RED ICE

by R. L. Crossland

  Nearly all of us were veterans. Each of us had been badly battered and in the end had become associated with a failed undertaking. We would not accept that assessment as a final score. We would take these failures, but only as setbacks on the way to some larger justifying victory. Someday, perhaps.

  I understood all this, as I always had, but I still invariably plunged into black depression. For I had forced the issue, and brought everyone to the test, and after tonight not one of our lives would ever be the same.

  Then Dravit beaned me with a Ping-Pong ball.

  Once we surfaced, the hatch was tossed open, and men and equipment spewed onto the exposed deck. Whitecaps smashed across the sub’s flatback bow, leaving the deck wet and icy slick. The quarter moon shed just enough light to give the quick-frozen icicles on the cigarette-deck railing a crystalline sparkle. The breeze did not feel unusually cold at first, but you soon knew where you had exposed skin.

  We assembled the kayaks just aft and in the lee of the conning tower. Rapidly, the kayaks took form and absorbed our watertight bundles of equipment. We clicked through assembly and loading like a well crafted breechblock with finely fitted tolerances. The mechanism showed a single flaw. Lutjens—in Chamonix’s boat—seemed to be an uncontrolled swarm of thumbs. The weight of the risks of a mission seemed to fall all at once during the last twenty-four hours before a launch. You became so intent on trying to visualize the future that you forgot the present. It was not unusual for even crack troops to become punchy with anticipation.

  The sub’s deck left little freeboard, and its guardrails had been removed. One moment the elegant German was standing next to his kayak, the next moment a comber running the length of the deck swept him off his feet and the deck.

  Chamonix lunged for him, but had no play left in his safety harness. Someone tossed a line, but by then Lutjens had disappeared under the submarine. Moments later, bits of stained neoprene bobbed in the submarine’s wake.

  “Why wasn’t his harness fastened?” Alvarez demanded. The big Cuban sighed as if his worst suspicions had been confirmed. “How could it happen? Not another accident.”

  “That Judas-Jonah is still with us,” said Wickersham glumly. He worked his bicep. “I don’t like it, not a bit.”

  Chief Puckins interrupted, “I can’t figure it out, either, but one thing’s for sure. If we don’t launch pretty damn quick, the Russki radar is going to draw a bead on this boat.” He drew his hand across his throat.

  Matsuma and I eased into our kayak. The old Japanese fisherman took the bow seat, and I the stern seat with the rudder pedals. I waved “all clear” to Dravit and in seconds the submarine began to submerge. The rush of white water tossed the kayaks around mercilessly, but our spray skirts kept us dry. The submarine slipped like a shadow beneath the waves, carrying Henry Dravit, former Royal Marine, and Keiko Shirahama, onetime Ama diver, away—perhaps forever.

  “One man dead for sure in exchange for one man’s possible rescue. At best, there can be no net gain,” Chamonix called over the darkness.

  I steered a course based on the sub’s last fix. Matsuma suggested course modifications to guide us through the large chunks of free-floating ice.

  “I don’t fight to balance any books,” I returned. “Those are the values of someone else’s vocation.

  “I fight to bring hope,” I added, addressing no one in particular.

  CHAPTER 21

  We had severed the logistic umbilical. For the next ten to twelve days, we could forget any outside support. As a small covert force we would be hard to detect, but if detected…

  Our kayaks dodged floes as needles of wind-driven spray tormented the paddlers. My use of an azimuth was of secondary value, the real navigation rested in Matsuma’s hands until we reached shore. In March, much of the pack ice began to break up, he had assured me, and the great tidal range and strong currents along this stretch of coast left it navigable to within one or two miles of land.

  March weather varied as unpredictably in Siberia as it did elsewhere. Though Siberia averaged only twenty inches of snow a year, a great part of this figure fell in March. March temperatures were generally milder than deep-winter temperatures, but they could plunge to sixty below without warning.

