They found the blue, unbroken ice not far from the wall of the naturally formed bowl of the glacier’s source where the ice was still firmly attached to the underlying rock. They set the dangling weight of the two Supacats down first, releasing the cables automatically before coming down in a tight semi-circle next to the bulky vehicles. A flurry of snow leapt up at the touch of the prop wash, blowing away the loose snow down to a layer of stiffer material that could accept the modified landing skis of the choppers without them sinking in up to their rotor blades.
Frank Marinucci was out first. He quickly removed the cover from the first Supacat and jumped aboard. He gunned the throttle and the turbocharged diesel engine flared into life with a burst of blue smoke. Marinucci drove the powerful little vehicle back to the Chinook and spun it through one hundred and eighty degrees. The wheels on each side of the Supacat could move independently like a tank’s tracks, and with the left wheels going forward and the right ones backwards, the Supacat spun around its vertical axis, throwing plumes of snow in all directions.
Jon and Tej hooked the pallets up to the towing eye on the back of the Supacat and Marinucci took off, dragging the two pallets down the ramp and out across the snow like a train of wagons.
Although they hadn’t worked together before, each member of the team knew what had to be done and got on with the job, so the overall impression was of seamless efficiency. After taking a quick spin around the area, Marinucci decided on a site for their base, and detached the pallets. King joined him in the second Supacat, towing the rest of the equipment, and with the four climbers sitting on top like third class passengers on an Indian train.
First came the shelter. At King’s direction, Alan Frazier and his team up packed the inflatable structure and the portable generator and compressor that would inflate it. The shelter came in three parts. There was a central hub – a windowless and fairly small space with long, zippered flaps on four sides to take up to four wings radiating off it. King had only brought two of the ten-metre long, barrel-vaulted wings so that, when inflated, the shelter would resemble a large L-shape with legs of equal length.
King stood on top of the Supacat, surveying the site and giving orders to the climbers as they attached the wings with a multitude of zippers and Velcro fastenings. Then he jumped down and connected up the compressor. The structure of the shelter was a mixture of the higher internal pressure provided by the compressor, and also ribs than ran through the structure that served the same purpose as the flexible plastic tent poles in a smaller camping tent. The ribs did not rely on threading plastic poles through sleeves, though. They too were inflatable, but at a much higher pressure than that inside the living area. King fastened bottles of compressed air to brass nozzles stitched into the walls of the shelter, and at the turn of the tap, the ribs filled and the structure sprung up from the snow, almost as quickly as a picture in a child’s pop-up book.
The fabric between the ribs still hung flaccidly between the rib-cage formed by the slim, high-pressure tubes that ran through it – it would take a few minutes for the compressor to catch up and fill the suddenly enlarged space, but in less than ten minutes, the shelter was up and the four climbers were securing guy ropes with ice screws down into the glacier while Marinucci fired up the industrial heater that would fill the insulated space with warm air.
They had landed about three hundred metres from the fuselage of the crashed Fairchild, and Doctor Keyes was keen to get over there as soon as possible. While the Supacats were tied up in hauling supplies to the newly set-up camp, Keyes had removed his crampons and replaced them with cross-country skis. Jon and the others followed his lead and, with backpacks full of medical supplies, they started up the shallow incline that led to the plane.
‘Colonel,’ Rose said into the radio clipped to the shoulder strap of his backpack, ‘—I’m taking the medical team up to the plane. Can you release a Supacat to start moving the wounded?’
‘It’s on its way, Captain,’ came the reply. Rose could hear King giving orders to the chopper pilots, getting them ready for a swift evacuation of those survivors who were fit enough to be moved. Rose turned the volume down and concentrated on keeping his strokes smooth and watching out for crevasses as he led the way up the mountain.
