Arctic Wargame (Justin Hall # 1) (9 page)

Kiawak jumped to his feet as soon as he finished his words, a big smile glowing on his face.

“Are you sure about this?” Alisha raised an eyebrow and pointed at Justin. “You don’t believe this nonsense, do you?”

“Well, there’s only one way to know for sure. We’ll fly northeast of Grise Fiord until we find the depot,” Justin replied.

* * *

“The Sirius Patrol has over fifty depots, small huts they build during the summers,” Justin said, taking brief pauses between his words. He was skimming through a few documents on his laptop. “Matthew from the office e-mailed me these documents a few minutes ago. These depots are all over the place, but they’re supposed to be only on the Danish, I mean the Greenland, part of the Arctic. The troopers usually rest in tents, but they use these huts during extreme weather conditions, when they need to repair their dogsleds or replenish their food supplies. According to these documents, some of these huts have hot showers, warm beds, and somewhat decent toilets.”

“The Sirius Patrol still uses dogsleds?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, don’t be surprised,” Kiawak replied. “Dogs are more reliable than snowmobiles, you never run out of fuel and, if you’re stranded without food—”

“Yuck,” Anna interrupted Kiawak, her body squirming in disgust. “Yuck. Don’t finish that thought.”

“Well, you can’t eat a snowmobile . . .” Kiawak muttered. “Hey, check out the view.” He pointed to his right. “Blue ice.”

They looked out the large windows of the Eurocopter. Details of the layers of ice and snow were very crisp from their current altitude of three hundred feet. The area Kiawak brought to their attention shined with a baby blue color. It looked as if a careful mother had wrapped the ice slopes, cliffs, and crevasses in a warm blanket to shelter them from the cold.

“Cool, very cool.” Anna dug into her backpack and pulled out a digital camera.

Carrie maintained a straight line, almost parallel to the Grise Fiord coast, which hacked deep into the southern region of Ellesmere Island. Two snowmobile or dogsled trails indicated someone had recently traveled in this area. Carrie flipped a few switches on the helicopter’s control panel, and the aircraft swerved to the right.

“What are you doing?” Alisha asked.

“One of the fiords turns right about ten miles ahead. I’m going to take us over the ridges, so we can explore both sides at the same time,” Carrie replied. “But I don’t think the Danes would dare to venture this far inland and come this close to Grise Fiord.”

“Oh, now you’re having doubts too?” Alisha asked with self-satisfaction in her voice.

“No,” Carrie replied, “I’m just being realistic. If it’s true they built their depots in our land, they would set them along our coastline. In that way, they have easy access to them and keep them far away from our communities.”

“Yes, but don’t you think they know the coastline is the first place we would check? It’s the easiest place to reach,” Anna said.

“That’s true,” Carrie said. “And that’s why we’re searching these inland regions as well. But I still think if we’re to find something, it will be along the coast, probably close to a secluded bay.”

“The CSE report indicated these icebreakers came very close to Cape Combermere, which is exactly northeast of Grise Fiord.” Justin pointed to a map on his laptop’s screen. “If we put together the findings of the report and Nuqatlak’s confession, something’s definitely going on around that cape.”

Alisha shrugged in a defiant silence.

They continued their flight over the next fiord and the one after it, maintaining their eastbound direction. At times, Carrie studied the blue map on the navigational screen to the left of the flight controls. The screen projected a detailed topographical map of the area underneath, the southeast part of Ellesmere Island, which resembled the flattened nose of a hammerhead shark. A red dot on the screen, just above the mouths of the fiords, indicated their helicopter’s position.

Two other screens to her right, by the radar monitor, were the object of Carrie’s occasional glance. The first one streamed enhanced real-time images from two powerful cameras mounted at the nose of the cockpit. These images were useful mostly during summer flights because of the bright and sharp contrast between ridges and valleys, cliffs and plateaus. At this time of year, the staleness of the glittering snow and ice was blinding and mind-numbing.

The second screen displayed photographs taken by two infrared cameras installed on both sides of the helicopter’s cockpit. The infrared system enabled the detection of thermal energy emitted by all objects with a temperature above freezing. These waves were converted into colored photographs. The higher the temperature of the target, the brighter the red dots in the pictures. About half an hour ago, the system had displayed a few red dots, probably caribous or muskoxen, given their constant and rapid movement. A building, Danish or not, would emit a low and static amount of thermal energy.

