Treasure Page 7

  Lily clasped her hands around Gronquist's great stomach in a death grip, her eyes closed, head buried against his shoulder. She yelled for him to slow down, but he ignored her. She turned and spied the bobbing light of the other snowmobile rapidly closing on their tail.

  Without the drag of the sled, the overtaking vehicle, with Hoskins steering and Graham behind, quickly caught up and passed. Soon all Lily could see of the other two men was an indistinct blur of hunched figures through a trailing cloud of fine surface snow.

  She felt Gronquist tense as a large metal object rose up out of the darkness at the far edge of the light's ray. Gronquist abruptly jammed the handgrips around to his left. The edges of the front skis dug into the ice and the snowmobile swerved away just one meter from striking a piece of the plane's shattered wing. He made a frantic attempt to straighten out, but the sudden twist of centrifugal force whipped the sled around like the tail of a maddened rattlesnake. The top-heavy sled went into a wild skid, jackknifed against the snowmobile and snapped the hitch. The tips of the runners dug in and it flipped upside down, scattering its load in the air like debris from an explosion.

  Gronquist shouted something, but the words were cut off as the flat side of a runner unerringly caught him on the shoulder, knocking him off the snowmobile. He was thrown in a wide arc like a demolition ball about to smash a wall. The hood of his coat was jerked back and the ice rose up and struck his unprotected head.

  Lily's arms were torn from around Gronquist's waist as he vanished into the darkness. She thought she might be thrown clear. The sled missed her, crashing to a stop a few meters away, but the snowmobile had other ideas. Without Gronquist's hands on the clutch lever and throttle, it came to a stop, teetering precariously at a forty-five-degree angle, engine popping at idle.

  It hung there for a brief moment, and then slowly heeled over to one side, falling on Lily's legs from her hips down and pinning her helplessly against the ice sheet.

  Hoskins and Graham were not immediately aware of the accident behind them, but they were about to run into a disaster of their own. After covering another two hundred meters, Graham turned, more out of curiosity than intuition, to check how far they had outdistanced Lily and Gronquist. He was surprised to see their light hewn far to the rear, stationary and pointing downward.

  He pounded Hoskins's shoulder and shouted in his ear, "I think something's happened to the others."

  It had been Hoskins's original intention to find the depression in the ice carved by the plane after it touched down and then follow it to the final crash site. His eyes were straining to penetrate the gloom beyond when Graham interrupted his concentration.

  The words came indistinct over the growl of the snowmobile's exhaust. He twisted his head and shouted back at Graham.

  "I can't hear you."

  "Something's wrong."

  Hoskins nodded in understanding and refocused his attention on the terrain ahead. The distraction was to cost them. Too late, he glimpsed one of the troughs gouged by the landing gear almost as he was on it.

  The snowmobile flew over the two-meter opening in the ice and became airborne. The weight of the two riders forced the nose to dip down and it collided against the opposite wall with a sharp crack like the blast of a pistol. Fortunately for Hoskins and Graham, they were pitched over the edge and onto the ice surface, their bodies tumbling crazily as if they were cottonstuffed dolls thrown across a waxed floor.

  Thirty seconds later a stunned Graham, moving like a ninety-year-old man, stiffly lifted himself to his hands and knees. He sat there dazed, not fully aware of how he got there. He heard a strange hissing sound and looked around.

  Hoskins was sitting in an upright position, doubled up in agony with both hands tightly pressed against his groin. He was sucking and exhaling air through clenched teeth while rocking back and forth.

  Graham removed his outer mitten and lightly touched his nose, It didn't feel broken, but blood was flowing from the nostrils, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. A series of stretches indicated all joints were still mobile, all limbs in place. Not too surprising, considering the heavy padding of his clothing. He crawled over to Hoskins, whose tortured hissing had become a string of mournful groans.

  "What happened?" Graham asked, regreuing such a stupid question the instant he uttered it.

  "We hit a gash furrowed in the ice by the aircraft," Hoskins managed between groans. "Jesus, I think I've been castrated."

