Frozen Solid A Novel

19




HALLIE WALKED TO WITHIN FIFTY FEET OF THE EDGE OF THE CREVASSE. She got down on her stomach, feet toward the abyss, and started inching backward. At the edge she dug the claws of both hammers into the surface, using them like the picks of ice tools, and lowered herself down.

The ice wall fell at about a seventy-degree angle. A romp with proper ice tools and twelve-point crampons. With the hammers and bunny boots, doable, but delicate.

“Rockie!” she yelled.

No answer.

She kept down-climbing, punching one tool lower, than the other, kicking toeholds with her boots. After forty feet her forearms were on fire and she was gasping for breath, but it was working.

She smelled diesel fuel, looked over her shoulder, and her headlamp beam caught machine twenty feet lower. It had come to rest where the crevasse’s walls converged. She heard Bacon’s radio crackling and nearly shuddered with joy; in her haste she hadn’t asked for one. Graeter probably wouldn’t have given it to her, anyway.

Hallie descended to the Cat and stepped onto its track, near the front of the machine. She walked back toward Rockie, who was still held in place by her seat belt, bent forward at the waist, arms hanging between her knees. There was frozen blood on Rockie’s face mask, and more on the Cat’s deck and dashboard.

“Rockie.”

No response.

With gloves and mittens on she could not feel for a pulse, but she could see that Rockie was still breathing.

The radio crackled again.

“Graeter. Can you copy me down there?”

Hallie unzipped one of Bacon’s pockets and found the radio. “This is Leland. I’m on the dozer. Rockie is alive, but injured and unconscious. I don’t know how badly. Can you drop a litter down here?”

There was a silence. When Graeter spoke, he sounded very angry. “No. The goddamned thing broke.”

“You only have one?”

“They both broke. Cracked like window glass. It’s too cold for fiberglass.”

She thought for a minute. “Lower one end of a good rope down here. Eleven-mil or bigger. Keep lowering until I tell you to stop.”

As Hallie probed the darkness with her light, she saw holes in the crevasse wall. They reminded her of the mouths of small caves, but with angles and lines. No straight lines in nature, as the saying went. Odd, finding them down here. At some point, flowing water must have bored them, as it bored much more slowly through stone to make terrestrial caves. But … neat lines? Then she thought: Old Pole. They must be part of the buried complex. She briefly considered trying to carry Bacon out that way, then decided there were too many unknowns. A rescue hoist would be better.

A few minutes later she grabbed the end of a rope. She waited for about twenty extra feet to come, then radioed for them to stop. “Don’t do anything until I call again,” she added.

Hallie folded the rope back on itself to make a ten-foot doubled length. Then she tied a double figure-eight knot, called “bunny ears” by climbers because of the two single loops at the knot’s end. She dressed the knot so that each loop was big enough to fit under their arms. She worked the rope over Rockie’s shoulders, down past her hands, and pulled it up under her armpits. She unfastened Rockie’s seat belt, then put the other loop on herself, making sure that the rope was secure under her own arms as well.

After a final check of the rope and loops, she keyed the radio.

“We’re both on rope. You need to bring us up very slowly and very smoothly.”

“Copy that,” Graeter said. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then Hallie felt the rope grow taut, and was thankful for all the layers of clothing, which prevented it from cutting painfully into her armpits. She and Bacon were lifted away from the D9 and rose slowly up through the crevasse.

Hallie held Bacon facing away, keeping her own back to the crevasse wall, acting as a cushion between the unconscious woman and the ice. She knew that this was not the best way to bring up someone who might have suffered spinal injuries, but there was no choice. It seemed to take a long time, but finally they were approaching the lip of the crevasse. Hallie radioed their position and had the haulers slow down even more. This was going to be the hardest part. She had them raise her and Bacon in small increments until she could hook her butt over the lip. Then, holding the inert woman against herself with one arm, she radioed the haulers to bring them on back.

They came across the ice smoothly, Hallie on her back, Bacon lying between her legs and against her chest. When they were out of the danger zone, Search and Rescue team members stabilized Bacon with a cervical collar and eased her onto a backboard. A big Pisten-Bully snowcat, like those used at ski areas, had traveled out. The SARs loaded Bacon onto the machine’s back deck, and it headed toward the station.

Hallie turned to the two Draggers, Grenier and Lange. “I’m sorry about your hammers, guys. Didn’t have enough hands to bring them up.”

“Hell with the hammers. They’re NASI’s,” Grenier said. “You’re a Beaker, right?”

“Yep,” she said. “Microbiologist.”

“A Beaker,” Lange said.

“A Beaker,” Grenier said.

They looked at each other.

“Goddamn,” Lange said.

“Son of a bitch,” Grenier said.

Then they stepped forward, slapped her on the shoulder, said, “Good job,” and headed to their snowmos, looking back as if still having trouble believing.

It felt good. She was tired from the crevasse work but sparking with adrenaline and the elation of having saved another human.

Graeter stood off to one side. The face mask kept her from seeing anything but his eyes. Hell hath no fury, she thought, like a martinet disobeyed. Her roster request would have to wait.

He came toward her and planted his feet, and she braced herself for a tirade. Or worse. She moved one hand toward the right pocket of her Big Red.

“You should not have come on that cracked ice to help me. And you should not have gone down into the crevasse for Bacon.”

The elation drained away, leaving exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and cold. She opened her mouth to reply, but he held up one finger, then lowered it to point directly at her.

“I’m glad you did. I owe you. We owe you.”

Overhead, the southern lights flared green and purple. He turned on his heel and motioned for her to follow.