Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  He looked round again, the scene now eerily still. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s keep together.”

  As if on cue, the silence was rent by a shattering concussion, and ice and water disintegrated in another shuddering blur. Jack became aware of a curtain of ice falling around them, jagged spears that sliced into the water like shrapnel. He concentrated all of his energy on holding Costas tight, knowing that if the hose that was his sole remaining lifeline were to rip out he would drown. He flashed back to the body in the ice, to his hallucination, then woke to a worse reality.

  They were dropping with sickening speed, sliding down a whirlpool of grinding ice, as if they were being sucked back to the frozen warrior and the place that had nearly been their nemesis. The water was falling away so fast that they were dropping through air, suspended half in and half out of the water, tumbling weightlessly against the chunks of ice that were splintering around them. Costas pulled Jack closer, straining against the centripetal force of the whirlpool, and pressed his visor hard against Jack’s. “The water’s being sucked down as the crevasse opens,” he yelled. “Hold on tight. I might be able to reverse the flow.”

  Suddenly the water billowed up around them and they were immersed deep within it. For a terrifying moment Jack felt the air crushed out of his lungs by some force that was working against the vortex, propelling them back upwards.

  Then they erupted out of the water, bouncing on a plume of brash that threw them high into the cleft above the cauldron. They crashed into a wall of ice and slid upwards, each scrabbling desperately with one free hand for some kind of hold. Then they began to slide back downwards, out of control, until they hit a ledge that held them precariously on the wall. As they crouched dripping together on the icy platform, the plume of brash and spray dropped back into the seething cauldron at the base of the crevasse far below them.

  “What the hell was that?” Jack panted, peering down a sheer drop of at least thirty metres.

  “The C-4,” Costas said exuberantly. “We were ejected from that chamber before I had a chance to blow it, but it came in useful after all.” He shoved the detonator transceiver into his thigh pocket. “Right. I’m cold and hungry. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Better make it fast. Take a look at that.”

  They peered down in horrified fascination at the ice chasm far below. It was beginning to narrow again, the walls compressing the slurry of ice and pushing it upwards. As the larger chunks were caught in the vise they exploded with a shattering resonance, sending lethal shards far up the crevasse. They knew that being caught in the maelstrom this time would mean instant death, their bodies shredded by the flying ice and then crushed as the crevasse caught them like a meat grinder. Relentlessly, terrifyingly, the gap was closing in on them, advancing like some living thing, its deadly maw spewing a geyser of splintering and shattering ice, moving with alarming speed up the cleft even in the few moments they had been watching.

  “This is it,” Costas yelled above the din. “No second chance this time.” They swivelled on the ledge and faced upwards. The skylight at the top of the crevasse was about fifty metres away, rushing streaks of grey now clearly visible on a background of blue. Suddenly the clouds parted and a dark shape appeared, blotting out the cleft, a blinding spotlight aimed directly at them. Then it veered away violently, trailing something that streamed out behind and whipped over the crack.

  “It’s the Lynx,” Costas shouted excitedly. “They’re trying to drop a winch.”

  “I told them to stay away. They’re pushing their luck against that wind.”

  “They could hardly do nothing.”

  “There’s no way they’ll get that cable down here. They must be waiting, hoping we can get to the entrance of the crevasse.”

  Jack glanced down. The gap was now terrifyingly close, no more than twenty metres below them, the shards of exploding ice almost reaching the ledge. He looked up again. The crevasse was glassy smooth, offering no handholds. The euphoria at seeing the helicopter suddenly turned to cold dread. It was another nightmare, a return to his brush with death years before in the flooded mine shaft, where the end of the tunnel had been in sight but no matter how frantically he tried to swim for it he seemed to stay the same distance away.

  Jack suddenly felt as if he were being pressed into the wall. He looked up again, then it dawned on him. “The crevasse. Isn’t it supposed to be vertical?”

  “Holy shit. The berg’s rolling!”

