Phoenix Force 06 - White Hell

by Gar Wilson

An unshaped block of snow was flung to the Israeli. "Katz, stamp that to powder, fill in the cracks as we go."

  Keio Ohara disappeared briefly and returned with a knife of his own—an "Arkansas toothpick," its blade twelve inches long. "Picked this up at a flea market." He smiled shyly. "Just tell me how you want them cut, Gary."

  Moments later blocks of compressed snow were peppering the crusted snowfield, Manning grumbling to himself as he was forced to recut them two and three times to give them correct slant. He was rusty, but his proficiency slowly returned as the haphazard construction went on. Keio, too, caught on fast, doing the rough cuts, giving them to Manning for precise trimming.

  And though the blizzard continued to build, the piercing wind almost sucking their breath away at times, turning the men's face masks to sheet ice, they hardly noticed. Racing against time, fired by the urgency of their task, they worked like men possessed.

  Little by little the circle of inward-leaning ice blocks mounted. One course high, then two. Then a whole section of the third course collapsed. A flurry of groans and curses carried as all joined to repair the damage. Several blocks split, partially disintegrated, and new ones had to be cut.

  "Goddamn," Encizo roared as the wind hit him like sheets of plywood slamming against his body. "How can it be so cold and not freeze solid?"

  While they worked, Manning explained that one October during a hunting expedition to Great Bear Lake, his party had been caught by a freak storm, and their Eskimo guides had erected an emergency igloo. Manning had pitched in, learning his basic skills then and there. Later he had researched Arctic survival techniques.

  "This is going to be one helluva excuse for an igloo," he apologized. "But it'll have to do."

  Another frantic hour later, all hands chilled to the bone, limbs and fingers leaden, all wondering if they could hold out another fifteen minutes, they were putting finishing touches on the ice dome. Manning and Keio worked inside by an emergency flashlight, while the rest continued shoring up the outside with snow, throwing it up at the igloo, molding a second reinforcing layer, stuffing every crack. The peak was particularly troublesome, and caved in twice before the king block was finally in place. Manning deftly opened an air hole with his knife.

  The entrance tunnel—tor-sho, according to the Eskimo—was makeshift, no more than a trench leading to the doorway, covered over with slabs of snow. It faced away from the direction of the wind. A double slab of snow blocks waited inside the door for the time when everyone was inside.

  It was now 1430 hours, the blizzard howling with even more demonic fury. "Last call," Manning announced with a self-satisfied smile. "Check those vehicles for anything you might need, guys. Anybody need to use the litter box? Now or never. We dig a hole in the floor once we get locked in."

  Encizo, wheezing and complaining, crawling down the tunnel on all fours, was last man in.

  Manning fitted the double layer over the opening and plugged the edges with snow.

  For the next ten minutes all five men performed a crouched shuffle inside to tamp down the snow. Next the tarps were spread out like primitive carpeting. At last the team sprawled upon the floor, on the verge of exhaustion.

  An eerie silence fell upon them. Listening to the muffled wail of the wind as it hit the igloo with slapping impact, they sensed an inviolable bond of camaraderie. Once again, acting as a team, drawing on inner resources, they had cheated death. The feeling of union was almost a tangible thing, and as they exchanged guarded looks, each man smiled foolishly.

  "Here's to hell," Encizo intoned.

  "And all her ugly little children." Keio Ohara provided the refrain.

  "And here's to Gary," Yakov muttered, his eyes shining with new respect. "I'm very glad he goes hunting with Eskimos."

  "Our goose would've been cooked for sure," McCarter said. "Frozen, I mean. Good show, mate. God almighty, but it's good to be outta that wind."

  "What about air?" Rafael said. "Any chance of suffocating in here?"

  Manning looked up at the hole in the ceiling, through which snow randomly sifted down. "No way."

  The temperature in the igloo stood at zero. But to Phoenix Force, after the winter onslaught outside, it seemed almost tropical. "It'll get up to forty, fifty in time," Manning explained. "With body heat and the stoves, we'll be warm enough."

  Keio sighed, huddling his face against his knees. His face mask off, his parka half open, he looked haggard.

  A fresh slap of wind hit the igloo. "Any chance the storm will cave us in?" Yakov asked.