  Matsuma and I held the lead position. The synchronized flutter of our double-bladed paddles moved us briskly up and over the rolling black waves. The seawater, which dripped from these paddles, or which splashed over the decks, froze in sheets down the length of our seventeen-foot craft. As we approached land, free ice became more plentiful. Clear passages through the ice fields became narrower and narrower, fanning into small, wandering channels, which forked like branches of a tree. Matsuma showed an unerring instinct for picking the fork that meandered toward pack ice. Then, for a quarter of a mile, we manhandled floes with our paddles to clear a path. Finally, we reached pack ice. There we climbed out and hauled the kayaks onto the ice. We portaged a mile, then hit a belt of open water. Once again we slid the kayaks into the sea. The belt was only a few hundred yards across and then we were back on pack ice. Before us lay disjointed piles of ice in pressure ridges. Here, a false step on seemingly secure ice could flip a man into water far colder than his dry suit provided for.

  One by one we dragged the kayaks across the unstable ice. Then we portaged them a quarter mile before dismantling them. Once during the portage, Gurung stepped into a crevice. A sharp crystal ripped a small hole in the leg of his suit as his foot plunged to the knee into the water beneath. We weren’t able to unpack one of the portable stoves until ten minutes later. By then his foot was encased in rime. As we thawed his foot with the stove, it looked to me as if he’d have to be scratched from the remainder of the raid. Reading my mind, he shrugged off further attention and limped on ahead.

  We hiked another mile across ragged ice before we reached a tree line, the first positive indication of solid land. We had reached the edge of the taiga, the vast, virtually unbroken expanse of larch, spruce, fir, and cedar that covered most of Siberia. There, at a distinctive stand of stunted birch, we buried the four kayaks in the snow and covered them with a white tarp, which we froze in place with melted snow. As an added measure we pushed a rotten tree over the tarp to keep the wind from blowing it over. I pointed out several terrain features that would help identify this spot to the returning raiders in the event that I was not with them. Then I went over each leg of the journey on the map once again to be sure that if we became separated, each man would have a chance, however remote, of rejoining the party. We then changed into our quilted Chinese uniforms and donned the white overtrousers. With the dark taiga background, we didn’t need overblouses.

  We melted snow to quench what was now an overwhelming thirst.

  “Why the Chicom uniforms?” Wickersham asked, putting on his fur hat. “If we’re going to wear someone else’s uniform, why not a Russian uniform? It’s a Russian camp.”

  “Where were you at the briefings, Wick?” Chief Puckins scolded. “Cinders of hell, from here on out we’re Chinese to the rest of the world, remember that. The sub’s Chinese, the kayaks are Chinese, the weapons are Chinese, the skis are Chinese, and the sledge is Chinese. Folks around you? They’re a crack advance force of China’s People’s Liberation Army.”

  The Texan had a point to make and he was not going to let up. “What did I ever teach you? Didn’t you catch the Chinese markings those Korean submarine fellows had painted on their boat when we boarded in Chinhae? Russkis are gonna think it’s made of grade-A fine porcelain.

  “Now mind me, if I hear you thinkin’, there’d better be Chinese subtitles on your thoughts or you’re on report. Why, if you break out any rations, you’d better finish up the meal with an almond cookie and a wise saying.”

  “Just throwing a little confusion in the game,” I added. “If we’re detected or pursued, I want the Russians to be worried about some larger movement by the Chinese and not devote all their energy to us and some insignificant corrective labor c
amp. We’re a little over four hundred miles from the Chinese border in a sparsely populated comer of the USSR. I want them to wonder if half a dozen Chinese divisions haven’t infiltrated through their back door. Also, it’ll confuse them as to our ultimate destination on the way out.”

  “If we get out,” added Chamonix.

  “We are not having radios,” Gurung interposed. “Is that being for the same reason?”

  I turned to the steadfast Gurkha.

  “No, too high a risk of RDF intercept. Russian radio direction-finding equipment is quite good, and in any event, for most of the mission there won’t be anyone to call for help.”

