ANTARCTIC FIRE: A Harry Crook Thriller - Conspiracy in the Antarctic

by Chris Geater

  The two Russian scientists who were kidnapped by the Chinese from their laboratory in retaliation for my little sortie of mayhem and murder were the resident experts at Progress on PhaT. Colonel Lu Wu-Dang offered to return them in exchange for Harry Crook so I could answer for my crimes. If not then they planned to interrogate the scientists and all the intellectual property on PhaT would be extracted.

  The general feeling was that since I held no intelligence or military position and as such a mere civilian, the scientists were more valuable and so the exchange should go ahead as soon as possible before the Colonel decided to carry out interrogation anyway, if he hadn't already. Len argued in my favour but frankly he didn't seem to put his best into it. The next subject covered means of persuasion, Len felt by no means could I be persuaded unless it included a hypodermic, ‘for the greater good’ is the term he used. Good old Len, faithful to the Motherland regardless, did mate-ship mean nothing to these communists?

  Natalie lay dozing in her room which I entered without knocking. Through half closed eyelids she put her arms out to me and said lazily, “You must be coming along alright Harry, can't keep you away.”

  “Wake up,” I instructed with some urgency in my voice, the inflection was not lost on her.

  “Whats going on?” she asked.

  “Len and his crowd are planning to hand me over to Wu-Dang in exchange for the two Russian scientists the Chinese kidnapped.” I informed her.

  “Kidnapped? When did this happen? I didn't hear anything about this, did you?”

  “Well, yes, but our friends here did keep it close to their chest."

  She sat wide eyed, fully awake and aware.

  “You knew about this but failed to tell me…, why?”

  I knew she would focus on that.

  “Not important. Look, Wu-Dang wants me to answer for the two men of his I dispatched while escaping and won't accept anything else as an exchange for the two Russians.”

  “I can't believe you kept that from me, what else don't I know?”

  I was perplexed, “How could I possibly know what you don’t know unless you tell me what it is you don’t know?”

  She looked perplexed.

  “I’m going to take off back to Davis. I’ll borrow one of the Lynx here that they have in their shed, should be enough time to get back there before night,” I told her.

  “I'll come with you, that trip is no picnic, I’ve done it once before and later in the year, not a solo trip I can tell you.”

  I liked the way she thought. “We have to go now, grab your gear and I'll get some food supplies and meet you in the ready use vehicle shed in five.”

  I detoured past my room to dress in the various survival apparel and then the cafe for a bag of food from the fridge. In their version of the cold porch several polar jackets with fur lined hoods, balaclavas, gloves all hung from various hooks on the wall. I took an assortment, threw on my back pack and limped to the vehicle shed where a tour of the base on my last visit revealed some handy snow mobiles. Natalie busily filled a cargo box on the rear of a Lynx Commander with some survival essentials from the gear that sat on shelves at the rear. The Lynx sported a GPS and a pillion seat. Due to my injuries we decided to share one vehicle rather than take two. I checked the fuel and we took off out the half opened roller door with the intention of sharing the driving if I could manage, it was going to be a very physical journey.

  Although the wind gusted and some ground ice flew across the track, visibility wasn't that bad. She followed the well marked gravel road up the hill towards the Russian airstrip that serviced Progress and pulled up in the lee of a small building. The GPS came to life and although Russian Cyrillic wasn't my strong point Davis had previously been programmed into the device which told us where our destination lay and several way points entered in by Russians travelling to Davis gave us an idea of our route. The risky inland path across the rough terrain included the Dålk Glacier, the Lynx had no crevasse detector. I hoped the Russians would assume we had taken the more sensible sea ice traverse and not follow us along this crazy path.