  "Hardly. The Eskimos use these up by Baffin Bay, where the wind hits a hundred miles an hour." Manning smiled. "Later, as the heat builds, the moisture will glaze the walls. That'll reinforce things."

  Yakov was busy with the radio again, trying to inform Grimaldi of the situation. But still there was nothing except hard, hissing static.

  Another long silence followed, each man lost in solitary thoughts, savoring the return of feeling to chilled faces and hands. There was worry as well.

  "How long, Yakov?" McCarter finally said. "The storm, I mean."

  "Hard to tell. It could be a couple of days or a couple hours. I'd estimate we'll be here overnight at any rate."

  Abruptly Yakov clicked off the emergency light, throwing the igloo into total darkness. "We'd best conserve our resources. We've got a long night ahead of us. We'll fire up the Hank Roberts later, do some cooking. I suggest that for now we bundle up, kill time with a little sleep."

  "Good idea," Manning grunted, falling back onto his tarp, drawing his hood about his face. "I'm beat."

  There were guttural sighs, sounds of cartridge belts dropping, of men adjusting their cold-weather suits. "Anyone want to borrow a hand warmer?" Encizo offered. "Got an extra."

  "Not me," Keio said. "Mine's still perking."

  There was silence then, only the howls of the wind to be heard in the igloo's cramped confines. Soon Yakov began to snore.

  Outside, the Arctic fury built up.

  AT THAT SAME MOMENT, the afternoon waning, the complement at QSS 0022 was similarly confined to quarters. With one marked difference, however—surrounded by the comparative luxury the USAF facility afforded, they could endure the snowed-in conditions with considerably more forbearance than the men of Phoenix Force.

  In Sean Toolan's quarters, Toolan and Mike Kelsay were involved in a war council of sorts, with Toolan already enjoined upon the day's drinking, his coherence partially undermined. "I'm worried," he said. "All these delays and that damned Avancini putting me off and all. We should never have come. Smelling the bloody stench of death, I am."

  "What can we do, Sean, the weather being what it is?" Kelsay asked. Following the disastrous probe mission near Toolik two days back, and the loss of Bryan Cafferty and the rest, Kelsay had become second-in-command. It was, to his mind, a dubious promotion at best.

  "I've got a broodin' in me gut, lad," Toolan went on. "Ever since Bryan cashed in. Him taking my gun and all. It's an omen, or I miss my bet. I've had that Sten since 1975. It was my lucky charm." He sipped at his whiskey and made a wry face. "No good will be coming of it, mark me. And who was it, I ask you? Who did such ugly work on our boys? You were there, Michael."

  "Like I've said before, Sean. I can't tell you. That helicopter came down all of a sudden, and we had to clear away. I saw some men in white. How many, whether they were Army people or not, I can't say. That damned squall comin' up just then. I waited till there was no more shooting, then I got out. We couldn't be risking our own aircraft now, could we?"

  "It was that same crew that wrecked us in Seattle, I'm thinking. But who are they? What's their place in all this? Avancini is trying to find out for us. He says he's seen them prowlin' about at Prudhoe. An inspection team, my foot. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. If I once get my hands on those bastards . . ."

  The phone on Lieutenant Pollard's desk rang. It was Tom Lynch, manning the security watch in the com section. "Sean? I've got our man on the line. He wishe
s a word with you."

  Toolan frowned as the connection was completed. "Well," he greeted snidely, "speak of the devil. What word, mate?"

  "I'll be brief," Avancini said, "before someone finds me on this line. We can't delay much longer. You and your men have to move soon. I've done all I can do here. Everything's in place for the strike. It's your turn now."

  "And what should I be doing, do you suppose? With these damned blizzards every half hour."

  "Sunday night," the contact man insisted. "Weather permitting. According to plan. Security's loosening up here again. All arrangements are on schedule. If the storm doesn't lift, then the next day. I'll be in touch, of course."

  "And our commando friends? What do we do about them?"

  Avancini chuckled malevolently. "We won't be hearing from them again. Last report has them lost out in the snow somewhere. Entirely cut off. They won't survive the night. Wolf food, come thaw time."

