Black Ice (29 page)

Murdo had lucked out completely. His feet were by far the biggest in the base—a size thirteen, a full two sizes bigger than the largest rescued ski boot.

‘No fucking way Cinderella's going to this ball,' he cursed as he gave up trying to jam his feet into one of the plastic boots. ‘I'll just have to make do with what I've got.'

Lauren nodded, sizing up the leather trekking boots he was wearing. ‘They should be OK,' she told him, ‘but we'll have to watch you when the ice gets steep.'

Privately, Lauren knew that Murdo was going to suffer. The boots he was wearing could offer very little protection against the cold and would freeze as soon as his feet began to sweat.

Worse still, the Scotsman would have to walk every one of the three hundred miles which lay before them, a factor which would bring down their average speed considerably.

‘Never was much good on skis anyway,' he told Lauren, striding alongside the sledge to keep his pace up.

Lauren resolved to spend as much of her own time on foot as she could; it would help Murdo's morale, if nothing else.

That first night, astonishingly, even with the frequent stops to try and adjust their boots and skis, the team completed the first ten miles in a remarkably fast six hours, the spirits of the group lifted by their decision to leave the base.

They were going hard into the night, each team member pushing their limbs faster than a normal walking pace in their desperation to get away from the smouldering wreckage of the base.

And to get away from Fitzgerald.

‘Not so fast,' Lauren had to tell them. ‘We have to pace ourselves properly. There's no point in blowing ourselves out to do fifty miles in record time if we've got no energy left for the next fifty.'

The team responded to her words, slowing their strides down to a more sustainable pace, searching for, and finding, the rhythm which suited them best.

There was one factor in their favour as they struck out across the plateau: the comparatively easy nature of the terrain. It was not perfect, but it was smooth enough to give them a chance to keep up a high average speed. The sledge ran without much resistance, its passage helped by the polished ice.

As the morning light arrived, Lauren and Sean kept a watch to the rear; this was the time when Fitzgerald was most likely to spot them making their escape.

‘You seen any sign of him?' Sean asked her as they stared back in the direction of the base.

‘None. And I can't see the base either. That means we've cracked enough distance that the curvature of the earth is working in our favour.'

‘What do you think he'll do?'

‘I imagine he'll just be biding his time. He'll think we're holed up in that temporary shelter trying to keep warm. With luck, he might not approach until he thinks we're all dead.'

‘With luck,' Sean repeated. ‘We're sure going to need an awful lot of that.'

‘I know,' Lauren told him, ‘but for the moment we're one step ahead of him, and that makes me feel an awful lot happier.'

Murdo was proving to be stronger than Lauren had expected, his mood dramatically improved now they were on the move. In the darkest moments after the fire she had feared the tall Scotsman was close to collapse, to giving up the fight. Now he was energised and walking steadily, never complaining even when it was his turn to take a spell at the hauling.

Frank too was trying his best, sliding clumsily on the skis, unable to use ski poles thanks to the burns on his hands. Mel examined him at midday, reporting back to Lauren.

‘Those blisters are oozing pus already,' she told her. ‘We can't hold the infection off much longer.'

‘Nothing we can do about it,' Lauren replied, ‘except get to that depot as fast as we can.'

That first night away from the base was horrendous, the firewood reluctant to catch, the improvised shelter flapping and rattling around them in the wind. But at least the spindrift held off; somehow the cold was so much easier to handle when it wasn't bringing driving snow.

Lauren brought in a new regime, rotating the team so that each got two hours in the sleeping bag. It meant there was a longer wait between sleep sessions, but two hours' sleep was a lot more useful than one. Nestled in the cosy cocoon, each of them was immediately able to sleep, the womb-like warmth a blessed relief after the piercing cold.

Lauren put herself last on the list, even though she craved her own turn in the bag as much as any of them.

