Whiteout! Read online

  Chapter 1

  It was cold, but at Thule they know how to handle cold, as they also know how to put the fear of God into newcomers. When the doors of the Galaxy freighter opened and the Arctic wind drove out in seconds the accumulated warmth of hours, they allowed that extra minute or so of delay before I could leave the plane. My teeth were already giving one or two preliminary and percussive chatters by the time I'd reached the foot of the aircraft stair, descending into a whipping crosswind that flicked ice particles stingingly against my face. By the stark airfield lights bulldozers were scraping at the runway.

  At the foot of the stair, a sergeant stood with his back to the wind. His green parka hood was up, with the fur rim drawn tight so that he looked at me through an aperture no more than four inches wide.

  'Mr Bowes, sir?'

  'Yes.' I was facing him and one opens one's mouth to speak. I closed it quickly as the wind picked at a tooth filling.

  'Weasel's right here, sir,' the sergeant said. Twenty yards away a small tracked vehicle painted in day-glow orange sat with its diesel snarling and steam scudding from its exhaust. I ran across and slid inside gratefully, slamming the door. The cold slid in with me, but the roaring heater battled and won and soon it was like an oven inside. I opened my coat and took off my gloves.

  'Sir.' The driver, also parka-clad, turned to look at me. 'Sir, don't take off those gloves.'

  I was more than willing to learn. First I put the gloves on, then I asked why.

  He grinned. 'People forget, is all. No gloves, you get out, you grab the door handle, you leave half your hand right there on the metal.'

  'Bad as that?'

  'It's okay. Watch regulations, y'know, and it's okay. Just don't get careless. You from England, sir?'

  'Yes.'

  'Know Bentwaters base in Suffolk?'

  'You were stationed there?'

  'Sure was. Two years. That was great, I tell you. Two years in Suffolk, then wham, you're here.'

  'Been here long?'

  'Six months. Furlough next week.'

  The door opened. The sergeant climbed in rapidly, but the cold was faster. In the time it took him to open the door and close it, the temperature must have dropped thirty degrees. I shivered. The heater roared on.

  'Move it,' the sergeant ordered, and the Weasel clattered forward. Side and rear windows were opaque with snow crust, but through the windscreen I could see the dark bulk of a big hangar. As we came close, the driver hooted three times, a door rolled up and we passed into the bright interior.

  'Office is right over there, Mr Bowes. We'll get your bag.'

  I thanked him, climbed out and walked across the concrete floor towards the glass-windowed cabins in the corner. What happened next would depend on the weather. My TK4 Hovercraft, now sitting snugly in the belly of the Galaxy, would have to be taken a hundred or more miles up on to the Greenland icecap. If the weather was anything less than severe, the idea was that I should drive it at least part of the way. In good conditions, and with luck, it would be no more than a three-hour trip and could be made with relative confidence, because the TK4 had already completed some snow and ice trials in Canada effectively and impressively. It was sturdy and reliable and could possibly prove very useful to the American engineers conducting their complex Polar research and development programme up here. If they bought the TK4, they'd buy three of them, which was an important order for the smallish company I work for." But they weren't sure yet; they wanted more trials, this time at altitude and in situ. It's one thing to watch the machine skating across smooth snowfields and another to try to operate it in eighty degrees of frost and hurricane winds; for a lot of the winter those are prevailing conditions seven thousand feet up on the icecap.

  I opened the door and went in, and a man sitting in an easy chair reading Time magazine, glanced up, then rose. He was wearing khaki indoors and there were two silver bars on his collar. He held out his hand. 'You're Mr Bowes?'

  ‘I am.'

  'Captain Fraser. How'd you like some hot coffee?'

  'I'd like it.'

  'Coming right up.' He opened a big vacuum flask and poured, then handed me the steaming cup. 'No problems?'

  I sipped. 'Not yet. It's early days, though, isn't it?'

  'Sure is. Getting up here's the easy stage. They'll tow the Galaxy right in here in just a minute, then you can unload.'

  I nodded. 'What's the programme?'

  He grinned. I was to learn that a grin was a curious commonplace up here; an unconscious and almost universal weapon in the battle to preserve psychological balance in a hostile environment. The words came through the grin. 'We had two rough weeks. Rougher still on the cap and it looks like it's, ah .., continuing uncooperative.'

  'Forecast's bad, then?'

  'Forecasts!' he said dismissively. 'Yeah, well, we wait and hope.' Then, visibly, he checked himself, and when he went on his tone was altogether more formal, as though there were a refuge in military crispness. 'This climate breaks all the rules, Mr Bowes. Forecasts aren't reliable. Okay here at Thule, maybe, but up there on the cap prognostications won't hold.'

