Man on Ice

by Humphrey Hawksley

  ‘Can we do it from there?’ asked Rake. ‘We use the ice wall as cover?’

  Henry and Ondola shook their heads. ‘This whole side is exposed,’ said Henry.

  ‘Then we go here.’ Rake used a spike of ice to show the spot on Henry’s map where a cove would be. It was a third of a mile from the base. When growing up, they had played at trying to cross to Big Diomede undetected. This was the only place where intrusive rock formations blocked the lines of sight from the ridge watch towers. ‘Has anyone been caught here?’ Rake asked.

  Henry forgot his animosity for a moment as he looked at Ondola. Both men shrugged as if to say neither knew, which meant no one had. If they made it onto the tiny rock beach, they would be clear.

  ‘Then the Russians might not have it covered.’ Rake pointed to other landing spots to the south. ‘Here, here, and here people have been intercepted, and this is where Anik was caught. I reckon if the weather stays bad we have a chance of getting in undetected.’

  ‘I’ll be a decoy,’ said Joan. ‘Go to one of those places with a white flag. They won’t shoot.’

  Rake didn’t like it. After Ondola’s killing of the two snipers, the soldiers would be nervous and trigger-happy. ‘It’s too dangerous. Joan, you come with us as—’

  Rake was about to say more when they heard a dog’s howl. A quiet wind carried it towards them from the direction of the Russian base. At first it was soft, undulating, almost singing, but it became loud, a throbbing cry, piercing, cutting through the air. It stopped abruptly and Rake’s radio sprang to life. ‘Watch the sky, yellow Yankee coward. It’s my orders to cut my brother until he dies.’

  To the west, over the coastline of Big Diomede, a trail of glowing yellow sparks climbed into the sky. For a moment, Rake thought it was machine-gun tracer. But the trajectory was wrong and it kept climbing until, like a firework, it burst into a shower of green stars that lit up a large area beneath, before streaming away, extinguished by the wind.

  THIRTY-SIX

  On the ice between the Diomede islands

  Through the night’s blackness Rake found the cove that would lead them onto Big Diomede. He recognized it by rock formations that jutted out like a hanging roof from the cliffside making a canopy over the beach. Underneath, protection from the weather had created a fast running channel of water about four-feet wide between sea ice and the frozen shingle of the beach. They needed to jump the water to get onto the island.

  Outside the canopy, wind and cloud cut visibility to inches. There were no stars, no moon, no lights from the Russian base or from the village on Little Diomede. Ice leading to the channel was flat, scoured by months of battering by hailstones that stuck like barnacles to the surface. Spotting weak patches was near impossible.

  They had kept watch for Tuuq and got this far. In this weather, they might not see him until they collided. Or he could already be on the island, even on the base. For sure, Tuuq was still out there. Ondola stayed well behind, keeping vigilant watch. Henry moved forward, testing with a pole, until he reached the edge. He locked grip with his boot, braced himself, and jumped across. Rake pushed the sled to the channel. He unstrapped the rucksacks and one by one threw them across to Henry. Rake moved back, and Joan stepped past him to the same spot from where Henry had jumped. Henry held out his arms to bring her in.

  Suddenly, the sound of fracturing ice cut through the air. The surface cracked into a hairline fissure. Joan stayed stock-still. She knew the dangers. Any sudden thrust to jump would break the ice completely. The fissure widened. She shifted weight. More ice broke. Her foot caught in the crack and she stumbled, struggling to stay up. Rake moved towards her, gliding more than running, keeping his steps light and fast. He lifted Joan in time to keep her feet clear of the water. Her voice rasped on fast shallow breaths, telling him she was all right. He carried her back and lowered her down. She steadied herself, pointing to an area to the right that might be safe. Rake let her make the judgement. They had all been raised around rotten ice, taught how it could kill. Foot by foot, prodding around her, Joan tested the strength until she was confident enough to jump. Henry caught her as she landed. A few yards to the left, Rake identified a fresh safe patch for himself.

  As if from nowhere a break appeared in the scudding clouds and moonlight bathed the landscape. The wind dropped. It might only last seconds, but Rake signaled for everyone to stay still. He could see a light from the base. It was close, about three hundred meters. The plan was that Joan would stay outside the fence with a radio and a Russian phone. Rake would secure Carrie, which probably meant killing Vitruk. Only then he would report back and get orders. Henry would deal with Akna and the baby.

