Target 5 (17 page)

'It may push us - the ice behind us . ..' Beaumont
shouted.

While Horst wrestled with his team Beaumont fought for
control of his own, one hand on the sled's handlebar, the other holding the whip. Water swirled round them; for
seconds the floe disappeared and they seemed to be stand
ing on the sea. The dogs were terrified, thought they were
on the verge of drowning. They might all be drowning
within seconds - it depended on the strength and depth
of the invisible ice they were standing on. If the massive
blow of the ice sheet coming up behind them caught a
weak point, fractured the floe, they would be in the sea
with nothing under them, struggling in icy water until
the two jaws met and pulverized them to thin layers of
flesh.

The eastern jaw was still a hundred yards away, its wave
hadn't reached them, when the impact came, a shattering
blow which quivered the ice under them. The dogs stopped going berserk, stood quite still in sheer terror. The sea had flowed off the raft, leaving pools behind in depressions, but it was still intact. And now they could feel the raft moving, being carried forward towards the advancing sheet heading
towards it for collision. Beaumont glanced back, saw the ice
sheet behind, a foot higher than the floe, like a giant step.
'Get to the other edge,' he shouted.

They used the whips, drove the demoralized dogs for
ward the short distance until they were almost at the brink.
Really, they hadn't a chance in hell. Beaumont wished
now that he had turned round, taken the teams back on to
the jaw behind them, but it was too late. The wave from the
east splashed down on the floe, threw water round their
legs, and the dogs tried to go berserk a second time. Beau
mont tightened his grip, held the whip ready for one sharp
crack. The water was still around their feet when the gap
closed. The sleds were alongside each other when the whips
cracked, the men shouted, the dogs leapt forward seconds
before the point of impact. Under them the sea flooded the
raft, surged knee-high, submerged it totally.

The dogs leapt forward, took the sleds with them over the
gap before the ice met in thunderous collision. Something reared up under Beaumont's right leg but the momentum of
the sled took him
forward with the boom of the ice in his
ears. The icefield was smooth near its brink and the sleds
scudded forward, the friction breaking off the newly-
formed ice on the runners where the sea had frozen. They
were deafened by the boom, deafened so they hardly heard
the monstrous smashing sound as both jaws of the ice sheets
broke off and heaved up a pressure ridge, heaved it up
twenty feet high, shot up a wall of jostling ice with great blocks wobbling on its crest. Then Grayson, dog-trotting beside Beaumont, slipped and went down. Behind him the pressure ridge came forward like a lava wall, toppling the blocks in front of it.

Beaumont saw him falling, held on to whip and sled with one hand while he grabbed. Grayson was on his knees when
Beaumont grasped one arm, jerked it up savagely. The
American's gloved hand locked on the handlebar and he
was dragged forward on his knees some distance before he
scrambled up. Behind them a massive block of ice weighing
many tons thudded down where Grayson had fallen. Still shaken, still gripping the handlebar, he stumbled forward as the sled kept moving, a little way behind Langer's team. To their rear the pack, caught up in the gigantic collision, was a chaos of movement.

Fissures shivered the weak points. A dark gash knifed past
Beaumont's sled and ahead of it. He swerved to avoid it and
swerved again to escape a second opening. The noise was
tremendous, like a bombardment as the erupting icefield
roared and hammered. They kept moving, driving the dogs, running for their lives away from the chopping hell behind
them, and when they had covered half a mile, when they
were close to the edge of the fog, Beaumont called a halt.
Panting for breath like the dogs, the clothes under their
parkas clammy with sweat, they looked back. In the dis
tance the icefield was still heaving and writhing. It could be
hours before the turmoil ended, before the icefield sealed
over once more, locking down the sea while an Arctic
silence you could almost hear descended.

'Who the devil were they?'

The nickering image of three fur-clad figures seen from the air hovered in the smoke, then vanished and there was
fog and more smoke. The projection screen inside the head
quarters hut went blank. Papanin stirred in his seat beside
Kramer as the projectionist removed the film reel and some
one switched on the light. The smoke came from the little
curved pipe he was puffing away at steadily, the smoke
which filled the overheated hut, which obscured the 'No Smoking' sign hanging from a wall. The atmosphere was torrid, glowing with warmth.

'It was interesting,' Kramer ventured.

'That film doesn't tell me a damned thing,' the Siberian replied. 'Just three men and two dog teams at the edge of the fog. Where is the Beaumont force? We're looking for a large body of men - for an expedition. Those thick-skulled pilots aren't looking in the right place.'

Swivelling round in his chair, his little pipe clenched in
his teeth, Papanin stared at a map of the lower Arctic
spread out on a table. The latest positions of all vessels in the
area were marked - the six vessels of trawler fleet k4g, the
carrier
Gorki,
the huge research ship
Revolution,
and the
American icebreaker
Elroy
which was steaming steadily
closer to the icefield.

