Whiteout!

Chapter 2

I drove back to Thule Air Base next morning in a sober mood. Cohen had told me the details. Having told me, he'd said, 'Look, forget it,' but I couldn't forget; I'd thought about it most of the night, sleeping intermittently and badly. No wonder Smales was concerned about morale. Until two weeks before, Camp Hundred had had a perfect safety record, apart from the odd bumps and bruises; there hadn't even been a bad case of frostbite in the three years the camp had been in existence. Now there had been two separate tragedies. The first, and worst, had been a helicopter crash, and nobody knew how it had happened. It seemed that four men, one of them an army padre, had been taken out of the underground camp to a helicopter and had climbed aboard. The vehicle that had carried them had about-turned and gone back. It had stopped at the tunnel entrance to watch the lift-off and then gone below. Next morning a bulldozer had gone to clear the overnight snow from the entrance and the driver had spotted the wreckage. Pilot, radio operator, padre and the three soldiers were dead. What made it worse was that two of the men had apparently survived the crash; they'd been badly injured, but alive and must have tried to crawl back to Hundred. They had frozen to death. Now there were six bodies lying in a snow tunnel up in the icecap. What was almost worse was that they'd been there two weeks: a ghastly daily reminder to every man in the place that death was very close at hand. If it had been possible to fly them out quickly, the tragedy would gradually have receded, but the weather had prevented any flying to or from Hundred.

'Couldn't you,' I'd asked Cohen, 'have brought them out on the Swing?'

He'd shaken his head: 'Camp Hundred's big and the bodies are sealed off in a tunnel. It's an uncomfortable situation, but it's stable. They look at the closed door and think what's behind it, sure they do. But think of that Swing. Only thirty guys, and one of the wanigans is a hearse. No, brother, you couldn't risk the damage to morale.'

It was a shuddery thought that the aircraft that flew up to Camp Hundred carrying Smales and me would be an empty hearse, on its way to collect the bodies.

No less unnerving was the second tragedy, which had happened the day after the helo crash. A man had got lost in a snowstorm and vanished. He'd apparently been on his way back to the camp from a surface hut only three hundred yards away, when a sudden snowstorm had come down. 'Christ knows why!'

Cohen had said angrily. 'There was a guidance line for the guy to move along. You get caught in a bad phase, you clip your belt to the guide line and keep going. That's regulations. I've done it; everybody's done it. But. ..'

But...There was always a but. But meant the weather, or the ice, the wind, or the cold, any of the eternal omnipresent hazards, the dangers that never relented when man was busy surviving in an environment of total hostility. There was so much joking, but only on the surface; below, never forgotten, was the knowledge that only technology and determination, only complete obedience to a carefully charted system of precautions, made life possible at all. For two weeks now Camp Hundred had been cut off, even from radio communication; for two weeks the bodies had been lying there; for two weeks the feelings of claustrophobia and loneliness must have been growing. Daylight was down to less than five hours out of twenty-four and shortening fast. The sense of adventure I had felt the night before had begun to evaporate already.

But next morning the run down to the big Thule base was quick and easy. In the hangar, I checked the TK4 and made sure all the spares were loaded. Then I climbed aboard and started the engines. No problems; she'd stood the trip well. I stopped the engines and went across to Fraser's office. Fraser, for the moment, wasn't there. I helped myself to coffee and sat looking at his copy of Time for a while, then the door opened and Fraser and another man came in.

'Hi,' Fraser said. 'Got me another visitor here. Mr Bowes, meet George Kelleher.' I stood up and shook hands. Kelleher was a big, loosely-built man with a slightly mournful expression. 'Mr Bowes,' Fraser went on, 'drives the hovercraft over there. Mr Kelleher's a nuclear engineer.'

Kelleher said, 'You taking that machine to Hundred?'

'That's the idea.'

He looked doubtful. 'Those things stable in lateral winds?'

'Up to a point.'

Fraser said, 'We've got a tractor and a wanigan standing by. And the mobile crane.'

'If I can,' I said, 'I'd like to run it up to Camp Belvoir myself. If the forecast is - '

'I warned you about forecasts,' Fraser said.

'All the same.'

