Beneath the Ice (13 page)

Tying both the static and climbing rope to the front loop of his harness, Luca moved towards the cliff. Joel watched him step up on to the first foothold. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘What about you? Don’t you need to be secured?’

Luca paused, but didn’t turn back. ‘All you’d do is pull me off the wall.’

With that, he stepped higher, pressing his body flat against the cliff. As his fingers dragged across the surface, searching for the first of the handholds, the rock felt smooth and hardened by the cold. His hands grasped on to one crack, then another, but none felt secure enough to take his weight. It seemed as though his fingers would just slip clean off.

Luca could sense the others watching his every move. He forced himself on, the anger still burning within and helping to mask his own fear. Jerking his body higher, he fought every inch. Movements that had once been so fluid and natural now became robotic, with his legs doing little more than drag up the wall behind him.

On he went, gaining a few feet with each move. Luca stared down between his legs and, despite it all, found he was already twenty feet off the ground. He could see the tops of the others’ heads as they stood in abject silence, refusing even to acknowledge each other’s presence. Babysitting – that’s how Bates had described it, forgetting to mention that the group Luca had been given was a bunch of fucking lames. They were almost as bad as each other.

Luca reached behind him, pulling a cam from the back of his harness, and released the spring-loaded mechanism into the crack in front. The teeth bit in, locking tight. Still cursing his luck, he threaded both ropes through, tying off the static line so it was fixed in position. He then moved higher, his fingers spreading out across the rock before the tips instinctively crimped around a tiny indent in the surface and he dragged his body higher.

He climbed, his mind reeling from the implausibility of the situation he now found himself in. It had all happened so quickly; the foreman, the helicopter, then being bundled on to the Ilyushin plane to Antarctica with barely anything more than a sketchily marked map as briefing. If this was so important to the Polar Division, why hadn’t they sent an entire team of climbers in?

Luca paused again, this time another ten feet higher. He jammed a second cam into the cliff in front, jerking it down with a rough pull of his hand. As he fumed with anger, the crippling doubts he had experienced in the tractor became lost in the general fog of his frustration. His progress became quicker, more fluid, as climbing techniques that had been hardwired into his brain began to return. As he shifted his balance from one side to the next, with his boots expertly swivelling on their points, he smoothed his body higher, gaining height with each minute that passed.

On he went, fixing anchor points every ten feet and running the ropes through. He could feel the drag on his harness, the weight of the ropes pulling him back towards earth as if loath to let him go. But it was something he was well used to from the oil rig. Blanking it from his mind, he forced himself on.

The top of the cliff was just ahead now, only a couple more moves to go. Swinging his right leg up, he hooked his heel over an outcrop of rock and used the momentum to heave the rest of his body higher. The move was flawless, as if staged for a climbing magazine, and with it Luca reached over the summit and pulled himself on to the flat ground beyond. He could feel his heart beating in his chest and his eyes were wide with sheer exhilaration. Old muscles that hadn’t ached in many years were now brimming with lactic acid, while his forearms felt pumped to bursting.

He straightened his back, staring out across the view. For that single moment a sense of freedom returned to Luca that had been lost somewhere inside his brooding self for so very long. He could feel the wind tugging at his hair and, as he stared out over the panorama of massive mountains, he smiled.

Maybe he could still do it after all.

ALMOST AN HOUR
later, the three other Englishmen arrived at the summit. They were breathless and tired, but had done as Luca said and climbed slowly and in silence. With the static rope running the length of the cliff, they had felt secure enough, with even Andy making reasonable progress. As they piled over the summit and lay exhausted against their rucksacks, the silence continued. Only Joel seemed willing to voice his excitement.

‘Now this is what I came to Antarctica for!’ he proclaimed, a full set of teeth visible in his smile. ‘Been cooped up behind a computer screen for so long, I forgot what it’s like out here. Man, that climb was good.’ He reached a hand across to Andy, offering to hoist him to his feet. ‘Wasn’t so bad, was it, mate?’