  There was a huge lurch and everything went still. The cleft had seized up, no more than ten metres below them. Through the skylight they were looking directly at the promontory where they had visited the old Inuit the day before.

  Jack found himself thinking that it was going to be a perfect day, that the wind was leaving the land washed in sparkling light. Then he felt the dread again.

  They had to reach the crack or they would die. When the berg rolled again the skylight would drop underwater, taking them into the abyss as it toppled off the threshold, sealing their fates in an instant.

  “The axe!” Costas shook him. “The axe!”

  Jack snapped back into reality. With his left arm still around Costas, he reached back and drew the axe from its straps. His hand was sticky with blood where it had brushed his thigh and the axe nearly slipped away, saved only by Costas’

  iron grip. They dangled the axe together down the slope, then flung it in a wide arc to lodge in the ice ahead of them.

  “It’ll hold,” Jack panted. “Pull yourself up.” He tensed his body, his fins still planted on the ledge but his elbows and knees ready to find any undulation in the ice, anything that might stop him from sliding. They heaved up on the haft, then shook it frantically until it was loose. For a few seconds they would be totally without anchor, held only by the tension of their bodies against the ice.

  Costas looked Jack full in the eyes and nodded. Jack let the axe slide down again and heaved. It arched overhead, skimming the back of the crevasse, then slammed into the ice a metre and a half ahead of them. As Jack craned his head up to free the axe for another blow, he saw a black-clad diver dangling from a cable no more than a hundred metres beyond the berg. He realised that the noise he was hearing was the din from the Lynx’s twin turboshafts.

  There was another lurch, and a rumble from the cleft behind them. The noise of the helicopter was drowned out by an immense creaking in the ice. The walls of the crevasse narrowed. The axe was poised but there was no more room to swing it. Another lurch brought up a surge of brash from the cleft, washing over them, then everything happened at once. The skylight was lost in a foment of water, a sucking whirlpool that rose up towards them, and suddenly they were sliding uncontrollably, plummeting towards the skylight as it angled into the abyss. Jack hit the incoming seawater with an immense crash, the axe trailing behind him, then was pulverised by the force of the water cascading down from the maw of the crevasse. The icy brash that had so nearly been their nemesis pushed them out of the berg, ejecting them in a frenzied tumble just as the walls of ice crushed together and sealed the crevasse for the last time.

  It was not over yet. Jack saw a vast wall of sculpted white advancing on them, extending as far as he could see in every direction. Already the crevasse was far below, marked only by a trickle of bubbles rising up the side of the berg, framing the black immensity of the abyss. As the berg rolled, Jack had the illusion that he was rocketing upwards, yet his body told him exactly the opposite. “It’s pulling us down,” he yelled to Costas, his voice contorted. “Inflate your suit and swim for it!”

  Jack pressed the inflator and began to fin hard, his left arm gripping Costas’

  shoulder. His depth readout showed they were hardly moving at all. They were still in the grip of the berg, being sucked down. He looked up and saw the sun shimmering off the waves, tantalizingly close. He felt the cold again in the pit of his stomach. Having survived the iceberg, they were about to die within sight of the surface. This could not
be happening. He began to hyperventilate, to outstrip the oxygen remaining in Costas’ cylinder. His breathing began to tighten.

  “I’m ditching your tanks.” Costas was breathing heavily, a great plume of bubbles encircling his exhaust, and he finned furiously as he disconnected Jack’s redundant hoses and flipped the quick-release buckle on his cylinder packs, sending the oxygen rebreather and the console backpack with its empty trimix cylinders plummeting into the depths. “I’m doing the same to mine,” he panted.

  “We’ve only got about a minute’s air left anyway and it isn’t doing us any good.

  Get ready to disconnect your hose. Stop finning now and when I say so take five deep breaths.”

  “I’m holding on to you,” Jack said, his breath coming in short gasps. “If you go down, I’m going with you.”

  Costas disconnected his rebreather and it dropped out of sight. With his left hand he flipped the quick-release on his backpack and held it in place, and with his right hand he found the disconnect to the hose under his helmet. Already they were plummeting down, sucked deeper and deeper by the rolling iceberg, their chances receding with every metre they dropped into the abyss.

