by Danny King
“Okay, who goes?” I cautiously agreed.
The short answer was me, decided by a hastily convened game of rocks, scissors and paper that whittled us down until I was left despairingly trying to cut Mr Deveraux’s fist in half with my fingers.
“Now if the Comm link is down, we won’t be able to talk to you, so just bring them up here, okay?” Mr Smith said.
“And if none of them can fly helicopters?” I pointed out.
“Well…” Mr Smith pondered. “I guess we’ll have to find another way out,” he reckoned.
“Right, and I’ll just sneak past a couple of wars, Griffin Marvel, Rip Dunbar, all those Omega wankers and come back and tell you about it then shall I?” I said, adding; “all the way back from the snowmobile dock?” to underline my alternatives.
Mr Smith accepted the unreasonableness of what he’d asked, so he sorted me out with a couple of distress flares and told me to fire one off if I left on a snowmobile.
At that moment the elevator phone rang so we picked it up and said hello.
“Help? Help us, anyone!” screamed a voice I didn’t recognise. “Anyone, we’re under…” the line went dead with a crackle.
Mr Smith looked at me.
“Don’t be long,” he suggested, pressing the button to take me back down into the mayhem.
25.
A CRYSTALLINE KISS OF SLEEP
I fired off a burst of automatic fire as the elevator doors opened, just in case there’d been anyone waiting for me, but there hadn’t. The place was quiet. Explosions and fire echoed from deep within the base but all human sounds had ceased. Smoke and the acrid smell of cordite hung in the air to indicate that this place had seen a fight, but those that had fought here were now silent.
The monorail train was also gone, so I hugged the wall and peered down the tunnel.
Nothing.
I really didn’t fancy this but what choice did I have? We were in Greenland, a thousand miles from anywhere and fast approaching winter. We needed a ride out of this place. Anything less was suicide.
I said a quick prayer and moved off into the darkness.
Most of the lighting was down, just a few red emergency bulbs lit from the back-up generator pierced the blackness and after a hundred yards or so I looked out onto the main aircraft hanger.
Dunbar was gone too. As were the troops he’d been fighting.
Also the Command Centre. Nothing was left of it. A smoking mass of twisted metal burned at the end of the hanger where it had once stood and most of the planes around it were either on fire or soon to be. Thankfully the bay doors at the far end were open, so most of the heat and smoke was escaping out into the arctic but even so, it was still close to unbearable in the cavern, even from where I was sliding along the wall.
Very little could have survived this hell.
But I took care all the same.
I ran at a crouch, following the monorail track around the hanger until I was within a sprint of the next tunnel and made it with seconds to spare. Two hundred yards behind me, the Tupolev finally succumbed to its wounds and blew to smithereens with a blinding flash. I threw myself into the tunnel mouth as a thousand gallons of burning aviation fuel splashed the back of the hanger and ran blindly until I’d escaped the searing black smoke.
The next cavern was in much the same state. The mainframe computers were crackling in a way that suggested it was going take more than a call to Apple to retrieve Marvel’s emails for him. What’s more, there were several charges attached to the housings I didn’t like the look of so I quickly moved off, into the next monorail tunnel and towards the snowmobile dock.
On foot, the base was bigger than I’d realised and where I’d happily trundled around in comfort on the monorail before, I now inched and stumbled my way through the cramped tunnels in near total blackness. Several times I caught my head on the bare rocks above, scraping my scalp and bloodying my hairline until all I could fantasise about were hard hats and TCP but finally I reached the end of the tunnel and peered out across the snowmobile dock.
The place was empty.
I pulled back and searched my brain for ideas, but none presented themselves, so I swore under my breath and stepped out into the open.
Once again I kept low, hugging the monorail track until I came to within thirty feet of a pyramid of crates. Only then did I take to my toes. I dashed the short open space between cover, wincing at the expectation of pain and winding myself when I slammed into the crates.
This was where I found Captain Collett.
I hadn’t been able to see him from the monorail track, but just around the corner he was stood straight and true against another stack of crates, looking like one of those ramrod sentries you got outside Buckingham Palace who weren’t allowed to move, smile or jangle their change.
Captain Collett didn’t move, smile or jangle his change either, but that was because he was stone dead.
I approached him gingerly, half-expecting his shocked wide eyes to flicker in my direction, but the eight-inch engineering spike that had skewered him through the forehead had grabbed his whole attention.
All around his feet were spent .38 shell casings and the bodies of his men. I conducted a quick count and found they were all present and correct.
Damn.
I wasn’t sure what had happened here; either Marvel’s Omega troops had done this or Rip Dunbar had blundered through with his finger super-glued to the trigger. Not that it really mattered either way; the whos and what-the-fucks could wait for another day, but for now, my most pressing concern was getting the hell out of here before Dunbar called on his NASA buddies to delete this whole place from the map.
I grabbed a few essential supplies such as radio, GPS and winter survival kit then grabbed a cold-weather coat and threw myself at the nearest snowmobile.