Andy ignored the proffered hand and only nodded vaguely. He didn’t want to say anything out loud in case it betrayed his real feelings. He had been petrified the whole way up, but had forced himself on, desperate to prevent Katz from deriving any sense of satisfaction from his failure. Despite the safety rope ahead of him and Luca’s occasional assurances shouted down the cliff face, he had found it one of the hardest things he had ever done. His lazy right eye made it hard for him to judge perspective at certain angles, and the sensation was always compounded as soon as he moved any distance off the ground.

Now he lay still, clenching and unclenching his hands. The joints in his fingers ached from where he had been desperately gripping on to the static line. As he slowly began to recover his breath, he found his eyes boring into the back of Luca’s head.

Joel was determined to share his enthusiasm and even cast a glance towards Katz, resting a few metres away, dabbing the sweat from his brow with a small square of towelling pulled from his Gore-Tex trousers. Far from looking pleased with himself, the natural sneer on his face had only hardened. It made whatever encouragement Joel was about to offer suddenly seem redundant.

For want of any other option, Joel zeroed in on Luca.

‘How much farther do you think it is to the drill site?’ he asked.

Luca stared out towards the far side of the mountain. They’d been lucky. The route ahead looked comparatively easy, with a wide snow slope funnelling across to the other side. Beyond it they could see the flat pan of the lake, but they were still too far away to discern anything of the actual drill site. In the distance, he could see the faint outline of the ‘barrier’ and the beginnings of the mighty Southern Ocean, littered with icebergs.

‘If we can get down to the lake easy enough, it should be about four hours more,’ he replied, eyes switching between the view ahead and the map in his hands.

‘Great!’

Joel moved closer still, glancing over Luca’s shoulder at the map. As they stood side by side, he reached up to reposition the same sweatband he had been wearing at the base, tugging a few strands of hair back under its elastic. Luca briefly turned towards him, registering a long line of zinc that Joel had smeared under his eyes to protect his skin against the sun. The tacky cream left a streak of brilliant white across his long nose and cheeks, making him look like a mime who had only half-finished his makeup.

‘You reckon we’ll get to the lake today?’ he asked.

‘Depends on us,’ Luca answered. ‘We’ve got twenty-four-hour daylight, so we can keep going as long as we want.’

‘We’ve got plenty left in us, haven’t we, lads?’ Joel declared, but there was little by way of response. ‘And once we get to the site, it’s going to be quick. That main winch system shouldn’t take too long to get up and running.’ He turned to his left. ‘What do you think, Katzy? The tube extraction is your deal.’

Katz shut his eyes at this bastardisation of his name. There was a pause, leaving the others unsure as to whether he was considering an answer or simply too irritated to try.

‘If everything is still set up,’ he finally replied in a monotone, ‘it’ll be a couple of hours to get the first sample out. I just hope the rest of you don’t screw up your jobs.’

As he spoke his eyes flicked towards Andy, still slumped against his rucksack and brooding. He had returned the goggles to his face, masking his expression once more.

‘I’ll get the job done,’ he muttered.

Luca stepped a few paces away from the group, unable to stomach the constant bickering. He cast his eyes up to the neighbouring mountain. The wind they had seen earlier on the high peaks was now being funnelled down towards the lower valleys. It kicked up the ground snow, swirling it across the ice so that it looked as if the entire surface was covered in ankle-deep cloud, streaming in a constant flow. Luca knew that once the wind passed a certain speed, the ‘cloud’ would build, drawing more and more snow up from the ground until it became a full-blown blizzard scorching across the open lake.

It was still too early to tell, but it looked like Dedov might have been wrong. The storm was steadily building, coming in more quickly than any of them had suspected.

‘Get ready. We keep moving,’ Luca called over his shoulder.

‘What difference is five minutes going to make?’ Katz asked, slumping back against the hard rock.

‘Have it your way,’ Luca replied. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of that lake when the storm hits. Doesn’t look like there’s too much shelter out there.’

Katz craned his neck a little higher as his eyes turned towards the route ahead. Despite the exhaustion he felt, he knew that Luca was right.

Joel smiled awkwardly, feeling partly responsible for his team mates.

‘How long do you think we have before the weather changes?’ he asked.

