Beneath the Ice

by Patrick Woodhead

  He could see his colleague’s whole body being torn between the vice grip of the crevasse and the power of the winch. His eyes were wide with unspeakable agony as his spine seemed to buckle under the incredible pressure. Slowly, his thighs were being wrenched from their sockets, each muscle and sinew tearing beyond its limit. On it went, millimetres at a time, the two opposing forces splitting his flesh and bone as if trying to divide it between them.

  Sommers shook his head, unable to cope with the terrible pain he was inflicting. He pressed the remote once more and immediately the winch cable reversed, releasing Akira. His whole body slumped back, with the cable slackening off and lying innocently beneath him.

  There was a long pause before Akira finally tilted his head up and stared directly into Sommers’ eyes.

  ‘Again,’ he breathed.

  ‘Just wait a minute,’ Sommers pleaded, staring down at the top of Akira’s head. ‘Please.’

  ‘Again,’ he repeated, trying to raise his voice, but the sound was lost to the cavernous walls of ice.

  Sommers pushed his thumb down on the remote once more. There was the same sound, the same immeasurable pressure on a human form. He counted the seconds as the cable pulled inexorably tighter with each one. It sawed through the soft flesh at the back of Akira’s thighs all the way down to the bone, before there was a dull crack as his hip joint finally collapsed. But still, Akira did not pull free.

  Sommers killed the winch, tears welling up in his eyes.

  ‘Please,’ he begged. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  Akira’s eyes were half closed, while his breath came out in a horrid rasping sound from somewhere deep within his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sommers whispered, kneeling down at his side.

  ‘It OK,’ Akira breathed, reaching up to grab his hand. Somehow both of them had lost their gloves and their bare fingers curled tightly together. Then Sommers’ body began to shake. As he silently wept, tears rolled down his face mingling with a line of snot from his nose.

  ‘It OK,’ Akira repeated, the words coming out breathlessly. His free hand moved up, tugging at the collar of his jacket. ‘Bushido,’ he whispered, revealing a little more of the tattoo on his neck. Sommers could see the tip of a samurai’s katana sword, wreathed in blossom. ‘Death not the end.’

  Sommers looked away, this mention of death too soon for him to consider. He swivelled round so that his back was against the ice and let his eyes run up the side of the crevasse. His vision settled on the aura of light pouring in from the outside world and he exhaled, watching the vapour hang listlessly in the air. The light seemed so very far away.

  For the first time, he felt cold. Sweat and blood had dampened his thermal layers, leaving only his thin windproof jacket to retain body heat. It wouldn’t be enough to see him through the next hour.

  ‘Don’t know how I expected to climb out of here anyways,’ he said, more to himself than Akira. ‘Nowt but tools and some rope in the tractor. Be bugger all help climbing to the surface.’

  He was about to turn back to his companion when a shadow played across the interior of the crevasse, partially blotting out the light. Sommers tried to focus, pulling his vision back from a blur. There, at the top of the crevasse, was a figure. He could see it now, the silhouette haloed by blinding white light.

  ‘Down here!’ he bellowed, bringing his hands up to wave. The figure moved slowly, eyes scanning from one thing to the next as it took stock of the situation, but it did not respond.

  ‘Hey! Down here!’ Sommers shouted again, this time clambering to his feet. It was impossible that the other person couldn’t see them. ‘We’re about sixty feet down and Akira’s hurt . . . bad!’

  The figure paused for a moment more, then vanished. As light flooded back into the crevasse, Sommers stared up towards the opening in confusion.

  ‘What the hell’s he playing at?’ he asked, then switched his attention back to Akira. ‘Don’t worry, mate. The cavalry’s here. We’ll get one of them oxy-acetylene torches from the base, and a hammer drill. It’ll crack this shit right open.’

  As he looked closer, he saw that Akira’s head had slumped forward. His eyelids drooped, the exhaustion and pain finally too much to bear. The last vestiges of colour had drained from his face, leaving only an ashen mask. He was barely recognisable. Sommers moved closer, gently slapping his hand across Akira’s face.

