by Mark Aitken
‘What it says.’
Picking up the phone built into his seat, Gallen put in a call to Aaron.
‘Gerry? Where are you?’
‘In the air,’ said Gallen. ‘Just going through the plan for the Ariadne launch. What’s this about the ArcticWatch people going down there? I assume we’re taking them off with Florita?’
‘Ixnay on that, Gerry. They’re down there for the first three-month shift.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m just the security guy, Gerry, case you hadn’t picked it. This comes from above.’
‘This a Joyce thing?’
‘I think Joyce helped create ArcticWatch,’ said Aaron.
Gallen paused, the bullshit factor too strong. ‘Okay, Aaron. So nothing to worry about?’
‘Nothing.’
~ * ~
The Oasis Challenger landed at Baker Lake Airport, powering through the slush and ice, past the famous green terminal, to where an Oasis Sikorsky S-92 was waiting.
Putting on their arctic gear, Gallen and Winter checked their SIGs and deplaned, walking across the wet surface to where a pilot was giving the thumbs-up in the cockpit of the large yellow helicopter.
‘You really think that retrieving this Newport Associates report is going to stop the teams?’ said Winter as the beeping of the turbine’s starter motor sounded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Gallen as he took the loadmaster’s hand, ‘but if we have the thing, we at least control that much.’
He let himself be pulled into the cargo hold and took a seat as Winter was hauled in to join him. Leaning into the flight deck, Winter handed over the coordinates and joined Gallen in the load space seats.
‘You okay?’ said Gallen, as the Canadian was seated. He seemed nervy.
‘Remember I said that there was probably more than one team out there?’ said Winter. ‘There was something weird about those shooters at the Britannia yards.’
‘You mean they didn’t come on like a rescue team?’
‘I guess that’s it,’ said Winter. ‘You think they killed Dale?’
‘Rather than let him talk with me?’
‘Yes.’
Gallen took the helmet and visor offered him by the loadmaster as the side door was slid shut with a bang. ‘I don’t know, Kenny. I’m all out of answers. Could be nothing to do with Oasis—could be other shit.’
Kenny turned slightly as if to talk, but Gallen pulled on his helmet and the conversation was over.
The loadmaster joined the pilot on the flight deck and the helo lifted into the sky.
~ * ~
It was early dusk when the helo crested the ridge and flew down towards the site of the crash.
Gallen and Winter leaned into the flight deck, watching the site in the red glow as the pilot banked off to land. Feeling emotional, Gallen pulled on his mittens and his Thinsulate double-layer balaclava before pulling the fur-lined hood forward and zipping the arctic parka all the way to his nose.
Helping each other put on their military snow shoes, they prepared to trek across the drifts. The Marines also issued hard plastic snow shoes for icy conditions, but Chase Lang had supplied the ‘tennis racquet’ variety—the much-hated footwear that 1st Recon Marines were forced to patrol in during their stints at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport.
Throwing the small backpack over his right shoulder, Gallen waited for the loadmaster to drop the fold-out stairs and walked down them into snow.
The two men struggled through the deep snow to where a hump of packed powder was all that showed the world what had happened in this place. The snow was about to start its thaw, but there’d been enough flurries to cover the whole crash site in a white veil.
Halfway down the gentle fifty-yard slope to the plane wreck, the area was illuminated as the helicopter’s floodlights went on. The last rotations of the rotors whooshed through the air and then Gallen was alone with his breathing.
Arriving at the starboard side of the fuselage that had sheltered the survivors from the elements, Winter pointed to where the entrance should be. Removing their fold-up shovels from their backpacks, the two men dug for several minutes until the snow caved in and the doorway to their hut was exposed.
The air accident investigators and the RCMP detectives had torn down the sacking and insulation that had once formed a door, and as they looked around the fuselage, illuminated by their flashlights, they smelled the burning rags and gasoline soot that had defined their survival.
Going to the ruined cockpit, Winter announced that the investigators had removed the flight deck avionics and probably the black box too. Harry Durville’s corpse was gone and so were those of the two pilots. Donny McCann’s body was back in Los Angeles, where his mother had buried him.
They stood in silence, looking at the beds that Harry and Donny had been afforded as they died, given pride of place closest to the meagre fire.
‘So,’ said Gallen, ‘Donny McCann was probably working for Paul Mulligan. His job was to steal the documents Harry Durville was carrying . . .’
‘The documents that were safe inside the bodyguard perimeter, but which weren’t so safe when one of the bodyguards was the thief,’ said Winter, lighting a smoke and offering one to Gallen.
‘Now, we know that Donny didn’t have the documents on him when he died.’
‘Check that, boss,’ said Winter. ‘We buried him naked, and there weren’t no documents.’
‘Correct,’ said Gallen, exhaling a thick plume of smoke into the cold air. ‘When we retrieved Harry’s satchel, there was nothing in there.’
‘That’s right. Which means he stashed them somewhere in the wreck.’
