Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,76

of the station. He veered to his right, watching for the flags that marked the lids to the escape hatches. Ryan had said it was only fifty yards from the door of the café but in this darkness…

“There!” Samantha saw it first.

A dark flag fluttered in the wind.

Thor gritted his teeth against the pain in his shoulder and walked faster, wanting to get out of this wind as soon as possible. He began shoveling, moving snow as fast as he could with one arm.

“Give me the shovel!” Samantha took it from him and went to work, cussing the whole time. “Damn it! Fuck!”

Then the shovel hit steel.

Samantha stepped back, tossed the shovel, reached down, but struggled to remove the heavy lid. Thor took over, shifting it to the side to reveal a dark, square hole with a wooden ladder leading into the depths of the ice, a faint light shining at the bottom.

He fought back a wave of dizziness. “I’ll help you down and then follow.”

She looked over the edge, teeth chattering. “O-okay.”

He gripped her hand with his good arm as she dropped down, turned around, and felt with her foot for the first rung of the ladder.

“It’s such a long way.” She started down.

“You’ve got it. Just keep going. Ryan said the ladder goes all the way to the bottom without a gap.”

Shivering, Thor let her get a body-length ahead of him then followed, the wooden rungs creaking under his weight. Instantly, it was warmer, the wind chill gone. But still, he shivered almost uncontrollably.

Down they went until it seemed they must be halfway to hell by now, but the ladder kept going, walls of ice surrounding him.

“I’m d-down!” Samantha turned on the flashlight, flooding the space with light.

Thor dropped to the ice beside her, pulled out his radio. “J-Jones, this is Isaksen. W-we’re inside the ice t-tunnels.”

21

Samantha didn’t think she’d ever feel warm again, the cold making her shiver uncontrollably. She hurried as fast as she could through the narrow ice tunnel, leading Thor to the unheated LO Arch, desperate to reach the machine shop. After that, they still had to walk to the Beer Can and then up all those stairs to reach warmth and the station.

Not to be a baby, but Samantha wasn’t sure she’d make it.

You have no choice.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

She came to a fork in the tunnels and stopped, body shaking from the cold.

“Which w-way?” Thor was shivering, too.

She hesitated, uncertain. If she took a wrong turn and got them lost, they would die. She shined the flashlight down both tunnels, then recognized the Buzz Aldrin shrine cut into the tunnel on her left. “Th-there.”

She didn’t remember the ice tunnels being quite this long, but then she’d been dressed for the cold when she’d gotten her tour. She led Thor past the shrines, following large pipes that carried fuel, water, and waste leading them toward the service arches. Then ahead, she saw the exit and, beyond it, the cavernous space of the LO Arch.

“S-stop.” Thor walked to the exit, looked up and down the length of the arch, as if checking for Hardin. “The s-stairs to the station are that way, r-right?”

But Samantha’s gaze was fixed on the door to the machine shop. “Th-there’s the machine sh-shop. We can w-warm up th-there.”

Thor nodded. “Hurry.”

They crossed the corridor, the thirty-foot-high ceiling and flickering lights lending a creepy feeling to the space. Its hundreds of meters of steel shelves were covered with boxed supplies, giving a person so many places to hide.

Don’t think about that.

Samantha took the stairs as fast as she could with muscles that had begun to slow down, and then stepped into the warmth of the machine shop. Her body ached with cold, the heat barely registering. She might have sat, but Thor took her arm, kept her standing.

He pulled down the towel that covered his face. “S-stay on your f-feet. Let’s see if th-they’ve got anything w-warm to drink here—or anything I c-can use as a w-weapon.”

Samantha pulled down her makeshift mask, too, moving on pure adrenaline now, her mind barely registering all the equipment and tools that sat on shelves and workbenches.

“C-coffee.” Thor motioned toward a coffee maker that sat on a nearby table.

The machine was on a timer and set to make a fresh pot in the morning. Thor got it brewing with the push of a button, and then walked off, searching shelves and toolboxes. He picked up a hammer, tested its weight.

“Th-that’s fitting. A h-hammer.”

He didn’t laugh.

Samantha stumbled