Arctic Floor

by Mark Aitken

  Kneeling behind the rock, Gallen scooped snow and patted it to the size of a bowling ball, his lungs struggling for air in the intense cold. He tore off his Thinsulate balaclava inside the arctic parka and stretched the material over the snowball as three shots sounded above the helo’s thromp.

  Waiting, trying to make himself breathe slowly through his panic, he counted down from five and threw the balaclava-covered snowball as far to his left as he could.

  The shots came fast, sending shards of black Thinsulate flying into the snow.

  Breaking cover from the opposite side of the rock, Gallen got a bead on the shooter and put three bursts into the side of the helo. The shooter leaned back in surprise, but not before Gallen drilled him in the left kneecap, the stomach and the upper chest, just below his chin.

  The shooter fell from the helo into the snow on the ridge. Banking away, the aircraft headed back towards the bottom of the bowl, and this time Gallen tried to run through the deep snow, knowing that Florita had no chance if the other shooter got even a glimpse of her.

  As he reached the edge of the bowl, readying to throw himself down the toboggan track created by Florita, he watched the muzzle flashes from the side of the helo and saw the snow and ice coughing up chunks.

  He now had a shot of almost one hundred yards to the helo. Lifting the G36, he conserved his loads by switching to single shot and trying to scare the pilot—few pilots enjoyed stars appearing in front of them and would generally stand off until the shooting stopped. But before he could put a bullet in the cockpit windshield, the sniper’s fire stopped and the helo banked away, keeping a wide arc as Gallen aimed-up.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he said into his mouthpiece, ripping his eyes off the helo disappearing over the ridge.

  Heaving for breath, he looked back at where the snow and ice had been churned up over Florita’s body, knowing she couldn’t have survived. His job now was to help the living defend themselves.

  Forcing his weakened legs to cover the thirty yards to the edge of the lookout precipice, he saw the red flare still burning in the air, its last glimmer of brightness about to expire as the shooting started out of view.

  Scores of volleys sounded over the harsh noise of the helo as Gallen finally made it to the precipice. Exhausted, fighting for oxygen, he looked down along his rifle and saw muzzle flashes pouring out of the helo at the camp, and muzzle flames firing back. Winter was visible from Gallen’s position, shooting from behind the starboard engine that lay fifteen yards from the tarpaulin entrance to the fuselage. Ford was behind a rock, close to Donny McCann’s cairn.

  Checking his magazine, Gallen found he had two-thirds of the loads left and he aimed-up, hesitating as he did so, watching the helo back off out of the range of the small-arms fire.

  The sniper had pulled inside the cabin and Gallen let his rifle drop, knowing it was a waste of ammo at that distance. As the helo throbbed in the still air, he heard a whirring, squealing sound. Lifting the field-glasses to his eyes, he found the source of the sound: mounted beneath the cockpit of the helo was a black minigun; the squealing sound was the six barrels spinning in preparation to fire.

  Gallen keyed the mic. ‘Kenny, this is Gerry. They’ve got a minigun. Get down.’

  ‘Copy that,’ said the Canadian, and then the most ungodly sound on a battlefield tore the air apart in a banshee’s shriek of lead. Fire spewed forty feet from under the helo as the electrically powered mini Gatling gun opened up at a cycle rate of twenty rounds per second, chewing a hole in everything in its path.

  The first five-second burst reduced the Challenger’s starboard engine to shreds of metal but Gallen couldn’t see Ford’s body or any blood. As the helo swung to take out Winter’s position, the pilot’s profile was too tempting for Gallen: adopting a kneeling marksman’s pose, he started squeezing head shots at the pilot. The second caught the frame beneath the pilot but the man didn’t notice and opened up with the minigun. As fire flowed from the minigun, Gallen’s fourth shot starred the glass beside the pilot’s head, surprising him and making him bank away, the line of continuous fire creeping up the cliff face and sending cascades of rock fragments into the air.

