Iceline

by Martyn Taylor

Mark Winter took the Jetranger westwards, towards the coast at Ballachulish and banked left, turning the nose southwards down Loch Linnhe, keeping below three hundred feet past Oban and Kerrera and hugging the shoreline along the length of Argyll and Kintyre until he crossed the threshold of Machrihanish airfield at the southern tip of the Mull, five minus before he touched down he had tapped the windscreen to draw Langhers attention to the Caribou transport drawing closer and pulling ahead, so that by the time he touched the skids on the apron the other aircraft was marshalled to a halt and unloading its cargo. The load-master ran the lightweight Land Rover across to the Jetranger as Langhers stepped down and ran at a crouch under the blades. Winter had his orders and once Langhers was clear of the rotors and he had permission from the tower he lifted the helicopter for the return leg of his journey to Norton Grange. Langhers exchanged seats with the load-master as he pulled up and stepped out with a cheery, “She’s all yours and Stores ask if you can be more careful this time, try not to break it.” and jogged back to the Caribou. Langhers grinned at him and pushed his day-sack across to the passenger seat as he slammed the door and slipped off the handbrake. He set the car moving and headed for the main gate, then took the road north towards Tarbet on the first stretch of his drive to Oban, then via the Ferry crossing to Craignure and finally along the coast road skirting the Sound of Mull to Tobermory.

  He glimpsed Tobermory through the trees and smiled at the brightly coloured buildings along the waterfront, then dropped down the hill and parked the lightweight. He stepped on to the pavement and stretched, breathing the clean sea air and shook his head vigorously, clearing the chaos building up inside and shelving the details of the morning's action, to be dealt with later. Charlie spotted the lightweight trundling down the road and unhooked his binoculars, spotted the driver as he stepped out and said. "Kurt’s back. I'd better go and fetch him then we can bring him up to speed."

  "I've a better idea, you stay here, fix him something to eat, Paul and I will go."

  "Fine, suits me," Said Charlie, hanging up the binoculars and stretching himself out on the cabin roof. Steel slipped the painter from the cleat, holding it close to the stern as Jones jumped down into the boat, Steel handed down the painter and followed him, the engine started first pull and the little boat chugged sedately back to the steps. Langhers saw them coming and wandered up the street, hands in pockets, with a relaxed shambling gait. He reached the steps first and came down to meet them, taking the offered painter from Jones and threading it through a rusty iron ring before he tied it off. Jones scrambled ashore on his own and Steel put out a hand for a pull and Langhers noticed the strain on his friends face. "You look shagged mate." He said with a grin.

  "Bloody great, pop ashore to say hello and you get insults for your trouble. You can fuck off."

  Langhers stood with his hands back in his pockets, chuckling deeply. "The flesh might be weak, but the spirit's still there."

  Steel made the introductions, Jones and Langhers shook on it and the three of them climbed the steps to the street and made for the Land Rover. On the way Langhers explained the events of the morning and why he had found himself with a lightweight instead of the Range Rover. Steel listened; his face creased with a frown, then spoke quietly. "That settles it, Charlie and Josie; they've got to move out. Paul, what sort of boat are you working with?"

  "Out there," he nodded beyond the Ketch, indicating a work-boat with a blue hull and white uppers, "a thirty one foot Mitchell, she'll sleep four at a push, so we can stay out overnight and I've got some diving gear, plus all the usual electronic gubbins you'd find on a bog standard scallop boat."

  "What about the unusual gubbins you won't find on a bog standard boat." Steel asked with feigned innocence.

  "Shh." Whispered Langhers humorously and the three of them laughed. Steel admitted that it wasn’t going to be easy persuading either of them that they really ought to be somewhere else when the fertiliser hit the air conditioning, back on board Josie stood in the cabin doorway with barely concealed fury as he packed his ruck-sack and day-sack, Charlie had said nothing, but the hurt in his eyes spoke volumes. "The old man and the girl, shunted off," Josie spat the words out, "how typically macho, let the lad's take the glory. Damn it Steel, what right do you have to do this to either of us, this is ours as much as it is yours and we're both in a better physical state than you are. OK, so you haven't split any stitches since yesterday, but when you do, who's going to pull them back together."

  "They won't, so stop panicking." He retorted.

  "Bollocks!" She said flatly, "Complete bollocks and you know it, anything could happen..."

  "I know and it probably will." Steel said tiredly, "I can't give you good reasons; I can only tell you that I don't want to have to look back on this and feel responsible for any damage that you two might have sustained. Dear God, Josie, try to see it, how could I live with myself if it all went wrong and Charlie ended up with a face like this, or even you. You're a beautiful woman, with an attractive body; I don't even want to think about what they might do to that. They’re still out there, the people who flew the helicopter and dumped me on the mountain and unless we’re really lucky we may never find them." He clipped the ruck-sack shut and eased it on to the cabin floor. Steel shed the life-jacket and waterproofs and stripped his shirt. "Check the dressings before I go and don't fret. You'll be meeting up with us in a day or so, but I want you to do something for me. Charlie will have a list of things we may need, bring them out to us and check with Jill and Robbie."

