Under the Ice

As he passed by the poker players. Jack lightly greeted the four pure-bred Inuits who made up the game.

“Who’s got all the luck this afternoon, gentlemen?”

“Corporal Eviki as usual,” returned the mustached soldier seated closest to Redmond.

“I still say he deals off the bottom.”

The longhaired Ranger seated opposite this individual shot back forcefully.

“Watch your tongue. Private.

Before you accuse a man of cheating, you’d better make certain to have the evidence!”

Quick to sense the start of trouble, Redmond intervened.

“Now that’s enough out of both of you! Either cool it right now, or kiss those cards goodbye.”

“I was only making a joke,” offered the mustached private who’d made the initial accusation.

“What are you so damn sensitive about, Eviki?”

“You and your damn jokes,” reflected the longhaired corporal disgustedly.

“Someday one of your wisecracks is going to get you in real trouble.”

As the men turned back to their card game, Redmond continued on to the cabin’s rear. It was obvious that his men were frustrated and tired after their long day of air travel. An eighty-kilometer forced march over the ice in blizzard conditions would all too soon channel their frustration into a struggle for survival.

Of this fact Jack Redmond was certain.

The plane shook in a sudden pocket of turbulence, and Redmond was forced to reach out to one of the exposed ribs of the fuselage in order to steady himself.

More rough air was encountered, causing one of the snowmobiles to slip from its mount and lurch violently forward. Only the lightning-quick reaction of his sergeant-major kept the streamlined, fiberglass vehicle from breaking loose altogether and slamming into the seated card players.

“Let me give you a hand with that,” offered Redmond, as he hurriedly made his way over to his second-in-commands side.

Together they lifted up the tracked snowmobile and placed it back in it’s mount. Only when the vehicle was securely in place did the sergeant-major respond.

“We can’t afford to lose one of these snow cats especially if our search leads us onto the pack ice.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to do just that,” returned Redmond.

“I just came back from the flight deck, and it appears we’ve got our first solid lead on the location of that cockpit voice recorder. A faint ultrasonic homing signal was picked up somewhere on the north face of the Brodeur Peninsula.”

“Excellent!” replied Cliff Ano.

“If the Aurora can get us in close enough, then we may not even have to use these damn machines.”

Jack Redmond shook his head.

“It’s not going to be so easy, my friend. Under normal circumstances the pilot could have done just that, but blizzard conditions have made such a landing impossible. In fact, we’ll be very fortunate even to make it to Arctic Bay.”

“So we’ll be going in from there,” observed the sergeant-major grimly.

“I should have expected such a thing all along.”

“Why the long face?” queried Redmond.

“If it was my birthplace we were headed for, I’d be thrilled.”

Cliff Ano heavily sighed.

“It’s apparent that you’ve never been to Arctic Bay, Lieutenant. Especially under the conditions in which I came into the world.”

The Inuit lowered his voice to a bare whisper and continued.

“It was a full year before I was conceived that my parents were moved up to Arctic Bay by the RCMP. Before that, my people lived near Rankin Inlet, on Hudson Bay. They were trappers, who had hunted in that area for many generations. Faced with the need of settling vast regions of unpopulated territory to the north, the government offered my mother, father, aunts, and uncles a chance to live in a virgin wilderness on Baffin Island. Since the beaver and muskrat that once flourished in Hudson Bay had been thinned to a point of extinction, my people agreed to a twelve-month trial stay in this new land.

“Little were they prepared for the type of existence that awaited them on Baffin Island. It was almost one thousand miles closer to the Pole than our ancestral lands, and the frigid climate of the island caused nothing but sickness and despair. The beaver and muskrat the government officials had promised they’d find here didn’t exist. They proved to be a lie fabricated by some insensitive bureaucrat in Ottawa. And when the supplies that had also been promised to them failed to materialize, my people had no choice but to learn to hunt new game such as the caribou and the seal. Such knowledge is not easy to come by. And in the many months it took them to master the skill of bringing down such game, many starved.

“When the year was up, the elders petitioned the RCMP to return them to the south. But the government had no intention of disrupting this vital settlement, and explained that such a thing would be impossible. Unable to get off the island themselves, my people were stuck in an alien, unfriendly place of long, bitter winters, and summer’s that passed like a fleeting dream. It was in such a land that I was born.”