  Toolan's smile was gleeful. "That is good news. Makes me feel that much better about Sunday. It is a night strike, isn't it?"

  "I said, according to plan," the traitor snapped. "Why don't you take an ad in the paper?"

  "Just checking. Don't go gettin' huffed. Sunday night then."

  End of communication. Toolan regarded the dead phone bemusedly. "Sunday night it is, Michael," he said, reaching for the bottle. "That calls for a drink, wouldn't you say?" They raised their glasses. "Salud and slainte," Sean toasted.

  IN STILL ANOTHER PART of the Satellite Control Facility, in a dimly lit room at the furthermost end of the corridor, there was a parlay of quite a different kind.

  "No, Clancy," Coletta Devane giggled, well jarred herself. "Such a pig-ignorant sod you are. Clothes off, damn you. I ain't screwin' any man with buttons to scratch and all. Get that shirt off, do you hear?"

  "But what if Sean should come along?" Clancy Dolan said. "And catch me and Derwin with you? He'll be killing us by inches."

  "The hell with Sean Toolan," the woman said, her eyes glowing. "He don't give a pig's tit what I do, or who I do it with."

  Close to fulfillment of two driving urges—to avenge herself upon an indifferent lover and to experience tandem sex once in her life—she was impatient with her overly modest partner. Derwin McSherry, his head already berthed between her silky thighs, was breathing hard.

  Dolan swiftly removed the rest of his clothes and approached the bed.

  "Now isn't that the sweetest lad?" the woman sighed, her eyes intent on his lower body.

  Dolan arranged himself high upon her torso.

  SOMEHOW THE DAY HAD PASSED, and now, at 0100 hours, the men of Phoenix Force were stirring restlessly. The Hank Roberts stove-lantern hissed softly, the second container of LP butane in place. McCarter shifted to avoid a persistent drip where the heat buildup melted the snow.

  Outside the wind still whistled and howled.

  "I think we're completely buried," Keio murmured. "The wind seems more muffled. Any danger?"

  Manning's eyes went to the dome. "Not so long as our little blowhole is open."

  "I would never have believed it'd get this warm," McCarter muttered.

  "Eskimo babies run around nude in these things once they get things balanced," Manning said. "When they settle in for a week or so at a stretch."

  "I'll pass on that." McCarter grimaced. "I'd go stir crazy. I feel like I've been in here for a month already. The smell alone. But what're you gonna do? We damned sure can't go outside." He winked. "An insult to my natural modesty."

  "That'll be the day," Keio teased.

  Again the men fell silent. The dim glow from the stove caught their faces in ruddy outline, emphasizing the hard, shadowed planes of cheek-bones and brows, the grim determination of their mouths. Rugged bodies, used to hard action, did not respond kindly to cramped, enforced inactivity. Neither did take-charge mentalities.

  In his area, Rafael Encizo was not sleeping. Eyes blank, he was thinking grim thoughts, his mind going back to another time in his life when he had been similarly caged.

  Only worse. Once more he was back in the reeking dungeons of Castro's El Principe prison. There had been stench there too, life being lived at its rawest, most elemental level. The slop pails were always full to overflowing, men actually voiding on the dirt floors when dysentery and rotten food robbed them of even that final dignity.

  He recalled the moans and shrieks in the night, a carry-over from the day's torture sessions.

  Fidel's bullyboys had sat up nights devising sadistic innovations. He recalled the dark hours when men had pleaded with their cellmates to kill them, put them out of their misery.

  Even more galling, Rafael remembered how—when his escape plans were finalized—he could get none of his cellmates to make the break with him. Terrified, weak, spineless, they chose to cower where they were; freedom was a distant, glittering chimera, impossible to attain.

  The chilling analogy between that time and his present circumstances was an easy leap. Again he was imprisoned, but with an important difference: here he was with comrades who would back him to the hilt, who were willing to risk all. To them freedom was not a dream, it was gut-level stuff, within reach. But you had to pursue it, fight for it. It was what their lives, what Phoenix Force was all about.

  Down the line McCarter sighed heavily. "Isn't this bloody storm ever going to blow over?" Nobody dignified the question with a reply.