* * *

Over the next sixty minutes, insignificant dots blipped occasionally on the infrared screen, but nothing worthy of a second glance. The Arctic Cordillera mountain range rose gradually along the eastern shore of Ellesmere Island. Carrie was careful to keep a reasonable distance from the majestic mountain peaks. A few of their summits stabbed at the sky, and some of them were over three thousand feet high. Baffin Bay was not yet in sight, but it was only a matter of minutes before they would marvel at the spectacular vistas of Ellesmere Island’s broken coastline.

“Where are we?” Anna asked, peering through the window. Her forehead pressed against the cold glass, and the vibration of the cabin sent a jolt through her body.

“We’re flying over the Manson Ice Cap, heading east, toward Baffin Bay,” Carrie replied.

“How can you tell?” Anna continued. “All I see is white powder and the occasional black mountain top poking from underneath.”

Carrie smiled. “I’ve got the map in front of me. Plus, the chopper knows his way around these mountains.”

They all laughed, except for Alisha, who kept staring at her laptop.

“Once we’re over the ocean, I’m gonna take us north, so we can search the coast. If we don’t find anything, we’ll turn around and search the inland valleys again before—”

She stopped, glanced at one of the screens, and fumbled with a few switches.

“What is it?” Justin asked.

“I . . . I don’t know. Let me check something.”

The helicopter lost some altitude, and Carrie steadied the aircraft in order to focus the camera for a clear image. From their distance of six hundred feet above the coastal cliffs, she could not make out the details of a large mass of white-yellowish debris at the center of the small screen. At first, she thought it was a colony of seals, but the infrared screen showed no thermal activity in the area.
Could it just be ridges of exposed cliffs after a windstorm scraped the ice off their slopes?

“We’re dropping in for a closer look at that point, right there.” Carrie tapped one of the screens, so Justin could follow her words. “There seems to be something tucked in at that little bay. Maybe, just maybe that’s what we’re looking for.”

Justin glanced at the helicopter’s navigational screen then at the topographical map of the island on his laptop. He seemed to be comparing the two. He took a quick look outside the window at the bay growing larger by the second underneath them.

“That’s Cape Combermere, right?” he asked Carrie.

“Yes, that’s right,” she replied.

Chapter Seven

Cape Combermere, Canada

April 12, 11:10 a.m.

The debris was spread over a stretch of rocky ridges, about one thousand square feet. If it had been August, Justin may have thought this was the shipwreck of careless Arctic adventurers. But in mid-April, when the Arctic’s frigid weather could stiffen a man in a matter of minutes, Justin was positive the rubble was not the result of a human error or a natural disaster.

The prefabricated timber panels, although split into smaller fragments and scattered from one end of the site to the other, resembled the basic elements of a large shed. Two log pads created a flat platform over the hard-packed snow, sheltered about two thousand feet inland, away from sudden movements of menacing ice floes. High cliffs rose up on both sides of the narrow clearing, providing extra protection from the northern and eastern wind currents.

“What do you think, Kiawak?” Justin picked up a couple of the pieces then scratched the snow surface with the tip of his boots.

“I’m sure this doesn’t belong to Parks Canada. This area is not a part of the Quttinirpaaq National Park,” Kiawak replied. He crouched and inspected a few metal scraps next to the log pads. “It doesn’t seem to be a research station. They’re much larger and not so close to the ocean.”

“Is it Danish?” Anna asked and followed Carrie as she walked around and took pictures of a few orange tatters that appeared to be fragments of a large tent.

“Who knows?” Kiawak shrugged. “If it’s not Canadian, where did it come from?”

“Of course it’s Canadian,” Alisha said.

They all looked at her as she walked off the log pads. She stomped her feet on the solid snow. “Nuqatlak led us here and this was his stash, regardless of whether this stuff is Danish or not.” She pointed at the rubble and at the orange tatters. A strong wind gust was trying to pry them away from the ice. “Nuqatlak’s dead and the ‘mystery of the depot’ is solved. It’s over. There’s nothing more for us to do here. Let’s go on with our mission.”

