by Mark Aitken
Florita looked up.
‘He was a corporal in my unit when I was a captain, up there in the hills of the northern Ghan. Donny was a rear-facing turret gunner in the convoy and he was the last man standing, the guy still hammering away with that fifty-cal while the rest of us were hiding under the vehicle, hoping the incoming would stop. That’s who he was.’
Gallen looked around at the faces, saw Florita crossing herself, saw Winter and Ford staring at him.
‘So, Donny,’ said Gallen, turning to the grave, not wanting anyone to see what the cold was doing to his eyes. ‘I wish I had some church words for you, brother. But for now, let me say that you were always a thousand per cent. You were the real deal. I put my life in your hands, and you were good for it.’
~ * ~
Gallen took the lookout shift himself, finding a rocky outcrop at the top of the cliff where he could sit without getting the seat of his arctic fatigues wet. He had a set of naval binoculars around his neck, huge things that had been stashed in an overhead locker by persons unknown. Leaning against the rock was the Heckler G36 assault rifle. If he saw a fox or a hare, he was going to try and shoot it, but he wasn’t going to stalk it. Winter was right: the country was too tough. Chasing the wildlife would take more out than eating it could put back in.
He tried to clear his mind, stay focused. There was the immediate concern of survival but there was also payback. Ford and Winter wanted to strike back at the bombers and they were annoyed that Durville wasn’t forthcoming about who might have done it. Never mind that Durville was close to death.
He’d heard a couple of comments from Winter, and the way the two had looked at him when they buried McCann was a pure call to arms. In officer school, they were trained to think like a leader so that potentially negative responses among the men—revenge, lust, rage, fear—could be used to create a positive energy for the whole team. But Gallen didn’t know if he had the right to manipulate the men away from their sense of vengeance. Having a goal—any goal—was sometimes fuel to keep going.
Standing to stretch his legs, Gallen glassed the horizon. It was a landscape of mid-sized hills and small mountains, escarpments and glacial riverbeds, covered in snow and ice and seeming to stretch forever in all directions; from one angle it looked like an ocean of white, while from another perspective it was a desert of snow. The sun bounced off each surface in a slightly different way, giving the terrain the creepy quality of being both uniform and constantly changing. It was an optical illusion and one that—once you watched it for too long—left the observer with almost no sense of distance or height or depth. Luckily they’d managed to recover enough polarised sunglasses that no one had to go without. Adding snow-blindness to their impossible situation would have been cruel punishment.
A figure walked slowly up the side of the cliff, a ramp-like block of snow and ice that led around the long way to the top of the escarpment. Gallen saw the red parka, black backpack and blue arctic pants and knew it was Florita.
She took half an hour to reach the rocky outcrop and was exhausted when she arrived, sitting heavily beside Gallen.
‘You didn’t need to do that,’ he said. ‘I would have come to you.’
He could see her smiling, way back in her parka hood, hiding behind fur trimming and a Thinsulate balaclava.
‘I needed the air, needed to talk,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Should have made an appointment. Can’t you see I’m busy? ‘
Florita laughed and shrugged the pack off her shoulders. ‘Look what I found.’
She pulled out a bright orange plastic box with a lid. It could have been a fishing tackle box, but Gallen knew it as an emergency flare kit.
Taking it from her, he opened it and looked inside: there was a white pistol with a blue handle, while an array of twelve flare charges in two rows of six gave the user a choice of white, red, blue, green and orange.
‘Nice work,’ said Gallen, smiling as he handed back the box.
Florita put it in her pack. ‘I know you want more from Harry, especially after Donny.’
‘You noticed?’
‘And I know that Kenny and Mike will leave him till you give the word.’
‘They want some answers and so do I,’ said Gallen. ‘I mean, you like being out here ‘cos someone bombed your plane?’
Florita shook her head, a plume of steam erupting from her hood as she sighed.
‘So, who’s Reggie?’
‘He’s Russian, his name is Kransk, and Harry believes he holds the key to the richest oil and gas reserves since Saudi was opened up in the 1930s.’
‘Where? Out here?’
‘Under the Arctic Ocean,’ said Florita. ‘Harry and Oasis Energy are working on cornering a resource that will control the world’s oil and gas supply for the next century.’
Gallen fished out a smoke, lit it. ‘Where does Reggie come in? He an oil guy?’
She shook her head. ‘Harry has been trying to flush him out, see exactly who he represents and what he can do.’
‘So that meeting in Kugaaruk.’
Florita looked away. ‘I’ve said too much.’
‘You haven’t told me a thing.’
‘You wouldn’t believe the confidentiality contracts I signed to get this job,’ said Florita. ‘And I’m not throwing it away because I can’t keep my mouth shut.’
‘Good job, huh?’