  I didn’t add the second reason. I didn’t want our turncoat to be able to communicate with his sponsors, or to be able to trigger RDF triangulation.

  Puckins hummed “White Christmas” and whirled like a Fifth Avenue model showing his new uniform with the jacket open, then closed, with and without gloves. This was the Puckins I remembered. In Japan and Korea, he had appeared distracted and lifeless, but since leaving the submarine he had reverted to form.

  “What about our chances of detection?” Alvarez questioned, watching Puckins’s fashion show. He was forever filing information for future use.

  “With luck, we should make it to the camp. There are fewer people per square mile here than at the same latitude in British Columbia. Siberia’s lack of settlers was the reason for establishing the camps here in the first place. It’s not the sort of climate that encourages people to be outdoors noticing strangers or following unexplained tracks very far without good reason. Survival out here is enough of a struggle to discourage idle curiosity. We’ll just have to keep a lookout for trappers and herdsmen.

  “As a small unit, camouflaged, and making the best of available cover, we should do all right. The wind will drift over our tracks in the open areas and the trees will hide them in the thickly foliated areas. Ivan may have a dogsled patrol like Greenland had during the Second World War, but I doubt it. He isn’t on a wartime basis, not way out here. I’d say our chances are respectable, but don’t hold me to it.”

  The North Star was too high in the sky to use for bearings, so I had to rely on Ursa Major, or Cassiopeia, or Deneb, and selected times to find North. Taking out my barometer/altimeter, I checked the reading. The Dzhugdzhur Range paralleled the coast. As long as we were gradually gaining altitude, we could not be too far off. About eighty miles from the coast, before we reached the crust of the range, we should stumble on a railroad spur. The spur worked northward from the main trunk of the Trans Siberian Railway and terminated at the camp; If we reached the summit of the range first, we were too far north.

  We shouldered our packs and donned our skis. Movement was slower than I had anticipated. The kayak voyage and ice portage had worn us down. Alvarez and Kruger broke trail while Puckins and Chamonix strained in the ahkio harnesses. We had fastened the two sleds together like a giant oyster. Though the fused container held the recoilless rifle, much of our ammunition, and the tents, it was relatively light. These remaining four skiers traded positions with these men at regular intervals.

  About an hour before sunrise we stopped and pitched the Norwegian tents. Within each two-man tent, each pair fashioned a cold well and sleeping benches above it so that they would not be sleeping in the lowest, and therefore coldest, portion of the tent. Stripping down to his Norwegian-made polypropylene underwear, each skier brushed down his boots and outer clothing, then stuffed them into the foot of his sleeping bag in a waterproof bag. Then from his sleeping bag, one member of the pair boiled water for the freeze-dried food under the tent’s outer fly. A single slow-burning candle combined with the pair’s body warmth to keep the inside of the tent relatively warm, but hardly comfortable. It was an unwieldy, time-consuming way to camp on a long-range patrol, but in cold-weather operations, eighty percent of your energy went to survival, fifteen percent to military activities, and five percent to fighting.

  My thermometer read fifteen below zero. When I awoke, a fine coating of frozen condensation covered the inner ridge of the tent.

  The next night we moved with better speed through the rolling, rising taiga. Our file looked like a long green-and-white caterpillar with piston legs as it threaded its parallel tracks through the widely spaced trees. Kick, slide, kick, slide. Packs clung to backs and pounded at kidneys. Our weapons, never designed for ski troops, were heavy and awkward. Periodically we stopped to check the stars and melt snow.

  “What is that white concoction?” Gurung asked, watching Wickersham wiping a lotion into his face and hands.

  “Cold cream,” Wickersham quipped.

  Kruger shifted his weight from foot to foot and clapped his hands against his sides. The cold was worse when we stopped. “I don’t s-s-see where it makes you look any better.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you saw what happened to the movie lady in Shangri-la, didn’t you? Well, it just so happens I have a limited supply available.…”

  “You have any vanishing cream?” Alvarez chimed in sardonically. The big Cuban was not about to let any of Wickersham’s pranks get past him. “That would sure make this jaunt a lot easier. Invisible raiders, yeah…’Stealth’ ski troopers.”

