A wall of water slammed into him and swept him down a smaller tunnel. He gulped in some water as he was sucked in, tumbling over and over beneath the current.
Conrad held on as long as he could but felt his consciousness slowly slipping away. Unable to cling to anything, he let go. A blackness overwhelmed him and he felt himself whooshing through a tunnel.
Suddenly he was pushed into daylight and thrown almost fifty feet into the air by a geyser of water blasting out of the drain. He landed with a heavy thud on the trembling ground, the wind and water knocked out of him.
Unable to move for a few minutes, he was shaken by the earth tremors and deafening rumble of the ice mountains tumbling down into the city valley.
A trickle of water ran past his ear, and he realized there was no place to hide: above or below ground, anything under an altitude of two miles from the subglacial surface was about to be deluged and frozen. With dread he recalled the people in the ice he had seen during the descent to P4 and decided he did not want to be one of them.
Somehow he managed to get on all fours and crawl through the rising water. Within a few paces he could feel the temperature dropping as the winds whipped. He shivered in the cold, damp air.
He slowed down for a second when he saw a body floating his way, bloated and blue. As it passed by, Conrad recognized the face of Colonel O’Dell from Ice Base Orion. The expression of horror on the corpse’s face motivated Conrad to pick up his pace.
The water was up to his knees now, and the bowl of mountains around the city was beginning to collapse like a tin can under the tremendous pressure. His shoulder hurt more than ever, the stabs of pain unbearable. He applied more pressure with his other hand as he rose to his feet and staggered. Then he saw a flash of color through the water.
It was a smashed red Hagglunds, a relic from Ice Base Orion. It was useless for travel, but the forward cab might provide a cocoon of shelter and life support.
Suddenly the ground pitched violently and Conrad was thrown facedown. He looked up to see a fifty-foot wall of water and ice thundering down on him. His jaw dropped in surrender at the spectacle. There was simply no place to hide from such a force of nature, and he knew then it was time for him to die. But he thought of Serena and with one last push reached up to the door of the Hagglunds and twisted the black handle until the hatch opened.
Then the water came. First a few droplets on his head. Then a spray.
He hoisted himself inside and barely managed to snap the seat belt in place and shut the door before the wall slammed into the Hagglunds and it was lost in a cauldron of churning water and ice.
37
Serena looked out across the stormy skies from inside the mouth of the southern star shaft near the top of P4. Whiteout conditions threatened, the clouds over the ice deserts in the distance were heavy with snow, and bolts of lightning flashed on the distant horizon.
Then she heard a familiar whirring noise overhead and looked up in stunned disbelief to see a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter drifting across the stormy sky. She waved frantically.
A rope ladder dropped down like something out of a dream, and she took a firm hold. She glanced back down the dark shaft and saw something shiny. She hesitated and looked closer. It was water, coming up like a geyser. She tugged the rope ladder and was lifted away as a spray of water shot into the air, barely missing the chopper.
An American airman grabbed her shoulders and dragged her into the Black Hawk. She could see from the faces of the crew that they were as shocked to see Mother Earth as she was to see them. Almost as shocked as they were to survey the ruins below. Their commanding officer introduced himself as Admiral Warren and shouted to the pilot over the roar of the helicopter and waters outside.
“Take us out!” Warren ordered.
“No,” Serena said, her teeth chattering. “We have to find Conrad, Doctor Conrad Yeats. He’s still down there.”
Warren stared at her. “You mean General Griffin Yeats?”
“No, I mean his son.”
Warren looked at the pilot who shook his head. “Believe me, no one’s down there now.”
The Black Hawk began to pull away.
“No!” Serena tried to climb in front and grab the controls. But four airmen restrained her and shoved her back against the medical supplies. She tried to get up, but all energy left her. Then the medic stabbed a needle in her arm.
“Calm down, Sister, you’ve been through a lot,” Warren said as he wrapped a navy jacket around her shivering body. She felt dizzy and light-headed.
She brushed back wet strands of hair from her face and looked out the window. A whirlpool of water had nearly swallowed the city. Only the peak of P4 stabbed out from the murky deep. She had often imagined as a child what it must have been like when the Red Sea parted for the children of Israel to pass through and later came together again to drown all of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots. Now the picture was all too clear.
She prayed to God that Conrad was safe but knew better. In her delirium, she could picture herself searching for him. Then, through the sheets of ice, Conrad would be spotted stumbling across the plain, miraculously having survived. He would emerge from the mist whiter than snow, his eyebrows and hair white, almost glowing, like he had come forth from the shiny veils of the holiest of shrines. The Americans would be forced to land the chopper. She would run to Conrad and embrace him. He would return with her to the awaiting chopper, his past buried behind him. They would hold each other tightly as snowflakes fell around them like stars.
But there was no Conrad, she realized bitterly. And God didn’t always answer her prayers the way she liked. As the chopper lifted off and away, she looked down to see the flattened tip of P4 barely showing above the water. It was as if they were flying over the Southern Ocean now. Not a trace of the city below-or Conrad. It was all gone, swept clean as if it had never been there.
Warren started shouting something again. She couldn’t pick up much of what he said under the whine of the blades and howl of the winds. Then she looked up to see him hanging out the open doorway. The Black Hawk swung toward whatever he was pointing at.
Serena was on her feet in an instant, clinging to Warren, peering out. There was a lone figure atop P4. The man who waved frantically was in a U.N. uniform.
“That’s him!” she said with as much force as she could muster.
“Get lower!” Warren ordered the pilot, who was struggling against the wind gusts.
Serena grabbed Warren’s binoculars as the Black Hawk started down. When they were no more than thirty feet away, she could see the man look up. With dismay she realized that the face she was looking at wasn’t Conrad’s at all. It belonged to one of the Egyptians, and his arm came up holding a machine gun.
“Admiral, pull back!” she said.
“We got him, don’t worry,” Warren said, and Serena looked back to see two marksmen with rifles trained on the man. “I want him alive.”
Serena felt a pop of air brush past her ear and looked down to see a bullet catch the Egyptian in the leg and send him down with a splash.
Warren nodded approvingly. “Move in.”
As soon as the chopper came in, however, the Egyptian rose from the water and started shooting wildly into the air.
Warren, standing in the open door, took a bullet in the throat and fell back against Serena, dead. She struggled to push his heavy body off her and called for help. But when she looked over her shoulder, she saw one of the Americans, also hit, falling backward. As he went down, his machine gun raked the cockpit with bullets. Serena heard the pilot cry out.
The Black Hawk lurched forward, and Serena grabbed at a strut for support. Then the chopper lifted violently,
