The Ice Star (Konstabel Fenna Brongaard Book 1)

by Christoffer Petersen

  “Antibiotics,” he shouted. “Keep an eye on it. I’ll give you a shot when we land.”

  “What?”

  Mikael pressed two fingers and a thumb together in front of Fenna’s face.

  “Okay,” she said and flashed the thumbs-up sign.

  Mikael slapped Fenna on the shoulder and picked his way through the dogs to his seat by the cockpit. He clipped the first aid kit in place and nodded to the pilot before picking up the spare headset.

  “Everything’s okay,” he said. Mikael leaned into the cockpit and pulled a pen from the pilot’s chest pocket below his name tag. He tugged a laminated section of the aerial chart for northeast Greenland from under a bungee screwed into the dashboard. With the pilot’s pen he traced their route with the nib.

  “About an hour,” said the pilot. “See that?” Hauksson pointed at the anvil of clouds in the vast, moonlit distance.

  “We’ll be all right,” Mikael said and stowed the map.

  “You might be. Make sure you have your shit together when we land.”

  “Not a problem,” Mikael said and slipped the pen into Hauksson’s pocket. He pulled off the headset and lurched onto the sledging box by the door. Mikael steadied himself with a hand on the sledge and grinned through his beard at Fenna. He tickled the ears of Betty, the lead dog at his feet, closed his eyes and listened to the drone of the engines.

  Hauksson slid the Twin Otter to a halt. The engines idling, he teased the aircraft within a tight arc pointing the nose of the aircraft north. Fenna and Mikael extricated themselves from the dogs, the sledging boxes, and the webbing straps securing everything inside the cargo area. They pulled ragg wool mittens over thin thermal gloves and popped open the door, coughing with the first intake of dry polar air. The thermometer on the inside of the door began its steady contraction to minus thirty-nine degrees Celsius. Fenna jumped after Mikael through the fog of their breath onto the ice. The dogs’ eyes flashed green and blue in the torchlight from their headlamps as they reached into the cargo area, grabbed an ice axe each, and a length of travelling chain and cord.

  Mikael dug the first loophole in the ice closest to the aircraft. He removed his mittens and fished the cord through the arch in the ice, tying a bowline knot through the last link of chain, securing it. Fenna pulled the chain into one long length, digging loopholes at intervals, threading a cord through the closest link at each before stretching the chain taut at the final loophole. Her breath frosted on the chain and beaded the cord. The freezing metal burned through the thin fingers of her thermal gloves as she tied the last knot and slipped her hands into her mittens. Mikael worked behind Fenna, untangling the short lengths of chain branching out of the main line. As Hauksson killed the propellers, the hush of fur inside the Twin Otter leaked out of the aircraft with silent anticipation.

  As Fenna trotted back toward the aircraft Mikael stopped her.

  “All set?”

  “Yep.”

  “How’s your arm?”

  Fenna rolled up her sleeve, her arm pale in the lamplight, shrouded in the fog of the patroller’s breath. Mikael gripped Fenna’s wrist and smoothed his thumb across the bandage.

  “Sore?”

  “It’s okay. It wasn’t too deep, more a panic-bite than anything else.”

  “All right,” he said as he tugged Fenna’s sleeve over the bandage. “We’ll have a look at it in camp tonight and I’ll give you a quick jab in the arse.”

  “You’ll try,” said Fenna.

  “You’ll love it,” Mikael said and grinned behind a mask of mist. He nodded at the aircraft. “Let’s get to work. Hauksson gets twitchy the longer we stay on the ice.”

  As Fenna clambered into the cargo hold the dogs erupted in flashes of bared teeth, whimpers and growls. Too closely related to the wolf to bark, the dogs half-barked and whined with abandon.

  “Shut your noise,” Hauksson shouted from the cockpit. Fenna grinned back at him, ignoring the finger the pilot flashed in return.