Alongside the map was a blown-up aerial photograph
of Target-5- The picture had been taken four weeks
earlier, a routine act to keep up to date their file on all
American Arctic bases. 'The ramp at Target-5,' Papanin
said, 'that place where they take their Sno-Cats down
on to the pack. The sabotage team should be there by
now.'

Kramer checked his watch. 10.30
pm.
He didn't know it but the lead was closing on Beaumont at this moment twenty-five miles away to the west. 'Our men arrived there
an hour ago,' the Bait replied. 'With their radar they'll have
found the American base even in the fog.'

'And the airstrip - that must be sabotaged as well.'

'The same team deals with both - ramp and airstrip.
They'll do it the way you suggested ...'

'No international incident, remember,
5
Papanin warned.

'If anything happens it will look like an accident - or a
series of accidents. Within thirty minutes Target-5 will be
sealed off from the outside world ...'

'Not if their wireless hut is still in action!'

'It won't be. The same sabotage team is dealing with that, too.'

But Papanin was hardly listening as he slumped with his arms folded across the back of the chair. 'Beaumont,' he
muttered. 'Beaumont,' he repeated. 'That name rings a bell
somewhere. Kramer, get me a message pad. I want to send
an urgent signal to Petrov at Records in Leningrad.'

'I think you're dead wrong .. .'

'We go due east,' Beaumont told Grayson for the third
time, 'and sooner or later we'll hit Target-5-' He lit a
cigarette and it tasted bad because of the fog which had got
into everything - including their lungs. The argument had
been raging for ten minutes - which was the right way to

go?

'We drifted a long way south on that floe,' Grayson in
sisted. 'Since I'm the navigator I should have some say . ..'

'You've had your say - and I don't agree with you. Everything is drifting south - and too quickly for my liking. The icefield, Target-5, the Russian base, the floe we nearly got killed on - it's all drifting south at the same speed, so you discount the floe drift.'

'Up to a point you're right .. .'

'I'm dead right. And this isn't the House of Commons -
where they talk to save themselves doing anything - so we'll
get moving.'

'Due east?'

'Where else?'

They started moving through the smothering fog. Over rough ice. So once again they had to keep a tight grip on the handlebar of each sled in an endless struggle to stop
them keeling over. And soon after they had moved off they
came up against a static pressure ridge they couldn't get round. They had to use ice-axes to chop a gateway in the
wall, and it was back-breaking work, work which delayed
them and used too much energy. The only bonus on the credit side was that they hadn't recently heard a single
helicopter.

'It looks as though the Russians have given up,' Langer
said hopefully as they passed through the gap in the ice wall. 'Or else they've run out of fuel.'

'Maybe,' Beaumont replied noncommittally. He was wondering whether they ought to pitch camp for the night. It was 11.30
pm
and everyone was moving lethargically -
even the dogs. The tension of the past few hours and the bitter cold was wearing them down - especially the cold.
He glanced at the man walking beside him. For a while
they had travelled with their snow-goggles over their eyes,
but soon the fog had smeared them and they couldn't see
where they were going, so now each man wore his goggles
pushed back over his hood. The goggles above Grayson's hood were lenses of solid ice. His breath had frozen on the
glass.

'We'll stop soon when we find a place to bed down,'
Beaumont said.

'Thank God for that!' The American decided he had
been a bit too eager to accept the suggestion. 'I could try
one more radio-fix,' he suggested.

Among the equipment they were carrying on the sleds
was a Redifon GR 345 transceiver and direction-finder, a
portable high-frequency set with a peak power of only
fifteen watts. But with this set they could communicate with
Thule, let alone Curtis Field. They had stopped and listened
in on the set three times since the Sikorskys had dropped
them on the ice, hoping to hear a transmission from
Target-5- They heard nothing - the island seemed to have gone off the air.

Had they heard only one transmission they could have used the direction-finder to locate Target-5's radio hut - to take a rough bearing they could have moved along. The absence of any transmission worried Beaumont, but he kept the worry to himself. 'Probably a lot of static - they know they can't get through so they don't try,' he said airily to Langer when he had queried the air-wave silence.

Ahead of them the fog began to thin out at ground level,
but not higher up. They came to a more even area of ice,
the best surface for pitching camp on they had come across
so far, and Beaumont decided they had better stop. The
dogs were slipping on the ice frequently now, a sure sign
that they were feeling the strain, and a moment earlier
Langer had called out a warning. 'Bismarck's lagging. The whole lot will pack up soon if we try to keep going.'

'I don't think we'll find a motel at this hour,' Beaumont
called out, 'so we'll kip down here . ..'

He broke off, still holding the handlebar, staring straight in front of him. In the thinning fog something flared redly,
vanished, flared up more fiercely. He couldn't believe it. He
blinked, sure that he was seeing things, stared again. The fog drifted, rolled a curtain across the sight, a transparent
curtain. The red flare burst out again, penetrated the cur
tain, climbed higher and billowed and wavered. There was
a faint stench in his nostrils, a stench of smoke, and now the dogs caught the scent and became restless, sensing fire.