VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 2330 GMT
The team had settled
down, some inside the two tracked vehicles, others alongside them,
to wait and see what would happen. No one dared make a move against
the soldiers or give them the slightest provocation to use their
rifles again. After the soldiers had halted the rescue team, they
had confiscated all communications equipment and conducted a
thorough search of both people and vehicles, until they were
confident that they had removed every flare, radio and mobile
phone, before withdrawing to their original position. They seemed
content to have impeded the team’s progress and simply stood next
to their snowmobiles, holding their ground and ensuring that the
Icelanders could not proceed.
Júlíus climbed into
the back of the second vehicle, taking care to sit beside a door.
After they had been waiting for some time he cautiously opened the
door and slid out. The stand-off had calmed down and he sensed that
their guards had relaxed. He lay for a long while in the snow
underneath the vehicle, not moving a muscle. The chill gradually
crept up his legs despite his thick ski-suit; his toes were
agonisingly cold, his hands growing dangerously numb. He would have
to move soon, if only to generate some warmth.
He heard the soldiers
talking but could not make out what they were saying. After about
ten minutes he crawled away from the vehicle, between two
snowmobiles and away into the darkness. When he believed he was
safe, he rose to his knees, peered behind him and saw that no one
had spotted his departure. Rising to his feet, he set off in a wide
detour around the soldiers, taking care to keep far enough away to
be hidden by the night.
He seethed with fury;
he was not going to let any bloody Yanks from the base threaten
him, search him and rob him, abuse and attack his friends, or ban
him from moving about in his own country. Besides, Kristín was
relying on him. If he could support her account of the army’s
activities on the glacier, he would at least have achieved
something. The shame and guilt of almost losing Elías burned in his
chest; it was too much to bear that Kristín might also be in
physical danger. Try as he might to rid his mind of these thoughts,
he was haunted by the prospect of being responsible for both
siblings coming to harm.
Soon the soldiers
were behind him and, driven by a mixture of anger and distress, he
broke into a run over the ice towards the glow which lit up the sky
about three kilometres away. He knew the Americans would be
monitoring the glacier closely and that he could expect soldiers to
appear out of the darkness at any moment to arrest him – maybe even
to use their weapons.
Júlíus was extremely
fit and covered the distance rapidly, the freezing air burning
invigoratingly in his lungs. At once, the flood of light ahead grew
brighter and he heard a roar approaching; from behind him,
helicopters swooped in and landed in the midst of the pool of
light. He heard the drone of the rotor-blades diminishing until all
was quiet again. Quickening his pace, he reached the margin of the
lit-up area. There he slowed down and finally threw himself panting
on the ice, before crawling the last stretch up a small rise which
afforded him a good view of the area.
He had not known what
to expect but what he saw was staggering. The two Pave Hawk
helicopters, the wreck of an old plane cut into halves which were
now being covered with tarpaulins. Soldiers swarming everywhere.
Tents. Equipment. It defied explanation. He noticed the helicopter
pilots being escorted to one of the tents and not long afterwards
saw a woman being taken into another tent. He had never set eyes on
Kristín, let alone the man who was roughly frogmarched in after
her, but it was clear that they were captives of the
soldiers.
At that moment he
heard the snow creak beside him and, turning, encountered a pair of
shiny, black boots. Following them upwards he discovered three men
aiming guns at him. Like the soldiers who had intercepted the
rescue team, they were wearing white camouflage, skiing goggles
obscuring their faces and scarves bound over their mouths to keep
out the cold.
Júlíus climbed warily
to his feet and, not knowing what else to do, raised his hands in
the air. The soldiers seemed content with this submission and,
without a word, gestured with their rifles towards the camp. They
had followed Júlíus from the moment he had appeared as a dot on
their radar screens, approaching the prohibited zone by
infinitesimal degrees.
All the way he made
desperate efforts to memorise what he saw. He noticed that the
soldiers were beginning to take down their tents and collect up
equipment and tools, as if their work on the glacier, whatever it
was, would soon be at an end.
On reaching the
ragged, makeshift encampment he was brought before another man.
This one was clearly an officer of some sort. There was no one else
in the tent. He stared at the Icelander as if he had come from
another planet, and it crossed Júlíus’s mind that this was not far
from the truth. When asked, he explained to the officer how he had
slipped away from his team and made his way here under cover of
darkness. He made sure to claim that there were other Icelanders in
the area, lying that his men had received a message from Reykjavík
before the soldiers had confiscated his team’s radios that other
rescue teams were at this moment on their way to the glacier,
together with the police and members of the Coast
Guard.
The officer listened,
nodding and went on asking his monotonous questions:
‘Has anyone else
escaped from the guards?’
‘No,’ Júlíus replied.
‘Is this an interrogation?’
‘Are you
sure?’
‘Why are you
interrogating me?’
‘Please answer the
question.’
‘I protest in the
strongest terms about your treatment of an Icelandic rescue team.
What on earth do you think you’re doing? Who are you?’
‘Are you alone?’ the
officer persisted, ignoring Júlíus’s outburst.
‘Don’t think this is
over. I’m looking forward to telling the press exactly what’s going
on here; how you’re jackbooting around in Icelandic territory,
putting Icelandic lives in danger.’
They heard a whine,
rising to a crescendo as one of the helicopters started
up.
‘Don’t move,’ the
officer ordered. He walked over to the door of the tent where he
saw Ratoff’s back disappearing into the helicopter. With an even
greater commotion, it gradually rose to hover thirty or forty feet
above the ice. The noise was deafening and the helicopter whipped
up so much snow that it could barely be seen. Below it, the
dangling thick steel cables tautened and soon the fuselage of the
old plane began to shift, inch by inch, off the ice, swinging in
the glare of the floodlights. Higher and higher it rose, the
helicopter then rotating itself westwards before setting off on its
course and slowly melting into the darkness. The other would be
minutes behind it.
When the officer
turned back into the tent he was met by nothing but a man-high slit
in the canvas wall. He leapt through it but Júlíus was nowhere to
be seen.
Júlíus was fairly
sure which tent he had seen Kristín being taken into and sprinted
over to it. Without a moment’s hesitation he slashed the canvas
from top to bottom and stepped through the opening. He was met by a
horrific scene. In the middle of the floor a man lay face down. One
of the tent’s walls had been spattered with blood and there was a
gaping hole in the back of the man’s head. A short way from him a
young woman was prone on the ice, apparently unconscious. His heart
lurched. Who else could these be but Kristín and
Steve?
Júlíus stooped over
Kristín’s slack body and slapped her cheek repeatedly. Her skin was
tinged with blue and cold to the touch. To his surprise, she opened
her eyes after a few seconds and stared at him. Quickly he forced
his hand over her mouth and laid his own face close to her
ear.
‘It’s Júlíus,’ he
said. ‘I’m alone.’