Chapter 14 - The Extraction on the Ice Shelf
The aircraft had broken into two sections upon impact. Its wings were sheared clean off, and the crumpled cockpit was crushed like an aluminum soda can against the blue ice wall. The cabin section, however, was wedged precariously against a towering shelf of frozen hardpack, its passenger hatch jammed shut by three feet of compacted snow.
Mason threw his door open into the roaring gale. The instant the Arctic air hit his exposed throat, his lungs seized with a sharp, burning spasm. The temperature was minus thirty-five, and with the wind chill, it felt like standing in a meat locker of liquid nitrogen.
"Secure the recovery winch to that rock outcrop!" Mason screamed through his radio mic to Diaz. "If the fuselage shifts, the whole tail slips into the crevasse!"
Mason didn't wait. He grabbed a collapsible titanium entrenching shovel and a heavy iron pry bar, leaping down into waist-deep snow drifts. Every step was an agonizing battle against the howling wind. Snow caked onto his eyelashes, freezing his eyelids halfway shut, but his eyes stayed locked on the twisted emergency exit door.
He reached the hull and began hacking frantically at the hardpack ice sealing the door frame. "Doctor Sloan! Can you hear me?!" he shouted, hammering the pry bar against the frozen alloy. "Search and Rescue! Respond!"
Inside, a faint, rhythmic double-tap sounded against the interior metal. Tap. Tap.
She was alive.
"Hang on!" Mason grunted, jamming the wedge end of the pry bar into the door latch seam. He threw his entire two-hundred-pound frame against the steel lever. The metal groaned, ice splintering like safety glass. "Diaz! Bring the portable winch cable! Now!"
Diaz scrambled through the drift, dragging the heavy galvanized steel cable. Together, they hooked the clevis pin through the emergency door handle. Diaz hit the remote switch.
The electric winch whined, straining against the ice. With a violent CRACK that sounded like a rifle shot across the empty glacier, the hatch tore free, spilling a cloud of gray, smoky exhaust from the cabin into the white storm.
Mason dove headfirst through the opening.
The interior was tilted at an alarming angle. Inside, strapped into a passenger seat that had broken free from its floor rails, was a young flight technician who was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Lying on the floor beside the communications console, her fingers wrapped around an exposed battery lead, was Avery Sloan.
Her lips were a dangerous shade of pale violet, her hair dusted with frost, her knuckles swollen and blue from the lethal cold. But her slate-gray eyes—the same eyes that had stared down Mason Kincaid across a spilled tray of curry—were open, clear, and razor-sharp.
She looked up at the figure in the bulky, unmarked green parka. She saw the raw scrapes on his cheeks, the desperate determination in his stance, and the familiar stubborn jawline beneath the ice mask.
Avery’s chapped lips parted into the faintest whisper. "You’re late... Specialist."
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Mason felt a lump rise in his throat, but he didn't allow himself to break. He immediately stripped off his outer thermal jacket and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders.
"Transportation had engine trouble, ma'am," Mason said softly, unhooking her harness with steady fingers. "Let's get you home."
