Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 03 - Snow Cone (9 page)

-Chapter 17-

I knew it was a wrong move as soon as I did it—the one little turn of my head, that one little peek just to see if anyone was watching.  I just created a domino effect.  I felt the blood rush from my face, and I could feel that something wasn’t right. 
Galveston stood with a look of horror as he saw what was beginning to transpire behind me.

It was then that I almost felt my heart burst from my chest, the sound of the word, “Hey!” echoed across the icy landscape.  I didn’t even need to look.  It’s the same feeling of when someone is chasing you playing tag, and you know they’re close without even seeing how close they are.  I immediately turned my walk into a run as I closed in on
Galveston and the truck.

One of the gunmen, out of the corner of his eye, had noticed our movement out of the truck, but it wasn’t until I looked back that he knew something wasn’t right.  I kicked myself—figuratively, not literally of course—because we were almost out.  I had jeopardized everything, especially our lives.  But
Galveston had noticed what was going to happen and sprung into action.

As I neared the truck, I heard a shot ring out.  A bullet didn’t fly by me, but instead it was a warning shot, up in the air.  Unfortunately, it alerted every other gunman in the area that something was amiss.  I pressed my body against the large truck and lost track of where
Galveston had gone.  The panic was beginning to take over, and I used every bit of my willpower to keep it at bay.

I heard a yell from above me coming from the cab of the truck. 
Galveston had climbed in and was attempting to start the engine.  I reached for the door handle but couldn’t grab it.  Galveston kicked it open, and as I scrambled to climb the tire to get to the cab I heard another gunshot.  This time it ricocheted off the front of the truck.  The gunmen were done with warning shots—now they were out to kill.

Galveston
attempted to start the engine again, but it only whined as the diesel engine struggled to start in the cold.  Diesel engines are notoriously difficult to start in cold weather. 

“They’re gaining!”
Galveston yelled, watching the armed men converging on us about a hundred yards away.  They had their guns raised but were proceeding cautiously.  “I can’t get it started,” he yelled again.

I tried to calm myself to assess the problem while
Galveston continued to crank the starter.  It wasn’t working, and I was in full panic.  I then remembered something about diesel engines from my teenage years.  I drove a tractor one winter hauling hay to horses.  It was a horrible job and was one of the reasons why I hated the cold to this day.  But I remembered one thing I had to do every cold morning to get the tractor running.

“Check for a button that says “glow plug” or “block heater”, somewhere on the dash,” I yelled at
Galveston just as another bullet struck the cab. 

I realized the gunmen didn’t have a clue to who we were, and they might have thought we were just workers since they were firing only a few bullets.  If they really found out who we were, they would pepper us with an intense amount of gunfire.

“I found it, block heater,” Galveston announced excitedly.  The gunmen were now fifty yards away and had picked up their pace.

“Switch it on, but don’t hit the starter,” I ordered.  “We have to wait for it to heat up.”

“What?” he answered, but at least hit the button.

“Now check for a glow plug light.”

Galveston searched the dash and found a lit indicator that said “glow plug”.

“We have to wait for the glow plug to heat up.”

I prayed that the glow plug would do what it’s supposed to do.  Glow plugs heat the internal combustion chamber of the engine to a temperature so that combustion can take place.  Galveston had been trying to start the engine too soon.  There was no way it would have started without it.

The gunmen now began to run towards us, and the gunfire was beginning to increase.

“Now?” Galveston yelled.

“Not yet,” I said watching the block heater temperature.

But we couldn’t wait any longer.  We had to hope that the block heater had warmed the engine sufficiently to start it.

“Hit it!” I screamed, and
Galveston cranked the starter.

The engine chattered for a few seconds before roaring to life, sending a puff of smoke out the exhaust.  This caused the armed men to stop and fire, now at full force.  The bullets bounced all around us, but luckily the cab was thickly insulated and tires were too huge and low of air to be deflated from bullets.

Galveston wrenched the shifter into first gear and ground the gears in the process, but he got the vehicle moving.  The bullets were now shattering around us as Galveston turned the huge truck away from the gunmen.  We bounced violently as we increased our speed and hit jagged bundles of ice. 

I looked in the mirror as the men gave up the chase and headed toward another truck.  But they would have the same trouble as we did in getting the vehicle started which would give us a small head start.