The engine revved first time and I ploughed towards the dock doors, but the auto-door mechanism must’ve been shot out, because the doors stayed right where they were, so I slammed on the brakes, circled around in a big loop and approached them again. This time I popped the missile lock off the handle-grip and fired two mini rockets at the doors, obliterating them in a flash of steel so that I was able to jump through the hole and out into vast snow-covered wilderness beyond.
I held the throttle open until I’d put a good mile between myself and the base and only then did I slow to take a look over my shoulder.
Columns of smoke rose from dirty black scars in the mountainside, staining the crystal sky and advertising the base’s whereabouts to anyone within fifty miles.
I looked towards the ridge but couldn’t see the helipad from this distance. I couldn’t even be sure the others were still up there, but I’d promised to signal if I wasn’t coming back, so I shook off my gloves, pointed a flare at the sky and pulled the rip-cord. A halo of blinding red streaked across the morning’s sky and fell away somewhere to the east, leaving a fluffy white smoke trail in its wake. This smoking trail might as well have had a big “You Are Here” arrow at my end because all at once the snow around my feet started kicking in all directions as multiple machine guns opened up on my position.
“Holy shit!” I freaked, twisting the throttle to launch myself down the nearest slope and into the gully beyond.
Several rounds dinked my snowmobile and my own bodywork fared little better with a chunk knocked out my right calf to poleaxe me headfirst into a snowdrift. I rolled around in the snow, howling, hollering and clawing at my wound, but had precious time for little else as the six dots motoring towards me on the horizon compelled me to my feet. I hopped and stumbled thirty yards or so until I found my snowmobile overturned against a boulder and managed to haul it back onto its tracks with a little huffing and puffing.
I didn’t know who the dots were or why they were shooting at me but after the sort of day I’d had why wouldn’t they?
I got my snowmobile going once again and took off for the gully just as mini-rockets started obliterating my tracks
. The dots formed up behind me like a pack of hungry wolves and I knew I’d have problems shaking them. Most of the weapons on this machine were front facing, though I did have a couple of mines proved utterly useless. All six of my pursuers steered wide, suggesting they were probably using their snowmobiles’ mine sweeping radar to avoid my nasties.
They opened up on me with the fixed guns again so I slalomed around their hails, throwing my snowmobile down the slopes with almost suicidal abandon. It wouldn’t be long before they hit me again, and when they did, I couldn’t see my luck holding out for a second scratch next time.
I turned a crest and dumped my last two mines in their path, but every single one of them took the bend wide to avoid my explosives.
That was my last shot. I had nowhere left to go.
I ploughed on regardless, down the crisp white slopes and into the wilds below but my chips were cooked.
At least, they were until another chef entered the fray and this one wasn’t as hygienic as the rest of us. An enormous explosion signalled rockets and mines meeting as one and from out of the fireball jumped a burning snowmobile to chase down the wolf pack.
It couldn’t be!
One of the wolves blew to smithereens as rockets ripped his snowmobile to pieces while another was cut in half under a hail of cannon-fire. The remaining wolves scattered to meet this new threat but he already had the drop on them, strafing one into a bottomless crevice with his front-mounted guns while leaping over another to take his head clean off with his snow tracks. By the time the remaining wolves knew what was happening it was too late. Rip Dunbar was in amongst them and he was “pissed”.
Seizing the lifeline I left them all to it and went all out to get myself off this mountain. I sped down a near vertical slope, picking up speed and putting as much distance between myself and that mad Coloradan but all at once he was the least of my problems. The sky shook as a squadron of Stealth bombers ripped through the blue and I barely had time to swear when they fired a volley of missiles that streaked above our heads and into the smoking remnants of our base.
They exploded like popcorn, blowing everything within in a half-mile radius of the mountaintop to atoms and shaking several thousand tons of snow to tumble on after us.
“Oh shit!” I finally got around to swearing, twisting my throttle the last few millimetres to race for the safety of shallower slopes.
I had no chance.
A solid, fifty-foot tall wall of death roared after us, blotting out the horizon and shaking the ground beneath our tracks. Dunbar and the last remaining wolf put their differences aside and tried fleeing for themselves, but Mother Nature had lost all semblance of patience and was determined to show them who was boss. She raced down the mountainside faster than we could fall, deleting everything that dared stand up to her and roaring with indignation.
I had a few hundred yards on the others and got to preview my own death as the wolf’s snowmobile was swamped in an instant, disappearing from view in less time than it took to blink.
Dunbar too, was rapidly running out of mountainside but the instant before he was swallowed up, he leapt off his snowmobile and was encased by an enormous rubber balloon that suddenly wrapped around him from behind. It came out of nowhere, gobbling him up like Pac Man, and Dunbar rolled on in a big padded ball, shielded from death by injustice and the cheating miracle of American ingenuity.
“You bastard!” I shouted but this was lost against the thunderous crash of ice.
The whole weight of the avalanche was being funnelled directly after me by the contours of this gully, so I figured if I could make it across one of the ridges, I might just about be able to lose some of the snows on the crest. This meant steering straight across its path rather than simply trying to flee it, but I only had seconds to live either way, so I figured it was worth a shot.