  ‘Come on!’ he said, trying to shout, but his voice seemed somehow disconnected from himself. ‘You’ve got to stay awake. Bushido. You told me all about that once. The way of the warrior, right?’

  Akira didn’t respond. His eyelids were closed.

  ‘Come on, mate. One last fight.’

  Taking off his own fleece hat, Sommers jammed it down on top of Akira’s head, poking some strands of loose hair back under the warm brim.

  ‘Akira-san,’ he whispered. ‘You’re one of my only real mates. You’ve got to pull through this. Please, for me.’

  Sommers exhaled a great cloud of air against his fingertips, but they were already numb from cold. He knew that his core was starting to protect itself, re-routing the warm blood from his heart so that it cut off his extremities. It was the first stage of hypothermia, and soon the rest of his body would systematically start to shut down.

  He stared towards the light once more. Why was the figure up there taking so long to help them? And how had he found them so quickly? They were over two days’ tractor drive from their base.

  ‘Help!’ Sommers screamed. He waited, then screamed again, this time louder. After a moment more, he sat down next to Akira and curled his legs up against his chest.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Somebody . . . help us.’

  Chapter 1

  RAIN MIXED WITH sleet hit the side of the helicopter window.

  The North Sea was its habitual grey-blue, near perfectly matching the autumnal sky. The only discernible differences between the two elements were the breakers playing across the surface of the water like the strokes of a paintbrush, but even they faded from view as the helicopter passed into yet another bank of heavy cumulus cloud.

  Kieran Bates sat bolt upright in his seat, trying to focus on anything other than the flight. The austere cabin lights accentuated his already pale features, while his auburn hair was slicked back from his face, partly from sweat. Every few seconds the helicopter lurched in a new bout of turbulence and Bates’ eyes would drop to his watch, willing the time to pass. He could feel the sweat slowly running down his back and collecting in between his buttocks, dampening the seat of his suit trousers.

  Far below, there was a small collection of lights – the only feature for hundreds of miles in the desolate sea. They were nearing the oil rig.

  The helicopter whined, the pilot feathering the collective, as first one skid, then the next, clumsily banged down on the concrete helipad. As he opened the door of the helicopter, Bates drew the thick sea air deep into his lungs, trying to steady his nerves. This had better work.

  A surly rig worker, as indifferent to Bates’ presence as he was to the weather, led him across the metal grating of the main platform and out towards one of the lower decks. Bates could hear the roar of the seawater swelling up from beneath them and smashing into the rig’s mighty supports. His eyes followed the line of the scaffolding towers as they reached up into the turbulent sky, hundreds of feet above where he stood. The sheer scale of the structure was monstrous.

  As they entered through a storm-sealed door, his guide suddenly turned to face him.

  ‘Matthews, right?’ he asked, the pitch of his voice unexpectedly high.

  ‘Right.’

  They followed the tunnel through one prefabricated module and into another, twisting down two flights of stairs to a lower level.

  ‘Like being in a bloody rabbit warren this,’ Bates offered, but his guide pressed on without comment. Arriving at what was obviously the canteen, the man simply gestured forwards and then left, leaving Bates with the sm
ell of old cigarettes and recently fried food.

  The canteen was nothing more than five rows of tables with coffee cups grouped in their centre. The movement of countless workers could be mapped by the grimy footprints zig-zagging across the linoleum floor, while heavy gas piping ran around the canteen’s circumference. The room’s sole redeeming feature came from the row of heavy-rimmed windows that faced out to sea, each accompanied by an old armchair, battered by age and neglect.

  Bates stepped further into the room, passing a serving hatch surrounded by notices and official reminders. At the centre, as if enshrined by them all, was the front page of an old FHM magazine featuring a provocative, bikini-clad girl airbrushed to perfection. Bates’ eyes lingered on her for a second, before the image was lost to a waft of steam curling up from a dented urn standing directly beneath. The smell of old, boiled tea rose up to meet him.

