Alistair MacLean Arctic Chillers 4-Book Collection: Night Without End, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, Athabasca

But the reasons no longer mattered a damn. All that mattered was the accomplished fact, and the fact was that Corazzini and Smallwood could no longer be stopped, not in the way we had intended. Even yet, of course, they could be stopped – but I had no illusions but that that would be at the cost of the lives of the two hostages in the tractor.

Frantically I tried to work out what to do for the best. There was no chance in the world that we might approach them openly over the glacier – we would be spotted before we had covered ten yards, and a pistol at the heads of Margaret and Levin would halt us before we got half-way. If we did nothing, let them get away, I knew the hostages’ chances of survival were still pretty slim – that trawler would almost certainly have a name or number or both and I couldn’t see Smallwood letting them make an identification of the trawler and then come back to report to us – and to all the waiting ships and planes in the Davis Strait – Baffin Sea area. Why should he take the slightest risk when it would be so easy to shoot them, so much easier still to throw them down a crevasse or shove them over the edge of the glacier into the freezing waters of the fjord a hundred and fifty feet below … Already the Citroën was no more than three minutes away from the nearest point of approach they would make to us.

‘Looks like they’re going to get away with it,’ Hillcrest whispered. It seemed as if he feared he might be overheard, though Smallwood and Corazzini couldn’t have heard him had he shouted at the top of his voice.

‘Well, that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’ I asked bitterly.

‘What I wanted! My God, man, that missile mechanism—’

‘I don’t give a single solitary damn about the missile mechanism.’ I ground the words out between clenched teeth. ‘Six months from now other scientists will have invented something twice as good and ten times as secret. They’re welcome to it, and with pleasure.’

Hillcrest was shocked, but said nothing. But someone was in agreement with me.

‘Hear, hear!’ Zagero had just come up, his hands swathed to the size of boxing gloves in white bandages. The words were light enough, but his face was grim and his eyes bleak as he stared out across the glacier. ‘My sentiments exactly, Doc. To hell with their murderous little toys. My old man’s in that buggy out there. And your girl.’

‘His girl?’ Hillcrest turned, looked sharply at me under creased brows for a long moment, then murmured: ‘Sorry, boy, I didn’t understand.’

I made no response, but twisted my head as I heard footsteps behind me. It was Joss, hatless and gloveless in his excitement.

‘Wykenham’s anchored, sir,’ he panted out. ‘Her—’

‘Get down, man! They’ll see you.’

‘Sorry.’ He dropped to his hands and knees. ‘Her powerboat’s already moving inshore. And there was a flight of four Scimitars already airborne: they should be half-way here already. In two minutes’ time four or five bombers are taking off, with HE and incendiaries. They’re slower, but—’

‘Bombers?’ I snapped irritably. ‘Bombers? What do they think this is – the Second Front?’

‘No sir. They’re going to clobber the trawler if Smallwood gets away with that missile mechanism. They won’t get a hundred yards.’

‘The hell with their missile mechanism. Do human lives mean nothing to them? What is it, Jackstraw?’

‘Lights, Dr Mason.’ He pointed to the spot on the fjord wall where the men from the trawler had already covered two-thirds of the horizontal and vertical distance to the end of the glacier. ‘Signalling, I think.’

I saw it right away, a small light, but powerful, winking irregularly. I watched it for a few moments then heard Joss’s voice.

‘It’s morse, but it’s not our morse, sir.’

‘They’re hardly likely to signal in English just for our benefit,’ I said dryly. I tried to speak calmly, to hide the fear, the near despair in my mind, and when I spoke again my voice, I knew, was abnormally matter-of-fact. ‘It’s the tip-off to our friends Smallwood and Corazzini. If we can see the men from the trawler, it’s a cinch the men from the trawler can see us. The point is, do Smallwood and Corazzini understand them?’