  “Now!” Jack took five deep breaths, then yanked the umblical. Simultaneously Costas released his hose and backpack. With Jack’s left arm on Costas’ shoulder, they began to swim determinedly upwards, taking wide, hard strokes with their fins, Jack still clutching the axe in his right hand. For a few moments he felt fine, his bloodstream brimming with oxygen, and he remembered to breathe out as he ascended. Then the effort of their escape began to take its toll, and he felt the first niggle of discomfort. They were rising steadily, a metre every couple of seconds, but they were still more than twenty metres from the surface. Any letup in their finning and they would be dragged back down again. Jack started to suck on empty, his lungs instinctively heaving for more air, drawing the last dregs out of his helmet.

  His legs, starved of oxygen, began to falter. He was beginning to black out, overwhelmed by exhaustion. He was not going to make it. He stopped clawing his way upwards, and in a last conscious act struggled to free himself from Costas’ grip, seeing his friend still going strong, desperate to give him some chance of reaching the surface alive.

  Suddenly he felt an odd sensation, a jolting weightlessness. He had stopped finning but was still being impelled upwards. He was dimly aware that the berg had stopped moving. By instinct he found the dump valve to release air from his suit and stop himself from rocketing upwards. Then he was on the surface, blinded by the light. He unlocked his helmet and ripped it off, gasping over and over again in the cold fresh air, his entire being focussed on replenishing his life force. As soon as he could, he swivelled round and scanned the waves, shielding his eyes against the glare. After a few anxious seconds he caught sight of a tousled head bobbing in the waves about ten feet away.

  “You okay?” he gasped.

  “Well, at least that little swim solved our decompression issue.” Costas’ voice sounded strange after the intercom, adenoidal with the cold. He was facing away from Jack, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, completely focussed on two gauges that he was holding out of the water. “But there’s a small discrepancy in the readouts. It’s incredibly annoying. I need to do a little tinkering.”

  Jack managed a small smile. He leaned his head far back, letting the evening sunshine play on his face. He could hear the helicopter above him and heard the splash as the rescue diver dropped into the sea. He cracked open one eye and saw the glinting golden blade in the waves beside him, the prize he had refused to let go. Suddenly their extraordinary discovery in the berg came flooding back, and a burst of adrenaline rushed through him. He shut his eyes, his mind now coursing with excitement. A wave washed over him, a cleansing jolt of cold that left lines of salt water trickling over his lips. It tasted good.

  11

  THAT’S SOME ICE AXE YOU’VE GOT THERE.”

  “Wait till you hear what else we found.”

  James Macleod had just finished applying a compress to the gash in Jack’s leg.

  His E-suit was slick with fresh blood, but the compress staunched the bleeding.

  Jack leaned back against the bulkhead, his face streaked with fatigue, and adjusted his flight helmet and headset. Between talking he was breathing deeply on the oxygen regulator that had been passed to him as soon as he had been winched into the cargo bay of the Lynx.

  “You don’t want to hear the odds Lanowski calculated against your survival.”

  “No, I don’t.” Jack was utterly exhausted, but felt he had to keep talking to tell them what had happened.

  “When the piteraq hit we were completely shut down. Inuva told us they could be bad, but I had no idea what we were up against. Couldn’t even get the chopper out of the hangar. It was terrifying, like banshees screaming above us.”

  “We saw it from the crevasse.”

  “When the berg rolled, all hell let loose. The displacement wave washed right up the shore and swept away the tent where we met Kangia. The local shaman was still there. As soon as we get you back on board Seaquest II the chopper’s out on a search, but it’s pretty hopeless.”

  “Inuva?” Jack said.

  “She’s okay. She was with Lanowski on board.”

  Macleod broke off to help the crewman acting as loadmaster to haul another dripping form through the open cargo door. Seconds later Costas was strapped into the seat beside Jack, pulling on his flight helmet and sucking gratefully at the oxygen regulator that had been handed to him.