  Several hours of daylight remained and it behoved us to make Davis before dark. The dangers of traversing this terrain were numerous, many of which I was not trained or experienced in, fortunately Natalie was. I would have given it a go by myself, anything was better than falling into the hands of my old mate Colonel Wu-Dang. According to the GPS our destination if we followed the way points lay a mere one hundred and five kilometres away from our current position. Not far if you’re driving down a highway on a spring morning, arabica coffee in its holder listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In this destination of distinction the trip could take days with a fifty percent chance you wouldn’t make it at all. Natalie set off at a modest pace, sufficient to arrive in time while keeping a sharp eye out for give-away signs. The terrain appeared flat and relatively smooth, deceiving and deadly. A crevasse could be lurking below the surface revealed only when your vehicle dived nose first into the opening. The first ten kilometres traversed the Dålk Glacier where a majority of the hazards lay. A fairly straight forward journey from then on in polar terms, only mildly suicidal doing it unplanned and with only two of us.

  The Dålk didn't disappoint and we experienced a couple of close calls where fortunately our modest speed allowed for a rapid stop when the Lynx began to dip its nose. After the last one we decided that Natalie would walk ahead with a ski pole and check the surface while I drove slowly behind, not fool proof and incredibly slow but better than luck. Finally the GPS indicated the end of the glacier on which we had squandered over four hours of our precious daylight. Natalie remounted the Lynx as the passenger while I took off breathing a sigh of relief. Suddenly the snowmobile dived down and to the left into a camouflaged hole throwing Natalie over my head and feet first into a crevasse. My hips jammed under the handle bars which were embedded in the opposite side of the narrow crevasse wall. Silence once I shut the machine down, just the ticking of a rapidly cooling engine.

  “Natalie, are you alright, can you hear me?”

  “I'm just below you, to the right a bit, only about fifteen feet down,” she replied.

  Her voice sounded strained and came in gasps. Sure enough, just to my right I could see the top of her hood, not close enough to reach but it was good to see she was OK.

  I climbed back up the steeply angled seats and stood on the edge of the rear cargo box. Visible but just out of my reach glowed the crevasse lip, hopefully our cargo held a tool to get us out.

  “I can't reach the top, I'm going to have to climb.”

  “You’ll have to crack on, I'm in a wedge and breathing is becoming more difficult,” she replied in gasps only quieter this time.

  Trapped in the bottom of a wedge shaped crevasse can easily be fatal even if the crevasse is shallow. As you breathe in and out the body tends to sink a little with each breath. To make matter worse the body heat melts the ice and you sink even lower again until eventually, similar to a boa constrictor, the body succumbs to asphyxiation. Unconsciousness within fifteen minutes and death within five more.

  I tied a bowline in the end of a roll of rope and lowered it down to Natalie.

  “Put this under your arms and secure it so that even if you’re unconscious I can pull you up,” I called down to her.

  I watched as she carried out my instructions and then I secured the rope to the Lynx.

  In the cargo box lay another coil of rope with several carabiners already prusiked along its length. Also attached were a couple of short pickets, perfect for this eventuality, a Russian had given this some thought. An ice axe clipped into the side of the box with a double head proved the perfect tool to hammer the pitons into the blue side of our crevasse. As I hammered the second piton the snowmobile moved and wedged itself deeper into the trench placing the piton above my head with only one carabiner attached. I swung the pick more gently in placing another piton at waist height and attached a carabiner at the other end of the
rescue rope. I then took my weight off the snowmobile so that it would not move any deeper.

  “How are you fairing?” I called down to Natalie.

  I heard a faint unintelligible response but no more than a whisper, time was of the essence.

  It seemed like an hour before I eased myself over the lip of the crevasse but was in fact only minutes. I placed a picket deep into the surface along with a snatch block about six metres away from the edge and attached Natalie’s rope. I called down to her my intentions. She didn’t respond.

  As the tension took on the rope it became apparent that my effort was not sufficient. Even with crampons on my boots I didn't have the necessary leverage to dislodge Natalie. Using another picket and snatch block I re-threaded the rope to double the effect. Almost immediately I felt a jolt as her potential icy tomb gave up its prey. Half way to the edge the join of the ropes met the first snatch block. I prusiked another carabiner onto her rope and secured it to a fresh piton. With the snatch block and carabiner repositioned her hood finally appeared at the lip, she didn't respond.

