They weren’t.
‘We can’t keep meeting like this,’ Colby said when Drake came out of his room. She had already stretched and warmed up. ‘Shall we run this morning or do you want to lift weights?’
Drake squinted into the pearl-grey light. ‘What’s the weather like?’
‘Another beautiful day in Costa Del Fiord-ay,’ she answered. Actually, though, you could never tell from inside the complex; inside was nice and warm all the time, and sealed against cold and rain.
At that moment, Starbuck, Flask, Samurai Sam, Czar and Hari, who was a Parsee, came loping along the hallway. ‘Don’t be a pussy, sir!’ Starbuck yelled. ‘The squadron that runs together …’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Drake nodded. ‘Okay, Colby,’ he said as the boys joined him at the end of the corridor, where they were all getting into cold weather gear, thermals, hoodies, gloves and eye goggles, ‘lead on. Let’s do the whole circuit.’
‘All the way?’ Samurai Sam asked, looking suggestively at Colby.
‘Why is it,’ she responded, ‘that you can make anything sound filthy?’ She put on a sun visor against the morning glare and punched the exit button. Immediately the temperature dropped to almost freezing point and Samurai Sam was gasping for breath.
‘You meant to do that,’ Drake said. The vapour from his mouth was already creating crystals around his lips. He led the squad, scrambling out into the cold, running along the circuit track away from the Tangaroa Consortium.
Just another day at the office.
Seniority required that Drake get out in front and set the pace. He would have liked it leisurely except that Colby kept pushing him from behind. Starbuck was abreast, and Drake managed to mutter to him, ‘Now I know why harpoonists are mainly women.’
It was a standard joke. ‘Yes, sir,’ Starbuck answered.
Drake concentrated on the run. When he’d spoken to Starbuck the air had invaded his lungs; ice caves with stalactites and stalagmites forming in their interior — not a pretty thought. He headed clockwise along the cluttered rooftop walkway of the main complex, jogging on the spot while the security guard looked him over. Once the check was done, he surged away from the complex.
Sheathed with sun reflectors, the base hugged the sheer sides of one of the deepest fiords at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island. It wasn’t pretty: a Monty Pythonesque assemblage of cumbersome concrete blocks seven storeys high — headquarters, communications, personnel quarters — all connected by a dizzying array of walkways, elevators and lifts and topped off with an odd crown of flimsy communications antennae. Tumbled into the neck of the fiord, the base looked as if some giant’s kid — a wannabe engineer with bad balance and no idea of perspective — had made it from Lego, got bored and abandoned it.
By the time the team reached the security road, Drake’s breath was coming in huge, tortuous, ragged gasps and his eyes were stinging from the cold. The road took them past the remote defensive armament installations that ringed the fiord. The last attack had been made about two weeks ago, nothing major; since then, all was quiet on the southern front.
Five kilometres later, they came to the massive iron double-locked gateway at the entrance to the fiord, which separated it from the sea. It was closed; they dashed across.
‘Let’s rest a bit,’ Drake ordered the others as he dived into the warmth of the gateway controller’s station, startling Silas, the engineer on duty.
‘Christ,’ Silas said. ‘Shut the freezer door, willya?’ He quickly switched off the porno download on his tablet before Colby could see it. The office was a mess.
‘Okay everyone?’ Drake asked. ‘Maybe we should have done weights this morning.’
Colby cocked an eye. ‘You’re not going to be like you are in bed, are you?’ she enquired. ‘Good at the start but can’t go the distance?’
Starbuck and Czar roared with laughter. They appreciated Colby’s acidic humour and the way she dished it to the boss.
Drake took it all in good humour. ‘I thought you liked the hundred-metre dash.’
From Silas’s place, the view was to die for. Within the high walls of the fiord the air was perfectly still — freezing, but still — and the water calm, but outside the gateway, the sea was storming up from the south, mountainous waves chasing squalls before them.
Time to get going again. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ Drake said. The laughter was cut short by oaths and curses as he led the squad back out into the freezing cold. Their breath jetted and curled in the air.
Approaching the base, they jogged past the submarine pens, still lit from the fleet’s late-night operations. One of the subs was in dry dock. So were a couple of water-powered jet boats, used as tugs. On the hills the wind turbines were spinning hard. The ground shook with their rhythmic force; they were like Maori gods doing a haka.
‘How’re you all doing?’ Drake asked everyone as they approached the elevator to the skyline water processing operations centre. Elevator? Well, it was more like an antiquated ski lift, but it did the job.
By now the squad was loping along, happy to be on the home straight, but Samurai Sam was flagging, taking twice as many steps as everyone else. Not that he would admit it.
Starbuck spoke for the group. ‘Don’t worry about us, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got your back.’
Suddenly, Drake saw something silver flashing through the air and hovering above him: a remote drone, come to check.
‘Drake Haapu,’ the drone said, ‘you naughty boy. Why didn’t you tell me you were going for a lovely walk in the park?’
‘Morning, Sally.’
Sally was the communications officer at the base, fifty if she was a day. ‘And is that the delectable Colby?’ she asked. ‘No wonder I’ve been stood up by you Drake … again. Ah well, lover boy, don’t forget you and your squadron are due to lift off at 0100 hours. See you later, honey.’
The drone whizzed off, skimming the water of the fiord. By this time, the team had reached the point overlooking the helicopter pad, close to the water.
‘Almost there,’ Drake said to Samurai Sam. He saw Bazza, the air controller, coming out onto the helipad.
‘Queequeeg and the early shift must be coming in,’ Flask said.
Colby looked at her watch.
‘Running on empty as usual,’ she added.
Even as she was speaking, Drake heard the distant familiar thump-thump-thump of rotors and over the lock appeared a group of small specks like mosquitoes come to suck blood.
Colby counted: ‘One, two, three, four, five …’
Drake shaded his eyes against the rising sun. He saw the familiar insignias on the approaching squad of Mad Max pilots — there was no other name for them really — Johnno, Slava, Oscar Bravo, Gayhead and Jenkins, and their outdated helicopters. As each chopper circled, Bazza waved them in. Mechanics were out, pulling one chopper off the helipad and into the hangar so that the next could land.
‘Where the hell’s Queequeeg?’ Colby asked.
‘He may have long-range fuel tanks,’ Czar calculated, ‘but he’s cutting it fine.’ Chopper pilots liked to dice with death and take the fuel gauge all the way down to the red when they landed. Judging by the earlier arrivals, however, Queequeeg was definitely running on fumes.
‘I think I hear him now,’ Harry said.
Bazza still had Jenkins on the helipad when, with relief, Drake saw a small spot in the distance: Queequeeg at last, riding Daedalus, but trailing a plume of black smoke, weaving a bit, nursing the engine along. A drama began to develop down on the helipad; Bazza had struck trouble stacking Jenkins into the hangar. Drake watched him frantically trying to wave Daedalus away to give him some time to sort the problem. But Queequeeg was coming in on a wing and a prayer, couldn’t wait for the all-clear, saw a space close by Jenkins that he just might be able to squeeze into, wiggled, began to descend … and his motor cut out.