Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Gabriel nodded, taking his shirt off the back of the chair.

“That’s what I figured you’d say.” Gabriel slid his arms back into the shirtsleeves. “How would you fly into Antarctica anyway? Christchurch to McMurdo, and then inland from there?”

“For heaven’s sake, Gabriel,” Michael said. “Surely you’re not considering—”

Gabriel buttoned his shirt and grabbed his jacket. “Considering it? Of course I’m not considering it,” Gabriel said, and Michael sighed with relief. It was short-lived.

“I’ve decided,” Gabriel said.

Chapter 6

The Christchurch pub where Gabriel had arranged to meet the other members of the expedition was—prophetically?—called the Hot Spot and had a jaunty hellfire theme featuring buxom cartoon devil girls and lurid flames on the black walls. The clientele was about a third Kiwi locals and two-thirds Antarctic researchers and McMurdo support staff, either on the way in or on the way out. The ones on the way in were quiet and thoughtful, savoring their last Guinness on tap while working up the nerve to face the killing cold, darkness and isolation of the coming Antarctic winter. The ones on the way out were scruffy, unkempt and pale as the ice they’d just left behind, except for masks of peeling pink sunburn that outlined the shape of now-absent goggles. They were also, without exception, falling-down drunk.

When Gabriel entered, he could see the pub’s inhabitants trying to size him up, attempting to fit him into one of the three categories and failing. He was searching through the curious, occasionally hostile faces, looking for his people, when he overheard the tail end of a loud conversation about a Harley chopper the guy talking had had extensively customized by some celebrity mechanic with his own TV show and air-shipped over from the States. The proud owner was going on and on about all the special expensive features of his brand-new toy and Gabriel smiled slightly to himself. If Rue Aparecido was anywhere within earshot, there would be no way she’d be able to keep out of that conversation.

Sure enough, just as Gabriel spotted the heavily tattooed Kiwi biker who was boasting loudly about his recent acquisition, he heard Rue’s distinct, husky Brazilian accent cut right through the bar noise and chatter.

“Might as well put a saddle on your ninety-year-old grandma and ride her around,” Rue said. “She’d be faster, handle better and be less likely to die under your ass.”

The biker turned and Gabriel followed his gaze to where Rue stood alone against the bar. She was in her early twenties, whippet-thin and wiry with closecropped dark hair, sharp black-coffee eyes and two hundred pounds of attitude packed into her hundred-pound body. The youngest child of a family of ten, she was the only daughter, an unapologetic tomboy with engine grease under her fingernails and utter disdain for anything she saw as frivolous or girly, such as makeup or high heels. Rue was a crackerjack mechanic in love with all things vehicular. Anything that flew, floated or submerged, she could pilot. Anything with wheels, she could drive. And if it broke down, she could fix it with nothing but elbow-grease and sweet talk.

Gabriel grinned in recognition when he saw her. Rue had a heavy sweatshirt tied by the sleeves around her waist. Even in the loose-fitting cargo pants she favored, there was no hiding the one part of her otherwise boyish body that was unabashedly feminine: her round, curvy backside. She’d always been self-conscious about it and habitually tied long-sleeved shirts around her waist to cover it up. Gabriel wasn’t fooled. He’d seen that particular feature up close and personal, without all the layers of tomboy camouflage. It was more than a year ago now, but he still felt a kind of melancholy ache under his sternum when he thought about the time they’d spent together. Today was the first time he’d seen Rue since she’d told him, over a crackling phone line, that long-distance relationships were not something she did, not even for him, and gave him a choice: move in or move on. He’d made the only choice he could, and she’d accepted it and moved on too, with no bad feelings and no looking back. It hadn’t been quite so easy for Gabriel. He’d been of two minds about asking her to join this expedition, but she was the only person he knew who had practical Antarctic experience. She’d done a few summers as a mechanic in the Heavy Shop at McMurdo Station and knew people on the ice who would be able to get them inland with minimal bureaucratic interference. It made all the sense in the world to involve her—but that didn’t make seeing her again any easier.

“What the hell do you know about it?” the biker asked Rue, fi xing her with his beery, bloodshot gaze.

“A hell of a lot more than you, apparently,” Rue replied, taking a swig of her Tui Brew 5 and wiping the foam from her upper lip with her knuckles. “I know well enough not to get my bank account cleaned out by a gang of celebrity babacas who think it’s perfectly acceptable to bend and force their goofy custom parts to fit the frame because they were too stupid to factor in the extra eighth of an inch before powder-coating.”

“Oh yeah,” the biker said, flushing a deep, dangerous crimson. “Let’s see your ride, then.”

“I’ve got a beat-up 99 Suzuki Hayabusa that I’m working on back home in Sao Paulo,” she said with a shrug. “She’ll do 300 kilometers per hour without breaking a sweat, but she doesn’t have bat wings or neon, or a football helmet welded to the frame, so I guess I have no idea what makes a real bad-ass ride. On the other hand, I could race your Malibu Barbie Dream Chopper on roller skates and still leave you in the dust.”

“Well why don’t you then?” the biker asked, taking a threatening step toward Rue, big hands clenching. “Right now, if you think you’re so goddamn clever.”

“I’d love to,” she said with a smirk. “But I can’t stand to see a grown man cry.”

“Why, if you were a bloke, I’d…”

“You’d what?” Gabriel asked, stepping swiftly in between Rue and the biker.

“And who the fuck are you?” the biker asked. “Her bodyguard?”

“Nah,” replied Millie Ventrose, rising suddenly out of the crowd like the calm eye of a storm. “That’d be me.”

Maximillian Ventrose, Jr., Millie to his friends, was the second team member Gabriel had come here to meet. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with twelve-inch fists and a boxer’s profile under his faded Saints cap, he stood six foot seven barefoot and looked like he could wrestle an alligator one handed without spilling his coffee. But there was a profound, Zen-like calm about him that ran contrary to his thuggish features and massive physique. He’d grown up in Chalmette, Louisiana, just southeast of New Orleans, and his deep, soft voice with its odd, almost Brooklynesque Yat accent possessed a mysterious power to smooth over even the most heated disagreements. Of course, anyone drunk, cranked or foolish enough to resist the calming power of Millie’s warm molasses voice was swiftly made to change his mind about fighting through more direct means. Usually by way of the local emergency room.

“That your chopper out front?” Millie asked.

“Yeah,” the biker replied. “You got something to say about it too?”

“That a Baker right-hand drive six-speed trans you got on there?” Millie asked.

“Hell, yeah,” the biker replied. “Gives her better balance with the fat tires. ’Course it costs twice as much as the standard left-hand drive, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Really?” Millie asked, nodding thoughtfully and stepping to one side, subtly pulling the biker’s focus away from Rue. “Ain’t that somethin’.”