  Henry edged forward to help Rake cross the open channel. Rake locked his boot; the ice was a clear blue and he was certain it would hold. He was coiling himself for the jump when a formidable hold took him around the neck and threw him down hard. Hands gripped like a steel vice, pressing on his windpipe with enormous power. Green eyes bore down, vicious and cruel, the face that threatened him all those years back ago on the sled in Uelen, not the soldier with whom he had trained, but his half-blood brother with a dark empty hole of hatred inside him.

  ‘Bye bye, Yankee coward,’ Tuuq whispered, his breath on Rake’s face. Rake was pinned. Tuuq’s fingers closed tighter, draining him of strength. Tuuq’s expression was primordial, without conscience, a hunter whose quest was not food or skins. He could have shot Rake, but he needed to do it by hand. Nikita Tuuq killed in order to kill. Nothing else.

  Rake’s sight blurred, his thinking muddled. Tuuq’s face became his. He became the Russian soldier who pleaded with him there didn’t have to be a kill. Rake gave no mercy. Nor would Tuuq. Across the channel, Henry had his weapon raised, but with no clear shot. Where was Don Ondola? He must be dead, killed by Tuuq on his way in. A few yards away, snow lay in a broken jumbled heap where Tuuq had been hiding, covering himself, and Rake had missed it.

  How stupid they had been! They knew Tuuq was out here. He would remember the cove just as they did. He had come, and waited.

  Rake lifted his boot and crashed it down on the ice, lifted and crashed it again, and again. Tuuq kept his hold. If Rake succeeded and the ice broke, both he and Tuuq would disappear into freezing water. Their survival wouldn’t be more than a few seconds. But it would be a different kind of death and give a clear run for Henry and Joan to get to the base.

  The ice shattered, but not under them. Rake’s pounding impacted further along where a whole section gave way, splitting like an earthquake, creating a gaping hole, slabs listing into the water which spilled over and ran down towards them.

  Drawing on last reserves of energy, Rake pushed his chest high enough to smash his forehead against Tuuq’s skull, hitting him on the bridge of his nose, loosening the hold on his neck. Rake turned his body, freeing an arm to drive his fist into Tuuq’s crotch. In those hair-trigger seconds, it was the best Rake could do, and it wasn’t enough. Tuuq slashed his hand across Rake’s face, cutting his cheek. He got his fingers back around Rake’s throat, harder this time, more urgent, dispensing with the luxury of the long kill. Tuuq fought as if untouched, blood streaming down his face. Rake was suffocating. Strength failed him. His arm wouldn’t move. His leg couldn’t lift his boot. His muscles were gone. He felt no pain around his throat. His will was stripped away by the reality that an oxygen-starved brain would not function and soon he would die. Tuuq loomed, his head slanted back, waiting, his gaze intent through the goggles. He was the victor. Rake saw Carrie, face caked with soot from a bomb. Then she went and there was haze. Rake’s mind played memories. His brain was without oxygen. There was no road to the greater good. All that killing had been for nothing. Soldiers die; it was his turn now.

  A smile lit Tuuq’s eyes. He reared back and let out that dog howl, keeping up the cry as he leaned forward, gripping harder, squeezing, his voice surging and rolling louder and shriller next to Rake’s ear, that primeval wail of death that had haunted R
ake for so long. As he howled, Tuuq twisted Rake’s windpipe, kneading his fingers in the last act of killing.

  Then, suddenly, his hold broke.

  Ondola smashed a metal ice pole across Tuuq’s head, gashing his skull. Tuuq toppled. Ondola hit him again, slicing the pole up under his jaw. Rake rolled himself out as Tuuq pulled a knife and scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Go!’ shouted Ondola.

  Rake drew freezing air into his lungs, and pushed himself up. He stumbled, found his footing. Ondola, his own knife in hand, swung towards Tuuq’s face. Tuuq side-stepped and hurled himself forward, hands clasped together, knife held like an executioner, and used his power to bring it down with absolute force towards Ondola’s neck. Ondola shifted an inch. The blade sliced his cheek and Ondola crumpled under Tuuq’s weight. Rake started towards him.

  Henry’s voice. ‘Rake. Over here!’

