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  ‘Up the ladder,’ snapped the armed man.

  Cody reached out and managed to grasp hold of the rope ladder. He dragged himself up the ship’s hull and clambered over the bulwarks onto the deck.

  Several men watched him in silence, but one was taller and more robust than the others as he stood forward to tower over Cody. He was dressed in a thick Arctic coat which was unzipped to reveal a barrel chest beneath layers of thick pullovers. A dense brown beard nestled beneath a hooked nose and cold blue eyes, his skin burnished to a leathery brown by the harsh caress of a thousand suns, and a gold crucifix dangled from a heavy chain at the base of his throat.

  The armed boatman leaped onto the deck behind Cody.

  ‘Stand over there,’ the man growled, and pointed with the rifle to the ship’s main mast.

  Cody obeyed as the tall, bearded man leaned over the bulwarks and shouted down to Cody’s companions in a booming voice that seemed to shudder through the ship’s hull.

  ‘Any of you make a move we don’t like you’ll get your friend here back in small pieces!’

  Cody stood near the mainmast, acutely aware of the men watching him with sullen and suspicious eyes. All of them appeared haggard. Cody realised that any voyage this far north into the pack ice would have taken its toll on even the hardiest souls. He counted seven men, all armed with a weapon of some kind.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  The question was fired at him as though from a shotgun as the bearded man turned away from the bulwarks and looked at him.

  ‘Cody.’

  ‘How many are you, Cody?’

  ‘Eight,’ Cody replied. ‘One injured, another missing right now.’

  ‘Eight?’ the big man snapped, ‘there’s only eight of you?’

  Cody nodded.

  A ripple of murmured Christ’s sakes drifted through the crew like a breeze. The big man looked down at Cody as though studying a small insect.

  ‘What about Alert, the airbase?’

  ‘Abandoned,’ Cody replied, ‘just before the storm.’

  ‘You know about the storm?’ the big man uttered.

  ‘We’re scientists,’ Cody replied, and made a play for sympathy. ‘The military pulled out in a real hurry, left us here.’

  The big man peered at him with interest for a moment but his scrutiny was interrupted by a curse from one of the crew behind him.

  ‘It’s a bust, Hank. This whole damned thing was pointless, I tol’ you so.’

  Hank straightened and turned to face his crew. ‘I didn’t hear any better ideas from you, Seth.’

  Seth was a short, wiry man with a straggly beard and a buzz cut who looked as though he’d just walked out of a maximum security prison wing. Purple tattoos stained his neck, the sinister tags of street gangs, and beneath one eye were two tattooed teardrops. Cody knew that they represented slayings, perhaps in prison.

  ‘I didn’t have one,’ Seth muttered. ‘But of all the places we could have gone, you dragged us into this hell hole.’

  Hank turned to look over his shoulder at Cody. ‘Have you been emitting any signals, anything at all?’

  ‘Distress beacons,’ Cody replied, ‘a few miles south of Alert.’

  Hank turned away and looked out over the barren, snow flecked tundra to the Winchester Mountains. Cody saw the crew glancing around them at the barren Arctic wilderness as though they already hated it with all their hearts. He realised that they looked gaunt, stricken with the same eternal hunger that plagued Cody’s companions on the ice below.

  ‘We didn’t think that anybody would come,’ Cody said. ‘That there was anybody left.’

  Hank nodded slowly but did not turn back to Cody as he replied.

  ‘There isn’t.’

  Cody felt a chill run down his spine and fear poisoned his guts as he stepped away from the mainmast.

  ‘I have a daughter,’ he said. ‘She’s three years old. Boston.’

  Hank’s big head slowly turned to look at Cody. The rest of the crew all appeared to avert their eyes from Cody’s as the captain responded.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Hank uttered.

  ‘No,’ Cody whispered. ‘They’re not gone.’

  Hank did not respond as he glanced down to the ice and the bedraggled group of survivors huddled together below them.

  ‘Saunders?’

  An older man with short grey hair and broad shoulders moved forward. ‘We can’t take them,’ he said.

  Cody gaze flicked across to Saunders. ‘You’d leave us here?’

  ‘We can barely feed ourselves,’ Saunders replied without rancour. ‘Another eight and we’ll all starve.’

