Chapter 11
Daniel
“Thanks, Marcus. We are going to focus on the rescue now.”
I keyed off the line and opened the one to Nate. Reed pulled us back from the rim and held us in a wide, slow circle. “So we can’t land on top.”
“No,” I agreed.
“The rotor wash alone would send the colony into a panic and destabilize the birds that are already exhausted,” Nate agreed.
Reed nodded. “Even if I could manage it, the surface area up there is not enough for a safe touchdown.”
“Correct,” I said.
We exchanged a glance inside the cockpit.
I had an idea. “What if… you drop me at the base? I can try to scale the wall.”
Reed turned his head and looked at me with an expression I recognized from the war zone. It was the expression that came right before he told me absolutely not. “Daniel. Those walls are completely vertical. You are a surgeon, not a free climber.”
“I have done harder things. I can rappel down.”
“I know. But not like this.”
“Wait, what?” Nate’s voice cut through. “Doctor Park, you can rappel down from a chopper?”
Reed grinned. “He can do many things.” He turned to me. “But no. Not this time. There are no handholds on sheer ice. I am not dropping you at the base of an ice wall in the middle of the Southern Ocean.”
“Doctor Park, even if you could somehow do it, it would take you hours.” Nate clearly agreed with Reed.
I blew out a breath. “Fine. Nate, any way to get the vessel closer?”
“I have been trying for the past hour, Doctor. The brash ice around the base is too dense and unpredictable for us to dock anywhere near it. We cannot get close enough to do anything useful, and I cannot get anyone off the vessel safely even if we could.”
“Drop me in the ocean,” Reed said.
I stared at him. “And then what exactly?”
“I trained for Everest two years back. That is how I got the Guinness record. I know how to climb.”
“Whoa. I didn’t know that.” Nate sounded awestruck.
Reed grinned. “Well, technically I didn’t set the record for climbing. I landed a chopper on Everest.”
“That’s even more impressive. I had no idea Waypoint Station was full of heroes.”
Reed laughed. I was still glaring at him. “No. You are not climbing. We just went over it.”
Reed said nothing. He looked out through the windscreen at the iceberg, then up at the sky, and then back at the iceberg.
“I am not leaving them,” Reed said quietly.
“I know,” Daniel said.
Reed turned back to the instruments. Several seconds passed as the three of us racked our brains. Suddenly, Reed snapped his fingers. “I have it!”
“What’s the plan?” Nate asked.
“What about a zipline?”
“I am sorry, what?” Nate asked.
“A zipline.” Reed was smiling wide, his eyes alight. I felt dread spread inside me. He was onto an idea, and I already knew this was it. But it meant Reed’s life was on the line.
“What about a zipline?” Nate asked again. “I am sorry. I don’t get it.”
“I have a grappling hook in the gear locker behind us. I throw it from the open side door and catch it on the rim of the iceberg. Once the hook is set, we have a fixed line running from the chopper to the iceberg edge.”
“Oh. A literal zipline from the chopper to the top of the berg?”
“Exactly.” Reed nodded enthusiastically. Down below us, Nate looked up at us, meeting our eyes through the glass.
“And then?” he asked.
“Then we have a ladder-ramp type of contraption. I will send it down that zipline first. It will just slide right down to the surface. Then I clip in and follow it down the same line. We never cross above the chasm. The colony never sees the rotor wash.”
I looked at the rim and then at the waterside of the iceberg and worked through it.
“Umm, Pilot Harmon, how do you throw a hook from a moving aircraft while piloting it?” Nate asked.
Reed smiled like a madman. “Oh, I won’t be piloting.”
I shook my head. Yeah, this was going to be absolutely insane.
“My husband will.”
Down below, Nate’s eyes went so big that I could see it even from this distance.
“Are you two real?”
Reed started laughing. Big, booming laughter. I couldn’t join because what he was proposing was indeed the only working solution, but it meant he would be risking life and limb. And he would be depending on my rusty piloting skills.
My headache came back full swing. I had lived a quiet life tucked away at Waypoint Station, and he had just come barging in, and now, in less than twenty-four hours, I had experienced every single emotion the human brain possibly could.