I twisted my handlebars right, hanging over the left hand side of the snowmobile as it cut a sweep through the snow, and gunned the engine one final time for the safety of higher ground.
If I’d had a moment to think I might’ve turned left instead of right, because that was the side on which I had no vision, which would have spared the terrifying spectacle of that frozen tsunami closing in on me with merciless grace. I tried to ignore it but fifty thousand tons of snow has a way of distracting a man from his objectives and before long I was caught in two minds and swept off the face of the mountain.
I don’t think I ever really knew what hit me. One minute I was hurtling around a snow-covered crag towards the crest of the rise, the next I was sideswiped out of my seat by a million frozen razor blades. I gulped down one last shocked breath, but was instantly smothered by an insurmountable swell of ice which turned me upside down, smashed me through a million more razor blades and turned my day into night.
I can’t remember my last thought. I think it had something to do with Linda; how she’d react when she found out I’d died. How she’d remember me.
That was when I realised she wouldn’t find out. No one would.
I was a thousand miles from nowhere, on the slopes of a deserted mountain in Greenland, and tumbling under thirty feet of snow – and snow that never thawed at that.
I was as lost as it was ever possible to be lost. Like one of those icemen that are uncovered from time to time in the Alps. Archaeologists would perhaps find me in a hundred thousand years time and wonder who I’d been. How I’d come to be here. And how I’d died.
They’d probably deduce I’d been a soldier, chased by an enemy, wounded in dozens of conflicts and finally buried under a winter’s avalanche for posterity. But that wouldn’t tell the whole story.
That wouldn’t even tell a tenth of it.
All the events that had conspired to bring me to this point. All the people I’d met. All the operations I’d seen.
It’s a shame because it was an amazing story, even if I do say so myself, so it would have been nice to tell it to someone.
But I couldn’t. And there was nothing I could do about that anymore.
Because all at once I was dead.
26.
NEVER SAY DIE
I awoke in hospital.
Bright lights. Urgent voices. Pain. Wooziness. Confusion.
I had tubes in my throat and needles in both arms. The moment I started to blink somebody shone a brilliant white light in my eye and reported I was dilating.
My memory was shot. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening to me.
I was in so much pain.
I think somebody picked up on this because yet another needle skewered my arm and I was quickly stifled by a cold sensation that invaded me, creeping through my veins and into my body until I floated away, out of pain’s way and deep, deep within myself.
More pain.
This time it was a duller pain: an ache of slumber, of distant injuries. Of recovery.
I’ve been under the knife enough times to recognise post-op pain when I wake up to it, although I was totally confused for a few minutes because I couldn’t remember having gone in for surgery. I’d become separated from my own time line and had to rewind my memories to a place I recognised before I could get my bearings.
The skyjacking.
The base.
The cells.
The fire fight.
Captain Collett.
I played them through my mind, out of the snowmobile dock and down the gully until the avalanche rolled over me. But that was all I had. The tape was blank from that point onwards. How had I gotten out of there?
And where exactly was I?
A white-coated doctor entered and introduced himself as Captain Nekoroski of the United States Navy. I could address him as either Captain or Doctor, whichever I preferred. I tried them both but no words tumbled out.
“It may take you a few days to get your voice back, we’ve had a lot of tubes down there,” the doctor informed me. “For the record, you are on-board the USS John Wayne in the IC unit and in the custody of the United S
tates Navy.”
“When…?” I somehow managed to mouth.
The doctor elaborated. “You’ve been with us for the last two weeks. You’ve been pretty badly bashed about, but nothing you can’t take I’m sure. So we’re gonna patch you up and send you on your way, first to Augusta and then to McCarthy – that’s Fort McCarthy to you,” he said in a way that set alarm bells off across my battered pain system. “So sit back, take it easy and let us know if we can do anything for you. Because this is as good as it gets. And it ain’t gonna stay this good for much longer.”
I have to say I wasn’t a fan of the Doctor’s bedside manner, but then again I guess he was part Doctor and part Naval officer and those were often two difficult hats to wear together. For the most part he was perfectly civil, if a little officious, and I couldn’t fault him on his standard of care because I was comfortable, pain-free and, most surprising of all, still alive.
But what was truly remarkable was how I’d come to be here in the first place. I mean, I simply couldn’t fathom it, that the United States Navy had found me buried in a God forsaken corner of nowhere under several thousand tons of snow and ice, thawed me out, resuscitated me and shipped me back to civilization. Or at least, as close to civilization as the USS John Wayne was ever likely to sail.
Actually, forget how they’d done this; I couldn’t figure out why they’d done this.
Somewhere beyond my range of vision, a door opened and a pair of heavy combat boots entered the room.
The doctor looked up at the new arrival and saluted him before returning to the question of my blood pressure.
“How is he, Captain?”
“He’s out of danger, sir. A few broken bones, torn ligaments and trauma injuries, but the ice protected him until we could get him to ICU. Residues of hypothermia, moderate concussion and a touch of shock but he’ll recover, I’m sure,” the doctor diagnosed.
“Good,” my visitor replied. “Because I’ve got plans for him. I need him fit and healthy to play his part,” he said now stepping into view so that I could see his miserable face.