They searched the fuselage in a grid pattern for half an hour, establishing where Donny McCann could have hidden Durville’s documents. They went through every leather-bound seat that hadn’t already been stripped for its insulation. They searched all the overhead lockers—which were underfoot—but came up empty.
‘He couldn’t move,’ said Winter, exasperated and panting for breath as he finished sorting through a pile of debris. ‘So I don’t know that searching in the snow is going to achieve anything.’
Taking a seat, Gallen realised the helo’s spotlights were illuminating the fuselage and he switched off his flashlight.
‘It’s like Donny just chucked the documents down a hole,’ said Winter, hawking and spitting.
‘A hole?’ said Gallen. ‘A hole!’
‘Yeah?’
‘That’s where Donny was thrown when the plane landed,’ said Gallen, standing. ‘I found him in that ice cave, under the dome.’
‘He couldn’t move, even then,’ said Winter.
‘Yeah, but he was conscious and he’d been that way longer than me.’
‘You think Donny did the theft on the plane?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gallen, moving out of the fuselage and into the night. ‘But we’re going to find out.’
~ * ~
The two of them slammed their shovels into the peak of the dome as they were held suspended in their safety harnesses beneath the thumping Sikorsky.
The lights from the undercarriage made Gallen squint and the noise and wind effect was terrible as they tried to break through the dome, a death-trap that turned solid as concrete when you needed to dig through.
After ten minutes, Winter broke through the crust and promptly disappeared into the dome, the safety rope tensing as he was held aloft. A split-second later, Gallen also fell into the cavern.
‘Okay, Oasis One,’ he said into his mic, as he dangled in the dappled light. ‘Take us down.’
The winches let out the cable and the two of them landed on the wet floor of the cave, the noise and light from the Sikorsky bouncing around crazily.
‘This way,’ said Gallen, unclipping from the safety line.
Leading Winter through the cave, he struggled to get his bearings: which way had he walked when he’d regained consciousness that afternoon? The
light effects from the helo were disorienting and within minutes every twist and turn looked the same.
‘Let’s try that again,’ said Gallen, as the cavern reduced suddenly to a tunnel that a medium-sized dog would have to squeeze through.
Retracing their steps, both of them slipped on the ice as they struggled to make headway up the slight incline, the snow shoes giving no purchase on the shiny surface. Small gutters had been cut in the ice where the melt water flowed.
‘Need my golf shoes,’ said Winter as they crested a small rise and paused.
Panting, Gallen looked around, the air temperature dropping into the minus-twenty range with the coming of night. ‘This way,’ he pointed, and stepped out.
The first slip was comical and as he swung his arms around for balance, Gallen almost laughed. Then he slipped again, his feet going straight upwards, leaving him horizontal in mid-air.
‘Gerry!’ yelled Winter above the din of the helo, and as Gallen hit the ice slopes his snow shoes broke off and he was accelerating like an Olympic luger. Gathering speed across the surface, Gallen plummeted and bounced towards the ice wall at the bottom of the slope, screaming as he did so and praying to a God he hadn’t spoken to since his teens. Gallen’s head bounced off the concrete-like floor, and he looked ahead and saw the ice wall approaching at twenty-five mph.
Readying himself for death—or life in a wheelchair—Gallen shut his eyes and tried to relax his body. The final ground before the collision suddenly gave way and he was falling and accelerating. And then the momentum had ceased and Gallen opened his eyes. He was lying in a pool of water, in a wide guttering at the edge of another ice cave.
Pulling himself out of the incredibly cold water, Gallen gasped for air, the nightmare memory of pleurisy returning. All around him was the noise of the helo and Winter’s shouts.
‘Kenny, Kenny,’ he said into the mic, scared he was going to pass out with the shock of the cold water, ‘I’m okay. I went under the ice wall. Repeat, I’m okay but wet.’
Shaking as he turned, he made his fingers wrap around the flashlight in his parka pocket and fumbled with the power switch. ‘Shit,’ he said to himself, not wanting to ever feel as cold as he had after that plane wreck. He’d promised himself it would never happen again.
Finally getting the flashlight powered up, he swung it around as his jaw seized shut.
‘Gerry,’ came Winter’s voice in the helmet. ‘I’m coming. Stay dry, I’m coming.’
‘Roger th-th-that,’ said Gallen, forcing it out as his nervous system tried to shut down. Turning slowly with the flashlight, he recognised the cavern; it was where he had found the prone form of Donny McCann.
Movement came from the corner of his eye, and in the gloom he could see a fluoro-yellow helmet poking through the ice culvert that he’d just slid through.
‘Here, boss,’ came Winter’s voice over the speakers in Gallen’s helmet, but now the voice sounded like it was echoing up from a well. The cave was starting to take on a dream-like quality as Winter arrived in front of Gallen.
‘Shit, boss. Fuck!’ he said.
Gallen, his brain swirling towards unconsciousness, was unable to talk or smile or even shut his mouth; his face had completely seized up.