Five seconds later I had my answer in the form of a suddenly deepening roar coming to us across the glacier from the engine of the Citroën. Corazzini – Hillcrest’s binoculars had shown him to be the driver – had understood the danger all right, he was casting caution to the winds and gunning the engine to its maximum. He must have been desperate, desperate to the point of madness, for no sane man would have taken the fearful risks of driving that tractor through sloping crevasse ice with the friction coefficient between treads and surface reduced almost to zero. Or could it be that he just didn’t know the suicidal dangers involved?

After a few seconds I was convinced he didn’t. In the first place, I couldn’t see either Corazzini or Smallwood as men who would panic under pressure, no matter how severe that pressure, and in the second place suicidal risks weren’t absolutely necessary, they would have stood a more than even chance of getting away with their lives and the missile mechanism if they had stopped the tractor, got out and picked their cautious way down the glacier on foot, with their pistol barrels stuck in the backs of their hostages. Or would they – rather, did they think they would?

I tried fleetingly, frantically, to get inside their cold and criminal minds, to try to understand their conception of us. Did they think that we thought, like them, that the mechanism was all important, that human lives were cheap and readily expendable? If they did, and guessing the quality of Jackstraw’s marksmanship with a rifle, would they not be convinced that they would be shot down as soon as they had stepped out on to the ice, regardless of the fate of their hostages? Or did they have a better understanding than that of minds more normal than their own?

Even as these thoughts flashed through my mind I knew I must act now. The time for thought, had there ever been such a time, was past. If they were left to continue in the tractor, they would either kill themselves on the glacier or if, by a miracle, they reached the bottom safely, they would then kill their hostages. If they were stopped now, there was a faint chance that Margaret and Levin might survive, at least for the moment: they were Smallwood’s and Corazzini’s only two trump cards, and would be kept intact as long as lay within their power, for they were their only guarantee of escape. I just had to gamble on the hope that they would be desperately reluctant to kill them where they were now, still a mile from the end of the glacier. And the last time I had gambled I had lost.

‘Can you stop the tractor?’ I asked Jackstraw, my voice a flat lifeless monotone in my own ear.

He nodded, his eyes on me: I nodded silently in return.

‘You can’t do that!’ Zagero shouted in urgent protest. The drawl had gone for the first time ever. ‘They’ll kill them, they’ll kill them! My God, Mason, if you’re really stuck on that kid you’d never—’

‘Shut up!’ I said savagely. I grabbed a coil of rope, picked up my rifle and went on brutally: ‘If you think they’d ever let your father come out of this alive you must be crazy.’

A second later I was on my way, plunging out into the open across the narrow thirty-yard stretch of ice that led into the first of the fissures, wincing and ducking involuntarily as the first .303 shell from Jackstraw’s rifle screamed past me, only feet to my right, and smashed through the hood of the Citroën and into the engine with all the metallic clamour, the vicious power of a sledge-hammer wielded by some giant hand. But still the Citroën came on.

I leapt across a narrow crevasse, steadied myself, glanced back for a moment, saw that Hillcrest, Joss, Zagero and a couple of Hillcrest’s men were following, then rushed on again, weaving and twisting my way through the cracks and mounds in the ice. What was Zagero doing there, I asked myself angrily? Unarmed, with two useless hands that could hold no firearm, he was nothing but a liability, what could any man do with ruined hands like those? I was to find out just what a man with ruined hands could do …

We were running straight across the narrowest neck of the glacier making straight for the spot where the tractor would arrive if it survived Jackstraw’s attempts to halt it: Jackstraw was firing in a line well above us now, but we could still hear the thin high whine of every bullet, the metallic crash as it struck the Citroën. Every bullet went home. But that engine was incredibly tough.

We were about half-way across when we heard the engine change gear, the high unmistakable whine of the tractor beginning to overrun its engine. Corazzini – I could clearly see him now, even without the aid of binoculars – must have found himself losing control on the steepening slope and was using the engine to brake the Citroën. And then, when we were less than a hundred yards away and after a longer than usual lull in the firing – Jackstraw must have stopped to change magazines – the sixth shell smashed through the riddled hood and the engine stopped as abruptly as if the ignition had been switched off.

