Chapter 62
Arctic
Sharpe’s head was down, his shoulders forward.
He was putting maximum effort into every step.
For hours now, he had been lugging the folding stretcher on his back like some sort of Arctic sherpa.
He’d easily been able to strap it on his back, but it was heavy and seemed to have a penchant for picking up snow and ice, increasing its weight.
He’d already stopped twice to knock off the worst of it, but it was becoming a regular chore.
And Sharpe didn’t like stopping, because that slowed him down.
The twin tracks he was following were getting less clear, and he was all too aware of what would happen if he lost his bead on Kasey and Chen’s trail.
Put simply, he would be screwed.
A muted sound registered above the sound of his crunching footsteps.
He couldn’t source the direction, but when he looked up, he immediately saw twin dark shapes in the distance.
Human shapes. Sharpe stopped and his spirits soared.
It was Kasey and Chen. They had stopped and were looking back at him.
His elation was cut instantly when he saw a muzzle flash.
Before he could even react, the report of the gunshot echoed across the ice.
He dropped to the ground sensing that a round had just whizzed past his head.
His face smacked into the snow and he wondered, for an instant, why the hell Kasey was shooting at him.
Probably because she can’t recognize me at this distance and thinks I’m one of the Chinese or Russians coming to steal Sky Fire.
Then he heard the muted sound again. Finally, he realized that muted sound hadn’t come from in front of him, it had come from behind—a low, massive growl.
Sharpe whipped around and saw the enormous polar bear fifty feet behind him. It had gone sprawling onto the ice, but its momentum was in his direction. The beast had been charging him. The huge paws scrambled, and the monster got back on its feet. A bloodstain was clear on its giant white shoulder.
The beast stood staring at him, panting. Tendrils of steam rose from his flared nostrils.
Sharpe pushed away an instinct to run. Instead, he stood up tall.
He shrugged the folding stretcher off his back, snapped it open to full length, and hoisted it over his head.
He wanted to appear as large as possible.
He began shouting, and with no particular message to give, he let loose a torrent of expletives.
The bear took a tentative step backward.
Sharpe yelled like a madman and waved the stretcher.
He looked over his shoulder and could barely distinguish Kasey. She had the rifle poised for another shot, but didn’t take it. Sharpe thought it was the right call. A second bullet, if it didn’t strike something vital, might only enrage the brute and cause him to charge again.
Whether it was the bullet, the shouting, or waving the stretcher, something seemed to work. The bear began backing away.
It moved slowly, sidestepping to keep Sharpe in sight—more caution in its posture than aggression.
Sharpe waited until the bear was at least a hundred yards away.
At that point he stopped shouting and very slowly lowered the stretcher.
He didn’t move until he had another hundred yards of separation.
He folded the stretcher, turned, and began walking toward Kasey and Chen.
He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly to make sure the bear didn’t change its mind.
KASEY KEPT THE Winchester ready all through Sharpe’s approach.
Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew it was him.
She recognized his somatic signature, his build and gait.
And who else would have come all this way lugging what appeared to be a folding stretcher?
If she wasn’t mistaken, one of the Russians had brought it to the crash site. Which is exactly what we need.
Sharpe had a knack for things like that.
Soon the polar bear was barely visible to the naked eye. Even so, Kasey kept tracking him with the scope.
As Sharpe neared, he said, “Thanks… I think.” He brushed snow off his jacket.
“Do you think you hit him?” Chen asked Kasey. The scientist had been silent through the entire event.
“She did,” Sharpe answered. “Right shoulder.”
“Will he come back?”
“Depends on how hungry he is.”
In any other situation, Kasey might have said something self-deprecating about her marksmanship.
But she was too tired, battling too many problems. “We know he’s in the area, so we need to keep an eye on him.
But the bear isn’t our biggest threat. The cold is what’s going to kill us.
” She looked at the stretcher. “I don’t know what impresses me more: the fact that you hauled that thing all the way here, or that you tracked us down from the crash site. ”
“I actually lost your trail twice. Had to go back and do a sawtooth pattern to pick it up again.”
“Clever.”
“I discovered that it helps to err to the north side out here when you’re trying to pick a trail back up. The footprints in snow stand out better in the reflection of the southern sun. I’m learning a lot about tracking over ice.”
“Amazing what you can do when your life depends on it.”
“Yeah. I probably didn’t think this through as well as I should have. It occurred to me after a couple of hours that if I didn’t catch up with you, I’d probably end up dead. I’ve got no comm, no way to navigate, and I doubt I could find my way back to the crash site.”
Kasey thought about that. The risks he’d taken to reach them were indeed immense. If the weather had turned, if new snow had obliterated their tracks, Sharpe would have died an agonizing death. But still he had kept coming.
“I think you knew exactly what you were getting into,” she said. “So thank you.”
He pulled down his gaiter and smiled, his ice-encrusted features conveying a genuine warmth.
He then said, “Can I ask where the heck you’re going?”
Kasey explained the new plan.
“A weather station?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know why anybody would bother. From what I’ve seen, there’s only one kind of weather here.”
“Don’t expect much when we arrive. From what we’ve been told, there’s nobody in residence and not much in the way of supplies. It’s just a shack of some kind.”
“How far away?”
“Four miles, assuming we can do it in a straight line.”
He regarded the lead, then took the stretcher off his back and unfolded it to full length. “Do you think it’s long enough to get us across?” he asked.
“Let’s hope,” Kasey said. “Because Chen and I were discussing the alternatives right before you showed up.”
“And what did you come up with?”
She reached for the stretcher. “You don’t want to know.”