Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

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Jay Shore was just about to leave his office at the Sanmobil plant when the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver and said “Yes?”

“Switchboard operator here,” said a voice high with stress. “Got an emergency. Driver Pete Johnson is on the radio. Wants to talk to you immediately.”

“I’ll take it. Patch him through.” Shore waited.

“Hullo? Hullo?” Johnson’s voice crackled through, even more excited than the operator’s. “Mr Shore, sir?”

“Speaking. Take it easy. What’s the problem?”

“I’m on my way down to Fort McMurray, sir. Driving bus MB 3. Just come round a corner and found Bus MB 5 abandoned in the middle of the road.”

“Abandoned?”

“That’s right. Doors open, motor running, lights on. Point is, it’s the bus Mr Reynolds took to go home in.”

“Jesus! Where are you?”

“About a mile past Hangman’s Turn. Mile towards Fort McMurray.”

“Okay. I’ll get someone right out there.”

“Mr Shore?”

“What is it?”

“I just saw a chopper take off from near the road, and somebody fell out of it. And two of our security guys – Mr Brinckman and Mr Jorgensen – are lying in the road, like they’ve been hurt real bad.”

“Damn!”

“Yeah, and there’s a truck stuck in the snow by where the plane took off. It’s trying to get back on the road, facing towards Fort McMurray.”

“Keep away from it,” Shore ordered. “Stay in your own vehicle. Back off a bit. But don’t go near the truck. I’ll get someone right down.”

“Okay, Mr Shore, sir.”

Shore banged down the receiver and snatched up another, an outside line. He dialled and waited. He knew that Carmody and Jones, the two R.C.M.P. men assigned to protect the Brady family, were also due at the Reynolds’s for supper, so he called directly there. Someone answered – Mrs Reynolds.

“Mary? Jay Shore speaking. Look – I’m afraid there’s been some sort of a…mix-up. Bill and the ladies have got delayed. What’s that? No – I hope not. Nothing to worry about. Have you the two constables there already? Great. Yes please. Either will do.”

John Carmody came on the line.

“Emergency,” said Shore quietly. “I think your party’s been hijacked. Yes – I do.” He explained all he knew in a couple of sentences. “What I want you to do is come right up the road to Hangman’s Turn. You see anybody coming to meet you, stop him: it could be the grey truck we’re after. O.K?”

“O.K. We’re on our way.”

“That’s fine. Get moving.”

Carmody drove. Jones rode shotgun, his .38 revolver ready in his hand. The Cherokee Jeep station wagon, in four-wheel drive, held the road better than a regular sedan, but even so they had to go carefully.

Carmody swore steadily as he nursed the wheel. “Goddam it to hell!” he kept muttering. “The first time we leave them, this happens. What in hell were the Sanmobil security guys doing, for Christ’s sake?”

They drove on, snow whirling through the headlight-beams. Suddenly they saw lights coming the other way.

“Block the road!” Jones ordered. “Get sideways on.”

“Better to keep head on – dazzle him. He can’t get past, anyway.”

Carmody stopped in the middle of the road and switched on the station wagon’s flashers. The oncoming driver rounded a bend, saw them, braked and slewed violently from side to side before sliding to a halt.

Jones got out and moved towards the vehicle. He’d only gone three or four yards when a spurt of fire flashed from the driver’s window, followed instantly by the crack of a gun. Jones spun sideways, clutching his left shoulder. The other driver slammed into gear and let out the clutch. For a second his tyres raced griplessly on the snow. Then he shot forward, cannoned into the Jeep, shunted it sideways enough for him to scrape past, and accelerated away in the direction of Fort McMurray.

Carmody tried to open his door but found it jammed: the bodywork was buckled all down that side. He bunked across to the other side and ran to the aid of his wounded colleague. Jones was conscious but bleeding badly from a wound in the top corner of his chest: a large, dark stain had spread out across the snow beneath his body.

Carmody thought fast. It was too cold to administer first aid to the wound. If he took off any of Jones’s clothes, the man would die of exposure and shock. First priority was to get him somewhere warm, then to hospital. He ought to call up an ambulance.

“Come on, Bill,” he said gently. “You gotta get up.”

“O.K.,” Jones muttered. “I’m O.K.”

“On your feet, then.” Carmody got him round the waist, avoiding his chest and shoulders, in case he made anything worse there, and hoisted him upright. Then he propelled him gently towards the Jeep and opened one of the back doors.

“In there,” he said. “Front door’s jammed.”

He got the wounded man safely in, closed the door, climbed aboard himself and turned up the heater to maximum. Then he addressed himself to the radio. To his chagrin, he could get nothing out of it. The set was live, but no signal came through. Something had been broken by the impact of the truck.

For a moment Carmody considered turning and giving chase. Then he realised the other driver had too much start on him: even with his four-wheel drive, he would never overtake him in the short distance between there and Fort McMurray. He was closer to the Sanmobil plant, in any case. Better get on and make contact with the bus driver who had first raised the alarm.

He set off as fast as he dared. Jones was ominously silent, not answering questions about how he felt. Carmody set his jaw and drove through the snow.

Five minutes later he came on the stranded minibus. Immediately he recognised the black-and-yellow chequered MB 5, which he had seen and ridden in many times before. Beyond it a line of vehicles had piled up, the drivers being kept at bay by Johnson, who had told them that the police were about to arrive, and that no-one must touch the bus until the cops had checked it out. The beaten-up security men were hunched in the seats of Johnson’s bus, apparently comatose.

Carmody sized up the position in a moment. “Get it out the way,” he ordered. “Let everybody else through.”

They pushed the Reynolds bus to one side and waved the other vehicles past. Three back in the line was a Sanmobil truck with two storehands aboard – the only men Shore had been able to conscript immediately at that late hour. Over Johnson’s bus radio Carmody called for police reinforcements and alerted the Sanmobil sick bay, warning them that three injured men were being brought in. Then he detailed one of the Sanmobil men to drive his own Jeep right on to the plant, with Jones still in it. Brinckman and Jorgensen, unsteady on their feet, also climbed aboard.

“Get back in the warm,” Carmody told them. “I’ll talk to you guys later.” As they drove off he turned to Johnson: “O.K., so what happened?”

“I just came on the bus in the middle of the road, like you saw it. The two security guys were lying in front of it, trying to get up. I got out to see what the matter was, and heard the racket of a helicopter engine, right close.”

“Where was it?”

“Just over there. I’ll show you.”

He switched on a big flashlight and led the way over the frozen tundra. “Sounded like he had a problem with the motor – kept running it up and letting it die again. Then he did go: lifted off and headed thataway – north. Here – you can see the ski-marks.”

In the torch-beam the imprint of long, heavy skis was still visible, though dusted over with the snow blown about by the rotor’s down-draught.