‘I was a fourth-year associate in a big LA law firm, beavering away for my theoretical chance to make partner, some day, perhaps, if I kept wearing the tight dresses, if I kept being the cute Latina laughing at the stupid Anglo jokes.’
‘Then along comes Harry.’
‘The Oasis partner was in Tokyo and his associate was on compassionate leave in Dallas. A contract needed to be checked and signed overnight, and when I saw it I called the number on the cover page to make sure they understood what they were signing.’ Florita warmed to the story. ‘So Harry Durville picks up the phone, and here I am talking with this big-time oil guy, this billionaire you see on the cover of Time and Forbes, and we’re taking clauses out and putting others in.’
‘Saved his ass, right?’
‘Next thing you know, I’m on the Oasis jet, doing the deals, meeting the Arabs and the Indonesians, and my firm doesn’t like it, tells me to move over, let the Oasis partner back in the game.’
‘I had no idea it worked like that.’
‘Sure,’ said Florita. ‘So about three weeks later, when I’m back in the tight dress, pretending to laugh at some lame prank, Harry asks me out for lunch. He makes me an offer: he’ll double my salary, give me stock options and a VP title—chief legal counsel.’
‘And he paid for discretion.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Florita.
Gallen wanted to argue, to put on some pressure. But he admired people who stuck to their undertaking. It was the single most important character trait for a combat soldier, in his opinion, trumping bravery and strength and even intellect.
‘I understand that,’ he said, realising her face was close to his.
‘You do?’ she laughed. ‘Wish you’d tell Kenny that. Harry’s scared of him, doesn’t want to be left alone with him.’
‘Heard of his reputation in the Ghan,’ said Gallen, thinking about the Canadian’s past.
‘No,’ said Florita, confused. ‘Harry used to watch him in the Western Hockey League. Says Kenny once put his stick through the plexiglass.’
~ * ~
The shape started as a speck on the horizon. Gallen stood, dislodging the hand that Florita had placed on his leg, and pressed the field-glasses to his eyes.
He was sure he’d seen movement against a small mountain range about fifty miles away. Scanning the whiteness, the maritime glasses good at cutting out glare, he strained his eyes to catch it again.
‘A snow flurry?’ Florita stood beside him. ‘Maybe a bird?’
Letting the binoculars fall to his chest again, Gallen put his sunglasses ba
ck on, not taking his eyes off the horizon. ‘It was something,’ he said. ‘Maybe a bird, but maybe a reflection.’
‘Which means glass or steel?’ said Florita.
‘I was hoping.’
They stood awkwardly, jostling for position.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to the water still.’
‘Yeah, um . . .’ Gallen tried to think of something mature to say. ‘I guess.’
She turned to him and leaned in, and as Gallen saw the look in her eyes—way back in the darkness of the snow hood—he caught movement at the edge of his vision. Pushing her away, he lifted the glasses again, his heart pumping into his throat.
Scanning across the mid-distance, concentrating on the ten-mile zone, he picked it up.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Helicopter . . . Kenny, Mike!’ he yelled into the radio mouthpiece. ‘Pick up! Kenny, Mike!’
As he waited, he motioned for Florita to get the flare box.
The Aussie snarl came on the radio. ‘What’s up, boss?’
‘Get the cushions on that fire!’ he yelled. ‘I got a black helo doing grids about ten miles north-west of our position. Get that black smoke in the air!’
The helo was going back and forth as shouted voices rose from the crashed plane below them. It looked like a small MH-6, the kind the US military called a Little Bird. It wasn’t what he’d expect for a search-and-rescue helicopter, but he’d fly out of there hanging off a kite if that was what was available.
‘Florita, got that flare gun?’ he said, eyes locked on the helo.
‘How does it work? ‘
‘Take out the gun, grab the barrel and break it,’ he said.
She fumbled for a few moments, the cold and gloves making small movements hard. The sound of the gun breaking echoed through the silence.
‘Put a red charge in the barrel, and make sure the solid end is facing you.’
She did as she was told and closed the breech before Gallen could tell her to.
‘Point straight in the air and pull the trigger,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt you.’
The flare rocket exploded on its way with a whooshing sound and Gallen pulled his eyes from the glasses long enough to see it arc five hundred feet in the air before bursting, then floating.
‘They’ll see that, won’t they?’ she said, both of them breathless with excitement.
‘We got smoke yet?’ asked Gallen. ‘Shit!’ The helo was flying away.
‘Is it going?’
‘Hope not.’ Gallen watched the low-flying helo duck behind a ridge. ‘Hope they’re doing a search pattern.’
Lowering the glasses, he looked down and saw thick black smoke rising to their position at the lookout, the chemicals in the foam cushions doing their job.
The radio crackled. ‘We got all the cushions on the fire,’ said Winter. ‘This is it, boss. You set that flare?’
‘That was us,’ said Gallen. ‘Florita found a box.’
‘Then where’s that helo?’