The tractor stopped too. On that steep slope this was surprising, the last thing I would have expected, but there was no doubt that not only had it stopped but that it had been stopped deliberately: there was no mistaking the high-pitched screech of those worn brakes.

And then I could see the reason why. There was some violent activity taking place in the driving cabin of the tractor, and as we neared – a maddeningly slow process, there were dozens of crevasses to be jumped, as many more to be skirted – we could see what it was. Corazzini and Solly Levin were struggling furiously, and, from thirty or forty yards, it seemed, incredibly enough, that Solly Levin was getting the better of it. He had flung himself completely on top of Corazzini where the latter sat behind the wheel, and was butting him savagely in the face with the top of his bald head, and Corazzini, trapped in the narrow space, could find no room to make use of his much greater strength.

Then, abruptly, the door on the driver’s side burst open – we could see it clearly, having been lower down than the tractor when it had stopped we were approaching it now almost head on – and the two men fell out fighting and struggling furiously. We could see now why Levin had been using his head – both hands were bound behind his back. It had been an act of desperate courage to attack Corazzini in the first place, but the old man wasn’t to get the reward he deserved for his selflessness: even as we came up to them Corazzini got his automatic clear and fired down point-blank at Solly Levin who was lying helplessly on his back but still gamely trying to get a leg lock on the bigger man. I was a split second too late in getting there, even as I crashed into Corazzini and sent his automatic flying away to slide down the glacier, I knew I was too late, Solly Levin was a crumpled little blood-stained figure lying on the ice even before Corazzini’s gun went slithering over the edge of a crevasse. And then I felt myself being pushed to one side, and Johnny Zagero was staring down at the outspread stillness of the man huddled at his feet. For what seemed an eternity, but was probably no more than three seconds, he stood there without moving, then when he turned to Corazzini his face was empty of all expression.

It might have been a flash of fear, of realisation that he had come to the end of his road that I saw in Corazzini’s eyes, but I could never swear to it, the turn of his head, the sudden headlong dash for the shelter of the ice-covered moraine rocks by the side of the glacier, ten yards away, were so swift that I could be certain of nothing. But swift as he was, Zagero was even swifter: he caught Corazzini before he had covered four yards and they crashed to the glacier together, clawing, punching and kicking in the grim desperate silence of men who know that the winner’s prize is his life.

‘Drop that gun!’ I whirled round at the sound of the voice behind me, but all I could see at first was the white strained face of Margaret Ross, the brown eyes dulled with sickness and fear. Involuntarily I brought up the rifle in my hands.

‘Drop it!’ Smallwood’s voice was curt, deadly, his face barely visible behind Margaret’s shoulder as he peered out through the canvas screen at the rear of the tractor cabin. He was completely shielded by her body – it was typical of the man’s cunning, his ice-cold calculation that he should have waited until our attention was completely distracted before making his move. ‘And your friend. Quickly now!’

I hesitated, glanced at Hillcrest – the only other man with a weapon – to see how he was placed, then jerked my head back again as there came a sudden plop from the silenced automatic and a sharp cry of pain from Margaret. She was clutching her left arm just below the elbow.

‘Quickly, I said! The next one goes through her shoulder.’ His voice was soft with menace, his face implacable. Not for a moment did I doubt that he would do exactly as he said: the clatter of Hillcrest’s rifle and mine falling on the ice came in the same instant.

‘Now kick them over the edge of that crevasse.’

