Whiteout! Read online

  Even before I got there, I could hear it despite the parka hood. As I came closer, the jet of air battering down at me carried with it the roar of the brutal weather above us. I stopped then and looked upwards, watching the flying white of snow across the open hatch cover twenty feet above my head.

  I raced up the spiral steel stairs. Loose snowflakes were falling fast around me and already the treads were treacherous, each with its inch or so of fresh white snow, indented with a footprint. Somebody was out there !

  At the top I shoved my head and shoulders out through the hatch, and promptly ducked down again as the sheer force of the wind threatened to knock me from the steps. Huddling down, I drew the parka hood tighter until there was no more than a two-inch aperture. Kicking the loose snow from the stair treads, I took a firm grip on the steel handrail before I raised my head again, like a cautious tortoise.

  Peering through the narrow opening of my hood at the hell outside, I saw nothing. Visibility was no more than two or three feet and the hard snow was flung against me by a shrieking, banging gale of frightening malevolence. To try to see footprints outside was absurd. Whoever had gone out into that must already be beyond hope and help. Nor was there a lifeline tied, as per regulations, to the hatch cover. Thankful to hide myself from the storm's anger, I withdrew my head, pulled the hatch cover down and began to fasten it. Then I stopped. Better leave the catch undone. If somebody had gone out, was struggling to get back and by some miracle succeeded, a locked hatch cover was a death sentence.

  Slowly, almost despairingly, I climbed down the steel stairs, my head still ringing with the violence of the Arctic wind. With the hatch closed, all was still and silent and even the cold walls, seen by the dim light visible from Main Street, seemed somehow almost indecently safe and secure. I was trying hard to think what reason any man could have to venture out through the hatch into the deadly and implacable world of the empty, intolerant icecap. Only a madman would . . . But the madman was below and secure.

  Backing down the stair was awkward. I turned to face the way I was going and my foot slipped on snow-coated steel and I stumbled, tried frantically to recover my balance, failed, and fell eight or ten feet to the tunnel floor below. It was a painful, bruising fall, but the heavy padding of my Arctic clothing must have absorbed some of the worst of it. I lay grunting and cursing for a few moments, then began to haul myself to my feet. As I did so, my hand touched something beneath a pile of loose, dry snow that had drifted through the open hatch. I brushed the snow rapidly aside. Allen lay beneath it.

  Pulling off my mittens, I touched his face and it was icy cold. I bent painfully, took hold of his arm, hoisted him in a rough fireman's lift and staggered back along the trench to the hospital block. I knew there wasn't an empty bed, so I took him straight into the little operating theatre and dumped him on the table and stood beside him for a moment, looking helplessly at the lifeless grey colour that had invaded his fine dark features. I was sure he was dead. His arm hung limply down, his mouth gaped, and as I bent to put my ear to his mouth, 1 could neither hear nor feel any trace of respiration. Ripping his clothes open, baring his chest, I bent again to listen. Nothing. I calculated the time since he'd left the block and then went to rummage in Doc Kirton's desk for the stethoscope. Finding it, I fumbled the earpieces into place and tried to listen for Allen's heartbeat. My total inexperience didn't help. I seemed to hear only the movement of the instrument in my own ears. But then, very briefly, I heard something - a faint flickering sound like a few drops of water gurgling out of some faraway wash basin. Seconds passed. There it was again! Whipping off the stethoscope, I bent, placing my mouth against his icy lips, and forced my own warm breath into him. Another breath: pressure on his rib cage to force it out, then another breath; a minute passed, then two. And suddenly, joyfully, I watched his ribs lift a fraction and then lower. It happened again, and then, after an agonizingly long pause, a third time. I stood back drenched in sweat and relief, watching him breathe, very slowly and shallowly at first, then more steadily, and there were odd, low but audible sighs to confirm to my ears what my eyes could see.

  It was once considered unwise to warm too quickly a body which might have been attacked by frostbite. The practice then was to rub the victim with snow in the hope of minimizing the murderous pain as circulation returned to frozen flesh. Nowadays a different view is taken. Warmth should be applied as soon as possible. In the next few minutes I had stripped off Allen's boots and trousers and draped towels soaked in warm water over feet and legs. A few moments fiddling with the anaesthetic apparatus and I'd got oxygen flowing into the face mask and with that clamped to his face, Allen's breathing strengthened and steadied. About ten minutes after I'd carried him inside, I was wringing out a new towel when I heard his voice, muffled, through the mask.