  Fenna found Betty and wrestled her out of the canine mass. She tripped on the dog’s tail and stumbled the lead dog out of the aircraft. Mikael caught Betty by the collar as Fenna tossed her out of the cargo door. Betty bounced on the balls of her hind feet as Mikael crunched the air from the surface snow in massive strides along the full length of the chain. He reached the end of the anchor line, fumbled for the karabiner clip and secured the team’s lead dog at the collar. Betty stood rigid on the ice as Mikael returned for the next dog. One by one, Fenna bundled the dogs out of the aircraft and Mikael danced them into position. Dealing a blow here and there, the Oversergent avoided the territorial arcs of piss marking the boundaries of each dog. Lacking trees, the dogs pissed on each another.

  Fenna slid onto the floor of the Twin Otter, her legs, weighed down by the boots on her feet, dangled out of the doorway. Strands of fur floated in the light of her headlamp, twisting in the frigid breeze as Mikael joined her.

  “How’s Hauksson?” he said.

  “Crotchety.”

  “Have you told him about the whisky?”

  “I thought I’d leave that to you.”

  “I heard that,” said Hauksson from the cockpit.

  Mikael cuffed Fenna to one side as he leaned in through the doorway. “Are you going to earn it?”

  “I’m not shifting boxes for one lousy bottle of Jack,” said Hauksson. “How many have you got?”

  “Two bottles,” said Mikael. “They’re yours as soon as you get off your arse and help us.”

  The wrench of worn springs masked another round of cursing as Hauksson carped out of the pilot’s seat and staggered into the cargo bay.

  “You’re a sucker for a drink,” said Mikael.

  “There’s fuck all else to do up here,” said Hauksson. “Which box?”

  “The last one.”

  “Bastards.” Hauksson straightened up and pushed past Fenna. He picked up a rectangular wooden box and hefted it onto his knee. “Come on then, dog-fuckers.” Hauksson shoved the box at Fenna, forcing her out of the door as he dumped the first sledging box of patrol equipment out of the aircraft and onto the ice. Fenna arranged it on the ice a few metres from the aircraft. Mikael checked each box and item on a list tucked behind a flap of canvas in the sleeve of the patrol document wallet. It took all three of them to get the sledge out of the aircraft. They slid it out of the door and onto the ice alongside the equipment. Mikael fastened the canvas sledging bag between the uprights of the sledge with a webbing loop over the left and right wooden handles. The frosted links of chain rattled as the dogs shifted within the limits of their tethers.

  As Hauksson and Fenna swept the aircraft interior for forgotten items, Mikael performed a thorough check of the sledge, scrutinising each of the bindings with his fingertips and eyes. He smiled when his fingers smoothed into the well of a cosmetic dent on the third cross-thwart.

  “Found it,” he said as Fenna hopped out of the aircraft.

  “My dent?” she said and laughed at the memory of Mikael’s exasperation at her carpentry skills. “Hey, I never said building a sledge was my forte.”

  Mikael cuffed Fenna on the shoulder. “She’s going to have more than a dented cross-thwart when we’ve finished with her.” He turned to wave at Hauksson.

  “We’ve got two minutes before he starts prepping the Otter,” said Fenna.

  “Did you give him the whisky?”

  “Just the one. See for yourself.”

  Back in the cockpit, Hauksson waved the bottle of Jack Daniels in the window.

  Mikael pulled a pipe from his jacket pocket and tamped a twist of tobacco into the bowl. He thrust the pipe into his mouth. Fenna lifted the sledge boxes onto the sledge and Mikael shuffled them into position. He slid the first box between the wooden uprights at the rear of the sledge. Sanded and smoothed in the shape of a woman’s breast and firm belly, the nipple on each upright made for a quick tease when cupping the tit on downward slopes and through gullies. In the harsh light of the
Twin Otter the shadow of the sledge swelled on the ice. Fenna turned away from the aircraft to read the call-sign Fever Dog stencilled the length of each sledge runner. The mission, she realised, was just about to begin.

