He turned to Hunt. ‘Is the thing in gear?’
‘There’s no park position in the transmission.’ She stomped on the park brake pedal to set the ratchet at the point of furthest depression for maximum stability. Then she called up the back cabin to make sure the others were getting warmth before helping sort out the confusion in the tilted cab. ‘If we run the tanks dry we’ll need the Primuses. Yellow boxes.’
‘Why are you using our fuel?’ Raul complained, shivering like all of them.
‘If you let the engine freeze, what’s the good of fuel?’
He pursed his cracked lips, his hatred for her showing.
‘If you use a Primus in a Hagg,’ Cain added, ‘you’ll do a Zola.’
‘What?’
‘Gas yourself. We need ventilation. This blow could go on for days and bury us.’
A fierce gust made the cab shudder. Above the rumble of the idling diesel, the noise was now a dull booming.
Nothing to do but wait it out.
He checked the blur through the side windows, braced against the engine cover, looked around. The boxes and sacks had been restacked to roughly simulate a level floor, and the people were perched on top of them in the tilting space. Hunt, Mullins and Bell searched among the mess.
Cain got his goggles out of his pocket, adjusted his balaclava. ‘Keep the engine running. I’m worried about the heater hoses.’ He checked his windproofs and hood, hauled his nose-wipers back on. ‘I’m going to check the old man and the temperature in the back.’ He got his hands on the roof hatch. ‘If you need me, there’s the interphone.’
Just then it buzzed. Bell picked it up. ‘No.’ His face clouded. ‘He hasn’t come in here… How long?… Half an hour?… All right.’ He shifted his mouth from the handset. ‘It’s the pope. He says Jakov went out to relieve himself and hasn’t come back.’
Hunt said, ‘Didn’t he know to rope himself up?’
Bell repeated the question into the phone, shook his head, hung up.
‘Well, as you’re popping out, Cain,’ Raul said, ‘you can look for him.’
‘In that?’ Cain laughed. ‘Did you know people down here get lost and freeze to death even between buildings at a base? Even if they have blizz lines? Forget it.’
‘Are you saying we write him off?’
‘He’s your man. You look for him. Just rope yourself to the roof rack and walk in circles till you find him. Except you’ll be blown off your feet. And there won’t be circles because you’ll end down the crack. And you won’t see him till you trip over him. Personally, I pass.’
Bell said, ‘You won’t even look?’
‘I’m heading straight across the roof, hanging on for dear life. If he’s squatting there wiping his arse, I’ll let you know.’
He put both hands on the hatch again.
The others waited for the shock of freezing air.
Hunt grinned. ‘Then there were eight.’
Jakov had given it much thought. He was fastidious about such things. That was why he could never be an airman. Fighter pilots had told him that they often had to pee their pants rather than risk a false move that could cause them to eject themselves. And they were forced to sit in their shit. That’s why the cockpits stank. He wasn’t sure about guys in tanks. As a military man, he knew his place on the totem pole was low. But Antarctica or not, he refused to do it in a bucket in front of a woman and a pope.
He got out, hanging on to the vehicle, and was almost blown away, dropped to all fours for stability. There was nothing to see at all — like the inside of a ping-pong ball. He hugged the tracks of the Hagglunds, worked his way further back, then tried to unzip himself. The mean bitch called Eve had given him toilet paper taken from the plane. Not much. Four wipers and a polisher. He was shivering already, freezing. He’d have to be bloody quick.
He removed his big mittens so he could undo his clothes. Then a gust blew him on his back.
Mittens flying from their harness, ventiles half-undone, he struggled back onto all fours.
The blizz drove steel-hard ice crystals into his ruined face. The vehicle was nowhere in sight. He tried to crawl back in the direction he’d been blown. The Hagg could only be steps away.
Just more whiteness.
As he tried to get his mitts back on, his hood was ripped back by the blast. Snow instantly froze in his hair, and around his eyes. By the time he turned from the hail of ice and dragged the hood back he had no idea of direction.
Then he heard the engine start up.
So close.
The wind tearing at his hood drowned the noise. He turned in a futile attempt to hear it again. Numbness striking at his limbs. His legs were stiff, as if his kneecaps were freezing. Dizzy, confused, breathless, responses blurred and shaking with cold, he crawled into the wind.
And fell into the slot.
There it was warmer, quieter, sheltered. He’d fallen on soft snow. He could see a bit in here — ice walls either side. Not high. And a little ahead, eureka! Blurred like something seen underwater — the underside of the Hagg.
He could hear the engine going.
The slotted tracks were hanging low.
He could reach them and haul himself up.
How lucky could you be?
He crawled underneath the vehicle, rose to his feet…
… and increased his ground pressure.
The false floor collapsed and he plunged 60 metres to his death.
Just before he hit, terror made him soil himself.
45
TRAVERSE
The blow lasted two days.
When the engine stopped, Cain and Mullins roped up and, bodies slow and stiff, off-loaded fuel drums and refilled the tanks. They returned to the front cab, numbed, light-headed with the effort and the cold. The big diesel ran for an hour, then coughed, stopped, wouldn’t even kick. Hunt told them that the fuel injection could have been damaged by frozen condensate.
They switched to Tilley lamps, Primus stoves and spent much of their waking hours cooking. The cabins stank of pemmican, salami, kerosene, human waste and fuel. By now they were filthy, ravenous, half-delirious and personal modesty was impossible.
Cain left the grim-faced militia in the front cab and went back to Eve, Nina and the pope. They were trying to beat layers of frost from between their inner and outer sleeping bags but the stuffing had frozen, too.
Despite the hardships, the pope still had his sense of humour. When Eve asked if he’d seen the All Blacks he replied that he hadn’t studied secular religions.
After they gulped down food, they crawled into the stiff, chilly bags and the trapped ice melted with their body heat. They slept in damp, woke with aching backs — only to be showered from the tilted roof with their own frosted breath.
Eve moaned, ‘I feel like death. I stink, can’t breathe. And no one told me I’d have to defecate in front of a pope.’
John said, ‘I haven’t been looking.’
‘But you can smell. Oh God, this is awful.’
‘When you’re this close to death,’ the pope smiled, ‘what’s another smell?’
‘Ignore her,’ Nina spat. ‘She’s a user.’
‘She’s a person,’ the pope said. ‘And the only mother you’ll get.’
‘She doesn’t give a stuff about me.’
‘And you don’t give her much chance. You may not live another day. Isn’t it time to stop being cruel?’
Eve started crying. Nina lapsed into sullen silence.
‘Here.’ John handed the girl some wire. ‘Can you fix the end of this to the roof near the door? It’s hottest up there. We’ve got to dry our clothes.’