  Hank remained silent, surveying the wilderness.

  ‘I said we shouldn’t have come out this far,’ Saunders informed his captain. ‘If there’s anybody left alive who can help us they’re not going to be broadcasting their presence, Hank.’

  Cody glanced at the crew and at the weather beaten ship. ‘You’re looking for somebody?’

  Saunders did not reply or even acknowledge that Cody had spoken, his eyes fixed upon the captain. Another crewman, a younger man with spiky hair and a deep scar across his left cheek, approached Hank’s side.

  ‘It’s time to finish this Hank,’ the man said. ‘There’s nothing left out there and chasing rainbows across the world is getting us nowhere. We need to….’

  Cody barely saw the blur of motion as Hank’s right arm flicked out and a big fist cracked across the spiky haired man’s face. The crewman staggered backwards and crashed onto the deck, holding his injured nose as he glared up at Hank.

  The glare melted away as the captain turned. ‘How about I leave you here, Denton, and take Cody with us instead?’

  Denton’s eyes snapped briefly to look at Cody. ‘He’d be useless aboard ship.’

  ‘Just like you once were,’ Hank growled. ‘Don’t forget where you came from boy, where I pulled you from. Question me again and I’ll put you right back there.’

  Hank turned to face Cody again. ‘Does the base have supplies and equipment?’

  ‘They cleared out all the food,’ Cody replied, ‘got a few working vehicles, plenty of diesel fuel, some medical supplies and a radio set.’

  Hank nodded thoughtfully. His crew watched in sullen silence and Cody realised that the captain could only control such men with an iron hand: most looked like they would cut their own mother’s throat for the right price. Denton dragged himself to his feet, blood dripping from his nose and a hateful gaze cast in Cody’s direction.

  Saunders stepped forward, unafraid of the big captain.

  ‘What are you thinking? Clear them out and turn back?’

  Hank turned and looked at Cody but he replied to Saunders.

  ‘The spring thaw is under way,’ he said. ‘We can break free of the ice within a week or two at the most.’

  ‘You know it’s never going to be that easy,’ Seth almost laughed from behind. ‘We don’t have room for these clowns. Cut them loose and let’s get the hell out of here.’

  ‘I agree,’ said another of the crew, a tall and muscular black man, ‘head for goddamned Hawaii.’

  ‘Nobody would have come up here to hide,’ said another. ‘They’ll have gone somewhere warm for Christ’s sake.’

  Hank stared at Cody throughout the exchange as though sizing him up. It was all Cody could do to meet the big man’s gaze. The crew watched as Hank paced forward until he towered over Cody.

  ‘I take you with us you’ll work your place aboard the ship, understood?’

  ‘We will,’ Cody assured him.

  ‘There is no we,’ Hank uttered. ‘You just got lucky. You got the balls to walk up here with a gun in your face you’ve got a berth aboard my ship. But we’ve got no room for your friends.’

  Images of Cody’s daughter flashed through his mind and he felt a painful tugging at his stomach. Cody held the captain’s gaze and shook his head.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

&
nbsp; ‘What do you mean you can’t do that?’ Hank growled.

  ‘They wouldn’t leave me behind,’ Cody replied. ‘I won’t leave them.’

  Hank scrutinised Cody further as Denton’s wounded voice reached them.

  ‘We don’t need ‘em.’

  The captain turned away from Cody as he looked at his crew. ‘I’ve got one man here who has a family in Boston yet who won’t abandon his friends, and a crew who would cut them loose without even giving them a chance. You tell me: who are the people who would serve me best aboard this ship?’

  Saunders’ harsh whisper cut through the cold air.

  ‘It’s not about who stays or who goes, Hank. It’s about how we damned well feed ourselves. We don’t have room for eight passengers.’

  Cody took a chance and stepped up.

  ‘You wouldn’t need to accommodate us for long,’ he said. ‘We only need to get out of the Arctic to somewhere we actually have a chance of surviving. Up here, we won’t make it through another winter.’

  Hank looked at Cody. ‘You said one of your group is missing and another sick?’

  Cody nodded.

