Dead Ice

TEN

Maddock kept the others in sight.

Leopov had been on her feet the moment the main party had set off, but he’d made her rest a few extra minutes. They wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, they both knew it, so better to conserve their strength than burn it.

“Don’t worry. They’ll have things set up for us when we get there. Think of it as one of the perks of the job.”

Scorn marred her lovely face. “Right. That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that you’re making sure that I don’t get under your feet.”

He shrugged, smiled, though he doubted that she would be able to see the motion beneath the great fur-lined hood he wore. “Stick with me, kid. Orders are orders, right?”

She paused for a moment, then answered with a single nod. Her head moved more than the hood of the coat that swamped her.

So he was right. She’d been ordered to observe him, not just the operation.

He wasn’t sure if that changed things. But, if he was going to be the object of her affection he’d just have to figure out a way to work with it.

Trailing behind while others carried the heaviest of the packs gave him to time to think, but short of tying her up he was not sure what he could do.

The others were in danger of moving out of sight. Maddock knew Bones would be well aware of their progress and doing his best to match it. If they became completely detached one of them would wait until they made visual contact. If Leopov was so determined to stay with them she either had to prove that she could do it, or determine once and for all she couldn’t. He extended his stride and gradually increased the cadence of his walk. She tried to keep up, but the strain soon began to show.

“Fast, Lieutenant,” he said. “Lives depend on it.”

She made no reply. He could hear her labored breathing. She was stubborn, but tiring fast and each stride became increasingly harder than the one before.

Her legs buckled more than once. This time he didn’t offer a hand to help her up. He maintained his pace, forcing her to keep on moving until she was almost breaking into a run just to try and match him.

“Is this how it’s going to be then?” she asked, words coming out two or three at a time between freezing breaths. The mist punctuated each little parcel of words like commas in the air between them. “Get to the submarine before the Russians or die in the attempt?”

“That’s exactly how it always has been,” he said. “It’s pretty much par for the course for us.”

He was already three paces ahead of her. He wouldn’t look back as long as he could still hear her labored breathing and the crunch of her footsteps. He knew she was with him. Maddock fought against the searing ache in his joints and the burning in his chest as the frigid air bit and clawed all the way down into his lungs, dragging down the warm inside of his throat to coat it with more and more frost with every breath. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind he was being just as unreasonable and stubborn as Leopov, but he wasn’t about to ease up. They had an objective. This was easy going compared with what lay ahead. He needed to test himself. He needed to be sure he was up to it every bit as much as the girl.

When the first sight of a tent came into a view, the green nylon stark against the white of the ice and snow, he was the one who felt the first stirrings of relief. He used it to spur himself on, again increasing the cadence in his stride, pushing himself to a punishing rhythm.

He’d been lost in thought for too long, concentrating on the whiteness in front of him and the back of the man he could make out in the distance. He thought it was Bones, but it was impossible to tell and the landscape offered no visual indicators as to just how large — or small — the figure was. Following the man in front had meant that the sound of Leopov following him had been replaced by the sound of his own heart beat pounding in his ears, and the rasp of every ragged breath he took.

He tried to listen for her. Nothing.

He glanced back to see just how far she was behind him.

Almost a hundred yards and trailing hard. He saw her stumble, then stagger back to her feet only to stumble and fall again, still making progress, but if she wasn’t coping with the relatively flat terrain there was no way she’d handle the challenge of the mountains. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to cope, never mind her.

When he reached the tent and bundles of bivouacs still lying beside it, he sank to his knees, grateful finally to have stopped moving.

He couldn’t feel his fingers.

Bones clapped him on the shoulder then walked past him to help bring the girl into camp. The fall into the icy water had clearly taken far more out of him than he realized. How much more did he have to give?