  Bates smiled. It was exactly as he had imagined, only grubbier. The entire oil rig was like a repository for lost souls, isolated by hundreds of miles of seawater. Here, the workers existed in a kind of stasis – no past, no future, just each day blurring into the next while the machines sucked the oil from the ground with unending thirst. People came here to escape the outside world. They were cut off and far removed from any semblance of a normal, functioning society. His old school friend, Luca Matthews, must have sunk low indeed to have ended up in such a place.

  In the farthest armchair, half turned from him, he could see the crooked knees of someone staring out to sea. He moved closer, surer with each step that the legs belonged to the man he had travelled so far to see.

  ‘I thought you always hated the water,’ Bates began, hovering just beside the chair.

  Luca Matthews looked up, eyes hazy from staring out of the window for so long. He looked distant and unfriendly; with unwashed hair that had matted into strands and now clung to the sides of his face. His cheeks had hollowed since they had last met, the skin tighter and creased at the outer corners of his eyes. He clung to a tin mug brimming with tea, his long, supple fingers bandaged in a vain effort to heal the deep cracks running over his knuckles.

  A few seconds passed before Luca’s expression softened. Then, slowly, the beginnings of a smile appeared.

  ‘I hate the water because you nearly drowned us once in your father’s boat.’

  ‘You know, he never forgave me for losing that boat.’

  After carefully putting down the mug, Luca got to his feet. Bates could see his long, muscular limbs through the threadbare T-shirt he was wearing. His abdomen was utterly devoid of fat, uncurling like the body of a snake. As he reached forward to hug Bates, the smell of dirt and turpentine wafted from him. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Norm?’

  Bates smiled at the mention of his old nickname. On their very first day at school together, one of the older kids had taunted him that he must be related to the lead character in Psycho and the name had stuck. He hadn’t heard it in almost three years – the last time he and Luca had met.

  ‘That’s a question I could very easily ask you. Real shithole you’ve found yourself here.’

  Luca made no effort to refute this. Instead, he stared at his visitor for several seconds before suddenly seeming to check himself and raising his mug up to offer some tea. Bates winced, genuinely appalled by the idea.

  ‘Guess there’s no need to ask how the flight was,’ Luca said.

  ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ his friend replied, with a thin smile. ‘I get motion sickness from just about every form of transport and there I go, choosing a job in the bloody Foreign Office. You’d have thought I might have opted for something with a bit less travel as part of the job description.’

  Luca didn’t respond, his mind still preoccupied by Bates’ unannounced visit. In all the time they had known each other, Bates had only ever come to see him for a reason, and already Luca was trying to guess what it might be. But as he stared into his old school friend’s face, he was struck by how much Bates had changed. He looked softer, paunchier.

  When they had first met, Kieran Bates had been obsessive about martial arts and his body had borne the hallmarks of strict training. He had been supple and lean, with explosively fast reactions. Now, he looked every ounce the drab office worker, beaten down by life and the daily commute. But as Luca studied him more closely, he wondered if there wasn’t perhaps something more deliberate about this change in his friend. Anonymity was an attribute highly prized in Bates’ line of work.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ Luca lied.

  ‘I look fat. But at least I’ve seen the inside of a shower room in the last month. You, my old friend, smell like the arse end of a donkey,’ Bates replied while idly scratching his thinning hair. ‘Still, I guess there aren’t too many ladies to impress around here – aside from Miss November over there.’

  Luca’s eyes flicked to the FHM poster on the wall. He had passed it hundreds of times, but would never have been able to say what edition it was. Bates had always been like that. He had a photographic memory and could remember even the most spurious details of their childhood years.

  ‘So how have you been keeping?’ Bates offered, his smile widening.

  Luca shrugged. ‘Come on, Norm, we’ve known each other for far too long. You didn’t come all this way to check up on me.’

  ‘Fair enough. Same old Luca – straight to the point.’

  Dragging the neighbouring armchair a little closer, Bates hitched up his suit trousers and perched on the edge.

  ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘there’s been an incident. A couple of scientists out in Antarctica got themselves trapped in a crevasse last week. Messy business. They had to cut them out with a damn blowtorch. The closest one to a guide in the whole group was a man named Sommers. They found him with all the skin stripped off his fingers from where he’d tried to claw his way out.’

  He looked to Luca for a reaction, but his expression remained blank.

  ‘You see, the scientists were drilling into this lake – a very special lake. Nearly two miles under the surface of the ice, they’ve found unfrozen seawater. It’s been there for nearly twenty million years, with all sorts of lost enzymes and bacteria locked within.’ Bates crunched his fists together as if trying to trap the water in his own hands. ‘Imagine it, Luca! Bacteria that was around when the world just began.’

  ‘Bacteria?’ Luca repeated. ‘Since when did you give a shit about bacteria?’

  ‘Don’t knock the little stuff. Life’s in the detail. Aside from finding unknown microbes, drilling down that low tells you exactly what the atmosphere was like all those years ago. Kind of important if you want to prove whether climate change is man-made or not.’

  Luca’s eyes passed over the ceiling of the canteen as if encompassing the entire oil rig.

  ‘You need to drill into an Antarctic lake to tell you that?’

  Bates ignored him, leaning forward in his seat.

  ‘Four different nations have pooled their resources and come together on this project. We’ve been at it for three years now. And this January, the Russian team finally succeeded in drilling into the lake.’ Bates shook his head in disbelief. ‘Drunken sods actually made it on schedule. Then it was supposed to be the British team’s turn and our boys were tasked with extracting the first samples. Only now, we can’t get back to the damn drill site.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘The route goes over this narrow pass and that’s exactly where the tractor was swallowed. Those idiots had been driving over a crevasse field for years and not even realised.’

  Luca blew the steam off his tea, already guessing what was coming.

  ‘We need someone to get our boys back to the drill site before Antarctica closes down for winter in just over a week’s time. The seasons are about to change. Soon, it’ll be twenty-four-hour darkness down there and as soon as that happens, nothing moves in or out for the next ten months. So, if we don’t get back to the drill site before then . . .’

  ‘.
. . the hole will re-seal,’ Luca interjected.

  ‘Yeah, the hole will re-seal. And three years of Russian drilling will be up in smoke.’

  ‘So just plot another route.’

  ‘Believe me, we’ve tried. The only way back to the lake is over a mountain. The lake sits right in the middle of a semi-circular range of them. They bar the drill site to one side, while the other is locked in by the sea.’

  ‘Why not just use a boat then?’

  ‘You ever heard of the barrier?’ Bates asked, but his short pause suggested that the question was purely rhetorical. ‘It’s a two-hundred-foot-high ice sheet that surrounds most of Antarctica. There are only a few places where you can actually dock a ship down there, and this lake isn’t one of them.’ He gave a smile that faded as quickly as it had appeared. ‘There’s a good reason why ye olde sailors used to stamp Here be Dragons and have done with it. Bottom line, Luca – we need a climber.’

  He had barely finished the sentence before Luca started shaking his head. ‘Come on, Norm, choose someone current. I can name five guys who could do the job for you.’

  ‘It’s a walk, Luca. Barely any climbing involved,’ Bates countered, ignoring his protests. ‘All you have to do is babysit a few scientists across to a lake. That’s it.’

  Before Luca could interject, Bates continued, ‘Job starts in Cape Town. From there, it’s a five-hour flight due south to the ice runway in Droning Maud Land.’

  ‘Cape Town?’ Luca asked, having been to the city many times before. All that time spent on the southern tip of Africa and he had never known that it was a gateway to Antarctica.

  ‘That’s right. And we’ll pay you twelve grand a week. Starting tomorrow, with a minimum of four weeks guaranteed.’

  ‘Twelve grand? That’s a bit more than the going rate, isn’t it?’ Luca stared hard at his friend. ‘You little shit. There’s a catch, isn’t there?’