He thought about the family farm and Roy, and what he’d have to do to bring the place back into the black. His pay cheques were being diverted into the Sweet Clover account, so the trust lawyer would have some funds to pay the creditors. But Gallen needed a bigger plan than that; he needed to decide what he was going to do with his life, a life no longer owned by the Marine Corps.
As he watched the ground, listening to the increasing howl of the blizzard, the radio headset crackled: Ford was on the line.
‘Good news, boss. Baker Lake Mounties are sending a chopper. They’re advising five hours but they don’t have this weather in town.’
‘You spoken with them?’
‘Yeah. Bloke called Detective Sergeant Jim Ballagh. He asked for the cords but I said I didn’t know — just said it’s a building called CAM fifteen, out in the snow.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Got back three minutes later, said they had the location and were on their way.’
‘What about our friends?’
‘Getting faint chatter but can’t confirm. Could be someone else. You’ll know when I do.’
Swapping shifts with Winter twenty minutes later, Gallen warmed himself by the stove as Ford monitored the radio.
Looking around, Gallen couldn’t see a spare plate of fox stew. ‘She eat it?’ he asked softly.
Ford smiled. ‘Kenny apologised, said he felt terrible about it—’
‘Yes, he did,’ said Florita, sitting up from what looked like a sleep. ‘And I ate it, only because I’m starving.’
Gallen laughed. ‘How was it? ‘
‘About the same as goat.’
‘Well I thought it was better than roo,’ said Ford, and both Gallen and Florita made faces.
‘What’s wrong with kangaroo?’ said Ford, going back to the radio. ‘If it’s good enough for me dogs, it’s good enough for me.’
Thawing out, Gallen noticed something beside the stove, against the wall. It was the aluminium briefcase from the sunken helicopter, now dried out.
Placing it on the table, he flipped the latches and opened the lid. Inside was a black ionised-steel box with a flip-up lid. Opening it, he saw the screen and a keyboard. He knew what this machine was, he just couldn’t put his finger on it.
‘Mike, what’s this?’
Ford looked at it and reached over, pulled out a retractable aerial that extended from behind the box. ‘Location receiver. You follow people or cars or luggage with it.’
Gallen stared at Ford, looked down at it again, his pulse hammering. ‘What could it track?’
Ford left the radio, turned the briefcase towards him and had a closer look at the water-damaged machine. ‘Micro-beacons the size of the smallest watch battery. Standard homing beacons the size of a casino chip. Magnetic beacons that are more the size of a cell phone and give a signal for almost two hundred miles. Transport companies and bus fleets use them.’
‘It’ll track anything?’
Ford nodded. ‘Pretty much. If it gives a signal in the right range, you lock on to it and track it until you lose signal. The Pentagon operates the world’s largest container shipment operation, and it’s all tracked on large versions of that.’
Gallen thought about it: there was nothing to tie Reggie’s people to the attack helo or to the tracking technology. Yet that was the only connection he could see.
What really concerned him was the chance of another merc helo in the vicinity, waiting to complete what the first team couldn’t. They’d have the same locator boxes.
‘What’s up, boss?’ said Ford, getting more static on the Home preset.
‘If the bad guys had beacons on us, then the beacons are probably still among us, right?’
‘Could be,’ said Ford.
They had all the fatigues and weapons on the table inside of thirty seconds, Gallen and Ford picking off the RFDs and throwing them in the fire — the tags on the guns requiring the flat side of a knife, given their solid bonding to the gunmetal.
Taking apart Durville’s BlackBerry, they searched for tags and came up empty. When Winter came down for his break, they stripped the tags off his parka and fatigues, but the only location technology was the RFDs Aaron had claimed were innocent.
Gallen took the next turn as sentry: he wanted Ford working the radio. Taking a look through every hole in the radar dome, he started his routine for keeping the blood moving: gripping his hands, stamping his feet, flapping his arms. The wind was dying and the blizzard abating, but he had the temperature up there in the dome at minus forty, at least.
The blasts of drift made reconnaissance difficult. With the half-light of the northern spring and the rising moon, the light was bouncing strangely off the snow and ice. The noise was still deafening, which was why Gallen missed the first words of Ford’s radio message.
‘Repeat.’
‘That watch with the temperature in it?’ said the Aussie, yelling over the howl of the northerly.
‘What about it?’
‘Donny gave it to me, boss.’
Gallen wasn’t getting it. ‘So?’
‘So it was the only thing that the three of us down here couldn’t vouch for,’ said Ford. ‘We opened it up.’
‘Yep?’
‘There’s a beacon in it. Flat model, like a sticker, with circuitry in it.’
‘Crap,’ said Gallen.
‘Doesn’t sound private, right?’
‘Fuck it,’ said Gallen, not able to help himself. The beacon Ford was describing was used by government intelligence agencies.
Then he was distracted by something through the west-facing hole in the dome. He thought he saw a different kind of light about a hundred yards away, but in the wind-driven drift he couldn’t be sure. Looking harder, he saw a yellowish shading that didn’t fit with the white swirls of snow.
‘Search-and-rescue call lately?’
‘Yeah, boss,’ said Ford. ‘Just told us they’re ten minutes away.’
‘Ten?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Okay, Mike. Send Kenny, tooled up,’ said Gallen, convinced there was an electronic light west of the base.
‘Seen something?’
‘Just send him. You’re staying with the girl,’ said Gallen, breath coming fast and shallow.
‘Wait,’ said the Aussie, his voice breaking up.
‘You there, Mike?’
‘Got traffic on the preset,’ said Ford.
‘What?’
‘Sounds like a pilot. Said, “We’re in position.” Their base told—’
The voice crackled out and there was dead air. Checking the Heckler & Koch for load and safety, Gallen focused through his peephole, wiping the back of his nose with his glove. The yellow glow disappeared and he strained his eyes in the gloom of the moonlight as the dying wind left calm patches between the squalls.
The trapdoor clanged and Winter’s boots sounded on the gantry before the big Canadian squeezed into the dome, panting with the shock of the cold air in his lungs.
‘What’s up?’
‘Possible boogies, your eleven,’ said Gallen, letting Winter get close to the peephole.
‘Don’t see anything,’ said Winter.
‘Keep watching. How’s your mag?’
‘Four-fifths. Yours?’
‘Two-thirds.’ Gallen pushed Winter aside for another look. ‘I saw something out there.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Winter.
Gallen paused, sensing a joke. ‘You know?’
‘Lost you on the radio,’ said Winter.
‘So?’
‘So the Harris went down, too,’ said Winter.
‘Even to search-and-rescue?’
‘That went down first, just after you came up here,’ said Winter, eyes steady