'Yeah. Well, it's your neck, pal. I just checked it out and you should be okay. Prognostication Phase One for the next three hours, if you want to believe it. That's wind speeds up to thirty-four miles an hour. Shouldn't be that strong, but...'

'Direction?'

'Off the cap. Near enough due east.'

'Headwinds, then,' I said. 'Perfect.'

Fraser turned to Kelleher. 'Seems you've got a choice. There's the Weasel, or you can ride with Mr Bowes.'

Kelleher pointed to the TK4. 'What's it smell of?'

'Paint, mainly,' I said. 'A little oil.'

'You sure?'

'More or less.'

'I'll come with you. These BO machines they got up here make me sick to my stomach. These guys do a six-month stretch up here. They got everything. They got Scotch and they got candy bars, movies, you name it. But they never heard of soap.'

I nosed the TK4 out carefully, following the Weasel round the perimeter to the cut-off track for Camp Belvoir . It was full daylight now, and just for a moment a little beam of sunlight pierced the grey overcast. On the runway a flight of Phantoms suddenly hurled themselves forward then vertically up; black smoke-rings blasted from their after-burners to hang for a second or two until the vortex of following turbulence wiped them away.

The Weasel led me gently away from the base, on to the road to Belvoir, then accelerated up to about thirty-five miles an hour. I let him go for a while before I increased revolutions on the TK4's little twin turbo props. This kind of run, in these conditions, wasn't much different from theCanadatrials. But I was very conscious that this wasn'tCanada, that theGreenlandweather is just about the most capricious and punishing in the world and that, from now on, I would have to operate at ever-greater altitudes and in ever-worsening conditions. When Kelleher had asked me about stability in lateral winds, he'd put his finger on the whole point of the TK4. A hovercraft skims over a surface with hardly any friction. That's their great advantage, but it's also their weakness. Without friction, naturally there's no grip, so a sudden sideways blow can bang you badly off course. If you're running over big areas of water or snow, that may not matter much; it's a bit different if you're suddenly going to be smashed into a wall of rock or over a precipice.

The problem can never be wholly solved. But Thomson-Keegan, my outfit, had built various ideas into the TK4 to increase stability, and it was our belief - borne out, so far, by experience - that in Arctic conditions for which they were designed, our modifications worked. There were three principal ones. The first was a small pair of steering skis. They were retractable because they wouldn't be in permanent use, but when they were lowered, there was another twenty per cent of steering control. What you lost was efficiency; you got less propulsion out of a given power output, and you could no longer ride over large bumps. But on reasonably smooth snowfields, they worked well. The second modification was a steel plate, also retractable, at the tail of the TK.4. It worked like a sailboat's keel, slicing about a foot into the snow surface. It had a similar effect to that of the skis, in effect holding the machine to its course longer, and giving more time for any necessary corrective manoeuvring. The third Thomson-Keegan gimmick was in the engine mountings, which could be swivelled to redirect the propeller wash and enable the pilot to counter wind thrust. None of the mods was particularly original; the point was that they'd been made to work without throwing the whole machine off balance. The US Army was interested, but that's all. My job was to turn interest into a conviction that the TK4 would be a valuable Arctic tool. In other words, I was a salesman, too, on this trip. So, on the trail away from Thule , I was very cautious with the rudders as we slid smoothly along in the wake of the Weasel. I felt at the wind, tested skis and tail plate, and generally motored as cautiously as a maiden aunt worried about the sip of sherry she'd had.

The track, mercifully, was easy to follow, pretty straight and with flags on bamboo poles atop the snowbanks. But a hovercraft is never really at home on any kind of road; there's too long a gap between decision and effect, and when you want to slow or turn, you'd better be certain there's plenty of room. All the same, the wind was steady and without gusts, and after a while I relaxed a bit and moved her along faster, keeping the Weasel just in sight.

'Smooth, I'll say that,' Kelleher said beside me. There was a little sigh which may have been relief.

'Don't worry, I'll get you there.'

He laughed. 'Not too sure I want to go.'

'Spent much time at Hundred?'

'Enough. I was there when we put the reactor in. My outfit built it and it's still my baby. Any little problems, me for the deep freeze.'

