After the engines powered down, the side hatch slid open, and the passengers disembarked, crossing the steel deck in the pelting rain.
From his command position, Captain Leighton counted the bodies through water-streaked windows. “Two new arrivals. I hope we have enough room.”
Silently Max Stafford appeared at the captain’s shoulder. “This should be the last of them.”
Down on the tossing deck, the final passenger to disembark was Lex Woods. Itchy, stiff, and tired, she’d paused at the chopper’s hatch before finally stepping onto the slick metal deck. After being plucked from her mountain perch, she’d shuffled from helicopter to private jet to helicopter again, crossing entire continents and vast oceans without benefit of clean clothes, a long bath, or adequate REM sleep. Now that she’d reached what she hoped was her final destination, Lex had little patience left. Whatever billionaire industrialist Charles Weyland had in mind for her, she certainly expected to find out sooner rather than later.
A hot meal wouldn’t hurt either, thought Lex. The last thing she’d ingested, other than the caviar canapes and smokehouse almonds on Weyland’s private jet, had been a Ziploc bag of cold yak jerky back on Khumbu.
After disembarking, Lex quickly caught up with her fellow traveler. Miller, the photo-happy Chem. E., was having trouble finding his sea legs.
“Careful!” Lex cried as she deftly caught the lanky, bespectacled man before he fell. Scrambling to retrieve his suitcase, Miller accidentally kicked it. The case hydroplaned like a hockey puck across the deck’s slick surface, and Lex snatched it up before it tumbled over the side.
“My savior! Thank you,” Miller gushed in unembarrassed gratitude. He gazed at Lex through dewy glasses thicker than the windows on a bathysphere. When Lex handed the young man his suitcase, she noticed his sneakers were already sopping wet.
“You need to find some better shoes.”
Miller shrugged. “I came straight from the office.”
So did I, Lex thought.
Fighting wind and rain, they made their way across the ship, Lex striding and Miller stumbling. Ahead, a sailor waved them forward with a red flashlight, toward metal stairs that led below deck, down into the ship’s hold.
From his position on the bridge, Max Stafford watched, amused, as the stunning Lex walked side by side with the awkward Miller.
“Alexa Woods… unusual first name,” he remarked to Captain Leighton.
It was another man who responded. “She’s named after her father, Colonel Alexander Woods, United States Air Force.”
Captain Leighton turned toward the deep voice to find a muscular man swaggering onto the bridge. Max continued to stare out the window.
The newcomer grinned, an unlit Cuban cigar clenched between his white teeth. Quinn radiated a raw, animal power and usually spoke with testosterone-fueled vulgarity, though his brutishness was blunted by quick wit and an innate intelligence. His sinewy frame and leathery skin reflected his life lived at war with the elements. Prickly stubble lined his square chin, and unruly, sandy-blond hair protruded from the sweat-stained rim of a battered cowboy hat.
Quinn touched the brim in a casual salute to the captain, then sauntered over to join Max Stafford at the window.
The two men stood side by side watching the lovely, athletic African-American woman stride across the pitching deck with perfect balance, oblivious to the storm swirling around her.
“Her old man was a tough bastard with a big reputation on the ice. Probably wanted a son,” said Quinn. After a pause, his jaw muscles clenched. “He got one.”
“Nice toys,” murmured Lex in a stunned breath as she moved farther into the cavernous main hold of the Piper Maru.
Tracked vehicles, heavy lifting and earth-moving machinery, prefabricated shelters, electric generators, hydraulic apparatus, harsh-weather gear, oxygen tanks, saws and handheld digging tools crammed the vast area. Thanks to her father, Lex had already experienced more Antarctic expeditions in her twenty-eight years than most scientists saw in their lifetimes, but she’d never before seen this amount of expensive equipment in one place.
Vehicles—including ten Hagglunds—dominated the deck, while mountains of packing crates were secured to the four walls. Most of the crates were branded with Weyland Industries’ ubiquitous W—the same W that Lex had seen on every damned vehicle, jumpsuit and flight attendant uniform during her trip to this icebreaker.
In one corner of the mammoth hold, Lex noticed a makeshift briefing area. Dozens of folding chairs had been arranged in an unbalanced circle around packing crates piled high enough to create an elevated stage.
Lex estimated there were thirty to forty other passengers milling around the hold, ogling the expedition toys. She divided them into two groups—scientists, of which she was one; and roughnecks, the folks who would be operating the heavy machinery. The latter were a different breed, common in Antarctica and one that Lex was, unfortunately, all too familiar with.
Lashed down in the center of the hold was a pair of enormous vehicles, each roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler. Lex recognized them from her stint as an environmental specialist at the Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. They were self-contained mobile drilling rigs equipped with multi-spectrum sampling labs, though the prototypes at ORNL were nowhere near as advanced as these models. She approached the machines to get a better look. A moment later, Miller appeared at her side, sans luggage and wearing dry clothes.
“That’s some pretty fancy gear over there,” she noted, nodding toward the drilling rigs.
Miller nodded. “Wonder what it does?”
Before Lex had a chance to tell him, someone else did.
“Well,” said Sebastian De Rosa, stepping up to them. “That right there”—he pointed to a collection of pipes on the side of the machine—“is a sophisticated thermal exchanger. So my guess would be some kind of drilling device based around heat.”
Miller raised a finger. “Don’t tell me… physicist?”
“Archaeologist, actually,” said Sebastian. “My colleague Thomas and I have an interest in anything that digs or tunnels.”
“The mystery grows,” Miller said, obviously enjoying every minute of this adventure. “We have a chemical engineer, an archaeologist, and an environmentalist. I even met an Egyptologist over there. So what are we all doing on the same boat?”
Sebastian arched an eyebrow. “I presume one of us is the murderer. That is the tradition, isn’t it?”
Lex smiled, her first since her forced departure from Nepal. She could not help being charmed. When Lex noticed an unusual object dangling from a leather thong around his neck, she asked him, point blank, “What’s with the bottle cap?”
“It’s a valuable archaeological find,” he replied without a trace of irony.
Miller, meanwhile, had become so insatiably curious about the drilling rigs that he climbed a metal ladder to investigate without permission. He stood on top of one machine, then climbed down the opposite side. The cab was unlocked, so Miller hopped behind the wheel and began bouncing around like a kid on a hobby horse.
Suddenly, Miller was surrounded by four large, muscular men wearing battle fatigues. They wore tags that read Verheiden, Boris, Mikkel, and Sven. None of the men was smiling. Instead, they were looming. Sitting between them Miller looked like a thread of dental floss. The biggest man—Verheiden—had a long scar running down his cheek. He thrust his head into the cab and leaned into Miller’s face.