Beneath the Ice (35 page)

That’s why the situation with Bear filled him with such unease. Eleanor Page had insisted that she be taken to the ‘farm’ for questioning until the whereabouts of the flashcard were known. Bates had insisted Bear should stay under his control and, although that request had officially been granted, he suspected that, for the Americans, this was just the start of the whole process. Soon, they would transfer her from the site and he would be fobbed off with some technicality. Then she would be lost for good. Already he was starting to hear platitudes instead of real answers from the base commander.

All last night Bates had stayed awake, wondering what Luca would do when he found out that Bear was missing. Bates knew enough to realise that his friend wouldn’t go quietly and wondered just how much wreckage would be involved along the way. He was going to have to find a way to control Luca, or at least deflect the blame from himself, but right now he didn’t have the faintest clue how to go about it.

Finally turning back towards the main building, Bates stared at the drab breezeblock walls. It was too hot outside and he needed to get under some air conditioning. Just as he took his first pace forward, the door of the main building was flung open and two men clutching medical kits burst through. They sprinted across the yard, prising back the door of one of the adjacent buildings. Briefly the sound of grim thrash music filled the air before being mercifully silenced by the closing door.

A few seconds later Devin emerged. This time his pale cheeks were flushed with anger and he stalked across the open ground, swearing in a continual stream. His hands stabbed at the air as if admonishing some kind of invisible companion, before he followed the medics into the building and everything went quiet.

Bates waited, the minutes turning slowly. Nearly ten minutes passed, but still he stayed outside in the baking heat, his concern deepening with each one.

Suddenly the interrogator burst through the door once more, blinking in the daylight. The first thing Bates noticed was that his hands were dripping wet with blood. The palms had been stained a deep crimson and he had hitched up his shirtsleeves until they were nearly past his bicep.

‘What’s going on?’ Bates asked. But Devin was so preoccupied that he hadn’t even heard him speak. Instead, he immediately set off towards the main building.

‘The stupid mother—’ he muttered, quickening his pace.

‘Hey, what’s happening here?’ Bates repeated, grabbing on to the crook of his arm and spinning him round.

Devin glowered at him. His eyes, once so languid and heavy, were blazing and small flecks of spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth.

‘Fucking medics didn’t do their job,’ he seethed. ‘I tell you, man, I am
not
going down for this one.’

‘What happened?’

The man looked doubtful for a moment. Bates tugged at his arm.

‘I have NSA clearance on this. Now answer me!’ he growled.

‘The woman’s fucking haemorrhaging all over the floor. The idiots didn’t spot it in the medical.’

‘Haemorrhaging?’

‘Yeah, she was pregnant.’ The interrogator raised his arms skywards in sheer disbelief. ‘Everyone has a medical when they arrive. Everyone! And now I’ve got a pregnant woman dying on me after only twenty-two hours of detention.’

Bates felt his hand slide off the interrogator’s arm.

‘Dying?’

The man shook his head slowly. ‘Jesus. I’ve never seen so much goddamn blood.’

As he said the words, the last of the colour seemed to drain from Bates’ face and he felt a terrible dryness creep into the back of his throat. He knew in that instant that he would never be forgiven, that something terrible and unmentionable would forever haunt him. He had played his part in causing Bear to miscarry, and now she was bleeding to death only a few yards from where he stood.

He shut his eyes, the nightmare closing in around him. He didn’t make any attempt to go to her, knowing full well that the medics would never let him into the cell. But more than that, there was an overarching sense of shame; that he was so despicable he shouldn’t even taint the same room with his presence. He had caused the death of Bear’s unborn child and now it looked like her life was being thrown into the balance as well.

‘I never meant anyone to get hurt . . .’ he mumbled.

‘Yeah, well. That’s not really why we’re here, is it?’ Devin retorted, eyeing the Englishman with vague suspicion. He then waved a bloodied hand towards the main building. ‘Look, I gotta get cleaned up and call this in. Christ knows how this shit is going to go down if she doesn’t pull through.’

Bates nodded, vaguely aware of Devin moving away from him.

After all that had happened in the township, it seemed incredible that Bear should be dying now. Bates knew that he had to
do
something. He had to act. But how could he save her?