  As I turned to him and lifted the mask away, he lifted his arm weakly, and said, 'Gee, my head.'

  'Can you hear me?'

  'My head. God, my head!'

  Moving behind him, I drew my fingers gently through his hair. His breath hissed and he winced suddenly as I touched a lump like a small mountain at the back where his hair was thinning. He hadn't got that collapsing in the snow!

  I said, 'Who did it?'

  Allen's head moved weakly from side to side.

  'Who?'

  He blinked up at me; real consciousness was returning now.

  'Somebody did hit you?'

  'Sure he did.' Allen's eyes closed tightly.

  'Who?'

  'Didn't see who. Had his .., his parka hood tight. That's all I saw. Then - Bam!'

  'You've no idea? No clue at all?'

  'No.'

  'Where did it happen? Before or after you got the keys?'

  Allen looked puzzled for a moment, then said slowly : 'Oh yeah, the keys. Never got that far.'

  All the same, the keys had gone from the rack.

  'Coffee?' His eyes had closed. He didn't open them as he nodded.

  Walking out of the theatre to the coffee machine in Kirton's office, I felt chillingly alone. Allen was in no condition to help; there was no sign of Kelleher; and inside me lurked an uncomfortable certainty that I was next on the list of targets.

  I still had no idea why.

  My hand shook a little as I filled the coffee-cup. My brain pounded with that question: Why? Why the long chapter of destruction, the skilled sabotage, the readiness to kill men, singly like Kirton or indiscriminately with the blunt sweep of poisoned food? Why, why, why? But I had only questions. No answers. And even if the answers had been there to reason out, my brain now seemed incapable of hard thought; Hundred had deadened it and there was just dull reaction to events, followed by weary frustration at a deadly riddle which grew hourly less answerable.

  I took the coffee in to Allen and watched morosely as he sipped. The acute discomfort in his guts and the brutal bang on the head combined to make him almost helplessly weak. He needed to be warm in bed, not lying awkwardly on this damned operating table. If only there were a bed . . . Then I groaned at my own stupidity. Of course there was a bed; there was the one Kelleher had occupied.

  I went through to check and stared in astonishment. Kelleher was in it, his eyes glaring up at me!

  'What the - !' But the sight told its own story. Kelleher was back in the straitjacket, the straitjacket was fastened to the bed, and there was a wide strip of surgical tape across his mouth!

  Chapter 15

  I bent to strip the plaster from Kelleher's mouth, thought better of it, and instead unfastened the strappings of the jacket. Once his hands were free, he took off the plaster himself with a mixture of impatience and extreme care. He massaged stiff, sore skin carefully as he told me what had happened.

  'Door opened and I heard Coveney's voice, just minutes after you'd gone. I climbed back in here just to avoid trouble, and turned away, pretending to be sleeping, damn it, so I didn't get the chance to see who did it.'

  'Did what?'

  'Listen.
I'll tell you. Coveney looked at me; I know it - I could sense his septic aura - then he went out. When he'd gone, I started to sit up and somebody tried to bust my head. When I woke up, I was strapped in.'

  'Somebody from the ward?'

  Kelleher shrugged. 'Who knows? There were some guys with Coveney; it could have been one of them. Stayed behind a moment and - splat !' He shook his head and muttered at the pain.

  'Can you stand?'

  'Sure I can stand.'

  'Good. We need the bed." I told him about Allen, and together we carried the master sergeant in, stripped him down to his underwear and tucked him up. As I up-ended his trousers to fold them and preserve the still immaculate creases, a bunch of keys fell out of one of the pockets, and as I bent to pick them up, a thought struck me. The camp had been searched for Carson, but had all of it been searched ?

  I said to Allen: 'Is there anywhere in this place that's out of bounds?'

  'Sure,' he said. 'There's - ' I let him finish, but had the answer already. Why the hell hadn't I thought of it, or anybody else for that matter: Coveney, Smales, Allen himself, anybody?

