Black Ice (28 page)

The motion brought them some relief, the welcome sensation of warmth as their bodies settled into the rhythm. But they couldn't keep going for long, and after an hour Lauren called a halt.

‘Back in the shelter,' she told them. ‘Get close to each other.'

They retreated back into the pitiful shelter, squatting side by side and wondering how they had ever taken the base for granted. The warmth and security it had offered seemed like a cruel trick of the memory; the very idea that they had been strolling those corridors in T-shirts, that they had enjoyed hot showers and efficient radiators, seemed only to conspire to make the cold more intense.

In no time at all the warmth they had so carefully gained was sucked out of their flesh. The cold was merciless, probing every crack in their clothing, freezing the fabric until it was as stiff as iron, numbing their limbs so that they could feel the muscles crackling as they attempted to relieve cramp.

‘How long can we survive this?' Murdo's voice was already filled with despair.

‘You mean tonight?' someone asked.

‘I mean how long before we die.'

‘I don't think it's going to help any of us to…' Lauren began.

‘Tell us,' Murdo insisted. ‘At least give me an idea how much of this we'll have to take.'

Lauren looked at Mel, her eyes posing the question.

‘I'd say five days,' Mel said quietly. ‘Maybe six or seven for the strongest.'

‘And what's it going to be like?' Murdo whispered. ‘What's going to kill us?'

‘This conversation is not going to help you, Murdo,' Lauren told him gently. ‘You have to keep your mind positive, or it'll be worse.'

‘Oh sweet Jesus.' Now Murdo was crying, the tears freezing on his cheeks. ‘I wasn't planning on dying just yet.'

‘And you won't.' Lauren reached out to place her hand over his. ‘Just get through tonight, and we'll start to work this out. We'll find an answer, Murdo; you wait and see.'

A little later Lauren found the stub of a pencil. ‘Anyone got any paper?' she asked.

The team searched their pockets, managing to find a few scrumpled sheets and a tatty envelope.

‘I'll keep a diary,' Lauren told the team. ‘Just a few words each day. It'll help keep us sane.'

‘And when they find our bodies,' Richard muttered, ‘at least they'll know who killed us.'

59

At eight, having not slept a single moment, Lauren pulled together some scraps of wood and lit a fire. She put their one saucepan on it and melted down ice until she had produced a litre of tepid water.

‘Everyone has to take some water,' Lauren told them. ‘Dehydration will kill us way before we starve.'

They took it in turns to drink the lukewarm fluid, their lips freezing to the aluminium pan even as they sipped. The liquid tasted foul, the pot had been partly carbonised in the fire.

‘I would pay every penny I ever earned for a single cup of sweet tea right now,' Murdo commented with a sincerity that could not be questioned.

‘And I'd kill for a bacon sandwich,' Sean added.

They sat in silence, passing the pan around, clutching it tight in their hands to benefit from the passing heat of the water.

‘I want an inventory,' Lauren announced when they had finished the drink. ‘We have to know exactly what we've got to work with.'

It didn't take her long to jot the list down on Sean's envelope.

‘Four sets of skis. Three sets of bindings. One sleeping bag. Assorted tools. One sledge. One half-destroyed cooking pot. One compass. Two Swiss army knives. Several cigarette lighters. Various warm-weather clothes. One blanket. Scrap pieces of wood enough for a couple of weeks of night fires.'

‘Anyone got any cigarettes?' Mel asked.

No one replied.

‘We've got to keep searching the wreckage,' Lauren said. ‘Somewhere in this debris there might be more things we can use. It'll give us a focus to the day, and the movement will keep us warm.'

They began to scour the remains of the base, shifting the movable bits of structure and poking around in the ashes. It was a dismal task with precious few rewards; Lauren called a halt to the search after just a couple of hours, in which time the only useful finds had been a few more pieces of firewood and some odd bits of metal which Sean used to improve their makeshift shelter.

They gathered together, hunger already gnawing at their stomachs. Lauren knew it was time for some decisions.

‘So,' she began, ‘bearing in mind the fact that we have absolutely no food whatsoever, how the hell are we going to survive this?'