  The aura of surrealistic timelessness deepened. Aggravation mounted, a hair-trigger tension infecting each man. They were encased in a brooding cocoon, each man isolated from his mates. Private thoughts of vengeance. Doomful, black thoughts.

  Thoughts of Grey Dog. And an impending showdown.

  The endless vigil went on.

  And still the blizzard gave no sign of letting up.

  9

  Some time around 0600 hours the storm finally began to abate. They awoke from a cramped, restless sleep, and were awed by the eerie silence surrounding them. Each man looked about in the suffocating darkness, hardly able to believe his ears.

  "Man," McCarter exclaimed, "that's bloody spooky. After all that racket." He struggled to his feet. "I'm gettin' my ass outta here."

  "Stay where you are," Yakov ordered. "What good are you going to do out there? Grimaldi will be out looking for us as soon as he possibly can."

  Yakov busied himself with the radio. But again no amount of adjustment would bring in anything other than static. "If I could just let him know we're all right," he fussed. "I'll bet he's worrying himself sick." Then to Manning he said, "Did you remember the flare pistol? When and if he does fly over?"

  "Check," Manning responded.

  At 0815 hours they heard the muffled clatter of the Bell Long Ranger's rotors overhead. Manning went to the igloo's center, poked the barrel of the Very pistol out of the air hole and jerked the trigger. Moments later there was a flat report, and suddenly the night went red. Immediately the patrolling chopper doubled back.

  "Pack up, everybody," Encizo called in playful falsetto. "Today we go home from camp."

  One by one the Phoenix members burrowed their way out of the snowed-in tunnel, emerging spluttering and gasping. As Yakov, the last to emerge, appeared, Grimaldi was coming across the opening, up to his waist in snow. He embraced Manning, then Katzenelenbogen, clapping them heartily on the shoulder. "If you bastards ain't a sight for sore eyes," he greeted, his voice husky with emotion. "I thought you were goners for sure."

  For long moments Grimaldi stood admiring what could be seen of the igloo. "Well I'll be damned," he said. "Leave it to you guys."

  Rafael draped his arm over Manning's shoulder. "Our scoutmaster," he joked.

  By 1115 hours, showered and shaved, a hearty breakfast put away, wearing fresh issue of clothing, all hands were closeted with Clark Jessup, the Stony Man-Pentagon liaison, for an update and strategy briefing. Also included in the meeting was Major Sam Harrington, the Prudhoe front man and procurement officer with whom they had worked ever since ar
riving.

  Jessup came directly to the point. "Where in hell are the Irish terrorists?" he blustered, scowling angrily. "Are we chasing our goddamned tails or what?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," Katzenelenbogen said, bristling a little at the bureaucrat's implication that they were bungling the mission. "One thing is certain: they aren't where we've been looking."

  "So?"

  "We have to start looking somewhere else."

  "And where might that somewhere be?"

  Katz patiently described the scope of their search to the officious Defense Department representative, managing to conceal the rancor he was feeling. He filled Jessup in on the zilch mission just completed, adding that further low-level reconnaissance on their way back to Prudhoe had also uncovered nothing. If they thought that the fresh dusting of snow would reveal Grey Dog tracks, they were mistaken.

  "The whole line, all the way from Toolik to Prudhoe," Yakov concluded sourly, "was clean." He ducked his head defensively. "I was wrong. I was sure they were there. Which means I must totally revamp my thinking. That's why I've invited Major Harrington here; he knows the North Slope like the back of his hand. Perhaps he can provide us with some more constructive leads."

  Jessup frowned and turned to Harrington. "What've you got, Sam?"

  Harrington had sheafs of topographicals pin-pointing every station, construction site, supply camp, isolated village and landfill within a two-hundred-mile range of Prudhoe—most of which Mack Bolan's crack team had already considered.

  Which brought them back to square one.

  "False leads, everyone," Yakov said. "So you tell me. Where do we look? They sure as hell aren't flying back to Ireland every night."

  "These designations here," Keio broke in, stabbing the map with a finger, "what are they?"

  "Those are major and minor BMEWS stations in our Space Defense System," Harrington explained. "Ballistic missile early-warning system."

  "And this one here, near the Colville River?" Keio persisted. "It's within helicopter range of the pipeline."