Arctic Floor

by Mark Aitken

  Gasping with the pain, Gallen stayed still, held down by Winter. ‘Shit, Mike. Think you got me?’

  ‘Hold on, mate. Gimme ten minutes, that’s it.’

  Ford sealed the catheter in place with a piece of bandage tape and fitted a clear plastic tube to it. Then, having pushed a large syringe into the base of the tube, Ford pulled out with the plunger, immediately drawing a reddish-amber fluid into the syringe.

  ‘If you can relax, the fluid will drain faster,’ said Ford, changing syringes for another extraction. He went through seven syringes in the next twelve minutes, taking the fluid off the lung.

  As Gallen took the penicillin at the end of the extraction, Winter sat beside him. ‘The radio’s not transmitting. Mike and I have been trying to find the problem but it looks like an antenna malfunction.’

  ‘Can’t we put a makeshift on it, try some rabbit ears?’ said Gallen, remembering some of the quick fixes they used to do on radios in the field. ‘We just need to get a signal out, even a weak one.’

  Ford shook his head. ‘They didn’t want that happening at this facility. It was an early warning base where comms security was pretty important, so the radio system ain’t like the Harrises we trained on.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s what they used to call a tropospheric scatter wave,’ said Ford. ‘I trained in comms when I was doing my time in the Navy, and we were only ever told about these things—never seen them before.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘They’re custom-built and hard-wired into the antenna systems. The antenna itself is part of the radio. No antenna, no comms.’

  Gallen breathed out.

  ‘The base that picks up our signal has to be using the same scatter wave receiver as we’re putting out,’ said Winter. ‘It looks like a giant relay system.’

  ‘So we’re going to have to go out there, climb the tower and find the break,’ said Ford. ‘Sun rose about three hours ago. We were going to eat and get out there.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘But be careful. One of us with pleurisy is enough.’

  ~ * ~

  Gallen lay on the bunk, drifting in and out of sleep in the warmth of the stove-heated room. Ford had found a box of VCR tapes, and Rain Man was now playing on the TV—Rain Man because the copy of Die Hard was worn out from too much play. He flipped through a Time magazine from 1988, in which George Bush senior was running against Michael Dukakis and someone was trying to explain why the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian airliner and killing two hundred and ninety people was a bad thing yet also justifiable.

  The idea of justifying the unjustifiable was playing on his mind. Harry Durville was not his favourite human being, but they’d left him back at the fuselage camp to die a lonely death. They certainly had their reasons, and Winter had tried to make it more comfortable for the billionaire. Yet Gallen felt guilty about it. ‘No man left behind’ wasn’t a cliche of war movies: it was a real commitment in Gallen’s world and he wanted to return to the camp, at least check on Durville.

  The door burst in before the end of the movie, and Ford and Winter were standing in the room, dripping sheets of ice and snow from their parkas and gloves. Leaving the wet gear on the racks in the corner, they moved to the stove in their thermals, Ford stoking it with more wood as they got themselves warm.

  ‘So?’ said Gallen.

  ‘It’s been disabled,’ said Winter, reaching for a smoke and offering one to Ford. ‘Guess when this place was decommissioned, they did a total job.’

  ‘We can’t fix it?’ said Gallen, unable to disguise his disappointment.

  ‘It’s rooted,’ said Ford, pushing himself back onto the stove as he sucked on his smoke. ‘It’s fucked, mate.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  Winter cleared his throat. ‘Mike found a garage and workshop.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And there’s a snowmobile parked in there.’

  Gallen shook his head, not wanting to hear it.

  ‘Looks like it works, boss,’ said Ford.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Gallen, wishing he could smoke. ‘We gonna travel five hundred miles across this country on a snowmobile that hasn’t been used for twenty years?’

  Ford and Winter looked at him and Gallen could tell that neither wanted to be the one to say it.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s that look?’

  ‘Three wouldn’t make it,’ said Ford.

  ‘But two might,’ said Winter.

  Gallen nodded, reality setting in. ‘Don’t tell me—two fit guys, right?’

  ‘We’d come straight back,’ said Winter.

  Gallen snorted. ‘How nice of you, Kenny.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 26

  Ford dragged an aluminium medical sled into the heated inner room and started packing it with supplies. It looked like the kind of emergency capsule in which injured skiers were transported off the mountain but it was now going to carry food, shovels, tents and spare clothing, and a replacement snowmobile track they’d found in the garage. But mostly it was going to carry two hundred pounds of gasoline in jerry cans.

  ‘Okay, boss,’ said Ford, the sound of the snowmobile’s revs coming from the garage area. ‘We’re gonna shut down all the electrical points in this building except the ones you have in here. Lights and TV.’

  Gallen nodded, still too tired to talk properly.