‘We'll have to hunt Fitzgerald down,' Murdo suggested. ‘Follow the skidoo tracks and surprise him in the night. I'll kill him myself. That way we get the food
and
the snowcat.'

‘But he might be fifty miles away,' Lauren countered. ‘We don't know where he's gone.'

‘And he's got an axe,' Sean added. ‘None of us have a weapon at all.'

‘It's too dangerous,' Lauren agreed, ‘and it'll mean having to split the team. If Fitzgerald sees two or three of our fitter members tracking him down, he might realise that the weaker ones have to be here on their own. Who knows what he might do then?'

There was silence for a while.

‘The protocol,' Lauren reminded them, ‘the protocol is we stay with the base.'

‘For what?' Mel demanded. ‘There is nothing for us here. I say we make for another base. Whichever is the nearest.'

‘It's eight hundred miles,' Lauren told her flatly. ‘Forget it.'

Sean was the next to speak.

‘There's only one way of getting out of here alive.'

The assembled team looked at him in surprise.

‘Fitzgerald's emergency transmitter. We turned it off and left it along with all the rest of their gear back at the crashed aircraft.'

Lauren thought about it, shaking her head emphatically.

‘Sean. That plane is three hundred miles away from where we are right now. We don't have any snowcats. We don't have food. Not one of us has the strength for that kind of journey on foot.'

‘I'm not talking about three hundred miles,' Sean told her. ‘I'm talking about one hundred. That's how far it is to the barrel of supplies we dumped at the first depot, right?'

‘My God, I'd forgotten about the depots,' Lauren responded, animated now this new possibility had opened up. ‘They're still out there from the rescue journey.'

‘Didn't you take them down on your way back?' Frank asked.

‘We were too heavily laden; we left them where they were.'

‘Here's the idea,' Sean continued. ‘We set out on foot. We make a hundred-mile trek to the first barrel. That gives us food to keep us going to the second depot. We feed up again, crack the last one hundred miles, then get to the plane and activate the transmitter.'

‘How do we know it'll still work?' Mel asked. ‘It's been out there for the whole winter.'

‘Those things are like black box flight recorders,' Sean told her. ‘They're guaranteed to survive anything. And the batteries are lithium, so they're not affected by the cold.'

‘Sean's right,' Lauren agreed. ‘The transmitter should work. But I'd say the real question is … can we get to the plane?'

‘Yeah. And that's a pretty big
if
 … if you ask me,' Murdo added.

‘How can we do this?' Lauren asked Sean.

‘Well, as far as I can figure, there's really only two ways. Either we split the team and one or two of us—the fittest—make a fast dash on skis for the plane and radio for help. Or we all leave together and make our way there en masse.'

‘How many days would the fast option take?'

‘Let me think now.' Sean did some quick mental sums. ‘Assuming that we find the depots without too many problems, I would estimate we can make twenty miles a day. That's fifteen days minimum.'

‘By which time anyone waiting here would be dead. And the other option?'

‘We'd definitely be moving slower. We'd be towing a sledge for one thing. In the best case I would say fifteen miles a day. Max. But bear in mind we'll be very low on food … and in fact with no food at all for the hundred miles before we find the first depot.'

‘What's in those barrels, Frank?'

Frank spoke quietly from his sleeping bag.

‘The same in each. Perhaps fifteen, maybe twenty kilos of food. An epigas cooker. Enough gas to last a week. A few pans. I think there were three sleeping bags. And two dome tents.'

‘Medicine?' she asked Mel.

‘I'm trying to remember. I think we put in some antibiotics, bandages, one splint, a couple of phials of morphine. Not a great deal, frankly, but it might make all the difference to have it.'

‘Can we keep six people alive for five days on what is in those barrels?'

‘If they weren't burning up any calories, undoubtedly,' Frank replied. ‘But walking a hundred miles on those rations? Hard drill, I'd say, but possible, yes. Men in worse condition than we're in have done much more.'

