Target 5 (24 page)

The outer edge of the ramp where supporting rocks had been levered out of the ice collapsed. The huge weight of
the vehicle completed the disaster. While Conway was still fighting with the controls the Sno-Cat went over sideways,
then went straight down twenty feet on to the hard pack.
Conway had switched off the engine, an instinctive reflex
when he was going over, and then he was upside down. The roof struck the ice and the terrible weight of the tracks came
down on the up-ended floor of the cab, concertinaing the
tiny compartment, crushing the man inside into an un
recognizable shape of smashed bone, tissue, metal and glass.

A mile away on the far side of the island, unaware of the tragedy, Beaumont led his small party down on to the pack the Russian security guards had just left and headed westward.

Tuesday, 22 February: 10AM-Noon

This was how the whole world - Europe, the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa - might look one day; a lifeless, sterile, frozen desert when the earth moved away from the sun and became an extinct satellite. It was like a preview of the death of the human race.

Wafted by the merest of breezes, a chilling stream of ice-cold air which came direct from the North Pole, the fog had shifted south, exposing the moonlit frozen desert Beaumont and the two sled teams were moving over. They had an end
less view to the west and the north, the same God-awful
expanse of ice, ice and more ice. Even in the land deserts of
the world something grows somewhere; there are isolated oases, pockets of green trees and burning blue water. Here
there was nothing but hideous ice - going on for ever.

Pressure ridges loomed in the moonlight ahead of them, a
chaos of static ridges ten to twenty feet high. Guided by Grayson's erratic compass they were heading due west,
sledding towards distant Greenland over a hundred miles away, and Beaumont was still wondering whether to take
out his insurance policy - to head due south instead of west,
south to the most dangerous place on earth, Iceberg Alley.

Since the fog had withdrawn its concealing curtain over an hour ago they had seen no sign of the Russians. It was
possible that Papanin's men were still patrolling the fringes
of Target-5, waiting for Gorov to come in. Beaumont
glanced over his shoulder as he drove his sled and Grayson
hurried up to him. 'How is our first-class passenger getting
on, Sam?'

'Gorov is a pain in the ass,' Grayson said inelegantly.
'He's still sulking over that cross-examination you put him
through, and he sits on Horst's sled as though he's some
kind of emperor. I'd make the bastard hoof it.'

'Later. He'd just hold us back at the moment. . .' Beau
mont broke off, looked quickly into the sky. A small dark blip was coming in from the north-east, heading directly towards them. Like an ugly bird it cruised across the night
sky, too far off yet for the blur of its rotor disc to be seen, for
the sound of its engine to be heard.

'Chopper! Get under cover . . .'

Beaumont cracked his whip as he shouted the warning,
driving the dogs faster towards the shelter of the pressure ridges while behind him Langer shouted at Gorov to get off the bloody sled, to run. The Russian tumbled off the mov
ing sled, fell over on the ice, swore in his own language and
then stumbled after them in desperate haste. The sound of the engine beat of the oncoming machine could be heard
now, a faint sound growing louder by the second. Beaumont's team plunged through a gap in the first ice wall and
then they were inside a corridor, halting as Beaumont
pulled at the sled. Langer followed them through the gap as
Gorov tried to catch up, still out in the open as the Soviet machine drummed closer. With a curse Grayson grabbed at
the Russian and threw him under the lee of the ice wall.
They waited, staring up while the dogs, huddled together, also gazed at the sky.

The machine they could no longer see was flying low, no
more than two hundred feet above the ice, and if it passed
over them they were bound to be spotted. Crouched against the pressure wall which climbed fifteen feet above them, its
crest curling over them like a breaking wave, they listened
and watched for the helicopter to appear overhead. The throb echo grew louder, vibrated
down the ravine where
they pressed themselves against the ice. And then Langer was in trouble with the dogs as two of them started to jump
about, hating the helicopter's noise, equating it with the machine which had brought them to the edge of the fog
bank. He slapped one hard and the animal turned on him,
showed its teeth, let out a menacing growl. If the dogs
careered out into the ravine it was certain they would be
seen. Nothing shows from the air like movement.

Beaumont glanced over his shoulder anxiously, unable to
leave his own team which was becoming infected by the
commotion. He was astounded to see Gorov crawling along
the ground on his knees, stretching out a hand and squeez
ing the rebellious animal's neck as he called to it in Russian.
The animal relaxed, permitted itself to be stroked, and the
second dog stopped struggling, staring as though it resented
the special treatment its colleague was enjoying. Then some
thing flashed over the ravine, the shadow of the machine.

Before there had been tension, anticipation, now they
froze with fear, holding their breath without realizing it. And the dogs froze, too, remained absolutely still. They
didn't see the helicopter - only its shadow - then it was
flying westward, away from them. 'Stay here till I get back,'
Beaumont ordered. Shielded by the pressure wall, he stood
up and walked along it until he found a high point on its
crest. He clambered up the wall carefully, jabbing his boots
into crevices until he could peer over the crest.

