Target 5 (28 page)

'It makes sense, Colonel .. .'

'Everything I say makes sense.' He looked over his
shoulder at Kramer. 'This time every machine must carry a section of armed men.'

'We haven't enough for all the machines.'

'Who the hell said we were going to withdraw all of them -
and immediately warn Dawes that his deception operation has failed? I'm. leaving half the pieces on the board to the north
and west of Target-5. The other half come back here, refuel,
and then scour my triangle.'

They left the hut quickly before the Siberian could comment on their slowness while Papanin remained staring up
at the wall map and sucking at his little pipe. 'I think I've
got you this tune, Mr Beaumont,' he said to himself.

Tuesday, 22 February: 7PM-11.30PM

It had become a nightmare: Russian machines were within
hearing all the time. Sometimes the deadly rat-tat-tat beat
was a long way off, little more than a murmur in the bitterly
cold night as they dragged their weary limbs down more
ravines, under the lee of more pressure ridge walls, but even
when it was only a murmur you had to listen hard, to con
centrate - so that you detected the moment
when it started becoming louder, when it was coming in your direction.

At other times it was close, far too close for comfort, the wicked beat rising to a loud cacophony which echoed along
the ravines and reverberated over the icy crests. It was,
Beaumont admitted to himself, only a matter of time before
they were seen - unless they were incredibly lucky. It was only a matter of time because, despite the frequent requests of Grayson and Langer, he obstinately kept them moving -
and movement can be seen from the air.

The constant need to listen, to stay on the alert, was now wearing them down as much as driving the sleds, driving their own legs to keep on the move. By ten in the evening
the four exhausted men were moving like automatons, their
limbs sluggish, their eyes half-closed with the fatigue and
the cold, and Gorov had twice said he couldn't go any
further, that he must travel on one of the sleds. Beaumont's
reaction had been quick and to the point. 'You'll either
keep up or die on the ice.'

'But this is why you are here!' Gorov had protested as he stumbled alongside Beaumont's sled. 'You came to collect
me!'

'It's got beyond that now,' the Englishman had told him
grimly. 'It's a question of our survival - so keep up or drop,
I don't care which any more.'

When Gorov had dropped back Beaumont sneaked a look
over his shoulder, and the Russian was plodding on beside
Langer's sled while in the distance Grayson was completing
another star-fix. Beaumont had no intention of leaving the Russian behind; if he collapsed he would have to be carried
on a sled. Oddly enough, faced with the prospect of a lonely
death on the ice, Gorov was able to keep going.

But the real havoc was played with their nerves and tempers, and now it was becoming dangerous for one man to speak to another because whatever was said it was always the wrong thing. It was just after ten o'clock when Grayson
decided that he had had enough, that they had run out of
luck, that this time they had to stop before Beaumont's mad
ness destroyed them all. He finished packing the sextant
back inside Langer's moving sled and hurried to catch up
with Beaumont.

'Another plane coming up - from the east. I'm getting on
top of a ridge to check . . .'

'Conserve your energy,' Beaumont snapped. 'It's a long
way off...'

'It's coming this way! It's louder already. Do we wait till the bloody thing is on top of us?'

'Yes!'

'Why, for God's sake?'

Beaumont took a tighter grip on the handlebar, and there
was barely suppressed fury in his voice as he replied.

'Because we are not playing their game - Papanin's game. Haven't you grasped what's happening? These are random
flights - crisscrossing the ice.'

'One of them will spot us .. .'

'If he's lucky, yes. But he'll have to be damned lucky to spot us down inside these ravines. To do that he'll have to
fly direct overhead. When that's going to happen we freeze
against the wall - I've already hammered that into you.'

'It may be too late then.'

Beaumont took a deep breath, stared at Grayson, then grabbed at the sled with both hands as it nearly toppled sideways. He spoke in a cold, deliberate monotone. 'We have to get further south than Papanin thinks is possible
before we rest. These planes are looking for us, yes. But they're also
trying to wear us down, to make us stop every
time we hear one, so that we never get a chance to reach the
Elroy
...' He stiffened as the rat-tat-tat he had been listening
to while he talked loudened to a roar. 'Get under cover!' ,

They stopped the dogs, sprawled beside them to calm the
animals, crashed down full length on the ice and seconds
later the helicopter boomed over them, the hellish clatter of its engines deafening them. It swept over them from east to west, flashed across the ravine two hundred feet up, then it was gone. They remained perfectly still because they didn't know yet whether they had been seen. If they had, it would
come back. Dropping prone on to the ice shook each man
badly, muffled as they were in their layers of clothing, because prone they didn't feel like getting up again. They lay
in the ravine alongside their twitching animals, calming
them, their bodies frozen, their resistance very low indeed. When the machine didn't come back they clambered slowly
to their feet and Grayson tried once more, croaking the
words.

'Keith, we ought to stop
...
to eat.. .'

