by Mark Aitken
Slowly Gallen’s breathing started coming in short sharp chunks of air as he forced his chest to operate and made his legs and arms move. Finning behind Ford, the strange light filtering through the ice, he looked into the blackness beneath him and hoped this wasn’t going to be a deep dive. The lakes in this region were probably U-shaped glacial valleys and that could mean a steep side and a dive of a hundred feet.
The cold pressed on his temples like a vice, his breathing sounding like a saw, but Gallen kept paddling, trusting that the sooner they salvaged the radio, the sooner he’d be back in front of that stove breathing in warm air.
After forty seconds of finning, Gallen almost ran into the back of Ford, who trod water under the ice floe, the bubble of an air pocket visible between water surface and ice.
They were fifteen feet from the steep-sided shore and Ford pointed downwards. As Gallen followed him into the darkness, the flashlight came on, illuminating the maw of cold and black. The cold got worse, along with the pressure on his skull and chest, and Ford stopped again, pointing. Below them, in the yellowish light provided by the weak old batteries, was the Little Bird helo, upside down, its plexiglass cockpit embedded in lake mud, the deadly minigun sitting on top of the wreck like a suitcase handle.
His breathing rasped and bubbles flew upwards as Gallen leaned over and finned downwards after the Aussie to a point where there was no more natural light.
Handing Gallen the tool kit, Ford gestured for the bag to be opened. Looping his arm around one of the fuselage pillars, Gallen steadied himself and opened the diver’s mesh bag, his face now numb at the edges of his mask. He could see Ford’s hands in the spill of the flashlight beam, could see him moving them furiously to get blood into them, and then the Aussie dipped his hands into the toolkit and drew out a small crescent spanner and a rubber-handled Phillips screwdriver.
Taking the flashlight, Gallen aimed it into the cockpit, getting a fright as he saw the pilot hanging upside down in his harness.
Scanning the cockpit with the beam, Gallen picked up the flight deck and located the Harris radio, planted in a ceiling bracket in front of the pilot’s head.
Ford moved into the cockpit and, unhooking the pilot, sent the blond flier to float with the fishes. Moving closer to the cockpit, Gallen gave a full beam to the radio as an aluminium briefcase floated in the slipstream of the pilot’s exit.
Ford swam to the radio as Gallen reached for the briefcase, placing it in the tool bag before it could descend to the bottom. His hands were already frozen numb and the cold sat on his chest like a piano; Gallen had to fight the panic, making himself focus minutely on where the flashlight beam was pointed and how many times Mike Ford turned the spanner.
After two minutes, Gallen watched a screw from the radio bracket float to the bottom. When he looked back into the cockpit he realised that the flashlight was failing. Its weak yellow light had faded to a sepia tone and he could see Ford hurrying to get the job done while the beam held out.
Gallen was at the end of his endurance. He needed to be out of that water and he urged on the Aussie, cursing loudly to himself about the situations that his life had forced him into. For the last four days he’d felt constantly on the edge of disaster, unable to change a thing. He’d simply been hanging on, trying to inspire others to do the same, and he was exhausted.
Ford’s elbow came up and down and then the spanner was flying free, spinning into the darkness. Lunging at it, the Aussie tried to get his hand on the tool but it went out of his reach. As Ford pulled back into the cockpit, his rig snagged on a broken piece of the door frame and instantaneously the air started rushing out of the tubes into the water.
His eyes growing wide, Ford signalled he was going up. Gallen prepared to fin to the surface but Ford was already untying the main line to Kenny Winter on the cliff and pointing at the tool bag.
Before Gallen could argue, Ford was ascending and Gallen tied the main line around his own waist, cursing the lake gods as his flashlight faded to a mushroom-coloured smudge of light.
Moving to the cockpit, he looked in the tool bag and found another crescent spanner. His body wanted to shut down as he kneeled on the ceiling of the helo and concentrated the beam into the radio bracket. His hands were locked in place like a chicken’s claws and he could feel his body going into shock as it became painful to draw breath. The piano that had been sitting on his chest had changed to a church organ and he groaned into the mouthpiece, trying to make the oxygen flow. Even as he felt himself expiring, he had the strangest thought: that there was an entire specialty in the military that did this work, totally hidden from the sight of all but those involved in it. If he ever got out of this shit, he’d never again take a clearance diver for granted.
The second screw that held the radio in place was much smaller than the first one and he tried in vain to wheel the spanner to a smaller size, yelling in frustration as his thumb slipped on the wheel. His wrist ached, his fingers wouldn’t respond, his other hand couldn’t hold the spanner properly. He’d done these coordination exercises in special forces divers tanks and in the ocean waters of Okinawa in summer—but trying to make a spanner work in this cold was beyond a joke.
As tears of frustration formed in his eyes, the flashlight went dead and he reached up to the pilot’s seat and dragged the spanner wheel across the fabric. Pushing his gloved finger into the new gap, he sensed it had worked and he tried it on the radio screw. Still too big.
