‘We were on an EXIT flight, damn it. That means no one but EXIT’ll go near it. Get these bloody cuffs off.’
As they set him free he yelled, ‘And get the guns.’
43
WASTELAND
He expected them to strafe the tent, was surprised as the rotor slap became more distant. He struggled into his boots and ventiles, dragging at closures and zips.
Mullins had released the drawstring and had his head outside the tent. ‘Big twin.’
‘Shift arse.’ Jakov hauled him back and stuck his own head through the widening hole. ‘Is Sikorsky S–76.’
ANARE, the Australian Antarctic Division, used those, Cain knew. But even give-it-a-go Aussies wouldn’t meddle with an EXIT crash. ‘Colour?’
‘Orange and black stripe.’
‘It’s Alpha,’ Cain said.
‘How they find us?’
‘Could be an EPIRB on the plane — probably still transmitting on the aircraft emergency frequency. But there’d be an EXIT classification on the signal.’
‘Guns.’
Mullins lifted the matting off the air mattress that formed the tent floor. He pulled out the two M–40s and slung one to Jakov who struggled from the tent.
Cain got his head outside into the gold-grey light of morning. The chopper hovered far across the sea of snow against cirrus that radiated from the horizon like a fan. They’d taken a risk, he thought. They were a long way from base and pushing it.
The extreme clearness of Antarctic air made everything deceptive. The view across the compacted snow could have stretched for 60 miles, or 12, to the milky haze where ice joined sky.
Bell, Raul and Hunt were bunkered in a scour that had formed behind a piece of severed wing. Bell had the sniper’s rifle and looked keen to use it. He called to Cain, ‘What’s going down?’
‘I’d say it’s a recce. They’ll be asking Alpha for instructions. The wheels are up. So they’re not going to land.’
‘Can we negotiate with them?’ Raul warmed his gloved hands under his armpits. ‘If they think their plane crew’s alive…’
‘They wouldn’t give a toss. Lots of Herc crews around. They want us dead.’
‘So what’ll they tell their base?’ Bell asked.
‘Good news and bad news. We didn’t escape but the Herc’s a wreck. They’ll report armed survivors. Then Alpha’ll freak and order them home.’ He pointed to the S–76, now a distant hovering speck. ‘That’s an all-weather, long-range job worth 2.5 million second-hand. They should fly them in pairs but they’re stretched for planes so they’ve sent it out alone. And there’s no way they’ll let them up the risk by scrapping with us.’ He shrugged. ‘When we’re dead, they’ll come back for our bodies. In a year they’ll mount a traverse — salvage engines, avionics…’
‘Which leaves us where?’ Raul rumbled.
‘Still dead.’
The chopper circled away, climbing, and soon was out of sight. The silence of the lifeless ice-scape, unfit for any warm-blooded animal, pressed in on them again. Raul slapped his mittens together. ‘Well I don’t intend to die here. So I suggest we hit the road.’
Hunt’s look of derision. ‘How?’
‘In the tracked vehicle. I prefer being driven in warmth to walking in the cold.’
Bell said, ‘Exactly. Exactly. One side of the front cabin’s wrecked but we could patch that to protect against the wind. The tracks are okay.’
Cain said, ‘And how will you thaw the engine?’
‘Huh?’
‘Thaw me first,’ Raul said. ‘I need hot food. Cain, you’re joining us for a working breakfast. Mullins, Jakov, check our guests and get them fed.’
Cain bundled into the tent with Raul, Bell and Hunt. She already had oats swimming in half-melted snow. They took their parkas off in the comparative warmth, sat awkwardly, desperate to eat.
Bell tried to pick ice off his brows, looked at Cain. ‘If the engine’s an ice block, how do we start the vehicle?’
‘On traverse, you’d plug it into a generator for two hours or use a Herman Nelson in condition one. But we don’t have those items.’
‘What if we soaked something combustible in aviation fuel, made a shielded fire under it and…?’
‘You don’t light a match near a Hagg,’ Hunt said with disgust. ‘Do you know the flashpoint of JP8?’
‘Well, the plane’s engines have generators. Wouldn’t the APU drive them?’
‘If it’s not wrecked,’ Cain said, ‘and you could hot-wire it. If you’re an aircraft electrician, go for it.’
‘I don’t care how you do it,’ Raul snapped. ‘Just get us moving.’
‘To where?’
He looked at Cain nastily. ‘What?’
‘I know where we are.’ Bell reached beside the cooking box and pulled out a map. ‘I found this with the navigator’s stuff.’ He unfolded the map, spread it across their knees, pointed to a pencil mark. ‘We’re here. I’ve double-checked the GPS coordinates.’
Cain examined the mark — some 400 kilometres from the pole of relative inaccessibility. ‘Great. Couldn’t be further from anywhere. So, forgetting Alpha, your nearest chance is…’ He ran his finger toward the coast. ‘… Asuka, a Jap base over 800 kilometres away.’
Hunt distributed mugs. ‘You couldn’t carry the fuel. Even if you struck no sastrugi…’
Bell held out his mug for hot chocolate. ‘What’s that?’
‘Wind-scoured snow ridges. They can get as big as tank traps. So if you didn’t strike those and got a litre per kilometre, you’d need 800 litres. It’d be closer to a kilolitre. That’s 220 gallons.’ She frowned, working it out. ‘Five 44-gallon drums.’
‘And we don’t have the fuel.’ Bell looked glum.
‘Yes you do. The Hagg’ll run on JP8. It runs turbines and diesels, too. And the plane’s inboard tanks are full of it.’
‘So we could siphon it out?’
Cain extended his mug. ‘Into what?’
‘There are drums in the plane,’ Raul said. ‘Certainly not five.’
Now Bell was a dog with a bone. ‘How much do the vehicle’s fuel tanks hold?’
Cain looked at Hunt. Haggs hadn’t been around in his day.
She frowned, trying to remember. ‘It has two 80-litre tanks plus the two jerry cans on the front of the back cab with about 20 litres each. So that’s 200 litres.’
‘There must be things we can use as containers.’ Bell’s eyes sparkled. ‘Like water containers in the plane’s galley or…’
Hunt glanced at Cain. Her look said ‘fingies’.
He said, ‘Even if we got it started, loaded with fuel and ten people…’
‘Now you’ve got the spirit,’ Raul said. Hot chocolate had cheered him remarkably.
‘… and we don’t slot it the first day, how do we warm it next morning?’
Bell said brightly, ‘Never shut down. Drive night and day. Drivers take shifts.’
‘I see. So you’re going to have someone walking ahead all night, probing with an ice axe?’
‘No,’ Raul said. ‘Life is risk and the riskiest policy is never to take risks. We drive fast, steer by intuition.’
Hunt snorted. ‘It’s lost a headlight and searchlights on one side. And you’re going to drive at night?’
Raul looked coldly at his nemesis. ‘If we drove twenty-four hours a day, how long would it take us?’
‘If you averaged 20 kilometres an hour, you’d do it in 40 hours.’ She sipped her drink. ‘But you could strike a patch where you could only average 10 kilometres a day.’
‘Still, it’s theoretically possible?’
‘Theoretically,’ Cain said. ‘Except that blizzards here can get up to 200 kilometres an hour.’
‘We haven’t struck one yet,’ Raul said.
‘This is a sucker break. It’ll come.’
‘The thing has radios,’ Bell said. ‘And radar.’