Panting for his life, he decided to go up. With a hard pull, he tore the final connecting cable out of the back of the radio and placed the unit in his bag. Then he started his ascent. After thirty seconds of slowly rising, he felt less pressure on his chest and could see the ice above. He stopped, trod water and looked at the G-Shock he had swapped with Ford; unable to use the buttons to make a countdown clock, he counted three minutes off the display. To his left he could see a set of scuba tanks suspended in the water, being jiggled like a huge tea bag. It was Ford marking Gallen’s escape route.
His mind played tricks as he trod water and looked at the G-Shock, and then he was dreaming: dreams of childhood, of being in the jungle. A dream about hitting the ice in a game they once played in Gillette, when Gallen’s cheek was split open and he lay there on the cold, concussed and coming to with the arena ice for a pillow.
The ice! The cold! The feeling he could sleep forever…
Opening his eyes, Gallen realised he’d stopped treading water and that he was sinking slightly. Shit! He’d fallen asleep.
Releasing the small valve on the chest of the dry suit, he let air out of the suit and kicked upwards, hoping he’d decompressed all he had to. He’d forgotten what time it was when he checked the watch.
Making it to the hole in the ice, he didn’t have the strength even to break the water. Then he felt the rope pulling him up out of the hole and into the cold sunshine, where he flopped onto the ice like a sack of salt.
The mouthpiece was ripped away and then his mouth was being cleared and his tanks pulled off and he was gasping, coughing. As he twisted and turned onto his knees, he vomited, the action forcing blood into his face with excruciating pain.
Taking the bag from him, Ford helped Gallen across the ice, both of them stumbling to the ice cliff, their joints frozen stiff, their blood sluggish in their veins. Winter looked down from the cliff and Gallen could see that the main line was now attached to the rear bar of the snowmobile. Tying them on together, leaving the scuba gear on the shore ice, Ford waved to the Canadian and then they were being pulled up the ice wall, bouncing against it as they were hoisted up and over the precipice by the snowmobile. Winter untied the rope and accelerated back to the divers, who lay in the snow, exhausted.
Gallen felt himself being loaded into the rescue capsule and then they were travelling, a deep warm sleep finally enveloping him like a drug.
CHAPTER 30
Sitting on a cot with his back to the wall, Gallen sipped on black tea, the coffee having run out as the last scavenged food was about to. He felt a little stunned and the dive in the lake had left him unable to hear very well.
Lying under blankets in the cot beside him, Florita turned away from the old Sports Illustrated she’d been reading.
‘So, this building was part of a line?’
‘The Pentagon wanted a line of radar stations that would give an early warning to our air force bases, allow us to scramble fighter jets against the Soviets,’ said Gallen. ‘The only place that line would work would be across the Canadian Arctic, over to Greenland I think.’
Florita made a face. ‘Sounds like a Maginot Line. It was a success?’
‘Don’t remember any big US cities being visited by missiles,’ said Gallen, getting a smile from Florita. ‘They started shutting them down in the mid-1980s.’
‘And shut down the radios too, huh?’
Gallen looked at the table in the middle of the room, where Ford and Winter were working on the Harris. The Harris was the radio unit carried by most Western combat forces, whether you were special forces, artillery or logistics. It had a design so basic that most Vietnam War veterans would be able to operate the modern ones, and they had a reputation of being able to go to hell and back and still be reliable.
‘That radio was in a frozen lake for twenty-four hours,’ said Florita. ‘Do you guys really think it will work again?’
‘I was once in the field,’ said Ford, as he held up a component and blew on it. ‘An APC ran over our Manpack, and twenty minutes later our comms guy had us back on the net. He didn’t buy a drink for two weeks after that.’
‘What’s a Manpack?’ said Florita.
Ford pointed to the parts arrayed in front of him. ‘This is the Manpack, the Harris we’re all trained on in the forces. They had one mounted in the chopper.’
‘The antenna going to be a problem?’ asked Gallen.
‘Think I got the solution,’ said Winter, picking up a long piece of metal.
He’d stripped down a piece of aluminium window frame as an antenna and Ford had wired it into the Harris.
‘This is looking okay,’ said Ford, clicking a dried piece into place and observing the completed machine. ‘Our big worry is the battery, but Kenny’s got that sorted.’
Winter left the room and came back a minute later with the snowmobile’s battery. Hooking it up, Ford made some of the lights work on the radio’s small screen, but he shook his head slowly.
‘I can get a scan going,’ said the Aussie, twirling the switches. ‘But it reverts to the preset.’
No one spoke. The preset from the radio would go to the people who’d tried to kill them.
‘Can we get an emergency channel? What is it? One twenty-one point five?’ said Gallen.
‘That’s civilian aviation emergency,’ said Ford. ‘I can dial that in, but the radio seems to flick us back to presets. We’d broadcast to the emergency channel in bursts.’
Gallen paused. He needed to get this right. ‘What do we know about the presets?’
‘One is hidden. It’s programmed into the Harris as “Home”,’ said Ford. ‘The other is one twenty-three point oh-two-fiver.’
The information clicked in Gallen’s mind. ‘Isn’t that—?’
‘Yes it is,’ said Winter quickly, clearly wanting to avoid worrying Florita.
‘What is it, Gerry? ‘ she said, eyes flashing with annoyance as she sat up. ‘What is this frequency, this preset?’
The men looked at one another, Winter breaking the deadlock. ‘It’s an air-to-air frequency. The one helicopters use.’
They watched her as she processed the information, her face dropping as she realised what it meant. ‘Oh no,’ she said, hand going to her face, which suddenly wore the nightmare of her ordeal in the snow. ‘There’s another helicopter?’
‘That seems to be the case,’ said Gallen.
Tears formed in Florita’s eyes, her hands fidgety. ‘So, so… what do we do? I mean, we can’t just sit here.’
‘We have to put out a call,’ said Gallen. ‘Or we’ll starve.’
Florita’s bravery fell to pieces in front of the three men, her sobs snapping them all back to the reality of their situation. Not every person forced into such circumstances was motivated to keep going till they found a way out. Florita was reality, the rest of them were the aberration, the people who were trained over many years to keep moving regardless of their peril. They’d waited for Florita to talk about her experiences in her own time — the way it was done among men in the field. But Gallen realised his mistake. She was a woman, a civilian, and what they’d taken for bravery may have been trauma and fear.
‘They’re out there!’ said Florita, lips quivering, looking at Gallen. ‘I’m sorry, Gerry, I’m so sorry. I tried to be brave, I’m trying. I—’
Winter gave him the dirtiest look, flicking his head, and Gallen moved to Florita’s cot, put his arm around her shoulders.
‘They won’t hurt you again,’ he said as the high-flying lawyer sobbed and clung to his chest. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
When Florita had succumbed to Ford’s offer of Valium, Gallen tucked her into the cot and joined the men at the table.