‘Headed west.’ Gallen ran arcs with the glasses, trying to catch another glimpse. ‘Keep the smoke coming.’
Waiting for three minutes, their breathing rasping in the cold, they could hear the occasional shout of urgency and excitement coming from the camp below. The smoke billowed and the tension built as Gallen wondered what he would do if this failed. There was no Plan B except to get that radio working. As people started dying, there would be the issue of eating the flesh, and for him the answer would always be ‘no’; once the sanction on cannibalism was lifted, when would hungry men make the decision to kill another to eat him, rather than waiting for him to die?
The noise started as a low throb, not unlike the distant undercurrent of an ocean hitting the beach. Turning his head and the field-glasses, Gallen swung for the direction of it. The throb started to come in sets of two and then three.
‘Hear that?’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ said Florita.
The throb grew and then Florita was shouting, hitting Gallen on the back.
Letting the glasses fall, Gallen turned to her and saw it, the Little Bird hovering two hundred yards behind their position, where it had obviously emerged having circled through a valley. As they watched the nose of the rescue craft pointed their way.
‘Over here, over here!’ she said, at a volume that took Gallen by surprise. Stashing the flare box in her pack, the executive started running for the helicopter.
The radio crackled. ‘We can hear the helo, boss. You see ‘em?’
‘They’re here,’ said Gallen, waving his arms. ‘They’re here.’ He followed Florita towards the aircraft; as they struggled in snow up to their armpits, they yelped and whooped like young children.
‘They’ve seen us,’ said Florita, crying with joy. ‘Thank you, Jesus.’
Gallen was getting short of breath in the snow, his bruised ribs aching, and was thankful when the helo dipped its nose at the two survivors and accelerated across the forbidding terrain. The speed with which the helo crossed that impossible ground brought tears to his eyes.
‘They’ve located us,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘We’ll be down there in a couple minutes.’
Winter sounded excited. ‘Copy that, boss.’
Resting while Florita continued on through the snow, Gallen waved again at the helo as it closed on them. He looked for markings, but couldn’t see any. He wondered if an oil rig helo had joined the search for the downed Challenger.
Florita jumped at the top of a snow bowl and slid on her back to the bottom, her laughter rising above the din of the closing helicopter, which banked over her and hovered.
Something clicked in Gallen’s brain before he saw the man. Something reptilian, something that made him shrug the Heckler from his shoulder into his gloved hands. Then the man in the left side of the helo’s rear compartment pushed back the small hatch in the main plexiglass door and Gallen’s instincts were confirmed: it was the stance of that figure in the chopper, and the stillness of his eyes as he focused on Florita in the snow.
It was the appearance of a rifle and the movement of a man about to take a shot . . .
~ * ~
CHAPTER 22
Gallen cupped his hands and yelled, ‘Florita! Get out of there!’ His voice was barely audible over the vibration of the helo.
The shooter at the rear door of the helo pushed a muzzle through the gap of the smaller window and Gallen lifted his Heckler, flicked the safety. The rifle coming out of the helo looked like an M14, what the US military called a DMR, or a designated marksman’s rifle. It was accurate at two miles.
Finding a good shoulder and bringing the G36 to his eye-line, Gallen squeezed at the target and watched the shooter fall back from the door as a star appeared in the plexiglass.
‘Florita! Get down!’ he shouted, panting cold air out of his lungs.
The woman turned, confused, her face hidden by the wolverine fur around the hood.
The helo swept quickly away from the bottom of the bowl and Gallen started running, trying to reach Florita. Looking up, he saw the Little Bird standing off, the shooter now pushing back the entire rear compartment door and assuming a professional’s kneeling stance.
Surging to his left, clumsy in the deep snow, Gallen crawled and swam through the white hindrance to the cover of a large rock as the bullets whistled and sang around him.
Gasping for breath as he climbed behind the rock and checked the Heckler for load, he keyed the radio. ‘Kenny and Mike, this is lookout, do you copy, over?’
‘Gotcha, boss,’ came Winter’s voice. ‘This is home base. Those gunshots?’
‘Affirmative, we’re under fire! Repeat, under fire! Don’t come up here. Find cover and break out the rifles.’
‘Can do. Anyone hit?’
‘Negative. They have a sniper in the rear of the bird. Out.’
Shouldering the German rifle, Gallen rose over the rock and scoped the ground along the barrel of the G36, an old hab
it from special forces: in a gunfight, never let your head and eyes work independent of your weapon. The half-second that you lose is the half-second in which you die.
The helo hovered over Florita’s position; judging by the lack of gunfire, they couldn’t find her. Good girl, thought Gallen: she must be burrowing into the deep snow drift.
The helo swung about so Gallen could see a second shooter aiming from the right side of the Little Bird. Gallen ducked as chunks of rock and ice exploded five feet in front of him.