  "Let me have a look." Graham pried away the hands and unzipped the front of Hoskins's jumpsuit. He took a flashlight from a pocket and pushed the switch. He could not suppress a smile. "Your wife will need another excuse to dump you. There's no sign of blood. Your sex life is secure."

  "Where's Lily . . . and Gronquist?" Hoskins asked haltingly.

  "About two hundred meters back. We've got to make our way around the ice opening and check out their situation."

  Hoskins rose painfully to his feet and hobbled to the edge of the ice break. Amazingly, the snowmobile's headlamp was still burning, its dim glow playing on the bottom of the flord while backlighting the bubbles that traveled up six meters to the surface. Graham walked over and peered down. Then they looked at each other.

  "As lifesavers," said Hoskins dejectedly, "we'd better stick with archaeology-"

  "Quiet!" Graham snapped suddenly. He cupped his mittens to his ears and turned from side to side like a radar dish. Then he stopped and pointed excitedly at flashing lights in the distance. "Hot damn!" he shouted.

  "There's a helicopter coming up the fjord."

  Lily floated in and out of reality.

  She could not understand why it became increasingly difficult for her to think straight. She lifted her head and looked around for Gronquist. He lay unmoving several meters away. She shouted, desperately trying to get a response, but he lay as though dead. She gave up and gradually entered a halfdream world as her legs lost all sensation of feeling.

  Only when she began to shiver did Lily realize she was in a mild state of shock.

  She was certain Graham and Hoskins would return any moment, but the moments soon grew into painful minutes, and they did not show. She felt very tired and was about to gratefully slip away into sleep when she heard a strange thumping sound approaching from overhead. Then a dazzling light cut the dark sky and blinded her eyes. Loose snow was kicked up by a sudden windstorm and swept around her. The thumping sound died in intensity and a vague figure, encircled by the light, came toward her.

  The figure became a man in a heavy fur parka who immediately summed up the situation, took a strong - grip on the snowmobile and heaved it off her legs to an upright position.

  He walked around her until the light illuminated his face. Lily's eyes weren't focusing as they should but they stared into a pair of sparkling green eyes that took her breath away. They seemed to reflect hardness, gentleness and sincere concern in one glinting montage. They narrowed a fraction when he saw that she was a woman. She wondered dizzily where he came from.

  Lily couldn't think of anything to say except, "Oh, am I ever glad to see you."

  "Name's Dirk Pitt," answered a warm voice. "If you're not busy, why don't you have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

  Lily looked up at Pitt, trying to read him, not sure she had heard him correctly. "I may not be up to it."

  He pushed back the hood of his parka and ran his hands up and down her legs. He gently squeezed her ankles. "No apparent breaks or swelling,"

  he said in a friendly voice. "Are you in pain?"

  "I'm too cold to hurt."

  Pitt retrieved a pair of blankets that had been pitched from the sled d you get here?"

  he asked her.

  "I'm one of a team of archaeologists doing an excavation on an ancient Eskimo village. We heard the plane come up the fjord and ran out of our hut in time to see it land on the ice. We were heading for the crash site with blankets and medical supplies when we . . ." Lily's words became vague and she weakly gestured
toward the overturned sled.

  "We?"

  In the light from the helicopter Pitt quickly read the accident in the snow coating the ice: the straight trail of the snowmobile, the abrupt swerve around the severed aircraft wing, the sharp cuts made by the runners of the out-of-control sledonly then did he glimpse another human form lying nearly ten meters beyond the wing.

  "Hold on."

  Pitt walked over and knelt down beside Gronquist. The big archaeologist was breathing evenly. Pitt gave him a cursory examination.

  Lily watched for a few moments, and then asked anxiously, "Is he dead?"

  "Hardly. A nasty contusion on his forehead. Concussion, most likely.

  Possible fracture, but I doubt it. He has a head like a bank vault."

  Graham came trudging up, Hoskins limping along behind, both looking like snowmen, their Arctic jumpsuits dusted white, their face masks plastered with ice from their breathing. Graham lifted his mask, exposing his bloodied face and studied Pitt blankly for a moment, then he smiled bleakly.

  "Welcome, stranger. Your timing was perfect."