Tearing off his own parka and balaclava, Winter ripped at Gallen’s sodden clothes as he stood like a helpless infant. Gallen’s brain was taking him into dream realms, back to the hot baths his mother used to run him after hockey, young Gerry soaking in the warmth while his parents argued about turning a sensitive boy into a hockey thug, Gerry lying there in a halfway world between his mother’s desire for him to be educated and his dad’s need to have at least one son who could spend time in the bin without it ruining his day.
The life was draining out, it felt like the end, as Winter pulled the dry balaclava and parka onto Gallen. And here he was sixteen years after refusing to take the hockey scholarship to the University of North Dakota, because he wanted to join the Marines instead. Turning his back on the one thing that would have made both his mom and dad proud—getting a degree while playing for the Fighting Sioux—to become a soldier.
His mother. Why didn’t he call his mother?
The first slap felt like a dream. The second made his eyes open and focus.
‘Gerry!’ the man shouted, and slapped him again.
‘Th-th-th . . . there,’ said Gallen, his whole body shaking with the exertion of speaking. He couldn’t make his arm move and so he pointed with his forehead.
Winter aimed his flashlight at the floor in the middle of the cavern. ‘Here, Gerry? This it?’
Closing his eyes, Gallen made himself nod once.
Winter walked away into the cave, the beam from his helmet fixed on the ice floor. He was wearing a layer of thermals and a jumper and nothing else. The flashlight beam crisscrossed in the gloom and then it was pointed in one direction.
Gallen’s head felt disembodied, as if it was floating away. He felt a sadness, as if he was closer to his mom than he had been since he was sixteen, yet still so far from her.
He felt like crying but his face wouldn’t work. And then Winter was in front of him again, slapping him and pointing, and then the Canadian’s arm was around his shoulder and under his armpit and they were moving, Gallen forcing each slow step as his body cried to shut down, brain-first.
Standing against the wall, Winter put on his helmet and Gallen listened as he told the pilot and loadmaster what to do. The noise built and then the entire centre section of the roof was collapsing, the Sikorsky’s landing gear sticking through, the landing lights lighting up the cave like a Broadway stage.
The loadmaster lowered the harnesses and Gallen watched helpless as Winter—now suffering from the cold himself—clipped Gallen onto the line and gave the thumbs-up.
As Gallen was raised into the Sikorsky’s belly, he watched Winter disappear like an apparition.
Hands grabbed at him as his mind floated away, into a dream of hot baths and a mother who had left him, but still cared.
And then the sleep came.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 50
His mouth was glued shut. He became aware of the crunch of the cotton pillow case and the soft sound of a TV on low volume.
Opening his eyes, Gallen let himself acclimatise as he did his test of toes and fingers. He was dressed in a foil suit inside several quilts. Feeling okay, but groggy, he tried to raise his head and was hit by a swoon that made him groan and hit the pillow again.
‘Shit, boss,’ came Winter’s voice, as Gallen squinted to stop his mind spinning. ‘Don’t move till I get the quack, okay?’
The doctor arrived eight minutes later and spent an hour going over Gallen’s vital signs, his eyesight, cognition and blood pressure.
‘So, it’s a Monday, you say?’ she said, getting Gallen propped up on several pillows against the hotel bedstead. ‘Want another guess?’
Squinting against the daylight, he felt a Krakatoa-size headache in its early stages. ‘I give up,’ he croaked.
‘Try Wednesday,’ she said, standing and packing her bag. ‘You’ll be okay, but you’re lucky you have a fast-thinking friend.’
‘And a helo on standby,’ said Winter, winking.
‘He needs a day of rest, okay, Mr Winter?’
‘Gotcha, Doc.’
‘I mean it. A full day. I’m holding you responsible.’
Giving Winter her business card, she said goodbye and left.
~ * ~
Grabbing a cold beer, Winter sat on the end of Gallen’s bed and handed him a water-damaged manila file. ‘I’ve read it—your turn.’
Gallen looked: inside were the red pages of the Newport Associates report, titled Operation Nanook. Behind it was another report which, Gallen realised, contained the original backgrounders on Gallen and his team as prepared for Harry Durville.
‘You want tea, coffee, water?’ said Winter.
‘Tea, thanks,’ Gallen croaked.
Shaking
out the report on Operation Nanook, Gallen sipped as he read: Rurik ‘Reggie’ Kransk, born 1952 in the Arctic Siberian city of Naryan-Mar; son of a visiting Russian scientist and an Inuit woman who died young from alcohol-related illnesses when Reggie was four; raised by his uncle as a fisherman; left school aged twelve, became captain of a fishing boat when he was sixteen, bought his own boat when he was eighteen.
Never a dissident in the strict Soviet sense of the word, Reggie was nonetheless associated with organised crime in the major cities. Under the Soviet commissars, all produce had to go through the state-owned agencies for distribution to shops and restaurants. Local gossip said Reggie got rich fast because he supplied the mob-run restaurant trade of Moscow and Leningrad with the best seafood, without it having to spend days in a ministry warehouse while the paperwork was completed.