  I secured the rope and pulled her onto the surface. The white blue pallor spelt disaster, the pulse indeterminate even with my ungloved hands. I removed my face mask and began to apply breaths, her chest rose each time. To apply CPR I unzipped her outer jacket and proceeded to push down on her chest counting out the number. There was a faint throb in her carotid as I checked followed by an even fainter cough and then a raising and lowering of the chest, she was alive but unconscious. I secured our clothing then descended to the cargo box on the back of the snowmobile. A throw bag, a sack of pilfered food gleaned from the Russian cafe, a small burner, some snow shoes, a small tent, all essential to our survival. I retrieved the rope and carabiners as I ascended, too handy to leave there.

  The throw bag when laid out on the ground was the perfect size for Natalie, a couple of ropes attached to the head of the bag, the food and supplies tied to her jacket and we were ready to sled our way to wherever we could given my injured foot and her dead weight. The first few steps were not encouraging but our survival depended on my grit, suck it up Harry Crook and march on regardless. Darkness descended, well not quite darkness but certainly a twilight causing the surface to appear flat when in actual fact it felt like a steep hill all the way, optical illusion I'm sure. My course took me back along our route, Progress was considerably closer than Davis and Natalie needed to survive, I needed her to survive. My appointment with Colonel Wu-Dang was a bridge I would cross later.

  Our outbound snowmobile tracks appeared fainter and fainter the further I trekked until disappearing altogether. Direction was ambiguous to say the least. The surface became soft powdered ice which was something I didn't notice on our way out but the snow shoes came into their own. The pain in my feet subsided along with any coherent thoughts as I took my body to another place. In our training many years ago we were taught to separate our bodies from our minds in the event we needed to remove ourselves from pain or fatigue. Great for extreme physical effort but not for accurate navigation or logical thinking. Eventually I yielded to the exhaustion, a small mound of ice and rock appeared and using my last reserves I set up the tent and heated some food. Natalie’s breathing seemed stronger but her skin temperature around the neck of her jacket felt cool.

  What the glutenous fatty mess lacked in flavour it made up for in calorific value, exactly what I needed. Half a bar of chocolate, melted half a litre of water from what seemed about a cubic metre of ice. Natalie managed to eat and drink a small amount, she was sort of conscious but not coherent. We lay spooned on the throw bag with our jackets removed and placed over us. The relentless cold prevented full sleep and fitful dozing did its best to restore our deteriorating bodies. At some stage Natalie woke up aware and cold.

  “Not exactly the Eskimo experience I dreamed of Harry but this feels nice,” she said puting on a brave voice.

  “How are you feeling, OK?” I asked.

  “Better but bloody cold, we should get moving, warm up a little.”

  I heated up some more food and we drank the last of the water. Helped enormously along with some more chocolate. Natalie inspected my foot and re-dressed it.

  “Not so great Harry but no frostbite you’ll be pleased to know and healing remarkably well considering.” I think she was glossing over the detail, it hurt like hell.

  She rummaged through our stuff, “You didn't think to grab the GPS did you?” she asked rhetorically. Good point, well done Harry.

  “We should be able to figure out our direction when the sun pops it's head over the horizon,” I suggested.

  “Pops is the operative word,” she replied looking at her watch. “It’s not dawn for another couple of hours so we can only go on the brighter section of the horizon and allow ten or fifteen degrees for two hours.”

  We loaded up the grab bag using it as a sled and took turns dragging it in the direction of where we thought Progress would lay. The enormous Antarctic desert seemed to stretch out forever, one rocky almost impassible rise after another. Snow and ice covered deep crevices almost as dangerous as the icy ones on the glacier. My body protested and Natalie struggled, we didn't know where we were after my mindless wandering the night before but north east seemed to be the direction we chose to get us closer to Progress. Hostile and rough are words that didn't do the terrain justice, I was just grateful for fine weather, any sort of storm would have been a show stopper. How Shackleton and his men made their journey was beyond me but my respect for them rose with each step.

