CHAPTER ONE
Marion Island, South AfricaNovember 11, 1:33 P.M., South Africa Standard Time
The population of Marion Island consisted of three South African seamen, thousands of birds, and tens of thousands of mice, all of whom were shocked from sleep by a ground-shaking concussion. Occasionally, there were research teams in residence at the science station at Crawford Bay. But not now.
Officially named Point Dunkel but referred to as “Point Dung Hill,” the large cinderblock bunker rattled for several seconds, cups falling from counters and pictures tilting on walls. Dressed in uniforms with thick thermal linings, the men raced from their windowless, prison-sized rooms to the one door and two north-south–facing windows of the blockhouse.
“Fire to the east!” fifty-nine-year-old Commander Eugène van Tonder alerted the others from the open door.
Shivering, the team’s helicopter pilot, forty-year-old Lieutenant Tito Mabuza, joined him at the frost-coated entrance. The localized flames were at least a mile away but the men felt wisps of heat. The driving wind was so swift and forceful that the heat barely had time to dissipate.
“Volcanic, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” van Tonder answered, sniffing. “I mean, it’s unlikely without any warning, yeah?”
“We had that notification this morning,” said twenty-year-old Ensign Michael Sisula. “The faint glow, likely outgassing.”
“On Prince Edward, not here.” Van Tonder shook his head. “Anyway, that’s jet fuel burning.”
“I’ll contact Simon,” said Sisula.
Simon was Simon’s Town, home of fleet command for the South African Navy.
“Let’s have a look,” van Tonder said to Mabuza, pointing up. “There may be survivors.”
The men rushed back to their rooms, neatly avoiding the half-dozen mousetraps in the corridor. As he pulled on his outer gear, Commander van Tonder was processing what they had seen and heard and felt. Silently, he prayed to God. The crash was likely a passenger flight. Prince Edward and Marion Islands were at the fringes of the commercial airline routes between Southern Africa and Oceania. Research planes typically flew along the Antarctic coast to maximize data gathering, and there was no tactical value for military aircraft to be here. When the South African Air Force tested their Umkhonto short- and medium-range missiles, there was no reason to travel over one thousand miles to the southeast.
Mabuza finished first and ran out to the black Denel AH-2 Rooivalk helicopter. He removed the insulated tarp from the main rotor swash plate and the tail gearbox and stuffed them behind the seats. Then he warmed the aircraft up. The commander followed quickly, pausing to holster his Vektor SP1 semiautomatic with a fifteen-round magazine. He had only used it once on the island, to end the suffering of a sick albatross. Given the nature of their assignment here, Simon’s orders were that both crewmembers should carry firearms during a flight. The pilot’s Milkor BXP submachine gun was in a brace behind his seat along with a shared M1919 Browning machine gun. That powerhouse could also be mounted on the helicopter in the unlikely event of an invasion by pirates or the military. They could destroy a target the better part of a mile away.
Before leaving, van Tonder told Sisula to monitor communications between the chopper and Simon. Depending on where they flew, the mountains could make the direct uplink to Simon spotty. It was strange that, just a score of years before, they would not have been able to communicate at all, not in a straight line. Signals had to go up in space and down so they could talk.
Van Tonder left, buttoning the greatcoat that had been given to him by his sister. A member of the Methodist clergy in Durban, she had been expedition pastor on several South African National Antarctic Expeditions and had said he would need the coat. She was correct. The standard wool-lined flight jacket provided by the military would not have gotten the job done. The winds here were not only constant, they were brutal. Albatrosses were smart birds, and van Tonder could not understand why so many of them chose to live here.
Perhaps it’s their laziness, he had thought, watching them when there was nothing else to do. If you’re a bird with a wingspan of up to twelve feet, you want to live where there’s constant and substantial lift.
The helicopter was parked on a large, naturally flat rock fifty yards behind the bunker. There was room for two small helicopters. During warmer months, scientists were ferried here from the mainland. During the late fall and throughout the winter, educated folk stayed away.
The pad was stained with the oil of six decades of helicopters coming and going at the outpost. Because it was set back from the high, rocky coast, the rock wasn’t stained with bird droppings. Walking anywhere to the front or sides of the outpost, a person had to watch their step.
The rotors were just starting to spin as van Tonder made his way toward the bubble cockpit. He was still praying, still asking the Lord to look out for the souls of the dead; there were sure to be many. Squinting into the wind as he looked to the left, he saw the horizon aglow with what looked like a second cloudy sun in the sky, yellow-orange flame mushroom-capped with roiling black smoke. He could smell not just the fuel but the burning plastics, rubber, and flesh—both human and avian, he suspected.
The commander climbed into the three-crewmember cockpit, stepping over the food chest, rescue net, and medical footlocker just inside the door, behind the copilot’s seat. With weather conditions and geography as extreme as they were here, a crew did not leave unless they were sure they could sit out a storm or provide first aid.
The third seat was above and behind the first two. Though van Tonder was not a flier, he wanted to sit beside Mabuza. Sometimes—and this was certainly the case with the pilot—a man’s expressions revealed more than his words. Also, from here, the commander could point and be seen.
Van Tonder donned a headset so he could talk to both the pilot and Sisula. The team was airborne less than five minutes after the crash.
Mabuza ascended to two hundred feet and flicked on both the underbelly spotlight and the cockpit camera before nosing toward the flames. The familiar rocks and their permafrost coating flew by. Van Tonder even knew where the small, slimy, caterpillar-like Ceratophysella denticulata lay their eggs.
He was beginning to think the long periods of calm were not as bad as he had imagined.
The three men were career men of the South African Navy Maritime Forces, Ships and Naval Unit Ready Forces. They had been sent to the long-abandoned British outpost three months earlier to investigate reports of illegal drilling on the protected island. In previous eras, invasive species had wreaked incredible ecological damage, in particular the mice and cats that came with whalers. Balance had been restored by both South Africa and nature. The leaders of the parliamentary republic—both from personal conviction, public fanaticism, and international pressure—insisted that order be maintained.
And then, foolishly, an aquatic sciences and fisheries survey in 2019 published a paper that mentioned, by the by, that the islands were likely rich in diamond-bearing kimberlite. The wintertime, evening-hours prospecting began. The navy responded with van Tonder, Mabuza, and Sisula.
The soft-plumaged petrels and Kerguelen cabbage must be preserved, van Tonder had thought when he received his orders.
The response was only partly cynical. Van Tonder believed in the mission. It was just unfortunate that the military invariably had to clean up preventable messes made by their own nationals at the behest of politicians.
Once each month, the fleet replenishment ship SAS Drakensberg arrived with supplies and fuel. In the event of a medical emergency, an aircraft could land on the flat plain between Johnny’s Hill and Arthur’s Hill, just to the northeast. Except for missing his nieces and nephews, and dating—Lord God, he missed women most of all, and the Internet was only a taunting reminder of just how much—van Tonder had no objection to being here. He liked the quiet and the time to pursue his studies of history and languages. Except for twice-a-day helicopter circuits of the two islands, his time was his own. And those trips were short. This island, Marion, was just 112 square miles. Prince Edward was even smaller, at just 17 square miles.
Copyright © 2020 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S&R Literary, Inc.
