“We thought about putting it down in the ocean and rowing ashore,” Lawrence joked.
“That might’ve been a bit smoother.” It was remarkable that the jet had been able to land at all on the rutted, pockmarked strip of broken asphalt posing as a runway.
“Frost heaving,” Dunning grumbled. “The frozen water in the pavement — pretty shitty pavement to begin with — opens up potholes and sinks. From the looks of this place, I don’t think they’re too used to routine maintenance.”
Only three other aircraft could be seen on the airfield, and none of them looked recently used.
The westerly winds had abated, but the thick overcast persisted and the amount of sunlight had been diminishing with each passing day. The sea was dull and humorless, too shallow and broken by weathered boulders to permit a landing by the Lansing or any large vessel. Ten miles to the north and just visible around the point were two offshore drilling platforms — a sign of the not-too-distant future as foreign owned oil companies began plundering the oil and gas reserves of the South Atlantic. Garner couldn’t help but uneasily muse that, if the rigs were successful in their exploration, there would be cause and money enough to build a proper airport here. The local population could triple in size and the ripple effects of this economic boon would only have to traverse Drake Passage to reach Antarctica and its unsuspecting population of three million fur seals and 180 million Adelie penguins.
“You ready?” Zubov asked as the last of Medusa’s gear was securely stowed in the Jetstar.
“Wind’s picking up,” Lawrence said. “Better to go now than risk it later.”
“Let’s go,” Garner said.
The flight range of the modified Jetstar was twenty-five hundred miles, meaning that they would have to make at least four, and probably five, refueling stops — the last of these likely being Churchill, Manitoba, on the western edge of Hudson Bay, or Cape Dorset, on Baffin Island.
There, Garner and Zubov would transfer to a chartered helicopter for the trip to the rendezvous point with the crew of the Phoenix. Until then, Garner and Zubov were free to rest, sleep, or eat and the plane’s Airfones would be available for calls to arrange the shipment of more equipment to the Phoenix.
With the cargo stowed and the flight plan set, Garner and Zubov settled into two of the four leather seats in the truncated passenger compartment. Garner hated takeoffs, second only to landings. The sounds of the aircraft’s cargo compartment thudding shut and the clanking from below as Lawrence pulled the chocks away from the wheels and climbed aboard were unnerving. The increase in the noise from the jet engines as the aircraft began to taxi, shuddering and halting as it passed over the potholes and fractured pavement beneath its wheels, was even more unnerving. A final hesitation, then the Jetstar began to pick up speed, the jolts from the landing gear coming faster and faster. Outside, the flat gray line of the sea rolled past the window, broken only by the fractured bedrock that lined the edge of the runway.
To Garner, the cold, bleak water seemed to lurk out there, like a hungry shark waiting for the Jetstar to overshoot the end of the runway and topple into the ocean. The airplane’s fuselage shook as though it were beginning to come apart, and Garner focused on his hands as they gripped the armrests of his seat.
“What the hell?” Zubov muttered from across the aisle. “Are we gonna drive there?”
With a final crescendo of thumps, the Jetstar lifted from the primitive runway, then banked toward their first refueling point, nineteen hundred miles north on the eastern coast of Brazil.
Zubov called forward to the pilots.
“I hope Sao Paulo has something better than that.”
“Until we get back to the States, the stops ahead of us will make “Stanley International’ look like LAX,” Dunning called back. He was still looking for an apology.
Zubov gave Garner a mock look of terror.
“Oh… my… God,” he said, his eyes wide. He knew that joking about Garner’s aversion to heights was more therapeutic than dwelling seriously on it. Garner himself wasn’t entirely without a sense of humor about his affliction; he had even christened his live-aboard sailboat in Friday Harbor, Washington, the Albatross.
Before they had even reached cruising altitude, Zubov unbuckled his seat belt, stretched his bulky form with a dramatic yawn, then moved back to the plane’s modest galley to plunder the wellstocked refrigerator. He returned and plopped heavily into the seat beside Garner, his arms piled high with snacks and miniature liquor bottles.
“Want something?” Zubov asked, nodding his head at the cornucopia of junk food in his arms. “Chee-tos? Snickers? Tanqueray?” A pair of bread sticks stuck out of his bearded mouth like walrus tusks.
Garner glanced at the offering, then shook his head and turned back to the window. His face had grown noticeably paler since he strapped himself into his seat and that seat had become airborne.
Zubov laughed at his friend’s expression.
“Man, the trouble you won’t go through to satisfy that woman.”
“It’s not the flying—” Garner began his familiar mantra.
“I know, I know,” Zubov said.
“It’s not the flying, it’s the altitude.”
“But the two go together so damn well. Like Oreos and milk. Like beer and pretzels.”
He puffed out his chest and changed his voice to a dramatic baritone.
“Like Brock Garner and danger.”
Garner shot his friend a sharp look, then turned back to the window.
Zubov burst out laughing at his own joke, then pushed most of a chocolate bar into his mouth.
“It’s funny, man,” he said.
“Sure, a phobia is a phobia. I’m scared of women with hairy legs. But you? Charles Lindbergh would give up flying after some of the shit you’ve flown through.” Small planes, jetliners, helicopters Zubov knew that circumstance had forced his friend reluctantly onto all of them, only to let fate deal him an unflagging assortment of mechanical failures, bad weather, and ill-timed circumstance intent upon trying to produce a crash.
“Hell, if the Wright Brothers had you for a passenger, we’d still be riding bicycles.”
“I know, Serg,” Garner said.
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“But you should,” Zubov continued. “Because you’ve walked away every time. You’re like a cat with seven lives.”
“Nine lives,” Garner said automatically.
“For you, I’d say seven,” Zubov said.
“Shut up, Serg.”
For the next hour, the two men sketched out a list of materials and contacts to be called as soon as the Airfones were in range of North American airspace. They speculated on the logistics of getting all this gear to the Phoenix in two days or less, then worked out a series of compromises and contingencies. At the moment, neither of them knew what to expect; anything they could scrounge would be better than nothing at all.
Zubov yawned again and stretched out across a bench seat along the rear of the cabin. Despite the mild turbulence that rocked the plane and the constant, muffled roar of the engines mounted aft on the fuselage, he was asleep within minutes, adding his own nasal drone to the overall dissonance.
Seeing the sea slip by far below was only one source of Garner’s current displeasure. He hated sitting there, hated being strapped bolt upright into the narrow seat with almost nothing to do for the next day and a half. He didn’t want to sleep, or eat, or read — not just yet, anyway.
Without Zubov’s animated distraction, Garner realized he was stuck there, alone with his thoughts. It was a place he generally tried to avoid.