  'There's that trench where the bodies are,' Allen said.

  'Who can get in?'

  'Two keys to the door. One on that ring. Major Smales has the other.'

  'Did you look inside?'

  He shook his head.

  Kelleher said, 'But Barney would, surely.'

  'Why should he? It's been locked for days. There are only two keys and - '

  'Locked it myself,' Allen said, 'right after we put Doc Kirton's body in there.'

  I held up the key-ring. 'Which one?'

  Allen pointed with a weary hand. 'Okay.' I turned to Kelleher. 'Let's go have a look.'

  'We're gonna be spotted,' Kelleher said. 'Leastways I am.'

  'We've got to risk it. Do what I did. Pinch a parka with somebody else's name on it. And carry something. Nobody looks twice at a beast of burden . . , take some sheets, you'll look like part of Coveney's clean-up.'

  We grabbed another of the parkas the sick men wouldn't be needing and gathered some soiled sheets from the laundry baskets and left the medical block cautiously, ready to duck back if we encountered anybody. But Main Street was deserted. We hurried to the trench. A notice on the locked door read: 'No admittance under any circumstances' and we glanced at one another grimly. I turned the key, the lock slid smoothly back, and in a moment we were inside and locking the door.

  I had brought a handlamp from the hospital, but we didn't need it. The light switch clicked and the overhead strip lights flickered on.

  There was no sign of Carson, but we went the length of the trench to make sure, sidestepping bodies as we walked. At the bottom of the escape hatch stair, Kelleher looked at me and gave a little shudder. 'C'mon, let's get out of here.'

  I shared his keenness to leave, and we turned and walked back briskly towards the door. But something only half-remembered began to prickle in my mind and I stopped, looking down at the bodies.

  'Just a minute.' Each of the bodies, blanket-shrouded, lay fastened to a steel-framed stretcher sled.

  'You spotted something?'

  'Hang on. Let me think.' I tried to remember the time I'd been in here before, in the darkness, when I'd blundered in a panic among these hard frozen remnants that had once been men. And there had been something odd about one of them. I'd assumed it had been Kirton, but. . .

  I said, 'How many men should be here?'

  'Seven, I guess. Six from the helo crash, plus Doc Kirton. Why? And what in hell are you doing?'

  I was on my knees, swallowing my revulsion and making myself run my hands over the shrouded forms. The fourth was the one that had lingered in my mind. I glanced at the identifying label tied to the sled, and said, 'Not much left of Private First Class Marvin K. Harrer.'

  'He was in a helo crash!' Kelleher said impatiently. 'What do you expect? Leave the poor guy alone!'

  Ignoring him, I began to unfasten the ties that held the shrouding blanket: as I pulled the material back from where the head should have been, I found myself looking down at a chunk of kapok wearing an Arctic-issue hat. 'I think,' I said, 'that we'd better see the rest of him.'

  Kelleher said, 'Be your age. There's got to be something to bury. The army sometimes has to return the body to the family with the lid screwed tight.' But the conviction was going out of his voice, and by the time I'd peeled the blanket right back to reveal lengths of wood positioned where the arms and legs would have been, he had no protests left. 'Six bodies,' he said.

  'And there should be seven. So where's the other one?'

  We stared at one another and both of us shuddered.

  'Wait. Wait a second,' Kelleher said. 'Let's just be damn sure this is right. We got - '

  'It's right!' I said, and my voice sounded harsh in my own ears. 'Somebody has used a body for something, and faked this up to make it look as though they're all here.'

  'What about the others?'

  I examined them quickly, squeamishness suppressed. There was a corpse on each of the remaining sleds. I didn't linger; one glance at each of the pale, waxy, dead faces was more than enough, and when I came to the pulverized remnants of Kirton, my stomach threatened revolt. As I moved from sled to sled, Kelleher followed behind, in silence, replacing each cover. When we'd done, I rose and said, 'Why would he steal a corpse?'

  'Because of what it would show?' Kelleher hazarded. 'Because the pathologist could prove something from it?'

  I nodded. It seemed the likeliest explanation.

