Black Ice

by Matt Dickinson

  Keeping the sledge intact was also occupying their thoughts. The aluminium frame had already been weakened and damaged in the fire, and, after three weeks of hauling, it was showing signs of metal fatigue.

  ‘This sledge isn’t really built to take this sort of punishment,’ Sean explained to Lauren as he showed her the problem areas. ‘Frank’s a hell of a weight to be carrying, and we’ve already got hairline cracks starting to appear at these joints. This is where the frame takes the most flexing.’

  ‘Is it going to break?’

  ‘One or more of these struts might go. If they do, we’ll be in trouble. Once one part of the structure starts to crack up, the rest won’t be far behind. Then we’ll be dragging Frank along on his arse.’

  ‘What can we do about it?’ Lauren asked him.

  ‘Best I can do is to try and tie up the joints with some cord, but that’s just a temporary measure. If the aluminium tubing decides it’s going to snap, then there’s not much we can do about it.’

  Sean sacrificed his bootlaces to the cause and tied them in a series of cleverly devised knots around the worst-affected parts of the frame. For the time being it would suffice, but Sean wasn’t at all confident that the sledge would survive the journey to the crashed plane.

  The question of what would happen to Frank then was one that he chose not to dwell on.

  For Lauren, the stop-start day passed in a haze. She pulled on her harness, pushed her legs into the endless cycle of push-rest-push, but her mind was fixed on Deep Throat, on the dilemma that Sean’s proposal had opened up inside her.

  Lauren knew that whatever happened the decision would divide her permanently in some way—a tear in the fabric of her own morality, a rip, with edges that were not clean. The type of wound that gets infected easily.

  But Lauren was in the grip of the most powerful force any human being can experience—the imperative which has no equal: to survive.

  Later, as they prepared one of the tents together, Lauren found a chance to speak with Sean. ‘I thought about it,’ she told him quietly, ‘and I think it’s worth a try. But the others can’t know about this. They absolutely mustn’t.’

  ‘You’re in?’

  ‘Yes, Sean. I am.’

  Sean showed no sign of surprise; he took her decision as a matter of fact.

  ‘We’ll do it tonight when they’re all asleep.’

  80

  At eleven p.m., Lauren followed Sean’s dark shadow away from the tents, keeping her footsteps in the tracks of the empty sledge he was towing. Sean waited until they were out of earshot. ‘Let your eyes adjust,’ he whispered to her. ‘We can’t risk the headtorches.’

  There was a sliver of moon burning through the cloud that night, the ridges and folds of the glacier gently illuminated with a weak cast of blue light.

  ‘This is crazy, Sean,’ Lauren told him. ‘It’s like Russian roulette wandering around this crevasse field in the dark.’

  ‘Most of these slots are pretty obvious,’ he replied. ‘I’ll use the flag pole to probe in front.’

  They set out, Sean in the lead, testing the terrain for sudden holes as they pushed deeper into the most heavily crevassed area. Lauren concentrated her attention on his footsteps in the snow, the shadow-filled holes guiding her forward.

  Thanks to the moon, the crevasses were not difficult to see. They bypassed the bigger ones and jumped the more slender cracks at their narrowest point.

  Then Sean was moving with more caution. Lauren could not imagine how he knew he was close—there were no clues that she could see.

  He stabbed the pole into the snow, then got down carefully to his knees.

  ‘OK,’ he told her, ‘I think this is it. I’m pushing into thin air just in front of us.’

  ‘How can we be sure it’s the one?’

  ‘I’ll take a look with the light.’

  Sean punched a small hole in the snow bridge which lay before him, then placed the headtorch inside it. Switching it on, he saw immediately that they had found Deep Throat, the feeble beam hinting at the great depth of the crevasse beneath him.

  ‘It’s even more awesome in the night,’ he whispered. ‘Want to take a look?’

  ‘No.’ Lauren shivered at the thought. ‘What about the tracks? Even if he’s tired, he’ll notice them disappear.’