  ‘Then it’s decided,’ Hank shot back at Saunders. ‘It’s seven people, and one of them might not make it. We get extra supplies from the base and in return these people sail with us.’

  Saunders looked away from his captain in despair. The crew stared down at their boots. Cody watched as Hank’s voice boomed orders across the deck.

  ‘Open the deck hatches!’

  As the crew scattered miserably to perform their duties Hank turned to Cody.

  ‘Get your people to load up anything of use aboard that vehicle of yours and get it here. We leave at first light tomorrow morning.’

  ***

  15

  Week 25

  My dearest Maria,

  I can scarcely contain my excitement: our saviours have arrived! A private vessel, the Phoenix, arrived this morning at Alert and we have negotiated, for want of a better word, a passage south. We have just finished loading our stores aboard the ship and I write this now in Polaris Hall. It is the last time I shall sit here.

  The Phoenix’s captain is Hank Mears. He appears an uncompromising man commanding an unsavoury crew but they represent our only hope of escape. Everybody is overjoyed at our sudden good fortune, but that joy is tempered by Bobby’s deteriorating condition and Bradley’s ill-timed decision to strike out on his own. If he fails to return by sunrise he will surely perish alone.

  Hank Mears and his crew cannot be drawn on what has happened to the outside world. They seem intent only on loading supplies and escaping from the Arctic, for which I cannot blame them. I will pack the radios from Alert to take with us along with the distress beacons, and hope against hope that somehow you have survived these long months and that you and your mother remain well.

  No matter what happens, I will never forgive myself for running away from you both. It brings me more pain than I can describe to know that had I remained I might even now be holding you both in my arms.

  Hopefully, I will now travel closer to you both with each passing day.

  *

  A hefty, rhythmic thud jerked Cody awake. Several moments passed as he tried to remember where he was. He blinked, struggled out of his bunk and opened the door to his tiny cabin aboard the Phoenix.

  Saunders stood before him in the passage outside. A small battery powered lantern in his hand illuminated the Phoenix’s darkened ‘tween deck corridors.

  ‘First light,’ Saunders snapped. ‘Be on deck in ten minutes, understood?’

  Saunders turned away and strode down the corridor to the next berth before Cody could respond. Cody hauled on his clothes in the cold darkness, wondering whether the crew had any coffee aboard. He fumbled his way down the shadowy corridor and clambered up a ladder, seeing weak light filtering ahead through from the skylights in the ‘tween decks.

  The schooner was some forty metres long and according to Jake a replica of a nineteenth century Baltimore vessel, with fore and aft deck houses that stood proud of the main deck. Her three masts were raked back slightly toward the stern, and Cody figured that in full flight they carried a tremendous volume of canvas that would give the Phoenix a swift turn of speed on the open ocean.

  Below the main deck was the ‘tween decks, as Saunders had referred to them in a manner that befitted the Napoleonic atmosphere their new life aboard the ship had taken. A crew room in the centre, with its skylights, was just aft of a galley, which in turn led on to the ship’s bow and the ‘heads, as the latrines were known. To the stern were the berths, then the dining room, and at the very rear of the ship were the mate’s and captain’s quarters. Wooden steps led down below the ‘tween decks to the ship’s hold, which was also accessible through the main deck’s skylights and a large hatch in the crew room when loading stores from ashore.

  The sky was a deep blue outside the crew room as Cody passed through, the panes of the skylight encrusted with geometric spirals and stars of frost. Cody climbed the steps at the stern of the room and walked out onto the main deck into the bitter cold, shut the hatch behind him and hurried aft toward the wheelhouse. Behind him, forward of the main mast, was the fore deckhouse, which held stores and a workbench to repair the ship’s enormous canvas sails.

  A warm yellow glow permeated the aft deckhouse, which was enclosed against the bitter cold. Cody hurried inside and closed the door behind him.

  Heat billowed from vents in the deck, powered by a generator that Cody could hear rumbling somewhere below. Captain Mears stood at a table near the wheel, pouring over a map of the Lincoln Sea that was illuminated by a lamp. Cody glanced at the heaters and lights curiously.

  ‘How come all your systems weren’t shorted out by the storm?’ he asked.

  Hank Mears did not look up from the map as he worked.

