"James Rollins - Subterranean" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

"Yes," he said almost fiercely. "And right now North Platte never looked so good."

"So why not quit and go back to the farm?"

His face suddenly clouded over, black eyebrows pulling together. He shook his head but remained
silent.

She tried to extract more from him. "How did you get hitched with such a dull assignment? Guarding a
bunch of scientists."

"I volunteered," he mumbled.

She crinkled her nose. Not exactly the expected decision of a career military man. No prestige, no glory,
stationed at the ass-end of the world. "Why?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I have my reasons." He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out of the seat,
grumbling about using the restroom.

Alone, she went back to studying the landscape passing below the skis of the aircraft. Sun reflected off
the ice. The more she got to know her teammates, the less she seemed to understand them. But what else
was new? She never understood people. Look at her marriage. A honeymoon that lasted eight years until
one day she came home early from a digтАФnauseated by morning sicknessтАФand discovered her husband
in their bed with his secretary. No warning signs. No lipstick on a collar. No blond hair on his jacket.
Nothing. A mystery to her.

Ashley placed a hand on her belly. Scott's infidelity was not the worst of it. She remembered the
cramping pain and the rush of blood. The emotional overload from his betrayal had triggered a
miscarriage. Losing the child had almost destroyed her. Only Jason, then seven years old, had kept her
sane.

Even though years had passed, a part of her ached when she remembered how much she had lost. Not
just the baby, but her faith in people. She refused to let herself be so gullible, so vulnerable again.

Slumping into her seat, she stared out the frosted window. Just at the edge of the horizon, a tower of
smoke rose into the air, a dark signature against the blue sky. She sat up straighter. As the plane droned
on, the source of the gray plume appeared, rising from the flat surface like some awakening giant. Mount
Erebus.

The interior of the Dodge van reeked of cigarette smoke and bounced in rough sync with the bass beat
of a Pearl Jam cassette. A tired midday sun protruded wanly over the summit of Mount Erebus. The
driver, a young Navy ensign, bobbed his head to the music. "Almost home," he called over his shoulder.
"Just around the next ridge of ice." The road from Williams Field to McMurdo Base was a rough-hewn
stretch of carved ice. With a final molar-jarring bump as they circled the ridge, Ashley viewed their
destination.

She swiped a glove over the steamed passenger window. The other team members were doing the
same. Beside the blue ice shelf encasing the Ross Sea, McMurdo Base was a black smudge. An
industrial complex of gray buildings dwarfed by a huge junkyard to the south. The van trundled past an
ignited trash dump fuming oily smoke into the blue sky.