Thirst Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Map

  T minus 5 days, 2 hours, 53 minutes

  T minus 5 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes

  T minus 5 days, 1 hours, 50 minutes

  T minus 5 days, 1 hours, 34 minutes

  T minus 5 days, 1 hours, 1 minute

  T minus 5 days, 29 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 21 hours, 35 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 21 hours, 35 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 20 hours, 56 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 18 hours, 42 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 11 hours, 40 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 9 hours, 17 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 9 hours, 4 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 5 hours, 36 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 3 hours, 17 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 1 hour, 33 minutes

  T minus 4 days, 1 hour, 16 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 22 hours, 58 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 21 hours, 50 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 21 hours, 49 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 19 hours, 26 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 19 hours

  T minus 3 days, 18 hours, 55 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 17 hours, 56 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 16 hours, 44 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 4 hours, 59 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 1 hour, 15 minutes

  T minus 3 days, 38 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 23 hours, 43 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 23 hours, 22 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 23 hours, 22 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 22 hours, 20 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 22 hours, 11 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 21 hours, 57 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 21 hours, 24 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 19 hours, 15 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 19 hours

  T minus 2 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes

  T minus 2 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes

  T minus 2 days

  T minus 1 day, 18 hours

  T minus 1 day, 12 hours, 48 minutes

  T minus 1 day, 12 hours, 34 minutes

  T minus 1 day, 11 hours, 49 minutes

  T minus 1 day, 2 hours, 55 minutes

  T minus 19 hours, 46 minutes

  T minus 10 hours, 50 minutes

  T minus 4 hours, 30 minutes

  T minus 4 hours, 3 minutes

  T minus 3 hours, 48 minutes

  T minus 3 hours, 38 minutes

  T minus 3 hours, 30 minutes

  T minus 3 hours, 16 minutes

  T minus 2 hours, 58 minutes

  T minus 2 hours, 39 minutes

  T minus 1 hour, 55 minutes

  T minus 1 hour, 20 minutes

  T minus 59 minutes

  T minus 38 minutes

  T minus 3 minutes

  T plus 11 minutes

  T plus 2 years

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  The Genesis Flaw

  Copyright

  PRAISE FOR L. A. LARKIN

  ‘A sweaty-palm page-turner with short chapters and

  loads of action … exciting, compulsive reading.’

  Australian Bookseller & Publisher

  ‘A savvy, entertaining environmental thriller.’

  The Age

  ‘Will have you riding a frantic rollercoaster of plot twists until the final resolution.’

  Herald Sun

  ‘A heart-pumping, edge-of-your-seat thriller which will satisfy fans of Matthew Reilly and Michael Crichton’ West Australian

  ‘This chiller thriller will reel you in with ice-cold action.’ Marie Claire

  To the men and women working in Antarctica.

  Satellite image of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier (known as PIG) and the Amundsen Sea Embayment, partially clogged with sea ice.

  Image: T. Scambos, J. Bohlander and B. Raup, 1996. Images of Antarctic ice shelves,accessed 16 February 2012. Boulder, Colorado, USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media. http://nsidc.org/data/iceshelves_images. Overlay adapted: Larkin, M.

  T MINUS 5 DAYS, 2 HOURS, 53 MINUTES

  5 March, 9:07 am (UTC-07)

  Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, 74° 55' S, 101° 11' W

  At minus thirty degrees Celsius, the trickle of blood on Mac’s beard froze rapidly.

  ‘Wh – what do you want?’ he stammered, spreadeagled on his back.

  His masked attacker didn’t respond. In the struggle, Mac’s prescription goggles had been torn off, so the man pointing an assault rifle at him was a terrifying blur.

  Minutes earlier, Mac had been helping Dave to remove fragile scientific equipment from the camp’s red, domed pods, known as ‘apples’. The Walgreen Crevasse project was complete and they were shutting down camp for the winter. The snowmobiles were loaded up, and Mac, chilled by the winds, had started swinging his arms and stamping his feet. His initial excitement at swapping shifts with Luke – the project’s glaciologist – had waned as the intense cold clawed at his bones.

  Now his heart was racing and sweat trickled down the back of his neck. His ribs had been broken by a savage blow from a rifle butt and every breath was torture. A few metres away, near the crevasse edge, Dave lay with his arms raised, two guns trained on him. The last of the four strangers was unarmed and watched from a distance. He was the leader – it was clear from the way the others deferred to him.

  ‘Who are you?’ Mac asked, dumbfounded. There were no other field sites for at least a thousand kilometres, and he knew the nearest station, Li Bai, was currently unmanned.

  Still no response. Had they heard him above the katabatic winds that hissed down the mountain and across the glacier, blowing stinging spindrift into his face?

  The leader moved closer. As he bent over Mac, some of his features came into focus. He rolled his balaclava up and away from his mouth, revealing thin lips and sparse black hairs on his boyish chin. ‘Did you report our presence here?’

