by Mark Aitken
Winter smiled. ‘When we found him, it was wound around him so tight I thought he’d been strangled.’
The bag was a satchel-style leather briefcase with a shoulder strap. Gallen dragged it across the table. Pulling out the contents, he placed them on the table: the ream of white foolscap paper was slightly damp. Feeling the outside pockets, Gallen came up with a BlackBerry, a charger and a Bluetooth earpiece-mic. Pushing the on-off button, Gallen started the device but it immediately asked for a password.
‘Have a go at that,’ he said, passing the BlackBerry to Ford.
Picking up the papers, Gallen scanned them one by one. The top sheet was a weekly run-down of Durville’s movements and appointments, printed from an Outlook program—Florita’s, judging by the tiny signature line on the bottom of the page. All of the entries duplicated what was on Gallen’s own running sheet. As he put down the sheet though, a name caught his eye, one that he hadn’t seen before: Tommy Tumchak, followed by a phone number.
‘Kenny.’ Gallen looked up. ‘What’s nine-oh-seven?’
‘Alaska, ain’t it?’ said Winter. ‘Not Anchorage. Probably Barrow.’
The date for the phone call was the day after the Kugaaruk meeting. It meant nothing to Gallen, but he decided to keep the diary anyway.
The rest of the documents were backgrounds on Gallen, Winter, McCann and Ford. They seemed to have got Gallen’s details correct and he smirked at the mention of the Silver Star, a medal for gallantry in action. It distinguished the combat Marine from the pen-pusher but the clipboards had been trying to erode that over the years, awarding themselves Silver Stars for the most tenuous connections to combat. The enlisted men called them Fobbers—a reference to the heavily fortified Forward Operating Bases, or FOBs, and the fact that many of the military careerists went to Afghanistan to have ‘combat’ stamped on their CV without ever leaving the safety of the FOB.
Winter’s sheet showed entries for Royal Canadian Infantry Corps, JTF2 Assaulters with specialties in marksmanship, field survival and hand-to-hand combat. Then there was a long period seconded to NATO’s intel command in Afghanistan. Ford, meanwhile, had taught comms and fieldcraft to other Navy combat divers. McCann’s Silver Star wasn’t news to Gallen; he’d earned it in the same action as Gallen himself.
Sifting through the papers again, Gallen looked for the sheet on Bren Dale, the person who was supposed to be on the detail. It wasn’t there. Gallen wondered about it: given that Dale had pulled out at the last minute, shouldn’t the brief still be in there?
There was something strange about the briefcase, and he had another look, opening all the inside pockets. ‘This is it?’ he asked the other men. ‘Nothing fell out?’
‘Didn’t even look in it,’ said Winter. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ll be happier if we can access that BlackBerry, see who Harry was talking to. But for now, I dunno. Would have expected more in a billionaire’s briefcase.’
‘Like?’ said Winter.
‘Like draft agreements, MOUs, maps, proposals. He’s an oil and gas guy who’s travelling with his top legal person to meet with a Russian to discuss some of the biggest untouched oil deposits on earth,’ said Gallen, lifting the foolscap pages. ‘But all he has is a BlackBerry and intel notes on his bodyguard?’
‘What’re you saying, boss?’ asked Ford.
‘I’m confused, is all,’ said Gallen. ‘Either the meeting was very informal—just getting to know you—or he brought some documents that were handed over to Reggie.’
‘With no copies?’ said Ford. ‘And no documents handed to him?’
‘Precisely,’ said Gallen. ‘Or . . .’
‘What?’ said Winter.
‘Harry was hugging that briefcase because there was a document, and he didn’t want anyone to see it.’
Ford gulped his coffee. ‘So where is it?’
‘It was taken, I suppose,’ said Gallen. ‘From when he packed at the hotel to when he died in the fuselage, he thought he had something in that case worth holding on to.’
‘That’s about two days, boss,’ said Winter. ‘You can search my stuff. I ain’t got it.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Ford.
Turning as one, they looked at Florita.
‘I’ll talk to her when she comes around,’ said Gallen. ‘For now, let’s talk about another shot at Baker Lake. I’ll take the trip this time.’
‘You look like shit, boss,’ said Winter. ‘It’s cold out there and that snowmobile ain’t the Orient Express.’
‘I can’t ask you guys to take all the pain.’
Winter gave him a look. ‘We’re beyond that, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t—’
‘You got pleurisy, boss—you’d be a liability,’ said Winter. ‘Besides, her toes are no good. She needs a hospital. If there’s a third person on the sled, it’s Florita.’
‘Frostbite?’
Winter shrugged. ‘Why Mike was rubbing on her feet all night.’
Looking over, Gallen saw the Australian rubbing Florita’s feet through the foil bag.
‘We have to talk,’ said Gallen.
‘Don’t worry. I don’t want to eat you, boss.’ Ford smiled.
‘Look,’ said Gallen, glad someone had come out with it, ‘we’re low on wood, low on diesel and now we have four mouths to feed. So our food supply just shrank to three days.’