  'So?'

  'They've been four days out of radio communication. Before that ten days. One radio schedule in two weeks and no planes in or out. Your chances of piloting up there aren't too good right now. Provisionally we figured to send your hovercraft up on the Swing -’

  I interrupted. 'Swing?'

  'Jargon. The snow train. You know about it?'

  'I've heard something.'

  'Basically it consists of big tractors hauling box cars. The box cars have runners instead of wheels. It just keeps going, day and night, till it gets up there. Kind of a train on sleds. We'll load the hovercraft on a wanigan.'

  I grinned this time. 'Wanigan?'

  'Box car. You'll get used to the Newspeak. The trip up there on the Swing can take from four days to maybe four weeks, but it sure gets there.'

  'And me?'

  'Ride the Swing, too, huh?'

  'For four weeks? What's the alternative?'

  'Wait for a weather slot and fly.'

  I said, 'I think I'll do that.'

  When the Galaxy was in the hangar, I brought the TK4 down the ramps under its own power.

  Then it was back into the Weasel.

  Camp Hundred, the research and development base on the icecap, had its own supply camp twenty miles away from the giant US Air Force field at Thule, and it was there I was heading. By now it was snowing again, not heavily but not gently, either. In the Weasel's bright headlights, the snowflakes blew across horizontally and the driver had to sit forward in his seat and concentrate hard as the road wound between high snowbanks. Inside the Weasel the temperature was uncomfortably high, fed by that noisy fan that discouraged conversation and almost drowned, too, the sound of radio traffic that emerged continuously from the little set above the driver's head. He'd explained the system to me earlier: the Weasel was safe and reliable, but. ., but if it broke down, he hollered for help and help came. There was a little stove to provide heat if the engine didn't. It sounded easy and simple; everything had been thought out; there was a system and the system worked. But sitting there in the roaring dark it was all too easy to think about breakdowns in twenty miles of icy emptiness, long miles of snow driven by freezing winds that would turn the warm security of the Weasel into a deep freeze cabinet in a matter of minutes.

  But I was excited, in a small boy kind of way, with a tune running unwanted through my head the way tunes sometimes do: From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand. . .

  After about an hour, the diesel's roar diminished suddenly and the view ahead changed. We were turning to a halt, and a big wooden hut, painted orange like the Weasel, showed through the snowblow. The driver said ove
r his shoulder, 'Don't knock, sir. Walk right in. I'll get your bag.'

  I found myself pausing to glance at my glove before touching the door handle, and reflecting that one lesson had been learned.

  Camp Belvoir is named after the Corps of Engineers' headquarters in faraway, peaceful Virginia, and there they kitted me out: long woollen underwear like my grandfather's, khaki battledress over it, a thick parka lined with wolverine fur, wind-proof trousers, a khaki, fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, silk gloves with woollen felt overmitts, and big heavy boots of thick white felt.

  I looked at the boots, puzzled. 'Surely these aren't waterproof?'

  The stores sergeant cocked an eye at me. 'You reckon on rain?'

  'The snow will saturate them, surely?'

  'Trick is,' he said, 'keep 'em real dry, like Sunday in Missouri. Listen, you're outside, cold don't get through that felt. Your feet are warm, and the heat can't get out. Felt keeps heat and cold apart. Snow's cold, so it don't melt; feet's warm, so they don't freeze. Right? Just you be sure of one thing: you come indoors, you kick every last snowflake offa that felt, and put them boots by to warm and dry.' I nodded. 'I see.'

  'Sure you do. I'm still gonna tell you. You come in and don't kick the snow off; the snow melts, right? Just a little, but it's plenty. The boots ain't wet, they're just kinda damp. Then you go outside and the goddam damp freezes and the cold goes straight through, right? Freeze your goddam feet off in ten minutes. Before you know it you're walking on two stumps, okay?'

  'I'll remember.'

  He grinned. 'Now you'll remember.'

  Major Cohen, commander of Belvoir, said, 'That's not enough. Pile up your tray.'

  I wasn't particularly hungry and said so.

  'Pile it up,' he said. 'You need the calories.' There were two big steaks on his own tray, two vast jacket potatoes, assorted vegetables, rolls and butter, about half a pint of ice-cream and a big glass of milk.

  I glanced back along the line. Service was cafeteria style in the mess hall at Camp Belvoir and all the plastic trays were loaded with food. I took another potato, a small one, and Cohen placed a glass of milk on my tray.