  ‘He’s backing off,’ said Gallen into his mic. ‘We have to hit that engine or the tail rotor.’

  ‘Hearing you, boss,’ came Ford’s Aussie twang.

  ‘Okay, on my five,’ said Gallen, and counted them in.

  As the helo righted itself and drifted back to firing position, Gallen reached ‘five’ and the three Heckler & Koch G36 rifles opened up on the helo, which banked again and tried to circle back.

  ‘Shit,’ said Gallen, wanting the helo within range.

  ‘I’ll get him in,’ said Ford.

  ‘Nothing stupid, Mike,’ said Gallen, struggling to breathe.

  The Aussie emerged from his hide a few yards away from the destroyed jet engine, and raised his rifle in plain sight. The helo twisted slightly and the shooter in the back aimed-up with the DMR.

  Firing again, Gallen missed on the first but hit the man’s shoulder with a lucky shot on his second, dropping the shooter.

  The pilot forgot about being careful and, dipping the nose, charged at the fuselage, the minigun spinning.

  ‘Okay, boys,’ came Winter’s voice. ‘Mike, get down, let’s finish this prick.’

  Ford dived to his left, back to the dugout he’d found in the snow, and Winter and Gallen opened up on the helo as it went through its ammo cans faster than any other gun on earth. Gallen’s shots found their mark in the helo’s tail section and rotor turret, but with no impact. Then his G36 clicked empty.

  Finally, the fuselage looking like Swiss cheese, the helo banked out of the bowl and circled, Winter having stopped shooting too.

  Gallen’s heart sank. ‘Guys, I’m out. Get down, wait for them to deboard and then let’s take ‘em.’

  ‘Wait,’ came Winter’s voice. ‘Think I scored in the engine bay.’

  They waited for the helo to circle, coming back to finish them with the relentless gun. Then Winter’s voice was in his head.

  ‘Smoke! Look, boss!’

  Squinting into the sun, Gallen saw a vague tendril of brown smoke wafting from the helo and then realised the engine note had changed from roaring power to a lawnmower with a dirty spark plug.

  Standing, he watched the aircraft limping away from their camp, the engine note becoming more uneven as the smoke from the turbine grew browner. There was a flash of flame and then the smoke was black like a steam locomotive and the engine was struggling, the rotor losing revs.

  ‘You seeing this?’ said Gallen, but he could see the Canadian and Aussie already emerging from their hides, running through the snow after the crippled helo. ‘Bring ammo for me,’ he said, dragging his feet back into action as he headed down to the camp. ‘And bring a pack full of food.’

  ‘Got it,’ came Ford’s voice.

  ‘And fellers,’ said Gallen over the mic, his lungs burning for air, ‘whatever we have to do, I want that radio in one piece. Can do?’

  ‘No one touches the radio,’ Winter panted. ‘No one even looks at it funny.’

  As Gallen found the ice ramp down to the fuselage a shot of orange flame burst from the stricken helicopter.

  Keeping his eyes on the point where the aircraft disappeared over the ridge, he threw himself forward on his stomach and let gravity take him on a toboggan ride to the valley floor.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 23

  Gallen met his men at the bottom of the lookout cliff, dusting snow off his parka as he took the spare mag. He was exhausted, fighting for breath as the three of them looked at a point on the horizon about five hundred yards north where the helo had dropped, flames pouring from it.

  ‘Shit, guys,’ he said, hands on his knees, his face almost hitting snow as he leaned forward. ‘I’m beat.’

  ‘We can’t keep running around in this snow,’ said Winter, mouth hanging open like a hound dog’s. ‘We don’t have the
food supply to support it, and we can’t afford to get covered in sweat. It just ices over.’

  Catching their breath, they looked at where they had to trek to, simply to get into a gunfight on the other side of the hill.

  Looking at his G-Shock, Gallen had 3.42 pm. The sun was low and the temperature was starting its drop towards the overnight extremes of minus forty or fifty, the killer temperatures they didn’t want to endure in the open.