Galveston pressed the truck hard toward our extraction point.  We planned to bail out there and head up the mountain.  I figured we had at least five minutes before the armed men caught up to us.  The weather was starting to turn, which for us was a godsend.  If we could get into the fog and back to the glacier, we could make it out in one piece without the threat of them following us.

Galveston
turned toward the base of the mountain, and I could see the fist-like, rock outcropping through the ever increasing fog and haze layer.  Galveston instinctively stopped before we reached it.

“What are you doing?” I wondered.

“We’ll stop here, and they’ll think we went up this way,” he said, pointing to an icy path.

I didn’t argue and jumped out.  We began to run away from the truck and eventually reached our exit point.

“What a glorious sight,” I said, admiring our rock fist and breathing heavily.

“No time to waste,”
Galveston yelled as he ran up the icy path.

The path down proved to be the easy part, and we were not making the time up the mountain as we expected.  I heard the roar of an engine, knowing our assailants were still pursuing us.  This time I didn’t look back, instead I climbed harder.  I felt my legs begin to burn as the adrenaline from the previous moments began to run out.  Now it would just come down to shear will. 
Galveston was slowing too, feeling the same aftereffects as me.

The plan to leave the truck parked had bought us enough time to get through the fog and out of sight.  We were almost to where Sally was supposed to be waiting when I heard a whimpering sound coming from above.  As we got to the top, we saw Sally sitting on the ground with her knees pulled to her chest. 

“Sally?” Galveston said softly.

She looked up, her eyes were red and swollen.  She obviously had been crying.

“Oh, my God,” she started, through a deluge of tears.  “I thought you two were dead.  I heard the gunshots, and I thought…”

“Sally, we’re fine,”
Galveston said soothingly.  “We ran into a little snag, but we’re fine.”

She cried some more as
Galveston hugged her tightly.  She realized this wasn’t all fun and games.

I suddenly heard a crackle of distance gunfire.

“Frustration fire,” Galveston concluded.  “They’re pissed we got away.  We better not hang around.  They’re probably going to try to climb to find us.”

“Agreed, and the weather is starting to get worse,” I added.

The weather was definitely turning.  The clouds had begun to lower even more, and we were beginning to find ourselves in one of those white-out conditions that had produced so many tragic endings.

“Sally, it’s time to put your skills to the test,”
Galveston instructed.  “I know you’ve faced tougher conditions than this, and we can’t stay here.”

“Okay.  I’m okay,” she said, wiping tears that were beginning to crystallize on her face.  “It’s going to be tough.  I think we underestimated Mother Nature.”

“I think we’ve underestimated a lot of things today,” I surmised.

We began the slow journey back to the cabin.  A hike that should have taken two hours was now looking like it was going to take five, and that was being generous.  My hands and feet began to go numb, and each step produced a burning effect that made me want to stop and sit.  But we couldn’t stop, not in weather like this, and we couldn’t lose sight of each other.  There were ice caves, ledges, holes, and all other sorts of things that could kill us if we didn’t stay right on the path where Sally was leading us.

She was beginning to feel the strain too.  Her steps were becoming slower, and she was starting to second guess her paths.  This was turning into a dire situation.

We decided to tie to each other with a bit of climbing rope that Sally always carried with her.  We should have done this before we started, and we were lucky that nothing had happened yet.  The fifth hour began to pass and the light was beginning to dim even though this time of year there was no true darkness.

Suddenly, Sally quickened her pace, noting important landmarks close to the cabin.  The sudden burst of energy drove us forward and toward the thought of a nice, warm cabin with food.  The exuberance caused an unintended side effect, however.  It caused us to let our guard down.

Sally scaled a small gorge in the ice, but as she tried to get a foothold on the other side, her boot let go.

“Roger, hold steady,” Galveston yelled.

I immediately felt a jerk on the climbing rope attached to my waist.  It yanked me forward and sent me sprawling onto my stomach.

“What the hell happened,” I yelled, just making out the figure of Galveston ahead of me.  Sally was nowhere to be seen.

Galveston
didn’t respond.  I walked toward him, and as I approached, he became clear through the fog and snow.

The rope was taut around his waist and disappeared down the gorge below.  His feet were perched dangerously close to the edge.  That’s when I knew what had happened.

