Black Ice

by Matt Dickinson

  ‘Good call,’ Sean agreed. He tied a loop at the bottom of the rope and stepped into the cradle until the rope supported his weight. The others hauled him up, inch by inch, until he was able to flop over the lip onto the glacier.

  ‘It’s gonna be a bitch getting that cat out of there,’ he said, looking at the weary state of the team. ‘If we can do it at all, that is…’

  They fell on the food, each devouring half a tin of spam and a handful of crackers. Then Mel pitched a tent and heated up some of the powdered milk they’d found.

  Lauren checked her watch. ‘It’s just gone midnight,’ she said. ‘We’ve got enough moonlight to work with. I suggest we get going.’

  The team gathered; everyone bar Frank, who was obviously in no condition to help pull.

  ‘What’s the breaking strain of this rope?’ Lauren asked Sean.

  Sean ran the nine-millimetre cord through his gloved hands.

  ‘It’s designed to take the shock loading of a climber falling twenty-five metres.’

  ‘How does that compare to the weight of the cat?’

  ‘It might hold it,’ Sean told her, ‘but, with these abrasions, it might not. It’s on the limit.’

  He abseiled down into the crevasse once more and tied the rope off at two points on the rear of the snowmobile.

  ‘We’ll try and bring it up backwards,’ he called. ‘Take up the slack.’

  Sean watched with his heart in his mouth as the rope began to tighten, the fibres protesting as they stretched into the load.

  100

  Fitzgerald noted the coming of the dawn and decided it was time to take a break. The night had been more of a trial than he’d predicted, with numerous crevasse crossings across snow bridges which were impossible to judge properly in the dark. Still, he’d taken the risk, and come through it intact.

  He removed the rope harness from his waist and sat on the sledge for a timed ten-minute rest, pulling out the GPS unit to check on progress. The LCD readout was showing encouraging news: he was now over halfway through this load-haul, with the crashed aircraft just fifteen miles away.

  The explorer broke a couple of bars of chocolate out of his provisions and ate them as he watched the light play above the horizon. The storm had blown itself out, ushering in a day which, for Antarctica, was remarkably calm. Normally, Fitzgerald would have welcomed the arrival of the dawn, knowing that with daylight came greater safety, that he could all the better find a way through the maze of crevasses. But this dawn left him feeling curiously exposed, easy to spot as he made his way north.

  He unpacked his binoculars and took a long hard look back to the south, screwing up his eyes as he searched for any sign that the others were in pursuit. He was ninety-nine-per-cent certain that no one in that team could match him for speed and fitness … but you could never be sure.

  And the snowmobile? Was there a chance they could retrieve it? Fitzgerald dismissed the idea as soon as it came, sure that the machine was even now lying many hundreds of metres beneath the ice, smashed to so much scrap.

  Gratifyingly, there was no movement to be seen, and the explorer relaxed for the remaining moments of his rest break, moving his arm in circular patterns every now and then to prevent the muscles around his shoulder from seizing up. The wound continued to be painful, but the imperative of reaching the target was such that the explorer was able to put it out of his mind.

  All too soon, the ten minutes was over. Julian Fitzgerald popped a handful of dextrose energy tablets into his mouth and sucked them as he continued the trek.

  101

  The team was in a line, hauling at the rope like it was a tug of war. Even Richard had been persuaded to join them, his weight at the back needed even if the state of his feet meant he couldn’t stand.

  ‘Give it another go!’ Lauren called out from the front. ‘On the count of three … one, two three!’

  Down in the crevasse, Sean pushed from below with all his might, his arms drained of blood and strength by the hours of work which had already passed. But the snowmobile slid just a few precious inches up the glassy wall before slumping back down again as soon as the team relaxed.

  ‘Hold it there,’ Sean called up, his voice hoarse from shouting commands. ‘We’re never going to do it like this.’

