“Are the other rations good?” Pacino hadn’t partaken of any of the emergency food supplies. He hadn’t been hungry over the last day. Who could be, he thought, with this shitshow going on?
“So far, the other meals seem okay, but the chicken was over half of our rations.”
“So, we’re down below two days,” Pacino said. “Maybe we could use the bad chicken rations for a polar bear trap.”
“I’ve read about polar bear meat,” Seagraves said. “It’s said to have worms in the flesh that would infect humans, to the point of fatality, that resist cooking unless you burn the hell out of the meat.”
“Well-done bear meat, even if it’s shoe leather, is better than nothing, Captain,” Pacino said.
“That assumes you can get a fire started out here, and with this wind, even if you could get it lit, how would you keep it lit?”
“I’ll work on it, Captain. A wind break, something to burn, some fuel and a lighter. Something to use as a grill or a spit.”
Seagraves clapped Pacino on the shoulder. “Try not to freeze solid out here, Mr. Pacino. I haven’t had much sleep over the last five days, so I’m going to try to shut my eyes in the shelter, but if there’s anything unusual, call for me.”
“Only thing I can think of that would be worth disturbing you is if our good friend Mr. Polar Bear shows up,” Pacino said.
Seagraves smiled. “Have a good remainder of your watch, Mr. Pacino. I’ll send the relieving section out a half-hour early. I’m doubling up on this watch. We need one man to make sure the other doesn’t fall asleep and die in the snow.”
“Good night, sir,” Pacino said, deciding to try the infrared monocular and the night vision. It was no better than regular human vision, he decided. There was just nothing to see.
“Just a little while longer,” Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev said to Captain Second Rank Irina Trusov, who was falling behind the group of people hiking toward the east-northeast, where they’d seen the explosion.
“I’m tired, Captain Alexeyev,” Trusov said over the hurricane wind of the storm. “I’m losing strength.”
“Do you want me to carry you?” Alexeyev asked.
Trusov looked at him in horror. “Dear God,
Alexeyev laughed, putting his arm around Trusov to help her walk. “Come on, we’re almost there.”
“Captain! What is that!” Trusov pointed out in front of them.
Alexeyev looked up. It was a flashing light, a strobe light. Were they both hallucinating it?
He shouted to the crowd. “Does anyone know Morse code and English letters?”
Captain Third Rank Chernobrovin, the engineer of the
“What about ‘SOS,’ the international standard for distress?”
Chernobrovin nodded. “Yes, Captain, I know it.”
“Can you see the strobe?”
“I see it. Let me observe it for a moment.” Chernobrovin stared off into the distance. “There is definitely an SOS, but there are other letters I don’t know.”
“Let’s keep walking,” Alexeyev said. “Sergei, join me at the head of the column, we will need to approach the American camp carefully. No sense getting shot by a sentry.”
Pacino supervised as Chief Albanese emptied the tins of chicken entrees onto the ice about fifty feet away from the shelter and the distress strobe light.
“How’s this, Mr. Patch?”
“That should do it, Chief. Keep a weather eye out for polar bears, but if you see one, two to the central mass, then two to the head.”
“L.T., I’m going to empty the entire goddamned magazine into any polar bears happening by,” Albanese said. “But don’t you think they’re sheltering from this storm?”
“Even bears are too smart to be out in this storm,” Pacino said, but just in case, he pulled off his goggles and turned on the night vision, then put the infrared scope to his eye. “I’ll be dipped in shit,” he said in disbelief.
“Polar bear?” Albanese said, training his rifle the direction that Pacino had looked.
Pacino put his arm out to Albanese’s barrel, lowering it.
“It’s
Sonarman Chief Albanese bolted for the shelter as the column of people slowly approached. The lead figures looked like two tall men supporting a limping, smaller female.
The captain, XO and navigator hurried out of the shelter, then the other junior officers, until the driving curiosity brought out all the crew but for the three dozen who were still deathly ill from the food poisoning. The
Pacino looked to his right at the captain. “Do you want the helmet, sir?” The column of people was a hundred yards long, maybe fifty of them. Seagraves took the helmet from Pacino, put it on and adjusted the infrared and night vision scopes. “Can you get a count, Captain?”
“I think so. Looks like twenty-four or twenty-five.”
