”

“The same.”

“What luck!”

Kathy appeared on the dock with her drill. Matt hoisted it, carried it to the vehicle, and put it inside the passenger compartment. Valena set to work transferring her duffels and Kathy’s into the compartment beside it.

Kathy asked, “Is your companion driver here yet?”

“No,” said Matt. “He’s picking up the flight lunches. I expect him any moment.”

Valena heard footsteps on the gravel behind her. She turned.

“Hi,” said Dave. He smiled uncertainly.

“Hi,” said Valena. She was simultaneously happy and sad to see him. The two emotions instantly tied themselves into a knot in her stomach, and she cast her eyes downward. When she looked up again, Dave had looked away, suddenly fascinated by something far away. Then he turned toward the Pisten Bully and loaded the lunches into the driver’s compartment.

Kathy opened the door by the shotgun seat, stepped up onto the track, and climbed in. “We’ll all swap around,” she said as she buckled her seatbelt, “but it’s a gorgeous day, I’m the PI, and what the heck, I’m pulling rank.”

Her stomach still twisted sideways, Valena climbed into the passenger compartment, climbed over the load, and sat down on the rear bench seat.

Outside, she heard Matt speaking to Dave. “I’ll flip you for first turn at the wheel,” he said, then added, his voice now carrying a tease, “Or would you prefer to start out in back?”

She couldn’t quite hear what Dave was saying.

“Fine then,” said Matt. “Ro-sham-bo.” He lifted his fist and began to pump it to start the competition. On three, he shot out two fingers, indicating scissors. “Dang,” he said. “Okay, you choose.” A moment later, Matt climbed into the compartment with her. “Happy days,” he said. “I get to start out with you.”

She felt the vehicle shift as Dave climbed into the driver’s seat. She could see the back of his head now through the glass panel that separated the compartments. She saw Kathy turn her head to the right, heard her open her door to talk to someone. She climbed out.

A moment later, Kathy opened the door to the passenger compartment. “Give us a minute, Matt,” she said. When Matt had climbed out, she climbed in and lowered her voice. “Bellamy’s just called a meeting of all the scientists in town to discuss a security breach regarding the Vanderzee investigation. I have to be there at eleven.” She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice even further. “But here’s the deal. He did not list your name and apparently does not know that you are with me. So you get going before anyone spots you. Just drop this drill with the Kiwi archaeologists, okay? They’ll get it to my people.”

“But how are you going to get there?”

“I’ll figure that out later. Now, go, before George figures out where to find you!” She stepped out.

Matt stuck his head in. “You want to ride up front, then?”

Valena shook her head. “You take it,” she said, thinking, I’ll hide back here where I won’t get spotted.

Five minutes later, the Pisten Bully was at the transition onto the ice, and fifteen minutes after that, they were rounding Hut Point with the broad, frozen expanse of McMurdo Sound opening out before them. Valena stared out at Mount Erebus. High stratus clouds lay in a thatch above its crystalline summit, and a long, white plume of vapors led from the crater out across the ice. The plume had grown so large and thick that it was throwing a shadow. Ten minutes more, and the vehicle stopped. She heard the driver’s door open and climbed out to see what was up.

A quarter mile to the north, a long line of broken ice rose before them. Blocks the size of automobiles lay in a rhythmic line of complex curves and blue shadows, crossing the field between them and the edge of the island.

“Do you see them?” asked Dave, suddenly quite close to her.

“See what?”

He moved closer to her and extended an arm so that she could sight along it, pointing toward the blocks of ice. “The dark things. Like logs.”

“Yes…oh, they’re seals!”

“Weddells. Neat, huh? They come up through the holes made when the ice heaves. Sometimes they have their pups there.”

“What makes the ice heave like that there?”

“The Erebus Glacier Tongue. It’s a glacier that pushes off the land into the sea ice for several miles, kind of wrinkling the sea ice. Up here a ways, we have to test the ice to get around the end of it.”

“Test?”

“We don’t want to drive into a crack. The rule is, you can drive over a crack that’s a third as wide as your treads are long, but still… no need to find out the hard way whether a Pisten Bully really floats.”

They continued north along the flag route another few miles before Dave stopped the vehicle again, close enough to the end of the ice heaves that Valena could see the whiskers on the seals. They lay on their sides basking in the sun, occasionally curling a flipper.

The men got out and tested the ice, then continued around the end of the glacier tongue, and a little way farther along, the Pisten Bully left the flag route. The shore of Ross Island arched westward here, and as they approached, it resolved slowly into a long, low cliff of black rock with a small yellow shack at its foot. Valena had noticed other shacks like this one. There was one just below Hut Point and another closer to the transition.

She could see a truck parked next to the shack now, a truck with tracks. It was a Ford pickup, painted red like most of the newer vehicles around McMurdo, but its wheels had been replaced with individual tracks, one where each wheel had been.

They pulled up next to the shack. As Valena climbed out, Matt said, “This is a dive shack. Sweet, huh? Looks like we’re going to view a dive! How cool is that!”

Valena replied, “I should imagine the correct word would be ‘cold.’”

Matt hailed the occupants of the hut and they stepped inside.

Three men were rigging into dry suits and wrestling their way into layers of gloves. A fourth man assisted, lowering a string of plastic flagging down the hole, which was a two-foot-diameter bore through the ice. The floor of the shack was plywood, with a hatch centered over the hole.

“How thick is the ice here?” asked Valena.

“Ten feet,” said one of the divers. “And the water’s at twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Twenty-eight? Isn’t that below freezing?”

“It’s saltwater,” said the man. “Damn, I’m getting over-heated.” He reached into the hole and fished out a handful of slush, which he patted onto his head.

“You’re out of your mind!” said Matt.

“You don’t know how many layers of insulation I have on,” said the diver. “Enough to stay warm in twenty-eight-degree water is enough to roast in twenty-degree air, especially inside here, where there’s no wind. But if I jumped in here without this suit, I’d be dead in minutes. Head first, and the shock might kill me quicker.”