‘Pretty well preserved,’ said Ford. ‘This is high-quality stuff. It’s US Navy spec.’
When Ford and Winter returned from the garage workshop, they’d filled the tanks with air from the compressor and found a flashlight that was not as strong as the modern ones, but which was the only one on the base. They also had a selection of tools that they would use to remove the Harris military radio without damaging it too much.
Directing Winter into the rubberised thermal undergarments, Ford laughed at the other man’s idea that only one frogman needed to dive.
‘Something you landlubbers gotta know,’ he said with a wink as he stretched the rubber vest over his head and pulled it down. ‘If you have the choice, you always dive with a buddy. It’s the first rule of diving’
Winter’s thermal pants wouldn’t sit properly on his hips and when Ford had to wrench the vest down, there was a one-inch gap between the top and bottoms.
‘Geez, you’re a big bastard,’ said Ford. ‘You should be okay when we get the dry suit on.’
Stepping into the silvery dry suit, Winter tugged on the leggings but they wouldn’t pull up far enough. ‘Shit. We got a bigger one?’
‘This is it,’ said Ford. ‘But you can’t wear that. You won’t be able to move.’
‘Need someone more your size, eh Mike?’ said the Canadian.
Looking from Ford to Winter and back again, Gallen tried not to grimace. He believed that a commanding officer should only ask of his men what he was prepared to do himself. And he’d come up with this crazy idea.
‘You’re, what?’ Ford looked Gallen up and down. ‘Five-eleven, one-ninety, two hundred?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ mumbled Gallen.
Ford smiled. ‘You’re up, boss.’
Winter drove the spike into the hard ice with a large sledgehammer, steam bursting from his fur-lined hood as he worked the four-foot length of steel in far enough to hold two men.
Tying off the rope under the spike’s flange, Winter threw it over the edge and onto the lake at the iced-over point where the helicopter had sunk two nights earlier.
Gallen coughed. The cold air was going down hard, his infected lungs not ready for the intense, paralysing temperature. The cold tore at the exposed flesh on his face, whistling at the wound in his cheek and attacking the broken teeth in his bare gums. The rest of him was insulated against the cold by the dry suit, a partially air-filled rubberised garment that started at insulated booties, enveloped the hands in gloves and ended in a waterproof hood that covered his entire head save for a rectangle that exposed his eyes, nose and mouth.
Gallen was over the edge first, the cold oozing through the booties as he struggled for a grip on the ice cliff. Giving up the idea of abseiling against that cliff, he opted for an adaptive rappel, sliding down the rope, bouncing off the ice cliff-face.
Hearing a shout, he looked up into the blue sky where Ford was leaning over the edge. ‘Don’t burn your gloves,’ said the Aussie, louder than he had to. ‘They need to be sealed when we hit the drink.’
The weight bore down on him and Gallen took it as slow as possible, trying to preserve his gloves. After two minutes of exertion, he hit the ice ledge beside the lake, exhausted already. Heaving for breath, which triggered a hacking coughing fit, he doubled over and tried to spit out phlegm. Then he tugged on the rope and waited for Ford.
Holding the rope steady, Gallen looked across the lake, a long piece of still water which was about a quarter of a mile across and maybe three miles long. The shore ice crushed up against the cliff, having repaired itself over the hole created by the helicopter, and Gallen looked for the hole they’d have to dive through.
The rope came down and he unclipped the scuba rigs and pulled the rope, which was retrieved quickly. Then Ford was on the line, ankles crossed over on the thick rope as he wormed his way down. If Gallen had been an instructor at Pendleton, he’d have given Ford a nine out of ten; he’d have given himself a three and a bawling-out.
Ford landed, his tool bag across his shoulder and flashlight clipped to his weight belt. After checking and rechecking the regulators, breathers, mouthpieces and masks, Ford picked up a set of fins and jammed them under Gallen’s weight belt.
Gallen shrugged into the scuba tank harness held by the Aussie and allowed him to come around and buckle the rig across his chest so it was tight. The air was at about minus thirty and Gallen was having a mild panic attack about going into that water. He’d completed the Marine Corps Combatant Dive School, but he’d never really used the training in operations because he’d been sent to Mindanao instead. It didn’t matter that he knew he could dive in the dark; this was different. This was Arctic diving with lungs that had just been drained of fluid. And he was scared of how his body would react, that the old Marines’ mind-over-matter approach would not be enough with pleurisy in his lungs.
‘We have to go through that?’ said Gallen, anxiety creeping over him as he pointed across the shore ice to a gap between two floes. It was a hundred and fifty feet from the shore.
‘That’s it,’ said Ford, testing the ice with his bootie-clad foot.
A breath of wind flashed across the frozen lake, so cold Gallen felt it could peel off his face, nose-first.
‘Shit,’ he said, looking away from the wind, feeling like he’d been fed the world’s worst brain-freeze. Pain exploded in his sinuses and he held his hands over his nose, trying to regain composure as tears ran off his face and mucus poured out of his nose. ‘Holy fuck.’
Tying a bowline, Ford attached the main rope to his waist and tied a thin line between himself and Gallen. They walked across the creaking ice, the sound of the lake lapping beneath it as creepy a sound as Gallen had ever heard. His anxiety rose as they got closer to the hole in the ice, a pulse banging in his head.
Following Ford’s lead, Gallen sat on the ice and put his feet in the water. The cold shot was instant, such a sudden sensation that he saw stars.
Ford looked at him. ‘You’ve done this before, right, boss?’ he said as they pulled on their fins. ‘I mean, Force Recon and all that. Just tell me if I’m teaching you to suck eggs.’
Gallen gulped down the stress and thought about transferring the adrenaline into positive action, not fear.
‘Yeah, I’ve dived before,’ he said. ‘Just not under the ice.’
‘It’s basic. Just follow my lead and stay focused.’
Gallen nodded but Ford shook his head. ‘No, I mean it. You let your mind wander down there and you’ll drift away. The cold’ll do that, so stay close and stay focused on the job. It helps, believe me.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen, as they pulled the fins over their booties.
Ford looked at the G-Shock on his wrist over the dry suit and turned his body towards the spot where the helo had sunk. It was Gallen’s watch, on loan to Ford so the Aussie could make a compass-navigated swim back to the site of the helo.
‘Lids down,’ said Ford, and they pulled down their masks, which formed a seal around the facial gap in their hoods. In theory, at least, no water should break that seal.
‘Mouthpiece in, boss, and then three-breath test.’
Gallen did as he was told and gave the thumbs-up. His heart banged erratically in his temples and he heard Ford yell ‘Divers below’ to Winter, who stood on the cliff.
Then Ford was tapping him on the shoulder and showing two fingers. The Aussie slid off the ice shelf into the freezing abyss, the ropes following him like snakes. And then, as though in a nightmare, Gallen was leaning forward, the water claiming him like an ice-demon.
CHAPTER 29
The sound of his own screams would have deafened him if any sound was able to escape his throat. The cold lake water wrapped around Gallen’s chest, throat and head like an angry squid and tried to choke the life out of him as he drifted in the first few seconds of the dive. Feeling virtually paralysed, he did what Ford had suggested and focused on what was in front of him and kept it real simple: follow the leader, don’t lose eyes on the man in front, don’t panic.