I asked, a little self-consciously, 'What's it like up there?'

He hesitated. 'Hundred's got a kinda feel you can't put in a sentence. I try to tell my wife. Naturally she reckons it's some kind of pleasure centre. You know. Las Vegas on ice, booze and Eskimo broads.'

'But.'

'Oh, you'll sense it. Look at it this way ... Ice is plastic. It moves and it distorts. The place can't last above a few years. But nobody knows how temporary is temporary. You're up there on top of seven thousand feet of ice, right? Surveys say it's solid. There's indices of compaction, stability studies, graphs, measurements, but who in hell knows what's going on down below? Hundred did a two-foot sideways skip last year. Not much, right ?

But maybe it opened up something, somewhere, I dunno.You worried?'

'Interested.'

'Me, I'd" be worried.' The brief seriousness was submerged and the necessary patina of humour returned. 'I'd be worried about my dough, is what I'd be worried about. They got bridge players, poker players, pool players up there, those guys'll hustle you clean out of your long Johns. Got any money?'

'A little.'

'Leave it at Belvoir. Take nothing. No cheques, no cash, no credit cards, no gold watches, wedding rings, no tooth stoppings even. Travel light.'

'You paint a pretty picture.'

He grinned. 'Like I said, my wife don't believe it, either.'

Thirty-two minutes after leaving Thule , I was creeping the TK4 into Camp Belvoir . The trip had been neat and uneventful. Wind had come up a bit, but not enough, nose-on, to cause any bother, and I was lucky that the hangar doors didn't necessitate any fancy manœuvring. Within twenty minutes she was all tucked up.

I went to the headquarters hut and scrounged hot coffee from Cohen's sergeant clerk. Cohen wasn't there, but he came in a few minutes later. 'Hear you brought the great ship in!'

'She's in your hangar.'

'Yeah. Listen, we got news. Radio contact with Hundred. Wind's dropping up there, snow's stopping too. Looks like we may have a flying slot.'

'When?'

'Soon. Hours - maybe minutes. That's the way it happens, pal.'

Smales strode in, glancing at his watch. 'Looks good!' He saw me and said, 'Better get that buggy of yours loaded.'

'She's refuelled already,' I said. 'Ready for off.'

He shook his head. 'We got a slot, not a big weather break. You fly up with me. The Swing'll bring the hovercraft. If you want to supervise loading, do it now.'

'Right.'

Cohen pressed a button on the telephone on his desk. 'Get me Sergeant Scully.' He waited, looking up at me. 'Scully? Listen, I want a tractor, a flat-top wanigan and a mobile crane over at the hangar right away. Yeah, a forty-five-foot wanigan. Get that hovercraft loaded, it's going up on the Swing.' He hung up and said to me, 'Scully'll have the machinery there in five minutes.'

And in five minutes it was all there, big powerful equipment roaring in the cold air. Both tractor and mobile crane had fifty-six-inch tracks and a lot of muscle was controlled by a good deal of skill. I unwrapped the TK4 and drove her out into the open and on to the lifting pallet, and I'll admit my heart was in my mouth as the crane driver went to work. One slip or misjudgement could do a lot of damage, but the corporal operating the crane levers never let that pallet move more than a couple of degrees out of the horizontal, and he popped the TK4 on to the wanigan with no more apparent effort than you or I would need to put a cigarette packet on a table.

We were still chain-strapping her down when my shoulder was tapped. I turned and Cohen's sergeant clerk put his face close to mine, bellowing to make himself heard over the roar of the diesels.

'Better move, sir. The major says you leave in five minutes.'

I hesitated. I wanted to see the wrappings put back safely. The last padded chain was already being snapped into position. Scully joined us, shouting, but I didn't hear the words.

'What?’ I yelled.

'Leave it to me' he shouted. 'When he says five he don't mean six!'

I looked at him doubtfully and he laughed. 'Be okay,' he shouted. 'It's a promise. Give you a dollar a scratch, right?'

Scully's efficiency had just been well demonstrated and I hadn't much option.

'Thanks,' I yelled, and headed at a run for my room. A couple of minutes later I was in the Weasel again with Kelleher and Smales, and we were tearing back down the Thule track and Smales was looking at me with amusement. I said, 'Well, when you move, you certainly move.'