  ‘If the wreck’s one thousand yards,’ said Gallen, ‘we can get there and back before nightfall proper. Let’s say a return trip of ninety minutes?’

  ‘And if we get to the top of the hill and the chopper’s two thousand yards, with shooters waiting?’ said Winter.

  They looked at one another, caught between the uncertainty of waiting in the fuselage for search and rescue, and the uncertainty of finding the Little Bird’s radio and calling for help.

  ‘How’s Harry?’ said Gallen, changing the subject.

  ‘On his way out,’ said Ford. ‘But he’s dry and we got food into him a couple of hours ago. Where’s Florita?’

  ‘They got her at the lookout,’ said Gallen, unable to look them in the eye. ‘Starts running towards the chopper like her Christmases have come at once, and then—’

  ‘Shit,’ said Ford.

  ‘Okay.’ Gallen took a calming breath. ‘There’s only way home, and it starts with a radio. What’s our food?’

  Opening his pack, Winter revealed a plastic bag of muffins and a Tupperware container of cold cuts: ham, salami and pressed chicken. Beside the food stash were two large bottles of water, distilled by Florita.

  ‘That’s maybe enough for twenty-four hours,’ said Winter. ‘We’ll have to get to that helo and get on the radio tonight.’

  ~ * ~

  The helicopter was perched on the end of a large ice escarpment, lying horizontal about two hundred feet over a partially frozen lake. As the sun edged towards the horizon to their left, pushing down the temperature to twenty below, Winter handed the field-glasses back to Gallen.

  ‘Seven hundred yards,’ said Winter. ‘I agree with Mike. There’s one set of tracks away from the machine.’

  ‘One survivor?’

  ‘One who can move on foot,’ said Ford. ‘Doesn’t mean there’s not a dude in the bird with broken legs, waiting with an M4 on his lap.’

  ‘Where would the tracks go?’ said Gallen.

  ‘The fit one’s gone wandering, or he’s waiting for us to arrive, going to ambush us for our clothes and food.’

  Gallen looked at the scene again, saw the last light of the day and felt the cold numbing his feet and face. A puff of wind hit the ridge they were standing on, and the cold cut through to his ribs like someone had hit him with a chisel.

  ‘We go the long way,’ he said, knowing he wasn’t going to be popular. ‘There’s one survivor on foot and he’s probably got the DMR. He could be waiting for us, so we have to come in from his six.’

  Ducking into the lee side of the ridge, Winter led the team in a long semicircle. As their feet started breaking through the crust of the hardening snow, Gallen knew he’d given them a better chance of taking the helo unchallenged, but he also knew the journey would take about an hour longer than the direct route.

  ~ * ~

  Gallen’s legs gave out halfway up the large snow drift. Falling sideways, he felt himself drop until the drift held him as if weightless. He struggled for balance as Ford and Winter got him upright.

  ‘You okay, boss?’ Winter whispered. The wind had died and the terrain had an eerie stillness, the pale blue dome of dusk bouncing the smallest noises for a thousand yards.

  ‘I’m okay.’ Gallen knew he should have had more recovery time from the hypothermia. The truth was, he was running on half-strength and he was having trouble balancing.

  ‘Have some water,’ said Winter, pulling it out of his waistband, where it was being carried to keep from freezing.

  Sipping, they watched Ford slide down from the top of the drift where he’d done a recce with the glasses.

  ‘I make one body at our eleven o’clock,’ said the Aussie, taking his turn on the water bottle. ‘Not moving, rifle lying beside him. He’s been waiting at the top of a drift.’

  ‘Dead?’ asked Gallen.

  ‘Sleeping, maybe hypothermia. Christ, it’s cold.’

  As they huddled in, trying to breathe through their noses to stop plumes of steam moving into the air, Gallen saw something extraordinary and for a second thought he was hallucinating.

