He clenched his own teeth to keep them from chattering. Fighting forces far beyond his control, and realizing that he might be responsible for saving billions of lives, was not pleasant, but it drove him to stay the course against the screaming wind and stinging ice. What frightened him most was the prospect of driving into a crevasse that was impossible to see before it was too late. The sane thing to do was to slow the Snow Cruiser to a snail's crawl and send Giordino ahead to test the ice, but besides risking his friend's life, it would have cost them precious time, and time was an extravagance they did not have. His numbed right foot could no longer move up and down on the accelerator pedal, so he kept it fully pressed down, frozen in place to the floorboard.
Their drive across that deceptive and treacherous ice field had turned into a freezing nightmare.
There was no point of no return. It was finish the mission or die. The shrieking fury of the ice storm showed no signs of diminishing. Pitt wiped the thickening veneer of ice from the instrument panel at last. The temperature gauge needles were slowly dropping out of the red now. But if he and Giordino wanted to reach their destination without further interruption, the needles would have to fall another twenty degrees.
He was a blind man in a world of the blind. He was even denied a sense of touch. His hands and legs soon went numb, with all feeling lost. His body no longer felt a part of him and refused to respond to his commands. He found it next to impossible to breathe. The bitter cold seared his lungs. The thickening of the blood, the chill seeping through his skin, the stinging pain that was torturing his flesh, despite the insulation of his clothing, drained his strength. He never knew a man could freeze to death so fast. It required a concentrated effort of willpower not to give in and order Giordino to close the door. His bitterness against failing was as strong as the terrible wind.
Pitt had stared the grim reaper in the face before, and he had spat on him. As long as he was still breathing and able to think straight, he still had a chance. If only the wind would die. He knew that storms could vanish as quickly as they were born. Why can't this one die? he implored no one but himself. A horrible emptiness settled over him. His vision was darkening around the edges of his eyes, and still those vexing needles hadn't wavered into the normal temperature range.
He did not exist by any preposterous illusion of hope. He believed in himself and in Giordino and in luck. The Almighty could come along, too, if He was agreeable. Pitt had no wish to welcome the great beyond with open arms. He'd always believed he'd have to be dragged away by either angels or demons, fighting to the end. The jury was still out on whether his good virtues outweighed the bad. The only undeniable, uncontested reality was that he had little to say in the matter and was within minutes of freezing into a block of ice.
If there was a purpose for adversity, Pitt was damned if he knew what it was. Somewhere beyond it all, he stepped from being a mere mortal to a man outside himself. His mind was still clear, still capable of weighing the odds and the consequences. He pushed back the dark nightmare that was closing in on him. Suffering and foreboding no longer had meaning for him. He refused to accept an inevitable end. Any thought of dying became abhorrent and stillborn.
He almost gave way to an overpowering instinct to throw in the towel and surrender, but steeled himself to hold out another ten minutes. There was never a doubt in his mind that he and Giordino would see it through together, nor was there a moment of panic. Save the engines, save himself, and then save the world. That was the line of priority. He rubbed the frost from his glasses and saw that the needles on the gauge were falling faster and rapidly approaching their normal operating temperature.
Twenty more seconds, he told himself, then another twenty. What was the old ditty, "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall"? Then came relief and exultation, as the temperature gauges registered nearly normal again.
There was no need to shout through the hatch down to Giordino in the engine compartment. The little Italian sensed when the time was ripe by placing a hand momentarily on the top of a radiator. He slammed shut the door, sealing off the frightful force of wind and ice, but not before throwing the interior heater switches as high as they could go. Then he rushed up to the control cabin and roughly pulled Pitt from behind the steering wheel.
"You've done enough for the cause," he said, troubled at seeing Pitt so close to death from hypothermia. "I'll help you down to the engine compartment where you can warm up."
"The Snow Cruiser…" Pitt barely murmured through frozen lips. "Don't let it wander."
"Don't burden yourself. I can drive this mechanical mastodon as well as you."
After setting Pitt on the floor between the big diesels where he could get warm again, Giordino climbed back into the icy control cabin, sat behind the steering wheel, and engaged first gear. Within sixty seconds, he had the grand vehicle boring through the storm once again at twenty-four miles an hour.
The consistent knock of the diesels, running smoothly once again, was more than music to Pitt's ears, it was a symbol of renewed hope. Never in his entire life had anything ever felt so good as the warmth that emanated from the engines and was absorbed by his half-frozen body. His blood soon thinned and circulated again, and he allowed himself he luxury of simply relaxing for half an hour while Giordino held the Wheel.
Almost morbidly, he began to wonder, had the special military force landed? Were they lost and dying in the same treacherous blizzard?
39
Painted in a charcoal gray with no markings but a small American flag on the vertical stabilizer, the McDonnell Douglas C-17 soared above an ocean of pearl-white clouds blanketing the glaring ice of Antarctica like a giant, featherless pterodactyl over a Mesozoic landscape.
Air Force Captain Lyle Stafford was quite at home in his cockpit office flying over the frozen continent. Normally, he flew back and forth between Christchurch, New Zealand, and the American ice stations scattered around Antarctica, transporting scientists, equipment, and supplies. This trip they had been abruptly pressed into service to fly the hurriedly assembled assault teams to the Ross Ice Shelf and drop them over the Destiny Enterprises mining facility.
Stafford looked more like a public relations director than a pilot. Graying hair neatly trimmed, always ready with a smile, he was always volunteering to help out Air Force service and charity organizations. On most flights, he read a book, while his copilot, Lieutenant Robert Brannon, a long-boned Californian whose knees came halfway to his chin when he was seated, tended the controls and instruments. Almost reluctantly, he glanced from his book, The Einstein Papery by Craig Dirgo, out his side window and then at the Global Positioning System display.
"Time to go back to work," he announced, putting aside the book. He turned and smiled at Major Tom Cleary, who sat perched on a stool behind the pilots. "It's almost time to begin prebreathing, Major, and acclimate yourselves to the oxygen."
Cleary stared through the windshield over the pilot's heads, but all he saw was cloud cover. He assumed that a corner of the Ross Ice Shelf was looming unseen ahead and below the aircraft. "How's my time?"
Stafford nodded at the instrument panel. "We'll be over your release point in one hour. Are your men ready and eager?"
"Ready, maybe, but I'd hardly describe them as eager. They've all jumped from a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet at one time or another, but not while it was traveling at four hundred miles an hour. We're used to feeling the aircraft slow down before the ramp lowers."