EDEN by Dean Crawford Page B

murmured as he pored over the map.
    ‘You want to trek five hundred clicks south and then jump on a boat?’ Bradley chortled and shook his head. ‘You don’t think that anybody with a working boat hasn’t already high-tailed it south?’
    Jake did not reply to Bradley and instead look over at Charlotte.
    ‘What’s the chances of us running the current south of Etah?’
    Charlotte raised her eyebrows in surprise as she moved closer to Jake and looked down at the map.
    ‘The current is strong beneath the ice in the Nares Strait, pretty much a steady southerly flow once it breaks free. If we could make Baffin Bay then we’d be clear all the way down to the Davis Strait and into the Labrador Sea. Full of icebergs obviously so treacherous all the way, but it’s a possibility.’
    Bethany joined them at the map. ‘Then what? Overland?’
    Jake shook his head.
    ‘Too slow. If we can ride the natural currents we could cover distance ten times faster than staying on land, and without using fuel. We’d have to stay out of Hudson Bay, hug the coast as much as possible, get to Newfoundland.’
    Bethany brightened. ‘A lot of native communities all the way down through there, people used to living off the land who might be able to get by without electricity.’
    Jake’s eyes were fixed on the map, but he watched from the periphery of his vision as Bradley Trent and Sauri exchanged a long glance. Jake rapped his knuckles down on Labrador.
    ‘From there, we can go wherever we want to.’ He drew a short breath. ‘If there’s anything left to see.’
    Bradley screwed the lid back on his flask and smiled at Jake.
    ‘Easy as that, huh? Two thousand miles across freezing terrain in the middle of winter with no fuel for warmth and unable to carry enough food. Sure, we could shoot stuff along the way but then how the hell do you cook it?’
    ‘You ever do anything but complain, Brad?’ Charlotte asked.
    ‘I keep it real,’ Bradley snapped back. ‘Sauri and I have had Arctic warfare training. We’re used to operating up here and I can tell you that your little plan won’t work. You already said it yourself: we can’t carry the resources we need to move that far.’
    ‘Staying here’s not an option,’ Charlotte pointed out. ‘We said that, too.’
    ‘Agreed,’ Bradley flashed her a grin, ‘but setting out in the hopes that we’ll find a boat that’s just right, that the owner decided to leave up here instead of taking it south, is tantamount to suicide.’
    ‘So is staying here,’ Bethany retorted. ‘Jesus, Brad, the moment the ice clears enough for me to see the ground I want to be out of here.’
    ‘How far could we make it per day using the snowmobiles?’ Charlotte asked Bradley.
    ‘Not far enough,’ the soldier replied. ‘Nowhere near.’
    ‘And the BV’s were taken away when the military left?’ Bethany asked.
    ‘We saw them loaded up,’ Jake replied for Bradley.
    Charlotte stared into space for a few moments and then her eyes met Bradley’s.
    ‘There were only four airplanes that came in,’ she said.
    ‘And the BV’s are too big to get more than one aboard each plane,’ Bradley replied.
    Bradley turned and grabbed his jacket. As one, the entire team tumbled out into the bitter darkness and marched across the solid ice to one of the big warehouses. It took Bradley a few moments to find the right key and get it into the lock of a side door.
    Bradley turned the lock and tried the door. Nothing. He stood back and slammed hit boot against the door and it cracked open with a spray of ice chips. The team followed him inside, and as his flashlight sliced into the deep darkness it reflected off the yellow metal bodies of two large Bandvagns parked inside the building.
    ‘I’ll be damned,’ Jake said as they all stared at the tracked vehicles.
    ‘Could we get one of them to Eureka?’ Charlotte asked. ‘How far could they travel in a day?’
    Bradley looked at her for a moment. Any retort on