  ‘Don’t forget he’s on the skidoo. He might be moving too fast to stop. Besides, we have this.’

  Sean pulled a length of cord from his pocket and cast it out onto the snow bridge. Then he dragged it back. After a dozen or so casts, Lauren could already see the faint lines in the soft snow, stretching out for metres in front of them.

  Sean flashed his headtorch onto it for a second, revealing the marks and scratches.

  ‘That’s not very convincing,’ Lauren told him. ‘What about the footprints?’

  ‘You’re right. Let’s try something else.’

  Sean took a gloveful of snow and squeezed it in his hand until he had created a hard ball. This he threw out onto the snow bridge as a test.

  A dark hole appeared where it had sunk a little into the soft surface.

  ‘It’s not perfect, but I can’t think of any other way.’

  Lauren joined him, and for some minutes they were busy moulding handfuls of snow to create small craters out across the snow bridge.

  Sean risked another quick glimpse with the torch.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘It’s never going to bear close scrutiny, but hopefully by the time Fitzgerald works out that something weird’s happening it’ll all be over.’

  They retraced their steps, concentrating hard so as not to lose their trail back to the tent. Then they walked back to Deep Throat one more time, both stumbling with the utter fatigue of that long day. The end result was a confusion of footsteps and sledge tracks which certainly looked like it had been made by the whole party.

  Then they returned to the tent a final time.

  ‘That’s it,’ Sean whispered, ‘trap set. Now it’s down to Deep Throat to do the job for us.’

  They crept into their sleeping bags, intensely grateful for the warmth they offered from that bitter night air.

  ‘We’ll sleep for a few hours,’ Sean said, ‘but we have to be out of here before first light.’

  But Lauren could not sleep. She lay awake, tense and uncertain. In her mind she could see nothing but the elegant blue glass walls of that monstrous crevasse, so fatally smooth and uncompromising, leading down … and down …

  81

  At five a.m., they woke the others, rousing them with some difficulty from their sleeping bags. They stumbled out of their tents onto the glacier, sleep-filled and shocked by the brittle intensity of the cold.

  ‘We’re breaking the routine today,’ Lauren told them. ‘We’ve got to get out of here right away, but we’ll stop for breakfast after a couple of hours. Try and keep as quiet as you can.’

  No one questioned her; there was something in the clipped urgency of Lauren’s tone which did not invite further enquiry.

  In less than thirty minutes they had the two dome tents and the sleeping bags packed onto the sledge. Lauren and Murdo took the harness between them as Sean led the team away, finding a route further to the east of their nocturnal trip into the crevasse field, a route which skirted the hidden depths of Deep Throat entirely.

  After a short distance, Sean left Lauren to continue with the route-finding and made his way back to the camp site. Using a ski pole, he smoothed over the trail they had just made, continuing until he had obscured some thirty or forty metres of their progress.

  When it was done, Sean flashed his torch, seeing with satisfaction that his work had virtually covered up the tracks of their recent departure. Now the heaviest trail leading from the tent site was the false one he had marked up with Lauren the previous night.

  He hurried back to the others, catching them easily with his faster pace.

  Not long after daybreak, the team reached a large depress
ion, a scoop in the glacier guarded by a low pressure ridge.

  ‘This is a good place,’ Sean told Lauren. ‘Let’s park the crew here.’

  Lauren looked about, realising the location was perfect. Fitzgerald would not see the team huddled in here—and, perhaps just as importantly, the team would not see the drama unfolding back at Deep Throat, which was now a good mile behind them.

  She took off her pack. ‘Let’s stop for some food,’ she said.

  They didn’t need to be told twice, within a few seconds their loads were scattered around the ice, the team resting gratefully on their packs while Lauren took out the epigas cooker and began to melt down some ice.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye out for you-know-who,’ Sean told her quietly. ‘Join me when you can.’

  Once she had the first litre of water boiling, Lauren let Mel take over the preparation of the food. Then she slipped away to join Sean, sure that the team were so tired they would barely notice their absence.