61

Crack.
A splintering sound rent the air. Fitzgerald sat up, his scalp tightening with fear as he was jolted from sleep. Someone was pulling his food from the sledge. Even though the wind was beating hard against the tent, he could hear the tins jostling as they stole them.

They were here. They'd get the snowcat.

How could he have been so stupidly complacent? Of course they would try and hunt him down … there was no other way for them to survive. Fitzgerald fumbled for the axe, cursing silently as his fingers ran carelessly across the blade.

I didn't go far enough. They've followed the tracks.

His heart was pounding uncontrollably. It would be Sean, of course. And Murdo, the big Scotsman. Too big for comfort. The two of them would be lethal, fighting for their lives. Fitzgerald checked the illuminated dial of his watch: 4:53 a.m., perfect time for a raid. He pulled on his boots, no time for the laces.

Got to get out of the tent and fight.

What would they have? What had the explosion left them? They would have a weapon, perhaps a sharpened metal strut from the debris.

Fitzgerald felt his skin crawling as he crouched in the doorway to the tent. He'd have to be fast or they'd stick him through the fabric of the tent. It rustled loudly as a new blast struck.

That was it. They were slitting the fabric.

Fitzgerald ripped down the zip and sprung quickly from the front alcove, a wave of fear and adrenaline driving him forward. He collapsed onto a snowbank; all was dark. He lashed out with the axe, sweeping great arcs through air which was filled with dense driving snow.

There was no light. Nothing to see his assailants by. He braced himself for the blows, hyperventilating as he blinked into the blizzard.

The sledge. They would take the sledge first.

The explorer felt his way to the side of the tent.

Thank God. The sledge was still there. He could feel the great mounds of boxes filled with food, the rounded outlines of the jerrycans … the fuel which would mean the difference between life and death.

He screamed a challenge against the wind, his eyes picking out some detail now, spinning as new eddies of spindrift turned themselves into fleeting figures running towards him.

Had he imagined it? Now he wasn't sure.

Crack.
This time it was the ice mocking him, the resonant cry of a glacier under stress. New crevasses opening up beneath him. He paused, listening … to what? The palpitations of his own heart, the rumble of the wind.

He had to move this camp. It was compromised.
Had they been there? Did they know where it was?
Suddenly, the night seemed filled with new fear.

Fitzgerald felt his mind come back. He couldn't move while the conditions were like this. He would have to wait till first light.

Crack.

This was a wake-up call. A message he couldn't ignore. Fitzgerald sat alert through that night, knowing that they would come, that they would have to try and kill him … all they had to do was find him.

Crack.

They could douse the tent in petrol. Burn him alive.

Now he knew the enemy, Fitzgerald wouldn't take them for granted again …

62

‘My legs. My fucking legs. Help me, for Christ's sake.'

Murdo was writhing on the ground in agony, both his legs shot out straight, rigid with cramp.

Lauren and Mel pushed on his feet, trying to ignore the tears of pain that this action provoked.

‘It'll pass,' Mel told him. ‘Breathe as deep as you can.'

Murdo wasn't the only one; they were all beginning to suffer from the harsh struggle to get to the first depot, and Richard was limping with a badly twisted ankle. Lauren calculated they had made forty-eight miles from base and the distance was beginning to tell. So was the lack of food; five days is a long time to ask the human body to perform with nothing but tepid water as fuel, and the miles were stretching into an unending nightmare of pain.

Lauren was hit by dizzy spells, attacks when she was forced to halt, to crouch on the ice with her head low between her knees to avert the threat of a faint. The others were no better: Sean was hobbling painfully on his frozen feet, Mel had developed a constant throbbing headache which refused to go away.

Frank said nothing for hours on end, but stumbled at the back of the group, his burned hands giving him hell. They were all dehydrated, suffering from constant thirst.

‘I thought you had to be in a desert to be this thirsty,' Frank commented, talking with difficulty as his tongue had swollen inside his mouth.

Lauren sympathised with him. Her own mouth was filled with a type of glutinous slime, a clear indication that her body wasn't getting anything like enough fluids.

