Black Ice (39 page)

Richard heard himself laugh bitterly, a laugh that turned immediately into a racking cough.

‘Miles to kill?' he spluttered weakly. ‘That makes me laugh for some reason.'

‘I know how much you're hurting,' Lauren told him gently, ‘but we really are getting closer to the aircraft, I promise you … and I know you can make it. You've done two hundred and thirty miles, Richard; you've been brilliant. Now just a few days more.'

‘I think you're lying,' he said. ‘You know we're all going to end up like Scott, dead in our tents. So let's get on with it.'

He tried to fall back, but Lauren had his shoulders pinned. There was a pause as Sean's voice came from outside the tent.

‘Sledge loaded.'

Lauren scraped some of the frozen condensation from Richard's hair and found the two pairs of gloves which were down inside the sleeping bag for warmth. There was no need to dress him, apart from the gloves, he was wearing every stitch of clothing he had. Lauren unzipped the bag all the way.

‘There's a pizza place near my flat,' Richard mumbled. ‘They do a quattro staggioni. The artichokes are all chopped up, swimming in olive oil…'

‘Shut up. Swing out your legs,' she ordered him.

The journalist tried to get his legs to work, but they felt as lifeless as wood. He could feel the muscles contract slightly in his thighs, but they were so weak he could not lift his lower body out of the bag. Lauren did it for him, placing both her hands underneath his calves and swivelling him into a position where she could get at his feet.

She pulled at the laces in his boots, creating enough slack to open them up a little, then slid them over his bandaged feet and tightened them up as gently as she could. Richard couldn't help a whimper as some of the blistered flesh was pinched.

Sean poked his head into the tent and gave Lauren some help to get Richard out by sliding him on his backside. He set about packing up the tent with Murdo as Lauren tried to persuade the journalist to get up and walk.

‘I don't want to stand,' he told her.

‘You have to.' Lauren stood behind him and hauled him to his feet. Richard felt the tears come to his eyes as his pulped flesh began to pulsate and flare. This moment was always one he dreaded: the rush of blood to his inflamed feet as he put his weight on them.

Richard took a few panting breaths and waited while Lauren slid the skis into position beneath his boots. She helped him to snap the boots down into the autolock fastenings—another explosion of pain his reward for this simple act—then they set out together towards the north.

Richard did his best, he really did, but his speed was a fraction of what the others could achieve. Sean and Murdo, harnessed to the sledge and pulling Frank's weight, overtook them rapidly. Richard stared at the sledge longingly as it passed. Was there room for two on there? he wondered. And could the others pull it?

Lauren stayed by his side, supporting him as best she could and keeping up a rolling conversation to which he listened with only half an ear.

‘Seventy miles,' she told him. ‘A car can do that in less than an hour. It's less than thirty per cent of what we've already done.'

For much of the morning they stumbled along together, sometimes with just Lauren giving him support, other times with Sean coming back to lend a hand when the ice got bad. Richard was suffering so much with the pain from his feet that he could barely pay attention to what Lauren was saying. Somewhere through the fog he did hear:

‘That's a mile done.'

Then later:

‘Kick through the pain barrier.'

‘It's
all
the pain barrier,' he muttered angrily.

Late in the morning they came to a pressure ridge blocking their path. It was a big one, some two metres high, chaotic blocks of ice all jumbled on top of each other and, Richard could see, a real epic to cross.

And that was the moment. The end of what his body could do. Now he didn't care how many miles there were to go; he had given all he had to give.

Richard felt his knees buckle as he decided to quit this game. That was when he discovered that the only thing which had been keeping him upright was his willpower. As for the sinews and muscles of his legs; well, they weren't going to be taking him anywhere soon … if ever again.

Lauren stood over him, her face resigned.

‘That's it,' he told her. ‘I need the sledge.'

88

‘Pull … and rest! And pull … and rest.' Lauren was still calling the shots, but the load, and the pressure, had doubled.

