Beneath the Ice

by Patrick Woodhead

  Luca then turned his gaze to the route ahead. He could only make out vague dips and slight variations in the colour of the snow; nothing that resembled the classic shape of a crevasse. The storms had blanketed snow over everything, making speed their only chance. All they could hope was that if they hit a crevasse, they would be travelling fast enough to glance across it.

  Letting his eyes blur against the glare of the sun, he tried to shut out the thought of the previous guide, Harry Sommers. His fingernails worn away . . . That’s what Bates had said, and instinctively Luca found himself balling his hands into fists as if to protect himself from the same fate. There was something terrifying about crevasses. Out of all the deaths that could befall a climber, a crevasse was the most feared. Unlike the others that led to mercifully swift ends, once inside a crevasse there was nothing else to do except die slowly.

  There was a cough from behind him and Luca turned, realising that he had been staring blankly into the middle distance for some time.

  ‘What do you think?’ Joel asked.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Luca replied, trying to mask the uncertainty in his voice. ‘I’ll be lighter and can test the route. Just make sure you follow my tracks – and I mean exactly – and, for God’s sake, keep your speed up.’

  He paused, finding only one thing left to say.

  ‘Good luck.’

  As Luca moved towards his Ski-Doo, Joel suddenly raised his hand.

  ‘Wait,’ he pleaded. ‘Just wait a couple more minutes. We need to talk about all this. You know, make a plan.’

  Luca turned back, seeing the fear in his eyes.

  ‘This is the plan, Joel,’ he said softly. ‘This has always been the plan. We’re going to be out of water in a few hours and so, if we don’t go now, that’ll be it.’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Joel shook his head in disbelief, before looking to Katz for support.

  ‘Come on, Katzy, you’re off-the-scale smart. There must be something we can do here? What we need is a strategy. A way round . . .’

  He trailed off as he looked closer and saw Katz’s expression. This was the first time he had actually looked terrified. The sight drained the very last of the fight out of Joel and he staggered back a pace, just managing to prop his wiry frame up against the side of the Ski-Doo.

  ‘Come on, kid,’ Katz said eventually. ‘Don’t make it any harder than it is.’

  As he spoke, he reached forward and gently pulled Joel back on to the seat. Ahead of them, Luca revved the engine several times before jamming down the throttle.

  He drove flat out down the slope, with the rev counter spiking into red with each jolt of the throttle. His whole body was pressed forward over the handlebars as he strained to see, while cold air rushed past his face with stinging intensity. Up ahead he could make out some of the bigger, more obvious crevasses, but knew that many more were out there, just inches below the surface.

  The Ski-Doo powered along for nearly a kilometre, its tracks leaving a narrow, snaking trail. Just as he was daring to hope that he was past the worst of the field, the whole machine dipped down suddenly, almost causing him to lose his balance and roll over the handlebars. There was the sound of the tracks spinning, then, before he had time to realise what was happening, the machine lurched forward again, up on to the other side of a snow bank, tugging him back into his seat.

  Luca glanced over his shoulder. There was a dark tear in the snow from where his Ski-Doo tracks had momentarily broken through the surface. But this time he’d been lucky and his momentum had carried him across. Signalling widely with his spare arm, he then looked ahead towards a low bank of twisting ice.

  The disturbance was no more than a few feet high, looking as if a bubbling undercurrent of air had somehow broken through to the surface and frozen on contact. He powered towards it, trying to decide whether he should crash right over it or veer to one side. At the very last second, he jammed the handlebars sideways, throwing the machine to the right in a long, drifting arc.

  As he passed around the side of the disturbance, he could see the colossal crevasse that had been lurking just behind. The opening was inky black against the brilliant white snow, and no less than twenty feet wide. He shook his head in disbelief. He had been moments away from being swallowed whole.

  On Luca went, twisting the Ski-Doo around a series of huge crevasses that lay in jagged lines across his route. These were old, too ancient and established to be covered by the storms, but they were easy to spot and wide tracks of snow ran in between. He drove past them, trying to keep his eyes locked forward and resist the mesmeric pull of the dark interiors.