  His voice was surprisingly deep. Authoritative. Some kind of accent … American?

  Before Mac could answer, his interrogator gestured to the nearest subordinate, who kicked him in the kidneys. Mac convulsed, vomiting bile.

  ‘Answer. Did you radio your station?’ the man yelled like a drill sergeant.

  Panting, and with his eyes now watering, Mac could barely make out the black blobs of his shattered two-way radio on the ground. They hadn’t had time to call for help. Dressed in white, the strangers had been virtually invisible. When they appeared out of nowhere, Mac and Dave had simply gawped. In Antarctica, there was no reason to assume strangers were anything but friendly, part of the international research fraternity. And they never expected visitors to be armed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mac, hoping his lie would be believed. He had made his scheduled call to Hope Station at 09:00, but that was ten minutes ago.

  The man in charge glanced at the radio shards, then leaned closer to Mac’s face. His small but perfect teeth were unnaturally whiter than the glacier. His eyes studied Mac’s with clinical precision. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He smiled, stretching his lips so thin they almost disappeared. ‘And you’re from Hope, the Australian station?’

  Mac just managed to shake his head, although his body shrieked in pain. The last thing he was going to do was lead them to his mates.

  ‘I see.’

  The man walked to where Dave
lay, pocketed his working radio and then kicked the sole of his captive’s boot, as if inspecting a car’s tyres. Dave kicked back but his assailant jumped aside and issued orders in a language Mac didn’t understand. Two of the attackers kneeled on Dave’s arms, one on each side.

  Young and fit, he struggled hard. ‘Get off me, you fuckers!’

  ‘Did you radio Hope Station?’ the leader called to Mac.

  One of their attackers – wide-framed and short-legged, like a bulldog – pulled off Dave’s hood to reveal a mop of light-blond hair. He moved with the speed of a man used to combat.

  ‘Let me go!’ Dave yelled, kicking and writhing.

  Mac struggled to go to the aid of his friend, but his guard shoved a rifle muzzle in his face. The broad soldier straddled Dave’s chest and slapped him twice. In the second or so it took Dave to recover, his assailant took hold of his head, a hand on either side, and twisted it sharply to the right. Despite the whining wind, the crack was unmistakable. Dave no longer moved.

  Too late, Mac shouted, ‘No! No, we didn’t. For God’s sake, we never radioed.’

  As the tears ran down his face and onto the hair at his temples, they froze in tiny pear-shaped beads of white.

  ‘That’s better. Your hesitation cost your friend his life. Don’t treat me like a fool.’

  Unable to speak, Mac stared in horror as Dave, still in his safety harness, was dragged to the crevasse lip and thrown in. The ropes pinged tight, as the three metallic anchors, hammered deep into the ice, strained under his weight. For a fleeting moment, Mac imagined Dave hanging like a macabre marionette.

  Mac was yanked to his feet, the pain in his ribs like an ice pick in his side. Two men held him fast. As they pulled him towards the crevasse, Mac’s terror mounted. Its mouth gaped a few metres wide, and it plunged into a deep and jagged V-shaped chasm.

  He managed to tear an arm free but a rifle butt hit him between the shoulder blades and he crumpled, yelping. Mac peered down into his turquoise tomb. Faced with imminent death, all the fight drained from him and he released the contents of his bladder.

  ‘Please don’t,’ he begged. ‘I won’t say anything, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes, I do, yes. Not a word. Please, I have a wife and daughter.’

  His captor barked instructions. Mac’s smashed radio was dropped into the crevasse, then the men used hammers to dislodge the ice screws still holding Dave’s weight. Once loosened, they zipped across the surface and disappeared into the depths, taking the ropes and Dave’s body with them.

  ‘A tragic accident. This poor man,’ the leader gestured towards the crevasse, ‘tried to save you. But unfortunately his anchors didn’t hold. Such heroism.’

  ‘No, not down there!’ cried Mac, attempting to pull back from the edge. ‘No! Don’t let me die down there!’

  The leader placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. ‘My friend, this is not personal. In fact, we probably want the same thing.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  Mac was released. He could barely stand but a glimmer of hope gave him strength and he staggered round to face his aggressor.

  ‘But you see,’ said the leader, gesturing to his second-in-command, ‘it has to be done.’

  A kick to the stomach propelled Mac backwards, and the lip of the crevasse gave way beneath him. He was too stunned to scream. With a thud his body bounced off an ice ledge and into the blue void.

  T MINUS 5 DAYS, 2 HOURS, 51 MINUTES

  5 March, 9:09 am (UTC-07)

  The other side of the Pine Island Glacier

  Suspended from a ten-metre rope as casually as if he were sitting on a swing, Luke Searle stabbed his crampons into the crevasse’s glassy wall. He removed his XL-sized inner and outer gloves and ran his fingers across a striking stain in the ice. It felt as smooth as polished granite. With the care of a diamond-cutter, Luke used the blade of his ice axe to chip away a tiny piece. He rolled it between his warm fingers. The ice melted slowly, releasing its gritty contents.