He banged the flashlight; it briefly sprang to life and Gallen rolled the spanner wheel along the pilot’s seat again, further reducing the spacing of the crescent.
His breath now coming in erratic jags, Gallen reached for the second screw, completely missing it. The cold had taken his coordination and he did what he’d been told: tried to focus totally on the job. Not the cold, not his breathing, not the darkness. Just the job.
He hooked the spanner onto the screw on the second try and it fitted. As he turned the spanner as slowly as he could, the flashlight died again, plunging him into primal blackness, a void that could send otherwise tough soldiers into wild, thrashing panic attacks. Gallen had seen it, seen what this environment could do to a man who wasn’t psychologically prepared for it.
Making himself breathe and focus, he lowered his free hand and tried to move it. When it finally did, he held the spanner on the screw and turned slowly, ensuring the spanner stayed on the head, not entirely sure what was moving through the thickness of the gloves and the intense cold. After a minute, the screw came free.
Pulling the Harris out of its bracket, Gallen saw for the first time the cables bolted into the back of it.
‘Shit,’ he said to himself, unsure how many of the cables had to be preserved.
Now breathing as shallowly as he had before the pleurisy made him pass out, Gallen reached behind the radio in the inky black and felt as best he could for the types of cable: one of them pulled away—a simple plug. Another wouldn’t budge and he could feel a spinning washer at its base—like a cable TV connector—which he tried the spanner on. He needed it slightly smaller and rolled the spanner wheel on the pilot’s seat for a third time, wondering when he was going to simply black out.
Bringing the spanner back to the rear of the Harris, Gallen found the washer turned easily; as he tried to rush it, though, the spanner fell out of his hand and into the dark.
Panting for his life, he decided to go up. With a hard pull, he tore the final connecting cable out of the back of the radio and placed the unit in his bag. Then he started his ascent. After thirty seconds of slowly rising, he felt less pressure on his chest and could see the ice above. He stopped, trod water and looked at the G-Shock he had swapped with Ford; unable to use the buttons to make a countdown clock, he counted three minutes off the display. To his left he could see a set of scuba tanks suspended in the water, being jiggled like a huge tea bag. It was Ford marking Gallen’s escape route.
His mind played tricks as he trod water and looked at t
he G-Shock, and then he was dreaming: dreams of childhood, of being in the jungle. A dream about hitting the ice in a game they once played in Gillette, when Gallen’s cheek was split open and he lay there on the cold, concussed and coming to with the arena ice for a pillow.
The ice! The cold! The feeling he could sleep forever . . .
Opening his eyes, Gallen realised he’d stopped treading water and that he was sinking slightly. Shit! He’d fallen asleep.
Releasing the small valve on the chest of the dry suit, he let air out of the suit and kicked upwards, hoping he’d decompressed all he had to. He’d forgotten what time it was when he checked the watch.
Making it to the hole in the ice, he didn’t have the strength even to break the water. Then he felt the rope pulling him up out of the hole and into the cold sunshine, where he flopped onto the ice like a sack of salt.
The mouthpiece was ripped away and then his mouth was being cleared and his tanks pulled off and he was gasping, coughing. As he twisted and turned onto his knees, he vomited, the action forcing blood into his face with excruciating pain.
Taking the bag from him, Ford helped Gallen across the ice, both of them stumbling to the ice cliff, their joints frozen stiff, their blood sluggish in their veins. Winter looked down from the cliff and Gallen could see that the main line was now attached to the rear bar of the snowmobile. Tying them on together, leaving the scuba gear on the shore ice, Ford waved to the Canadian and then they were being pulled up the ice wall, bouncing against it as they were hoisted up and over the precipice by the snowmobile. Winter untied the rope and accelerated back to the divers, who lay in the snow, exhausted.
Gallen felt himself being loaded into the rescue capsule and then they were travelling, a deep warm sleep finally enveloping him like a drug.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 30
Sitting on a cot with his back to the wall, Gallen sipped on black tea, the coffee having run out as the last scavenged food was about to. He felt a little stunned and the dive in the lake had left him unable to hear very well.
Lying under blankets in the cot beside him, Florita turned away from the old Sports Illustrated she’d been reading.
‘So, this building was part of a line?’
‘The Pentagon wanted a line of radar stations that would give an early warning to our air force bases, allow us to scramble fighter jets against the Soviets,’ said Gallen. ‘The only place that line would work would be across the Canadian Arctic, over to Greenland I think.’
Florita made a face. ‘Sounds like a Maginot Line. It was a success?’
‘Don’t remember any big US cities being visited by missiles,’ said Gallen, getting a smile from Florita. ‘They started shutting them down in the mid-1980s.’
‘And shut down the radios too, huh?’
Gallen looked at the table in the middle of the room, where Ford and Winter were working on the Harris. The Harris was the radio unit carried by most Western combat forces, whether you were special forces, artillery or logistics. It had a design so basic that most Vietnam War veterans would be able to operate the modern ones, and they had a reputation of being able to go to hell and back and still be reliable.
