Jack Du Brul - Pandora's curse

Stepping from the shower, Raeder realized that Gunther had never questioned one of his orders. He was thinking like a Nazi thug and Raeder worried that, once his special-projects director reached Greenland, he would become even more defiant. When this operation was over, he hoped Rath would again return to normal. But for as long as it took to erase part of Kohl’s Nazi past, Raeder would have to keep a tight rein if he wanted to avoid bloodshed.

Mercer was sitting on his bed, going over the computer maps from their survey, when the dormitory’s main door crashed open. Though his room was at the far end of the structure, he felt a noticeable temperature drop.

“Mercer! Mercer!” Marty Bishop shouted. “Are you in here?”

“Back here,” Mercer called.

“Thank God. Igor’s dead.”

Stunned by those words, Mercer’s guts gave a hollow slide. Igor dead? Injury or even death wasn’t unheard of in the dangerous world of polar exploration, but Igor Bulgarin? He was the most experienced person in the camp. Somehow, Mercer was not surprised it was the big Russian. Coming on the heels of their discovery of Major Delaney yesterday and Mercer’s findings this morning, he knew something was very wrong with this entire expedition. It being Igor who died seemed like the appropriate third link in a chain of bizarre events.

Quickly, before his thoughts became clouded, Mercer set aside his personal feelings of loss and suspicion. There would be time for that later. His relaxing, don’t-need-to-be-in-charge vacation was over. Marty’s coming to him in such an obvious panic meant that the leadership of the Surveyor’s Society team was about to shift to him. Mercer didn’t hesitate. He owed it to Igor and he owed it to the Surveyor’s Society. He was on his feet and zipping up his coat by the time Bishop appeared at his bedroom door.

“What happened?” His voice crackled with the authority he’d intentionally hidden from the others.

Marty paused, looking Mercer in the eye. For an instant he resisted answering, knowing that he was supposed to be in charge and should be demanding explanations. Yet he had rushed here, pushed by instinct, to report their discovery to the man who was the natural leader of the group. He could not sustain Mercer’s steady gaze, and rather than resentment, his voice was filled with gratitude.

“When we went into Camp Decade this morning, Bern Hoffmann and I found there had been a cave-in overnight. Part of the roof collapsed in the main corridor, right beyond the area that was already partially blocked by snow. Remember where we had to crawl to get to the barracks and officers’ quarters?” Mercer nodded. “Just past there, about ten feet of the hallway was filled floor to ceiling with ice and snow. We were using shovels to clear away the mess when we found Igor at the bottom of the pile. He must have been right under the avalanche when the ceiling let go. He was frozen solid.”

“Show me.”

Outside, the sun was hidden by clouds so thick there were no shadows. The wind was a raw force that knifed its way through the few gaps in Mercer’s Arctic clothing. He drew his hood tighter and refastened the Velcro at his sleeves to prevent the icy air from reaching inside his gloves. He snapped a lead from the safety line to his coat and began trudging across the snow toward Camp Decade’s entrance. It was impossible to hold a conversation in these conditions, so Marty walked silently in his footprints.

Mercer’s mind raced with speculation. Because Igor had the room next to his, Mercer had heard him leaving the dormitory in the middle of the night. Assuming he was headed for a late-night snack or possibly a romantic encounter, Mercer had quickly fallen back asleep. When he awoke, Igor wasn’t in his room and Mercer guessed he’d already gone to the mess for breakfast. He put the incident out of his mind, working instead on a problem he’d discovered with their subsurface radar survey.

Now the Russian meteorite hunter was dead, killed by an avalanche that shouldn’t have happened in a section of the camp he had no right to be in. Mercer couldn’t shake the feeling that, had he questioned Igor last night, Bulgarin wouldn’t be dead this morning. There were a great many deaths on Mercer’s conscience, mostly trapped miners he’d been unable to rescue, but there were others too. Soldiers. Refugees. Friends. And even without knowing the full truth yet, he added Igor Bulgarin to the list.

Behind him, Marty shouted for him to slow down but Mercer ignored him, lengthening his stride in a futile race to reach the Sno-Cat poised above the tunnel. A race Igor had already lost.

Mercer didn’t pause before climbing into the waiting bucket and lowering himself into the ice. Marty would have to recall the makeshift elevator when he reached the ’Cat. He leapt from the bucket as soon as it touched bottom, his boots splashing through accumulated meltwater.

“Hold on,” Marty called down from the rim of the shaft.

“Start the topside pump,” Mercer shouted savagely. “There’s too much water down here. You should have done it first thing this morning.”

When he reached the second set of doors, he heard the low thrum of a portable generator running somewhere in the maze of the complex. Mercer cursed under his breath, fury sparking behind his slate eyes. He checked his watch and calculated that Marty and Bern had been working down here for a few hours.

At the first intersection he turned right and saw the glow from several portable spotlights rigged to the ceiling farther down the corridor. The sound of a small generator grew with each step toward the light. So did the reek of exhaust.

The young German didn’t hear Mercer approach. He was at the far side of the generator shoveling chunks of ice and compacted snow into an empty office. Mercer grabbed up a flashlight left on the floor next to the portable generator and flicked off the gasoline-powered engine. The floodlights dimmed to orange before failing completely. The beam from Mercer’s flashlight was nearly swallowed by the darkness.

“Who’s there? Who shut off the generator?” Hoffmann peered into the flashlight.

Mercer fought to keep his anger in check. “Get the hell out of here right now. This drive is fouled with carbon monoxide.” Unconsciously Mercer switched to the vernacular of hard-rock mining, where a tunnel was called a drive.

“Didn’t Mr. Bishop tell you? Igor’s dead.”

“And you will be too if you don’t get out of here.” Mercer grabbed Bern by his collar, heaving him to his feet, where he swayed for a moment, pressing his gloved hand against a wall to hold himself steady.

“Whoa.” He slammed his eyes as a blinding headache raged inside his skull.

“Your lungs are full of gas. Didn’t you smell it?”

“ Ja, but I thought we’d be okay.”

Bern could barely stand, so Mercer continued to drag him by his jacket, maneuvering him toward the exit. In the spill of light coming from the surface, his face was gray and his eyes weeped. The fresh cold air made him cough in fits so powerful that he vomited.

“Marty,” Mercer yelled up the shaft. “Where’s Ira?”

“During breakfast Greta asked him to help fix the engine on one of the Sno-Cats.”

That explained why these two had been so stupid. Ira Lasko would have known not to run a generator inside the base. Because carbon monoxide was heavier than air, the gas had pooled where the men were working and had been slowly suffocating them. In a sense, Mercer saw that Igor Bulgarin had saved their lives. Had Marty not gone to get him, he and Hoffmann would have been asphyxiated as they attacked the blockage, and their corpses would have been found next to the Russian’s.