From the ocean side, he could hear the distant roar of a snowmobile, and he couldn’t help but compare it to the smooth, natural whooshing of the sled. As a photographer—somebody who relied upon all the latest gizmos—he knew he was in no position to throw stones at technology. Hell, if it hadn’t been for airplanes, he’d never have gotten here, and if weren’t for digital cameras, he’d be fumbling with a lot of frozen, broken, and scratched film. But the noise of the snowmobile, which looked like it would arrive back at the base just about as he did, was an intrusion nonetheless, like a power mower breaking the perfect quiet of an August morning. He wondered, as he watched it zip across the ice like a black bug skittering across a tabletop, if Darryl was on board, loaded down with fresh specimens.
The kennel was at the back of the station, beyond the quad where the dorms and administration modules were set up, back where the labs butted up against the equipment sheds and generators. Even though the generators were placed as far away from the dorms as possible, there were still many nights, if the wind was down, when Michael could hear their constant thrumming. When he’d complained about it at breakfast one morning, Franklin had said, “Worry about it when you don’t hear that racket.”
The dogs cut a narrow path past the ice-core bins and the botany lab, past the garage where the Sprytes and snowmobiles and augers were housed, and on toward the kennel, across a winding alley from the marine biology lab. Michael shouted “Whoa!” to almost no effect, and pressed with both feet on the brake. He could feel its steel claws digging into the permafrost and slowing the speed of the sled, but they weren’t slowing it enough for a soft landing. He shouted again and leaned back, with all his weight, on the mainline, until he saw the brush bow, at the front of the sled, lift an inch or two, and the dogs gradually wind down. Kodiak stopped straining against the harness and fell into a trot, and the others immediately followed suit. The blades coursed almost silently across the snow and ice, until the sled pulled up to the kennel—an open shed with a hayloft above, illuminated by a glaring, white light. From the happy reaction of the dogs, it looked to them like the Ritz.
“Nice job, Nanook,” Danzig said, hoisting himself up and out of the shell. “What’s on the meter?”
Sinclair had heard the sled arriving—the barking of the dogs, the runners cutting through the snow. But he didn’t dare to open the door to see what was out there—for all he knew, a guard might be posted right outside.
There were no proper windows, either, but he did see a narrow glass panel running just below the flat ceiling, close to the door, and he quietly drew a stool over to it. He stepped up on the stool—his socks, still damp, squishing on its seat—and tried to peer outside. The noise of the dogs was quite close. But the window was so encrusted with snow and ice, he could barely see anything. On his side of it, however, there did appear to be a handle of some kind—like a crank—and when he turned it, the bottom of the window lifted, pushing some snow out of its way. He cranked it again, and now he had a couple of inches through which he could see. The blast of wind, despite the narrowness of the aperture, was forbidding.
He saw an ice-packed alley, with a team of wolfish dogs prancing through it. There were two men on the sled—one, in a bulky, hooded coat, was driving, and the other, wearing a necklace of bones around his neck, was riding in the carriage. The sled ground to a halt inside a wide-open barn—brightly lighted, even though it appeared to Sinclair to be midday outside—and the man in the sled clambered out. Sinclair could not hear what the men were saying. But his attention was drawn instead to the back of the dog pen.
His chest was there. The one that had contained the cache of bottles.
The men pushed their hoods back and lifted some sort of heavy dark spectacles from their eyes. The driver was young—maybe Sinclair’s own age—tall, with longish black hair; the other man, with a full beard and wide Slavic cheekbones, was older and stocky. Neither of them wore anything that suggested a uniform, or national allegiance, of any kind, but that was little help. Sinclair had known soldiers, so weary and so encumbered with gear, that by the time they arrived at the front, they looked more like a band of hooligans than Her Majesty’s own.
The bearded man was untying the harness lines—Sinclair was reminded of his own horses and carriages, back at his family’s estate in Nottinghamshire—while the driver filled a stack of bowls with food from a sack. One by one, the dogs were tied to stakes, spaced a few feet apart; their eyes were riveted on the bowls as the young man dispensed them. While the dogs devoured their meals, the bearded man hung his overcoat on a wall hook—he had some other coat on underneath it—where Sinclair saw a motley assortment of other garments, hats and gloves and even a pair of those green spectacles, also hanging.
More and more, he knew that he would have to raid that barn. There was food (even if it was only considered fit for dogs), there was clothing…and there was his chest.
“What do you see?” Eleanor whispered.
“Our next objective.”
He climbed down from the stool and began to put his own clothes back on.
“Are they dry yet?” Eleanor asked. “If they’re not dry…”