  No one on the helicopter had seen the other two members of the archaeology expedition from the air, and Pitt began to wonder how many other ambulance cases were wandering around the fjord.

  "We have an injured man and lady here," Pitt said without formalities.

  "Are they part of your group?"

  The smile fell from Graham's face. "What happened?"

  "They took a bad spill."

  "We took one too."

  "You see the aircraft?"

  "Saw it go down, but we didn't reach it."

  Hoskins moved around Graham and stared down at Lily and then glanced around until he spied Gronquist. "How badly are they hurt?"

  "Know better after they've had X-rays."

  "We've got to help them."

  "I have a team of medics on board the helicopter."

  "Then what in hell are you waiting for?" Hoskins cut him off - "Call them out here - " He made as if to brush past Pitt, but he was stopped dead by an iron grip on his arm. He stared uncomprehending into a pair of unblinking eyes.

  "Your friends will have to wait," Pitt said firmly. "any survivors on the downed aircraft must come first. How far to your camp?"

  "A kilometer to the south," Hoskins answered compliantly.

  "The snowmobile is still operable. You and your partner rehitch the sled and carry them back to your camp. Go easy in case they have any internal injuries. You have a radio?"

  "Yes. "

  "Keep it set on frequency thirty-two and stand by," said Pitt. "If the plane was a commercial jetliner loaded with passengers, we'll have a real mess on our hands."

  "We'll stand by," Graham assured him.

  Pitt leaned over Lily and squeezed her hand. "Don't forget our date,"

  he said.

  Then he yanked the parka hood over his head, turned and jogged back to the helicopter.

  Rubin felt a great weight smothering him from all sides as if some relentless force was driving him backward. The seat belt and harness pressed cruelly into his gut and shoulders. He opened his eyes and saw only vague and shadowy images. As he waited for his vision to clear he tried to move his hands and arms, but they seemed locked in place.

  Then his eyes gradually focused and he saw why.

  An avalanche of snow and ice had forged through the shattered windshield, entrapping his body up to the chest. He made a desperate attempt to free himself. After a few minutes of struggling, he gave up.

  The unyielding pressure held him like a straitjacket. There was no way he could escape the cockpit without help.

  The shock slowly began to fade and he gritted his teeth from the pain that erupted from his broken legs. Rubin thought it strange that his feet felt as though they were immersed in water. He rationalized that it was his own blood.

  Rubin was wrong. The plane had settled through the ice in water nearly three meters deep and it had flooded the cabin floor up to the seats.

  Only then did he remember Ybarra. He turned his head to his right and squinted through the darkness. The starboard side of the aircraft's bow had been crushed inward almost to the engineer's panel. All he could see of the Mexican delegate was a rigid, upraised arm protruding from the snow and telescoped wreckage.

  Rubin turned away, sick in the sudden realization that the little man who had sat at his side throughout the terrible ordeal was dead, every bone crushed. Rubin also realized he had only a short time to live before he froze to death.

  He began to cry.

  "She should be coming up!" Giordino shouted over the engine and rotor noise.

  Pitt nodded and stared down at the gouge that cut across the merciless ice, its sides littered with bits and pieces of jagged debris. He saw it now. A tangible object with mamnade straight lines imperceptibly appeared in the gloom ahead. Then they were on top of it.

  There was a sad and ominous appearance about the crumPlead aircraft. One wing had completely ripped off and the other was twisted back against the fuselage. The tail section was buckled at a pathetic angle. The remains had the look of a mashed bug on a white carpet.

  ... The fuselage sank through the ice and two-thirds of it is immersed in water," Pitt observed.

  "She didn't burn," said Giordino. "That's a piece of luck."

  He held up his hand to shade his eyes from the dazzling reflection as the helicopter's lights swept the airliner's length. "Talk about highly polished skin. Her maintenance people took good care of her. I'd guess she was a Boeing 720-B. any sign of life?"

  "None," replied Pitt. "it doesn't look good."

  "How about identification markings?"

  "Three stripes running down the hull, light blue and purple separated by a band of gold."

  "Not the colors of any airline i'm familiar with."

