Beneath the Dark Ice (18 page)

“What? It’s only a small mountain, it’s gonna take more than that to flatten me.”

Mike stepped forward and punched his “little” brother in the chest. “Okay, you’re the baddest—for now.”

Alex ordered a rest and food stop. The dark was disorientating and time was measured not by clocks but by fatigue. They ate dried fruit and some chocolate and Alex was pleased to see that his HAWCs were joining in some good-natured banter. He and his team had been trained to keep a respectable distance from civilians and regard them as invisible, or a means to an end—to be retrieved, delivered or expended. However, Tank’s escape had been the first piece of good fortune they’d had for a long time and he guessed they would all need luck and each other’s help to get back to the surface.

Alex sent Takeda ahead with Monica to scout out the area and he sat by himself and checked his equipment. He removed his glove and placed his bare hand down onto the stone and closed his eyes. There was no sliding, no
vibrations; other than Takeda and Monica, nothing was moving. He had reached out with his extraordinary senses and couldn’t feel any cold presence nearby. For the moment they were secure. He looked into the dark where Monica had just disappeared and thought to himself,
Come on girl, find me an exit
.

Aimee came over and sat beside Alex while Silex watched like a snake from the dark, his wet lips moving as if mouthing secret obscenities at the pair.

“What’re our chances?” Aimee asked.

“We’ll be OK.” He couldn’t tell her of his fears. They had food and water for only another few days and battery life for even less. The HAWC night vision goggles would last a little longer, but that was it. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if the lights went out for good.

“Things always work out. You’ll see.”

Aimee looked up at him. “How can you be so confident and calm all the time?”

Alex gave a half smile and turned to her. She rested her chin on her hand and even in the dark her eyes were luminous in her dust-streaked face. What could he tell her? Though it was his job to keep a unit in the field motivated, the real reason was difficult to explain. Alex knew he should already be dead, but had survived and literally risen a different being. Risks and danger held no fears for him anymore as he felt destiny, kismet, karma, whatever you wanted to call it, was keeping him safe for some specific purpose. He didn’t believe for a second it was to die in these caves. He would see the sun again.

“Do you believe in fate, Aimee? I do, and I know we’ll make it. Besides, it’s been over twelve hours since we communicated with HQ and by now Major Hammerson will be bursting the eardrums of the entire armed forces to get more military bodies down here. Stay close to me and don’t worry.”

Monica appeared looking very pleased with herself. “Everyone this way, I’ve found something,” She led them quickly down the cave and to a gigantic hole in the rock floor.

Monica immediately set to pegging in around a large belay rock. Silex was immediately at her side and hissing into her ear. “What are you doing, we’re not going down there. Are you crazy? That’ll just take us deeper. We need to be going up, you know, where the sun shines. Not down.”

“Dr. Silex, you hear that?” Monica had held up her hand to quieten the scientist and the entire team stopped what they were doing and listened. Nothing could be heard except for their own breathing.

Alex was the first to speak. “Water, running water.”

“It’s a cave stream, quite a large one by the sound of it. I’m not making any promises because it could just disappear through another boulder choke that we can’t get through. However, it could also flow out at the coast.”

Alex stood at the edge looking down thoughtfully. Silex stared at him and smirked, probably thinking Alex was racked with indecision, while he was in fact using his senses to get an impression of what waited for them down in the dark depths. He didn’t want to let Monica rappel down first, and his men could just as easily have achieved it, but she was the specialist and better equipped to give them an idea of the descent’s safety and risk factors.

“OK, Ms. Jennings, but I want you to borrow Mike’s comm unit so we can stay in touch. Mike will be coming down right behind you. Hand the unit back to Mike and then do a near-perimeter survey and report in. Got it?”

Monica nodded and started to rig up her rappelling harness using low-stretch kernmantel rope with a friction brake to control her speed. She didn’t have the time or the rope to set more safety cords, or cow tails as they were
called, but did use a sit-stand rig to ensure the rope wouldn’t rub against any jagged rocks.