  Five hours of soul-destroying labour had proved one thing beyond any equivocal doubt: hauling five hundred pounds of inert metal up thirty or so feet of an almost sheer crevasse wall was no mean feat … particularly when the top section of the wall was slightly overhanging.

  And even more so when the team of individuals attempting it were suffering the effects of malnourishment and frostbite, let alone the rigours of a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile winter trek across the ice cap of Antarctica.

  They’d hauled it roughly twenty-five vertical feet, up to the edge of the lip. Then the overhang had come into play, leaving the machine swinging in free space, the rope which held it stretched right to its breaking point and creaking ominously with every fresh pull.

  Sean clambered out of the crevasse to join them, but, no matter how aggressively they pulled on the rope, the inertia of all that dead metal was more than a match.

  ‘How about a counterweight?’ Frank suggested, ever the boffin.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You need some weight on the other end of the rope,’ he continued. ‘Give you some leverage.’

  Once the team had got the concept, they quickly set to work, the idea giving them fresh energy. They found that the rope was long enough to reach a second crevasse, running parallel to the one the snowmobile was stuck in.

  ‘If you can get a few hundredweight on the end of that rope, you might just crack it.’

  They used a tarpaulin that Fitzgerald had left behind, flattening it out on the glacier and filling it with snow and whatever ice blocks they could find. Then they brought the corners together and tied them off at the top, creating, in effect, a huge bag of snow weighing—Frank estimated—around three hundred pounds.

  They attached the counterweight to the loose end of the rope and pushed it into the parallel crevasse, then resumed the process of pulling up the snowmobile.

  Almost immediately, they felt the benefits of the extra weight, the force from behind them equivalent to two or three extra hands pulling. The snowmobile rose another foot, then a few more inches. But that was as far as it got, still snagged beneath the overhang, and resisting every attempt to get it higher.

  Night was falling. The team was running out of ideas. The counterweight had seemed such a strong solution—and had taken them so long to rig up—that its failure had left them in despair.

  ‘It’s so close!’ Murdo raged. ‘Just a few feet beneath that bastard lip.’

  They tied off the rope and took a rest, the sky sprinkling them with a fresh layer of snow as they lay there in a state of total fatigue.

  ‘There’s only one way to achieve this,’ Lauren told them. ‘We’ll have to cut away the edge of the crevasse, create an easier angled ramp to drag it up.’

  Sean walked wearily over and appraised the lip.

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Fitzgerald’s axe.’

  ‘That,’ Sean said, ‘is a ball-breaking job. It could take us all night.’

  But Lauren had picked up the axe and was already chipping at the ice, each blow sending a handful of shards into the air.

  ‘We’ll take it in turns,’ Lauren said as she worked. ‘Fifteen minutes each.’

  ‘We’ll have to shift a couple of tons of ice to do this,’ Sean said, utterly dismayed.

  Lauren stopped for a moment, her face calm, resolved.

  ‘This is what we have to do to stay alive,’ she said, then began again.

  102

  With a final shout of ‘Heave!’ the team fell back as one, the snowmobile slipping up and finally breaching the crevasse lip. They stared at it, scarcely able to believe they’d finally achieved the objective, most without enough energy to pick themselves up fr
om where they’d fallen on the glacier.

  ‘That,’ panted Lauren, checking her watch, ‘has just taken us the best part of twenty hours.’

  ‘Have we still got time?’ Sean asked. ‘Can we still beat him to the aircraft?’

  ‘That’s down to you,’ she replied. ‘If you can get this baby started, then maybe—just maybe—we still can.’

  Sean stepped over to the familiar snowcat and pulled on the starter cord. Immediately, he noticed the irregular stutter to the engine as it failed to fire. A thick plume of blackish smoke ran out of the exhaust in an apologetic cough. He tried again, letting the starter cord rest in his fingers, pulling gently until he felt the tension of the pressure building in the cylinder block.

  He pulled back smoothly. Again, the engine did not cooperate.

  ‘This baby is sick for sure.’

  Sean tried more than forty pulls, but he still couldn’t get the engine to fire. ‘You think you can fix it?’ Lauren asked him.