  My foggy brain noticed what appeared to be bright lights some distance to our left. I pointed it out to Natalie.

  “That can't be right,” she said in an exhausted voice slightly slurred. “We’re nowhere near Progress, we haven't even made the surface of the glacier.”

  With renewed enthusiasm we put in our best and probably last effort with the lights as our destination. Fortunately we were on flat smooth ground allowing some reasonable progress. Something wasn't quite right, we kept having to continuously alter our course to keep the lights ahead.

  “Those lights are moving,” Natalie spoke what we were both thinking.

  “That’s a lot of lights on the move,” I pointed out. “How could something that large be moving?”

  We changed course to intercept and finally the object, or objects became clear. Something out of a science fiction novel appeared before us. Several identical vehicles similar to something you might find traversing Mars only ten times bigger and in this case attached to each other by enclosed walkways like a train . In front four large tracked tugs roared their way along at a healthy three kilometres an hour. The units sat on long legs ending with large skids, a glassed enclosure sat atop the front unit not unlike the bridge of a ship. A Union Jack flew from a short mast, the British were here. Someone must have noticed us, a gangway of sorts lowered from the rear of the lead unit and several figures made their way towards us, the train didn't stop.

  We stood, stooped with exhaustion as they approached.

  “Natalie and Harry I presume?” One of the hooded figures asked. We nodded.

  How they knew it would be us didn't make sense. Sure, there weren't many people strolling about the Antarctic who you could bump into, the Russians must have alerted them.

  They picked up our load and helped us to the gangway as it came abreast, no mean feat. Our energy reserves were fully depleted and the train wasn't going to stop at this station. Eventually we were all aboard in the warmth of the lead units control centre.

  With comforting efficiency our over-clothes were removed, some warm thick soup turned up in large cups and a medical person began to take our vitals.

  A tall woman wearing a humorous expression introduced herself as Margaret Cunningham the stations commander.

  “It's beyond belief that we found you, or you found us. We were contacted by Progress and Davis to keep a sharp eye out for you but didn't presume for a second that we would make contact, what are t
he odds!”

  Indeed, the odds were not great that we would stumble upon the British highly advanced Antarctic mobile base Halley VII.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Margaret and the British crew went all out to help in our recovery. Davis and Progress were contacted much to the relief of Steve although I am sure he would have been a little bit happy if I hadn't made it. The very well equipped medical sickbay onboard the moving behemoth did the Brits proud as did their doctor. Natalie and I were fixed up and drugged up in no time. When I say fixed up, my feet were dressed, and Natalie’s broken rib strapped. This amazing woman went through all those difficulties over the past twenty four hours with a broken rib and didn't complain. As a doctor she probably knew it was broken. I really admired her.

  Halley VII reached its destination and a hive of activity surrounded the unique structures as the crew established their summer base.

  The next morning Margaret paid us a visit, plopped herself down on the small lounge between the two beds in which Natalie and I lay.

  “Good to see your progressing quite well. If you’re fine to talk about it, I’d really like to know how you ended up out here, as in wandering around half dead?”

  Her accent was distinctly Yorkshire as she gave us both a strong gaze and crossed her legs.

  Natalie and I glanced at each other, I wondered what we should share with Margaret and how much did she already know? Natalie was probably thinking along the same lines.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Natalie kicked off. “Given the nature of events I’m not sure we are in a position to give you all the details.”

  “That’s alright, just the nuts and bolts will do, I'm just curious. We didn't put much hope for you at all when we received the calls from the two stations, thought the Progress lads were joking, mad Russians and all that, but then we got the call from Davis! It’s pretty tough out here as I'm sure you know only too well. How did you manage to survive on foot, more to the point, how did you end up on foot?”