Despite the relatively shallow slope, the work was tiring and he soon found himself short of breath. The oxygen mask hung around his neck on a thin strip of elastic and he took a couple of blasts from it to ease the pressure in his chest. Looking to his right, he saw that Keyes had fastened the mask over his nose and mouth already and was still breathing heavily. Rose hoped that the little doctor wasn’t particularly susceptible to altitude sickness.
The crashed plane drew closer, but from ground level there was no sign of the crevasses they had spotted from the air. Rose reasoned that if the crust of ice over the crevasses could take the weight of the plane, then four skiers shouldn’t cause it any trouble. Still, he led the team up the smooth path of packed snow caused by the sliding plane, and kept a watchful eye on the virgin and possibly treacherous snow around them.
◆◆◆
Rebecca watched the advancing skiers from the roof of the plane. The others had gone inside, partly to pack, partly just to get out of the cold that had begun to seep through their initial elation. Rebecca didn’t care about the cold now. It was over; at least, this part of the ordeal was over. Now she would have to face the world again as the only surviving crew member. There would be questions to answer. What had caused the engine failure? Whose decision had it been to go so far off course to avoid the storm? She was glad that she wasn’t going to end her days freezing to death halfway up a mountain, but she still couldn’t help watching the approaching skiers with a touch of ambivalence. One of them waved at her, and she took her hand away from the warmth of her armpit for a second to give a desultory acknowledgement. As the skiers drew closer, she slid down the curve of the fuselage and went to meet them.
‘Captain Jonathan Rose, Miss,’ the first of the four skiers said, taking off his skis. ‘How are you doing? Are you injured?’
Stupid, bloody question, Rebecca thought. How the hell do you think I’ve been doing?
‘No, I’m okay,' she said. 'The wounded are inside.’
‘How many survivors are there?’
‘Six… One’s bedridden. Everybody else can walk. Are you going to take us down?’ She looked towards the helicopters where the rest of the rescue team seemed to have set up a camp of some kind.
‘Six… Shit,’ said Rose. ‘I guess so. We’d hoped there would be more, so we brought along some additional shelter. We’ll see if your friend can be moved. If he can, we’ll get you all down as soon as we can. What’s your name?’
‘McCarthy, Rebecca McCarthy.’
The Captain’s gaze dropped to her blue collar that poked out from the thick jacket.
‘Are you a stewardess, Ms. McCarthy?’ he asked.
Despite all she had been through, and all she had yet to experience, she still felt human enough to get indignant about the man’s assumption. ‘Actually, Captain, it’s First Officer McCarthy. I was the co-pilot.’
‘Sorry, Ms. McCarthy. How do you get in?’ He gestured towards the plane.
‘Through the cargo hatch. It’s on top.’
The man nodded and jogged up to the plane, leaving her with two of his companions.
◆◆◆
Rose jumped down into the cargo area, and crouched down to peer through the tilted doorway into the passenger cabin. The smell was almost unbearable and he fought the urge to cover his mouth with the oxygen mask. It was more important, he thought, that the survivors saw a friendly face.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘—I’m Captain Jonathan Rose of the Royal Engineers. We’re here to take you home.’
There was a chorus of cheers, and the muffled clapping of many gloved hands. One survivor clapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand, even as he was trying to shrug off his pack to get at the blankets inside.
‘Thank you, Captain. Thank you,’ the man said.
‘You are very welcome.’ Rose handed him a silver thermal blanket, and started to hand the rest around the cabin. They seemed to have kept warm pretty well. Rose guessed that a lot of the passengers had been climbers and trekkers on their way to Gilgit, as the survivors had managed to scrounge a fair amount of warm clothing. However, all around the cabin was evidence of what they had been through. A deep rent in the fuselage had been stuffed with seat cushions and loose bits of clothing. The wall of the cabin next to the rent was stained with blood in a trail of glittering red crystals. There was more blood, particularly towards the back of the cabin where it traced wavy lines across the floor. They had taken the dead that way, Rose deduced.
‘We have a medical team with us,’ he continued. ‘And we’re setting up warm shelter for you as well as some food and drink. As soon as the doctor has taken a look at you, we’ll move you down to the shelter and from there, back to Islamabad.’
