Why exactly he and his men were here hadn’t been explained to him, only that they should report in if they saw anything other than birds.
“Yeah,” Martin said, suddenly, apparently not done with whatever it was he felt he needed to say. “I know you all think I’m crazy, but yeah. I mean they’ve got the freakin’ gateway to hell right up there, and things—bad things are hanging around.”
“That’s not what it is,” Class said.
“Yeah? The ‘Vile Vortex,’ then. You know what happened to the last poor souls who tried to go in one of those.”
“Soldier, get a grip,” Class said. “Nobody is asking you to go in, are they?”
“No, sir,” Martin said. But after a moment he went back to his rosary.
“So what was it, Sarge?” Ryan asked.
“What?”
“Eskibel. What was he yanking your chain about?”
“Oh,” Class rolled his eyes. “Monkeys. Eskibel said to keep an eye peeled for flying monkeys.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Okay, then. And maybe a wicked witch or two.”
Class was just calling in another report when they heard the thuttering in the distance. The sound was unmistakably helicopters, and a lot of them. Dozens, maybe.
“Choppers,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Class replied. “Must be our flying monkeys.”
“You know what’s going on, Sarge?” Ryan asked.
“That’s above my pay-grade, soldier,” Class said, as the sound drew nearer.
He strained his eyes to see through the fog. Well, it wasn’t fog really, but instead a fine mist of snow and ice particles suspended in the Antarctic air, but the effect was the same.
He saw them then, heavy-lift choppers, flying in formation.
Then he looked lower, at the immense shadow below them, something lying in a bowl-shaped mesh net bigger than a football field.
“Oh, shit,” Ryan said. “It is a flying monkey.”
Sure, Class thought. If a monkey was the size of the freaking Chrysler Building. But he was aware his jaw was hanging open and shut it deliberately.
He tracked the huge ape as it passed over them, suspended by cables from the helicopters above.
“Well,” he said. “There’s something you don’t see … ever.”
Behind him, Martin’s prayer grew a little louder.
“Piki ába ish binili ma. Chi hohchifo hát…”
“Martin?”
Martin broke off. “Sarge?”
“Go ahead and pray,” Class told him. “And uh, you can include the rest us, if you want.”
“Sure,” Martin said, and started again, in English this time. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
FOURTEEN
There is only one untouched reservoir of raw materials left in the world, and that’s in the region known as Antarctica. An area larger than the combined area of the United States and Europe. The American government is sending a naval expedition to that region. The purpose is to train our navy in polar operations so that it may better perform its function of preserving the peace upon the seven seas of the world. Beyond that, the American government is seeking to do its share in the discovery and release to the world of the unknown treasures of Antarctica in the interest of all mankind.
James V. Forrestal,
United States Secretary of Defense,
in the documentary
The Secret Land, 1948
Antarctica
They’d had to tranquilize Kong again, of course. His fight with Godzilla had left him exhausted, but they couldn’t take chances. They had dosed him while he slept and strapped him into the same harness they had used to transport him onto the ship in the first place. The ship had lasted long enough to get them within around two hundred miles of their objective before she could no longer support Kong’s weight.
From there it had been a long, slow flight carrying the Titan by helicopter. Wilcox had used what resources they still had to set up an in-flight refueling schedule, since there was no place to set down. They had cast a wide net, alert for Godzilla, but fortunately, the big lizard didn’t catch on to what they were doing. Either that, or he no longer cared.
Nathan rode in the back of one of the helicopters, along with Maia, Ilene and Jia. They had all donned their flight suits, so as to be ready to board the HEAVs as soon as it became necessary. He noticed Jia still had on her red shawl, now configured to serve as a hood. The girl watched with fascination as the sea became spangled with broken sheets of ice and eventually merged into the ice pack of the frozen continent.
He noticed Jia signing to Ilene.
“What’s she asking?” Nathan asked.
“Why everything is white,” Ilene responded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess she’s never seen snow before.”
“There’s a lot of things she’s never seen before,” Ilene said. “There are a lot of things I’m not at all eager for her to see.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault. Well, some of it is. But really it has just been a chain of events that started with Monarch first finding Skull Island in ’73. We should have left it alone, once we knew what was there. That he was there. But we didn’t. And I was a part of it, too. I could have studied anywhere, but it had to be Skull Island.”
“You didn’t cause any of this,” he said.
“I didn’t stop it,” she said. “When they started talking about setting charges in the Skull Island Vortex, to open it up for exploration, I knew it was a bad idea. I knew it in my bones. And I did nothing. So now Kong and Jia have no home. Unless you’re right. Unless it’s down there.”
“You don’t think it is?” he asked.