‘We’ll try again,’ said Winter. ‘But we’ll need food.’
‘What we really need,’ said Gallen, ‘is comms.’
‘No luck,’ said Ford.
‘Well,’ said Gallen casually, ‘there’s a Harris at the bottom of that lake.’
The conversation halted like someone had lifted the needle off an LP. Ford grabbed a Camel and avoided Gallen’s eyes.
Then the sceptical Aussie drawl started up. ‘Between lake and bottom you missed the part about freezing.’
‘I saw the suits in the garage,’ said Gallen, as softly as he could. ‘Hanging on the wall.’
‘I told you.’ Ford pointed at Winter. ‘Told you he wouldn’t miss that.’
Winter slowly fixed Gallen with a look, not of hostility, but certainly that of a man who’d told a few COs to go fuck themselves in his time. ‘Boss, I know what you’re thinking, but that diving gear is, what, thirty, forty years old?’
Gallen shrugged. ‘Looks okay.’
Winter raised the intensity slightly. ‘That’s a freezing lake and we don’t know how deep the wreck is sitting. What we do know is that exposure is our big enemy. It’s already given you the pleurisy.’
‘Can we do it? ‘ Gallen looked at Ford.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said the Aussie, leaning back on his chair legs, his blue eyes crackling through blistered cheekbones. ‘You think because I’m a clearance diver I’m crazy?’
‘No,’ said Gallen, keeping his voice soft. ‘I thought because you’re a Navy commando that something this impossible might be possible.’
Winter slowly shook his head.
‘It’ll feel warmer under the water, right?’ said Gallen.
Ford’s eyes widened. ‘You’re nuts.’
‘Let’s check the gear,’ said Gallen, standing.
‘No, I mean it, mate. You’re a fucking lunatic.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 28
They watched Mike Ford as he sorted and arranged each dive rig, separating and checking every moving part. It was like watching a sniper take apart his rifle, except that Ford seemed to feel the need to blow on every piece, screw it, shake it, bang it and hold it to the light, squinting.
‘What’s that?’ asked Gallen, noticing that Ford was particularly fixated on a valve system.
‘That’s your basic sealed diaphragm,’ said Ford, smiling as he held it in his fingers. ‘Environmentally sealed, to be precise. Supposed to trick the regulators into thinking they’re in normal water.’
‘What happens otherwise?’ said Winter.
‘The water would freeze the air-mix so the regu
lator would seize, and then your lungs would really have something to complain about.’
‘I see,’ said Gallen, secretly glad that he wasn’t going in that lake.
‘It’s natural to worry about your dry suit in arctic diving, that’s what everyone is concerned about,’ said Ford, replacing the diaphragm. ‘But you have to start with the breathing apparatus. If that doesn’t work then we’re not going far.’
‘The seals and connectors working?’ said Gallen.
‘Pretty well preserved,’ said Ford. ‘This is high-quality stuff. It’s US Navy spec.’
When Ford and Winter returned from the garage workshop, they’d filled the tanks with air from the compressor and found a flashlight that was not as strong as the modern ones, but which was the only one on the base. They also had a selection of tools that they would use to remove the Harris military radio without damaging it too much.
Directing Winter into the rubberised thermal undergarments, Ford laughed at the other man’s idea that only one frogman needed to dive.
‘Something you landlubbers gotta know,’ he said with a wink as he stretched the rubber vest over his head and pulled it down. ‘If you have the choice, you always dive with a buddy. It’s the first rule of diving’
Winter’s thermal pants wouldn’t sit properly on his hips and when Ford had to wrench the vest down, there was a one-inch gap between the top and bottoms.
‘Geez, you’re a big bastard,’ said Ford. ‘You should be okay when we get the dry suit on.’
Stepping into the silvery dry suit, Winter tugged on the leggings but they wouldn’t pull up far enough. ‘Shit. We got a bigger one?’
‘This is it,’ said Ford. ‘But you can’t wear that. You won’t be able to move.’
‘Need someone more your size, eh Mike?’ said the Canadian.
Looking from Ford to Winter and back again, Gallen tried not to grimace. He believed that a commanding officer should only ask of his men what he was prepared to do himself. And he’d come up with this crazy idea.
‘You’re, what?’ Ford looked Gallen up and down. ‘Five-eleven, one-ninety, two hundred?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ mumbled Gallen.
Ford smiled. ‘You’re up, boss.’
~ * ~
Winter drove the spike into the hard ice with a large sledgehammer, steam bursting from his fur-lined hood as he worked the four-foot length of steel in far enough to hold two men.
Tying off the rope under the spike’s flange, Winter threw it over the edge and onto the lake at the iced-over point where the helicopter had sunk two nights earlier.
Gallen coughed. The cold air was going down hard, his infected lungs not ready for the intense, paralysing temperature. The cold tore at the exposed flesh on his face, whistling at the wound in his cheek and attacking the broken teeth in his bare gums. The rest of him was insulated against the cold by the dry suit, a partially air-filled rubberised garment that started at insulated booties, enveloped the hands in gloves and ended in a waterproof hood that covered his entire head save for a rectangle that exposed his eyes, nose and mouth.