THE TWO SKI-DOOS
powered up the gradient, leaving fresh tracks in the otherwise unblemished snow. As they reached the top of the saddle, Luca pulled to a halt and jammed his fist down on the kill switch, cutting the engine. Behind him Joel and Katz did the same. For the first time in six hours there was silence.

They had traversed all the way across the lake on the original tractor route back to GARI. Now they looked straight ahead, eyes scanning the sloping expanse of snow. For hours they had built up the crevasse field in their minds, fear and anticipation creating a sea of monstrous séracs and sheer, precipitous walls of ice. But the route ahead showed nothing more than a few gentle undulations covered by a dusting of snow. It looked tranquil and inviting; the very antithesis of the danger that lay beneath.

They all knew that Sommers and Akira had frozen to death only metres from where they now stood. The crevasses were out there, waiting.

Dragging his leg over the saddle, Luca brought himself to his full height with a groan. He had been hunched behind the broken windshield of the Ski-Doo for so long that his back felt rigid, while his entire right hand was numb from holding in the throttle. As painful as his body was, it paled in comparison to his thirst. It had been nearly eight hours since his last sip of water in the old Soviet base. Now, his lips were swollen and sore. A thumping headache had settled over the middle of his forehead like a thundercloud. Luca knew that it wouldn’t be long before dehydration really started to take its toll. Soon, the effects would become far more insidious.

Staggering across to the other Ski-Doo, he held the black Pelican case in his right hand and threw it down on the snow in front of Joel and Katz. Both men watched his every move, having battled their own thirst for the entire duration of the journey. Now, it was all they could think of.

Sliding the first of the three aluminium cylinders out of the protective foam, Luca was about to unscrew it when Katz suddenly cut in.

‘If anyone’s going to do it,’ he said, ‘I will.’

Luca stared at him for a moment, watching as Katz’s tongue poked out to the edge of his lips in anticipation and wondering whether he might have some ulterior motive. But then he looked deeper into the scientist’s eyes and even behind the reflective sheen of his glasses, could see the conflict within him. To men like Katz the lake water was the ultimate prize and, by extension, what they were about to do, the ultimate sacrilege.

‘One canister. Eight hundred and seventeen millilitres split three ways,’ Katz whispered, using his bare hands to carefully unscrew the lid. There was a low hiss as the pressure escaped before he raised the flask to his lips and poured.

The water felt ice cold, almost burning the back of his throat. As it slipped down he could taste a peculiar lightness to it, caused by the sheer absence of any chemical or mineral taint. It was unbelievable. He was drinking twenty-million-year-old water that had first existed at the beginning of the Miocene era.

The cylinder was handed across to Luca, who took his share before passing it to Joel. None of them spoke, each silently policing the amount the others were drinking, until finally Joel raised the cylinder and drained the very last drop. Silence continued, the same thought repeating across all their minds. It wasn’t nearly enough. Just over two hundred and fifty millilitres had barely revived their parched throats, let alone quenched any real thirst. As Joel slowly placed the empty cylinder back in the case, they all looked at the remaining two with envious eyes.

Katz was the first to act, sliding off the Ski-Doo and slamming shut the lid of the Pelican case. The click of each lock signified that, for now, the matter was closed.

Luca then turned his gaze to the route ahead. He could only make out vague dips and slight variations in the colour of the snow; nothing that resembled the classic shape of a crevasse. The storms had blanketed snow over everything, making speed their only chance. All they could hope was that if they hit a crevasse, they would be travelling fast enough to glance across it.

Letting his eyes blur against the glare of the sun, he tried to shut out the thought of the previous guide, Harry Sommers. His fingernails worn away . . . That’s what Bates had said, and instinctively Luca found himself balling his hands into fists as if to protect himself from the same fate. There was something terrifying about crevasses. Out of all the deaths that could befall a climber, a crevasse was the most feared. Unlike the others that led to mercifully swift ends, once inside a crevasse there was nothing else to do except die slowly.

There was a cough from behind him and Luca turned, realising that he had been staring blankly into the middle distance for some time.

‘What do you think?’ Joel asked.