Luca shrugged, knowing it was better to tell them what they wanted to hear. ‘We’ll have enough time if we push hard. Come on, everyone up.’

The descent along the back of the mountain led them through a deep valley, strewn with open crevasses. Here, the immovable rock was slowing the glacier, stretching it to breaking point and ripping open the surface ice. Crevasses were everywhere, some interlocking at angles, while others radiated out in symmetrical lines as if part of some elaborate design.

Roped up and led by Luca, they twisted around the gaping holes, barely daring to stare down into the depths as they passed. The edges of the crevasses had wind-blown snow stacked up in twisted heaps like tombstones besides open graves. The landscape itself looked timeless and unchanged.

As they passed through the icefall each man followed Luca’s footsteps exactly. No one spoke. The danger was so palpable that nothing seemed important enough for them to break the silence. The only noise came from Katz’s rasping cough that had worsened over the last couple of hours, with the dry air catching in his lungs.

At last they came on to the flat ground by the lake. Time had passed quickly, but now that the obvious danger was gone, the final march to the drill site felt like a bitter slog.

With his Global Positioning System in hand, Luca led them on, hour after hour, tracking ever closer to their goal. The ground snow swirled at their feet, with spindrift curling up and freezing against their bare cheeks and stubble. The vapour from their breath condensed against the collars of their jackets, soon turning to solid lumps of ice and making it look as if the tops of their clothing had been dipped in frost. All of them had their shoulders hunched, bodies tilted into the wind as they pressed on and on.

Luca kept them to a strict routine: walking for an hour, with five-minute breaks in between. Their reward was a glug of sweet tea from his thermos and an energy bar, whose chocolate-plastered oats were frozen solid, snapping off in their mouths and threatening to crack their back teeth with each bite. During the breaks they all sat in silence, perched on their rucksacks with their backs to the wind.

Just as they finished their last mouthful, Luca would force them on to their feet once more. He knew this tactic would only last so long, and Katz was already starting to stumble when he was pulled back up.

As the sun passed midway through the sky it ducked behind one of the adjacent peaks, casting an immense shadow across the lake. Only a watered-down twilight remained, immediately making everything feel colder, more hostile. Luca could feel a little more pull on the rope. The rest of the team were slowing and he doubted they were going to make it to the next break.

Tilting his head back, he peered across the swirling snow. The GPS was telling him that the drill site was now less than a kilometre away. As he stared into the distance, he suddenly saw it. Dead ahead was the top half of the drilling platform, with the main scaffolding tower jutting high into the sky. He shook his head, almost unable to believe he had missed it for so long.

‘That’s it!’ he bellowed, raising his voice above the wind. ‘Keep going and we’ll be there in less than thirty minutes.’

The news was greeted by resigned nods, with only Joel mustering a tired smile. As Luca unclipped from the rope and watched them file past, Joel pulled the fleece neck gaiter down from his face to speak.

‘We made it!’ he said, stumbling past.

Luca returned his smile, but silently repeated the old climbing maxim to himself: reaching the summit is only halfway. He knew well enough that they would only have made it once they had returned to GARI and were safely inside.

A SINGLE SCAFFOLDING
tower dominated the drill site, rising over sixty feet in the air. It stood alone, like a monument to some long-forgotten dynasty, with two custom-built shipping containers positioned either side. They were encased in drift snow with only a single side and the roof visible, the colour of which had long-since been turned an indeterminate grey by the sandblasting effect of the wind.

The sides of the containers opened with a hydraulic winch to reveal miles of yellow piping turned around a central reel. A massive generator had been built into the side of the nearest one, its component parts protected by a heavy-duty storm blanket. Luca stared from one piece of machinery to the next, amazed by how basic the whole site was. But then again, it had to be one of the most remote drill sites on the planet.

Luca led them to the leeward shelter of the first container and they all collapsed back on to their rucksacks, enjoying the respite from the wind. Andy and Joel looked tired but they were more or less alert, already starting to look towards the drill equipment and deciding where to start. Katz, however, moved like a drunk, sheer exhaustion buckling his legs. Ice particles covered his cheeks, while his eyes looked glazed as if recently having borne witness to some unspeakable tragedy.