  Bent double, Ondola staggered, legs buckling. Tuuq drew back the knife to plunge it into the exposed back of his neck. But Ondola was ready for him. In a lightning move he deflected the arm and sank his knife into it.

  ‘I’ve got him!’ Ondola yelled. ‘Go!’

  Tuuq crashed his elbow into Ondola’s head, bringing them both back to the ground.

  ‘Now, Rake.’ Henry’s voice. Sensible, firm. ‘We need you here.’

  Rake ignored him. Tuuq’s right arm was raised to plunge the knife into Ondola. Rake propelled himself forward, leaping up to kick Tuuq in the head, or anywhere to deflect the blade. His boot struck Tuuq’s shoulder, but it was enough to skew his balance. Tuuq fell back, his hands empty, the knife embedded above Ondola’s sternum, deep in his throat.

  The ear-splitting fire of an automatic weapon splayed across the ice. Henry emptied a magazine towards Tuuq who jerked as a round thudded into his body, but moved quickly, using the ice as cover. Bullets cut through in a circle around him, but missed. There was silence. Rake needed to help Ondola, but he couldn’t until he dealt with Tuuq. Henry fired a burst of three, stopped. He had no target. Then came a tearing roar. Water sprayed up like a geyser and the frozen sea tilted as if in an earthquake. Clawing at the edges of broken ice Tuuq slid down, his blood trailing through the water.

  ‘Brother!’ Tuuq cried out in Russian. ‘Help me!’ Rake ran to him, holding out an arm, an instinctive reaction to anyone caught in bad ice. Tuuq’s face caught in reflected moonlight had lost its hardness. For a flash, Rake imagined his father there. He lay flat on strong ice and stretched out to take Tuuq’s hand. As Tuuq reached for him, Henry fired twice, one shot in the forehead and one straight through the mouth. Tuuq slid silently into the water.

  Ondola lay still, gloves holding the knife blade, keeping it in his throat to stem the bleeding. He managed a smile. ‘I told you … to go …’ Rake pulled out a bandage and a pack of blood clotting agent which he tore open.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Ondola. He didn’t move his hands from the knife. His eyes were clear. ‘This is … a good place to die …’

  Rake dropped the bandage to put his hand on Ondola. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said.

  ‘You’re my brother.’

  ‘Stay with us. We’ll get help.’

  ‘Go save my daughter.’ Another smile. Frailer. A last spark of life in his eyes. ‘Tell her I’m not all bad.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  British Ambassador’s residence, Washington, DC

  Stephanie paced the dining room in the British Embassy, back and forth between the mantelpiece and the long table that was splashed with mid-morning winter light. Maps and charts lay among laptops, tablets, and part-drunk cups of coffee. Harry leant against the wall in a far corner, working contacts on the phone with a second line open to the Situation Room watch commander.

  She had repeatedly rung Carrie’s phone and got no reply. She kept asking herself what it might mean and dealt with that by protecting herself in diplomat thought: Don’t speculate. Just keep working. She dialed Carrie, then Grizlov, alternately, one after the other, aware that minutes were ticking down to Swain’s deadline to take out the Russian base. She understood his reasoning. She hated that she was part of it and that Carrie was there. Stephanie owed her big time for standing in as a bar-room therapist that night they hit the town in Moscow when Harry was being such a shit. She knew that diplomats at the American and British embassies in Moscow were burning contacts to get to Grizlov or anyone who could make sense of what was happening. But they had all gone to ground.

  Then Grizlov picked up, his voice filled with tension. ‘Hold, Steph. Stay on the line.’ A click. Emptiness. She mimed to Harry that she had Grizlov. But he was already looking her way, must have heard from the Situation Room. Grizlov was back, no charm, no introduction, taut to breaking. ‘Vitruk’s on his own, Steph.’

  The finality of his tone brought goose bumps to Stephanie’s neck. ‘Can you stop him?’

  ‘I need time. If you strike, we have to strike back.’

  ‘We don’t have time, Serg. You’ve got to—’

  Grizlov ended the call with a terse ‘I’ll get back to you.’ Prusak was immediately on the line. ‘Voice analysis is coming up as genuine.’

  Genuine what, she thought angrily. Her palms were sweating. She was shaking all over. All the fucking gadgetry in the world and they still couldn’t stop blowing each other up. She kept herself measured and said, ‘The President must stand down the strike, Matt. We’ve talked to one of the good guys.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll ask him, Steph. Well done.’

