Thirty-six hours elapsed before the weather was clear enough for the Argentine government to send down another C-130 Hercules. In that short time, Antarctica reminded the men left stranded on the peninsula why humans were merely temporary interlopers on her shores. While not quite forced into cannibalism like some Uruguayan soccer team, the men were nearly helpless without the steady supply of natural gas. They’d been forced to use portable stoves to heat food and shared body heat to keep warm. Despite her damage, which included a holed bow, the Admiral Brown took on more than two hundred of the survivors, while the rest congregated in two of the dormitory buildings, huddled miserably while the interior temperatures plummeted.
General Philippe Espinoza was the first down the ramp when the big cargo plane came to a stop on the ice runway behind the base. Raul Jimenez was waiting and threw him a smart salute. The General had aged ten years in the week since Jimenez had seen him. Thick bags the size of grapes clung to his lower eyelids, and his normally florid complexion had gone pale.
“Any word of my son?” he asked immediately.
“I’m sorry, sir. No.” They stepped up into a waiting snowcat. “It is my duty to report that a group of four men were seen entering the gas-processing plant just a few minutes before the accident. Nothing of their remains has been found.”
Espinoza took this news like a body blow. He knew his son would never abandon his post, so the odds were that Jorge had been one of the four. “First my wife and now this,” he muttered.
“Your wife?” Jimenez asked too quickly.
Espinoza didn’t pick up on the young Lieutenant’s enthusiasm, and such was his state of mind that he actually explained himself to a subaltern. “She took our children and left me. Worse, she has betrayed me.”
Jimenez had to fight to keep the emotion from his face. Maxine had left him, and he knew she had done it so they could be together.
His heart rate went into overdrive. The news was the happiest he had ever heard, so the next words out of the General’s mouth were especially painful.
“I managed to get two agents to meet her plane when it landed in Paris after I was told by customs that she had left the country. She was met by two men and was taken immediately to the head-quarters of the DGSE.”
He knew that was the French spy agency, their version of the CIA.
Espinoza continued. “I don’t know if she was their agent all along or if they turned her, but the truth is unavoidable. She is a spy.”
At that instant, Jimenez understood that she had gotten as much information from him as she had the General. He recalled that last time, along the banks of the stream, when he had told her about abducting the American professor and how she was being kept in the Espinozas’ Buenos Aires apartment. Maxine had relayed that information to their superiors, and they had arranged her rescue.
“And now my Jorge is dead.” He fought to contain his grief and finally managed to compose himself. “Tell me this was the work of the Americans so that I may have my revenge.”
“I have been working closely with Luis Laretta, the director, and Commander Ocampo, who is the first officer aboard the Admiral Brown. Our preliminary conclusion is that the ship’s anchor came loose, which allowed the vessel to drift into the gas plant and cause the explosion. Secondary fires destroyed three other buildings, including a workshop and the dormitory we were using to house the scientists we had taken from other bases.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as too convenient? The two things the Americans want, the base reduced to ashes and the prisoners set free?”
“Sir, they weren’t freed. They all died in the fire, their remains burned to bits of charred bone. All told, there were sixteen fatalities, not including the foreigners. Eight were on the bridge of the cruiser, four plus a sentry in the plant, two died in the fire with the prisoners, and two more were killed when men panicked and started shooting at shadows.” That last piece of news was especially hard to deliver because Jimenez had been in charge, and the lack of discipline reflected on him. “We have found absolutely no evidence that this was anything more than a tragic accident.”
The General didn’t comment. He was still grappling with the quadruple loss—his wife and their two young children, his son, and, most assuredly because of this calamity, his career. He stared fixedly ahead, his body moving only when the snowcat bounced over a rough patch. They rounded the last hill, and the base was spread before them. Seen from above, the damage to the gas-processing plant looked bad. From ground level, it was far worse.
Half of the building, which had been big enough to park two jumbo jets, was a smoking hole in the ground in the center of tons of torn and blackened pipes. The Admiral Guillermo Brown was tied to the pier, her back half appearing normal, while from her bridge forward she was a charred husk. It was a testament to her Russian builders that more men aboard her hadn’t perished.
Out across the bay stood the legs of three of the production platforms. Of the rigs themselves, only the spindly arms of deck cranes poking above the waves marked their locations. Ice was already forming around them, and within another few days the bay would be a solid sheet.
“Mr. Laretta says that we can still pump oil to the storage tanks from the surviving rigs, but, without any means to process the natural gas, we have no way to power the operation,” Jimenez said when the silence became too much for him. “But he did say that portable machines can be brought in that will give us some processing capabilities and allow us to start rebuilding.”
Espinoza continued to sit like a stone.
“We still need to evacuate most of the staff until we can get fuel down here and the processor is up and running. Laretta says he needs just twenty men, at first. There will be more later, to be sure, but for now there aren’t enough resources to keep the rest alive. I forgot to ask, General, when are the other planes coming?”
They had pulled up close to the smoldering remains of the processing plant. Espinoza threw open his door and jumped down to the ice. He didn’t bother pulling up his parka hood, as if in defiance of this place. There was nothing more Antarctica could do to him. He stood mutely as the wind howled off the ocean, the air heavy with the smell of seared metal.
“Jorge,” he whispered.
Jimenez was actually surprised at how badly the General was taking his son’s death. From stories the Major had told him over the years, and seeing the two together, he had come away with the sense that the father looked on his son as just another soldier under his command.
“Jorge,” Espinoza repeated softly. Then his voice firmed and became angry. “You have failed and don’t have the courage to face me, do you? You stupidly died to avoid answering for your mistakes. You rode my coattails for so long that when it came time to step off, you could no longer stand on your own.”
He reared on Jimenez. “Planes? There will be no planes. You men will live or die by your wits. You will get this facility running again or you will all freeze to death. So long as our Chinese friends back our play, you must remain here and legitimize our claim. Now, tell me of this mystery ship that beached near here.”
Espinoza had gone from lamb to lion so quickly that Jimenez took a second too long to respond, so the General shouted, “Lieutenant, your dereliction has already been noted, do not make it worse!”
“Sir!” Jimenez came to attention. “As soon as the weather cleared, I ordered our helicopter to conduct an aerial survey off the coast because that vessel was an unexplained anomaly that your son told me had bothered him. They failed to spot the craft, and, given its situation when it was last sighted, it is my belief that it sank during the storm.”