I twisted the slack line around my waist and began to pull him back, and my boots slipped uneasily on the ice.  Every muscle in Galveston’s body was tensed up, and he struggled to breathe holding the line.  I got down on my hands and knees and clawed at the ice while managing to get a foot hold that allowed Galveston to back away from the edge.  I knew Sally was at the other end of that rope.

Galveston
was wearing out, and I looped my rope around him.  He had wrapped the rope around his wrist and it was cutting in.  After I bound us together, I reached for the tight line in front of him.

“On the count of three, we pull together,” I ordered him.

He was unable to speak, but nodded in agreement.

We struggled for five minutes and were able to bring the line in slowly.  As I saw Sally’s head begin to appear above the ice, I knew we had her. 
Galveston let go for a second and moved toward her, using his last available strength to drag her over the top.  She had a contusion on her head and had been knocked unconscious after the fall, most likely from striking the ice wall.

Galveston
picked her up before he fully recovered from the ordeal.  We now had to find our way to the cabin on our own, but more importantly, we had to make sure Sally was alright.

I offered to carry Sally, but
Galveston refused. Instead he wanted me to find our way to the cabin.  It had been a mistake to rely on Sally without a backup plan, specifically for this reason, but we had done this trek many times already, albeit, not in these conditions.

Sally had gotten us close enough that I was able to locate an ice path we had used before.  We eventually got to the cabin and swung the door open.  Joe was sitting down and fraught with anxiety.  He was afraid something had happened and was chastising himself for not going on the journey with us.

We got Sally by the heater, and she finally began to move.  She was groggy, but talking clearly—a good sign after taking a blow to the head.  Galveston collapsed on the floor, but never took his eyes off of Sally until she was able to say some words to him.  She grabbed his hand, smiled, and mouthed the words, “thank you.”

-Chapter 18-

I hadn’t seen
Galveston this shaken in a long time, in fact, I had never seen him this shaken.  Joe was a mess, I was a mess, and Galveston was a mess.  The only person that wasn’t a mess was Sally, except for the big bump on her forehead.  She didn’t remember anything about the ordeal, and she came to after Galveston had pulled her over the edge of the ice crevasse.

I sat down by
Galveston and put my hand on his back.  “You okay?”

“Please don’t get sappy on me,” he ordered.  “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?  I know I’m not fine.”

Galveston
didn’t respond and whispered to me.  “I’ve seen dead bodies, guys shot, I mean, horrible stuff.  But this…I just saw her disappear and she was gone.  That image, I can’t get it out of my mind.”

I didn’t know what to say.  There really wasn’t anything to say, but I felt I needed to add something.  I decided that a bit of shock would help
Galveston forget the ordeal.

“You know she’s alive and well, right, stupid?”  I added the derogatory comment simply for the shock value.

“What?” Galveston replied and looked at me with a slight bit of anger.

“She’s fine and doesn’t remember a thing.  It’s not a nightmare to her so why should it be to you.”

“It could have gone the other way.  I could have been telling Joe that I lost his niece in that hole.”

“But you didn’t,” I said strongly.  “And you know why?  Because you don’t let that sort of thing happen, that’s why.”

Galveston kept his head down and didn’t say a word.

“She’s fine, and she wasn’t going anywhere.”

“But if we hadn’t tied ourselves off, she would have…”

“But we did, specifically for that reason.  It all went according to plan.  We kept each other safe.  There was no way you would have let any harm come to her.”  It was difficult to talk this way.  I had flashes of what could have happened, as anyone would after a scary event.  I needed
Galveston to take control of his thoughts and the situation.  My primary job many times was to keep Galveston focused to make sure he continued to do things with his trademark, reckless abandon.

“Now, you’re going to put on your big boy pants and get on with things.  You’re going to forget about this, because that’s what you do,” I said, poking him in the leg.

“Big boy pants?  Really?  I’m just glad I was there instead of you.  Your skinny, little bird legs would have dropped us all in that hole,” Galveston retorted.

I had managed to move him back into his cavalier mode.  “You wouldn’t have been able to do it without my help,” I snapped back.

“You got in the way,” he exclaimed.  “Heck, you were wandering around wondering what to do.”

“Ah, yes.  Big, bad
Galveston does it again.”

“Exactly.  I knew you would admit it.”

I got up and smiled.  Galveston’s feelings wouldn’t get in the way of us doing our job now.  I needed him to be sharp and able to come up with more of his half-cocked plans.