And the worst hadn’t even come. And yet.
And yet, I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
Reed’s spirit was unmatched. I think he lived the lives of a hundred men single-handedly, and somehow I had the luck to be chosen for this wild ride.
“Nate, give us a moment.” I keyed the mic off.
“You know it’s the only way,” Reed said.
“I know. I just don’t like it. You made me promise you earlier. Now it’s my turn.”
He glanced at me with warm eyes. “Anything.”
“You will be safe. Nothing can happen to you.” My voice shook. “Nothing. You hear me?”
He reached for me, grabbed my palm, and brought it to his lips. We were visible through the cockpit to the research vessel’s crew. At that moment, I didn’t care.
He kissed my fingers and held my gaze steadily. “I’ll be safe, love. I’ll come back.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them, I was ready. “Let’s do it.”
***
I had flown before. I couldn’t land or take off or do anything besides basic flying, but I knew the mechanics of holding a chopper steady. Had to learn during that deployment because there was no one else left.
But knowing the mechanics and executing them while your husband leaned out of the open side door with a grappling hook were two entirely different things.
Reed had clipped himself to the anchor point inside the cabin before he opened the door.
The wind came in immediately, cold and flat, filling the cockpit.
For the next several minutes, it was a scene out of my nightmares. Reed hung over the open water, one hand on the line above him, the other guiding his descent, his body moving in a long, controlled arc toward the iceberg wall. He was so small against that wall of ice.
I held the chopper and tried to just keep breathing. He was absolutely insane to do this and, God, how I loved that about him.
At last, he landed safely, and I could breathe again. Reed moved across the iceberg surface to the chasm edge. He went to his knees and worked the ramp over the rim, unfolding each segment, extending it down into the chasm in sections. Was it long enough? I couldn’t see.
“Anything?” Nate asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
Reed stood up and waited. Nothing happened. He turned back to me and shrugged. I raised a hand and splayed my fingers to tell him to wait.
They were birds. They didn’t know what we were trying to do. But my idiot of a husband had other ideas. He started flapping his hands up and down and walking along the chasm edge in a waddle.
I groaned. Oh my goodness.
Blue 48 stared at him.
“What’s going on?” Viktor’s voice came over the comm line.
“Reed is… mimicking a penguin.”
A roar of laughter burst through my headphones.
A single emperor penguin’s head peeked over the edge of the ramp, and the next moment, it stood on the iceberg surface, blinking in the light.
“It’s working,” I reported.
Cheering broke over the comm line. I watched as another popped out. Then four at once, jostling at the top of the ramp, spilling onto the surface and waddling immediately toward the iceberg edge without hesitation, toward the water far below.
One after another after another, black-and-white bodies came out of the chasm.
Reed grinned up at me from the surface of the iceberg.
The birds soon became a huge mass of black and white. Their calls filled the air. Then one brave bird took the plunge. I watched its tiny body fall through the air. It hit the water and disappeared, only to bob back up seconds later.
One by one, the others took off from the edge, arcing out over the sheer wall and hitting the water cleanly, disappearing and surfacing and immediately swimming away.
“They’re coming out.” Nate took over and kept a running commentary for the team while I fought sudden tears.
Reed stood watching the spectacle. Scores of emperor penguins climbed out of the earth, walked past him, and jumped back into the ocean they had come from.
Somewhere in the mass, Mama Blue 48 left the iceberg too.
“Viktor, she’s off. Swimming back to her family,” I let him know.
“Understood.” I heard a sniffle. “Get your man back and come back home, Daniel.”
Before we headed back, I did remember to hover over the research vessel.
“Nate.” I made sure the line was private, just him and me. “I’ve something for you. I’m going to drop it now. Ready to catch?”
“What? Oh. Ah… okay.” He lifted his hand to shield himself from the rotor wash. I could see his scrunched-up expression as I dropped a nonbreakable messenger tube with the folded note from Garrett. He caught it neatly and gave me a thumbs-up.
The last words I heard from him as we flew back toward Waypoint Station were, “That asshole.”