  "Now you're just trying to make me feel better by giving me a set of spurious jobs to do." There was bitterness in her words, a sharp acidity on her tongue and Steel stopped what he was doing and turned towards her. "They are not spurious jobs and I don't need any justification for wanting to put you out of harm's way. If nothing else; you are the boss's P.A. and that is reason enough and Charlie will have his own spurious job, as you put it, to do. To help you and to look after you and I don't particularly care which he sees as his main priority. Now, will you please," his voice softened, "check these dressings for me."

  Sullenly, she got to her feet and came towards him, dragging his discarded clothes out of the way and pushing him backwards until he sat down. Silence settled between them, of words unspoken, which were better left unsaid, words which might hurt, or heal, but stayed silent. Wiser a tense silence than harsh words regretted later. Josie worked methodically, stripping the old bandages and balling them up, then gently swabbing the wounds with a couple of alcohol wipes and taking up the scissors to snip the stitches away where the wounds had closed up. Steel winced slightly as each pulled on his skin as it was snipped and drawn. There was no fresh blood, just crusty flakes of old scab breaking away as she brushed him down, then satisfied it was as clean as she could make it, she wound a fresh bandage around him, the crisp white cloth gave a touch of colour, darkening his skin in comparison with the pallor of his chest. She finished it off with a safety pin. She patted it gently into place. "There, that should do, now for the face," and she began to ease the butterflies off, peeling them away and watching for any indication that the wounds were opening, all the time avoiding his eyes. The skin was healing well and he wouldn't need them anymore. She was gentleness itself, any anger inside her remained there, only the tenderness of her fingers touched his skin. Steel dragged his shirt back on and Josie pushed his hands aside to fasten the button, her voice firm, but quiet. "I'll do it, I'll go out of harm's way, but I won't do it happily. The three of you will probably need help at some point and if we, Charlie and I, are somewhere else, then it might not get there in time."

  "I like the idea of you being the cavalry," Steel replied, tilting her chin upwards so he could look into her eyes, a manoeuvre she countered by half closing the lids and returning his gaze through a veil of lashes, "but the idea is that you summon them, not do their job. That would bring you back into harm's way."

  “Treating me like some pathetic girlie!"
<
br />   "I'm sorry you see it that way, but it isn't like that at all, it's, well it's complicated, just leave it at this for now, I want you somewhere safe; because I won't have to worry about you, that will make the job ahead easier." She heard the gentleness in his voice above the words themselves and that spoke to her, reaching where her stubbornness held on the tightest. Swallowing her pride, she gave in and said. "I'll go, but reluctantly and the jobs will get done and we'll see you whenever."

  Steel gave her a hug. "Thanks, it is better this way." He finished dressing and closed his day-sack.

  Charlie was waiting in the tender, the engine ticking over, when Steel dropped his baggage into the boat and jumped after it. Josie stayed to tidy the cabin, re-packed the medicine chest and screwed up the discarded dressings again before she rammed them into a polythene bag. Steel said nothing on the trip back to the shore and Charlie made no attempt to break the silence, prepared to wait for him to speak. They were standing on the steps when Steel offered his hand to the older man and said. "Thanks Charlie, for everything, will you look after her for me?"

  "No worries mate," Charlie joked and then said seriously, "don't do anything stupid will you?"

  Steel replied. "I'm not bothered about doing anything stupid; I'm bothered more that I might say something stupid."

  "You will, one day, you'll say the stupidest thing imaginable and you'll have to live with the consequences." Charlie grinned from ear to ear.

  "Yeah, well, until then, look after her." Steel turned to climb the steps, then stopped and turned back. "I'm not going bullshit you about sending you away from danger, I get the drift from talking to Ben, Jardine and yourself, danger's an old friend. I would ask you one thing, if it were possible, to pass on the essence of your experience."

  Charlie climbed the step between them and rested his hand on Steel's shoulder. "You're doing alright lad, most of the time you feel out of your depth, but you'll find what you need inside you. Don't be scared of being scared." He said. Steel nodded and watched Charlie return to his tender and go back to the ketch. Josie had appeared on deck and stood by the foremast, leaning against the pole with her arms folded. She was annoyed with him, maybe she would calm down after a couple of days with Charlie. He knew enough about life and death, Steel guessed, to make him a valuable confident. He watched her turn to receive the tender and gathered his luggage and trudged down the road to join Langhers at the lightweight.

  Charlie recovered the tender and hoisted it on to the davit at the stern, securing it for the voyage back to Oban, all arguments considered, the store cupboard was showing its spaces and that meant a visit to the shops. Tobermory could have supplied most of their wants, but he knew the value of putting space between them for a little while. He recovered the mooring, set Josie at the wheel and started the engine, the subtle signs in her body language tweaked his antennae and he knew she would start talking soon and the easiest way to talk while at sea was under power. The steady chug of the engine eased its way into everything, quickly disappearing into the background. She pointedly ignored the activity on the Mitchell, never glancing back until they were out of sight behind Calve Island and the ketch nudging the bone in her teeth towards Oban.

