Before them was a long, low ridge that rose up off the glacier, churned ice and chunks of snow littering its banks. Veer could see as he jumped down off the ATV that the disturbance was recent and that the ski gliders had stopped nearby, their tracks in the snow clearly visible. The other ATVs switched off their engines and his men dismounted, already down from their original hundred to about eighty five. Three had still been alive after the SEALs had dumped the C4 charges out on the ice fields, badly injured and in need of urgent medical attention. General Veer had ensured that they received the best possible care during a time of such urgency by personally executing them where they lay. Now his men stood and watched him in silence as he clambered up the ridge line and peered down into the shadowy blue depths of the chasm below him. Rappel pins were still lodged in the rock hard ice, the lines descending down into the fissure and vanishing into the blackness far below. Several of Veer’s officers joined him on the edge of the ridge and peered down inside it.
