by L. A. Larkin
Wei thought for a moment, then ordered a soldier to free Vitaly’s hands. It was the same soldier carrying the ice axe and the rope.
‘Please? Me too?’ said Maddie.
Wei again nodded.
Before the soldier realised what was happening, Luke had snatched the rope and ripped the axe from his hand. Vitaly grabbed Maddie’s waist and fell backwards onto the weak snow bridge, which shattered. They disappeared.
Luke jumped through the gap and dropped into the darkness below.
T MINUS 2 HOURS, 58 MINUTES
10 March, 9:02 am (UTC-07)
Luke fell. He smashed into something hard and all the air was forced from his lungs. Distant shouting from above. Angry voices. Heavy clumps of snow hit his face and body like punches. Slowly, the cascade softened to a trickle of icy powder. Luke wiped it away and opened his eyes. He had to get his bearings.
He was on a narrow shelf. Instinctively, he flung his ice axe into the wall as an anchor. Directly above him, long icicles hung like a giant, glass pan pipe from the cathedral-like ceiling. The hole they had fallen through was almost circular and sunlight poured in, illuminating the otherwise dark cavern. He expected to see faces staring down or hear bullets pinging off the walls. But if their captors didn’t have any way to secure themselves at the surface, they wouldn’t want to crawl over what remained of a semi-collapsed snow bridge. Perhaps the soldiers assumed they were dead?
‘Mads! Vitaly! Are you okay?’ he called. It was unlikely their enemy could hear them in their semi-sealed icebox.
‘Yes,’ replied Maddie.
‘I am very flat,’ joked Vitaly.
‘He’s hurt his arm,’ said Maddie.
Luke looked down. The wall supporting the ledge he lay on sloped at a seventy-degree angle. The opposite wall was vertical. The floor of the slot was unusual: rather than the two walls narrowing to a point, the bottom curved like a bowl. It was covered in loose snow, which had softened their landing. Luke peered down into the depths: he spotted Vitaly’s khaki green coat first. Maddie’s white parka made her hard to see.
‘I’m up here,’ waved Luke. ‘Don’t move. The floor you’re lying on may not be solid.’ He knew it could be a false floor.
‘What!’ Maddie exclaimed.
‘Keep still. You could crack it.’ Luke saw her head of copper coloured hair move as she tried to sit up. ‘Maddie, you’re the lightest. Can you brush the snow off the floor and check how solid it is? Be careful.’
Luke could just make out her silhouette as she gently swept the snow away.
‘It looks rock-hard,’ she called up.
‘Good. Now, can you see any tunnels? Any daylight coming in through chinks in the ice? Any potential way out?’ He waited.
‘No, only the hole in the roof,’ Maddie replied.
Luke scanned all that he could see of the chasm. Maddie was right. Their only way out was the way they arrived. ‘Vitaly?’ he called. ‘How bad is your arm? Can you climb?’
‘It is okay. It will not come out.’
Luke sighed with relief. With a dislocated shoulder, Vitaly would not have been able to climb.
Nearby, a piece of mottled ice protruded from the wall and pointed at the ceiling. It reminded him of a long, high termite mound. It was wider than Luke’s shoulders but had a narrower section, much like a waist. He still had the coiled rope he had grabbed before he jumped. He guessed it was fifty metres – long enough. He tied a loop and tightened it around the giant stalagmite’s waist, leaving both ends of the rope dangling. He tested that it could bear his weight, then coiled one loose end around his body as a make-do safety harness and pulled his axe out of the wall.
Above them, Luke heard a scream. Thick chunks of snow rained down. He looked up. One of the soldiers was dangling from a rope through a much wider hole in the ceiling. Clearly, he had tried to crawl across the overhanging roof to look for them and had fallen through. The beam from his head torch darted about like a fly trapped in a bottle.
Luke didn’t move. The soldier was pulled back from the opening in rough jerks and disappeared. They waited in silence. Luke heard more angry words from the surface, then everything went quiet.
The minutes dragged by with no further sound from above.
‘Have they gone?’ Maddie’s voice was tentative.
‘I think so,’ Luke called down.
