Target 5 (34 page)

'Standard procedure when Ivan is in a bad temper. You
know what's going to happen if you're up there when I slam
into the pack? It's suicide.'

Beaumont looked round the deck where seamen were
continuing to heave ice overboard. Heads turned away
when he caught their gaze, one man spat on the deck and then hurriedly resumed work as Schmidt glared at him.
'Suicide?' Beaumont repeated. 'Then everyone here will be
happy.'

Three hours' sleep had revived Beaumont, but he was
hardly his normal energetic self as he mounted the ice-
coated ladder, swaddled in clothing, the leather chest-strap
clamped round his body, the second snap-clip strap for
fastening round the mast dangling, the telephone headset in
position under his fur hood. Below him on the deck a subtle
change had come over the seamen who ten minutes earlier had been so hostile. They paused in their work, staring up
with some awe at the huge Englishman climbing the deadly
ladder. Beaumont had noted the change when he came on
deck the second time, had ignored it. To hell with them.

Twenty feet above the deck he stopped to smash his boot
down hard to break the ice. His boot slipped, his gloved
hand tightened on a rung, and the ice he had hammered was
intact. He was mounting a ladder of pure ice. As he went
on up he felt the sub-zero temperature penetrating his
gloves, seeping through the mittens inside them, rasping
at the raw skin of his fingers. He felt the bitter night air freezing his face, prickling his eyelids, catching his throat.
His eyes watered, his vision blurred. He went higher and
the sensation of relentless cold began to blot out everything
else - the throb of the waiting engines, the searchlight
Schmidt had projected over the bows, the endless icefield
planing away to the south.

He was forty feet up when the snap-clip dangling from his
chest-strap hooked on to one of the rungs; he went on up,
not realizing what had happened. He had one foot on a
lower rung, the other reaching for a higher perch, when his
body jerked taut in mid-air. It caught him off-balance and
he lost his equilibrium. The foot in mid-air thrashed about in space and the boot lower down, poised on a rung of ice,
had to take all his weight, the shock of the sudden halt. Then
the lower boot slipped off the rung. He dropped.

Suspended forty feet above the ice-coated deck by only his
hand-holds, gloves clawing at slippery ice, he fought to re
gain control, his boots swinging in air as he tried to find rungs he couldn't see. He felt his hand-holds losing their grip, slithering round the icy rungs, then one foot found a
rung, took some of the weight, and within seconds he had
his other foot back on the ladder. As he paused for breath
he had a glimpse downwards of the deck, of tiny faces
staring up at him. He waited for his heartbeats to slow down
to something nearer normal, then he resumed his ascent.

The crosstree was a right royal bastard. The steel ladder
ended just below it, so he presumed it must have led straight
up through a trap into the observation cabin where Carlson had died. He now had to climb beyond that, climb up over
the crosstree before he could straddle on it and attach the
chest-strap to the mast above it. And he was now eighty feet
above the deck. Before he attempted this tricky manoeuvre
he reached up with one hand to test the canvas padding wrapped round the crosstree. He found that it revolved,
gave no safe purchase at all.

It took him ten agonizing minutes to get up over the
crosstree, to get seated on the unstable canvas sleeve with the mast between his groin, to get the second strap looped and fastened round the mast, to attach the telephone terminals into the box already fixed to the mast. Only then did it occur to him that under his clothes his body was covered
with sweat, that sweat was running down his face. He
fumbled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and used it to wipe his face. Beads of ice came away from his forehead.
Before communicating with the bridge he looked around
and the
view was spectacular.

He pulled back the side of his hood to listen. No, he hadn't
imagined it: weird gibbering and squeaking echoes were
coming across the ice, then a low rumble like a volcanic up
heaval. Half a mile away he saw the turbulence starting -
half
a
mile ahead of the
Elroy.
Walls which seemed no
larger than ripples from that height and distance began to
heave up, to creep over the plain of ice, moving away from
the
Elroy
, moving south. As he watched a ribbon of dark water appeared, spreading away from the icebreaker. The night was full of the sound of ice cracking, ice shattering
against itself. And the lead went on expanding, creeping
towards a distant belt of darkness which was the ocean. The
Elroy
had to break through to that lead.

Twisting round, held to the mast by the chest-strap, he looked beyond the stern. A half-mile of open channel lay behind the vessel, and at the end of that channel, a long way down, lay the ruins of the Soviet helicopter Beaumont had flown to the ship. He had deliberately landed the machine under the bows of the
Elroy
and later Schmidt had completed the job, reversing his vessel a short distance and
then ramming into the ice, into the machine perched at the brink. When he withdrew the steel bows dragged the remnant with it, dropped it into the sea. But it wasn't the end of the
channel Beaumont was staring at now; appalled, he was looking at something well beyond it.