  Finally, the convex shape of the slope changed, dipping into a compression. That meant no more crevasses. Slowly, Luca eased back on the throttle, before turning the machine round so that he was facing back up the slope.

  It took him several seconds to spot Katz and Joel against the mounds and bulges of ice, but suddenly he saw their Ski-Doo no more than three hundred feet away. Even from a distance, he could see that Katz could barely keep control of the machine. He was trying to follow Luca’s tracks but overcompensating with each turn, violently shifting their balance from right to left. With each swerve, the opposite track nearly lifted clear of the ground, threatening to topple them over and send them sprawling.

  Luca watched, his lips moving in silent prayer. Then, just as they were rounding out on to the flatter area, he saw the whole front end of their Ski-Doo dip, catapulting them over the handlebars. For the briefest of moments, their dark silhouettes seemed to hang in the air before they were thrown forward and bounced down across the ground. Behind them, the machine spun lengthways, kicking up a hazy cloud of snow with each turn, until it finally came to rest with a resounding thud and a splintering of bodywork.

  Luca stared at the destruction. Before he even realised what he was doing, he had begun to retrace his steps and head back up the slope.

  Both Katz and Joel were on the ground when he arrived, limbs spread wide on the snow, while just to one side, only inches away from Katz’s head, lay the Ski-Doo itself. It was a mess of broken parts and hanging tracks. The engine had already cut out, while a black stain of oil fanned across the snow like blood from a mortal wound.

  Katz was the first to raise his head. His entire face was plastered in snow and he stared wide-eyed at Luca, still unclear as to what had actually happened. With a heavy groan he rolled on to his back and seemed to do an internal inventory of his body parts, twitching each muscle in turn before slowly coming to the conclusion that he was remarkably unscathed.

  Joel, on the other hand, was not. When Luca rushed over and hoisted his head on to his lap, there wasn’t the slightest flicker of reaction. ‘Joel?’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Joel!’

  Luca shook him slightly, then slapped him hard across the cheek. Nothing. He could see a long, raking wound across the top of Joel’s forehead from where he had slid across the snow, but knew that it was only superficial. The real damage could be to his neck or spine as an impact like that could easily have snapped one of his vertebrae.

  Katz stared across at Luca, trying to muster the strength to stand. He managed to pull himself up into a kneeling position, but then paused, gasping from the effort.

  ‘Is he . . . breathing?’ he panted.

  Luca twisted his head to listen. ‘Yeah. But he’s out cold.’

  ‘Has he broken anything?’

  Running his fingers behind Joel’s neck, Luca urgently kneaded the flesh for any sign of a break. After a couple of seconds, he looked up desperately.

  ‘Shit! I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m not a bloody doctor.’

  ‘If it’s not obvious,’ Katz managed, ‘then it can wait.’

  With that, he slumped over and lay on his back in the snow. He stared up at the clear sky, watching as his breath condensed in a cloud in front of him.

  ‘You win,’ he muttered, as if addressing the entire continent. ‘You win, you bitch.
I give up.’

  ‘Give up?’ Luca called. ‘What the hell do you mean, give up? We’ve got to get Joel back to GARI. So get up and help me move him.’

  Katz gave a scornful laugh. It came out as little more than a gurgle.

  ‘Just admit it – we’re fucked.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Katz,’ Luca seethed, surprised by the rage in his own voice. ‘The end of the crevasse field is two hundred yards away! Get up and help me.’

  Katz barely seemed to register that he was being spoken to. Instead, he glanced down at his watch as if he had all the time in the world, before letting his shoulders slump back against the snow.

  ‘The Emergency Antarctic Protocol runs out in two hours’ time and then the plane’s gone,’ he said. ‘We’re over four hours away from GARI. So tell me, Luca – what’s the goddamn point?’