Vitaly shouted, ‘It is nearly nine. First detonation in one hour. I think soldiers are gone. Too busy to stay and wait for dead people.’
‘I agree,’ Luke called back. ‘The first explosion shouldn’t impact us. Maybe a little ground shake. But the one along the Fitzy … we’re too near. It’ll bury us.’
‘I guess we’re in what will become the shipping lane,’ Maddie said.
‘We need to hurry,’ Luke called. ‘We’ve only got three hours before they blow the Fitzy. I was hoping we’d see another way out, but I can’t. We’ll have to climb back the way we came.’
‘But how?’ asked Maddie. ‘We haven’t got any harnesses or pulleys.’
‘We have a rope,’ said Luke, ‘and our crampons. Give me a moment to think this through.’ He listened for any sound of human activity at the surface. Nothing. The sloping ice wall above him was covered with protrusions; these might give them something to grip. ‘Mads, I can lower the rope and the axe and you can use them to climb up to this ledge. But how do you feel about free-climbing the last three metres to the surface?’
There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘I think I can do the rope climb. My leg should hold out. But the free-climb? That’ll take the kind of strength I don’t have.’
‘Vitaly?’
‘I am a sailor; I am good with rope. But my arm is not strong. I will try.’
Luke glanced at the icy stalagmite; perhaps it would not cope with Vitaly’s tank-like weight. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll climb to the surface and then you can use me as an anchor. If I can make it, you’ll have a rope the whole way up.’
Suddenly, Luke heard an ear-splitting snap from down below. He leaned over the ledge, breathless with panic.
‘The floor, it crack, I feel it,’ said Vitaly, not daring to move a muscle.
‘It’s behind me,’ shouted Maddie.
‘Change of plan. Mads, don’t move. I’m lowering one end of the rope and the axe. Use them to get yourself up to this ledge. I need to get one of you off that floor.’
Luke searched inside his cuffs for the bindings he had removed earlier, but they were lost. Damn! He removed his left crampon and pulled out the boot’s shoelace. Using that shoelace, he tied a prusik loop to the long rope, the knot of which locked if you put weight on it but easily slid up or down the rope if you didn’t. ‘Use the prusik loop as an extra handhold,’ he called down. ‘As you walk up the wall, you can alternate using the axe and the loop. Okay?’
He tied the axe handle to the end of the rope and lowered it carefully.
A few seconds later it was dangling over Maddie’s head. She reached up, untied the knot to take the axe and then used the rope to lift herself off the icy floor.
‘Vitaly?’ Luke called. ‘Can you move away from the crack and find something solid to hold onto?’
As Maddie rose up the rope, Vitaly tentatively crawled back against the wall. Luke watched anxiously as Maddie got into an efficient climbing rhythm, digging the crampon spikes into the wall, pulling down on the prusik loop so that it took her weight, yanking the axe free of the ice and then slamming it into the wall higher up. Then she stepped up to repeat the same process. Within minutes, Luke was pulling her onto the shelf next to him.
‘Thanks … Luke,’ she panted, exhausted.
‘Vitaly? Are you okay down there?’ Luke called.
‘Da, but I don’t know how long it okay.’
‘There’s no room on this ledge for another person so I’m going to climb to the top and take the rope with me. When I’m set up as an anchor, I’ll lower the rope for you.’
‘Do not leave me h
ere, Luke,’ shouted Vitaly. His tone sounded a note of warning.
Luke knew that this was the closest Vitaly would ever come to expressing fear. ‘Mate, I’ll get you out. Count on it.’
Luke untied the loop and laced up his boot, then checked that his crampons were secured tightly. With the rope coiled over his shoulder, he said, ‘Mads, I’m sorry, I need that axe.’
She reluctantly let go of the handle.
This was going to be the most difficult climb of his life: a free-climb in sub-zero conditions. With his right hand he smashed the axe’s blade into the ice above him and clung to it. He then grasped a protruding piece of wall with his left hand. Digging his spikes into the ice, he stepped up. He found another wall cavity and used it as the next handhold. He made slow but steady progress up the wall. Gradually, the cold took away the feeling in his hands; he knew that was dangerous. He climbed further. Every muscle in his body shuddered with the strain.