 

  The Mitchell Sea Warrior was a work-boat, Wheelhouse and cabin forward and open after-deck gave her an air of rugged glamour, Jones caught Steel eyeing up his boat and said. "She works alright, she's a good sea keeper, not flash, but she shoulders a wave well. She's sea safe, as much as any boat can be."

  "She looks right." Steel said.

  "She's ready for sea; I fuelled her first thing this morning and restocked the stores last night." Jones offered

  "What happened to your crewman?”

  "Got the week off, he's going to keep an eye on things in Tobermory while we're away, he's got one of those things which you normally don't find in a scallop boat and that's all I'm saying, you don't think I'd just fuck off into the wild blue yonder with my backside hanging out do you. Basic rule of life, keep your arse covered at all times."

  "You should have seen him in that hospital gown," Langhers said as he emerged from the cramped galley below and manoeuvred brimming mugs of coffee on to the ledges and sills of the wheelhouse, "failed on that one he did, letting it all hang out."

  Steel relieved him of a mug and told him. "Thank you friend, now fuck off."

  "Charming Bastard!" he countered.

  Jones laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "This is going to be some cruise, you two taking the piss all the time."

  "Be alright, when it gets serious, so do we." Said Steel.

  "Yeah, we seriously take the piss." Langhers butted in, immediately returning the conversation to its normal level. Jones nodded across the water, at the stern of Westering Home disappearing around the island. "They've gone," he said quietly, "does that mean we can stop worrying?"

  "Probably," Steel remarked, "but, being a pessimistic bastard, don't hold your breath."

  Jones drained his mug, ambled out on deck to check the gear. Satisfied, he prepped the engines. Half an hour after Charlie had turned Westering Home towards Oban, Jones took Mara, out of Tobermory Bay and steamed for the lighthouse at Ardnamurchan, the plan, rough and ready as it was to start the sweep at the pinnacle known as Bo Fascadale, two miles north of the village of Fascadale. A pinnacle with a gentle shoreward slope to the east, but the west face plummeted to 50 plus, then sloped further to 86 metres. The voyage would take them well into the night and Jones was working out his dive plan for a tidal window around breakfast time. Steel would have been an obvious choice for a dive buddy, but didn’t feel ready for it. Langhers, with much less experience, wasn't sure he was up to it, which left only one workable possibility. Jones would dive solo, as a roped diver. Well out into the Sound with the headland of Maclean's Nose off the starboard beam. Jones and Steel opened a locker on the deck and dragged the diving gear out. Standard open circuit scuba, with spare bottles for stage decompression and a compact 3.5 cubic foot Coltri-Sub compressor bolted to the deck. Dive bags holding the suits were stacked on top and the whole pile covered with a tarpaulin and tied down for the night. Dusk settled quietly towards night as Mara butted her way towards the first sweeps of the lighthouse on Ardnamurchan and the rock and roll of the swells sweeping down the coast from the north, pitching wildly as she rounded the headland and thrust her nose into the waves, spray speckling the cabin windscreens. Jones had ordered everything that wasn't already stowed tied down before nightfall. Steel stumbled out on deck and checked the tarpaulin, the ties were snug, straining against the ring bolts in the planks, but nothing seemed to be going anywhere. He tumbled into the wheelhouse through door as it swung wildly open and slammed it shut. Langhers was below, sorting through the equipment, checking and cleaning the weaponry, a box of shells tipped out on the bunk as he recharged the magazines. Jones saw the disarray and kicked the cabin door shut. "I don't want to see that and I'm trying to forget that your lady friend was inclined to shoot my bollocks off this afternoon. For Christ's sake Steel, we're not fighting a war here."

  "Then what, Paul, are we fucking doing, because the bastards who had their hands on me weren’t playing cricket," he countered, "maybe not open season blood and thunder war, but it still feels like a war and if I have go to hell, I'm going in with fire-fighting kit."

  Jones said nothing. He had his ideas where the target lay and Bo Fascadale offered the best option so far. Jones had the helm and Steel wedged himself in, with his back to the bulkhead and his feet against the door, jamming it shut, with a clear view across the deck and the sea astern. They were alone, no other vessel crossed his line of sight, or seemed to be moving in the area, but the light would fail in another hour or so and the closest it got to darkness at this time of year would cover the seascape. Even at the darkest there would still be light to the north, the glow of the northern lights, or the wash from the higher latitudes where darkness never fell until the autumn months drew in. It would be dark enough
for anyone with evil intent to be about with little chance of discovery. Jones guessed that the isolation around the site would have been sufficient to make it viable as a drop off. He explained his thoughts to Steel, who with a natural pessimism managed to pour cold water on most of his suggestions. Daylight disappeared in a storm of fiery colour beyond the Outer Hebrides, the blue melting to yellow, bleeding through orange to dark red and the purple haze of the advancing night crowded the day over the horizon. Night fell and the Milky Way splashed its star-dust across the sky as the phosphorescence glowed in the bow wave and the wake, leaving a trail visible for miles. The navigation lights clicked on and Jones ticked off the way-points from the GPS, the information feeding direct to the auto-pilot, the glow from the instruments the only light in the wheelhouse.

  *****

  Chapter Twenty Two