  ‘There’s enough diesel for the generator to tick over for five or six days,’ said the Aussie. ‘And that wood pile is good for a week, just don’t overdo it. Keep it on the slow combustion and stay in your foil bag.’

  Looking down at the table in the heated room as Winter came through, Gallen saw the map from the Challenger lying open, saw the guesstimates for where they were and the various routes to Baker Lake, the only settlement in the southern region of Nunavut; it was, they all agreed, at least five hundred miles away.

  The calculations were stark in their simplicity: two men would have to travel at least one hundred miles per day, in an east by northeast direction, hoping to find Baker Lake, which was not exactly a massive metropolis. The terrain was as bad as any of them had seen, just an endless procession of ice, snow and water, arranged in various obstacles and traps. Snowmobiles were useful machines—Gallen had grown up using them on the farm—but they bogged in deep snow, and once you broke a track, you were finished.

  Gallen had already resigned himself to waiting in this concrete igloo for at least a week. If no one came, he’d starve, if he didn’t get a secondary lung infection and die from that first. It was Ford and Winter he was worried about: there were so many things that could go wrong on their mercy dash that their calmness was both disturbing and inspirational.

  Watching them put on their layers and adjust the snow goggles they’d found in the stores, Gallen felt a pang of sadness, something he hadn’t felt since he’d been to the Joe Nyles fundraiser in Florida.

  Winter saw the look, cracked a smile as he slipped on his Thinsulate balaclava. ‘No speeches, boss. None of us asked for this—we just do what we can, right?’

  Gallen slumped. Two weeks ago these two men were making a living with their skills, free from the dangers of a military life. Now they were in the middle of the Arctic tundra, having to make a trek that was probably going to end in death.

  ‘We do what we can,’ said Gallen, short of breath again. ‘No heroes, okay?’

  ~ * ~

  The VHS copy of Wall Street was good enough that Gallen could follow the story, and when it finished he ate a cup of dried raisins and dried apricots and made a pot of coffee. He’d promised himself to preserve the generator’s diesel consumption by limiting himself to one movie per day, and he already had them lined up as a countdown to when Ford and Winter should return with the search-and-rescue helicopter: Predator, The Untouchables, Beverly Hills Cop II, Robocop and Twins.

  Gallen took his penicillin and lay in the cot with two cardboard boxes of magazines beside him. The r
oom was warm and he was tired again, although breathing was slightly easier than it had been before Ford drained the fluid off his lung.

  As he dozed, he tried to put some of the pieces of this disaster back together. He’d been targeted to form a crew and take on the bodyguard assignment of a person who lived a dangerous life. Responsible for the security issues surrounding Oasis Energy’s global interests was Paul Mulligan, a former intelligence bigwig from DIA. Mulligan had stalked him to a motel in Red Butte before making his offer. Where else had he been followed and put under surveillance? And why was Mulligan in that motel car park? It was like asking the Secretary of Defense to make a purchase order for infantry boots. It was an unlikely role.

  Gallen ached for a cigarette but kept with coffee. Then there’d been the tails that had been on Winter and Gallen in Los Angeles, and probably also in Denver and Calgary. Gallen thought about the LA tail and Reggie’s security crew in Kugaaruk: were they the same people? Working for the same employer? He’d have to do work on that if he ever got out of the Arctic.

  But the biggest concern was the man called Reggie Kransk and an admission that the TTC wasn’t as legit as it sounded. There was a massive oil and gas field under the Arctic Ocean which, Florita had implied, would keep the West going on its petroleum habit for several decades.

  If Gallen ever got out of his predicament, he was going to start with a person who should have known better than to mess with a former special forces captain. He was going to find Paul Mulligan, and he was going to get some answers.

  ~ * ~

  The noise woke him from his sleep. The fire in the stove had burned down and he listened to its soft hiss, audible above the howl of the wind around the spherical dome.

  Looking at his G-Shock beside the cot, he saw it was 9.53 pm, a few hours into nightfall. Ford and Winter were out there somewhere, weathering what sounded like a fifty-mph wind.

  Something else niggled at him, but he couldn’t place it. Emerging from the bed, he padded over dry concrete to the wood pile, opened the stove door and put two pieces of wood into the box.

  Something made him hold his breath, as if a spider had run up his spine. A faint bang, coming from the garage area of the building. He wasn’t experienced with Arctic storms but it sounded like something more than wind hitting a roller door.

  Pulling on his hypothermia suit, which looked like a giant roasting bag for a turkey, he picked up the SIG handgun left to him and moved to the door that sealed the warm room from the draughty building. As he leaned his ear to the door, he heard it again: a thump and then a whir. Someone was opening the garage door?

  His heart pounding, Gallen thought of possible explanations. Maybe the hit men in the helo had radioed to their back-up, who were now scouting the area? The snowmobile tracks would have led directly to the Canadian Air Force building.

