Arctic Rising Read Free Page B

front of her.
    “Come on, we gotta get this off you,” said another man behind her, yanking at the strings she’d pulled so tight.
    They stripped the survival suit off her, and then someone grabbed a pair of scissors and cut her wet uniform away. Someone else wrapped a dry thermal blanket around her.
    The warm air between her skin and the survival suit disappeared, and that sent her into another round of deep, bone-shaking shivering.
    “Tom,” she told them, teeth chattering. “Tom.” She wasn’t sure if they could understand, and she kept repeating it as best she could.
    “We’re looking for him,” someone said into her ear as they rubbed her arms.
    A thermometer beeped, and Anika felt pressure against her ear release. “The shivering’s okay,” the voice behind her said. “Means you’re alive. Your temp’s a bit low, but you’re fine. Keep shivering and moving and rubbing your arms.”
    Anika took an offered cup of warm water.
    “Sip it,” they told her. “No gulping.”
    She almost dropped the cup, but with focus and determination, she managed to bring it shakily up to her lips and sip. She hunched in place on the floor, listening to the thermal blanket crinkle and crunch every time she shifted.
    “Got him!” someone shouted.
    A few minutes later they dragged Tom in, dripping water, and the whole routine repeated itself. Only Tom didn’t look so good. His uniform was sopping wet; the survival suit hadn’t gotten zipped quite properly.
    His lips were blue, Anika saw. Tom was almost translucent, a pale man almost tailor-built for living in this polar world. But it didn’t matter to the cold water.
    A redheaded man with a long beard held up a satphone as they wrapped Tom in a thermal blanket. “UNPG’s five minutes out by helicopter. Jen? They want you to drop the parafoil.”
    A short, wind-burned woman in her late fifties with a ruddy face and straw blond hair walked out into the cabin. “Five minutes? Shit. Hey! Everyone on deck, we’re pulling in the sail!”
    The redhead remained bent over Tom, checking his temperature. When he sat back and glanced at Anika he didn’t have to say anything. It was in the posture. Anika saw. Tom was in bad shape.
    A minute later a large amount of parachute-like material dropped to the flat back deck where the crew of the ferry grabbed it and rolled it up.
    As the parafoil was being packed away, she could hear the thwap of rotor blades approaching.
    Two UNPG search-and-rescue men dropped out of the sky on ropes and hit the deck. They conferred with the redhead, shouting over the noise of the hovering helicopter.
    Then, consensus reached, they hauled Tom out on deck, fastened him to a basket, and all disappeared back up in the air.
    “They’re low on fuel. They said they’ve been in the air since your mayday call, all the way from Nanisivik. They’ll send another helicopter for you,” the redhead said, appearing in the door.
    Anika leaned back against the steel bulkhead behind her. “I understand. Does anyone have a satphone that they can lend me?”
    Jen, who Anika took to be the ferry’s captain, had a thick, plastic-covered phone with a whip antenna: all functional and weatherized. The logo GAIA and a smaller TELECOMMUNICATIONS was stamped into the side in raised letters with a globe in the background. Anika slowly punched the numbers in to dial Nanisivik Base.
    “Claude here,” replied a smooth, but slightly tired-sounding Québécois voice on the other side.
    “Commander, it’s Anika Duncan,” she said through jaws still clenched from the cold.
    “Anika! A second chopper’s about fifteen minutes out from you,” Commander Michel Claude said quickly. “Are you okay? They said you were okay. They said Tom needed to be flown back right away.”
    “Yes, yes, I’m doing fine,” Anika reassured him. “They were right to leave me if they were low on fuel.” She didn’t want to be responsible for her rescuers getting themselves in danger as