Gallen was over the edge first, the cold oozing through the booties as he struggled for a grip on the ice cliff. Giving up the idea of abseiling against that cliff, he opted for an adaptive rappel, sliding down the rope, bouncing off the ice cliff-face.
Hearing a shout, he looked up into the blue sky where Ford was leaning over the edge. ‘Don’t burn your gloves,’ said the Aussie, louder than he had to. ‘They need to be sealed when we hit the drink.’
The weight bore down on him and Gallen took it as slow as possible, trying to preserve his gloves. After two minutes of exertion, he hit the ice ledge beside the lake, exhausted already. Heaving for breath, which triggered a hacking coughing fit, he doubled over and tried to spit out phlegm. Then he tugged on the rope and waited for Ford.
Holding the rope steady, Gallen looked across the lake, a long piece of still water which was about a quarter of a mile across and maybe three miles long. The shore ice crushed up against the cliff, having repaired itself over the hole created by the helicopter, and Gallen looked for the hole they’d have to dive through.
The rope came down and he unclipped the scuba rigs and pulled the rope, which was retrieved quickly. Then Ford was on the line, ankles crossed over on the thick rope as he wormed his way down. If Gallen had been an instructor at Pendleton, he’d have given Ford a nine out of ten; he’d have given himself a three and a bawling-out.
Ford landed, his tool bag across his shoulder and flashlight clipped to his weight belt. After checking and rechecking the regulators, breathers, mouthpieces and masks, Ford picked up a set of fins and jammed them under Gallen’s weight belt.
Gallen shrugged into the scuba tank harness held by the Aussie and allowed him to come around and buckle the rig across his chest so it was tight. The air was at about minus thirty and Gallen was having a mild panic attack about going into that water. He’d completed the Marine Corps Combatant Dive School, but he’d never really used the training in operations because he’d been sent to Mindanao instead. It didn’t matter that he knew he could dive in the dark; this was different. This was Arctic diving with lungs that had just been drained of fluid. And he was scared of how his body would react, that the old Marines’ mind-over-matter approach would not be enough with pleurisy in his lungs.
‘We have to go through that?’ said Gallen, anxiety creeping over him as he pointed across the shore ice to a gap between two floes. It was a hundred and fifty feet from the shore.
‘That’s it,’ said Ford, testing the ice with his bootie-clad foot.
A breath of wind flashed across the frozen lake, so cold Gallen felt it could peel off his face, nose-first.
‘Shit,’ he said, looking away from the wind, feeling like he’d been fed the world’s worst brain-freeze. Pain exploded in his sinuses and he held his hands over his nose, trying to regain composure as tears ran off his face and mucus poured out of his nose. ‘Holy fuck.’
Tying a bowline, Ford attached the main rope to his waist and tied a thin line between himself and Gallen. They walked across the creaking ice, the sound of the lake lapping beneath it as creepy a sound as Gallen had ever heard. His anxiety rose as they got closer to the hole in the ice, a pulse banging in his head.
Following Ford’s lead, Gallen sat on the ice and put his feet in the water. The cold shot was instant, such a sudden sensation that he saw stars.
Ford looked at him. ‘You’ve done this before, right, boss?’ he said as they pulled on their fins. ‘I mean, Force Recon and all that. Just tell me if I’m teaching you to suck eggs.’
Gallen gulped down the stress and thought about transferring the adrenaline into positive action, not fear.
‘Yeah, I’ve dived before,’ he said. ‘Just not under the ice.’
‘It’s basic. Just follow my lead and stay focused.’
Gallen nodded but Ford shook his head. ‘No, I mean it. You let your mind wander down there and you’ll drift away. The cold’ll do that, so stay close and stay focused on the job. It helps, believe me.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen, as they pulled the fins over their booties.
Ford looked at the G-Shock on his wrist over the dry suit and turned his body towards the spot where the helo had sunk. It was Gallen’s watch, on loan to Ford so the Aussie could make a compass-navigated swim back to the site of the helo.
‘Lids down,’ said Ford, and they pulled down their masks, which formed a seal around the facial gap in their hoods. In theory, at least, no water should break that seal.
‘Mouthpiece in, boss, and then three-breath test.’
Gallen did as he was told and gave the thumbs-up. His heart banged erratically in his temples and he heard Ford yell ‘Divers below’ to Winter, who stood on the cliff.
Then Ford was tapping him on the shoulder and showing two fingers. The Aussie slid off the ice shelf into the freezing abyss, the ropes following him like snakes. And then, as tho
ugh in a nightmare, Gallen was leaning forward, the water claiming him like an ice-demon.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 29
The sound of his own screams would have deafened him if any sound was able to escape his throat. The cold lake water wrapped around Gallen’s chest, throat and head like an angry squid and tried to choke the life out of him as he drifted in the first few seconds of the dive. Feeling virtually paralysed, he did what Ford had suggested and focused on what was in front of him and kept it real simple: follow the leader, don’t lose eyes on the man in front, don’t panic.