  Then Kelleher said slowly, 'But it would have to be something obvious, that's for damn sure. Look, they fly these poor guys out to Thule first chance, okay? They unwrap the corpses, dress 'em up to ship 'em Stateside. But they know how they died. A helicopter crashed. So nobody's looking for anything suspicious.' He paused a moment. 'Listen. Thule's got the whole works, pathologists, morgues, even a mortician, for God's sake. The whole deal. It's a big place and people die, right? So .., this guy who steals a corpse, what's his reasoning ? I'll tell you. There's something about that corpse, about Pfc Harrer, that's gonna attract attention and fast ! When the bodies arrive, the pathologist takes a quick look because the book says look, then he gives the okay to the mortician for the screwed-down lid. Only he doesn't, not with Harrer, because that quick look's gonna ring alarm bells. So the body has to be stolen and got rid of.'

  'Wrong,' I said.

  'Why?'

  'Because alarm bells ring anyway. Instead of a body there's a bundle of wood and kapok.'

  Kelleher sighed. 'True enough. Maybe I did go nuts back there!'

  'The minute that little bundle arrives,' I said, 'all sorts of things happen, and the first is a bloody great investigation of what's going on up here. Shipping this out draws attention.'

  'Maybe the other thing was worse.'

  'Perhaps.' But it didn't ring true. We stared at one another for a moment, bafflement complete. I said, 'Let's try Allen.'

  As we slipped cautiously out of the trench, Coveney and a couple of others were moving purposefully along Main Street about fifty yards off, fortunately heading away from us. A glance would have been enough, but nobody seemed to turn and look. Kelleher carried his bundle of sheets at face level as we hurried back to the medical block.

  Allen was sleeping, but Kelleher didn't hesitate. His forefinger was prodding the master sergeant awake as 1 closed the door into the ward. Rapidly we told him what had happened. He was physically very low, blinking with the need for sleep, but he listened with determined attention. Our account finished, we stood still, watching him try to think.

  Finally he said, 'Nope. Can't see any reason.' He was sick and bone weary; it was an effort to stay awake and after a few moments his eyelids closed.

  I was exasperatedly lighting a cigarette when he said, suddenly and clearly, 'What did you say the name was?'

  'Harrer,' I said, 'Pfc Harrer."

  Allen pursed his lips. 'We had this show a coupla
months back. Stage show. Camp concert. Funny sketches and comic songs, you know the kind of thing.'

  I thought for a second he'd begun to ramble. 'What about Harrer?'

  'Harrer did a comedy routine about Doc Kirton. Best number in the show.'

  I didn't see the point, but Kelleher suddenly snapped his fingers. 'You mean he looked like Doc Kirton?'

  Allen gave a little nod. 'Enough for that kind of show. Big build. Dark hair. He wasn't a double, it wasn't even close, but on that stage with make-up and a stethoscope and a white coat...'

  Kelleher interrupted him. 'So if that's not Kirton in there ...'

  We talked, we thrashed at it, we speculated, we postulated, and at the end of it all, we still had only questions. Not an answer in sight. There was still somebody, malevolent, cunning, ruthless and inevitably insane, who was responsible for everything that had happened at Camp Hundred, but there was no clue to his identity or even to his thinking. There were plenty of insoluble mysteries, with a new one added: what possible use might have been made of Harrer's body and his resemblance to Kirton?

  It was Allen who finally said, 'Got to know whose body it is.'

  The state of the body was still vivid in my mind. I said, 'It'll be very difficult to do. Whoever it is, he's in a terrible state. He was flattened by the tractor.'

  'Fingerprints?' Kelleher said, impractically.

  Nobody bothered to reply. Then Allen said, 'Boots.'

  'What about them?'

  Allen smiled faintly. 'Boot size is stamped into the leather binding inside the top of the boot.'

  Kelleher opened the clothing locker. Inside were Kirton's various overalls, some sealed in sterile packs. On the floor of the locker were operating theatre footwear of green rubber. He picked one up and examined it. 'Eleven.'

  I said, 'That's no use unless we know Harrer's size.'

  'Well, we know Kirton's an eleven, regular fitting,' Kelleher said. He turned to Allen. 'How many fittings are there?'