The Silent Sea (2010) - Cussler Clive - Страница 40

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Linda climbed stiffly from her perch and remained silent until she made her way to the station's main door to verify the snowcat was gone. Linc and Mark appeared by the time she returned to the rec room.

I heard shooting, Linc said, concern corrugating his broad forehead. Are you okay?

She nodded. It was a close call, but yeah. Where'd you guys hide?

I just laid down next to one of the bodies, Mark said. The guy checking the room didn't give me a second look.

I was in the back of a closet under a pile of clothes. I think they were pretty spooked by what they saw. Their search was cursory.

I know how they feel, Linda agreed, trying not to think about the grisly tableau around her. Linc, you said you found something in the vehicle shed?

Yeah, but you'll need to see it for yourself.

With their masks back in place, the three of them trooped along the staked trail to the arch-roofed building. The door still flapped in the wind, a metronomic rattle that was the base's only sign of life. The power was out, and the garage was so heavily shadowed that the back wall was lost in the gloom. Their flashlights cast brilliant beams that cut the murk like lasers. The two snowcats looked like a hybrid cross between tanks and passenger vans. The tops of the studded Caterpillar tracks came up to Linda's thigh. Bright orange paint covered the bodywork so they could be easily spotted out in the snowfields behind the station.

Over here. Linc led them to a workbench along the side of the garage.

Amid the usual clutter tools, oil cans, and frozen rags was a trunk measuring three feet in length. Linc opened the lid.

It took Linda a moment to understand what she was seeing. There was another body in the trunk, but, unlike the others, it had clearly been dead and exposed to the elements for some time. It was more mummy than corpse, and much of the face had been eaten away by scavengers before the body became too frozen to eat. Its clothing was unfamiliar. It wasn't dressed in contemporary arctic gear but rather a padded jacket of brown wool and pants too thin for the environment. The hat perched atop frozen black hair looked odd. It had two peaks and a short brim.

I'd say this guy's been down here for a hundred years or more, Mark said as he examined the body.

Linda said, Maybe a whaler who got lost over the side of his ship?

Could be. Mark looked at Linc. Did you go through his pockets?

Not me, man. I took one look and closed the lid. But our missing man sure did.

Linda had forgotten they hadn't accounted for all fourteen members of Wilson/George. You found Andy Gangle?

Is that the dude's name? He's at the back of the garage. And he is messed up.

Andy had taken his own life in the end, driven to suicide by the same madness that made him kill his companions. He had sat down, with his back against a rack of spare tools, and pulled so hard on his lower jaw that he'd nearly broken it loose. He'd died, either from exposure or blood loss, with his fist stuffed into his mouth as if he were trying to get at whatever affected his brain.

Something glinted brightly in his other hand. Mark pried it from the stiff fingers. It was a piece of gold, misshapen now, but at one point it had to have been ornamental. There was a hammer on the floor next to Gangle's body. When Mark shone his light on it, he could see where bits of gold had transferred to the head.

He smashed it with this hammer?

Why?

Why'd he do any of this? He was sick.

What was it?

Hard to tell. A figurine of some sort.

Is it pure gold?

I'd say at least two pounds. Say, thirty thousand dollars. Mark peered into a knapsack that also was within Gangle's reach. It made a sound like broken glass scraping together when he lifted it. He peered inside, then dumped the contents on the floor.

It was impossible to know what had been in the bag originally because all that fell out was opaque greenish sand and small bits of similar-colored rock. Like with the golden statuette, Andy Gangle had hammered at something until all that remained was dust and fragments no bigger than a thumbnail.

There was also an odd tube made of what looked like cast bronze in the bag. One end was closed off and the other was shaped like a dragon's open mouth. The body of the tube was scalloped to resemble a dragon's scaly skin. Mark examined it more closely.

This is a pistol.

What?

Look, here at the closed end there's a small hole for a wick or taper. It's a single-shot muzzle-loading pistol.

Looks Chinese, with the dragon and all.

And ancient, Linda added. I assume all this stuff, whatever it was, goes with our mystery friend in the box?

That's my read, Linc replied.

Weird, Mark opined.

Linc asked, What now?

Report our findings back to the Oregon so we can let the CIA know what happened. My guess is, Overholt will want us to pay a visit to the Argentine base to see what's happening there. In the briefing material I read, it said no one has laid an eye on their facility in two years. I say we anticipate him and head out on our own.

I'm not walking thirty miles across Antarctica, Mark griped.

Linda tapped the front of the nearest snowcat. Neither am I.

After making a radio call to their ship and fulfilling Dr. Huxley's request for tissue and blood samples from Andy Gangle and the mummy in the trunk, it took almost an hour to get one of the big vehicles fired up. Without electricity for the plug-in engine warmer, the oil had turned as viscous as tar. It had to be drained and warmed over a camp stove twice since the first time it cooled too quickly to crank the motor. Despite his nerd chic, Mark Murphy was a nimble mechanic.

Heat from the snowcat's ventilators was a welcome breath, and only a few miles from Wilson/George it was warm enough for them to unzip their outer parkas and remove the heavy mittens over their Gore-Tex gloves. Linc drove, and Linda relinquished the shotgun seat to Murph.

She decided they should circle out into the snowy expanse behind the base and approach the Argentine camp from the east. Compasses were useless this close to the South Pole, but the snowcat was equipped with satellite navigation. This, too, was a little spotty because the constellation of satellites used for triangulation was often hidden by the horizon. The system was not developed with polar navigation in mind. There were base relay stations to aid GPS, but most of them were on the other side of the continent where most of the research bases were located.

The landscape was an unbroken vista of white. Even the distant mountains were still covered in winter ice. Some would melt as the spring thaw deepened to reveal gray granite slopes, but for now they towered under a mantle of frozen snow.

Unlike other areas of Antarctica, where the ice was miles thick, there was little chance of driving into hidden crevasses here, so Linc drove fast, the crawler treads having little difficulty hauling them across the wind-scarred surface.

It's believed, Mark said to cut the boredom, that the mountains to our left are a continuation of the Andes in South America. He stayed quiet when no one engaged him.

Three hours of monotonous driving found them two miles behind the Argentine research station. Given the militaristic nature of the current regime in Buenos Aires, they expected there would be perimeter security of some kind, most likely patrols on snow machines. Linda judged two miles was close enough. From here, they would proceed on foot.

Linda and Linc tightened up their arctic clothing. Mark was to remain with the snowcat so he could start the engine occasionally to keep it warm and also to be able to move it if trouble approached. They grabbed up their weapons and leapt to the ice. It was dark but the clouds had moved on, allowing the moon's glow to glitter off the snow.

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