“Hey, Roger.”

“Yes, macho man,” I answered with a sneer.

“Thanks…stupid.”

I didn’t need to respond.  It was his way of giving me kudos.  Galveston realized he would have gone in after her, no matter the danger.  His thoughts about what might have happened were a momentary weakness in his character, and it was not a thing I would see again in the near future.  I prayed I hadn’t created an even bigger, egotistical monster, however.

Sally rested by the heater and seemed to have no ill effects from the bump on her head.  I went over to console Joe
, feeling like I was running a dysfunctional psychotherapy clinic.  He was taking it harder than Galveston, and for good cause, this was his niece and employee, and he was in charge of her safety.  I instructed him to call Hamut on the radio so he could get us out of the cabin early the next morning.  He did as I said, and Hamut planned to meet us where he had dropped us off. 

In order to change Joe’s mindset, I decided to discuss the pictures with him.  There was nothing better than good hard work to get one’s mind off of gunmen trying to hunt you down.

I opened the pictures on my phone and enlarged them so Joe could get a better look.  The photos would have been easier to see on paper, but I had neglected to shove a digital printer in my backpack.

Joe looked over the picture of the map carefully and stroked his chin.  He was deep in thought as he tried to deduce what the men were doing out on the ice. 

“This definitely isn’t how you mine for uranium,” he said confidently.  “You don’t even explore for it this way.” 

“Then what do you think they’re after; gold, rubies?”

“Possibly, but I can tell from the map they’re not looking in the right place, and they don’t have the right equipment.  They would have to strip off the ice layer to get to any minerals or gems.  From what you told me, they’re digging holes, with shovels no less.”

Galveston
moved toward us and peered over Joe’s shoulder at the tiny screen.  “Where did you take that soil sample that you gave to the biologist?” he asked.

“About here,” he said pointing at a spot in the middle of the map around where most of the work was taking place.  “I can see there is a pattern.” Joe enlarged the picture as far is it would go without it becoming grainy in resolution.  “These ‘x’ marks must be where they have dug, probably with the two boring machines you told me about.  The ‘o’ marks must be where they plan to dig, or vice versa.  But I can’t, for the life of me, think why they would be using men with shovels to dig the holes out.”

“Joe, have you ever heard of the term Broken Arrow,” I asked.

“It sounds familiar, and I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t place it,” he replied, shaking his head.

We were at an impasse, but Joe continued to examine the tiny map on the screen.  His face began to change, and I knew he saw something different in the picture.

“What is it,” I pressed, eager to hear his thoughts.

“I’m not sure, but it looks like…like an archeological expedition.”

I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth, and it never occurred to me that it was in the realm of possibility.  What artifacts could be found in
Greenland on ice that had never had any inhabitants?

“It’s laid out in a pattern of an archeological dig.  There are grids, and that would explain the men with shovels.  Delicate digging is needed to find any artifacts.  The machines are probably there to break up the ice and allow the workmen to get to a deeper level.”

I could see what he was talking about.  We had been focused on the “x” and “o” marks that we didn’t notice the faint outline of a grid pattern around each of them.  But it still begged the question of what they were looking for.  Joe was unable to answer that.

“I think it’s time I give Alex a call.  Maybe he knows what
Broken Arrow means.”

I put on my arctic parka and pulled the hood tight over my head.  I would have to go out into the frigid air to get a clear signal for the satellite phone to operate.

The wind blasted me from side-to-side, and I managed to find a relatively calm place to make the call on the backside of the cabin.  I used my bare fingers to peck out the long string of numbers needed to make the call.  There were a series of clicks and buzz sounds before I got a ring on Alex’s line.

I always expected Alex to pick up, but this time it went to his voicemail.  I let out a barrage of a few choice words.  “Where is he,” I thought.  Unbeknownst to me, his phone was sitting on his desk, and Alex was engaging in one of nature’s occurrences.  I left a quick message to call us as soon as possible, and I gave him our latest information about the operation.  “And find out what the term
Broken Arrow means,” I yelled through the phone, above the whistle of the wind.  “That’s what they’re calling their project.  We have all heard of it but can’t place the term.  Call back soon.” 