  "Drop down and circle her," said Pitt. "While you spot a landing site, I'll try and read her lettering."

  Giordino banked and spiraled toward the wreckage. The landing lights, mounted on bow and tail of the helicopter, exposed the half-sunken aircraft in a sea of brilliance. The name above the decorative stripes was in a slanted-style instead of the usual easier to read block-type letters.

  "NEBULA," Pitt read aloud. "NEBULA AIR."

  "Never heard of it," said Giordino, his eyes fixed on the ice.

  "A plush airline that caters to vips.

  "What in hell is it doing so far from the beaten track?"

  "We'll soon know if anybody's alive to tell us."

  Pitt turned to the eight men sitting comfortably in the warm belly of the chopper. They were all appropriately clothed in blue Navy Arctic weather gear. One was the ship's surgeon, three were medics, and four were damage-control experts. They chatted back and forth as casually as if they were on a bus trip to Denver. Between them, tied down by straps in the center of the floor, boxes of medical supplies, bundles of blankets and a rack of stretchers sat stacked beside asbestos suits and a crate of firefighting equipment.

  An auxiliary-powered heating unit was secured opposite the main door, its hoisting cables attached to an overhead winch. Next to it stood a compact snowmobile with an enclosed cabin and side tracks.

  The gray-haired man seated just aft of the cockpit, with gray mustache and beard to match, looked back at Pitt and grinned. "About time for us to earn our pay?" he asked cheerfully.

  Nothing, it seemed, could dim Dr. Jack Gale's merry disposition.

  "We're setting down now," answered Pitt. "Nothing stirring around the plane. No indication of fire. The cockpit is buried and the fuselage looks distorted but intact."

  "Nothing ever comes easy." Gale shrugged. "Still, it beats hell out of treating burn cases."

  "That's the full news. The tough news is the main cabin is filled with nearly a meter of water, and we didn't bring our galoshes."

  Gale's face turned serious. "God help any injured who didn't stay dry.

  They wouldn't have lasted eight minutes in freezing w
ater."

  "If none of the survivors can open an emergency exit, we may have to cut our way inside."

  "Sparks from cutting equipment have a nasty habit of igniting sloshing jet fuel," said Lieutenant Cork Simon, the stocky leader of the Polar Explorer's damage-control team. He bore the confident look of a man who knew his job inside out and then some. "Better we go in through the main cabin door. Doc Gale, here, will need all the space he can get to remove any stretcher cases."

  "I agree," said Pitt. "But a pressurized door that's been jammed against its stops by the distortion of the crash will take time to force open. people may be freezing to death in there. Our first job is to make an opening to insert the vent pipe from the heater."

  He broke off as Giordino cut a steep Turn and dropped down toward a flat area only a stone's throw from the wreck. Everyone tensed in readiness.

  Outside, the beat of the rotor blades whiPPed up a small blizzard of snow and ice particles, turning the landing site into an alabaster-colored stew that wiped out all vision.

  Giordino had barely touched the wheels to the ice and set the throttles on idle when Pitt shoved open the loading door, jumped into the cold and headed toward the wreckage. Behind him Doc Gale began directing the unloading of supplies while Cork Simon and his team willched the auxiliary heater and the snowmobile onto the ice.

  Half-running, half-slipping, pi made a visual inspection of the interior of the fuse lage, carefully avoiding open breaks in the ice.

  The air reeked with the unwelcome smell of jet fuel. He climbed up the ice MOUnd that was piled a meter thick over the cockpit windows.

  Climbing the slick surface was like crawling up a greased ramp. He tried to scoop an opening into the cockpit, but quickly gave it up: it would have taken an hour or more to dig through the packed ice and then tunnel inside.

  He slid down and ran around to the remaining wing. The right section was twisted and broken from its supporting mounts, the tip pointing toward the tail. it lay on the ice, crushed against the sunken fuselage only an arm's length below the row of windows. Using the wing as a platform over the open water, Pitt dropped to his hands and knees and tried to peer inside. The lights from the helicopter reflected off the Plexiglas, and he had to cup his hands around his eyes to close out the glare, At first he could not detect any movement, only darkness and a deathly stillness.