“To stop World War Three.”
Olivia’s breath was coming out of her in gusts of excitement. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She was talking rapidly into her recorder, kicking snow off what appeared to be concrete underneath the thin layer of ice.
The others were doing the same. Men with small spades walking about the perimeter that has now been marked with yellow tape like a crime scene.
“And in a sense, it was a crime scene of sorts,” said Olivia into her recorder.
“Come on, let’s find the entrance,” Miller said to Friedman. “There’s got to be a way in around here.”
Friedman started digging in a spot some meters away from Olivia. The other men joined them. Olivia took photos of them. She discovered after taking the photo that Ted Cooper was not in it.
Ted was at the other angle of the square. He was on his knees, scraping with his hands, his spade lying beside him on the snow. Ted had rolled his sleeves up, his hairy hands working furiously.
Olivia took pictures of him. He heard the click and looked her way.
He waved her over.
Olivia walked over to him on shaking legs. She could not believe much of what was going on.
“Here, this place, I think we could go in through here,” he puffed. “Come on, take photos of me digging.”
Olivia shook her head. “Seriously?”
“Come on, this is my moment.”
After a moment, when Olivia thought the man was a man in a boy's body, she took the photos. Ted Cooper opened up a hole in the snow. He picked his spade and started using the pointed edge to chip at the ice.
Beneath the ice Olivia could make the outline of what appeared to be, not concrete like what the others have found, but the head of a hatch. If the ice could be broken, the hatch could be opened and then from there they could gain entrance.
In order to be sure, she held Ted’s digging hand. “Wait, do you know what that is?”
“No, what?”
Olivia brought her face closer. She saw clearer when Ted’s shadow blocked the sun.
“It’s what I thought.” She got up, dusted snow from her trousers. “It’s a hatch.”
“I know.”
Ted started cutting with his spade.
“Guys, Ted’s found something!” Olivia called out.
They marked out what amounted to two times the size of a regular football pitch.
Peter Williams and Anabia Nassif dug the left long side of the perimeter, while Victor Borodin and Liam Murphy continued on the right side where they had been digging.
Itay Friedman and Frank Miller set up sensors in the measured distance in the middle of the perimeter, to discern depth and material.
Ted Cooper had now broken thought the ice and was working the lock on the hatch. It was rusty with age, oxidation, and stiff from lack of use.
Olivia Newton got her notes and wrote drafts of her paper. She took relevant photos as the men worked. Nicolai had commenced his singing of home in mother Russia. He drank vodka from a clear bottle.
Olivia asked him about the song he was singing. And then she eyed the bottle of vodka.
Glassy-eyed, the Russian said it was a song from the war. Russians in the concentration camps Oswiecim, as the Germans called the place in Poland, sang it in memory of the news of who got taken.
“It is an old song from wartime,” Nicolai explained. “They call it the ‘Juden Song.’”
Olivia wrote the words:
“Long may you live, O Juden
Though death your hand has taken,
And love the world’s forsaken,
Still long may you live, O Juden.”
That was when it happened.
Ted Cooper got the turning cap of the hatch to move only about a quarter of an inch and it stopped. He reasoned that since the metal was crusty up here, it may also be flaky underneath.
He decided perhaps the smart thing to do was weaken the joint by forcing friction on it. He climbed on the hatch and began jumping up and down on it. It made a muffled sound that ended in choked echoes down under.
The others glanced up from their digging, gave the professor a hasty glance, and went back to work.
Nicolai had started singing another song, eyes closed, his mouth twisted in a doleful serenade. Olivia watched Peter. Slowly, she started walking towards the man.
“Stop,” he said.
Ted Cooper was sweating though the temperature had dropped below -40 °C since they arrived at the site. He jumped higher every time and he tried to double his force with every thump.
“Ted?”
Olivia dropped her notebook, her hands reaching out as if to grab the professor. The echoing sound had deepened but the man didn’t notice it. Olivia could, though she could not understand how she knew, that any second now, Ted Cooper was going to cave in with it.
“Ted, stop!”
Ted Cooper’s eyes bulged in surprise as the hatch caved in under his feet. His mouth froze in disbelief as the ice broke under him in a circle of about two meters wide. He turned his head just in time to see Olivia flying through the air, her hands seeking his flailing arm.
Their hands grasped each other in the air and they fell.
The ice around Ted Cooper’s feet fell away. His feet dangled over a dark hole. Falling debris and ice made flat, distant sounds at the bottom where they shattered.
“Oh shit! Oh shit!” Ted screamed.
Olivia cried out too. “Help!!”
Someone grabbed her by the waist as she felt herself slip off the ice towards the gaping hole, pulled by Ted’s weight. It was Nicolai. He too called for help. The others quickly grabbed hold and a human rope was formed.
Ted and Olivia were dragged to safety.
“Oh Jesus.” Ted trembled.
Somewhere on the west coast of the ice shelf of Antarctica, another expedition had arrived.
Ten snowmobiles painted green and brown, the color of elite Argentine special forces. At two miles from their target the leading snowmobile stopped. Special visors went on the masked face of one of the soldiers, he being the leader.
“Target is two miles, sir,” he spoke in Spanish into a talkie.
A voice squawked in clear English, “This mission is a go, approach at your own discretion. Stop trespassers on contact. Detain until advised otherwise.”
“Copy that, Admiral.”
The soldier twirled his right index finger in the air. The regiment moved again.
Admiral Anton Huebner made sure there was no one in sight before receiving the call. He discharged his exec and went down to his quarters around the same time that Ted Cooper’s feet were flailing over the open mouth of the hole he had created in the ice.
Everything was timed.
There was a knock on his door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and the exec was there. “Admiral, we have a radio communication from OttoII, sir. They request an explanation for our delay, sir.”
Huebner tucked his talkie away and directed the exec to move. In the coms room the officers there stared at the admiral in confusion.
“Turn off all coms,” he ordered. “We are going radio silent.”
Then he turned to the exec.
“We are watching these waters for a while.”
The exec saluted. The admiral looked at the four officers in the communication room. They understood what was expected of them and they saluted. But when Vasquez went down to the ship's quarters there was trouble.
A mutiny was underway, led by lieutenant Juelz.
It ended in blood, as quietly as it began.
Admiral Huebner was ready for it. He shot Juelz himself and his supporters laid their weapons aside.
“This is for country and humanity,” said Huebner.