It hadn't taken long to discover that it took all four of them to tow the two men. Previously, Lauren and Sean had done most of the hauling, but now there was no escape for Murdo and Mel. The conditions were soft, the snow deep enough to make progress abysmally slow.

They tugged in unison, pushing forward on their skis and swearing bitterly as the rope sliced a little more into their backs with each jolting movement. They completed four miles on the day that Richard threw in the towel, and now were into the second day of the extra load—one which Lauren was determined would tick off ten or more miles.

Lauren wondered how many pounds they were pulling; was it two hundred and fifty? Three hundred? Whatever, it might as well have been a ton for all the pain it was giving them. Lauren had never asked her body to do more, and the only thing which was keeping her going was the knowledge that Murdo, Mel and Sean were suffering the same.

On the sledge the two men lay side by side, saying little as they were pulled along. Frank was now profoundly depressed, the gangrenous state of his fingers dominating his thoughts. He didn't complain, but Lauren could see he was hurting bad. Once in a while he would mutter: ‘I'm so sorry … so, so sorry…'

But then Murdo screamed at him to shut up, and he said no more.

Richard was also sinking ever deeper into depression, his blistered feet showing no signs of healing, and still grotesquely swollen. Lauren knew there was absolutely no chance they would ever get his boots on again—not until he could get hospital treatment at least.

‘Pull … and pull…' Lauren's voice was down to a hoarse whisper, her vocal cords strained and sore.

At midday Lauren finally called a rest stop, the team falling to the ice just where they stood, without the strength to prop themselves up against a sastrugi or to sit with their backs to the sledge.

Mel was lying next to Lauren, and she spoke to her quietly as she recovered her breath.

‘You've got to come up with an alternative,' she said. ‘Murdo and I aren't as strong as you and Sean. We can't pull that thing much further.'

Lauren was sympathetic.

‘I know how you're feeling,' she said, ‘but what do you think we can do about it?'

‘There must be something…'

‘Like what? Leave one of them behind?'

‘I don't know … Maybe you and Sean should go ahead to the aircraft, leave us here, and we'll wait for you … I know you didn't want to split the team up before when Murdo asked, but now…'

‘The team stays together,' Lauren told her. ‘That was the way we began this, and that's how we'll continue.'

‘But…' Mel began to cry, a quiet sobbing noise coming from deep within her.

‘You've got it inside you,' Lauren told her gently. ‘Take it one step at a time.'

‘I haven't … I can't pull that bloody sledge another foot…'

Sean interrupted them.

‘What about the food?'

He handed Lauren the supply pack, and she took a look at the meagre collection of tins they had left, making her choice quickly.

‘Starvation rations,' she said grimly. ‘Two cans of sardines.'

Lauren peeled back the lids of the sardine tins, inhaling the aroma of the fish as she did so. Normally, sardines turned her stomach, but now the mere sight of the oily fish had her taste buds sizzling with anticipation.

She divided the contents into six tiny piles, and they ate them in ritualistic silence. All too soon, the food was gone.

They rested for an hour, no one exchanging a single word. Then a hailstorm whipped up from nowhere, the stinging pellets of ice bouncing off their goretex clothing with a pattering sound, the hailstones collecting in small drifts against their legs and boots. Still no one said a word or even moved. Anyone stumbling across the scene could easily have imagined that they were all dead.

The hailstorm moved on across the glacier, a grey mass of cloud hurrying away to the north. Then the moment that Lauren dreaded; the moment she had to motivate them to begin again, to bully them onto their feet and get them into the hated harnesses ready for more hauling.

‘How many miles?' Mel asked as Lauren helped her to her feet.

‘About sixty.'

Mel hung her head, shaking it gently from side to side.

‘It's OK.' Lauren put her arm around Mel's shoulders, holding her close. ‘We're all going to make it.'

‘That's the mantra,' Murdo said bitterly, ‘but does anyone here still believe it?'

No one replied.

