Frozen Solid A Novel

22




“WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE DIVE SHED,” SAID AGNES MERRITT.

She and Hallie had ridden there on one snowmo, Guillotte on another.

“Its official name,” Merritt continued, “is the Amundsen-Scott Research Station Dive Operations Center, but that’s a bit fancy for an Army-surplus Quonset hut with a plywood floor.” She glanced from Hallie to Guillotte. “I heard about Bacon’s Cat going through.”

“Word travels fast,” Hallie said. “It’s warm in here. Well, warmer.”

“Seventy below freezes up the dive gear,” Guillotte said. “So we keep it about zero. Balmy, yes?”

Several Draggers were working on compressors and other machinery. No one stopped for the new arrivals. Racks of double- and singletank scuba rigs lined one long wall. A workbench ran the length of one short wall. Along the other short wall stood five-foot-tall cylinders of air, pure oxygen, and helium for blending Trimix and Nitrox breathing gas mixes. Two blue argon cylinders provided insulating gas for use with dry suits.

Sharing her secret with Fida had been a tremendous relief for Hallie, but she was still walking around with the knowledge that a murderer might be roaming the station. Any person in this shed, other than Merritt, could have done it.

Once, deep in a cave, her main headlamp had failed. Then, both backup lights. It was the first and only time that had happened to her. She never forgot what it felt like to suddenly lose all light, to know that twenty steps in any direction could send her over the lip of a pit or into a sump. It was paralyzing knowledge, and the feeling now was almost as powerful. In the cave, she had simply sat down and waited for another member of the expedition to come along with light. Here, that wasn’t going to happen.

Regardless, the dive had to go forward. If she had not had the conversation with Fida and learned what Vishnu could mean, she might have called it off. But not now.

“We will go over to my, ah, office and talk through the dive plan.” Guillotte pointed to a four-by-eight sheet of plywood on four saw-horses. Hallie was following him when she saw a burly man stumble and, to keep from falling, grab a rack of scuba tanks.

“Hey,” she yelled. “Don’t do that!”

The rack was already starting to fall. Hallie was closest, about eight feet away, and she reached it just before the whole assemblage, tanks and rack, tipped. She shoved it back upright and stood for a second, collecting herself. If an impact broke the valve head off a full scuba tank, the escaping gas, pressurized at thirty-two hundred pounds per square inch, would propel it like a lethal and unguided missile. Hallie had seen one, dropped by a careless customer in a dive shop, break clean through an outside wall and smash in the side of a parked car beyond. What it would do to human bodies in an enclosed space she preferred not to imagine.

When she realized that none of them were going to die, she turned to the clumsy worker, who was standing there looking far less guilty than she thought the moment required.

“You need to be careful around those things,” Hallie snapped. “They can—”

She stopped. Bulky body, red face, boozy breath.

“Hey, it was an accident,” Brank rasped. “Chill the f*ck out.” He took a step forward, his face contorted with anger, and she thought: Him. He could have killed Emily. But her own anger flashed then, and she planted herself in his path.

Instantly, Guillotte slid between them and put his hand on Brank’s chest. “Go sober up,” he said. “You have no business here drunk.”

“F*ck yourself, Frogman,” Brank said, shoving Guillotte’s hand away. “I don’t take no orders from you.”

The two men stood glaring at each other, and Hallie wondered which would throw the first punch. Before either could, Agnes Merritt stalked over and stood on tiptoes to put her face inches from Brank’s.

“You don’t take orders from me, either. But if you’re not out of here in five seconds, I’ll have Graeter on you like stink on shit and you can kiss your fat Pole paycheck goodbye. Forever.”

Hallie was as surprised by Merritt’s transformation as by its effect on Brank, who was already backing toward the exit. To Hallie, he said, “Ain’t seen the last of each other, blondie,” and slammed the door so hard the DOC shook.

“I cannot apologize enough for Brank,” Guillotte said to Hallie. “He works for someone else. I do not even know why he was here.” He looked at the door, then back at her. “But I promise you it will never happen again.”

Hallie tried to sound settled. “At least no one got hurt. That’s the important thing.”

“Indeed,” Guillotte said. “So. Let us plan your dive now.”

“I’m curious. Why aren’t you doing this dive yourself?” Hallie asked.

“I would love to, believe me. Two years before coming to Pole, I suffered a decompression accident diving a U-boat in two hundred and sixty feet of water. I was paralyzed from the waist down for several days. After many hours in the reco chamber I could walk. But as I am sure you know, there is no more diving after an accident like that. It would be suicide. So …” He drew an index finger across his throat. “I am done. Finis.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hallie said.

“Was hard at first,” Guillotte said. “Okay now. Not good, but okay.”

He pointed to a round hole, five feet in diameter, cut out of the plywood floor in the center of the hut. Two feet below the rim, black water sloshed. “They bore these shafts with big, hot-water drills. This one broke through about thirty feet down. So you descend in the shaft, and at that depth enter the cryopeg through its ceiling.

“Poor Dr. Durant made four dives before she found her thing at a hundred and five feet.”

For twenty more minutes they planned the dive—route, distance, maximum depth, destination, bottom time, possible emergencies and resolutions. Then it was time to gear up. Hallie had brought her own critical components—first- and second-stage regulators, mask and fins, dry suit, thermal undergarments, computers, lights, assorted tools.

She shed all her ECW except her silk long underwear and, over that, black, expedition-weight polypropylene long johns. That got the Draggers looking up, but she quickly donned a Viking Arctic Plus insulated dive suit with booties, size medium, and over that another, size XL. Last, her red DUI CF200 crushed-neoprene dry suit. She preferred lighter, more flexible trilaminate dry suits. But when diving wrecks, with so much ragged metal, or in any environment with unknown hazards, she used the crushed neoprene. It was heavy, thick, and stiff but much tougher.

She put on insulated dive boots, gloves, and a fifteen-millimeter neoprene hood. After purging her suit three times with argon gas, a much more efficient insulator than air, she buckled two dive computers onto her left arm and a bottom-time calculator and compass onto her right. The compass would be no use here at the South Pole, but Hallie’s donning protocol never varied. Two freeze-proof, submersible pressure gauges were clipped to D-rings on her left hip, and three high-intensity, handheld dive lights were fastened to D-rings on her chest harness. She clipped primary and backup dive reels to D-rings on her right hip and snapped an Envirotainer, a flashlight-sized, stainless steel cylinder she would use to retrieve samples of the extremophile, to another D-ring.

She was impressed with Guillotte’s efficiency. As soon as she finished donning one piece of gear, she found him standing close by, next piece in hand. Experienced, skillful, attentive. Where an extra set of hands was required, he was firm and steady, not erratic and yanking. Overall, a manager she could trust. Very good to know for a dive like this.

She strapped on a rig with double steel tanks, each with one hundred cubic feet of capacity, equipped with her specialized Scubapro cold-water regulators. She put on her fog-proofed mask, and Guillotte secured her diving helmet with a headlamp that had a front bulb and single-bulb lights on either side. All told, she was now weighted down with close to 125 pounds of gear, so Guillotte supported most of the weight from behind, with his hands under the tanks, while she shuffled over to the shaft. Then he helped her sit on its edge. She pulled on fins and dangled her feet in the water. Even through double socks, insulated inner booties, and eleven-millimeter outer neoprene boots, she felt the cold.

They ran through the final predive checklist items. Guillotte raised a hand with thumb and forefinger circled. “Okay?”

His voice sounded distant through the thick hood. She returned his okay signal, placed both hands on the lip of the shaft, and eased forward and down into the water.