Douglas Preston - The Ice Limit

"Sure."

Lloyd smiled wistfully. "That goddamned Eli. He should have supplied a bottle of cognac. Well, at least it's hot." He unscrewed the cap and poured out the steaming cups. Lloyd held his up, and McFarlane and Puppup followed suit.

"Here's to the Desolation meteorite." Lloyd's voice sounded small and muffled in the silent snowfall.

"Masangkay," McFarlane heard himself say, after a brief silence.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Masangkay meteorite."

"Sam, that's not protocol. You always name the meteorite after the place where —"

The empty feeling inside McFarlane vanished. "Screw protocol," he said, lowering his cup. "He found it, not you. Or me. He died for it."

Lloyd looked back at him. It's a little too late now for an attack of ethics, his gaze seemed to say. "We'll talk about this later," he said evenly. "Right now, let's drink to it, whatever the hell its name."

They tapped their plastic cups and drank the hot chocolate down in a single gulp. A gull passed by unseen, its forlorn cry lost in the snow. McFarlane felt the welcome creep of warmth in his gut, and the sudden anger eased. Already the light was beginning to dim, and the borders of their small world were ringed with a graying whiteness. Lloyd retrieved the cups and placed them and the thermos back in his pack. The moment had a certain awkwardness; perhaps, McFarlane thought, all such self-consciously historic moments did.

And there was another reason for awkwardness. They still hadn't found the body. McFarlane found himself afraid to lift his eyes from the ground, for fear of making the discovery; afraid to turn to Puppup and ask where it was.

Lloyd took another long look at the hole before his feet, then glanced at his watch. "Let's get Puppup to take a picture."

Dutifully, McFarlane stepped up beside Lloyd as the older man passed his camera to Puppup.

As the shutter clicked, Lloyd stiffened, his eyes focusing in the near distance. "Look over there," he said, pointing over Puppup's shoulder toward a dun-colored jumble, up a small rise about a hundred yards from the hole.

They approached it. The skeletal remains lay partially covered in snow, the bones shattered, almost unrecognizable save for a grinning, lopsided jaw. Nearby was a shovel blade, its handle missing. One of the feet was still wearing a rotten boot.

"Masangkay," Lloyd whispered.

Beside him, McFarlane was silent. They had been through so much together. His former friend, former brother-in-law, reduced now to a cold jumble of broken bones at the bottom of the world. How had he died? Exposure? Freak heart attack? Clearly, it hadn't been starvation: there was plenty of food back at the mules. And what had broken up and scattered the bones? Birds? Animals? The island seemed devoid of life. And Puppup had not even bothered to bury him.

Lloyd swiveled toward Puppup. "Do you have any idea what killed him?"

Puppup simply sniffed.

"Let me guess. Hanuxa."

"If you believe the legends, guv," Puppup said. "And as I said, I don't."

Lloyd looked hard at Puppup for a moment. Then he sighed, and gave McFarlane's shoulder a squeeze. "I'm sorry, Sam," he said. "This must be tough for you."

They stood in silence a moment longer, huddled over the pathetic remains. Then Lloyd stirred. "Time to get moving," he said. "Howell said three P.M. and I'd rather not spend the night on this rock."

"In a moment," McFarlane said, still staring down. "We need to bury him first."

Lloyd hesitated. McFarlane steeled himself, waiting for the protest. But the big man nodded. "Of course."

While Lloyd collected the bone fragments into a small pile, McFarlane hunted up boulders in the deepening snow, prying them loose from the frozen ground with numb fingers. Together, they made a cairn over the remains. Puppup stood back, watching.

"Aren't you going to help?" Lloyd asked.

"Not me. Like I said, I'm a Christian, I am. It says in the Book, let the dead bury the dead."

"Weren't too Christian to empty his pockets, though, were you?" McFarlane said.

Puppup folded his arms, a silly, guilty-looking smile on his face.

McFarlane went back to work, and within fifteen minutes they were done. He fashioned a rough cross from two sticks and planted it carefully atop the low pile of rocks. Then he stepped back, dusting the snow from his gloves.

"Canticum graduum de profundis clamavi ad te Domine," he said under his breath. "Rest easy, partner."

Then he nodded to Lloyd and they turned east, heading for the white bulk of the snowfield as the sky grew still darker and another squall gathered at their backs.

Isla Desolación,

July 16, 8:42 A.M.

MCFARLANE LOOKED out over the new gravel road, cut through the brilliant expanse of fresh snow like a black snake. He shook his head, smiling to himself in grudging admiration. In the three days since his first visit, the island had been transformed almost beyond recognition.

There was a rough lurch, and half of McFarlane's coffee splashed from his cup onto his snowpants. "Christ!" he yelped, holding the cup at arm's length and swatting at his pants.

From inside the cab, the driver, a burly fellow named Evans, smiled. "Sorry," he said. These Cats don't exactly ride like Eldorados."

Despite its massive yellow bulk, and tires almost twice as tall as a man, the Cat 785's cab held only one person, and McFarlane had ended up sitting, cross-legged, on the narrow platform beside it. Directly beneath him, the huge diesel engine snarled. He didn't mind. Today was the day. Today they were going to uncover the meteorite.

He thought back over the last seventy-two hours. The very night they arrived, Glinn had initiated an astonishing process of unloading. It had all happened with ruthless speed and efficiency. By morning, the most incriminating equipment had been moved by heavy equipment to prefab hangars on the island. At the same time, EES workers under Garza and Rochefort had blasted and leveled the beach site, built jetties and breakwaters with riprap and steel, and graded a broad road from the landing site around the snowfield to the meteorite area — the road he was now on. The EES team had also offloaded some of the portable container labs and workspaces and moved them to the staging area, where they had been arranged among rows of Quonset huts.

But as the Caterpillar 785 Hauler rounded the snowfield and approached the staging area, McFarlane saw that the most astonishing change of all had taken place on an escarpment about a mile away. There, an army of workers with heavy equipment had begun gouging out an open pit. A dozen huts had sprouted up along its verge. Periodically, McFarlane could hear an explosive shudder, and clouds of dust would rise into the sky over the pit. A tailings pile was growing to one side, and a leachpond had been built nearby.

"What's going on over there?" McFarlane shouted to Evans over the roar of the engine, pointing to the escarpment.

"Mining."

"I can see that. But what are they mining?"

Evans broke into a grin. "Nada."

McFarlane had to laugh. Glinn was amazing. Anyone looking at the site would think the activity on the escarpment was their real business; the staging area around the meteorite looked like a minor supply dump.

He turned his gaze from the ersatz mine back to the road that lay ahead. The Hanuxa snowfield coruscated, seeming to grab the light and draw it into its depths, turning it to infinite hues of blue and turquoise. The Jaws of Hanuxa stood beyond, their grimness softened by a dusting of fresh snow.

McFarlane hadn't slept at all the night before, and yet he felt almost too wakeful. In less than an hour, they would know. They would see it. They would touch it.

The truck lurched again, and McFarlane tightened his grip on the metal railing with one hand while quickly downing his coffee with the other. It might be sunny for a change, but it was also hellishly cold. He crushed the foam cup and slid it into a pocket of his parka. The big Cat was only slightly less shabby-looking than the Rolvaag itself, but McFarlane could see that this, too, was an illusion: the interior of the cab was brand-new.