The Reluctant Warrior Read Free Page B

turn was heading towards him. He eventually got close enough to recognize the team member was Jonathon. “Have you spotted any of the others?” he hollered.
    “No,” Jonathon shouted back. “They could be miles away.” He waited until he was within easy speaking distance before continuing. “The thing is,” and Jed was close enough now to see the fear in his friends eyes, “they’ve got the G.P.S., so unless we find them soon there’s no way out of this predicament.”
    Jed turned it over in his mind, without the G.P.S. they were definitely doomed. Pulling out his compass he was disappointed to see no reading, it had gone haywire, so they had obviously reached a point beyond the pole where no instrument other than the G.P.S. would give a true reading.
    Jonathon had been watching him hopefully, “any good?”
    “It’s not giving a reading,” Jed said quietly.
    Jonathon seated himself on his sled. “That blizzard could have blown us anywhere. For all we know we may have just gone around in a big circle.”
    Jed shook his head. “I checked the compass just before the blizzard struck and it was working fine. If we’d gone around in a circle it should still be giving us a reading.” He slipped the offending instrument back into his jacket pocket. “We’ve been blown any number of miles into the interior.”
    Jonathon was unusually subdued, his normally cocky character having chosen to desert him on this occasion. “Well that’s it then,” he said in an air of defeat, “we’re going to die out here.”
    Jed sat down on his sled in imitation of his friend. “I’ll grant you that things aren’t looking too good, but I’m not about to roll over and die yet.”
    “So what are we going to do?”
    “We’ve got enough food to last us three weeks if we go easy on it. If we just keep moving we might be able to walk away from this one.”
    Jonathon stared out at him from behind cynical eyes. “Who’re you trying to kid?”
    “Look,” Jed wasn’t about to accept any defeatism, not this early on in the piece at any rate, “if we’re going to have any chance at all we have to remain optimistic. Otherwise we’re…”
    Jonathon suddenly sat bolt upright. “Did you hear that?”
    “Hear what?”
    Jonathon craned his head forward. “Listen.”
    As Jed sat perfectly still and listened a faint sound came drifting across the ice towards them. “Someone’s calling,” he said excitedly.
    Jonathon pointed off into the distance. “It’s coming from that direction.” Taking off his sunglasses he squinted against the glare from the ice. “I can just make out someone on the horizon.”
    Jed eased his aching body up into a standing position. “We’d better get ourselves over there and check out who it is. Might be Steve,” he said hopefully, “he’s the one Rex gave the G.P.S. to.”
    As they trudged wearily towards the distant speck they silently prayed that the as yet unknown team member would be the one holding their only ticket out of this icy graveyard.
    “It’s Rex,” Jonathon said glumly, as soon as he was close enough to make a positive identification.
    “No sign of the others,” Rex said with resignation when they had joined him. “They must have had too big a head start on us when that blizzard hit.”
    “So what do you want to do now?” Jed asked calmly.
    “Jonathon’s the one with all the experience in polar regions,” Rex said sarcastically. “He’s the one you should be directing that question to.”
    A look of panic invaded Jonathon’s usually fun-loving eyes. “I’ve never been in this position before,” he half pleaded. “I don’t know what to do.”
    “So much for you being the experienced one,” Rex answered caustically. “The reason you were brought along in the first place was because you’re supposed to know all about survival out here.”
    “I’m not a miracle man. I can’t be expected to get us out of a situation where we’ve got no idea where we