  ‘Let’s move fast,’ Sean told her. ‘We don’t want to miss the main event.’

  Quickly, they made their way back up the glacier. The adrenaline was pumping so hard inside Lauren that the distance meant nothing to her.

  As she walked, her mind began to play; the main event, Sean had called it. Murder, in other words. Lauren was beginning to feel physically sick at the thought of it. Was there no other route?

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m still not sure. Maybe we should be thinking about this another way. He’s out here all alone, perhaps he’s sick or hypothermic—we don’t know what state he’s in. Maybe the two of us can get close to him somehow, overpower him?’

  Sean stopped dead.

  ‘Can I remind you of something? He’s killed already, and he’ll kill again without any qualms. We’re unarmed; he’s got an axe and God knows what else. We’ve been on starvation rations for a two-hundred-mile trek, and he’s been eating as much as he needs every goddamn day. We wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘But what if the rest of the team find out what we’ve done? That scares me, Sean…’

  ‘You know the only thing about this that worries me?’ he replied. ‘It’s the fact that in eliminating Fitzgerald we’re going to lose his snowmobile. That’s where I am, Lauren. I’m at that point, OK? The point where I’m regretting that a by-product of killing him is that we’re going to forfeit a useful piece of machinery.’

  ‘Well, I’m not in the same place as you then,’ Lauren told him. ‘I don’t know if we have a right to do this.’

  ‘So go back and wait with the others if you want.’

  Lauren shook her head, and they continued in silence.

  Not far from Deep Throat—a hundred metres at most—they found a prominent block of ice which was big enough to hide behind. From that vantage point they could see the trap clearly, safe in the certainty that Fitzgerald would not spot them.

  They sat there with their backs to the ice, waiting for the telltale buzz of the snowmobile to come across the glacier towards them.

  One hour. Two hours. Time crept slowly by. Lauren and Sean began to freeze into their positions, their muscles cramping as the cold began to bite.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ Lauren said, her teeth chattering as she checked her watch. ‘Where the hell is he?’

  ‘Relax,’ Sean reassured her. ‘He’s probably just having a hard time getting the snowmobile started.’

  Suddenly, he stiffened as he spotted something. ‘Speak of the devil; I think that could be him.’

  Away in the distance, the unmistakable black profile of the snowmobile was just coming into view.

  ‘Here we go.’

  The minutes ticked past as Fitzgerald weaved a steady route through the crevasse field towards them. Now they could hear the engine, shockingly loud in the still air of the glacier.

  ‘He’s lost his silencer,’ Sean observed. ‘That’s why it sounds like a pig.’

  After what seemed to Lauren to be an age, the snowmobile arrived at their camp site of the previous night. Fitzgerald slowed perceptibly as he scanned the clues left on the ice, and for a few seconds he seemed to pause, distracted by something away to his right.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Sean muttered. ‘Take it. Take it!’

  Then Fitzgerald was accelerating once more, driving confidently down the trail Lauren and Sean had laid towards Deep Throat.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Sean couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice. ‘Now just build up a little more speed and everything’s going to be over real quick.’

  Lauren could taste blood on her tongue where she had bitten into it. ‘This is so wrong, Sean,’ she hissed. ‘There has to be another way!’

  ‘Not now there isn’t,’ Sean told her. ‘He’s halfway to hell already.’

  The snowmobile rounded a small crevasse and continued on track, close enough now that they could see Fitzgerald’s ice-encrusted beard beneath his ski goggles.

  ‘We can’t do this! It’s not right. I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t try and talk him round.’

  ‘Lauren, no!’

  Sean lunged forward, but he was too late. Lauren had left the hiding place and was already stumbling across the glacier towards Deep Throat.

  ‘Stop! You have to stop!’

  Fitzgerald could not hear her above the noise of the engine. He was fifty metres from the edge of the crevasse.

  Lauren was running now, waving her hands frantically in the air. She was approaching the far side of Deep Throat.

  ‘Stop!’ she screamed.

