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Returning outside, head against a sudden shift of wind, Gronquist dashed around the hut to a small snow-covered shed that protected the project's two snowmobiles. He kicked away the ice that had formed around the bottom of the door and pulled it open. Inside, a small oil heater struggled with all the efficiency of a candle inside a freezer to keep the interior air twenty degre
es above the temperature outside. He tried the starter buttons, but the batteries were badly drained after months of hard use, and both engines balked at turning over. Cursing in vapored breaths, he removed his heavy gloves with his teeth and began yanking on the manual pull ropes. The engine on the first snowmobile caught on the fifth attempt, but the second played stubborn. Finally, after -two pulls (Gronquist counted them), the engine obstinately coughed to life.
He hitched the tongue of a large sled to the rear catch on the snowmobile whose engine had had extra time to warm up. He finished none too soon, as his fingers were beginning to Turn numb.
The others had already stacked the supplies and equipment outside the entryway to the hut when he rode up. Except for Gronquist, they were all bundled up in down-filled jumpsuits. The sled was loaded to the top of its sideboards in less than two minutes. Graham passed everyone a heavy-duty flashlight, and they were ready to set off.
"If they crashed through the ice," shouted Hoskins above the wind, "we might as well forget it."
"He's right," Graham shouted back. "They'd be dead from hypothemiia by now."
Lily's eyes turned hard behind her ski mask. "Pessimism never saved anybody. I suggest you big jocks get a move on."
Gronquist grabbed her by the waist and lifted her onto the snowmobile.
"Do what the lady says, boys. There're people dying out there."
He swung a leg over the seat in front of Lily and cracked the throttle as Hoskins and Graham raced for the idling snowmobile in the shed. The engine's exhaust purred and the rear tread gripped the snow. He cut a sharp U-Turn and took off toward the shore, the sled bouncing along behind.
They swept over the uneven ice-covered stones of the beach onto the frozen fjord. It was dangerous going. The beam from the single light mounted in front of the handgrips wavered over the ice pack in a crazy jumble of white flashes against black shadows, making it nearly impossible for Gronquist to see any pressure ridges until they were plowing up and over them like a lifeguard boat through heavy surf. And no amount of driving skill could prevent the heavily laden sled from veenng and seesawing in their wake.
Lily clasped her hands around Gronquist's great stomach in a death grip, her eyes closed, head buried against his shoulder. She yelled for him to slow down, but he ignored her. She turned and spied the bobbing light of the other snowmobile rapidly closing on their tail.
Without the drag of the sled, the overtaking vehicle, with Hoskins steering and Graham behind, quickly caught up and passed. Soon all Lily could see of the other two men was an indistinct blur of hunched figures through a trailing cloud of fine surface snow.
She felt Gronquist tense as a large metal object rose up out of the darkness at the far edge of the light's ray. Gronquist abruptly jammed the handgrips around to his left. The edges of the front skis dug into the ice and the snowmobile swerved away just one meter from striking a piece of the plane's shattered wing. He made a frantic attempt to straighten out, but the sudden twist of centrifugal force whipped the sled around like the tail of a maddened rattlesnake. The top-heavy sled went into a wild skid, jackknifed against the snowmobile and snapped the hitch. The tips of the runners dug in and it flipped upside down, scattering its load in the air like debris from an explosion.
Gronquist shouted something, but the words were cut off as the flat side of a runner unerringly caught him on the shoulder, knocking him off the snowmobile. He was thrown in a wide arc like a demolition ball about to smash a wall. The hood of his coat was jerked back and the ice rose up and struck his unprotected head.
Lily's arms were torn from around Gronquist's waist as he vanished into the darkness. She thought she might be thrown clear. The sled missed her, crashing to a stop a few meters away, but the snowmobile had other ideas. Without Gronquist's hands on the clutch lever and throttle, it came to a stop, teetering precariously at a forty-five-degree angle, engine popping at idle.
It hung there for a brief moment, and then slowly heeled over to one side, falling on Lily's legs from her hips down and pinning her helplessly against the ice sheet.
Hoskins and Graham were not immediately aware of the accident behind them, but they were about to run into a disaster of their own. After covering another two hundred meters, Graham turned, more out of curiosity than intuition, to check how far they had outdistanced Lily and Gronquist. He was surprised to see their light hewn far to the rear, stationary and pointing downward.
He pounded Hoskins's shoulder and shouted in his ear, "I think something's happened to the others."
It had been Hoskins's original intention to find the depression in the ice carved by the plane after it touched down and then follow it to the final crash site. His eyes were straining to penetrate the gloom beyond when Graham interrupted his concentration.
The words came indistinct over the growl of the snowmobile's exhaust. He twisted his head and shouted back at Graham.
"I can't hear you."
"Something's wrong."
Hoskins nodded in understanding and refocused his attention on the terrain ahead. The distraction was to cost them. Too late, he glimpsed one of the troughs gouged by the landing gear almost as he was on it.
The snowmobile flew over the two-meter opening in the ice and became airborne. The weight of the two riders forced the nose to dip down and it collided against the opposite wall with a sharp crack like the blast of a pistol. Fortunately for Hoskins and Graham, they were pitched over the edge and onto the ice surface, their bodies tumbling crazily as if they were cottonstuffed dolls thrown across a waxed floor.
Thirty seconds later a stunned Graham, moving like a ninety-year-old man, stiffly lifted himself to his hands and knees. He sat there dazed, not fully aware of how he got there. He heard a strange hissing sound and looked around.
Hoskins was sitting in an upright position, doubled up in agony with both hands tightly pressed against his groin. He was sucking and exhaling air through clenched teeth while rocking back and forth.
Graham removed his outer mitten and lightly touched his nose, It didn't feel broken, but blood was flowing from the nostrils, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. A series of stretches indicated all joints were still mobile, all limbs in place. Not too surprising, considering the heavy padding of his clothing. He crawled over to Hoskins, whose tortured hissing had become a string of mournful groans.
"What happened?" Graham asked, regreuing such a stupid question the instant he uttered it.
"We hit a gash furrowed in the ice by the aircraft," Hoskins managed between groans. "Jesus, I think I've been castrated."
