Purkiss squeezed his eyes tight, focused on the rawness in his hands beneath the gloves, the frightening deadness in his feet.
When he opened them, Hannah stood in front of him, his on-off partner of the last half year. Beside her was Vale, cigarette in hand. Both their faces were etched in sadness, Hannah’s with a regretful tinge, Vale’s with one of disappointment. Neither of them spoke, and they were gone in the blink of an eye.
Purkiss waited for Claire to manifest herself. Claire, his fiancée, dead now nearly six years. Claire, who had torn open the wounds all over again even four years after her death.
But she didn’t come.
He tried to list the symptoms of frostbite. Of hypothermia. All that came to mind was a smorgasbord of recollections, of random images from the recent and distant past, of snatches of discordant music. He half expected to hear the sweet, deadly singing of sirens, luring him to his doom; and yes, there they were, fantastical creatures calling to him from the depths of the permafrost, hundreds of metres beneath his feet.
So easy to end the pain. So easy to lay down his burden, bury his face in the frozen earth, and sleep.
Time had lost all meaning. It yawned chasm-deep ahead, before contracting like a released rubber band. Something so infinitely flexible couldn’t exist, surely? Purkiss felt he’d discovered an important truth, something that had eluded philosophers and scientists for millennia. When he tried to get a grip on the concept, it vanished.
His hallucinations, dreams, whatever they were, took on a more basic character. Where there’d been music, there were now single, jarring notes. Complex images of people were replaced by elementary percepts: primary colours, geometrical shapes, flashes of light. Purkiss supposed it meant he was near the end, his mind running out of creative power and running on reserve before it shut down entirely.
Lights.
He felt himself being pulled down a tunnel towards a distant point, as if his consciousness was being dragged back towards a reality it had decided it had had enough of.
Purkiss stopped.
The shock was intense, the return to the terrible real world with its extremes of cold and bodily pain and despair.
And light. A steady rind of it curving above the meniscus of a ridge, another bloody ridge, half a kilometre ahead.
No. It’s another mad vision, a mirage, a fever dream. Crawl back into your cocoon.
But he knew this was different.
Purkiss gripped the tow rope, found he was already gripping it as tightly as he could. Probably had been all along. Just as he must have, on autopilot, been checking the compass.
He turned to Clement.
She wasn’t there.
He found her, face down in the snow, a hundred metres back. He stooped over her, constrained by the harness around his chest, and wondered if once he crouched beside her he’d ever get up again.
With his boot he rolled her over. Her dead eyes were closed, the goggles knocked askew when she’d fallen.
He knelt, because it seemed proper, and stripped off her balaclava. Let her skin feel the touch of nature, even though nature was what had killed her.
He stared at her lips. Leaned in closer, raising his goggles, bringing his eye as close to her mouth as he could.
Against his exposed cornea, he felt the slow, rhythmic flutter of breath.
Purkiss pulled the balaclava back over her head. With a silent shout of defiance against the weakness of his body, against the tundra itself, he reached under her arms and stood and hoisted Clement over his shoulder and turned and felt the renewed strain of Haglund’s weight against his torso and didn’t care, because all that mattered now was putting one foot in front of the other, a thousand times, ten thousand if need be, until he reached the light.
Thirty-four
The ridge had posed a conundrum. Aleksandrov had spotted its snaking shape on the satnav screen and said to his driver, ‘How would they get round that?’
The driver played with the image, sweeping left and right. ‘It ends six klicks to the southwest, Captain.’
Aleksandrov considered it. Either they had gone that route, or they’d found some way to climb the ridge, in which case they abandoned the snowmobiles and would now be on foot.
‘Take us round,’ he’d said.
By the time the Vodnik was rumbling along the top of the ridge, and there was no sign of the fugitives, Aleksandrov had decided the only option was to continue heading towards Saburov-Kennedy Station. If they arrived there first, they would wait out of sight of the station for their targets to appear.
The truck ploughed across the ground, its speed aided by the relative evenness of the terrain. Aleksandrov felt a sense of disquiet. Were they too late? Had the targets reached the station already? Or had they chosen a more circuitous route?
‘One kilometre to destination, sir,’ said the driver.
They are to be prevented from reaching Saburov-Kennedy Station at all costs. Tsarev’s order.
Light appeared ahead, dim as if shielded. The station was located within a natural basin, Aleksandrov knew, and he could see the slope of the side looming ahead.
He leaned forward, straining to make out the detail.
‘I see them,’ he said.
Purkiss heaved Clement off his shoulder so that she slapped, limp, against the slope. He bent, hauled her up again, tried to throw her further. She slid back down.
The rise was no more than ten feet, and not particularly steep. But he couldn’t get Clement to the top while still towing Haglund.
With fingers like bloodied sausages inside his gloves, Purkiss unwound the flex from his body and flung it aside. He scrabbled at the slope — it was less rocky than the ridge they’d ascended earlier, and purchase was difficult — managed to get a hold, and climbed.
At the top, he gazed down into a large natural quarry, at the base of which lay a complex of structures larger and more elaborate than those at Yarkovsky Station. Arc lights blazed around the perimeter. There was nobody in sight.
‘Hey,’ called Purkiss. His cry came out as a pathetic croak, which was snatched away immediately by the wind.
The wind changed direction abruptly, bringing another sound to his ears. The rumble of a heavy vehicle.
He turned, vertigo nearly toppling him from the rim.
Back across the plain, a kilometre distant, a military vehicle of some kind was rolling forward. His blurred eyes made out the turret surmounting it, the ugly phallic protrusion.
A machine gun.
Purkiss looked down into the basin again. He could slide down the slope on this side, out of range of the gun. Stumble to the buildings and hammer on doors.
But he’d be too late.
Purkiss reached down, drew the flare gun from the holster at his side. His finger trembled on the trigger as he pointed it upward.
The soaring arc, the subsequent brilliant explosion, were more beautiful to him than anything he’d seen before.
An instant later, a cacophony of barking erupted from one of the buildings. Huskies, he thought.
Five seconds after that, a door opened and figures emerged, six of them, gazing at the sky. Purkiss rose to his knees and waved his arms feebly. One of the men pointed and shouted something. They began running across the rock floor towards the base of the slope, beckoning him down.
Purkiss stayed where he was.
The first of the men reached the slope and began climbing.
Designed for anti-aircraft use, the KPV heavy machine gun had an effective range of three kilometres. The man on top of the ridge was now less than a third of that distance away.