But the biggest concern was the man called Reggie Kransk and an admission that the TTC wasn’t as legit as it sounded. There was a massive oil and gas field under the Arctic Ocean which, Florita had implied, would keep the West going on its petroleum habit for several decades.
If Gallen ever got out of his predicament, he was going to start with a person who should have known better than to mess with a former special forces captain. He was going to find Paul Mulligan, and he was going to get some answers.
The noise woke him from his sleep. The fire in the stove had burned down and he listened to its soft hiss, audible above the howl of the wind around the spherical dome.
Looking at his G-Shock beside the cot, he saw it was 9.53 pm, a few hours into nightfall. Ford and Winter were out there somewhere, weathering what sounded like a fifty-mph wind.
Something else niggled at him, but he couldn’t place it. Emerging from the bed, he padded over dry concrete to the wood pile, opened the stove door and put two pieces of wood into the box.
Something made him hold his breath, as if a spider had run up his spine. A faint bang, coming from the garage area of the building. He wasn’t experienced with Arctic storms but it sounded like something more than wind hitting a roller door.
Pulling on his hypothermia suit, which looked like a giant roasting bag for a turkey, he picked up the SIG handgun left to him and moved to the door that sealed the warm room from the draughty building. As he leaned his ear to the door, he heard it again: a thump and then a whir. Someone was opening the garage door?
His heart pounding, Gallen thought of possible explanations. Maybe the hit men in the helo had radioed to their back-up, who were now scouting the area? The snowmobile tracks would have led directly to the Canadian Air Force building.
Checking the SIG for load and safety, Gallen tried to get deep breaths into his lungs without coughing. He needed to stay calm: whoever was entering that garage door had the disadvantage of not knowing the layout.
Slipping into his boots, he moved into the main room of the building, feeling the cold as he crossed the floor, past the old terminals and radar consoles, to the far side, where the garage was located. The lights were down, a faint illumination coming from the bunk room where Gallen had left one bulb burning.
The roller door clanked and then the building was filled with the noise of a snowmobile, revving above the sound of the garage door coming down again as men yelled at one another.
Ripping open the door, Gallen held the SIG in cup-and-saucer, keeping his forehead lined up with the gun as he scanned for unfriendlies.
A light went on. He was blinded momentarily then realised it was Winter at the light switch, sheets of ice falling off him like a barn in spring. Ford was huddled over the snow patrol capsule behind the snowmobile.
‘What the fuck?’ said Gallen, moving into the garage which was now wet with snow and ice.
Ignoring Gallen, Winter moved to Ford’s side and then they were lifting something out of the capsule.
‘Quick, boss,’ said the Canadian as they marched past. ‘Get another foil bag, woollen blankets.’
Shutting out the cold from the garage, Gallen followed the two men into the bunk room, where the heat was sealed in again as he shut the insulated door.
Unzipping a foil emergency bag, Gallen handed it over as Ford tore open what had been a folded tent and was now a covering of some sort.
‘Get a double bag,’ said Ford.
Gallen saw a body beneath the tent, Ford and Winter tearing wet clothes from it.
‘In the bunk,’ said Winter as Gallen unzipped a double hypothermia blanket. ‘Quick!’
Panting with exertion and panic, red-faced with cold, the Australian and Canadian got the naked body into the rustling metallic bag alongside Gallen, making him flinch at the shock of incredibly cold skin. As they fastened the hypothermia blanket he saw glimpses of the body, bluish pale, translucent with cold, dark hair in a tangle around a handsome face.
‘Florita?’ said Gallen as Ford and Winter wove woollen blankets around the duo.
‘Correct,’ said Winter, lock-jawed with cold as he raced to the stove where he checked the coffee pot for contents and put it on the front burner.
Ford’s jaws clattered as he pulled pills from his medical kit and forced them into the woman’s mouth, his hands as stiff as timber.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gallen, as he felt her wet hair against his face.
‘You don’t have to.’ Winter’s face was a mask of exhaustion and worry. ‘Let’s call it a miracle and not push our luck.’
CHAPTER 27
Florita’s pulse was faint and slow against Gallen’s mouth, which Ford had encouraged him to place on her neck. It was eight o’clock in the morning and Gallen wanted to use the washroom almost as much as he wanted to remove himself from the embarrassing physical intimacy.
‘She needs all the warm contact she can get,’ said the Aussie, kneeling beside the cot with his stethoscope. Pulling back the blanket, he listened to the woman’s heart and then restored her sleeping arrangement.
‘She’s alive,’ Gallen whispered.
‘Yeah, she’s doing better than the alternative,’ said Ford, rummaging in his medic’s kit. ‘But there’s no substitute for sharing bodily warmth. Can you hang on for a couple of hours, at least until she regains consciousness?’
Gallen agreed and tried not to move as Winter returned from the shower cubicle and warmed himself against the stove.
‘One of you going to tell me why you’re here with Florita, not halfway to Baker Lake?’
‘Shit.’ Ford shook his head slightly as he selected a vial and a syringe. ‘Florita happened.’
‘We were half an hour east when we saw the flare,’ said Winter. ‘It was coming from the Challenger so we headed back, looking for Durville.’
‘And?’
‘Durville was dead.’
Ford injected something into Florita’s neck. ‘We headed out again and there was another flare — a green burster — coming from up behind the lookout.’
Gallen felt a wave of guilt. ‘Shit, she was up there?’
‘Found her in a snow cave, dug down,’ said Winter. ‘She wouldn’t have survived in the open.’
‘That was her last flare,’ said Ford. ‘What a tough chick.’
When Florita had stabilised, Gallen climbed out of the hypothermia bag, had a hot shower and dressed in dry thermals and clothes. The three of them sat at the table as the executive slept.
Gallen sipped coffee. ‘Okay, so what did you do with Durville?’
‘Buried him,’ said Winter, lighting a smoke.
‘Can we find him?’
‘Right beside Donny,’ said Winter. ‘You wanna make sure you can hand back a body?’
‘Something like that.’
‘We grabbed his bag.’
Gallen paused. ‘His bag?’
‘Yeah,’ said Winter. ‘You didn’t see that thing he was clutching in the fuselage?’
‘Thought he was trying to stay warm,’ said Gallen.
Winter smiled. ‘When we found him, it was wound around him so tight I thought he’d been strangled.’
The bag was a satchel-style leather briefcase with a shoulder strap. Gallen dragged it across the table. Pulling out the contents, he placed them on the table: the ream of white foolscap paper was slightly damp. Feeling the outside pockets, Gallen came up with a BlackBerry, a charger and a Bluetooth earpiece-mic. Pushing the on-off button, Gallen started the device but it immediately asked for a password.
‘Have a go at that,’ he said, passing the BlackBerry to Ford.
Picking up the papers, Gallen scanned them one by one. The top sheet was a weekly run-down of Durville’s movements and appointments, printed from an Outlook program — Florita’s, judging by the tiny signature line on the bottom of the page. All of the entries duplicated what was on Gallen’s own running sheet. As he put down the sheet though, a name caught his eye, one that he hadn’t seen before: Tommy Tumchak, followed by a phone number.