She looked briefly at Matt. “Once again into the wide black yonder.” Matt gave her a thumbs up and looked as cheery as possible in the situation as Monica stepped back into the abyss.

The shaft was complex with many ledges, lumps and spikes. She descended slowly, watching both the wall and the rope and keeping a lookout below for the yet unseen floor. There was no echo, just the faint musical sound of the water as it tumbled over a hidden stream bed below. At about fifty feet down she hit the floor of a second large chamber. It was flat-based, worn very smooth like a giant tabletop. She still couldn’t see the stream, but it was louder now. It was also much warmer and the humidity had encouraged traces of moss to grow on the walls.

She unzipped her suit a few inches and spoke into her comm unit. “Captain Hunter, you’re good to go. Careful on the way down as there are some protrusions, but I’ll be at the base guiding Mike down.”

Alex held up his hand to Mike who was already rigged up and waiting for the word to drop. Before he descended Alex walked over, checked his rigging and spoke to him. “How’re the wounds?”

“I’m OK. They’re starting to bleed a little again, but when I get down to the bottom I’ll give ’em a little more coagulant gel.”

“Good enough. Can’t have you bleeding away any more energy, can we?” Alex nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. Mike stepped back into the shaft. He descended quickly, Monica’s light giving him more depth perspective than she had.

One after the other they descended, leaving only Alex at the top. He hadn’t bothered to rig up and instead unfastened
the rope from the belay boulder and let it drop down into the hole. He heard Aimee’s panicked voice from below.

“What just happened? Did it break?” As the rope coiled on the ground at their feet Aimee shone her torch back up the shaft. Monica gently grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the way.

“Aimee, he knows what he’s doing. He just saved me from having to climb back up there. We need that rope and can’t afford to leave anything behind we might need later.”

Alex climbed down the wall like a spider; there were enough protrusions to afford him plenty of hand and toe holds and his caving suit was specially toughened on the fingers and toes for just such a climb. He was confident that Monica could have ascended without trouble, but it would have cost them at least another ten minutes and at this point Alex was keen to save every second they had and use it for escape.

Monica shone her torch in a slow arc around them. Caves were amazing places. There were magnificent formations all around and above them; straw-like calcite stalactites and huge piles of what looked like frozen pink froth lumped around like melted candy. As a general rule, the larger the cave, the older it was. By that standard, these caves were truly prehistoric. It was like being in some giant child’s garden made from coloured stone. Rocks that looked like icicles, trees, statues, or the delicate designs of lacy flowers in shades of white or cream, or blues and reds from the dissolved minerals trickling from miles of stone overhead. At any other time Monica would have been lost in delight at this caving wonderland—for now, survival was the priority.

The cave ended abruptly at the bank of a wide and slow-moving
river. It looked shallow, but cave pools and streams could be deceptive due to the clarity of the water—a stream where you could easily pick out every tiny pebble on its bottom could actually be over six feet deep. The upside was that there were rarely hidden jagged objects under the surface—the smoothing effect of thousands of years of polishing by the moving liquid.

“What now, build a boat from rocks?” sneered Silex. It was an obnoxiously posed question, but they were presented with a problem—they had no raft and there was no river bank or beach to walk along. They couldn’t cross to the far side of the river as it ended in a sheer rock wall—in fact, the cave they were in ended at the river.

Monica was standing on the bank looking downstream. She turned to Silex, not caring that she was staring into his face and blinding him with the bright beam of her helmet light. “Well, we need to follow that river and we don’t have diving equipment or a raft with us, so you’re right, we do build a boat—but not from rocks, Dr. Silex, from people. There is a caving style for travelling down streams to ensure everyone stays together in the dark. It’s called the Disney method—everyone sits one behind the other holding on to the person in front by their feet. We rope everyone’s waists together and create a set of human train carriages. We’ll also need an anchor—someone who is tied to the group but set about twenty feet back to act as an emergency brake. Usually they’re the biggest member of the team.” Monica turned to wink at Tank.