'That we do, old chap,' he said with a wildly exaggerated English accent. 'That we do.'

'So what now?'

He said, 'We fly from Thule , if the slot's still open.'

'Why Thule ? If time's so precious - '

His face was suddenly grim. 'Fixed wing. You heard about the helo crash?'

I nodded.

'We decided no helos go into Hundred, not till we get an investigation going. We go by Caribou and there's no strip 'at Belvoir, only a helo pad.' His tone lightened. 'You'll feel at home in the Caribou.'

I said, 'Not particularly. It's built by De Havilland ,Canada. Nothing to do with us.'

He glanced down. 'Hey!'

'Yes?'

'You didn't kick the snow off the felts.'

I felt myself flush as I bent to brush the snow crystals away. When I'd finished, I looked at the gleam of moisture on my fingers. 'Will it matter?'

'Not this time,' Smales said. 'You can toast them in the heater in the Caribou. Be dry when you reach Hundred.' He looked at me levelly. 'Just remember,' he said, 'they're your goddam feet!'

The Weasel clattered on to the swept concrete of the enormous runway at Thule . Over in front of the Corps of Engineers' Polar Research and Development hangar, the silver, twin-engined Caribou with the ice-orange wings and tail, was warming up, its tail loading ramp drooping. The Weasel went directly over to it and we got out and climbed the ramp. It was cold as hell in the bare cabin, where one of the crew stood waiting.

'Is that slot still open?' Smales demanded.

'So far, Major.'

Smales looked at his watch. 'Daylight sure won't hold.'

'We've done it before.'

'I know, I know. Okay, let's get the hell out of here.'

'I'll tell him to move his ass,' the crewman said. 'He's only a captain.'

Smales grinned. 'Tell him I said so. I outrank him if you don't.'

'Strap yourself in, sir.'

The seats ran the length of the Caribou's fuselage, leaving a broad space in the middle for cargo. There wasn't any cargo, however, except two wooden boxes which must have contained Smales's loot from two weeks of scrounging at Belvoir.

Whether the captain had been told or not, he moved. The air-frame shuddered a little as the ramp cranked upwards, and almost before it was secured, the plane was moving. The Caribou's a high-wing monoplane with plenty of power and plenty of lift, and I don't suppose it used more than about a tenth of the endless runway before the wheels lifted and we droned off.

Smales nudged me. 'Don't wait for the seat-belt sign. There isn't one. Heater grill's over there.'

I nodded, unstrapped myself and crossed the cabin to dry off the boots. In truth, they weren't very damp and the heater was powerful, almost too powerful. My feet were becoming uncomfortably hot when Smales said, 'Not too much. Sweat wets the inside.' So I returned to my seat, feeling rather helpless. In a set-up like the one they've got up there, you hand yourself over to the machine and move when they want you to move. You don't know anything; you're just anxious to remain safe and avoid being sworn at. An unwanted humility is draped over you like a wet sheet. Smales said, 'Be a great sunset.'

I turned to look out of the window. Beneath us the icecap was climbing sharply up from the coastal strip. Around us were low mountains, coloured and shaded, black, gold and red in the dying light. The endless snow beneath us was variegated like the left-hand bands of the spectrum. Smales said, 'It doesn't last.'

'He's a real romantic guy,' Kelleher said.

'I painted it once,' Smales protested, smiling.

'If he painted it,' Kelleher said, 'he painted it army green or ice-orange. If he paints in oil, it's diesel. To this guy canvas is for windbreaks and charcoal's for fires.'

Twenty minutes after take-off, the light had gone and the landscape had become silver and black, with a dull gleam to it.

Smales walked forward to the cockpit and came back nodding. 'Weather's more or less.'

'More or less?' Kelleher said.

'Snowflakes flying; the wind's up to ten.' Smales glanced at his watch. 'Eighteen minutes, that's all. Just make it hold.'

I said, 'Are you talking to me?'

Smales flicked his glance upwards. 'The man up there. If he made it, he can make it hold.'

'It'll change that suddenly?'