‘Of the two choices, I say we keep the team together,' Lauren told them. ‘For the following reason. If four of us wait here, inactive, without any food whatsoever, I don't believe we'd survive more than six or seven days before we died of exposure. This shelter is as good as useless, and we already know there's not enough firewood left to give us heat all day long.'

There was a general nod of agreement.

‘There's another factor. We don't know what the hell Fitzgerald is going to try next. If we stick together, we've got strength in numbers.'

‘Wait a minute,' Mel interjected. ‘Does Fitzgerald know we put those depots down?'

There was an awkward silence as the team tried to recall.

‘Shit! I told him,' Sean remembered with a moan. ‘I told him about the depots when we were on the way back.'

‘Then we're screwed,' Murdo said. ‘That madman will drive out there and use those supplies himself before we can get to them.'

‘Hold on…' Sean's expression suddenly lightened. ‘I told him we laid two depots, but I didn't tell him where they were. I didn't even tell him about the hundred-mile intervals … just that we'd put down the barrels of gear in case we needed them on the way back.'

‘So what's the chances of Fitzgerald finding either of those dumps by chance?' Mel asked.

Sean and Lauren answered simultaneously.

‘Zero.'

‘For that matter, what's the chances of
us
finding them?'

Lauren thought about it. ‘We've got the compass. It'll be tough, but we can do it with dead reckoning.'

‘I'd rather do anything than sit here in the ruins of this base, waiting to die,' Murdo said.

‘Me too.'

‘Does everyone agree we stick together?'

There was a murmuring of assent.

‘Then I think we should go now,' Lauren told them.

‘Why not wait until first light?'

‘Because that's exactly what Fitzgerald will figure we'll do. He won't be looking for us until tomorrow morning. We have twelve hours of total darkness to put some distance between us and the base. With luck, he won't even know we've gone.'

‘What's to stop him making straight for the plane himself?' Murdo asked. ‘Perhaps he reached the same conclusion about the transmitter.'

‘He may not be thinking rationally,' Lauren replied. ‘He's out there, alone, not knowing how many of us are dead or alive. He might be thinking about the plane, and he might not. Maybe his plan is to make sure we're all dead and then head for the nearest base on the skidoo. We can't second-guess what he's going to do. That's why I say we go now. From now on we do the things he's
not
expecting. That way we keep at least some of the initiative.'

‘But when he finds we've gone, he'll put two and two together.'

Lauren considered. ‘We'll leave a decoy note, try and send him off on the wrong trail.'

‘And if a real search team
does
arrive?'

‘I have an idea for that. I'll arrange it before we leave.'

Lauren made eye contact with every member of the team.

‘Anyone not in favour of that plan say so now.'

There were no objections.

Thirty minutes later the team was outside and ready to go. They loaded the sledge with the firewood and the few objects and tools they had managed to retrieve, then Sean rigged up a rope harness which would allow two people to tow the sledge.

Lauren felt the rope dig harshly into the flesh of her hips as she began to ski. Then Sean took up some of the strain and the pain eased a little.

They worked side by side, getting easily into a rhythm, even their breathing rates gradually adjusting until they were inhaling and exhaling at the same time.

Slowly, they pulled away from the base, moving as quietly as they could.

In her breast pocket, Lauren could feel the smooth outline of the titanium sample bottle. That was another responsibility—almost as overwhelming as the five lives which now depended on her.

That sample had to get out intact.

Lauren held the phial of liquid like a talisman in her hand as the night wore on.

60

Nothing fitted. Everything chafed. Blisters had sprouted on their feet, their hands, their waists in the very first hours of the trek.

The problems came from the boots and the skis; rescued at random in the most chaotic moments of the fire, they were mismatched, odd-sized, missing key components.

There were four complete sets of skis and boots, and by improvising bindings out of rope they managed to make them more or less operational. Lauren, Mel and Frank had the best deal; each of them had size eight or nine feet, giving them access to the best sets. Sean and Richard were less lucky, forced to share a set comprising one size ten boot and one size eleven. They resolved to swap every hour, taking the next hour in the insulated boots they'd been wearing when the fire struck.