It was a good look-out point. Beyond him more jagged
ridges spread away, lower ridges he could see over, and
about half a mile away the ridges ended and the ice flattened
out. The belt of flat ice stretched into the distance like a
sheet of plate glass, ideal terrain for them to sled across except for one thing - the Russians were in the way.

Small groups - he counted a dozen - were spaced out
over the belt with long distances between them. And they
were all sled-teams, moving slowly away from him, heading
west towards faraway Greenland. Several miles across the ice
two helicopters flew above the pack as though patrolling.
The machine which had passed near them landed while he
was watching, came down on the level ice close to one of the
sled-teams. The rotors had hardly stopped whirling when
the door opened and a stream of dogs poured out on to the
ice. Men followed the animals, sleds were unloaded, and
within minutes the men were harnessing the dogs. The speed
of the operation impressed Beaumont. Ten minutes after
he had first looked over the crest the helicopter took off,
climbed to about five hundred feet and flew off to the north
east. Beaumont slithered back into the ravine, hurried back
to where the others were waiting. The argument flared up
almost at once.

'Well, it missed us, thank Christ,' Grayson said.

'It wasn't looking too hard - it's just unloaded more sled-
teams.'

'More?'

'Sam, not more than half a mile away to the west the ice
is lousy with Russian search teams. Some of them are a
long way west - and they've got choppers above them.'

'They're coming this way?'

'At the moment they're heading away from us . . .'

'OK. So we creep along behind them.'

'It won't work. Remember that wide belt of smooth ice we saw when we flew in over the pack? They're spread out across that. If we try to cross that belt they'll spot us., Papanin just slammed the door in our faces.'

Short of sleep, the memory of the air crash horror still
fresh in his mind, Grayson faced Beaumont and his temper was going fast. 'You're dead wrong, Keith,' he said quietly.
'The only safe way out is
westward. We have to hit the
Greenland coast. Once we get there we're OK - the Russians can't invade Greenland.'

'A perfect plan,' Beaumont said sardonically, 'except the
bit about hitting the Greenland coast. I keep telling you -
the Russians are in the way . . .'

'We can slip through those search teams. The ice is big -
too big for them to cover it all.'

'You're not getting the message. It's not only the men on
the ice - they're patrolling that belt from the air . . .'

'So which way do we go?' Grayson flared. 'North towards the bloody Pole? East back to Target-5 where Papanin's waiting for us? South ...'

'South,' Beaumont interjected. 'That's where we're
going.'

Gorov, who had been listening intently, added his own
contribution to the growing tension. 'South? That is mad
ness . . .'

'You're not invited into this debate,' Grayson told him roughly. He turned back to Beaumont. 'We'd be heading straight for the edge of the icefield, straight for Iceberg Alley. I suppose when we get there we make the sleds seaworthy and float 'em ail the way down to Cape Farewell?'

'Stop busting a gut,' Beaumont rapped back. 'We'll be going aboard the icebreaker
Elroy.
She's already coming hell for leather up Iceberg Alley - I fixed that with Dawes
in Washington in case something like this happened.'

Grayson was astounded. 'And you really think we have a snowflake's chance in hell of rendezvousing with her?'

'We will rendezvous with her. She's coming up the tenth
meridian and we go down it to meet her. You'll have to
take frequent star-fixes to check our position.' The decision
taken, Beaumont started forming up his own dog team, but
Grayson hadn't finished yet.

'You make it sound like we'll be going down the New Jersey Turnpike. The star-fixes may not be accurate - you
know that. It would be one pinpoint trying to find another
pinpoint . . .'

'With the aid of a little science.' Beaumont pointed to his
sled. 'Don't forget we have the Elliott homing beacon.
When we get within range of where the
Elroy
should be
we'll send them a signal on the Redifon set. They'll send up
the helicopter they have on board and it will home in on our beacon.'

'I don't like it.' Grayson looked at Langer who had
listened to the argument in silence. 'Do you like it?'

'Look, Sam . . .' Beaumont's voice hardened. 'That's the
way it's going to be. We did the same thing once before
when we made rendezvous with the
Edisto
near Spits
bergen.'

Grayson exploded. 'We were heading for land then! This time we'll be heading for the edge of the icefield - beyond
that there's nothing but Iceberg Alley, the ocean .. .'

'Sam,' Langer intervened, 'before Keith started talking what was the last thing you'd have expected him to do?'

'Head south . . .'

'So that's the last thing Papanin will expect us to do.'

Gorov, who had been clasping and unclasping his gloved hands, burst out suddenly. 'I do not think we should do this
very crazy thing.'