He said harshly, 'It's changing now.' There was tension in every line of him. 'Minute and a half in a Phantom, that's all, but not in a goddam Caribou.'

Kelleher said, 'Yeah,' and lit a cigarette. Two minutes later Smales was walking towards the cockpit again and Kelleher grinned at me. 'My wife's like that,' he said. 'All watches and questions.'

Smales didn't come back this time, and I wondered what must be happening up ahead. I noticed Kelleher, too, kept looking at his watch, and it started me off. Fifteen minutes had gone before Smales returned, scowling. He said, 'Snow's thickening and it's twenty knots across. Increasing.' He sat down and fastened his lap strap.

I said, 'What kind of landing strip is there at Camp Hundred?'

'Snow. Six hundred yards.'

We waited, as the Caribou's nose dipped and the pilot made a turn correction. Nobody spoke as the plane began to glide smoothly down. Glancing out of the window, I saw the flaps move. One wing lifted to the crosswind and was forced down by another rapid correction. Then the power wound down, prior to touchdown. I glanced at Smales. His eyes were closed; he was willing the plane down. There were only seconds to go when the airframe shook to sudden emergency application of maximum power and the Caribou's nose rose abruptly and kept rising. Smales's eyes flicked open angrily and the cabin door opened and the crewman came back, stopped in front of Smales and said simply, 'Runway lights failed, sir.' He was ashen.

'The hell they did!' Smales was already going up forward.

My stomach was knotting itself. We must have been under a hundred feet, throttled well back and dropping, when the lights failed. Luck, or skill, or a combination of both, had kept us from a fatal stall, but the margin must have been minute.

Kelleher, his skin greasy with cold sweat, was staring at the cabin floor. 'What happens now?' I asked. He raised his eyes and looked at me. ' Thule ,' he said. 'Just pray it's Thule .'

'It'll have to be, surely, without lights.'

'You'd think so,' Kelleher said. His voice was odd, rusting a little with straight fear.

'But?'

'But Barney's up there.'

The Caribou had levelled off and was circling, starboard wingtip lifting at intervals to maintain the pattern.

Six minutes had gone since we nearly crashed, and still the Caribou circled. I loosened my seat-strap and turned to look out of the window. There seemed to be nothing down there but the endless, icy waste. Then I saw a light. Correction: two lights -and close together like headlights. There were two more behind. I blinked. They were headlights!

Kelleher said, 'Like I said, that's Barney. What he's doing is he's moving everything with lights up on top. We go down by tractor lights.'

Below us, as I watched, the lights seemed to grow dimmer. Then Smales came back, grim-faced, and strapped himself in without a word. Kelleher didn't say anything either, and the silence was not the kind I felt like breaking. I stared forward, waiting for the nose to tip down. It was over in less than two minutes. The pilot should have come in slowly, an inch over stall speed, hanging in the sky until the skis touched, but he daren't do that; he had to have power to counter the gusting crosswind that kept bucking the Caribou sideways. I could imagine the gritted teeth and the

'Okay, let's go!' up there in the cockpit. We came fairly bucketing in, hit once and bounced hard, hit again one ski only and the starboard wingtip lifted, then another bounce and we were down and running. I suddenly found myself staring straight down a headlight beam that temporarily blinded me, and by the time I'd rubbed some sight back into my eyes, we were slowed right down. A hand slapped my arm. 'Move!' Barney Smales said. The rear ramp was already lowering and the freezing air had flooded in. I rose and followed him to the ramp, down the stairs and into the waiting Polecat. Kelleher followed, slamming the door. He slumped in his seat for a long moment, then summoned a grin. He said, 'Uncle Sam wants ten years of my life and the taxes.'

We waited perhaps two minutes before Smales joined us. He looked angry and Kelleher asked why.

'She's freezing down. Can't wait. Okay, let's go.' As the Polecat moved off I saw the Caribou through the windscreen, already taxiing.

I said,’ Not that fast?'

Smales said, 'She stood a minute and she was sticking. Three and the ski runners would be fast. There's never time. Never any damn time!'

'So she's empty?' Kelleher asked.

'Damn right.'