  ‘Sheer luck,’ he said. ‘We were trailing a sonar buoy at the time, listening to whale-song of all things, which effectively earthed the ship. We lost a few systems, lights and so on but managed to shut others down when we realised what was happening. You don’t often see aurora off San Diego.’

  Jake McDermott stood on the opposite side of the bridge, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and another held out toward Cody.

  ‘A quarter-spoon and no sugar or milk,’ Jake said, ‘house rules.’

  Cody grabbed the cup and gratefully down the hot coffee as he spoke to Hank.

  ‘How’s Bobby doing?’

  ‘Alive,’ Hank replied without looking up. ‘But he’s in a bad way and we don’t have any medicines aboard. There’s nothing that we can do for him.’

  Cody nodded, suspecting already that Bobby could not possibly now defeat the infection raging through his bloodstream.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ Hank asked.

  Cody blinked, surprised at the captain’s apparent interest in his comfort. ‘Well, thanks.’

  ‘Good, because it’s the last decent night’s sleep you’ll be getting for a while,’ Hank uttered as he stood up from the map. ‘It gets rough down through Baffin Bay and we’ll be dodging icebergs all the way there. The Phoenix is no ice-breaker. It’s only her manoeuvrability that got us this far north.’

  ‘And the ice melt,’ Jake agreed. ‘I never thought I’d be grateful for climate change.’

  ‘It’s still a hard voyage,’ Hank said. ‘We’ll be moving with the current instead of against it, which will help, but there’ll be a twenty-four hour watch throughout the trip until we’re well clear of the ice. One wrong step and the hull could be crushed like an egg shell.’

  Jake looked at Hank for a moment.

  ‘What brought you all the way up here?’ he asked. ‘Surely not just our distress beacons?’

  Hank did not reply. Instead, he folded the map and gestured to the bridge door.

  ‘You’re both up for duty,’ he said. ‘Saunders will assign you your tasks.’

  Cody set his mug down alongside Jake’s and they bot
h ventured out onto the deck.

  The Phoenix still lay at anchor in the clear water channel that hugged the coast of Ellesmere Island. Nearby, the pack ice crunched and rumbled as it drifted past, chunks the size of boulders floating in the frigid sea. Stars twinkled above in the dawn sky and Cody could see that the ship’s bulwarks and rigging were encrusted with frost and thick icicles, like transparent bayonets hanging from the thick ropes.

  ‘Ryan, over here.’

  Cody looked up to see Saunders waving him over. Cody joined him at the foredeck. Saunders handed Cody a small hand axe.

  ‘Ice,’ he uttered. ‘Remove it.’

  ‘From the whole Arctic?’

  ‘I’ll do the gags,’ Saunders replied with a brittle grin. ‘Clear it from the rigging and sweep it from the decks wherever you find it. I don’t want anybody breaking a leg.’

  Cody got to work as Jake was detailed to perform the same tasks on the port side of the deck. The menial work did nothing to dampen Cody’s mounting excitement at the prospect of finally leaving this awful place. He hacked away at chunks of ice on the bulwarks and watched them tumble into the black water below as though he were cleansing himself of the grinding helplessness that had burdened him for so many long months.

  Captain Hank Mears had assigned Charlotte and Bethany to cookhouse duties, a sexist decision but not one that either of the women opposed. Cody wondered if the captain had more than just his own prejudices in mind when he had ordered them below decks. More than once Cody noticed members of the crew cast lingering glances at the two women, and it quickly crossed his mind that they were tough men who had been at sea for months with nothing but their own company.

  Reece Cain found himself being trained to handle the rigging along with Sauri in preparation for their departure, the Inuit taking to his assignment with customary silent zeal. Cody noticed Jake keeping a close eye on Reece as he worked, no doubt suspicious of his every move. By the time the sun had cast its first brilliant rays across the flawless blue sky the captain bellowed his orders.

  ‘Stern anchor, away!’

  Saunders seconded the order, and as Cody looked up from his work he saw Denton alongside a hugely muscular crewman named Taylor. The two men heaved on a locking lever and released a small anchor that crashed into the water behind the ship, the chain rattling out for several seconds before it fell silent.