After leaving her with his usual “I’ll see ya when I see ya”, he had gone to find his dogs. He discovered Shep and the huskies in their usual quarters with the other dogs in the kennels near the generator building. When he saw his master, Shep barked a happy hello, pacing behind the chain link.
Henry talked to his dogs for a few minutes, promising them he’d be with them the next day. “Hold ’er down, Shep,” he said before he went back to his bed. He’d had to ask the nurse for a shot to sleep. When she turned out the lights and left, he could see lights far out on the ice. He suspected that the Navy, guided by his story and his map, were searching the ice by air, but finding nothing. He guessed they would soon be back at his bedside asking him for more help.
And now he was discovering that he’d been dead right.
At dawn, only moments after he’d finished dressing, he found himself being hustled, despite his pain and complaints, into a Cobra helicopter. A few minutes after lifting off he was handed a cup of warm coffee and an ice-cold powdered donut by way of breakfast. Soon he was retracing his path back to the site of his encounter with the terrorists.
“How am I going to recognize the place from up here?” he protested after they’d been gone only fifteen minutes. “It all looks the same from this high up.”
Kai Grimes sat behind Henry, listening carefully to everything he said. “Would it help if we flew lower?”
“It might,” shouted Henry over the roar of the rotors.
“But we’ll have to double back and start over. I might be able to see my tracks.”
The pilot looked over his shoulder at Grimes and the general and received a nod. The copter banked and headed back towards McMurdo.
This time they flew low and more slowly. After only a few minutes Henry saw the tracks his team had made coming into McMurdo. He gave a thumb’s-up. “This might work, General.”
The Cobra flew less than fifty feet above the ice. From here Henry was able to see the tracks in spite of a light snow covering from the night before. After more than five years on the ice, Henry knew the area around McMurdo well, and he had learned to notice the most subtle of topographic features. Frequent references to the compass, paying close attention to the subtleties of the landscape, and developing the habit of frequently checking to see where one has been — all these are essential to survival and navigation on the ice. Every upheaval and crack in the ice is a major landmark, noticed and stored in the mind for later reference.
As they flew low over the ice he relived every detail of his painful journey. The task of guiding the Navy to the site of his encounter with the terrorists was less daunting than he had anticipated. Soon he saw the fissure he’d had to make a detour to cross.
“There you are, you bastard,” he said softly. The pilot heard, and looked back at him for a cue. “Hang a right and follow that crack for a mile or so,” said Henry.
He studied the deep fissure, hoping it hadn’t changed too much since he’d been here. He looked for the widest opening as a clue to where he’d encountered it. Finally identifying the spot, he tapped the pilot’s arm and pointed. When he’d changed course to follow the crack his sled had made a fairly noticeable scar in the snow.
The pilot spotted it easily enough, and the trail leading out into the ice field beyond. With a sickening tilt the chopper turned to follow the trail.
Henry hated flying, particularly in helicopters. Most of the flying he’d done had been in association with bad news. The big exception was when he’d flown to Paris for his honeymoon with Tess. That had been a wonderful experience. But just about every other time he’d flown… The last time had been the worst — the loss of everyone he loved. Helicopters were less familiar to him, but they too were linked in his mind to traumatic situations — rescue operations, evacuations from dangerous ice. He preferred trudging through the snow with his dogs over any other mode of travel. For him it was always an adventure.
As he traced his path across the Ross Ice Shelf, the details of his journey returned: every time he’d fall en, where he’d made camp or stopped to rest; all the moments of pain and effort were written in the snow. As they neared the site of his encounter, his anger at the slaughter of his beloved dogs returned full — force. It made him more resolute than ever that he’d find the place and help the Navy kick some terrorist ass.
Watching the landscape pass, he tried to remember the faces of the faux-Norwegians. He’d described them to the Navy as well as he could, but realized that what he’d been able to verbalize was of little help.
The terrorists had worn dark blue parkas with Norwegian flags on one arm. Little else of their attire had seemed remarkable. And, with hoods covering everything but their faces, all Henry had been able to see was the faces themselves. He hadn’t even been able to tell their hair colour, except that one of the men, the apparent leader, the bastard who had shot him, had a greying, well trimmed beard.
The ground continued to speed by below. He noticed the place he’d camped and pointed to it. “I followed a compass line from the time I left here. The trail should run straight to the site,” he said to the general.
Hayes nodded and told the pilot to speed up a little.
Then he turned to the SEAL. “Lieutenant,” he said, “if we find the site you’ll drop Mr Gibbs and me off so we can look around. Then I want you to fly on a ways and trace the path of the terrorists.”
He turned back to Henry. “We’ve got three gunships ready to nail your ‘Norwegians’ as soon as we know a possible search area. Twenty men carrying heavy equipment shouldn’t be too hard to find. Meanwhile I have NORAD and NASA looking into satellite imagery to see if anything’s on film.”
Henry nodded. “You know, General, it might not be a bad idea to have some artist try to reconstruct what these… terrorists… I saw looked like.”
“I’m afraid we’re ahead of you on that. You’re scheduled to talk to a sketch artist being flown in by jet from Washington.” Hayes laughed. “It should be the ride of his life. To save time we decided to use an F-18 to get him here. Mid-air refuelling — the works. We even put a diaper on him.”
Everyone joined in the laughter but Henry. All he could manage was a vague smile, and then his mind drifted back to his encounter. Over and over he relived it, trying to etch the faces into his mind. Somehow he could forgive the strangers for shooting him, but he couldn’t forgive the murder of his dogs. The dogs had been just innocent bystanders.
Finally the trail came to an end. Henry looked to the south and spotted the ice hill. “This is it, General Hayes,” he said. “Put her down right here.”
The place looked deserted.
As Henry walked over the area, the horror of his encounter with the terrorists returned to him. He wondered how Shep would react if he were here.
The general had already found something. He held it up for Henry to see.
“My granola wrapper,” said Henry. “There should be two.”
The general waved and pointed, then walked a few paces and picked up another. “Here’s number two!”
Henry and Hayes had been alone for about twenty minutes. The Cobra, under orders from the general, had gone hunting the terrorists’ trail. Henry could still see it as a black dot above the horizon.
The general deployed a balloon, anchoring its tether to the ice. Boosted aloft by a small canister of helium, the orange bubble grew until it was twice as big as a basketball and then lifted into the sky. Henry noticed a small instrument package the size of a hand grenade hanging beneath the balloon; he assumed it was a radio beacon.