Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

But there was no time to think about it, no time for even the smallest flicker of satisfaction. The cable ran smoothly over the pulley and I could hear the steady whirr of the electric motor, the soft clicking of the ratchet. Raising the axe in my hand, I waited for the switch-off, the watching face. There'd be a fraction of a second for identification, then I must strike, instantly and accurately. Ten feet. I called Kelleher's name once, twice, a third time, and my words vanished into unresponding silence.

Tensely I waited for the upward movement to stop. The top of the frame loomed nearer; my eyes came level with the bottom of the corrugated steel ring and therefore the floor of the trench .., and then I realized suddenly that it wasn't going to stop, that the chair was to be dragged right up to the frame, where the power of the motor would drag me and the seat against the pulley. I dropped the ice-axe, grabbed desperately for the corrugated iron and hurled myself sideways, out of the bosun's chair, but the swaying seat robbed me of any accuracy of movement and only my left hand reached the metal. My right hand clawed at empty air as I hung there over the well and the bosun's chair crunched into the ironwork above and was destroyed!

Chapter 18

Two frantic lunges with my right arm missed the rim of the ironwork and I could feel my left hand beginning to slip. Numbed, cold fingers lacked the strength to hold me and 1 knew with total clarity that I had only a second or two left before the tenuous grip broke and I plunged into the depths of the well. Once more . . , and my last chance. If this final grab failed, it was over for me. I swung my right arm back, and touched something with the back of my glove. The nylon line ! I grabbed it despairingly and took a turn round my wrist as the fingers of my left hand began to slip inexorably over the metal. Would the nylon hold? It cut viciously into my wrist as my weight swung on to it, and I waited for the long fall . .

, then the agony on my wrist told me it was holding and I lunged again, desperately with my left hand, and got a grip, a better one this time, and made myself swing twice on the line until I could make a grab with my right. And this time I got it. A minute later, heart beating wildly, I was clambering over the iron surround on to the floor of the trench, relief and fearful anticipation whirling together in my head. If he was there, why hadn't he simply knocked my hand away from the well-head? I stared wildly round me. The trench seemed empty. But no - it wasn't! Kelleher lay on the trench floor beside the well-head, and the sergeant lay against the wall, beneath the winch control box. The electric motor whirred on. Quickly I bent to look at Kelleher. As I turned him on to his back, his arms moved limply, lifelessly And then I saw the little hole in his parka, over his heart. Kelleher was dead!

The sergeant was dead, too, lying in a puddle, already congealing, of his own blood. As I looked at him, I saw the red smudge of blood that ran across from the well-head to where he lay, and the little channel his body had made in the crystalline floor as he'd dragged himself towards the motor. There was more blood on the wall, where he'd somehow forced himself upright. It was so plain what had happened : the two of them at the handle, the trench door opening and closing, the two shots: Kelleher killed instantly and the sergeant, mortally wounded, using the last moments of his own life to reach the switch in a last desperate attempt to save mine. He'd known that when electric power was restored, the winch would come on automatically, hoisting me out of the depths of the icecap. Now I knew the two single taps had been gunshots, probably from a distance since the sound had not been loud. They must have been fired from close to the door. A glance at my watch showed that about eighteen minutes had passed since the shooting. How had those minutes been used ? And who had used them ?

And then, quite suddenly, I knew! In seconds the mystery of days had been resolved. I knew now who

'young F.' was, and who the killer must be, and where he must have gone now. Bending over Kelleher's body, I rapidly searched his pockets for the keys, then raced along the trench to the door, turned the lock and stepped out into Main Street. I pulled my parka hood tight and kept my head down as I hurried in the direction of the tractor shed. As I opened the doors and stepped inside, cold air rushed over me. The big outer doors now gaped inwards! A light burned in the office and I tore over to it. Inside, the duty mechanic was slumped over the desk, an open paperback beneath his head. I shook his shoulder, but he wasn't sleeping; he was unconscious. Leaving the office, I went to the main doors. Heavy snow was falling. I looked at the tracks imprinted in the fresh snow and already being filled, their sharp outlines blurring. And the snow was falling vertically because the wind had dropped. It all fitted now. The weather-change had precipitated things, providing one last chance for the killer to maintain the mystery, a chance he'd had to take.

My TK4 stood, silent and shiny, to one side of the huge shed. 1 began to cross to it, then stopped. I'd need a weapon. A drum of petrol, probably used for engine cleaning, stood on a wooden packing case. I found a bottle, filled it and stuffed cotton waste in the neck. The TK4, icy cold as she was after being immobile for days in low temperatures, didn't start first bang. Bad advertisement, I thought with professional sourness, relieved no one had been present to see it. But she started at the second time of asking and gave a few pleased puffs as the rubber skirt ballooned and lifted her and the engines roared cheerfully. I eased her forward, nosing out through the doors into the blackness, then stopping briefly to give my eyes some chance to adjust. I didn't want to use the lights. The snow was very thick, cutting visibility back, and clouds blanketed the moon, but I dared wait no longer. The heavy tractor was slow, but the distance was small. He'd be there already, and searching. I turned the hovercraft eastwards and moved slowly over the snowfield, trying to remember all the details of the layout of Camp Hundred.

I knew that the camp perimeter was marked at a range of four hundred yards by triangular flags on high, flexible, steel poles mounted on barrels and sunk into the snow at five-yard intervals. He'd have followed them, and so must I. Visibility through the heavy snowfall was less than twenty yards and, tense with frustration, I kept the speed down.

I swore suddenly. The tracks! All I had to do was follow his tracks! Fifty-per-cent thinking again! I eased the TK.4 back towards the dim yellow square of light from the tractor shed, opened the side window and leaned out, searching the smooth white surface for the wide track-trail of the big diesel tractor.

There! As I moved her forward, creating a wind, bitter cold flooded in through the open window, chilling my face. I pulled the drawstring of my hood tighter and ghosted across the snow-field, through the thick curtain of silently-falling snow, in the wake of the big diesel tractor. Within a few yards I was suffering one of the hazards of a hovercraft running slowly over powder snow : the downward pressure of air blown out from beneath the skirt blasted dry crystals upwards into a fine fog all around me. They whirled higher than the cab, like an impenetrable fog, and enough blew in through the narrowed aperture of my parka hood to start chilling nose, cheekbones and chin. At speed the problem diminishes; the blow-up snow spray is left behind before it can cause a problem. But I couldn't go at speed. The need to follow the tracks without light dictated my rate of progress. I was also uncomfortably aware that the small snowstorm the TK4 was creating would serve to blank out the tracks behind me. There was also the possible hazard of running into the tractor. With visibility so short, it was likely that by the time I saw it, it would be too late to slow. I had to catch up with the tractor and its murderous occupant, but preferably not that way!