  Blair House, Office of the President-elect

  Bob Holland checked himself in a long mirror and smoothed down his dark pinstripe suit to rid it of creases caused by his thermal underwear. Outside the temperature was below freezing. Wind-chill on the podium would send it lower. Holland could not be seen wearing an overcoat for his inauguration.

  There was knock on the door which opened with his six-year-old son Casper scuttling around the legs of CIA director Frank Ciszewski. Holland’s wife, Nancy, picked Casper up, carried him out, and shut the door.

  ‘Ambassador Lucas made contact with Sergey Grizlov. He described Admiral Vitruk as being on his own. He has asked for time to resolve,’ Ciszewski said, handing Holland a thin folder. ‘The President has delayed the strike on the Big Diomede base. But we have these. They show a mobile missile launcher moving out of the Toksong site in North Korea, sir.’

  Holland examined a collection of grainy photographs. ‘When was this taken and where is it now?’

  ‘Just over an hour ago. We know the broad area, but not enough to target it.’

  The image showed the snub nose of a huge missile emerging from a cluster of trees. Much of the photograph showed cloud cover, but Holland could make out the edge of the trailer and a set of front wheels.

  ‘When could it launch?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Range?’

  ‘Los Angeles and the West Coast are its outer range, flight time about half an hour. We cannot guarantee a successful intercept. The missile is designed to avoid our infrared detection satellites and tracking systems. It could carry six nuclear warheads, each on an independent re-entry vehicle. The likelihood is just one, but we have to factor for all six.’

  Holland’s Senate job had not been one of making impossible choices. In less than an hour, he would have to make one. ‘What would you do, Frank?’ he asked the CIA director.

  Ciszewski’s avuncular face stiffened. ‘I can give you our intelligence, but I cannot make your decision.’ He was not unfriendly, but he was adamant.

  ‘What’s Swain doing?’ said Holland.

  ‘Like you, sir, he’s getting dressed while trying to end this thing. His view is that any pre-emptive action without knowing the exact location could blow back badly on us.’

  Holland checked his watch. ‘I need you in on a conversation with the Joint Chiefs.’

  ‘We can schedule for 13.15.’

  ‘No, now, before the ceremony. I don’t intend there to be a mushroom cloud over L
os Angeles because I was too busy fixing my tie pin.’ Holland dropped the satellite pictures onto a small table by the mirror.

  ‘I’ll fix the meeting, sir,’ said Ciszewski.

  ‘At 12.01 all of our assets must be ready. We go before I finish my speech.’

  Big Diomede, Chukotka, the Russian Far East

  Henry’s firm grip took Rake’s arm as he jumped the narrow channel onto the island. He looked back and saw Tuuq’s wrist caught on the edge of ice, his body visible in the water. Ondola lay on his back, staring upwards. Rake couldn’t tell if he was waiting to die or already dead. The gunfire might have alerted those left at the base. But the wind was blowing off the island and they may have heard nothing. Rake hoisted a pack onto his shoulders and set off up the hill with Henry and Joan following.

  The hillside was steep, the ground firm with a track between the rocks. Soon they sighted the base, protected by high granite cliffs with a narrow opening that gave access to the sea. There were no walls, no razor-wire fence, no watchtowers even. The geology of the island and the environment gave defense enough. Soldiers in watchtowers along the top usually kept vigil, but now the watchtowers were empty, the guards gone.

  Rake crawled forward to the edge of the rock and used his night-vision binoculars to examine the base. It appeared through light fog as an example of the faded Soviet dream at the edge of the empire, a series of drab low-rise buildings with no style, no grandeur.

  The buildings formed a ring around a central helipad with a second landing spot about a hundred yards to the east right on the shoreline. A helicopter was parked in the open near a hangar. An engineer worked, alone up a ladder near the tail where a panel hung open.

  Three jeeps were visible, one by the hangar, another to the left of the main building. Two overhead lamps protruded from either side of the door, but they were unlit. A light shone inside. He counted three snowmobiles by a ramp to the sea. He saw no dogs. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. They would be trained for air-scent because of the way water neutralized a dog’s smell. With the wind blowing due south hard against them, it was unlikely a dog, however well trained, would pick up anything.