Dawn Plus One Hour
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, and she was thrown out through the open door. She felt herself falling through space. Then she splashed onto the top of P4.
She rolled onto her back and looked up. The Black Hawk bucked twenty or thirty feet up in the air, veered sharply to the left, and exploded in a great ball of fire. Burning debris scattered like shrapnel, destroying any hopes she had for escape.
Soaked to the bone and waist-deep in water, she stood up and faced the wounded Egyptian. The lone remnant of Zawas’s army, blood spurting from his leg, pointed his unsteady AK-47 at her.
She didn’t bother to put her hands up as he approached her with a desperate expression on his face. Or was he looking at something over her shoulder?
She turned to see another military chopper sweep in, this one with U.N. markings. Its heavy machine guns exploded and bullets kicked up water along the P4 summit, hitting the Egyptian and driving him backward over the edge and into the water.
Serena looked up as the chopper circled overhead. A ladder was lowered for her. She grabbed the first rung and started climbing. When she reached the top a strong hand helped her in. She looked up to see the face of Colonel Zawas. In his right hand was an automatic pistol and it was pointed at her.
She was numb with shock as Zawas smiled, the wind blowing his cap off.
“You do not disappoint, Doctor Serghetti.” He held up her green thermos. “Now that I have the Sonchis map there is nothing to stop me from returning one day to complete that which I’ve begun. History, as I’ve mentioned, is written by the victors.”
Maybe, she thought, but a quick glance told her it was just Zawas and the pilot aboard. “Tell me, Colonel, did you twist the thermos shut clockwise or counterclockwise?”
“Clockwise.” Zawas eyed her dubiously. “Why do you ask?”
She smiled and said, “Oh, nothing.”
Zawas’s confidence began to waver. He lowered his gun to untwist the thermos. As he did, Serena tried to kick the gun out of his hand. She missed the gun but hit his arm and the gun went off. The chopper veered up, throwing Zawas off balance, but not before he put two more bullets through the window in his efforts to kill her.
Serena looked at the pilot and saw that he had been hit. She jumped in front, shoved the man aside, and grabbed the controls. She looked over her shoulder in time to see an angry Zawas rise to his feet.
“Colonel!” she screamed. “Do you know how to fly a helicopter?”
Zawas frowned. “Of course, woman.”
“So do I.”
She banked sharply and watched Zawas tumble out the door. He dropped like a stone, his arms windmilling until he hit the surface of the churning water and disappeared.
She took a deep breath and steadied the chopper. A quick scan of the instruments told her she might, if she was lucky, have enough fuel to make it within radio range of McMurdo and land on more solid ice. But she couldn’t make herself proceed without looking back. She scanned the ice below, fighting back the tears. The city was gone and her fuel gauges were dropping.
As she hovered in the gusty skies over the hardening ice, she prayed for the soul of Conrad Yeats. Then she turned the chopper in the direction of McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf and flew away.