‘That radio was in a frozen lake for twenty-four hours,’ said Florita. ‘Do you guys really think it will work again?’
‘I was once in the field,’ said Ford, as he held up a component and blew on it. ‘An APC ran over our Manpack, and twenty minutes later our comms guy had us back on the net. He didn’t buy a drink for two weeks after that.’
‘What’s a Manpack?’ said Florita.
Ford pointed to the parts arrayed in front of him. ‘This is the Manpack, the Harris we’re all trained on in the forces. They had one mounted in the chopper.’
‘The antenna going to be a problem?’ asked Gallen.
‘Think I got the solution,’ said Winter, picking up a long piece of metal.
He’d stripped down a piece of aluminium window frame as an antenna and Ford had wired it into the Harris.
‘This is looking okay,’ said Ford, clicking a dried piece into place and observing the completed machine. ‘Our big worry is the battery, but Kenny’s got that sorted.’
Winter left the room and came back a minute later with the snowmobile’s battery. Hooking it up, Ford made some of the lights work on the radio’s small screen, but he shook his head slowly.
‘I can get a scan going,’ said the Aussie, twirling the switches. ‘But it reverts to the preset.’
No one spoke. The preset from the radio would go to the people who’d tried to kill them.
‘Can we get an emergency channel? What is it? One twenty-one point five?’ said Gallen.
‘That’s civilian aviation emergency,’ said Ford. ‘I can dial that in, but the radio seems to flick us back to presets. We’d broadcast to the emergency channel in bursts.’
Gallen paused. He needed to get this right. ‘What do we know about the presets?’
‘One is hidden. It’s programmed into the Harris as “Home”,’ said Ford. ‘The other is one twenty-three point oh-two-fiver.’
The information clicked in Gallen’s mind. ‘Isn’t that—?’
‘Yes it is,’ said Winter quickly, clearly wanting to avoid worrying Florita.
‘What is it, Gerry? ‘ she said, eyes flashing with annoyance as she sat up. ‘What is this frequency, this preset?’
The men looked at one another, Winter breaking the deadlock. ‘It’s an air-to-air frequency. The one helicopters use.’
They watched her as she processed the information, her face dropping as she realised what it meant. ‘Oh no,’ she said, hand going to her face, which suddenly wore the nightmare of her ordeal in the snow. ‘There’s another helicopter?’
‘That seems to be the case,’ said Gallen.
Tears formed in Florita’s eyes, her hands fidgety. ‘So, so . . . what do we do? I mean, we can’t just sit here.’
‘We have to put out a call,’ said Gallen. ‘Or we’ll starve.’
Florita’s bravery fell to pieces in front of the three men, her sobs snapping them all back to the reality of their situation. Not every person forced into such circumstances was motivated to keep going till they found a way out. Florita was reality, the rest of them were the aberration, the people who were trained over many years to keep moving regardless of their peril. They’d waited for Florita to talk about her experiences in her own time—the way it was done among men in the field. But Gallen realised his mistake. She was a woman, a civilian, and what they’d taken for bravery may have been trauma and fear.
‘They’re out there!’ said Florita, lips quivering, looking at Gallen. ‘I’m sorry, Gerry, I’m so sorry. I tried to be brave, I’m trying. I—’
Winter gave him the dirtiest look, flicking his head, and Gallen moved to Florita’s cot, put his arm around her shoulders.
‘They won’t hurt you again,’ he said as the high-flying lawyer sobbed and clung to his chest. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
When Florita had succumbed to Ford’s offer of Valium, Gallen tucked her into the cot and joined the men at the table.
‘Okay, so we put out a mayday on the emergency frequency. Who hears us?’ he asked.
‘Just about every aircraft is preset to one twenty-one point five on their secondary channel,’ said Ford. ‘The people looking for that helo are also looking for us, and they’ll be listening to that channel.’
‘So there could be another helo waiting in the vicinity that was working with the one we put down?’
‘I’d say so,’ said Ford.
‘We need to give our location in coded form,’ said Winter. ‘Something the locals would understand, but not a bunch of mercs flown in to kill us.’
‘Ideas?’ said Gallen.
‘The name of this base,’ said Winter. ‘Found a label on a box of oil in the garage. It matches with some others I found.’
‘And?’
‘This base was called CAM fifteen. If w
e put a call out with that location, some of the local search-and-rescue people might know what it is . . .’
‘But not the unfriendlies?’ said Gallen.
‘Worth a try?’
Gallen thought about it. ‘How are we for weapons, ammo?’
‘Two handguns, about forty rounds,’ said Ford. ‘Three rifles, half-loaded—let’s say forty, forty-five rounds.’
‘Okay, Mike.’ Gallen rubbed his stubble with his fingertips. ‘Get a mayday on the net. Call it CAM fifteen, and no more. Not even the word base or facility. Okay?’
‘Got it, boss.’
‘And as soon as we send that mayday, Mike, I want us all over those presets.’
‘Pick up the chatter?’
‘Damn right,’ said Gallen, aching for a cigarette. ‘If they’re coming in again, I want to know in advance.’