‘So why won't you answer?' he demanded. ‘Because no one believes that bullshit any more…'

Lauren crossed to him and tied the rope around his waist. Then she did the same for Mel and finally herself. Sean was already tied in, and slowly, with muttered gasps of pain as their already depleted muscles creaked into movement, they began the endless haul towards the north.

‘It's not just a mantra,' Lauren said as they pulled away. ‘It's the truth. We're all going to make it. No one's going to die.'

But for the first time her words sounded hollow, and Lauren knew why. She was no longer one hundred per cent certain, not now they had so much extra weight to haul. The grain of doubt had taken root, had sent up a shoot and was choking off her previous optimism like a fast-growing weed will choke a rose. Having two men on the sledge might easily tip the balance, she knew, and there was still so much distance to travel …

‘Pull…' she gasped, ‘and pull again…'

Deep in her heart she was no longer sure. But something inside her was still going to try.

89

It was twenty-three days since Lauren had informed her sponsors of her radio problem, and De Pierman and the Scott Polar were now at the point where they knew they had to act. The absence of any signal was downright bizarre—the base had been out of contact for way too long—and the possibility that something had gone terribly wrong at Capricorn was becoming a real concern.

The Antarctic winter was coming to an end; the ambient temperatures might just allow a plane to land. Antarctic Air Service promised to give it a try.

There was a weather delay—De Pierman was beginning to understand that with Antarctica there was always a weather delay. But finally the Twin Otter managed to set out for the Capricorn location.

The following day, De Pierman got the news on a crackly telephone line from Tierra del Fuego. Capricorn was completely gutted by fire. The AAS pilots had been able to land and confirmed that there were no survivors.

‘Did you find any bodies?' De Pierman asked them, distraught now his worst fears had been realised.

‘It looked like the main fuel tanks exploded,' one of the pilots told him. ‘There was almost nothing left to see and certainly no bodies to be found. Most of the base was covered in a deep layer of snow and we had no time to dig.'

‘You saw no human remains?'

‘It is doubtful there would be any. Even the metal was melted.'

De Pierman knew enough about rig fires to know what they were saying. A human body is organic and will crumble to dust given enough temperature. Even the enamel of the teeth will shatter and explode if the fire is intense enough.

‘How about transport?' he asked them. ‘Could you see if any of their snowmobiles were missing?'

‘We found the remains of a vehicle shed,' the pilot told him. ‘There were definitely the remains of snowmobiles in there, but as for how many, it was hard to tell … two or three at least.'

De Pierman was shattered; his one foray into scientific sponsorship had ended in total disaster, and the negative backlash would have far-reaching repercussions both for him personally and for Kerguelen Oils. More importantly, he felt a genuine sadness at the loss of so many talented people, and particularly for Lauren, who he had come to like and admire.

De Pierman knew he would have to go public with the disaster, but his first call was to the Scott Polar to break the tragic news to Michael Collins. The director took it badly, breaking down in tears on learning that Lauren—whom he'd worked with on several field projects—was lost.

‘But is there any chance,' De Pierman asked him, ‘that they might somehow have survived? I don't want to go public on this until we're absolutely sure they're dead.'

‘You'd better talk to John Gresham,' Collins advised him. ‘He'll be able to advise you on that.'

Long ago, the Scott Polar had realised the importance of understanding the limitations of the human body in polar environments, and Dr Gresham—an eminent physician—had been drafted in to head the study.

Gresham was one of the old school, a scientist with eighteen Antarctic seasons behind him, still an important figure in the world of polar science even though he should have retired years before. Diligently, he had worked through the existing data, run endless experiments in the cold rooms at the British Army Polar Warfare unit at its Farnborough base and produced a computer program which was as close as anyone had ever got to predicting how a human body would react given a specific set of cold-weather conditions.

De Pierman made contact with Gresham, who, once he understood the context of the call, immediately agreed to see him. De Pierman was driven up to Cambridge and escorted into Gresham's cluttered office, the scientist brushing a teetering pile of academic papers aside to give his visitor a chair.