“Oh fu—” Max bit his lip, as a bullet drilled a deep hole in the front bumper, sending a few metal slivers above his head. “That numbskull almost whacked me.”
“You’re a lucky dude.” Neville snorted and fired two rounds. “So, we’re out of here or what?”
“I’m not sure. I’m still talking to Justin.” Joe frowned at Neville, who shrugged and kept pulling the trigger of his Let Støttevåben. “You were saying, Justin?” Joe said, his back pressed against the truck’s front wheel.
“Kiawak’s wounded. Nilak may be dead by now.” Justin sighed heavily. “I need to get them out of there.”
“Are we going on with the explosion?”
“How far along are you? Three, four more charges?”
“Actually, it’s only one more, but we can blast ‘em right away, if need be.”
Justin paused to mull over this information. “Even if you do set them off, the chances of the ice shattering all the way around are not that good, are they?”
“I don’t know,” Joe replied. “We’ll cause a huge blast on our side, but without Kiawak’s explosives I doubt the ice sheet will cave in entirely. Can’t Kiawak fire them up from where he is?”
“He said he could do that, but they’re three charges short.”
“That’s a hundred and fifty. Crap!”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna work.”
“How about sending someone else to finish the job?”
“The area’s too hot,” Justin replied. “At this point, I can’t send other men. Even a rescue mission is going to be difficult. Hey, where are you going?”
“What?” Joe asked, confused about Justin’s question. “I’m still here.”
“Come back here,” Justin shouted.
“What? What did you say? Whom are you talking to?”
“I’ve got to call you back, Joe.”
“No, wait, what do we do? Huh? He’s gone.” Joe groaned.
Neville looked up at Joe for a second. “My girlfriend does that to me all the time, hanging up on me and shit.” He placed his left eye once again on his machine gun’s scope.
“I ordered you to stop.” Justin followed Amaruq, who kept marching toward his snowmobile. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I’m saving Kiawak’s ass, since no one else seems to give a damn about him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard you talk to Joe on the radio about the rescue being difficult and all that bullcrap.”
“I didn’t say we’re not gonna help him.”
“Yeah, right. You stay here and talk, while I’ll show you how it’s done.” He turned his back to Justin, proceeding to start his snowmobile.
“Amaruq, I can’t let you do this. It’s suicide.” Justin stepped in front of the snowmobile. Amaruq was busy tying his rifle to one of the saddles.
“Well, in that case, you have to shoot me ‘cause I ain’t staying here and watch my friend die.”
Amaruq fired off the throttle. Justin sighed, staring at the M-16 in his hands. He held Amaruq’s dark blue eyes for a moment, realizing he was powerless against the storm brewing in the old man’s soul.
“Fine.” Justin began to move aside. “Just pick up Kiawak and his men and get back right away. Don’t even think about—”
His last words were lost amidst the snowmobile’s engine blast. Amaruq hacked his way into a snowbank and down the steep hillside.
Amaruq avoided the crooked trails plodded by the trucks’ tires. He cut through the snow as far away from the Danes as the broken and rugged permafrost would allow him. At first, he slalomed in a regular pattern, with slow, circular turns and rare jumps, as he dodged ice hills, rock boulders, and snow crevasses. Aware of his vulnerable position as he approached the enemy flanks alone, Amaruq picked up speed. At the same time, he shifted into a largely dangerous and mostly improvised descent. Sharp S curves, swift zigzag maneuvers and random leaps over rifts, as well as increased cover fire from Justin and his men, allowed Amaruq to swoop unharmed close to Kiawak’s jammed truck.
“Fifty more feet, you can do it,” Amaruq whispered to himself, hanging onto the handlebar while the snowmobile sprang over a pressure ridge and landed on an ice patch. “Crap,” he swore, his body bouncing on the seat.
The snowmobile kept sliding and swerving, in danger of tipping over at any moment. His fingernails clawed through his gloves, as he tried to cling to the tottering vehicle. The left ski had broken off as a result of a bad landing. The sled was now tilting to that side. He steered to the right to counterbalance the drag and felt the snowmobile losing traction. The rubber’s probably broken or one of the lugs is damaged. He was not in control of the snowmobile any more.
A barrage of bullets scrapped the ice a few feet in front of him. Amaruq ducked. His head was at the same level as the snowmobile’s windshield. He released the throttle and tapped the brakes, seeking cover behind a tall mound of ice boulders. Then, he screamed in pain from a sharp stab in his right arm. A bullet struck him by the elbow.
“Ah.”
It was all Amaruq could grumble before finding himself airborne and rolling to his side in midair before plunging head first into a deep snowbank, a few feet away from a large crevasse in the snow.
Carrie completed a small circle around the Twin Otter. The airplane needed a much larger space to perform any rotational maneuvers and a much longer time frame. On the other hand, the Seahawk could change its direction in a matter of seconds. But the airplane had the upper hand if it came to a straight-line pursuit because of its two powerful turboprop engines.
Understanding the Seahawk’s weakness, Carrie zigzagged left and right, climbing and dropping constantly, avoiding a fatal fall in the crosshairs of her pursuers, and always maintaining a safe distance of no less than three thousand feet. Beyond the maximum fire range of medium-caliber weapons, she felt relatively confident when playing cat and mouse with the airplane. If they had any rockets or missiles, they would have launched them by now.
The altimeter locked the Seahawk’s position at nine hundred feet above ground. Carrie searched the entire battleground for the best location to bury the enemy airplane. She noticed two trucks far to the sides and assumed they were the teams of Kiawak and Joe. Carrie looked through the helicopter’s camera mounted at the tip of the fuselage. The image on the screen was grayish and somewhat blurry, but she recognized human silhouettes spread out in fighting positions in trenches or stretched without moving on the snow.
She veered to her left, dropping about eighty feet and glanced at her radar screen, looking for the Twin Otter. It was still behind her. She glanced again at the field below, this time through the windshield, and noticed a quick moving dot darting over the snowbanks and the ice mounds. What on earth is that? Puzzled by the discovery, she dove in for a better look. At three hundred feet, the shape of the object became clear. A snowmobile is all Justin has for backup?
Carrie tapped the throttle and the Seahawk responded with a swift ascent. The Twin Otter repeat the same maneuver, but at a slower pace. She reached for the radio just as the snowmobile slammed right into a snowbank, dropping out of sight. What the hell just happened? Did he get shot or lost control of the sled?
“Hey, Justin, come in.”
“Carrie, where are you?” Justin replied.
“About half a mile to the left of the field. Can you see me?”
“I can’t see anything. We’re being hammered here and almost out of ammo.”
“I hear you.”
Carrie made a quick right turn.
“I was planning to drop the Otter over the enemy to help with the explosion.”