  Checking the SIG for load and safety, Gallen tried to get deep breaths into his lungs without coughing. He needed to stay calm: whoever was entering that garage door had the disadvantage of not knowing the layout.

  Slipping into his boots, he moved into the main room of the building, feeling the cold as he crossed the floor, past the old terminals and radar consoles, to the far side, where the garage was located. The lights were down, a faint illumination coming from the bunk room where Gallen had left one bulb burning.

  The roller door clanked and then the building was filled with the noise of a snowmobile, revving above the sound of the garage door coming down again as men yelled at one another.

  Ripping open the door, Gallen held the SIG in cup-and-saucer, keeping his forehead lined up with the gun as he scanned for unfriendlies.

  A light went on. He was blinded momentarily then realised it was Winter at the light switch, sheets of ice falling off him like a barn in spring. Ford was huddled over the snow patrol capsule behind the snowmobile.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Gallen, moving into the garage which was now wet with snow and ice.

  Ignoring Gallen, Winter moved to Ford’s side and then they were lifting something out of the capsule.

  ‘Quick, boss,’ said the Canadian as they marched past. ‘Get another foil bag, woollen blankets.’

  Shutting out the cold from the garage, Gallen followed the two men into the bunk room, where the heat was sealed in again as he shut the insulated door.

  Unzipping a foil emergency bag, Gallen handed it over as Ford tore open what had been a folded tent and was now a covering of some sort.

  ‘Get a double bag,’ said Ford.

  Gallen saw a body beneath the tent, Ford and Winter tearing wet clothes from it.

  ‘In the bunk,’ said Winter as Gallen unzipped a double hypothermia blanket. ‘Quick!’

  Panting with exertion and panic, red-faced with cold, the Australian and Canadian got the naked body into the rustling metallic bag alongside Gallen, making him flinch at the shock of incredibly cold skin. As they fastened the hypothermia blanket he saw glimpses of the body, bluish pale, translucent with cold, dark hair in a tangle around a handsome face.

  ‘Florita?’ said Gallen as Ford and Winter wove woollen blankets around the duo.

  ‘Correct,’ said Winter, lock-jawed with cold as he raced to the stove where he checked the coffee pot for contents and put it on the front burner.

  Ford’s jaws clattered as he pulled pills from his medical kit and forced them into the woman’s mouth, his hands as stiff as timber.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Gallen, as he felt her wet hair against his face.

  ‘You don’t have to.’ Winter’s face was a mask of exhaustion and worry. ‘Let’s call it a miracle and not push our luck.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 27

  Florita’s pulse was faint and slow against Gallen’s mouth, which Ford had encouraged him to place on her neck. It was eight o’clock in the morning and Gallen wanted to use the washroom almost as much as he wanted to remove himself from the embarrassing physical intimacy.

  ‘She needs all the warm contact she can get,’ said the Aussie, kneeling beside the cot with his stethoscope. Pulling back the blanket, he listened to the woman’s heart and then restored her sleeping arrangement.

  ‘She’s alive,’ Gallen whispered.

  ‘Yeah, she’s doing better than the alternative,’ said Ford, rummaging in his medic’s kit. ‘But there’s no substitute for sharing bodily warmth. Can you hang on for a couple of hours, at least until she regains consciousness?’

  Gallen agreed and tried not to move as Winter returned from the shower cubicle and warmed himself against the stove.

  ‘One of you going to tell me why you’re here with Florita, not halfway to Baker Lake?’

  ‘Shit.’ Ford shook his head slightly as he selected a vial and a syringe. ‘Florita happened.’

  ‘We were half an hour east when we saw the flare,’ said Winter. ‘It was coming from the Challenger so we headed back, looking for Durville.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Durville was dead.’

  Ford injected something into Florita’s neck. ‘We headed out again and there was another flare—a green burster—coming from up behind the lookout.’

  Gallen felt a wave of guilt. ‘Shit, she was up there?’

  ‘Found her in a snow cave, dug down,’ said Winter. ‘She wouldn’t have survived in the open.’

  ‘That was her last flare,’ said Ford. ‘What a tough chick.’

  ~ * ~

  When Florita had stabilised, Gallen climbed out of the hypothermia bag, had a hot shower and dressed in dry thermals and clothes. The three of them sat at the table as the executive slept.

  Gallen sipped coffee. ‘Okay, so what did you do with Durville?’

  ‘Buried him,’ said Winter, lighting a smoke.

  ‘Can we find him?’

  ‘Right beside Donny,’ said Winter. ‘You wanna make sure you can hand back a body?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘We grabbed his bag.’

  Gallen pa
used. ‘His bag?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Winter. ‘You didn’t see that thing he was clutching in the fuselage?’

  ‘Thought he was trying to stay warm,’ said Gallen.