Things had changed in the last forty-eight hours, the early attacking style of the trek now replaced by a miserable shuffling of feet, scuffing across the ice in a despondent line as mile after mile passed at a snail's pace.

The equipment problems had largely been solved; now they'd been hit by the horrific realisation of just how much distance was really in front of them.

‘I will never again look at a motorway signpost in the same way,' Frank commented. ‘I swear every mile feels like ten.'

Lauren and Sean took on the lion's share of the sledge hauling, giving Murdo, Richard and Mel as much down time as they could. Frank was out of the hauling rota thanks to his injuries.

The haulers had quickly learned to hate the sledge, the way it constantly nudged at their heels, the way the rope around their waists caused friction burns as the hours continued.

There was one positive development: by the third night, Sean and Murdo had the night shelter in much better shape.

Their earlier attempts had been to try and construct a type of wigwam, using three ski sticks and wrapping their one blanket around the makeshift frame along with the few bits of plastic and metal sheet they had managed to bring with them from the base.

There was no room to lie inside, only enough space for them all to sit in a tightly packed circle. The lucky occupant of the sleeping-bag shift—the two-hour highlight of their nights—would curl up in the middle to give the others a chance to warm their feet beneath the fabric.

As an idea, the wigwam principle was sound enough, but the structure was too high and thin, making it fundamentally unstable. A sturdy wind would blow the poles to one side, collapsing the teepee so that one of the occupants—normally Sean—would have to go out and retie the flimsy guy ropes and try to make it erect again.

‘We've got to have a better system,' Sean announced after exiting into the night for the tenth time to repair the shelter. ‘This one truly sucks.'

During the next day's trek, Sean and Murdo talked it through, discussing the finer points of detail as an effective way of passing the time.

The solution they came up with was for a much lower structure than the previous one. First they took the sledge and turned it on its side so that the flat surface was facing into the wind. It acted as a windbreak approximately two metres long and half a metre high. Behind it, they lined the ice with the metal sheets, then placed the softer, more comfortable plastic sheeting on top to give them some insulation from the heat-stealing properties of the floor.

When it was time to rest, they lay side by side—like sardines in a can—with the blanket suspended over them from the sledge. The sleeping-bag occupant acted as the anchor for the blanket at the other end and also doubled as a foot warmer for anyone brave enough to take off their boots. It was claustrophobic—the blanket sagged just a few inches above their faces—but the lack of space was itself another advantage, giving their body heat a better opportunity to warm the air.

The result—the ‘Mark Two Den', as Sean christened it—was a big improvement, an ingenious way of maximising their scant materials and far warmer than the previous shelter. It didn't blow down, it was relatively snowtight in drifting conditions and if snow did collect on the blanket a vigorous heave from below could always clear it. The main disadvantage was suffered by the two team members at the outer extremities of the shelter, their unprotected flanks froze solid without the warmth of another body to close up to. They rotated these positions every hour.

‘Like emperor penguins in the winter,' Lauren said. ‘The ones on the outside always get the bum deal.'

The Mark Two Den was a success, but it still wasn't enough. Only inside that sleeping bag could any of them find true sleep. For the rest of the interminable hours of the night, there was nothing but the cracking of the frozen blanket in the wind and the chattering of teeth.

In their minds was one thought, and one thought only. When would they get to that depot? And how much food would it contain?

63

Fitzgerald steered the snowcat in a little closer. Now he was just a few hundred metres from the wreckage of the base. It was the closest he had dared to come since the fire.

He paused, looking intently into the ruins, alert for any sign of movement. If someone ran towards him, he was ready to turn and race away.

This was the trap, he knew, and he had to admit it was well done. For three entire days he had seen not a single sign of life from the base. They were luring him in, coaxing him closer, hoping that he would lose his caution and make that one fatal mistake which would lose him everything. If he went too close, they'd be on him like a pack of wolves.