  ‘Not without tools I can’t.’

  Sean pulled back the velcro strips which held down the foam seat cover. Beneath it was a recess in which a small tool roll was sitting. He untied it and revealed a number of screwdrivers and spanners.

  ‘Bet Fitzgerald didn’t even know that was there,’ he said with a smile.

  Sean flipped back the rubber ties which held the cowling down and exposed the 500cc engine to view. Set on either side of the cylinder head were twin carburettors, both relatively easy to get to. He used the screwdriver to unclip the fuel lines and unbolt the two units from their base.

  In less than ten minutes he had both units stripped down and examined, quickly determining that both had problems. Problem one was in one of the float chambers, where the constant battering of the journey had simply thrown one of the float levels out of true.

  That was easy to remedy; by bending the bracket which held the float in place, he could put it back in the correct position.

  Problem two was one of the jets—Sean guessed a piece of dirt in the fuel had blocked it. He unscrewed the brass thread, raised the jet to his lips and blew sharply through it, sensing the resistance of a blockage in the pin hole. He spat to clear the taste of fuel from his mouth and blew from the other end. He felt the air pass through in a rush as the obstruction cleared.

  ‘That jet was full of gunk,’ he told them. ‘No wonder this thing won’t start.’

  Sean reassembled the carburettors and replaced them on the head, taking care to position the gaskets correctly beneath them. He clipped the fuel lines back on and tested they were secure. Then he ripped back the pull start, grunting with satisfaction as the engine fired first time. Even in the first few seconds it sounded like a happy machine.

  The team was jubilant.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Sean said. ‘Now let me check the belt.’

  He selected a sixteen-millimetre spanner from the tool kit. He loosened the four securing bolts which held the seat on its frame and pulled it off to reveal the top side of the transmission belt beneath.

  A brief pull on the drive mechanism confirmed what he’d suspected: that the belt was running loose.

  ‘I haven’t got a spanner big enough for this,’ he told Lauren. ‘I have to adjust the tension on the belt.’

  ‘Can’t you improvise?’

  Sean considered the tools available. ‘There’s only one thing’ll get those bolts free. I could cut a notch in the side of the two bolt heads with the chisel and try and knock them round with that heavy spanner.’

  ‘Do it. And make it fast.’

  Sean got to work, and soon the noise of hammering filled the air, the clean sound of metal on metal as the spanner hit home.

  ‘That’s shifted one!’ he told them, pulling on the belt as he retightened it, then a few minutes later: ‘And the other.’

  Sean got the engine started and took it for a test drive. The belt wasn’t perfect, he knew, but it was a lot better than before.

  ‘Pack up the sledge,’ Lauren told the others. ‘We’re leaving right away.’

  ‘One more thing.’ Sean unscrewed the petrol filler cap and beckoned for Lauren to look inside. ‘We’ve only got half a tank of fuel.’

  ‘How far will that take us?’

  ‘Hard to say. How many miles to the plane?’

  ‘Thirty-five. Maybe a bit more.’

  ‘It’s going to be tight. It’s going to be really tight.’

  103

  Fitzgerald heard it before he saw it, the thin, high-pitched note of an engine carried to him on the wind. It hung in the air for a few moments and then vanished. He stopped dead, his heart pounding with shock as he turned to look back in the direction of the sound.

  Silence. Seconds ticked by.

  He must have been mistaken, the explorer decided; there could be no engine running out here in this wilderness. Unless …

  His hands suddenly shaking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his binoculars. There it was again, that engine sound once more.

  He scanned the glacier with the glasses, panning from left to right, then back again, as he searched for the source of the noise. But, looking back, the glacier was undulating like a series of sand dunes, the machine—whatever it was—was hidden from view.

  Then it emerged from a dip, and Fitzgerald saw it as clear as day. Just a couple of miles behind him, a fully laden snowmobile was picking its way steadily through the glacier, a sledge running behind it.