Beaumont shook his head slowly, listened, and couldn't
hear the sound of any machine. Painfully, he began to
climb up the nearest ice wall, slithering back several times
before he got anywhere near the crest. It was time to check
the view ahead. Once more. Reaching the top, he nearly fell
backwards, but regained his balance. He rubbed at the
lenses of his night-glasses to clear them, perched his elbows
on the crest, raised them to his weary eyes. He could see a long distance, a very long distance indeed. He scanned the
blurred horizon, dropped the glasses a fraction, stared through them steadily, then lowered them as he looked
down into the ravine. 'I think you'd better come up here," he said quietly.

'Well?' Papanin demanded.

'Nothing yet.' Vronsky closed the door of the hut. 'I've
just come back - it looks pretty hopeless.'

'Hopeless, did you say?' Papanin stood up slowly from his
chair and Kramer, who knew him, took an involuntary step
away from the Siberian. 'You're gutless, Vronsky. You're not fit to lead a detachment. In this game it's the man who
goes on longest who wins. I'll have to consider your position
when this is over. You were going to eat? Skip the meal, Vronsky - you're aboard the next helicopter that takes off.'
He waited until the Russian had left. 'It's going to be
difficult if they reach the
Elroy,
Kramer,' he remarked.

The Bait was startled. It was the first time Papanin had
even suggested that Beaumont might reach the ship. 'Diffi
cult?' he queried. 'Impossible once Gorov is aboard an
American ship . . .'

'Not impossible, but difficult, yes.' The Siberian's tone
was deceptively quiet. 'The thing would begin to assume huge dimensions. Our people back home would start fretting - because of the American President's visit to Moscow
in May.'

'We may be lucky . . .'

'I make my own luck!' Papanin's fist crashed down on the table which was now bare: the little chess set was inside his pocket. 'We are changing our tactics,' he rumbled. 'From now on "we sweep north from the
Elroy -
we'll meet
them coming in over the ice. When a machine finds our target it lands as close to them as possible -I don't care how bad the ice is under them.'

'And if the men with Gorov resist?'

'This is the second order you will issue at once. Give it
personally to each leader of the armed parties - the pilot
must not hear you. We don't want the men with Gorov -
they are an embarrassment, so lose them. Bury the bodies
under the ice - if an open lead is available drop them into it. The dogs must be killed as well - poisoned meat would be best. And lose the sleds. By midnight, Kramer! Earlier if
possible ...'

It had to be a mirage, Beaumont thought when he first saw it in his night-glasses. The image blurred, went away, then came back again as he readjusted the lenses to their original
fix. He called down to the men inside the ravine. Langer
reached him first; caught by something in Beaumont's
voice he mounted the ice wall quickly, then flopped beside the Englishman on the crest. His face was whiskered as he pulled open his hood to use the glasses, whiskered and still
smeared with fog streaks many hours old.

'Over there. The thing sticking up.'

Beaumont pointed and Langer, his fingers trembling with
anxiety, tried to get a fix. For another three miles ahead the terrible jumble of pressure ridges continued, like a stormy
sea with massive waves coming towards them, a stormy sea
frozen suddenly in mid-fury. Beyond this was level ice, very
level ice indeed, a vast sheet gleaming in the moonlight. In the middle of it was the mirage, something which, if photo
graphed, would look totally unreal. 'Good God!' Langer muttered the exclamation and fell silent.

The mirage was a high-masted ship with a high bridge, a ship made of ice and snow, almost like an unsuccessful
wedding cake. In the night-glasses Langer saw that its bows
pointed towards him, that it was crusted and coated and
mired with ice so that in the moonlight it glittered like a
ship made of glass. Icicles hung from the crosstree, from the
jagged tip of the mast. Its rails dripped a curtain of ice like the edge of a counterpane flung casually over the foredeck.
The bows were very high, as though mounting a huge wave,
but the vessel was absolutely stationary, embedded in the
pack, and the only clue that it might not have been aban
doned was the lights at the tips of the crosstree. It was not a
mirage. It was the American icebreaker
Elroy,
ten miles from
the nearest ocean, hemmed in by the pack.

'Good God!' Langer muttered again.

'You said that before,' Beaumont reminded him. 'You must be getting old - you're repeating yourself.'

'I feel old.' Langer corrected himself. 'I felt old! Hey,
Sam, it's the
Elroy!'

Leaving Gorov to watch over the dogs, Grayson had
hauled himself up on to the crest. 'Don't kid me,' he
croaked. Langer handed him the glasses. 'See for yourself.'
The American opened his hood, exposed an equally haggard, grizzled face, and focused the glasses.

'How the hell did it ever get in so far?' Langer wondered.

'Guts,' Beaumont said. 'I've never met Schmidt, the cap
tain, but he's smashed his way through that stuff inch by
inch to get in close to us. The funny thing is I can't see his
radar.'