Carried forward by a rising breeze from the north, a
black pall was creeping towards the ship, a pall quite different from the fog which had blanketed Target-5, a
black curtain hundreds of feet high, a curtain which glit
tered ominously in the moonlight. A bank of black frost was
drifting towards the ship, the most dreaded phenomenon in
the Arctic. What Beaumont was staring at was a bank of
frozen fog, a rare weather condition so insidious that it can
cause frostbite requiring instant amputation if it settles on a
man. If it caught him at the masthead he could be dead
within seconds. And it was already invading the pressure ridge zone. He spoke quickly into the mike dangling from
his chin.

'Schmidt! Reverse her!'

He clung to the canvas-padded mast as the engine throbs
increased in power, then the vessel was moving back, sliding
through the dark water behind its stern. The immediate
effect at the masthead was more gentle than Beaumont had
feared; no more than a slight sway as the icefield drifted past
below and dark water appeared on both sides, a dark stain
against the pallor of the pack. Then the vessel slowed,
stopped. Knowing what was coming Beaumont felt his
stomach muscles tighten. It took a conscious effort of will to
start the process, to give the order into the mike.

'Half speed! Forward!'

'OK, Beaumont, here we go! Hold on tight.'

Beaumont hugged the mast, his head to one side, pre
pared to take the impact. The power increased, quivered up
the mast, the vessel moved forward. The icefield slid past in
the opposite direction far below, the water stain narrowed,
and Beaumont watched the narrowing stain - because when
the stain vanished the icebreaker would hit, ship against ice,
steel against the barrier, a moving force against an im
movable force. The stain narrowed, faded to a ruler-line, vanished. The ship went on, moving faster . . . Grkkk! The steel bows struck. The impact shuddered the entire vessel,
raced up the mast, and the mast shuddered, whipped,
vibrated to a maximum at its tip. It hit Beaumont like a
hammerblow as he clung desperately to the mast, his body
pressed into the canvas. Then the vibration slowed, stopped.
The icebreaker was stationary, locked into the ice.

Beaumont relaxed his grip, stared ahead. A dark crack
extended beyond the bows, but no more than a few feet. He
looked either side of the crack, searching for a more
promising fissure, found nothing. The ice was intact. His concentration was so great that it took him a few moments
to realize that Schmidt was talking to him. He took a
firmer grip on the masthead, saw half a mile away that the lead was still growing wider, then he heard Schmidt again
and there was a hint of anxiety in the firm voice.

'Beaumont, are you receiving me? Beaumont. . .'

'I'm OK. We didn't do much this time. Same again is the
answer - and hit the ice in exactly the same place if you
can.'

'Reverse?'

'Take her back, Schmidt.'

The engine power built up, the screw thrashed the dark
water at the stern, and from his great height Beaumont
could sense the icebreaker fighting to tear herself free.
Hurling her great bulk against the ice the
Elroy
had trapped
herself; the ice had parted, let the bows bite into it, then
closed round them like a massive vice. The throbbing built up a second time, built up greater power, and when Beaumont was certain Schmidt had failed again the ship sud
denly wrenched herself loose. The sound of rending ice
came up to him above the engine throbs, then the
Elroy
slid
backwards, leaving a dark smear on the port side where the
remnants of her paint stained the damaged ice. As
the vessel
went back Beaumont looked back. The black frost curtain
was advancing over the belt of smooth' ice, coming closer to
the ship. He waited until the ship stopped again.

'Half speed! Forward!'

Schmidt had taken the ship further back down the channel this time, so when the bows met the ice they would be
moving faster. Beaumont braced himself. Eyes half-shut,
staring down, he watched the narrowing stain of water, not
knowing that Grayson and Langer were on deck, gripping a
rail, staring up in horror. The gap closed, the ice was under
the bows, the impact was far greater. The tremor shot up the
mast and Beaumont was in trouble, shaking like a leaf with the mast's brutal vibration. He had his eyes still half-open
and the vast icescape shuddered horribly, shuddered as
though in the grip of an earthquake. Then the ship was still.

Thirty minutes it went on at half speed, thirty bruising, battering minutes. Beaumont changed the angle of attack,
used the
Elroy
as his own personal battering ram, hammer
ing into the icefield, and slowly something began to happen.
The ice began to fracture, to show a pattern of dark zig-
zags. And something else was happening, not so slowly. Beaumont was methodically being reduced to a state where
he hardly realized what he was doing. His face was horribly
sore and bruised, sore with the aching cold, bruised with
pressing it into the canvas at the moment of impact. And now the black frost had almost reached him - they had to break out quickly before it killed him.

'Reverse, Schmidt,' he croaked. 'Take her back to the
end of the channel this time.'

They went back. They went too far back. A finger of
black frost was creeping out over the point where the sub
marine killer had gone down. The finger curled out to the masthead and Grayson, seeing what was happening, bel
lowed up to the bridge in a way passengers don't normally address ships' captains. 'You stupid idiot - get her moving!
Beaumont's in the frost!'