  ‘The fuck’s that?’ He cowered away as what looked like an ice fairy floated past them on the air.

  ‘Ice,’ said Winter. ‘Gets cold enough out here, ice crystals form in the air. It must have fallen through fifty below.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Gallen said, tongue cold simply from opening his mouth. ‘We have to take out that shooter, get to the helo.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Winter. ‘Just gimme cover.’

  Slinging his rifle diagonally over his shoulders, Winter checked the Ka-bar in its rubber belt scabbard and crawled over the ridge on a journey that would cover about a hundred and twenty yards to the next ridge, where the shooter was lying.

  The moon rose from the north, favouring Gallen and Ford. They could keep their heads up without worrying about their silhouettes on the horizon.

  Gallen tracked Winter’s progress with his G36, jaws clenching in the cold. The exertion of moving through the deep snow may have been exhausting but it had kept them warm. Now he had to consciously move his toes and twirl his wrists, making the blood run to the extremities as his nose ran freely, the mucus freezing solid on his top lip.

  Winter crawled to within twenty yards of the prone man, the air alive with the man’s snoring. The shooter partially rolled sideways, made three snores, and then his head collapsed into the snow, hypothermia reducing him to a near-comatose state.

  Winter must have seen this before, decided Gallen, because as soon as the snores had finished and the head slumped, he stood and walked the last few yards, picked up the shooter’s rifle and rolled the man onto his back.

  ‘Okay,’ said Winter, his voice carrying across the snow bowl as if he were standing beside them. ‘We’re clear.’

  At Gallen’s request, Winter ratted the man, turning out his pockets, finding a wallet which he looked inside then handed over to Gallen. The Canadian found a support-belt under the man’s clothes, the mark of a former soldier whose back had taken one too many jumps off a helicopter or landings with a parachute.

  ‘He’s a pro,’ said Winter, panting in long plumes of steam as he stood with Gallen and Ford. ‘Hi-Tec boots, back belt, military thermals. It’s all generic, Canadian and US military issue.’

  ‘No ID?’ said Gallen.

  Winter shook his head. ‘Check out the wallet.’

  Looking at the wallet reflecting the moon, Gallen couldn’t see anything strange about it. ‘What are we looking at?’

  ‘No cards, no memberships,’ said Winter. ‘It’s all cash; even the brand name of the wallet has been cut out. Who, these days, has a wallet that looks like that? ‘

  ‘You mean, besides a spook?’ Ford checked the man’s arms for tattoos but instead came up with a G-Shock watch, which he pocketed.

  Gallen pushed back the man’s parka hood and grabbed the doublelayer balaclava off his head, shoving it thankfully onto his own skull, which had gone naked since creating the snowball diversion. The sleeping man was swarthy, like a Spaniard. He didn’t look like any of the men they’d encountered with Reggie’s crew at the meeting house in Kugaaruk.

  Gallen nodded at the man. ‘Can you get him talking, Kenny?’

  ‘I can try, boss. But it’s over for him.’

  ‘I want to know who’s in that helo,’ Gallen said, looking across the snow to where the helo lay buried in the ice like a massive dragonfly.

  Winter and Ford worked on the shooter, waking him and trying to get him talking while Gallen scoped the helo with th
e glasses. More ice crystals floated past, suspended in the frozen air, and Gallen felt the cold driving up into his boots, sitting on his back like a gorilla.

  ‘Is that Russian?’ said Ford, as they got a few slurred words out of the dying man.

  ‘No,’ said Gallen. ‘Let’s go.’

  They took turns at the lead as they tramped across the deep snow bowl towards the helo, gasping the freezing air while trying to stop it going too deep. The moisture in the air was frozen and Gallen’s injured rib was aching with every breath. He worried about what was happening in his lungs, worried about frostbite and hypothermia. He could sense his team were desperate to get into the helo and get warm as the temperature crushed in on their skulls.