Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Christa Faust, Gabriel Hunt Read Free Book Online Page A

7
    Gabriel looked out the military plane’s tiny round window as the twinkling lights of Christchurch receded beneath scattered cloud cover. Millie slept with his massive arms crossed and his Saints cap pulled down over his eyes. Velda looked calm and gorgeous, dressed as if ready to shoot a Ralph Lauren ad in Aspen. Only her hands betrayed the anxiety she felt, clenching and unclenching and periodically smoothing her pristine and wrinkle-free trousers. Rue sat directly across from Gabriel, chewing a piece of gum and cleaning the engine oil from under her fingernails with a plastic swizzle stick bearing the logo of the airport bar.
    “Ever been to Mactown before?” Rue asked.
    “Where?” Gabriel looked away from the window, which now afforded a dull flat view of dark water stretching out forever in every direction.
    “McMurdo Station,” Rue said. “You know, the place we’re going.”
    Gabriel shook his head. “I’ve been to the North Pole, but never to Antarctica.”
    “Well, imagine that,” Rue teased, her dark eyes bright. “This poor little paulista has been somewherethat the brave adventurer Gabriel Hunt has yet to conquer.” She kicked Gabriel’s boot with her toe.
    “I’m sure it’s an amazing place,” Gabriel said, looking back out into the darkness. “So much grim, bloody history. The stark, pristine beauty of untouched glaciers. The struggle to triumph over the brutal elements in the last real uncharted wilderness left on earth.”
    “Right,” Rue said with an arched eyebrow. “Better get some sleep. You’re going to have more stark, pristine beauty than you know what to do with—twenty-four hours a day of it. Remember, the sun never sets during the Antarctic summer, so…”
    “So this will be our last dark night,” Gabriel said.
    “Pretty much,” Rue said.
    He flicked off the overhead light, closed his eyes and slept.
    “So,” Rue said. “What do you say? Is this pristine beauty or what?”
    The four of them sat on orange plastic chairs that would not have looked out of place at New York City’s DMV waiting room in 1972. At the far end of the room was a scarred metal desk with nothing on it. The walls were cheap wood paneling and the only decoration was a pair of faded posters, one featuring cute penguins and the other cute seals. Besides a couple of seagulls, this was the only wildlife they’d seen in the eighteen hours since they’d landed at McMurdo airport.
    “Christ,” Millie said, shifting his long legs awkwardly in front of his tiny seat. “I feel like I’m in trouble with the sisters back in grade school.”
    Outside the charmless metal building, the temperature hovered at 22 degrees below zero, but inside it wasuncomfortably stuffy and overheated. The accumulated snow in their boot treads had rapidly melted into dirty puddles around their feet. In spite of the gurgling, spitting humidifier in one corner of the room, the air was so dry Gabriel could almost feel his lips chapping as they waited. Several attempts to contact Michael on the expensive satellite phone he’d insisted Gabriel bring had resulted in frustrating fifteen-second bursts of asking each other “Can you hear me?” followed by the inevitable loss of signal.
    Before Gabriel could come up with a good answer to Rue’s question, a new bureaucrat entered the room. This one was female, but otherwise virtually identical to the two that had spoken to them before. Her sour, constipated expression did not bode well for the expedition.
    “I’m Celia Lanke. Executive DP here at McMurdo. Mr…” She looked down at a plastic clipboard and then back up at Gabriel, her gaze baleful. “Hunt. You claim that you’ve already filed your 679-A, but I’m afraid Denver has not been able to confirm that any such filing actually occurred. Because of the urgency of your stated mission, I have requested and received the go-ahead to allow you to refile, but there will be a refiling fee of thirty-five