‘I’ll go first,’ Luca replied, trying to mask the uncertainty in his voice. ‘I’ll be lighter and can test the route. Just make sure you follow my tracks – and I mean exactly – and, for God’s sake, keep your speed up.’

He paused, finding only one thing left to say.

‘Good luck.’

As Luca moved towards his Ski-Doo, Joel suddenly raised his hand.

‘Wait,’ he pleaded. ‘Just wait a couple more minutes. We need to talk about all this. You know, make a plan.’

Luca turned back, seeing the fear in his eyes.

‘This is the plan, Joel,’ he said softly. ‘This has always been the plan. We’re going to be out of water in a few hours and so, if we don’t go now, that’ll be it.’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘I’m sorry.’

Joel shook his head in disbelief, before looking to Katz for support.

‘Come on, Katzy, you’re off-the-scale smart. There must be something we can do here? What we need is a strategy. A way round . . .’

He trailed off as he looked closer and saw Katz’s expression. This was the first time he had actually looked terrified. The sight drained the very last of the fight out of Joel and he staggered back a pace, just managing to prop his wiry frame up against the side of the Ski-Doo.

‘Come on, kid,’ Katz said eventually. ‘Don’t make it any harder than it is.’

As he spoke, he reached forward and gently pulled Joel back on to the seat. Ahead of them, Luca revved the engine several times before jamming down the throttle.

He drove flat out down the slope, with the rev counter spiking into red with each jolt of the throttle. His whole body was pressed forward over the handlebars as he strained to see, while cold air rushed past his face with stinging intensity. Up ahead he could make out some of the bigger, more obvious crevasses, but knew that many more were out there, just inches below the surface.

The Ski-Doo powered along for nearly a kilometre, its tracks leaving a narrow, snaking trail. Just as he was daring to hope that he was past the worst of the field, the whole machine dipped down suddenly, almost causing him to lose his balance and roll over the handlebars. There was the sound of the tracks spinning, then, before he had time to realise what was happening, the machine lurched forward again, up on to the other side of a snow bank, tugging him back into his seat.

Luca glanced over his shoulder. There was a dark tear in the snow from where his Ski-Doo tracks had momentarily broken through the surface. But this time he’d been lucky and his momentum had carried him across. Signalling widely with his spare arm, he then looked ahead towards a low bank of twisting ice.

The disturbance was no more than a few feet high, looking as if a bubbling undercurrent of air had somehow broken through to the surface and frozen on contact. He powered towards it, trying to decide whether he should crash right over it or veer to one side. At the very last second, he jammed the handlebars sideways, throwing the machine to the right in a long, drifting arc.

As he passed around the side of the disturbance, he could see the colossal crevasse that had been lurking just behind. The opening was inky black against the brilliant white snow, and no less than twenty feet wide. He shook his head in disbelief. He had been moments away from being swallowed whole.

On Luca went, twisting the Ski-Doo around a series of huge crevasses that lay in jagged lines across his route. These were old, too ancient and established to be covered by the storms, but they were easy to spot and wide tracks of snow ran in between. He drove past them, trying to keep his eyes locked forward and resist the mesmeric pull of the dark interiors.

Finally, the convex shape of the slope changed, dipping into a compression. That meant no more crevasses. Slowly, Luca eased back on the throttle, before turning the machine round so that he was facing back up the slope.

It took him several seconds to spot Katz and Joel against the mounds and bulges of ice, but suddenly he saw their Ski-Doo no more than three hundred feet away. Even from a distance, he could see that Katz could barely keep control of the machine. He was trying to follow Luca’s tracks but overcompensating with each turn, violently shifting their balance from right to left. With each swerve, the opposite track nearly lifted clear of the ground, threatening to topple them over and send them sprawling.

Luca watched, his lips moving in silent prayer. Then, just as they were rounding out on to the flatter area, he saw the whole front end of their Ski-Doo dip, catapulting them over the handlebars. For the briefest of moments, their dark silhouettes seemed to hang in the air before they were thrown forward and bounced down across the ground. Behind them, the machine spun lengthways, kicking up a hazy cloud of snow with each turn, until it finally came to rest with a resounding thud and a splintering of bodywork.