  Luca stared at him, still trying to ignore the reality of their situation. For so long he had been pressing on, turning a blind eye to any sense of logic or reason. Now Katz’s words seemed to cut right through him. The man was right. They were never going to make it back before the plane took off. There was now only one prospect for them – they were going to have to wait out the winter in Antarctica.

  Ten months. Luca tried to consider such a huge amount of time. It would be like the worst kind of prison sentence; each day an endless tedium with nothing to do but pace the cold corridors and wait for the season to change. He knew that he would go stir crazy inside that base, passing each hour and day without once having the opportunity to see Bear.

  ‘We won’t have enough fuel either,’ Katz offered unhelpfully. ‘I checked. The tanks were less than a quarter full. And now we only have one Ski-Doo.’

  Luca looked up towards the horizon. The sun was just skirting across the far mountain peaks, threatening to set for the first time in five months. The darkness would give Antarctica another, more terrifying aspect, and the prospect made him absolutely desperate. He had never experienced such an absolute dread of a place. He just had to be free from it.

  Forcing himself to his feet, he gently laid Joel’s head back down on the snow before moving across to the Ski-Doo and flipping open the saddle. Inside was an assortment of old spanners and long-forgotten spares for the engine, but tucked right at the back amongst some sections of frayed rope was a thin piece of black rubber tubing.

  ‘We’ll siphon the fuel out of your Ski-Doo and combine the tanks,’ he said triumphantly, raising the tubing. ‘Come on! Get up and help me. That plane could be delayed by a few hours and, whatever happens, we’ve still got to get Joel inside.’

  Katz looked on, too tired to refute this, but still made no effort to get up. ‘Come on, Katz! What the hell else are you going to do?’

  ‘Lie here,’ he retorted, but already he knew that Luca was offering the only hope that remained. After a moment more he finally rocked his body forward and got to his feet.

  Nearly an hour passed before they were ready. While Luca had been siphoning off the last of the fuel, Katz had spent the time searching for the black Pelican case with the water samples. Luca had looked on, astounded that he could let Joel lie unconscious on the freezing snow while he searched for his prize. After nearly twenty minutes Katz had found it dug into a section of soft snow a little further down the slope. Inside, the two remaining cylinders were intact.

  As he returned triumphantly, Luca made no effort to hide his contempt.

  ‘Glad you got what you were looking for,’ he snapped. ‘Now help me get Joel off the snow.’

  They carried his deadweight over to the Ski-Doo and stacked him against the backrest. In all the time they had been working, he hadn’t regained consciousness. Now, his skin felt deathly cold to the touch. The clock was ticking and both of them knew that they wouldn’t have the strength to carry him to GARI if their single remaining Ski-Doo broke down.

  Luca stared at the machine on which all their hopes were pinned. It was covered in dents and cracks, while an oily plume of unhealthy exhaust wafted out from behind. As he climbed on board, pressing up against Katz and Joel on the narrow seat, the Ski-Doo’s suspension buckled under their combined weight. The underside of the seat was pressing right into the rubber tracks, and as he revved the throttle it began to grate with a horrible, lurching rattle. There was the stench of burning rubber and they both knew that it wouldn’t be long before the track wore through completely and snapped.

  ‘Hurry,’ Katz said, as Luca jammed it in gear and, with a rattle of the exhaust, sent them forging off towards GARI.

  Chapter 28

  VLADIMIR DEDOV STOOD outside on the metal gangplank at GARI. His eyes were narrowed as he watched the sun dip below the horizon for the first time in as many months as he could remember. Long shadows stretched out, bleeding into a uniform grey, before a pale, chilling darkness passed across the land.

  Dedov inhaled on a cigarette before blowing out a cloud of smoke in the direction of the runway. It was seven kilometres away, but still he could hear the low rumble of the Ilyushin-76 jet. It was holding on the brakes at the start of the runway, powering up just before take-off.

  Everyone from the base was on board, even little Hiroko. They had dragged the Japanese women from her nest in the top hatch before force-feeding her a powerful sedative. She had looked ghostly pale, with eyes wide and mistrustful. For so long her world had been little more than a few square feet of insulated attic. Now she was on her way home. Dedov shook his head, hoping that the psychiatrists back in Japan could mend such a broken mind.

