Gallen’s balls ached as they bore the weight of two men. ‘Make it fast,’ he said with a grimace as Ford clambered over Winter’s shoulder and hit the ground behind Gallen.
The movement made the rifle slide through the ice precipice and Gallen felt his momentum taking him over as Ford grabbed him by the back of his belt. The rifle gave way and clattered into the darkness as his legs and hips extended over the edge, Winter holding onto his legs and front pocket, the lake gleaming below. Gallen could now see the waves made by the falling ice and submerged helo. He didn’t want to die — not down there, anyway.
Yelling at the top of his lungs, Gallen pulled up on Winter as Ford pulled back on his belt. Twisting around, he came face to face with the icy edge as Winter clambered over him and helped Ford drag him to safety.
Panting in the moonlight, lungs aching with the cold, they caught their breath as the lake slowly returned to its millpond stillness, with not a sign that the helo had ever existed.
‘Well, that was a fuck-up,’ said Ford as their pulses returned to normal, triggering a laughing fit among them. Gallen laughed until his eyes ran; for the first time in three years, he felt a sense of joy.
‘Drove a corporate jet into a cliff, dropped a helicopter into a lake,’ Winter chuckled. ‘And we’re just getting warmed up.’
Sitting up, Gallen pulled the last of the Marlboros from his parka, fished out three that were unbroken and offered them to the other men. As Winter proffered flame from his Zippo, they sucked on their smokes like men attending their own funerals.
‘Well,’ said Gallen, as they smoked, ‘we have to go back, hope the fire hasn’t gone out.’
It was the death option and none of them expected to make it. At least one of them would fail and the still fit wouldn’t have the strength to drag an exhausted man through chest-high snow at fifty below. They’d arrive back at the shelter, physically spent and with no fire and no food. They were already struggling to breathe and talk, and their uncoordinated movements were consistent with the early stages of hypothermia.
‘Or,’ said Winter, sucking on his smoke from way back in his parka hood, ‘we can check that out.’
Following his gaze, Ford and Gallen looked across the lake, getting a clear view now the helo wasn’t in the way. On the other side of the lake, between two large snow dunes, was a shape that didn’t look natural, a white sphere hovering over the snow.
‘What is that?’ said Gallen.
The moon had risen further and although it wasn’t full it was casting a strong light in the still air. Winter raised the field-glasses and took his time investigating the sphere.
‘I make it a compound,’ he said. ‘Got a large dome, sitting on a building of some kind. Demountable, maybe? Whole thing inside a fence.’
Gallen had a look, saw the white sphere balanced on a rectangular single-storey building.
‘That’s four miles, maybe five. You guys up for it?’
‘Weren’t doing nothing anyhow,’ said Winter. ‘Diary’s free.’
Gallen looked at the Aussie. ‘Mike?’
‘Pope shit in the woods?’ said Ford. ‘How about you, boss? Got the gas?’
‘Nope.’ Gallen stood and brushed himself off in the moonlight. ‘But that never stopped me before.’
CHAPTER 24
Winter cut the last of the muffins into even portions with his Ka-bar knife and handed them out. They were hard, like stale ship’s biscuit, but the men chewed at them and swallowed them down, knowing that the next several hours would sap their last reserves. They’d talked it through and Gallen had insisted on a vote: either trudge for an hour back to the fuselage to the certainty of no food or radio, but a guarantee of heat; or spend maybe three hours in the snow at fifty below to get to a small chance of food, heat and radio. No guarantees.
They voted unanimously: risk all for the strange building in the snow.
Spooked by the collapsing lake frontage that had claimed the helicopter and the radio with it, they took a wide track around the north end of the long lake, staying fifty yards away from where they expected the lake started. What had scared Gallen most about the helo’s submersion was the fact that the lake had eroded so far under the land ice. There was no telling how far back the lake extended under the ice and he didn’t want to test it with the boots of three men.
Urging each other on, they took turns in the lead through the snow, the lead man acting as a sort of ice-breaker to ease the passage of the men following. The temperature was brutal and they tried to keep rests to a minimum, the sweat on their backs and legs freezing as soon as they stood still for more than thirty seconds.
Stopping briefly at the top of a large snow drift, Ford pulled his ratted G-Shock from the front pocket of his parka and read the time: 11.54 pm. They’d been travelling just over three hours and the sphere had disappeared from view.
Gallen’s left lung ached under his injured rib. In the past half-hour, the pain had deepened so it was no longer purely external. His breathing was faint and he was losing strength. He reckoned he had another thirty minutes of exertion.
‘Hey, look at this,’ said Ford as they prepared to set out again. ‘Dude’s watch has a temperature gauge. It’s fifty-two degrees below zero, Celsius.’
By the time they’d negotiated two major snow bowls, Gallen was no longer asked to lead. He was falling behind and Winter had pushed him into the middle of the pack. He was running on instinct, his legs numb with fatigue and cold and his breath ridiculously shallow, as if he was sucking breaths through a straw.
At the bottom of a bowl, where the snow was head-height and had to be fought through like a jungle path, Gallen looked to the top of the drift that loomed over him and his legs stopped.
As he lost his balance, he felt Winter grab him under the armpits; there was shouting and then Ford was in front of him.
‘Ten more minutes, boss,’ said the Aussie.
Winter whispered in his ear, ‘We’re gonna do this. We’re not stopping now.’
Planting one foot in front of the other, his balance kept largely by leaning on the snow wall as he followed Ford’s trail, Gallen managed to get himself to the top of the drift. They all panted as the zenith moon illuminated the ground in front of them. It was dominated by a large white dome sitting on a square scaffold which in turn sat over a long, white demountable.
‘Holy shit,’ said Winter, out of breath.
It took them five minutes to get to the fencing around the structure, their enthusiasm and panic combining for a renewed sprint through the snow. Winter smashed the padlock on the gate but they couldn’t swing it open through the deep snow, so the Canadian threw his pack over the cyclone fencing, climbed to the top and put his hands down for Gallen, who allowed himself to be man-handled over the fence by the two men, falling into deep snow on the other side.
Walking around the seemingly abandoned structure, they could find only one door that wasn’t completely snowed over. It had been a long time since someone had shovelled snow around this building.
Kneeling, Winter scraped at the snow until a sign on the door appeared: Property of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Trespassing at this facility is prohibited and punishable under national security laws.
‘Ooh,’ said Ford facetiously. ‘I’m gonna tell on you, Kenny.’
The snow was hard-packed and the three of them cussed as they dug it out, down to the door handle and then down to the step, Winter getting into the subsequent hole and kicking a pathway so the snow didn’t fall in when he broke down the door.
Reaching up, he took a rifle from Ford and cocked the slide, aiming at the lock and putting a protective flat hand across his eyes.