Carefully he tried to wriggle out from under the huge creature, only to find himself held fast by his trapped right arm. Dieter tried to move it; he couldn't feel his arm at all anywhere below his shoulder. Nevertheless, it did move; he could feel it slide down toward his back by a couple of inches. Not broken, he thought with relief. Not frozen solid either. Just a pinch on the nerve, blood still circulating.
He managed to slide it down until it struck the seal beneath him; once there, he was stuck again. The flesh of the dead seal on top of him had molded itself around his arm and then hardened, giving him no leeway. The one beneath formed a solid floor that might as well have been oak. Sucking in his breath to make himself smaller was not in the equation at the moment.
Interesting problem, he thought. He got his left hand underneath the seal's chin and lifted; a fraction of an inch might be all he needed to get tree. But his ribs quickly, and loudly, protested. He stopped; it had been a faint hope anyway. If all he'd had to do was break its spine it might have been possible, but getting this thing moved would require breaking its whole body.
Even in my younger days— without broken ribs— I doubt I could have done it.
He'd been lucky about the ribs; they might be broken, but they hadn't pierced any important organs. He'd better make sure they hadn't. Every muscle in your gut and upper body pulled on the spine and breastbone, and the ribs were what joined those.
Dieter bent his left leg and began sliding his booted foot toward his free hand.
He reached for the knife in his boot sheath, straining toward it despite the grating protest from his ribs. Definitely more than one, but only on one side. Almost
more than the pain he hated the sensation of wrongness in his body.
His fingertips brushed the hilt, but he had to stop and get his breath. Grasping his pant leg to prevent his foot from sliding out of reach, he allowed himself to relax. Not easy to do in this slightly curled posture, where he felt his ribs separate with every painful breath.
Realizing that he wasn't going to get any rest until this was finished, he walked his hand back toward his boot, trying to pull his leg closer with every move.
Dieter pulled until the tendons in his knee protested, then pulled some more.
Finally he gritted his teeth, then lunged, to be rewarded by possession of the knife's hilt and a pain so sharp from his side that he almost grayed out.
But he held on, to both his consciousness and the knife. Closing his eyes, he took a series of long, slow breaths to calm the pain and get himself in the zone. Then he started carving at his prison.
After what seemed like eternity in a freezing, white hell, Dieter flung himself up onto the hard surface at the top of the crevasse. Then he pulled himself into fetal position to conserve body heat and rested. Don't rest too long, he warned himself. Too long being a very short time here. Wincing, von Rossbach pushed himself into a sitting position. Some of his senses seemed to have shut down—
smell, for example, though that might just be the cold. The world seemed to be very far away, seen through a thick plate of clear glass. At least the blizzard had stopped. If it had still been snowing, things would be even more desperate. He thanked God for great favors.
He checked the time and date. Early afternoon, day after I acted like a complete
dummkopf and left the tent alone. He knew better than to do a thing like that and had paid dearly for the mistake. Dieter struggled to his feet and after a moment's dizziness felt better for it. Without the weight of a full-grown seal crushing his body, his ribs didn't hurt nearly as much. Looking around, he saw that someone else might have paid for his mistake.
There was a mound of bloodied snow near where he'd crawled out of the rift, and following the blood trail with his eyes led him to the imprint of the snowmobile.
As he looked over the marks in the snow, he decided that John must have fallen into the crevasse and that Wendy, clever girl, had used the snowmobile to pull him out. Von Rossbach leaned over the edge cautiously to find another seal, this one broken on the same massive blocks of ice that had sheltered him.
Dieter sincerely hoped that the blood belonged to the animal, because there seemed to be quite a lot of it. Turning away, he followed the snowmobile's tracks back to their campsite and wasn't really surprised to find John and Wendy gone.
They'd naturally assumed that he was dead and had continued the mission without him. Which was entirely reasonable, especially given John's training, but not a very welcome discovery. A man on foot without supplies was at a distinct disadvantage here, even if it was just a short walk to shelter.
He looked into the distance. Yes… the rock ridge was unmistakable; even a storm wouldn't recarve the surface ice that much in so short a time.
That's the direction. So I'd better get going before the weather changes again.
Traveling on foot was going to be bad enough without risking another sudden storm. Though the sky seemed clear enough now. Perhaps it was the ribs, but he felt pessimistic.
With a grimace of distaste he pulled a chunk of seal blubber out of his pocket and, lifting his balaclava, worried off a piece with strong white teeth. Then he returned the bloody lump to its place. He chewed thoughtfully as he walked. Seal blubber was awful stuff, tasting like fishy lard with a slightly more solid texture.
But it was high energy and would keep him going as long as anything that came out of a nutritional lab.
Talk about cold comfort.
Clea lay on her cot, going over and over the corridors and the labs and the offices of the complex through the eyes of the security cameras, and found herself very close to being bored. Where are the cameras that watch Tricker?
she wondered. And those that watched the perimeter of the base, where were they? Every other inch of the base was wired, why not the sheds?
Lab after lab flicked by and then the deserted offices. But there were omissions in what she was seeing. There were fifty-seven separate labs or offices on view.
But the cameras in the base's various corridors showed sixty doors.
Missing was some sort of security center, where the monitors would be and the recording equipment. Perhaps an office or two that needed to remain secret.
Although, somewhat to her surprise, she'd located the office of the base commander quite easily. Clea would have expected a slightly higher level of security for such a sensitive area.
I'm blind here, she thought impatiently, sitting up. I need to find out what's in those unscanned rooms. That would take a little work, but it would be worth it.
She'd discovered earlier in the day that Tricker had locked down the elevator on
the top floor and the only other way to get from one floor to another was the emergency stairs, which were both freezing cold and guarded by alarmed doors.
Not even a challenge for such as she.
The next time the cameras went off she flashed down the corridor at her top speed and disabled the emergency door's alarm. Then she raced to the next level and disarmed the alarm on that level. With less than fifteen seconds left she reached the first mystery door, only to find it locked. She moved on to the second, also locked.
When the security cameras came back on she had stuffed herself into a narrow supply closet in someone's office. A minute could pass quite slowly under those circumstances and she had to force herself to remain still. She couldn't help thinking that it was extremely likely that Tricker was asleep, making it safe for her to roam around. After all, he was only human, he had to sleep sometime—for that matter, so did she. And yet it would be foolish to jeopardize the mission on that assumption, because being Tricker, he might also be looking right at her.