I understood then. The bodies. The Caribou had to go without taking the bodies and they'd stay at Camp Hundred, radiating depression, until the next weather slot opened. The little Polecat scampered over the snow, moved on to a sudden downslope, and a second or two later had entered a long, brightly-lit tunnel whose snow walls were festooned with pipes and cables. Smales tapped the driver's shoulder. 'My trench.'

When the Polecat stopped, Smales jumped out, and we followed him through an archway into another and smaller tunnel in which stood a big wooden hut decorated with the crest of the Corps of Engineers'

Polar Research and Development group with the word Commander stencilled in orange on the door. Smales opened it and went inside, pausing to kick snow off his boots. A black man with a master sergeant's multitudinous stripes looked up and said quietly, 'Okay, sir?'

Smales nodded. 'Sure. What's new?'

'No problems, sir.'

'You sure of that ?'

'I'm sure.'

'You put that can in the wall?'

'Soon as I heard you were coming, sir, I put the can in.'

'Good.' Smales jerked his head. 'Follow me, gentlemen.'

We trooped after him, back into the main tunnel and then into another side trench. The hut there bore the words 'Officers' Club'. Instead of going directly in, Smales walked towards the tunnel wall. From a hole in the wall, a length of thin orange line hung down. He pulled on the line until a stainless steel bottle came out. Holding it reverently in mittened hands, he walked towards the hut. Kelleher, smiling, opened the door with a flourish and Smales marched in first. We entered a pleasant, comfortable bar and Smales put the bottle carefully on the counter, then went behind it and took three glasses from a shelf and, opening the cap of the bottle, poured an almost watery fluid into the glasses. Then the mittens came off as he handed us the glasses.

He raised his own. 'The welcome you just had, gentlemen, was not in Camp Hundred's best traditions. We aim to start improving that right now. A votre sant é!With the French toast he gave a little Germanic bow and poured half the contents of the glass down his throat.

I wondered what it was, sipped it, and identified a dry Martini. I said, 'My God, it's cold!'

'Among other things,' Smales said, 'we have perfected the art of Martooni here.' He poured the second half after the first. 'There are people in this club "who call it Martini University . Swallow it. You need one well down to appreciate the velvet texture of the second.' He bustled round producing olives and onions, peanuts and pretzels. 'When I retire from this man's army, I'm gonna open a bar and make a million. Make a better Martooni and sure as hell the world will beat a track to your door. Beats the hell out of the mousetrap. Now, gentlemen. Tonight we dine with class. State your requirements. Cookie's got a whole two hours.'

The man's gaiety was remarkable and infectious. He'd walked in here, fresh from an experience that still had my scalp crawling, and had turned on the good cheer, had literally switched it on. But there was nothing spurious about it. He was back in his kingdom and happy about it, and his natural ebullience placed the experience squarely behind him and would doubtless keep it there. He was an intricate man. But I couldn't forget. It was all too recent and the mental scar tissue would stay with me. When I could, when a suitable moment occurred, I was going to ask what exactly had happened, but the moment refused to occur naturally; Kelleher was telling Irish jokes and Smales was telling Jewish jokes Cohen had told him down at Camp Belvoir . Finally I asked him about it as we stood side by side under the showers an hour or so later.

He said, 'Arctic foxes.'

By that time I was mildly befuddled with his treacherous Martinis and thought he was joking. I laughed politely and he said, 'They're not funny.'

'AH right."

He said, 'It happens this way. The foxes follow the Swings up along the trail, living off garbage. The Swing crews bury it, but the foxes dig it up and follow the source of supply. Here we bury our garbage deep, so those old foxes, they're goddam hungry.'

'Hungry enough to eat electric cable?'

'Not the cable, no. But they chew off the insulating material. We got the lights strung both sides of the runway, but one good bite in the right place and you got a dead fox and a lot of darkness !'

'Can't you get rid of them?'

He said, 'It's a sin of omission. Sure, we could put down poison bait, but Jesus, did you ever see an Arctic fox? They're beautiful, believe me. If I could shoot 'em clean, then sure. But poison, no sir.'

'No matter how dangerous ?'

He put on a heavy Southern accent. 'Ah see yo'all is a logician, sir.' Then switched it oft". 'The answer's no to poison.'

That was the moment the lights went out.