  During all his years studying ice, he had never seen anything quite like this. Engrossed by his discovery, he ignored the barely audible voice coming from the two-way radio strapped across his chest. Not only was Luke abseiling in an unknown and potentially unstable crevasse, he was alone and had not bothered to alert anyone at Hope Station to his whereabouts.

  Above Luke, the ice walls shone a milky, opalescent white. Below, the ice morphed from the palest sapphire-blue to dark titanium; here the sun penetrated for the briefest of glimpses, and then only at the height of summer. In front of him, a horizontal black line as thick as his arm ran through the ice like the licorice in an allsort. A circle of ice crystals clung to his balaclava’s mouth slit and to the tips of his eyelashes, as the moisture in his breath froze.

  This was Luke’s first day off in three months. His research into accelerated glacial flow was complete, his report submitted. But his love affair with ice didn’t stop simply because his project was over. Antarctica would soon be plunged into six months of darkness; before that happened, Luke wanted to investigate his theory that a sub-glacial volcano had erupted two thousand years ago, dropping a layer of ash onto the ice that, over time, had been buried.

  ‘Maddie ... ten ... you read? ...’ his station leader called through the radio, every few words missing. Her persistence worried him; it might be something urgent. Luke scraped some frozen ash into a sample bag, sealed it and then ascended rapidly to the surface to improve his radio’s reception.

  ‘Luke, this is Maddie on channel ten. Do you read? Over.’

  Luke crawled over the lip of the crevasse and away from the fragile edge. Still on all fours, he pulled the radio close to his mouth. ‘Maddie, Luke here. Receive you loud and clear.’

  ‘Luke, I know this is your day off but Mac’s having problems with his snowmobile and might need you to go out there and fix it. Everything’s packed into the trailer but the clutch is slipping. Over.’

  The overwintering team was small so each member had to be multi-skilled and Luke’s other role was station mechanic. He checked his watch: 09:19.

  ‘No worries, Maddie. I’ll give him a yell now.’

  ‘Thanks, Luke. And by the way, it would be helpful if we knew where you were.’ She sighed.

  Inside the entrance to Hope Station hung a chess-like board covered by small hooks; on every hook hung a plastic tag bearing a station member’s name. When someone left or returned to the station, they had to turn their tag. There was also a book in which they were to record their name, time of departure, destination and intended time of return. Luke had done neither.

  ‘Maddie, I can look after myself.’ As if to reinforce this point, Luke rose to his full height of six foot three.

  ‘I know you can. But I need you to set an example.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘Luke, I shouldn’t be saying this on the radio, but has anyone told you what a pain in the arse you are?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, you have – several times. Oh, and my ex. And my previous boss, too, now that you mention it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, at least I’m not the only station leader you pay no attention to. But, we’ve got to work as a team here. Out.’

  Luke stowed his abseiling gear with expert speed, slung his pack on his back and, having removed his crampons and secured them, slid his boots into his skis’ bindings.

  ‘Mac, this is Luke on channel ten, are you receiving? Over.’ He waited. ‘Luke to Mac, radio check, please.’

  Nothing. He glanced up the mountain to the VHF repeater tower, which resembled a long ladder pointing at the sky. His signal should definitely reach the field camp because the repeater extended its range. Perhaps the silly bugger had left his radio in the field hut. He tried Dave instead, but still no response. Surely one of them should hear his voice?

  He tried Mac again, and at last a response came. He could barely understand it, however, because it kept cutting out, the gaps filled wit
h brief silence. It sounded like, ‘Mac to Luke. Receiving you weak and intermittent. Over.’

  ‘Mac, what’s wrong with your snowmobile? Over.’

  A pause. ‘What … you mean?’

  ‘You radioed in. Is the clutch slipping again?’

  ‘Negative. The clutch is …’ Then nothing.

  ‘Mac, can you repeat?’

  ‘The clutch is fine.’

  Luke frowned, surprised. Maddie wouldn’t have asked him to check if it hadn’t been important. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Clutch … working now.’ Still the voice kept dropping out.

  ‘Roger that. Mate, you sound like your head’s in a bucket of water. I can hardly hear you. ETA still midday?’

  ‘Mac to Luke … midday.’

  ‘Roger that. Radio me if you have any problems.’

  ‘Will do. Out.’

  This was odd, but Luke decided to give Mac another call once he was back at the station.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Luke slid to a stop and removed his balaclava and goggles to reveal blue-grey eyes, prominent cheekbones and weathered olive skin which belied his thirty years. His unruly black hair was sorely in need of a cut.