‘Bear’s not a killer,’ he mumbled. ‘She’s a survivor.’
Hearing the moans again, he started burrowing upwards.
The sun made him wince as he broke out of the snow drift. As his eyes adjusted to the intense brightness, he got an idea of how lucky he’d been.
About a mile distant, a pall of black smoke rose thousands of feet into the still air, a furrow twenty feet deep leading to where the plane’s fuselage had slammed into a rock face. On the left side of the deep furrow, there was a section of wing from the Challenger. Random pieces of debris from the corporate jet were littered around the rolling dales of snow, a piece of leather chair here, a landing wheel there.
Looking down, he saw red splashes, and pushing his tongue into his cheek he realised there was a deep gash on the left side of his face. Refastening the wolverine-lined hood of the parka to keep his head warm, he pulled his glove off and immediately felt the cold, which he estimated was at least minus thirty on the ground. Warmer than he’d been at altitude with the wind-chill factor, but colder than any daytime temperature he’d ever experienced, either in Afghanistan or Wyoming.
His de-gloved hand still had a silk liner over it but the chill went into his bones like someone had hit him with a mallet. Exploring in the chest pocket of his parka, Gallen pulled out an unused handkerchief and quickly got the glove back onto his hand. Laying the opened handkerchief on the ground, he filled it with snow and tied the ends of it together as best he could. Then he held it against the facial gash, hoping to staunch the wound before he lost too much blood.
As the cold dug deep into his facial tissue, making tears of pain run, Gallen raised his G-Shock. The watches were favoured in the military because they were simple to use and because of their toughness: Gallen had started life with a stainless-steel analogue watch from the Pendleton PX but he’d switched to a G-Shock after a troop truck had driven over a colleague’s and the thing had still worked.
Now he was on to his second, a present to himself when coming back through Guam for the last time after his final tour in the Ghan. He’d discarded his old trusty and bought himself the top of the line. Looking at it now, it worked fine: 11.18 am, it said. Gallen remembered a feature that he’d never used, thinking it too gimmicky for a military professional. Pressing the ‘comp’ button on the lower right of the dial, he watched the face blink twice and a black display came up showing ‘SE’. Turning slowly, Gallen brought the G-Shock around until the dial showed a large ‘N’. Fixing his north as a mountain saddle in the distance that had a distinctive U-shape followed by a sharp peak, he turned back to the plane and fixed it in a south-west position.
The moaning continued and Gallen looked around, trying to find the source. He could vaguely remember McCann holding him down in the seat, and then not being able to hold on anymore. What had happened to them? Had they been thrown from the plane?
Tramping north, struggling in snow up to his armpits, Gallen croaked through the hoarseness in his larynx.
‘Donny!’ he said, trying to put strength into it. ‘Donny, talk to me.’
The moans got louder as he struggled over a crest and looked down into a bowl, his energy sapped after just ten minutes of moving through that terrain.
There was no sign of his colleague in the bowl and Gallen paused: he either used his energy to find Donny McCann or he used it to get to the plane wreck, look for survivors and ransack the cabin for food and fire. He breathed deep, turned, saw a trek of perhaps a thousand yards to the plane, then looked back at the endless snow bowls in front of him. Fuck it: he’d give it thirty minutes to find his man, and then he’d summon the energy to get to the plane. He had the whole day to find food but he may have only a few minutes to find Donny alive.
He heard the moan again.
‘Donny!’ he yelled.
Stepping over the crest, Gallen started downwards into the bowl but he only took one step and he was through the snow layer, dropping like a stone. The snow raced past him and then his feet were hitting something solid and he bounced across a hard floor until he came to rest on a small knoll of ice.
Looking around, he saw an ice cave formed by the winds and covered over by a crusted bridge of snow, just waiting for someone to tread on it and fall to their death. The moan of pain was closer now and, turning to find it, he gasped as his ribs spasmed.
‘Shit,’ he said to himself, his body in a rictus of pain. He could barely breathe and he knew why, having sprung a rib as a hockey player in high school.
Struggling to his feet, trying to find a pain-free way of moving, he stood still on the subterranean ice knoll until he could balance without flashes of light at the edges of his vision.
Moving gingerly through the cave, avoiding the large fissures on the floor which seemed to go forever into the earth, he followed the moans, yelling his encouragement, trying to hear McCann’s echoes long enough to get a fix on him.
Pushing through a small gap in the ice wall, Gallen padded into a larger ice gallery and found Donny McCann lying on the ice floor, a hole in the roof above.
‘Shit, Donny,’ he said, wincing with pain as he kneeled beside his comrade. ‘What’s up?’
‘Back,’ whispered McCann, his mouth quivering with cold. ‘Broke my fucking back.’
‘You sure?’ Gallen looked down the inert length of what had once been the most vital person he’d ever known.
‘I’m sure, boss,’ said McCann, lips dark blue. ‘Anyone else make it?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Gallen.
‘Take the headset.’ Following the line of the injured man’s nod, Gallen saw the radio headset and cabling lying in the ice. He retrieved it and, reaching down to McCann’s belt, plugged it into the radio set and installed it around his head and throat.
‘Kenny, Mike, anyone there?’ said Gallen into the mic, blood dripping off his face again.
‘Try all the channels,’ said McCann in a hoarse whisper. ‘There’s five.’
Reaching into McCann’s parka, Gallen tried each channel, his fingers barely able to grasp the tuning button.
‘You got the volume up?’ said McCann, eyelids drooping.
Looking again at the radio set, lost in the layers of clothing at McCann’s belt, Gallen found the volume control and turned it up. The headset crackled and Gallen heard a voice.
‘Boss, that you?’ came the Canadian drawl. ‘Donny? Gerry? This is Kenny Winter, copy?’
‘Gotcha, Kenny,’ said Gallen, his jaw seizing. ‘We’re in an ice cave, I’ve got a man down. Can you assist? Over.’
‘Can try. Where are you?’ came the voice.
‘Look for a dome of snow, directly north-east of the plane wreck. My guess, eight hundred to one thousand yards.’
‘Got no compass, boss,’ said the Canadian, his voice wavering in and out.
‘Okay, take a fix on the saddle in the distance, along the line the plane landed on,’ said Gallen, the rib starting to ache. ‘There’s a U-shaped saddle on the mountain horizon, with a sharp peak right beside it. Walk towards it and after eight hundred yards, look to your right for footprints around a big snow dome.’
Gasping for breath as the rib muscle gripped like a clenching fist, Gallen fought for consciousness. He panted as Winter’s voice surged into the headset.
‘On our way, boss,’ said the Canadian.
‘Bring ropes,’ said Gallen through his gasps. ‘And don’t walk on the dome. Repeat, do not walk on the dome, it’s hollow underneath.’