Tank smiled and said, “Shucks, I didn’t even have to volunteer.”

“We also need a driver; that’ll be me.”

Alex quickly overruled the caver. “Good idea, Ms. Jennings, but I’ll sit out in front this time. The team is going to be too heavy for you to steer and I’m better able to sustain impacts. However, I’d like you to be right behind me, guiding me and telling me what to expect.”

They all turned to look at the river. None of the team particularly looked forward to getting into the black water and floating into the impenetrable darkness that loomed ahead. However, everyone realised that going back would be even worse.

Takeda took a reading downriver with a portable echo distance display unit and spoke back to the group. “Straight run for about two miles then it either bends, dips or stops. No narrowing I can detect.”

“OK, people. We travel the straight distance and stop for rest when we get to the bend. Let’s keep moving.”

Monica wound the soft rope around Alex’s waist and then left a vacant loop for herself to climb into. She looped in Matt, Mike and then Aimee. Takeda went next, then Silex and twenty feet back, Tank as the anchor man. Tank had already removed a small collapsible grappling hook from his pack and tucked it and its rope tether into his front suit pouch. They were ready.

If it wasn’t for Alex leading the way, they may have all hesitated a few minutes while working up their courage. As it was, before they had time to think he was wading into the water, and all being tied together, they had to follow.

Rocks moved; then more. A low groan emanated from under the rubble. A large flat piece of stone flipped over like a door opening and a black-clad figure sat up.

Borshov slowly pulled the knife from the orbital socket of his eye and felt something warm and jellied fall to his cheek.

In the darkness he felt the ragged hole and cursed in old Russian. He resheathed the sticky blade and pulled a small light from a pocket as he rose to his feet.

It was slower going than many of them expected. Though the stream travelled at about three knots their weight and bulk meant they travelled closer to two knots. At this rate Monica estimated they would be in the cold water for an hour; not great, but there was no choice. The thermal lining in their suits would provide some protection, but eventually the cold would seep through and start to slow down muscle reaction time. Any longer than that and hypothermia would set in.

The only sounds were the slight tinkling of the stream and a few whispers from among the team members. Matt kept both hands around Monica’s waist and Monica in turn dropped her hands to cover his. For the most part, except for the odd bump it was a fairly smooth ride.

Several times the team passed little black sandy beaches and heard scuttling sounds off in the darkness. But when they turned their torches in the direction of the noise, there was nothing there. From time to time they also witnessed small flashes of light on the walls of the cave. Monica leaned forward to Alex. “Bioluminescence, or cold light; probably small cave organisms or fungi. If we get enough, maybe we can do without the torches.”

Alex had requested they keep moving their arms and legs as much as possible in their restricted positions to ensure
they kept their blood flowing right down to their extremities. It was easy to become numbed, and it was this numbness that allowed Mike not to notice that the water had diluted the gel over his wounds and they were once again beginning to bleed.

In the stream his faint blood trail moved ahead of them, at three knots to their two. In the dark and with such a small amount of blood it could not possibly be noticed; not by human senses anyway. After about fifty minutes in the water, Mike noticed his wounds were becoming almost unbearably itchy. It was not for a HAWC to complain about hunger, pain or discomfort. He had slept in snow, hidden in a steel drum in hundred degree heat and been camouflaged under mud for eighteen hours; he would wait until they reached a rest point as instructed by their team leader.

At last they reached a suitable rest point just a few hundred feet before the stream veered around a huge fallen boulder. A small beach of black sand curved in a crescent at the base of the rock wall. They all stood up in the waist-deep water, stepped out of the rope loops and struggled up the bank on cold stiff legs. Though they were shivering the team was in good spirits and looking forward to some rest, and perhaps some more chocolate. Takeda immediately took to lighting a miniature propane heating unit. Each of the HAWCs carried them; they could be used for emergency lighting, as an incendiary device, or in Takeda’s case, a way to heat his precious green tea. Alex allowed the small break in the rules as Takeda was the most serene and efficient warrior he had ever come across; if the tea helped, then he could have it.