There were damn few survivors, he thought. Damn few. They might as well just put everyone on the chopper straight away. He gazed around the cabin. He recognised the older man that had shaken his hand as Rupert Garrett. Apart from him and the first officer outside, there were only two other westerners – one injured – and a father and daughter who looked local. As to the others: well the trail of blood down the back of the cabin told that story well enough. They had been though every airline passenger’s worst nightmare.
Rose’s radio crackled to life. ‘Captain, this is King. Over.’
‘I read you, Sir. I’m inside the cabin. We have six, repeat six, to evacuate. It looks like they can all travel, but I’m going to have Doctor Keyes check them out before they go anywhere. Over.’
‘Roger that. The Supacat is outside when the Doctor gives the all clear. King out.’
Rose turned to see Doctor Keyes dropping into the cargo compartment with Nurse Gibbons close behind. He scanned the cabin quickly before his gaze fell on the injured man on the makeshift bed towards the rear.
Rose left them to it, and decided to have a look outside. The crevasse was still worrying him. Although it had held during the initial impact of the plane, there was no telling whether the ice bridge that sealed its mouth had been weakened. Early spring was one of the worst times to visit the mountains. The heavy snows of winter were hanging thick on the sides of the mountain, waiting for just half a degree rise in temperature to loosen their foundations enough for an avalanche. The spring temperatures would be felt in the glacier’s gut as well. Shedding loose snow through avalanches may actually relieve the tensile stress in the glacier, but the rise in temperature would be felt by icy crust over the crevasse as well. Although new crevasses may not be formed, the one that already existed could open up underneath them like trapdoors once the crust over them melted.
The back of the plane had been sealed up with a wall of luggage. The bloody trail along the cabin disappeared under the cases. They must have taken the bodies out this way and then sealed off the opening. Rose pushed at one of the cases and felt it give. They should be able to tear down the wall pretty easily. It would be easier to the wounded man out this way, than to try and hoist him up through the cargo hatch. He leant into the wall with his shoulder and one section of it, about four suitcases worth, gave way. Rose pushed them out of the way, eventually making a hole wide enough to squeeze through. After the dim cabin, the brilliance of the outside world blinded him, and he hastily dragged his goggles back over his eyes and stood blinking for a few seconds before he saw Marinucci standing next to an idling Supacat.
‘Anyone good to go yet?’ he asked.
‘Maybe in a couple of minutes,’ Rose replied.
‘Have I got time to take a trip to the tail? I want to make sure we get the black box, in case we need to leave in a hurry.’
‘Why don’t you send the other ‘cat?’
Frank didn’t reply. He just pointed up the slope to a black dot that was churning the snow five hundred metres away. ‘King sent it up there. Checking out the top of the glacier. It’d be a shame to get this far, and then get caught in an avalanche.’
Yes it would, thought Rose. But at the moment an avalanche seemed to be the least of their problems. The slope of the natural basin where the plane had crashed was pretty shallow. It would take a huge avalanche to keep going across so much flat snow to reach the crash site; it would just pile up at the base of the mountain and gradually get added to the glacier. The driver of the other ‘cat was more likely to find himself and his two tonne vehicle at the bottom of a crevasse.
CHAPTER 7
Major Parindra Naik looked down into the cirque from his craggy eerie on the slope. The arrival of the two helicopters was an unfortunate complication. He had hoped to snatch the prize and get back to friendly territory before the rescue party arrived, but the rescuers had proved themselves to be unusually efficient.
Accomplishing his objective without the rescue party sending a distress signal would be difficult. Already they had spread out across the cirque: some were at the crashed plane itself, while still more manned the strange, domed tent near the ice fall.
It seemed that a degree of conflict was inevitable. His superiors had foreseen that and had given him sufficient leeway to use his own judgement on such matters.
They would all have to die.
