Free Target 5 by Colin Forbes Page A

takes off along a runway which ends at the brink of a cliff; as Beaumont put it, 'When you see nothing ahead you'll go either up or down ...'
    At nine in the evening of Saturday, Washington time, Beaumont was ready to go, a feat of organization which was little short of miraculous. In the past sixteen hours he had flown from Washington to Thule; in pursuit of Tillotson he had flown to the Humboldt Glacier and back again; since then he had flown the breadth of Greenland to Curtis Field. And by nine in the evening' everything was ready - and Curtis Field knew that a whirlwind had hit them.
    'I need those two Sikorskys fully serviced, fully tanked up within two hours . . .'
    'Not possible,' Fuller, the airfield controller had snapped.
    'Put more men on the job! Do I have to phone Dawes in Washington? It's your damned emergency ...'
    The helicopters were ready to fly by 9.5 pm. A plane had flown out to check weather conditions near Target-5 - and came back to report no sign of fog. The two Eskimo-type sleds had been brought from Camp Century, had been packed with food, a powerful radio transceiver, rifles, ammunition - and an Elliott homing beacon.
    'What's that for?' Fuller had asked.
    'Insurance.'
    Beaumont's reply had been abrupt and totally non- informative. Restlessly, he had prowled round the hangar where icicles hung from the girders, poking his nose into everything, checking the controls of a Sikorsky, giving a hand with packing the sleds, frequently striding into the radio room to ask whether a message had come in from Washington. His energy, which seemed boundless, injected Urgency into the airfield staff, made them work twice as fast as normal: Had Col Igor Papanin been able to witness the performance it would have made him thoughtful.
    But Beaumont would never have achieved the impossible without the aid of the short, wiry, thirty- five-year-old American, Sam Grayson. It was Grayson who spent nerve-racking hours on the phone calling Thule, the huge American air base at the top of Baffin Bay. 'I want those dogs sent here now. No plane available? Only a Hercules just taking off for Point Barrow? Then drag yourself out of that armchair and stop it. Listen! If it takes off I'll get on to Dawes and have it turned round in mid-air ...'
    'Those dogs were due here one hour ago,' Beaumont rumbled behind him.
    Grayson twisted round in his seat. 'Keith, do you want them now or when they arrive?' he demanded.
    Beaumont grinned bleakly. 'Both - and sooner!'
    Most Arctic teams function in one of two ways. A British team has a leader and the rest do what he tells them to; other nationalities work differently - Americans and Nor wegians work democratically, they exchange opinions. Beaumont's three-man team was unique. As he put it with a dry smile, 'They do what I tell them because they know I'm right.' Grayson's version was different. 'In a crisis we follow Beaumont, then argue it afterwards.' Horst Langer's version was different again. 'We have three bosses - and it works. Don't ask me how!'
    Sam Grayson, brilliant navigator, marine biologist, and a first-rate marksman, came from Minneapolis. Before going with Beaumont and Langer on the epic Spitsbergen crossing he worked for the U S Geological Survey and the Lament Geological Observatory of Columbia University. An old Arctic hand, he assured his wife before each trip, 'Maybe this will be my last crack at the ice - could be I'm getting sick of it . . .' That was until the next trip came up.
    "The dogs just came in,' he informed Beaumont two hours after calling Thule.
    'Horst had better check them right away ..."
    Beaumont swung round as the third member of the team, Horst Langer, came into the tiny room Grayson was using as his headquarters. 'The dogs are here - and what's that sinister bit of paper you're waving about?'
    'An urgent signal just came through from Dawes - we're to stand by ready for instant departure.'

    Because it was unprecedented the depression caught all the met