He was an arm’s length from the crevasse lip and could feel the sun on his face when suddenly he lost his grip.
T MINUS 2 HOURS, 39 MINUTES
10 March, 9:21 am (UTC-07)
Luke clung to the ice axe in his right hand, but his left swung away from the wall. His heart almost leaped through his chest. Thankfully, his spikes still held in the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, sweat stinging them. He must not lose his nerve. Not now.
He opened his eyes and looked up, trying to work out what had happened. He hadn’t lost his grip: the ice had broken away in his palm. He had to find a sturdier handhold. And fast.
He spied one that looked promising and stretched his arm up, hooking his fingers into it. It felt firm. He pulled the axe out and used it to test the edge he was about to climb over. It appeared that the soldier had demolished the weaker roof ice when he crawled over it.
Luke was nearly there. His ice axe crashed down on the top of the crevasse lip and wind-blown ice particles danced on his hand at the surface – a pleasant change from the tomb-like silence below. He moved his crampons up one at a time until he felt sure they were well embedded. He had to let go of his handhold and grab the axe with both hands. A blind leap of faith.
In one quick motion, Luke moved his second hand to the axe, praying it would stay wedged. The muscles in his neck bulged, his face crimson with the strain. He clenched his teeth and, with his last remaining energy, pulled his torso forward. His knees connected with the glacier’s surface. Terrified that the lip might disintegrate, he crawled away quickly, hot sweat dripping from his brow onto the cold glacier. He had made it!
He struggled to a sitting position and looked around. He saw a stationary snowmobile in the distance, with a soldier on its seat. He was listening to the two-way radio. He hadn’t yet noticed Luke; the moaning wind had masked the little noise Luke had made.
Without pausing to think, Luke yanked the axe free and moved on all fours towards the snowmobile. It was the one Robert had stolen from Hope. The soldier laughed, amused at something he had heard. Luke rose to a kneeling position. At last the man saw him. But before he could raise his rifle, Luke swung the axe into his arm.
The soldier cried out, dropped the radio and tried to raise his rifle with his remaining hand. Luke charged and crash-tackled him off the snowmobile. He tore the gun away and pointed it at the prostrate soldier, who clutched his bleeding arm.
Luke could barely stand. He kicked the radio away, gasping for air. ‘Do you … speak English?’
‘Yes, little.’
‘I don’t want … to kill you. You understand?’
‘Yes.’ The man nodded as he held his limp arm. ‘No kill me.’
‘Lie on your stomach. I will bandage your arm, but if you move, I’ll shoot.’
The soldier obeyed.
Luke opened the snowmobile seat and found the first aid kit, as well as a recovery kit and rope. The soldier stayed motionless but whimpered in pain as Luke tied him up. Luke hastily used the bandages on his captive and pocketed the radio.
Finding the snowmobile was a blessing. He switched it on and revved the engine. The rescue kit provided a pulley system but it would take too long to set up. Instead, he attached the harness from the rescue kit to one end of the rope he carried and tied the other to the snowmobile.
Luke quickly made his way to the crevasse’s edge. ‘Maddie!’ he called.
‘You made it!’
‘Yup, your turn now. Get into the harness. When you’re ready, I’ll use the snowmobile to lift you. It could be jerky. Protect your face from sharp edges.’
‘Did you say snowmobile?’
‘Yes, they kindly left us one.’ Luke used the kitbag as padding to stop the rope cutting into the crevasse lip, and lowered the harness.
‘When you get near the lip, push yourself away from it so you don’t get snagged.’
‘Ready!’ Maddie called out a few moments later.
Luke straddled the snowmobile and drove forward, watching for the rope to go taut. He needed enough power to lift her, but if he went too fast she might get bashed or sliced on the sharp ice.
In a few minutes Maddie lay on the ground near him. She was laughing with relief. ‘Thank God! Thank God!’ she repeated.
‘I need your help with Vitaly, your weight on the snowmobile.’
‘Of course.’
Luke threw the harness down to Vitaly. ‘Mate, can you hear me?’
‘About time!’ Vitaly called.
‘I’m using a snowmobile to pull you out. Try walking up the wall to avoid swinging. Do you understand?’
‘Da.’
