Anika looked at the bottles, and then tapped the left-most one. “Purple,” she said.
Her professional UNPG look was long gone now. And it was about to get worse, she knew, because Roo had pulled out a small kit. “Face paint,” he said. “Facial recognition cameras can be fooled, if you willing to get a little … dramatic. We don’t know who here is hunting for you, and what resources they have, but better safe than sorry, yeah?”
Anika looked down at the makeup kit. “Okay,” she said hesitantly.
“To fool the cameras, we need to put a pattern on your face, a solid cover that distorts your cheekbones, nose, and eyes. Almost like what you see on a picture of a harlequin. Like you getting into carnival.” Roo held up the makeup, and then his phone. On it were several line drawings of faces with swooshing patterns crossing the eyes and cheeks. “Pick a color and a pattern you like.”
Anika sighed deeply and took the makeup and his phone, then turned to the mirror.
Using a green that complemented her new locks, she slowly covered the top left half of her face, then drew the solid patch of color down under her right eye.
“How does this look?” she finally asked, turning to face Roo.
He held up his phone and took a picture, then tapped around the screen. “I have a facial recognition program here, looks for pictures I take and tags them for me.” He smiled. “And you fooling it. We ready. Maybe even cutting it a bit close to late. We have to hurry.”
Chandra Gupta, a leather-faced helicopter pilot with piercing green eyes and a thick mustache, directed them to the back of the helicopter. “You’re late,” he told Roo. “I should have left without you.” Anika kept waiting for Chandra to ask about her, standing there with loudly colored hair and a wildly made-up face, but the old helicopter pilot didn’t even bat an eye.
There were no seats in the back, they perched on crates of medical supplies and boxes of fresh produce.
Chandra was an old Indian Air Force pilot. Once he was finished complaining to Roo about messing with his schedule, he kept on chatting to them as he got the helicopter ready to fly, flipping through a checklist.
He’d served in combat over Kashmir and Pakistan. “It’s better here,” he told them while flipping switches. “It’s just cold here. There, it was cold and really fucking high altitude. That flying, it was murderous, and in the hills, some separatist with a rocket launcher sitting on a rock at the same height or higher than you is just waiting for you to turn the corner. Miserable times. Miserable times.”
The helicopter rose from its pad, rising above the towers and stacks of Bent Horn, then tilting and swinging out over the sea.
Turbulence shook them around a bit, and Roo swore as a crate hit him in the back.
But then it smoothed, and the miles whipped by underneath.
“See that!” Chandra shouted over the cabin noise back at them. He jabbed a finger off in the distance as they banked. Three large U.S. Navy ships were pushing through the heavy seas at top speed. A carrier and two support ships. A destroyer or cruiser may have been on the distant horizon, Anika couldn’t quite make it out. Even this far away, she could see bow spray as the ships slammed against the large waves. It would have been dangerous down there in their stolen Coast Guard boat.
“Yeah?” she shouted forward.
“They are headed to join the U.S. Polar Fleet. They are beefing it up.”
“Why?”
Chandra shrugged. “Supposedly it is a joint fleet maneuver with the Europeans. I think they’re just trying to show everyone they still have the military edge, even in the Arctic.”
Roo looked out the window. He didn’t seem to believe Chandra’s theory, but he didn’t add anything to the conversation.
But he was very interested in the ships. He kept staring out of the window until they were past the wakes they left behind and banking into a new direction once more.
22
Chandra called them mist boats. They had been oil tankers at one point and then obviously rebuilt. Large helipads dominated their massive prows.
But that wasn’t the largest structural adjustment: each tanker had five massive funnels grafted onto the decks. These reached up like radio towers or small skyscrapers, using the decks of the tankers as firm ground.
Mist poured out of the tips of the funnels, slowly rising up into the heavily clouded sky.
Chandra flew them in low, low enough that Anika could see the churning whitecaps at the tip of each wave below them whipped into the air by the driving winds buffeting the copter.
There were three mist boats at anchor. Chandra gained altitude and flared the copter out in a motion that made Anika’s stomach lurch, and then they dropped onto the helipad of the lead mist boat.
The tanker rode the swells. Disconcerting, because it felt, to Anika, as if she were standing on the street of a large city that rose and fell with the waves. Something this large, with the deck and metal as far as she could see, with funnels stretching overhead like downtown buildings, and all of it dominating her field of vision, all this simply shouldn’t move underfoot.
A cheerful looking blond in a red windbreaker opened Chandra’s door with an accompanying gust of cold air and peered in. “Rough landing, Chandra!” He looked like he would be much more comfortable surfing off the California coast or backpacking through Oregon.
He looked back, saw Anika and Roo, and ran a hand self-consciously through his wind-harried hair. “Hey guys, I didn’t realize Chandra was ferrying anyone out.”
“I am not.” Their pilot pushed the blond aside and got out. “They’re on their way to Pleasure Island.” He heaved the side door out of the way.
“It’s awesome to see some new faces, even if for a few hours.” The blond stuck out a hand and helped Anika out, but left Roo on his own. “My name’s Martin Frobish. Everyone just calls me Bish.”
Bish had a handcart with him. He and Chandra started pulling the boxes out of the helicopter. After a second Roo and Anika got in the line and helped.
Then together they all manhandled the unruly cart along the nine hundred feet of deck.
They pushed it through watertight steel doors into the warm fluorescent lights and gray paint of the corridors. Bish led them to the large kitchen where Lars, a burly Scandinavian who looked every bit a descendant of the Vikings, ripped open the boxes with eagerness.
He held up a fresh clump of lettuce with something approaching reverence. “Finally, a fucking salad,” he growled.
Chandra pulled Bish aside as the Scandinivian began chopping lettuce and puttering around the boxes, grabbing fresh produce with a grin. “I need to barter for the extra fuel to get to Pleasure Island, and I’ll be landing back on my way.”
“Talk to Everson, he’ll fuel you up,” Bish said softly. Then even softer. “And I’ll buy your fuel for a trip back south on your return.”
“What is happening with you?” Chandra asked.
Bish chuckled and stole a slice of tomato while Lars had his back turned. “Any of you been following the news this morning?”
“No,” Anika said. After getting Anika disguised they’d abandoned the room to head straight over to the helicopter.
Lars had his head in the fridge. He slammed the door shut, shaking the wall. “We have been fucked.” He had a pair of beers in his hand, he threw one at Bish, who snagged it out of the air with ease and popped the top.
Both men, Anika realized, had been drinking heavily before she’d arrived. Lars had bloodshot eyes.
A heavy thunk, and a steady shaking rumbled through the floor.
“Shit, they’re opening the hold doors.” Bish’s head snapped around, facing the direction of the decks.
