Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,15
them heading for the crash site. They’re farther out than we are, but you’re going to have company.”
Samantha exhaled as the plane came to a stop, her hands still gripping the arms of her seat, her knuckles white. It had been a rough landing, but at least they hadn’t tumbled into a crevasse. “Good grief!”
Wind buffeted the small aircraft, its propellers still running.
She stood, put on her hat, hood, snow goggles, mask, gloves, and headlamp, the satellite schematics tucked inside her parka. “What about the other plane?”
Thor rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder, his gaze meeting hers. “Let us worry about the plane. You focus on the satellite.”
The men moved quickly, pulling out rifles and putting on masks, headlamps, goggles, and gloves.
“Rifles over your shoulders. Pistols holstered.” Thor took a rifle and the steel lockbox out of his gear bag. “We’ll set up the tent on her windward side to create a windbreak and offer some shelter.”
Lev grabbed a large duffel bag. “I’ve got the tools. Jones, grab the tent.”
Thor turned and shouted to the pilot. “How much time can you give us?”
“It’s minus eighty with a wind chill of minus one-ten. No more than twenty minutes, if that.”
Samantha’s stomach knotted.
Twenty minutes. What they were asking of her seemed impossible, and yet she had no choice but to get the job done. If any of the plane’s systems froze, they would die. If they got caught in the storm, they would die. If she didn’t retrieve the components, lots of other people might die.
You can do this.
If she could access the components, that is.
“I’ll go first and make sure the ice is stable.” Thor opened the door, letting in a gust of frigid air. He walked a path to the satellite and back, then returned for her and helped her down the stairs.
She pulled her hat down over exposed skin that burned, turned on her headlamp, and looked out on devastation.
The satellite’s various antennae and solar arrays were strewn across the snow in a thousand shattered pieces, the main body lying there like a battered corpse. The clean-up crew had a big job to do next summer.
She lowered her head against the wind and walked over to the mangled remains of the satellite. It was badly damaged, looking nothing like the images she’d memorized. She tried to orient herself, their headlamps the only source of light. “That must be where the thirty gigahertz antenna connected. This held a solar array. That must have been where the dual subreflectors attached to the module.”
Thor walked beside her. “Where do you want to set up?”
She pointed. “Over there.”
Thor motioned to the others. “Let’s get that tent set up!”
The men struggled to complete their task in the wind, while Samantha opened the tool bag, the wind chill already penetrating her layers. A blow torch would have made this easier, but they were unreliable in this cold. She took out a hammer and chisel, which she used to punch through the aluminum alloy paneling until she’d made a big enough opening for a close-quarter hacksaw.
“Like this,” she heard Thor say.
He seemed to be in his element here, more so than the others.
“I think you’ve done this before,” Malik said.
“A thousand times. Tighten that down. There. We’re good.”
The tent did make a difference, sheltering her from the worst of the wind.
Thor told Malik and Lev to shelter inside. “Do what you can to stay warm, so you’re good to go when that plane arrives.”
She kept sawing, the blade slicing through metal. But she needed to go faster. She couldn’t spend ten of their twenty minutes just getting into the module. Unfortunately, aluminum was one metal that gained strength in extreme cold.
The saw blade snapped, unable to take it.
“Damn.” She bent down, rummaged through the tools for a replacement blade.
“What can I do?”
“The blade broke. I need a new one.”
“All you’re doing is cutting open this paneling, right?”
“Yes.”
Thor gave her something—hand warmers. “Get inside the tent. Activate those if you need them. We’ll handle this part of it. We’re good at wrecking shit. Come on, boys, let’s rip this open.”
She stepped inside the tent as Malik and Lev stepped out, her breath turning to ice crystals that danced in the light of her headlamp. Through a crack in the tent flap, she saw the men using the hammer and chisel to punch out a large opening in the panel.
A few minutes later, Thor ducked his head inside the tent. “You’re on.”
She stepped out and peered into