“This
is
our mission,” Justin said. “This is what Nuqatlak wanted us to find, and we found it, but we can’t pack our bags and go. Not yet. The Danes put this depot here and filled it with their supplies. I’m sure when we dig down and discover what may still be here, we’ll find evidence that Danish icebreakers anchored here and left this . . . this ‘present’ behind. This evidence will convince
whoever
may still have doubts.”

Justin looked at Alisha, but she did not respond. Carrie and Anna headed over to the helicopter. A minute later, they returned with a couple of pickaxes and a snow shovel.

“It’s a waste of time and energy.” Alisha stepped aside, making room for Justin and Kiawak, who took to the excavation.

The only place Alisha would dig was in her pockets for a little extra warmth.

* * *

“Here’s a flare gun.” Justin handed Kiawak the only decent thing they had found so far.

The first ten minutes of chiseling ice and removing snow had rewarded them with nothing but trash. Chocolate bar wrappings, empty water bottles, and wood fire ashes were clear proof of recent human activity on the site.

“Why didn’t Nuqatlak take the flare gun?” Anna asked, staring at the orange pistol. She was shoveling away the snow Kiawak and Carrie had piled up in two large mounds.

“Maybe he ran out of space or left it behind for his next trip,” Kiawak replied. “Or maybe he thought this hut would make a good hideout, at least for a while, away from everybody. Then a blizzard came and wiped it out. The snow is fresh. The blizzard happened two, maybe three days ago.”

Justin lifted his pickaxe over his head and brought it down hard. They heard a sharp snap, unlike the constant ice cracking until that moment. Tiny slivers, like glass shards, sprang up from the two-foot-deep hole.

“What the hell was that?” Justin asked. He was glad the sharp slivers had missed his face. The goggles and the black balaclava everyone wore at all times when outside for a long period of time protected his entire face, but his nose and his mouth were still exposed.

“Easy with the axe,” Kiawak said. “Anna, can I have your shovel?”

He filled the square blade of the shovel with debris from the bottom of the hole and carefully lifted it up. He placed the mixed mass of ice, snow, and mud over a clear section of the log pads. Then he rooted nervously through the mass, examining each piece with great care. Finally, Kiawak placed a tiny square-shaped transparent fragment on his left palm. He paraded it in front of Justin and Carrie.

“Is that what I just smashed?” Justin asked.

“It has to be, and it’s definitely not ice,” Kiawak replied. “I would say your axe smashed into a laptop or some other electronic gadget buried deep down there.” He stared at the hole. “Something with a clear screen.”

“Cellphone? Digital camera?” Carrie guessed.

“It could be,” Kiawak said. He dropped to his knees and began to clear the hole with his gloves. Carrie and Justin stepped back to give him enough room.

“Why don’t you take a drink of this?” Justin noticed Anna had begun to shiver and offered her a coffee thermos he fetched from his backpack. “It will warm you up.”

Anna nodded and took a couple of big gulps.

“Do you want to wait in the chopper?” Carrie asked.

“No,” Anna said. “I’ll be OK. We’re not gonna be here much longer, I assume, once we discover our little treasure.”

“Well, here we go,” Kiawak said. He had completed his excavation of the fragile article and gently brushed the snow from a black object that fit easily in his hand. The object resembled a large cellphone, like an old model from the nineties, but sleeker looking, with a leather coating and numerous buttons.

“It’s a multiband radio,” Justin shouted over the rising wind. “A military radio.”

“You’re sure?” Carrie asked. “I haven’t seen our army use them.”

Kiawak flipped the radio over, scrapped a thin layer of ice from its back side, and read the white inscription. He shook his head. “Bingo,” he shouted and passed the radio over to Justin.

“What’s going on here?” Their excitement had drawn Alisha’s attention. She stepped closer to the action.

“We’ve found the evidence. This is a Danish army radio,” Justin said, his eyes focused on the radio.

“And how can you be sure of that?” Alisha’s voice rang out as an accusation.

“Because it says in the back, you dimwit,” Justin snapped at her and pushed the radio toward Alisha. “Read it for yourself. ‘The Royal Danish Army’ is stamped on the back!”