I ended the call with a frozen finger and walked back to the cabin door.  Just as I was going to open it to escape the bitter cold I heard something that wasn’t the wind.  In fact, it wasn’t a sound I recognized.  I stopped and looked into the fog, unable to tell what direction it was coming from.  I tried to localize the sound, but still couldn’t deduce where it was.  It whined up and down, and then I realized what was making the sound—snowmobiles.

Hamut had been instructed by radio to pick us up the next morning, so these sounds could only mean one thing—the armed men were searching for us.

I pulled the door open quickly and pulled the hood from my head.

“I hear snowmobiles.  I can’t tell where, but they’re out there,” I yelled at the rest of the group.

Galveston
dropped a book he was looking at, and Sally sat up from her reclined position in front of the heater.

“Are you sure?”
Galveston asked.

“Definitely snow mobiles,” I confirmed.

Galveston raced to the window and looked out.  The fog was thick, which offered him little help.  He opened up the door and went out into the cold without a jacket.  He was back in less than a minute.

“Yup, I hear them, and they’re getting closer.  It sounds like they are making a crossing pattern below us.  We have to get out of here.  We can’t wait for Hamut.”

“But he won’t be here for six hours.  We can’t go out in this weather; we’ll freeze to death,” Joe answered morbidly.

“It’s either wait here and get caught, or take our chances out there.  I vote for out there,”
Galveston surmised.

I nodded my head in agreement.  There was no telling what the gunmen would do to us at this point, especially after stealing their truck and looking through their private information.

“I think we have to go, Uncle Joe.  We’ll make it.  Plus the weather might be what we need to get away,” Sally reassured him.

Joe put his head down.  He was a cautious man, and he knew better than anyone the risks of going out in weather like this and through terrain we were unfamiliar with.

“We better pack up.  Make sure you layer with extra clothing.  Keep your packs light.  We’ll leave the sled since it will just slow us down,” Joe ordered, knowing that leaving the sled behind was the equivalent of leaving all of his research equipment behind too.

We didn’t speak and packed up quickly.  I threw on another pair of socks and long underwear before I put on my heavy outer pants.  When we were ready, we turned off the heater and lights, and Joe bolted the door after we left the cabin.

The wind had picked up even more, and snow began to blow horizontally.  It was going to be an incredibly hard journey, even under the best conditions, and we would have to put our full trust in our GPS receiver to find us the way out.

I sat behind Sally on the first snowmobile, while
Galveston got behind Joe on the second.  Each engine started after a little coaxing, and we slowly moved off the hillside and into the valley below.  We could hear the whining of the other snowmobiles in the distance from some unknown direction, and they continued to get closer and closer. 

Joe instructed us to take it real slow, almost with the engines at idle.  This way we would produce less noise and not alert the pursuers to our position.  We slid down the hillside, using just enough throttle to navigate our way around dangerous ice holes and crevasses.  We traveled for over an hour before the sounds of the searching snowmobiles faded away.

We had made it safely away from the first danger, but now we had the cold and snow to deal with.  My hands were already beginning to go numb, and I couldn’t imagine what Sally was dealing with.  She was blocking most of the biting wind and was still hurt, but she maneuvered the craft gracefully over the snow and ice.

We stopped after three hours to get our bearings, and I reached into my pack to retrieve some water for us all.  Unfortunately the cold had got to it first, and it had frozen into a solid block of ice.

The GPS showed we were on course, but things didn’t seem right.  The fog obscured every possible landmark, and it felt like we were going around in circles.  I was beginning to numb from the waist down and was finding it increasingly difficult to hold onto Sally.  She was also beginning to tire as her hand began to lose its feeling.  She was having trouble moving the throttle.

“Let me take over for a while,” I yelled in her ear.

“No, I’m okay.  I can do this,” she said over her shoulder.

I could tell she was strong-willed and didn’t like losing control.

“Sally, it’s okay.  Just a while, until you warm up, then you can have it back.  Just tell me what to do,” I said nicely.

“Okay,” she relented and stopped the snowmobile.

We exchanged positions and she told me how to operate the controls.  If we hadn’t been in a life or death situation, I would have thought of it as good fun, but right now all I thought about was getting out in one piece and not freezing my goodies.

It took me a little time to figure out how not to potentially flip us.  It looked easier than it was.  Sally gave me detailed instructions on how to navigate the ice while she attempted to warm herself in the fastest manner possible.