‘Have some water,’ said Winter, pulling it out of his waistband, where it was being carried to keep from freezing.
Sipping, they watched Ford slide down from the top of the drift where he’d done a recce with the glasses.
‘I make one body at our eleven o’clock,’ said the Aussie, taking his turn on the water bottle. ‘Not moving, rifle lying beside him. He’s been waiting at the top of a drift.’
‘Dead?’ asked Gallen.
‘Sleeping, maybe hypothermia. Christ, it’s cold.’
As they huddled in, trying to breathe through their noses to stop plumes of steam moving into the air, Gallen saw something extraordinary and for a second thought he was hallucinating.
‘The fuck’s that?’ He cowered away as what looked like an ice fairy floated past them on the air.
‘Ice,’ said Winter. ‘Gets cold enough out here, ice crystals form in the air. It must have fallen through fifty below.’
‘Jesus,’ Gallen said, tongue cold simply from opening his mouth. ‘We have to take out that shooter, get to the helo.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Winter. ‘Just gimme cover.’
Slinging his rifle diagonally over his shoulders, Winter checked the Ka-bar in its rubber belt scabbard and crawled over the ridge on a journey that would cover about a hundred and twenty yards to the next ridge, where the shooter was lying.
The moon rose from the north, favouring Gallen and Ford. They could keep their heads up without worrying about their silhouettes on the horizon.
Gallen tracked Winter’s progress with his G36, jaws clenching in the cold. The exertion of moving through the deep snow may have been exhausting but it had kept them warm. Now he had to consciously move his toes and twirl his wrists, making the blood run to the extremities as his nose ran freely, the mucus freezing solid on his top lip.
Winter crawled to within twenty yards of the prone man, the air alive with the man’s snoring. The shooter partially rolled sideways, made three snores, and then his head collapsed into the snow, hypothermia reducing him to a near-comatose state.
Winter must have seen this before, decided Gallen, because as soon as the snores had finished and the head slumped, he stood and walked the last few yards, picked up the shooter’s rifle and rolled the man onto his back.
‘Okay,’ said Winter, his voice carrying across the snow bowl as if he were standing beside them. ‘We’re clear.’
At Gallen’s request, Winter ratted the man, turning out his pockets, finding a wallet which he looked inside then handed over to Gallen. The Canadian found a support-belt under the man’s clothes, the mark of a former soldier whose back had taken one too many jumps off a helicopter or landings with a parachute.
‘He’s a pro,’ said Winter, panting in long plumes of steam as he stood with Gallen and Ford. ‘Hi-Tec boots, back belt, military thermals. It’s all generic, Canadian and US military issue.’
‘No ID?’ said Gallen.
Winter shook his head. ‘Check out the wallet.’
Looking at the wallet reflecting the moon, Gallen couldn’t see anything strange about it. ‘What are we looking at?’
‘No cards, no memberships,’ said Winter. ‘It’s all cash; even the brand name of the wallet has been cut out. Who, these days, has a wallet that looks like that? ‘
‘You mean, besides a spook?’ Ford checked the man’s arms for tattoos but instead came up with a G-Shock watch, which he pocketed.
Gallen pushed back the man’s parka hood and grabbed the doublelayer balaclava off his head, shoving it thankfully onto his own skull, which had gone naked since creating the snowball diversion. The sleeping man was swarthy, like a Spaniard. He didn’t look like any of the men they’d encountered with Reggie’s crew at the meeting house in Kugaaruk.
Gallen nodded at the man. ‘Can you get him talking, Kenny?’
‘I can try, boss. But it’s over for him.’
‘I want to know who’s in that helo,’ Gallen said, looking across the snow to where the helo lay buried in the ice like a massive dragonfly.
Winter and Ford worked on the shooter, waking him and trying to get him talking while Gallen scoped the helo with the glasses. More ice crystals floated past, suspended in the frozen air, and Gallen felt the cold driving up into his boots, sitting on his back like a gorilla.
‘Is that Russian?’ said Ford, as they got a few slurred words out of the dying man.
‘No,’ said Gallen. ‘Let’s go.’
They took turns at the lead as they tramped across the deep snow bowl towards the helo, gasping the freezing air while trying to stop it going too deep. The moisture in the air was frozen and Gallen’s injured rib was aching with every breath. He worried about what was happening in his lungs, worried about frostbite and hypothermia. He could sense his team were desperate to get into the helo and get warm as the temperature crushed in on their skulls.
Approaching the helo, almost unable to stand, Gallen raised his G36 and gestured Ford and Winter to close on it from opposite flanks. The ice creaked as the men approached the downed aircraft and Gallen could see the patches of clear lake water below, reflecting the moonlight.
Pushing into the cockpit, Winter poked and prodded the pilot and gave the thumbs-up to Gallen. The ground creaked again: were they on a glacier, or was it the deep snow contracting with the cold, having warmed in the day?
‘Let’s get on that radio,’ said Gallen, his voice sounding far away with fatigue.
Putting his boots on the Little Bird’s step, Winter froze. ‘What the fuck—’ he started, and then he was turning, the helo moving as the ice emitted a ripping sound.
‘Shit,’ said Ford, moving to Winter as the helo slid deeper into the snow.
Gallen looked down at the source of the ripping sound and saw a crack opening a few feet in front of him.
‘It’s going,’ he said, the creaking and ripping joined by a crashing as tons of ice hit the lake’s waters below.
Grabbing Winter by the arm, Ford pulled the big man off the helo’s step and ran with him through the snow as the gap opened in front of Gallen. The two men ran, Gallen screaming encouragement as the helo disappeared from view and the noise of the ice hitting the lake reached a crescendo.
Shoving his rifle’s muzzle into the snow as hard as he could, Gallen sat straddling it and called for the men to leap as the gap opened to six feet in front of him. The whole scene unfolded in slow motion, the ice opening at a steady but slow pace and the two men struggling through deep snow which reduced their progress to the most excruciating pace.
Winter leapt first, pushing off the receding precipice of the crevasse and landing with his hands on Gallen’s fatigues belt. Ford leapt a second later and disappeared into the darkness of the opening maw.
Screaming at one another above the cacophony of the sheering ice cliff, Gallen leaned back, driving his ass into the snow, hoping for enough purchase with the rifle and his heels to hold up the Canadian.
‘Climb!’ screamed Winter, and Gallen felt the rifle start to slip through the snow, pushing the heels of his boots over the edge so they were dangling under Winter’s armpits.
Why was Winter telling Gallen to climb?
Then he said it again. ‘Mike, fucking climb!’ and Gallen saw Ford’s hands gripping into Winter’s shoulders, tearing at the arctic parka’s heavy fabric.
Reaching down as they all teetered on the edge of the yawning crevasse, Gallen gripped Winter by the shoulder of his parka. With his other hand, Gallen gripped Ford’s glove and took the weight, the rifle sliding a few inches more through the snow towards the gap. Once it reached the edge they’d all be going into the lake and certain death.