  Chapter 6

  The cough of a propeller hurried the two patrollers as they fixed the sleeping mats and tent on top of the load, securing the canvas tarpaulin with trucker’s hitches, passing the cord through heavy eyelets and around the thwarts sticking clear of the sledge runners. Mikael slid the padded rifle holster between the cord and the load, Fenna organised the skis. The second propeller coughed – a hoarse bark that caught their attention. Hauksson waved from the cockpit window and the patrollers continued their work. Mikael hung thick rope, woven into coils, over each of the uprights. The coils, the only piece of equipment designed to slow the sledge’s progress, would be slipped over the runners when going downhill. Fenna and Mikael would wear them across their chests once they started the patrol. Like the sledge and almost everything else the patrol carried, they were easily repaired.

  As the engines of the Twin Otter spun into an idle rhythm, Mikael and Fenna dug out the second bottle of Jack Daniel’s tucked into the heavy canvas sledge bag hanging at the back of the sledge. Hauksson blotted the interior light of the aircraft as he filled the doorway.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Sledge bag, eh?”

  Mikael shrugged. “You’re getting old.”

  Hauksson nodded. “Too old for that,” he said with a nod toward the sledge. “You want to get back on board?”

  Fenna shook her head and grinned.

  “She’s eager, Gregersen. You want to watch her.”

  “She’ll be all right. How about you?”

  “Weather’s holding for the moment. It’s you who should be worried. I don’t know why you couldn’t wait a day.” Hauksson turned in the doorway. “You’ve got my frequency?”

  Mikael nodded.

  “Fine then,” Hauksson said and took the bottle. He yanked the door closed, clapping his last visible breath in half. Hauksson grinned through the window and flipped his middle finger. Mikael and Fenna returned the gesture.

  They stepped back to the sledge as Hauksson revved the Twin Otter’s engines in a tight circle, the arc from the wing lights blinding the patrol. The aircraft lurched to a stop as Hauksson applied the brakes, holding them firm as the engines whined, releasing them at fever pitch to roar down the short stretch of smooth ice before leaping into the black air. Fenna and Mikael watched as the Twin Otter traced a low and lazy circle in the sky returning to buzz the patrol with a waggle of wings. They waved and watched the aircraft disappear in the night sky. All was still. The polar air sank around them, they switched off their headlamps and the dark enveloped them.

  ITTOQQORTOORMIIT, EAST GREENLAND

  Vestergaard looked up as Petersen walked into the kitchen waving his mobile.

  “All telecommunications are still down, sir. But I’ll keep trying.”

  “The fog?” Vestergaard said and reached into his jacket pocket for his mobile.

  “No, sir. The TELE Greenland guy at the store says it’s a fault and they’re working on it.”

  “How long?”

  “They’re working on it, sir. I have no idea.”

  “Very well,” Vestergaard said and checked his mobile once more before slipping it back into his pocket. “Konstabel, did you have any experience of working with dogs before Sirius?”

  Fenna smoothed the fabric of the sweatshirt over the dog bite. “No. Not so much.”

  “So, tell me the nature of your mission. What was it you were tasked to do?” Fenna glanced at Petersen. “It’s all right, Konstabel. I assure you Petersen is cleared for this.”

  Fenna looked at Petersen. She watched as Vestergaard clicked the button on his ballpoint pen back and forth. “You’ll show me the letter when Maratse returns?”

  “As soon as he gets back,” Vestergaard said and smiled. “Okay?”

  Fenna took a deep breath. “At our second briefing, when the location of the satellite was confirmed, we were told to retrieve certain parts of the satellite, if we couldn’t get it all.”

  “Just parts of it?” He looked up from his notes. “The satellite is called Sapphire. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand the Canadians launched it back on the 25th of February, 2013.” Vestergaard closed his notepad and took a breath. “Sapphire is a surveillance satellite.”

  “I know,” said Fenna.

  Vestergaard frowned and continued. “It’s part of the Canadians’ programme to improve their ability to patrol their Arctic territory, something that I understand is becoming increasingly important as the ice retreats and shipping lanes are freed.”

  “Kjersing told us that Sapphire is the first spy satellite the Canadians have ever launched,” Fenna looked up. “Since we’ve been flirting with the Canadians over Hans Island, and not forgetting the Xue Long incident...”

  “Xue Long?”