  The distant rumble grew louder as the plane careered along the runway. He spotted the first flash of a navigation light skirting low across the dark skyline. For the first time in many months, his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness and it took him a full minute to discern the outline of the plane flying towards him. A second later its huge fuselage scorched directly overhead and Dedov looked on as the pilots dipped their wings to say goodbye for the last time.

  Finally, he was alone. Even the monstrous Ilyushin plane had fled before the onset of winter. The dawning realisation that he was hundreds of miles from the nearest science base made him feel as though he was the very last human being on earth and, instinctively, Dedov hunched his shoulders against the cold. He was well used to the sub-zero temperatures, but the darkness somehow made it feel all the more threatening, as if the cold were seeping in all around. He shivered, zipping up the collar of his jacket until it pressed right up against his chin.

  Dedov had overwintered once before back in the 1990s and experienced the same deep-rooted sense of separation, as if marooned in the middle of the ocean. But that time he had been part of a skeleton crew of nineteen men. This was different. He could have another seizure at any minute and there would be no one around to help. If he fell down the stairs or choked on his own tongue, no one would even know that he was dead.

  Dedov forced himself to shut out such fears and instead try to be pragmatic. The ship was docking in only two days’ time and he needed to get a message to the captain if he was to have any chance of getting on board. He had already tried to contact them via radio, but had yet to elicit a response. He knew that they would only be skirting alongside the barrier for a few hours while they unloaded the containers. It wouldn’t give him much time.

  Dedov sucked the air deep into his lungs until it almost burnt, caught between a sense of duty and his own need for self-preservation. If the British didn’t arrive in two days’ time, he could either leave them to their fate and attempt to reach the ship alone, or he could elect to stay the winter at GARI and wait for their eventual return, if they made it back at all. Although he knew the latter choice would all but guarantee his own death, there had been an element of martyrdom in his decision to stay from the very beginning. The truth was that he had failed to stop Pearl. More than that, he had been actively complicit in the whole diabolical scheme.

  Dedov hung his head, remorse weighing heavily on his shoulders.

  ‘If I was afrai
d of the wolf,’ he said eventually, ‘I should not have gone into the woods.’

  He was about to move back inside when he heard a faint noise. It was some kind of vibration, just cutting above the silence of the landscape. He listened, wondering if perhaps it was still the aftermath of the hulking Ilyushin plane, but then the noise grew louder. As he stared out into the gloom, he saw a light winking in the darkness.

  Dedov sprinted down the metal steps, the heavy clang of his boots reverberating across the base. Striding out through the snow, he waited until the outline of a Ski-Doo appeared in its entirety. Three figures were slumped on top of it, so close as to be leaning into one another, while the machine itself rattled in the final stages of its death throes. Dedov stared in amazement before raising his hands in welcome.

  ‘You made it!’ he thundered, beaming with joy, then his expression dimmed as he realised the condition the men were in. He was just able to recognise Luca, slumped over the handlebars and shivering uncontrollably from cold. Frost had iced against his collar and jawline, and he stared at Dedov with hollow eyes.

  ‘The plane . . .’ he managed to say.

  Dedov’s gaze switched briefly up to the sky, where only a few minutes ago the Ilyushin had thundered overhead. The British were in no state to handle the truth. First, he had to get them inside.

  ‘Everything will be OK,’ he said, grabbing Luca under his arms and manhandling him off the Ski-Doo. As Luca was dragged clear, Katz slumped forward in the seat, too weak to keep himself upright with the weight of Joel’s body pressing down behind him.

  Hoisting Luca’s body across to the hangar entrance, Dedov bundled him in before staggering back outside for the others. By the time he had them all lying inside the main base next to the heating vents, rivulets of sweat were running down his face. He stood staring at them and wondering what on earth they had been through since they had last met.

  ‘Water.’

  Dedov turned to see Luca’s head raised an inch off the ground.