and rescue them out here.
Thor turned to the pilot. “Can the plane carry seven more?”
Seven? Of course. The six men, plus their pilot.
“Fuck.” The pilot let out a gust of breath. “We don’t have enough oxygen for everyone. You’ll have to share. The extra weight means we’ll use more fuel and take longer to get back—if we get back. Can you control them?”
Thor seemed unruffled and in command of the situation, his confidence reassuring. “No problems there.”
“Then get them on board. We needed to leave five minutes ago. Our propellers and fuel line might freeze, and then we’re all dead. I’m going to get us moving.”
“Take this and lock the cockpit door behind you.” Thor handed him the lockbox with the components. “Segal, tell our new friends we’re taking their weapons. They’ve got thirty seconds to get aboard.”
Lev shouted something to the Russian, who motioned to the others.
Samantha watched, pulse racing, as desperate men scrambled across the ice, running toward their only chance at survival.
But what if they were lying? What if they had concealed weapons and hijacked the plane? What if they killed them all and simply took the plane?
One by one, the men climbed on board, handed their rifles to Malik and Lev. When the last one had made it, Thor pulled up the stairs and secured the door. Samantha noticed that he still had his pistol, as did Malik and Lev.
They weren’t taking any chances.
He shouted to the pilot. “Let’s go!”
Lev and Jones stowed the rifles. Then Segal spoke to the Russians, who sat on the floor alongside the ferry tank with no safety belts. From Lev’s gestures, Samantha could tell he was explaining that they would have to share oxygen. The Russians nodded and began taking off their goggles and masks. And there among them was Vasily.
He saw her, surprise on his face. “Sam?”
But then the plane was moving.
Thor took something from the overhead compartment—a first aid kit—and sat beside Samantha. The frost from his eyelashes had melted, dripping down his face like tears. “You know him?”
She held out her palm, which was now bleeding freely and had stained the blanket. “I met him at McMurdo when we first arrived. A group of us researchers got together. There may have been drinking.”
He opened the kit, cleaned the wound, his fingers cold, his brow furrowing when the sting of the antiseptic made her gasp. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” She watched him work. “You’re not what I was expecting.”
“Oh, how so?”
“You’re kind. No swagger or chest-thumping or sexist jokes.”
He chuckled. “You were expecting a shitting jerk, then. You don’t have a very high opinion of military guys, do you?”
She suppressed a smile at his syntax error. English speakers didn’t use the word shitting quite like that. “I guess not.”
He bandaged the cut and put the kit under the seat in front of him just as the little plane lifted off, shaking in the wind.
Thor passed the O2 mask to Samantha, their heads close together so as not to waste oxygen. As soon as they’d gotten airborne, Jones had gone to the back to reconfigure the oxygen system, giving the seven Russians four tanks to share, while he, Segal, Samantha, and Thor split two between the four of them.
It wasn’t ideal, but they’d had no other choice.
Thor could never have abandoned anyone in those temperatures. Rarely had his time on the ice of Greenland involved wind chill that extreme. When it had, he and his teammate, Bengt, had staked the dogs, put up their tent, and crawled into the same sleeping bag for warmth.
The dogs with their thick coats could survive it.
People couldn’t—not for long.
Samantha handed the mask back, her fingers accidentally brushing his, the contact human and warm. He knew she was afraid, but she was handling it well. For someone who hadn’t wanted to be a part of this mission, she’d done a great job.
If the flight out had been turbulent, the return trip demonstrated exactly why people didn’t fly in Antarctica in the winter. Twice, the plane had suddenly lost altitude, seeming to free fall before the pilot was able to gain lift again. The man deserved a medal as far as Thor was concerned. In a lesser pilot’s hands, they’d already be dead.
So far, their Russian guests hadn’t tried to pull anything. Then again, without safety belts, they had to hold on to the straps that secured the ferry tank or risk broken bones. None had spoken a word since takeoff.
The plane shook and bounced