When Vitaly was ready, Luke revved the engine, with Maddie seated behind him. He inched the vehicle forward again and felt the rope go tight, but this time the snowmobile began to skid. Luke carefully accelerated some more. It crept onward, and then seemed to find some grip and jerked forward.
After a few seconds, Vitaly appeared over the crevasse lip and was dragged away from the edge. The Russian shook off a dusting of snow, like a bear coming out of hibernation. Luke braked and stopped the engine. All three were safe. For now.
Luke gave them a few moments to recover and then revealed his plan. ‘We have two hours and ten minutes before the Fitzgerald Fissure blows,’ he said. ‘I have to try to stop it. I don’t expect you to join me.’ He kneeled and patted the ice as if comforting a sick animal. ‘If this glacier is destroyed, millions of human lives will be too. We’re all linked. I don’t understand why Robert can’t see that.’
‘My friend, two hours and ten is very little time,’ Vitaly said.
Luke looked over at the soldier. ‘Let’s find out what this man knows.’
Vitaly took the rifle and pointed it at the wounded man.
‘We’re leaving you here,’ Luke said. ‘So, unless you help us, you’ll be blown to smithereens. Do you understand?’
The soldier nodded.
‘If you help us find the explosives, we can deactivate them. You’ll live and I’ll come back for you.’
The soldier glanced in the direction of the Fitzgerald Fissure, his eyes wide with fear, but he did not speak.
‘Help me and you have a chance. The SAS are on their way,’ Luke lied. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ll tell them you helped us.’
Finally, the man spoke. ‘Explosive on floor and in wall at eighteen metre depth. All the way.’
‘The full length of the crevasse?’
‘Yes.’
Luke moved closer. ‘How can we find them?’
‘Red flag. Many flag.’
‘Where’s the initiation point?’ The man didn’t understand. ‘Where does it start?’
The soldier nodded inland.
‘How does signal from laptop reach the detonator?’ Vitaly asked, jabbing the man with his rifle.
‘I not know how to say,’ replied the soldier. ‘Signal go from laptop to box and then to detonator.’
‘You mean there are signal relay boxes at the surface?’ Luke asked.
‘Signal
relay boxes, yes. But not at surface. They in the crevasse.’
‘How many?’ Luke demanded.
‘Five.’
That meant they were every four kilometres. ‘How do we find them?’
‘Yellow flag.’
‘How deep are the boxes?’
The soldier frowned, trying to remember the English word. ‘Boxes at ten metre.’
Vitaly whistled through his teeth. ‘I will go with you, but this is a big challenge, my friends. We must be clever with our time.’
Luke steered them away from their enemy’s earshot.
‘Is he telling us the truth?’ Maddie asked.
‘I think it is truth,’ Vitaly said.
‘I agree,’ said Luke. ‘Robert will transmit the countdown signal from his laptop. If we can’t stop the signal transmission – and there’s no chance of that – then we’ll have to stop the detonators receiving that signal.’ Luke glanced at Vitaly for confirmation.
‘Da. We must find these signal relay boxes. Without them, the signal from the laptop will be too weak to reach the detonators. We must cut … how you say, like insect?’ Vitaly held both hands to his head and wiggled his two middle fingers.
‘The antennae?’
‘Da. We destroy the antennae,’ Vitaly said, flexing his sore arm.
‘What antennae?’ asked Maddie.
Luke clarified. ‘The explosive is probably pentolite – it can cope with the cold and wet. It’ll be in holes in the crevasse walls, surrounded by compacted snow to keep it nice and snug. In each stick of pentolite will be an electronic detonator. There’ll be an antenna protruding from each detonator that would normally pick up the signal from Robert’s laptop. But because some detonators will be as much as twenty kilometres away, and eighteen metres deep inside the crevasse, the long antennae on the relay boxes will ensure the signal reaches the detonators.’
Vitaly whistled again, shaking his head. ‘They must have new technology. I never heard of such a big detonation, ever.’
‘So how do we destroy the antennae?’ Maddie asked.
‘We have two ice axes now, thanks to our friend over there,’ Luke said, nodding in the direction of the bound soldier, who watched them nervously. ‘We cut them.’