clinging to the distant mountains. He knew instinctively that it was the reflection of the setting sun on the vast ice sheet. He felt a deep pull in his chest and was more relaxed than he’d been in a long time.
When he was prospecting in the field, Mercer was always the expedition leader, and he was forced to deal with the hundreds of details that cropped up on a daily basis. It wasn’t an ego issue. He actually preferred to fade into the background. But when a mining company was paying him thousands of dollars a day, sitting back wasn’t an option. They expected results. On this trip, it was refreshing not to have that kind of responsibility. Mercer wouldn’t have to deal with the burden of command. That fell on Werner Koenig, who seemed more than qualified to handle any emergencies, and Marty Bishop, who was starting to show interest.
Mercer took a deep breath, feeling the burn of icy air in his lungs. It was so clean it left his head spinning for an instant. This was one of those moments of pure happiness, a precious and rare feeling that he savored with each moment it lasted. He laughed aloud as the glow of reflected light faded to blue and then vanished altogether.
HANN GLACIER, GREENLAND
Standing atop one of the Sno-Cats so his view wouldn’t be interrupted, Mercer swept the vista with a pair of binoculars. Except maybe on the ocean, he couldn’t imagine a place with a more distant horizon. The line between ice and sky was as straight as a laser beam. It was only to the east, toward the coast twenty miles away, that the line blurred just slightly as the massive glacier began its three-thousand-foot plummet to the sea. To the west lay 850,000 square miles of frozen nothingness.
Now that the Alpha Air JetRanger had shuttled the last of the team to the glacier and flown back to the heliport at Ammassalik, an eerie silence descended over the clutch of vehicles. The occasional muttered word sounded as out of place and blasphemous as a curse in a cathedral. The wind was a constant whisper not even strong enough to stir snow off the ground, but the temperature was ten degrees below freezing. Mercer kept his hands gloved and the hood of his nylon shell pulled tightly over his head. Beneath it was his leather jacket, a sweatshirt, and two T-shirts. Over his long underwear and jeans, he wore nylon overpants and insulated hiking boots. Since they’d be driving for the next twenty hours or so, he didn’t need the heavier Arctic gear packed in his luggage, including the pair of padded moon boots.
Ira Lasko was at the back of the Sno-Cat making sure their ground-penetrating radar sled was secured for the rough overland trek. “What was that line about the moon? ‘Magnificent desolation’? Something like that?”
Mercer lowered the binoculars. “I’ve been on a few glaciers in Alaska, but nothing like this.” There was awe in his voice. The variety and beauty of the earth’s geography never failed to amaze him.
“They say if the ice covering Greenland were to melt, sea levels around the world would rise about twenty- five feet.”
“You’re forgetting that the weight of this much ice has actually sunk the interior of Greenland about a thousand feet below sea level. The oceans would rise twenty feet, and this place would become the basin for the largest freshwater lake in the world.”
“Last time I trade trivia with a geologist,” Ira muttered good-naturedly.
Laughing, Mercer scrambled down the ladder bolted to the back of the Sno-Cat. “Anytime you want, you can stump me about submarines.”
Tall marker flags had been attached to the lifting pallets so when the Sno-Cats returned to be retrieved by the rotor-stat, they could be found under the new snowfall certain to bury them. Werner Koenig also got a fix from a handheld GPS and wrote the satellite-derived coordinates into a notebook he carried in his parka. “We’re ready to go.”
“Let’s saddle up,” Marty bellowed and gave a cavalryman’s closed-fist gesture.
The Toyota Land Cruiser would drive point, since it was the most maneuverable and fuel-efficient vehicle in the convoy. Geo-Research had hired a former European rally racing champion named Dieter to drive it. Werner, Greta, and Igor Bulgarin, who had the most experience on the ice out of anyone on the expedition, would ride with him. Their job was to scout for the easiest routes when the ground became too broken.
The Surveyor’s Society team was assigned to the first Sno-Cat and each member would take turns driving it. The vehicle’s controls were nearly the same as any truck with the exception of the steering wheel. To change directions, the ’Cats had levers that activated brakes on the tracks.
As team leader, Marty took the first turn in the driver’s seat, with Ira next to him. Mercer sat on the large bench seat behind them. The rear portion of the ’Cat was accessible from the cabin but was packed to the roof with personal gear and the radar sled.
“Get the goddamned heater cranked,” Ira complained. “I’m freezing already.”
The turbo-diesel fired on the first turn of the key, surging for an instant before settling into a powerful growl. A white jet of exhaust burst from the back of the Toyota. Over the sound of their own vehicle they could hear the other three ’Cats come to life. Dieter gave the SUV a burst of gas, and her bulbous, under-inflated tires dug into the snow.
Marty jammed the Sno-Cat into first gear, and they began crawling forward, keeping to the tire tracks left in the Land Cruiser’s wake. He worked the levers to test the Sno-Cat’s steering response. “It’s like driving a tank.”
Because of the loads each ’Cat towed, their speed was limited to fifteen miles per hour. The ride in the cabin was smooth if monotonous. After the first hour, everyone but Mercer had lost his sense of wonder. Like a frozen Sahara, ice stretched flat and featureless in every direction, broken only rarely by humps of yet more ice. The sun made the landscape dazzle like a world of diamond chips. Without their dark glasses, the reflection would have blinded them all.
Strung out like elephants in a circus parade, the four Sno-Cats doggedly followed the trail laid down by the Toyota. With the weather clear, it was easy to keep to the track, but as the morning wore on, the wind picked up and a whiteout developed with a suddenness that startled them all. One moment everything was normal, and an instant later the visibility dropped to zero as a swirling maelstrom of ice particles and snow whipped around the cabin. The storm screaming over their heads was strong enough to rock the massive vehicle.
“Jesus, is this normal?” Marty shouted louder than necessary.
Ira chuckled. “According to Igor, this is nothing.”
The radio under the dash crackled to life. “How are you doing back there?” Werner was checking on his people. “Igor says this should die out in a minute or two. Or it will go on for a few days.”
Ira plucked the microphone from its bracket. “We’re hoping for the first option.”
A new voice came on the radio. “This is Erwin. I’m in the last Sno-Cat, and the wind’s already dying down. We’ll be ready to go in just a minute.”
The wind dropped just as abruptly as it had risen, but in its wake the men were subdued. This had been just a taste of the Arctic’s fury. After a lunch of military MREs, Ira took over the driving. The terrain became more fractured, jarring ridges of ice and snow that the ’Cat hit with kidney-punishing regularity. Their speed dropped to ten miles per hour.
Two hours later, Werner Koenig’s voice came over the radio. “This is a call to all Sno-Cats. I just got word from the
Ira grabbed the radio from Mercer. “Then let’s get the lead out. Marty just took his boots off, and I don’t think we can stay in the ’Cat tonight without gas masks.”
At six, they took a vote to stop for dinner or suffer through tepid MREs again. Werner estimated that they were forty miles from the base, and if they stopped, they’d be forced to spend the night in the vehicles. Grumbling but unanimous, they decided it was Meals Ready to Eat one more time.
Mercer took the Sno-Cat’s driver’s seat, and Marty pushed himself into a cramped position between the front seats so he could talk with Ira and him. The sun’s fading light caused the ice to glow as twilight crept over the caravan. The sky’s soft pastels of purple and rose were mirrored by the landscape, cut only by black shadows cast by frigid hummocks. It was clear enough to see a star’s reflection. Like the night before, it remained light long after the sun had vanished. The western horizon was lit as if it hid a vast city below its rim. When the half-moon rose, its