  “You okay?” Jack asked.

  Costas sucked a few more times and then lowered the regulator, giving Jack a doleful look.

  “Oh. Let me guess.” Jack looked back with exaggerated sympathy. “Your ice probe.”

  “Months of research and development,” Costas said sadly. “And that was the only prototype. I’ll have to build the next one entirely from scratch.”

  “No hurry as far as I’m concerned,” Jack said. “I think I’ve just ticked diving inside icebergs off my list.” He turned back to Macleod. “What was your contingency plan?”

  “When we saw that the berg had rolled three hundred and sixty degrees we thought there was a chance. Lanoswki remembered the old crevasse above the longship. It was all his idea, modelling the likely rupture line, even calculating the explosive charge we’d need to blow it open.”

  “You’ve got to hand it to the guy,” Costas murmured.

  “So that’s what Ben was doing,” Jack said.

  Macleod nodded. “Ben volunteered to take the charge down. He tried half a dozen times, but he couldn’t get close enough to the crack. The wind was buffeting us and we had to fight to keep the chopper on station. Then he saw you inside the crevasse. He was trying to feed the cable in when the berg began to roll again.”

  “You guys are heroes,” Costas said.

  Macleod shook his head and smiled. “We’re just the shuttle service. I don’t know how you did it.”

  At that moment the loadmaster hauled a third figure through the door and secured the winch hook to its davit. Ben ripped off his face mask and looked anxiously at Jack and Costas. He gave them a diver’s okay sign, and they responded in kind.

  “Okay, Andy.” Macleod slapped the bulkhead behind the pilot’s seat. “We need to get out of here before that thing finishes its roll. We’re good to go.”

  “Roger that.”

  The others strapped themselves into the seats at the rear of the cargo bay. As the helicopter pitched forward and shuddered up to full power Costas jerked his hand to the axe lying across Jack’s legs. “By the way, thanks for saving me from the deep freeze.”

  “I owed you. I seem to remember a little help a while ago inside a volcano.”

  Costas looked warmly at his friend and nodded, his face suddenly lined with fatigue. Jack slumped back against the seat and breathed deeply from the regulator, feeling reinvigorated with every breath, knowing that the oxygen was cleansing
his system of excess nitrogen. To his right he could see the immense form of the berg, seemingly as solid as a mountain, and to his left the sparkling shape of Seaquest II, far out in the bay. He was swept by the feeling of elation he had experienced upon surfacing. For months since their return from the Black Sea he had been nagged by a secret uncertainty, that the prize no longer justified the risk, that he had lost his edge. Now he knew he was back where he belonged. He shut his eyes and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  “My apologies,” Lanowski said. “I didn’t count on a storm.”

  “You gave us every warning,” Jack replied. “It was my call.”

  Jack and Costas were sitting on the foredeck of Seaquest II, slumped against the port railing where the helicopter had winched them down with Macleod a few minutes before. The ship was maintaining position in Disko Bay about a mile west of the fjord entrance, and Jack could see the tip of the iceberg beyond the starboard railing opposite them. Even at this distance it was an awesome sight.

  He and Costas had been extraordinarily lucky that the berg had rolled a full 360

  degrees, that the huge force of the storm had tumbled it back to its upright position and left it perched precariously on the outer rim of the threshold. The next time it rolled it would flip over and stay that way, crushing any remaining air pockets beneath hundreds of metres of freezing seawater.

  Lanowski had been the first of the scientific team to reach them on the foredeck, joining the crew members who had guided down the helicopter winch and were now helping Jack and Costas to peel off their E-suits. They were quickly joined by Maria, whose look of relief turned to concern as she saw the blood on Jack’s thigh. The ship’s doctor was already on the scene, cutting away the bandage and spraying coagulant into the gash.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” Jack winced as the medic applied a suture, then held up a bloody spear of ice. “Nature provided her own cold compress.”

  “You were lucky,” the medic said. “It just missed the femoral artery.”