Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Michael could see that Sinclair had harnessed the dogs in pairs instead of fanning them out on wider leads, and he knew that doing so was particularly dangerous under the current conditions. With the dogs bunched together, the weight of the whole sled could cross onto a fragile snow bridge all at once, and if the bridge gave way, the dogs first, then the sled itself, could be dragged straight down into the bottomless crevasse below.

For that matter, Michael could plummet into one, too. That was why he tried to stay on the same path the sled had already taken. But it wasn't easy. The silvery glare off the terrain was harsh and penetrating, and the scrum of snow and ice thrown up by the front runners of the Arctic Cat kept flying back, sticking to the windshield and coating his goggles.

Even as the distance between them closed, Michael began to wonder what he could do when he did catch up. He racked his brain, wondering what was likely to be in the snowmobile's emergency compartment. A first-aid kit? Some nylon ropes? A GPS? A flashlight?

And then he remembered the last essential item sure to be there-a flare gun!

Sinclair would never know the difference between that and a real gun.

The sled was turning slightly, toward the coastline, and Michael could see Sinclair's head turning, aware now that he was being pursued. Though the sun glinted off his goggles and golden epaulettes, and the scarlet flaps of his jacket whipped out behind him like a fox's tail, the black ski mask made him look less like a soldier than a burglar on the run.

The sled was rounding a coal-black nunatak, and the danger there was even greater, especially as Sinclair wouldn't be aware of it. Crevasses often formed around the base of such rocky outcrop-pings, and increased in number and depth as the glacier field approached the sea. Sinclair was continuing to bear toward the water, no doubt because it made navigating easier. In Antarctica, it was as hard to judge distances as it was direction-there was seldom any landmark to rely on, everything looked the same for hundreds of miles sometimes, and the sun, which on that date was very nearly straight overhead, offered no help either. Your shadow clung as close to your heels as an obedient dog.

Michael was torn between quickly overtaking the sled-and forcing a confrontation on the unstable ice-or waiting until he had reached the solid soil of Stromviken. But that was Sinclair's stomping ground, and who knew what other advantages he might be able to call upon once he got there?

The sled was slowing down a bit, because it had to. Michael could see the chunky blocks of a serac field rising up from the ground, like the tines of a giant fork sticking up from the earth. The dogs were snaking their way through the obstacle course, and Sinclair was bent far forward over the handlebars, urging them on.

Michael wiped the snow and ice from his goggles and lowered his head below the windshield. Wispy white clouds were draped like muslin across the sky, muting the sunlight and dropping the temperature another few degrees; Michael pegged it at about thirty below zero. The snowmobile was rapidly closing in on the sled. He was near enough that he could see Sinclair's sword slapping at his side and Eleanor's head, tightly bound in a hood, poking up from the shell.

Sinclair, hearing the roar of the Arctic Cat, turned again and shouted something Michael could not hear, though he doubted it was an offer of surrender. If there was one thing he knew about Sinclair, it was that the man's will was indomitable.

But then, with no warning, Michael saw the snow beneath the sled begin to crumble. There was a wild, terrified yelping from the pack and, as Michael watched in horror, the snow bridge collapsed, and the lead dogs disappeared. Each of the pairs behind them, barking madly but yoked to the same harness, were dragged into the widening chasm. The sled, too, rocking like a canoe in the rapids, its blades screeching across the ice, was pulled sideways toward the crevasse.

Michael steered to one side of a looming serac and hit the brakes, skidding to a halt. When he leapt off the snowmobile and lifted his goggles, he saw the sled teetering on the edge of the crevasse, with Sinclair pounding his feet on the claw brake, and barely holding on. Michael knew that the fissure could run in any direction there-it could be under his own feet even then-but he had no ski pole to gauge the snow with. All he could do was approach at an oblique angle and hope for the best. He yanked open the snowmobile's storage compartment and grabbed the rope and tackle, but before he could go ten yards, the back end of the sled rose into the air like the stern of a sinking ship, with Sinclair still clinging to the handlebars, and after hesitating there for a second or two, slipped from sight.

“Eleanor!” Michael cried, throwing all caution to the winds, and stumbling across the patchy snow and ice, slipping and sliding most of the way. When he neared the edge of the crevasse, he went down on all fours and crawled to the rim, terrified at what he might find.

The crevasse was a deep blue gash in the ice, but the sled had fallen only ten or twelve feet before becoming wedged between its narrow walls. The dogs dangled below it, like terrible ornaments, the ones that were still alive twisting in their collars and harness, their weight and frantic struggles threatening to dislodge the sled altogether.

“Cut the leads!” Michael shouted. “And the towlines!”

Sinclair looked up uncertainly from his perch on the rear of the sled, then drew his sword and started hacking at the tangled lines that were within his reach.

Eleanor was still huddled in the shell, her face entirely covered by the hood.

First one, then several, of the dogs’ bodies dropped away, caroming back and forth against the icy walls and thumping, with hard wet splashes, onto the unseen floor of the crevasse. A few agonized howls echoed up from the bottom of the blue canyon, but then they too died away.

Michael hurriedly wrapped the rope under his own arms, then tied a loop and lowered it into the chasm.

“Eleanor,” he said, lying on his belly with only his head and shoulders extended over the edge, “I want you to slip this rope over your shoulders and then tie it around you.”

The loop hung down like a noose above her head, but she was able to peer out from under her hood, reach up with gloved hands, and grab it.

“Once you've done that,” Michael said, “I want you to climb out of the sled, as carefully as you can.”

Sinclair hacked at another lead, and another pair of the hanged dogs plummeted into the purple depths. Even so, the prow of the sled, jammed at a slightly lower angle than the back, slipped another foot or two down.

“I've tied it,” Eleanor said, her voice muffled by the hood.

“Good. Now hold on.”

He would have given anything for some kind of anchor-a rock, a snowmobile, something to fasten the rope around-but all he had was his own body. He sat back, dug the heels of his boots into the snowpack, then pulled up, his bad shoulder already complaining.

“Use your feet, if you can, to grip the wall, and push off it.”

She broke free from the shell and her body instantly swung against the ice. He heard her groan, then saw the toes of her black boots grip the surface. He coiled the rope around his arm again, and pulled harder. He could feel the tendon straining, and the thought- not now, don't snap now — endlessly repeated in his head.

She had come up a yard or more, but her feet suddenly slipped away from the ice and dangled in midair.

“Michael!” she cried, hanging above the sled and the chasm that yawned below. Michael dug his heels in deeper, but he could not get enough traction; he was slipping toward the fissure himself, his arms shaking almost uncontrollably. Just as he thought he couldn't hold her up for another second, he saw Sinclair stretch forward over the handlebars, put his hands, still encased in thick gloves, on the bottoms of her boots, and push her up. Although the lieutenant's face was obscured by his black ski mask and goggles, Michael could well imagine his fear and anguish. But Eleanor rose, just enough that Michael could grab the rope encircling her and haul her the rest of the way out of the crevasse.