  He picked out the figures, could see Sean in the driver’s position, Lauren sitting behind him.

  But how? Fitzgerald had been so certain he had destroyed that machine. He felt a wave of panic wash over him as he watched them bearing down on him. They would kill him, he was sure of that.

  Fitzgerald looked quickly over to the wreckage of the crashed plane, expertly drawing down the distance. Less than a mile—twenty minutes if the ground was good. Could he beat them to it? Without the sledge, maybe, but to leave the sledge was as good as suicide anyway.

  Fitzgerald whipped the harness around him and set out for the remains of the aircraft, moving faster than he’d ever moved on ice before, the sledge bumping and tilting in his wake as he pushed his legs towards the objective.

  104

  Lauren was the first to see him.

  ‘There he is!’ She had glimpsed the explorer just a few hundred metres in front of them. Not far ahead of him, large shapes were dark against the ice. The remains of the aircraft, Lauren realised; they were almost there.

  ‘I can see the wreckage,’ Sean confirmed.

  Then the snowmobile juddered slightly, the engine noise dying away for a few beats, then picking up again and continuing.

  ‘The tank’s just about empty!’ Sean yelled.

  Oh no. Just a few more minutes, Lauren prayed; please God, don’t let the engine die. Not when we’re so close.

  The machine gave another lurch, the sledge bucking violently behind it as the engine coughed. Then the last drops of fuel trickled through the carburettors and the snowmobile coasted to a halt, the front runners sinking into the snow as the engine died. They could see Fitzgerald looking back towards them as he appraised this new development, then he continued his trek towards the aircraft wreckage, moving like a man possessed.

  Instantly, Lauren dismounted, snatching her skis and sticks from the sledge and setting out in pursuit. Sean was right behind her, his breath coming in short, explosive bursts as he pushed himself to more speed.

  105

  Fitzgerald could hear them gaining on him, the sound of their skis against the ice. Did they have the axe?

  He knew he didn’t have the time to look back.

  Fifty metres. There was the aircraft wing, partly covered in snow, big pieces of engine and gearbox strewn here and there.

  His legs were beginning to cramp, he could feel the muscles starting to knot as they reached their limits. The great crevasse was in front of him, the one the aircraft had fallen into. On the other side was the re
mains of their camp, the tents no longer standing but the fabric still visible poking from the winter drift. Inside one of those collapsed domes would be the emergency transmitter, but if the others reached it first …

  The explorer thought he would have to skirt the crevasse, a detour which might mean at least an extra mile on foot. Then he saw that a snow bridge had built through the winter. It looked fragile, but now there was no choice. Fitzgerald committed himself to the thin span of ice, feeling sick as he felt it slump in the middle, the weight of the sledge threatening to drag him down into the void which fell hundreds of metres deep on each side.

  But the snow bridge held.

  Fitzgerald reached the other side, turned, saw that Lauren and Sean were just seconds from crossing the crevasse.

  Next to him was a mass of metal. He saw rubber, aluminium struts: the remains of one of the Twin Otter’s wheels. The explorer reached down and pulled with all his might, wrenching the forty or so kilos of wreckage free from its icy grip and hoisting it above his head.

  With a roar, he threw the metal remains out onto the snow bridge, the weight crashing with a muffled crumping noise into the midsection of the bridge and collapsing it into the depths.

  106

  Lauren and Sean came to an abrupt halt, just before the edge of the monster crevasse. In front of them, huge fragments of the snow bridge were tumbling down into the dark interior of the ice cap, and, not twenty metres in front of them, Julian Fitzgerald was standing, triumphant and untouchable.

  Lauren tried to scream something at him, to vent the fury and despair that welled up inside her. But she didn’t have the breath. Instead she bent over double, winded and desperate for air after the chase.

  They had failed. For the sake of a cupful of petrol, a few metres of distance, they had failed. Lauren could feel what remaining vestige of strength was left inside her ebb and fade as she watched the explorer walk over to the remains of his old camp.