We did as he said and stood there powerless to do anything except watch the savage, mauling fight on the glacier. Neither man had regained his feet since the struggle had begun, the ice was too slippery for that, and still they rolled over and over first one on top, now the other. Both were powerful men, but Zagero was severely handicapped by the exhaustion of the terrible night’s march that lay behind him, by his crippled useless hands, by thickly-swathed bandages over his hands that not only prevented him from catching or holding Corazzini but softened the impact of every blow he struck. For all that, there was no question how the battle was going: those broken hands I’d said would never fight again were clubbing and hammering the life out of Corazzini. I thought of the tremendous force with which I’d seen Zagero strike a blow only the previous morning and felt a momentary flash of pity for Corazzini: then I remembered he was just as Smallwood was, that Smallwood was prepared to kill Margaret with as little compunction as he would snuff out the life of a fly, I looked at the crumpled figure at my feet and every shadow of pity vanished as if it had never been.

Smallwood, his eyes unblinking, his face expressionless as ever, had his gun on them all the time, waiting for that second when the two men would break far enough apart to give him a clear sight of Zagero. But, now, Zagero was underneath nearly all the time, one arm crooked round Corazzini’s neck while the other delivered a murderous series of short-arm jabs, each one drawing a grunting gasp of agony from a white-faced Corazzini: finally, goaded into supreme effort by panic and fear, Corazzini managed to break loose and hurled himself not towards Smallwood, where safety lay, but for the shelter of the moraine rocks, where he would never know safety again. Zagero, cat-like as ever, was only feet behind him, moving so fast, so unexpectedly that Smallwood’s swift snapshot missed him altogether.

‘Call your friend Nielsen.’ Smallwood must have realised how things were going behind the concealing shelter of the rocks for his voice was suddenly savage, urgent. He spared a swift glance in Jackstraw’s direction – Jackstraw, followed at some distance by two more of Hillcrest’s crew, was crossing the glacier at a dead run and now less than fifty yards away. ‘His rifle. In a crevasse. Quickly!’

‘Jackstraw!’ My voice was hoarse, cracked. ‘Throw your rifle away! He’s got a gun on Miss Ross, and he’s going to kill her.’ Jackstraw braked, slipped on the ice, halted and stood there for a moment irresolute, and then at my repeated desperate cry carefully, deliberately dropped his rifle into a nearby fissure and came slowly on to join us. It was at that moment that Hillcrest grabbed me by the arm.

‘He’s moving, Mason! He’s alive!’ He was pointing down to Levin, who was indeed stirring slightly. I had never thought to examine Levin, it had seemed a ludicrous idea that a professional like Corazzini could have missed at such point-blank range, but now, regardless of Smallwood’s reaction, I dropped to my knees on the glacier and put my face close to Levin’s. Hillcrest was right. The breathing was shallow, but breathing there undoubtedly was, and now I could see the thin red line that extended from the temple almost to the back of the head. I rose to my feet.

‘Creased, concussed probably, that’s all.’ Involuntarily I glanced over my shoulder towards the rocks. ‘But too late now for Corazzini.’

And I needed no eyes to know that this was so. The unseen battle behind the rocks had been fought out with a dumb feral ferocity, with a silent savagery that had been far more frightening than all the most maddened oaths and shouting could ever have been, but even now, as Smallwood jumped down from the tailboard of the tractor cabin, Margaret Ross still held in front of him, and started hustling her towards the rocks, a hoarse high-pitched scream that raised the hackles on the back of my neck froze us all, even Smallwood, to immobility: and then came a long quavering moan of agony, cut off as abruptly as it had begun. And now there was no more screaming or moaning, no more slipping of feet on ice, no more gasping or frenzied flurries bespeaking the interchange of desperate blows: there was only silence, a silence chillingly broken by regular rhythmic pounding blows like the stamping feet of a pile-driver.

Smallwood had recovered, had just reached the rocks when Zagero came out to meet him face to face. Smallwood moved to one side, his gun covering him, as Zagero came slowly towards us, his face cut and bruised, his blood-saturated bandaged hands hanging by his sides, with two long ribbons of red-stained bandage trailing on the ice behind him.

‘Finished?’ I asked.