◆◆◆
Rose peered through a pair of binoculars at the second Supacat that was still charging up the glacier. Its balloon tyres with their deep, tractor-like treads tore up the snow, sending plumes of fresh powder into the still air.
‘That bloody idiot!’ Rose swore.
‘What’s the matter?’ McCarthy asked.
‘Well, I can think of better ways to start an avalanche,’ Rose said as he handed her the binoculars, ‘—but they all involve elephants and marching bands.’
‘He could kill himself!’
‘That would be a best case scenario.’
Rose hoped that the ice near the foot of the mountain was in better shape that that near the edge. The ‘cat and its driver had made it all the way to the edge of the glacier, and completed about half of his one kilometre long patrol. If he could make it back to camp without tearing into an unseen crevasse, then maybe Rose’s fears would prove to be unfounded after all.
He turned his attention to the young woman. ‘You should go inside and let the doctor take a look at you.’
‘I’m alright. I’d rather stay outside.’ She hugged her silver thermal blanket tighter around her shoulders as she gazed off into the distance. ‘You know I’ve never really taken a moment to really look at these mountains. They’re quite beautiful... I mean, now that I know that they’re not going to kill me.’
‘Sometimes the most beautiful things are also the most deadly.’
‘Coincidence?’
Rose shrugged. ‘Maybe. But not here. The mountains are uncompromising, immediate. There’s a kind of honesty to them. Truth and beauty often go hand in hand.’
‘So danger is honest and honesty is beautiful?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘Yeah, well danger can be pretty ugly too.’
McCarthy gazed back towards the wreckage of the plane and the frozen heap of bodies.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-’
‘I wasn’t thinking about them. Here, let me show you...’
McCarthy led Rose past the shattered wing to the rear of the plane. Before tearing off on his patrol, the driver of the second ‘cat had dropped off King as well as Mark Campbell and Dave Patterson of the mountain rescue team. They had finished setting up the inflatable shelter and were currently demolishing the makeshift wall of luggage and packed ice that sealed the ruptured tail of the crashed plane. They seemed to be going about the task with a great deal of respect: carefully removing each case and bag and cataloguing it on a small hand held computer, no bigger than a personal organiser, before adding it to a growing pile to one side of the openi
ng. Rose reflected grimly that the same task would have to be done for the luggage’s former owners. Fortunately, that task was not in his mandate. His duty was towards the living.
The fire pit was still smoking when they approached. The twice-burned mass at its core cracked and popped as it cooled.
‘You’re saying that was some kind of animal?’ Rose asked.
‘Not an animal. It was... well I don’t know what it was, but it sure as hell wasn’t beautiful.’
Rose couldn’t make much of the blackened lump at the base of the pit.
‘You said someone else saw this... creature?’
‘Carver. She pulled it off me and threw it into the pit.’
‘And what did she think it was?’
‘She said it was a snow leopard. But I know what I saw. And whatever it was, it wasn’t natural.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with Miss Carver. I know how the mind can play tricks on you in a stressful situation. And you can double and square that when you include the cold and lack of oxygen.’
‘You think I’m crazy.’
‘I think you’re mistaken—there’s a big difference. Look, once we’ve got the survivors back to safety, the team will come back to recover those that didn’t make it. How about I make sure that they bring back that thing... whatever it was.’
‘You’re humouring me. You think that once I get home, I’ll realise that all this was just a bad dream: some kind of stress-induced hallucination.’
‘That was my plan, Rose admitted. ‘Do you think it’ll work?’
McCarthy gazed at the distant mountains. ‘I hope so... I really do hope so.’
◆◆◆
Doctor Phillip Keyes gave all the survivors a quick once over. They were in remarkably good shape considering what they had been through. The only passengers in need of immediate assistance were the climber with a brace of broken legs—he would need surgery as soon as they could get him down the mountain-and the quiet Pakistani man who claimed he was fine, but seemed to be suffering from acute mountain sickness.
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