They sped through the half light of the morning in a swift military SeaHawk-S helicopter. It could take a dozen people and an additional 9,000 pounds of equipment, but as they had little more than slim backpacks for the short trip, they had squeezed the maximum bodies in, and by the look of it, a lot of extra fuel. There were twelve of them: the six HAWCs, Aimee, Silex, Matt, Monica and the two medical personnel.

It was becoming apparent to Aimee that Tom’s trip was a larger search and rescue mission with a scientist and a small security detail, whereas this seemed more a strike force with a science and medical appendage. Even the helicopter they rode in looked aggressive. Oscar Benson had delighted in describing the craft’s ordnance to her. It was armed to the teeth with a full armament of torpedoes, AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, an M-60 machine gun, an M-240 machine gun, a GAU-16 machine gun and a GAU-17 minigun for good measure. The speed they were experiencing was delivered by two turbo shaft engines, each providing over 1,600 horsepower that gave the sleek beast a speed of nearly 200 miles per hour. Benson had smiled when he finished his description and said, “It can get in quick, deal death and be out before you even hear it approaching.” Shit, the lethal team, the armaments; Aimee suspected that the military thought that a little more than built-up gases had knocked the previous team out of action. My ass, they were not expecting any trouble, she thought.

The first leg to Macquarie Island, though the shortest, seemed to take forever. When the door of the helicopter finally slid back, a desolate granite landscape was revealed with a freezing wind that moaned its loneliness to a few wet-eyed seals lying at the grey water’s edge. They were meant to stretch their legs, but the cold made the very marrow in Aimee’s bones ache and she just pulled her parka hood further down over her face. Mercifully, the HAWCs managed to refuel in only thirty minutes and they shot up once again to complete their trip. No one spoke this time and most chose to simply doze or stare introspectively at their shoes. Even the HAWCs, now wrapped in their white snow coveralls, looked like hibernating polar bears, conserving their energy for the tasks ahead.

In Dante Alighieri’s vision of hell, the lowest circle of Hades appeared as a frozen lake that leached all warmth from the human body and spirit. His allegorical imagery of perpetual frozenness was thought by some to be a metaphor for distance from the grace of God’s warmth.