  'You eat well,' I said.

  'Five thousand calories a day,' Cohen said. "And we need it. Just being here burns food. Up on the cap they eat close to seven thousand.'

  'And get fat?'

  'Hell, no. You know what Uncle Whiskers thinks about fat soldiers. They need the food. Up there three thousand calories would be a slimming diet. Think they'd haul it up there if they didn't have to?'

  He led the way to a corner table and sat down. 'You met the Bear yet?'

  'The Bear?'

  'You haven't, huh ? Well, he'll be along.' He cut into a steak. I followed his example. It was very good steak and I said so.

  'Once upon a time,' Cohen said, 'I was attached to your people, the British. Not long, but long enough.'

  'The army?'

  'Sure. Maybe I should have tried for the Wrens, but I wasn't as cute, then.' He grinned. 'Korea, it was. I was only a kid, you understand. But this I remember: they ate their bully beef off the regimental silver. Now us, we're barbarians, right? We eat off plastic trays, but we eat steak.'

  I said, 'Who or what is the Bear?'

  'The Polar Bear.'

  'Go on.'

  'Major Barnet M. Smales, US Army Corps of Engineers, Commander of Camp Hundred. The Polar Bear.'

  'He's here? At Belvoir?' I was surprised.

  'Sure he's here. Been here two weeks and three days. Flew down for some welfare supplies and couldn't get back.'

  'I'll look forward - '

  He interrupted me. 'Wish he'd get his goddam ass the hell back up there while I've still got some kind of an installation around here.' He was staring at his food, talking loudly. Footsteps scuffed behind me and I half turned as Cohen added, 'He's nothing but a goddam highwayman. If it's loose, he steals it.'

  The man with the white beard stared at Cohen, and at me for that matter, with what looked like malevolence. He joined us at the table and sipped at a steaming mug of coffee. 'You told this guy I was a goddam polar bear?' he asked Cohen.

  'Yeah.'

  'He's right. Shake a paw.' Smales extended a hand towards me and I shook it. 'Now lemme see, you're . . .'

  'Bowes,' I said. 'Harry Bowes, from Thomson-Keegan.'

  He nodded. 'What a dump, huh? Even the chow's lousy. Wait'll you get to Hundred. Can't you even feed your guests, Cohen?'

  Cohen said, 'Seventeen days we fed the Bear. We're running clear out of seals.'

  'Out of ping-pong balls too,' Smales said. 'Two dozen girls, you'd expect a problem, but two dozen ping-pong balls!'

  Cohen sighed theatrically. 'It's kleptomania,' he said to me, touching his index finger to his temple. 'Know what he did last night?'

  Tell me.'

  'He walks into the sergeants' club. They're shooting pool in there. Middle of a game, right ? So he lifts the twelve ball right off the table. Now why was that?' '

  'Because,' Smales said, 'we're a twelve ball short at Hundred.'

  'So one of the sergeants, he says, "Sir," he says, and you'll see here at Belvoir we observe the proprieties, "Sir," he says, "without that twelve ball, the whole pack's useless, right?" So what does the Bear say ? I'll tell you what he says. He says, "Okay, I'll take the rest." So now he's got two packs and he's still one goddam twelve ball short.'

  'Strategic reserves,' Smales said.

  'He didn't even let them finish the game. Why didn't you let them finish, Barney?'

  Smales said, 'I might have forgotten.'

  Cohen spread his hands in appeal to me. 'You see. Don't stay more than two weeks in this guy's hands. What he's got, it's contagious. They come down here like plagues of locusts. Can't keep their hands off nothing. He stole my skis last time here.'

  'Borrowed his skis,' Smales corrected amiably.

  'Like Stalin borrowed Czechoslovakia.'

  It went on like that and I listened as they batted insults back and forth like the ping-pong balls Smales kept demanding. It dawned on me after a while that it wasn't just banter; Smales was intent upon removing to Camp Hundred any trifling thing that could conceivably make life easier.

  After a while I asked how long it might be before we reached Camp Hundred. Major Smales pointed out that Cohen's guests couldn't wait to leave his lousy hotel, then he said he didn't know. Something in his eyes suddenly told me he wasn't far from anger and I wondered why. Smales finished his coffee, rose and left us, and I said to Cohen, 'Something's wrong?'

  He frowned. 'Barney's worried about morale.'

  'You mean the place can't live without him?'

  Cohen shook his head. 'It's not his absence that matters. It's what's up there.'

  'And what's that?'

  'Six dead men. No, make it seven.'

  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.