  “A Chinese icebreaker that arrived in Tuktoyaktuk, in the far north of Canada, without them noticing,” Fenna said and paused. “The Canadians have been having sovereignty issues in the Arctic for quite some time now.”

  Fenna remembered the briefing, with details about the Canadians and their snow machines getting stuck in bad ice in the far north. It had been a good joke at the time. Something for Sirius to feel proud about, proving once again, that as long as the sea continued to freeze, dogs were the only way to patrol the Arctic. That might change, Fenna realised, if the ice continues to retreat to the pole. Who will have the last laugh, she wondered.

  “The Chinese,” Vestergaard said and tapped looked up from his notepad. “I assume you were also briefed on the Chinese cargo plane that flew over the area around the same time the satellite was reported lost?”

  “Yes,” Fenna said. “Kommandør Kjersing was quite concerned.”

  “It strikes me as strange they would only task you to bring back a piece of it.”

  “I think they were worried about the storm and the Chinese,” Fenna said. “And our ability to get in and out with the entire satellite.”

  “They?”

  “Kommandør Kjersing's seniors, sir.”

  Fenna paused as she thought about the briefing at Daneborg, when they were first tasked with the mission. Mikael, she remembered, had been as close to insubordination as a second year man could get. He’d made it crystal clear that picking up a piece of space junk was the last thing he wanted to do, especially when it shortened the patrol. He lived for the wild, she thought and sniffed to ward off a round of tears. Shit, Mikael, what the hell did we get ourselves into? And, she added as an afterthought, did Kjersing know?

  “Tell me again why did they not just send a helicopter?”

  “Okay,” Fenna said and flexed her shoulders. She shifted her position on the chair. “All aircraft were about to be grounded due to a storm rolling in from the east. Hurricane strength. What the East Greenlanders call a piteraq.”

  “But you can operate in that kind of weather?”

  “The dogs can cope with temperatures in the minus fifties.”

  “And the men?”

  “That’s the challenge,” Fenna said. “Yes, we can do it. We do do it.”

  “And your mission?”

  Fenna paused for a sip of coffee. She let her eyes drift across the tabletop, letting her mind wander as the coffee stains grew into lichen clustered outcrops of rock, pits in the surface of the table became ravines, scratches transformed into contour lines on the map, and the edge of the table became the ice foot rising and falling with the tide as the table rose and fell with Fenna's breaths.

  “Konstabel?” Vestergaard said and tapped his pen on the table. “The mission?”

  Fenna shook her head before answering. “We planned to sledge from our insertion point – where Hauksson dropped us off. Locate the satellite and retrieve the components before they were lost in the storm or buried in the snow.” She looked u
p. “Total mission time: three to five days to reach the area. At which point we anticipated being contacted by helicopter.”

  Petersen shuffled for a better seat on the kitchen counter as Fenna waited for Vestergaard’s next question. She took another sip of coffee and recalled the shush of sledge runners in the snow compared to the grating noise they produced when the dogs pulled them smartly across pure sea ice. Not the inland ice sheet that people thought they patrolled, but the sea ice along the coast of Northeast Greenland. Wild and untamed – polar bear territory.

  “Was there any indication of a credible threat?”

  “What?” Fenna said and looked up.

  “Were you informed of any hostile groups interested in the satellite?”

  “No,” Fenna shook her head. “Perhaps that was our biggest mistake.”

  Fenna closed her eyes tight as the picture of Burwardsley, striding across the snow with the Browning pistol in his hand, invaded her mind. As the image focused, the details flooded back. As he’d approached the hut, he had pulled down the hood of his white camouflage jacket. He wore a green beret on his head and a low-cut mask that hid most of his face bar the blond hair flicking out from under the beret. Fenna recognised it now from a photo she had seen in one of her father’s books. It was a British Royal Marines uniform. The shorter man with a machine gun, the one he called Bad, also wore a beret, green or black, it didn’t matter. Fenna focused her memory on the eighteen inch sword at the man’s waist, a kukri, a Gurkha blade. A credible threat? She opened her eyes and breathed out with a long breath as she focused on Vestergaard. A Royal Marine and a Gurkha. I’d say that was a pretty fucking credible threat.