“The skipper got a call on the radio five minutes ago. Chopper’s half an hour out.” Symonds took a sip of coffee, peering across her mug with narrow eyes. “I’ve been working in these lofty latitudes for almost ten years, and I’ve never seen a chopper fly out to pluck someone off the ice who wasn’t about to keel over from botulism or some such thing.” She took another sip of coffee, then gave Moon a mock toast with the mug. “You must really rate.” Her eyes shifted quickly from side to side, and then she leaned over the table and whispered, “Are you a secret agent?”
“More likely that I’m in trouble,” Moon said.
“Maybe.” Symonds looked into her coffee, then up to meet Moon’s gaze. “Do you really think there was someone down there, under the ice? A Russian submarine or something?”
“I know what I heard,” Moon said. “And it wasn’t farting fish like Thorson says.”
The part about the noises sounding like Chinese seemed like something Moon should keep to herself.
“And you don’t think it was ice? That stuff screams like a banshee all night long.”
“Like you said, it’s weird that they’re sending a helicopter,” Moon said. “Maybe I heard a secret lab under the ice and they’re taking me somewhere to keep me quiet.”
Symonds laughed at that. “Maybe,” she said. “You ever think about how in the movies, when some spy or military dude messes up, really screws the pooch I mean, and the uppity-ups banish him to a science station in Alaska? We must be a couple of first-rate brainiacs, coming, what, five hundred miles off the Arctic Circle of our own free will…”
Moon lowered her voice. “Sometimes I think those uppity-ups only say they’re banishing the guy to the North Pole for punishment when what they really mean is they’re dumping his body down a mine shaft somewhere.”
“Like my dad when he told me my dog was in a better place?”
Moon brandished the oatmeal spoon to make her point. “Exactly like that.”
Another crewman stuck his head in the wardroom and twirled his finger in the air. “Captain says you should get out on the ice,” he said. “Your chariot is fifteen out and they don’t want to put down where the ice is chewed up next to the boat.”
“They were half an hour out five minutes ago,” Symonds said.
Moon got up with a groan, gathering her anorak and duffel. “I get it,” she said. “Choppers burn a shitload of fuel every minute. Can’t blame them if they would rather have me waiting on the ice for them rather the other way around.”
“Maybe,” Symonds said. It was her favorite word. She set her mug on the table and stood with Moon. “You’ll need a polar-bear guard. I’ll get the twelve-gauge and come with. Skipper saw two yesterday morning before the weather got bad, chowing down on an adolescent walrus they’d managed to nab off a haul out.”
“I saw the photos,” Moon said.
“Brutal to the bone, right?” Symonds said. “The snow was slathered in blood and gore. One look at that shit is enough to make me never venture onto the ice without the shotgun.”
“You really think any self-respecting polar bear is going to stick around between us and an approaching helicopter?”
Symonds shrugged and gave Moon a wink.
“Maybe.”
The gray twin-engine UH-1Y Venom “Super Huey” helicopter kicked a cloud of white into the air as it settled on thick ice fifty yards from the ship. The pilots kept the rotor spinning while a callow Marine bundled up like the Michelin Man beckoned Moon toward the open side hatch.
She ducked instinctively as she approached, though the rotors were well above her head.
“Dr. Moon?” the Marine shouted above the whumping blades and whining engine. She exaggerated her nod in the big parka ruff. Satisfied that she was the person he’d come for, he waved her aboard. She tried to thank him, but he shook his head, tapping the earmuffs on the side of his helmet and then pointing to another helmet and earphones hanging by one of the vis-à-vis seats inside the otherwise empty cabin.
Moon frowned at the thought of being the only passenger. She’d been only half kidding about the possibility of getting dumped down a mine shaft — or, in this case, into the Arctic Ocean.
In addition to the heavy flight suit, cranial protection, and goggles, the crew chief wore a load-bearing vest that included a sidearm — presumably polar-bear defense if they went down. Moon stifled a smile at the thought. A nine-millimeter pistol was better than your teeth and fingernails against a nine-foot bear who considered you food, but not by much. A cable attached to a line inside the cabin was clipped to the young Marine’s safety harness, allowing him to move around the cabin with relative freedom. He helped her put on the four-point harness in one of the forward-facing seats, then had her don the helmet. He pushed the tiny boom mic closer to her mouth.
His voice came over the intercom. “Copy?”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Five by five.”