  Fitzgerald glanced up, his attention caught perhaps by the movement in front of him, by Lauren’s dark clothing contrasted against the ice.

  Lauren was so close to him she could actually see his jaw drop down in astonishment. Then he slammed hard on the brakes, slewing the snowmobile round in a clumsy arc and bringing it to a halt just half a pace away from the place at which the solid ice he was driving on became the wafer-thin snow bridge of Deep Throat.

  Fitzgerald took in the scene: the clumsy fake tracks which petered out midway across the snow bridge; the sag in the middle which hinted at the drop below.

  For a while they were both silent, the only noise the brittle crackle of the snowmobile engine as it ticked over.

  ‘You can see what we wanted to do,’ Lauren called out across the crevasse, ‘but I think there’s a better way.’

  She paused, expecting a response from Fitzgerald, but he made none.

  ‘Two of my team are sick, Julian; they’re really sick. If you help us with the snowmobile, maybe we can sort things out between us. You’ll have to answer for what happened at the base when we get back to civilisation. But if you help us … and we all get out alive, we can make things easier for you.’

  Fitzgerald said nothing, just continued to stare directly at Lauren. She thought she could see him shivering, but it might have been her imagination.

  Then he revved up the engine, turned back on his tracks and drove away, the snowmobile bobbing and tilting as he navigated the route back through the crevasse field.

  Then Sean was standing next to her.

  ‘That was our chance, Lauren,’ he said quietly. ‘And you threw it away.’

  Lauren turned to him, her eyes filling with tears which straight away began to freeze.

  ‘I had to try.’

  ‘But what did you think? That you could talk him round to helping us? You’re crazy if you thought that!’

  Lauren could not find the words to reply. Soon Sean turned his back on her in disgust and began to walk back to where the group was waiting.

  Lauren stood for a while longer, lost in her own misery. From time to time she could see Fitzgerald in the distance, driving erratically back and forth on the glacier.

  ‘You won’t win.’ She spoke beneath her breath. ‘I still won’t let you win…’

  Snow began to fall as she wearily turned back to follow Sean’s tracks, her feet like lead as she dr
agged them through each step.

  Thirty miles still to go to the second depot. The thought of all that distance in front of them was beginning to eat into Lauren like a cancer.

  82

  Fitzgerald creased over and retched his breakfast onto the ice. It formed a little puddle at his feet for a few seconds before freezing hard. He breathed in deeply, trying to regain control, to recover from the shock.

  So close. He’d been a hand’s-breadth from death. And he’d been right all along. They had been plotting to kill him. They did know he was following. Secret meetings had discussed the best way of crushing him, of sending him to hell.

  Oh, they’d relish that. The unyielding ice beating his destiny out of him as he cartwheeled down into depths where light had never penetrated. How long might he have lain there in that crevasse … wedged and trapped, watching his lifeblood seep away as the vice cracked and tightened in on him?

  And then … The explorer frowned. Had it really happened? He ran it back through his mind. Lauren had run to warn him! In fact, she had saved his life. Why had she done that? Fitzgerald climbed off his snowmobile and stood uncertainly. He began wandering at random through the ice pinnacles that surrounded him. It was like a maze, this place; you could so easily get lost.

  He took off a glove, ran his bare hand across a blue shard of ice, savouring the bite as it stuck and peeled.

  Lauren had been weak. It was her first mistake. But there was no longer any doubt about the team’s intention to kill him.

  Fitzgerald returned to the snowmobile and sat on the seat. He wiped the snow from his goggles. Far off, he could see Lauren and her team picking their way through the crevasses of the glacier, a weaving line of dark figures heading off into the darkening void.

  Things would be different from now on, Fitzgerald promised himself. So far he’d been passive, content to follow, to watch.

  Now that time was over.

  83

  Lauren scraped the stubborn layer of ice off the face of the compass and checked the bearing, turning the plastic bezel until north was aligned. The red needle was sluggish and slow to swing round, the fluid inside the case close to freezing now the temperature had dropped so low.