  “Nope. Chief Puckins handles vanishin’ and materializin’. Different department altogether.”

  The cold, dry air stung bitterly. Occasionally the wind swept down the valleys with such intensity that we had to wear suede face masks for protection. Once, when we were caught in a full-blown williwaw, we had to turn our faces away from the wind and seek whatever windbreaks we could find. Kick, slide, kick, slide.

  As the second dawn approached, I estimated we had covered nearly thirty miles as the crow flies—ten in the first night, twenty during the second. Unfortunately, we could not ski as the crow flew because the increasing gradient often forced us to traverse slopes.

  Even if the gradient had permitted, it was unwise to travel too long in a straight line. Since you couldn’t cover your tracks you had to hope they’d drift over, but often they didn’t. Each night before bivouacking, we left tracks in an ever-diminishing coil—resembling a watch spring—with the campsite at the center. In this way, we could hear pursuing trackers as they traipsed around us. At this point in our journey it was too demanding a drain on our manpower to post sentries. Half the group would be dead on their feet the next morning. Instead, we relied on our mobility and camouflage to protect us. As a further safeguard, Gurung strung alarm trip wires around the camp—high enough so animals wouldn’t trip them, low enough so humans would.

  I realized we would soon have to change from night to day travel. The terrain was growing more rugged and we were hitting stretches of black taiga—thick expanses of fir and spruce, which made hauling the ahkio a nightmare. Secondly, cloud cover was creeping in from the west and would soon obscure the stars. Soon I would be forced to navigate by terrain features and my sun compass alone. Clouds did not hamper its value, but it required daylight.

  Fatigue began to show in the men’s faces. No matter how well you prepared your tent and sleeping gear, you were never quite warm. Every time you shifted position in your sleeping bag, it took five minutes to get warm enough to sleep again. No one slept soundly and a heightened sense of survival stirred you awake at the snap of a frozen twig. Cooking was a miserable cycle of fumblings. First taking your mittens off to adjust something, then hurriedly jamming the same mittens on to numbed fingers in the futile hope of getting them warm again. Yet though cooking was torture, not cooking—and thereby forfeiting the fuel that kept you warm and moving—meant disaster.

  The psychological strain was telling, too. Bundled in innumerable layers of hooded clothing, you found it easy to withdraw into yourself. It was called going “into the cocoon.” Though the hood brought warmth, it restricted your hearing and field of vision. Your thinking became sluggish and you were soon oblivious to all. When an entire group entered their individual cocoons, lethargy gained the upper hand and carelessnes
s set in.

  I decided to stop though we had only covered fifteen miles. Over the past hours, as each pair had taken the ahkio, their irritations erupted into hushed arguments, and those arguments generated wasted heat. It was time for a rest. I noted the temperature was thirty degrees below zero and the barometer steady.

  I awoke at midday, bundled up, and left the tent to relieve myself. This routine function was always one of the most traumatic chores of cold-weather travel. When my urine sizzled as it hit the snow I knew something was wrong. I checked my thermometer again. It read fifty degrees below zero.

  “Pass the word to the others,” I called to Wickersham and Gurung’s tent. “We’re not traveling until the temperature goes up. It’s fifty below. Not safe to move.” Chamonix rolled over in his sleeping bag and muttered some elegant French profanity. The sun played lightly on the side of the tent—very lightly.

  Chamonix boiled water for the rations over the small stove. In the next tent Puckins was doing sleight-of-hand tricks for Gurung. Gurung gave amused yelps.

  The ascetic old legionnaire whistled tunelessly. For the first time since I had known him, the muscles at the ends of his mouth had unconsciously bunched upward. My curiosity was aroused.

  “Why all the radiant good cheer? Fifty below doesn’t usually hit people that way.”

  Torn from his thoughts, he looked up at me puzzled. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s we’re out here—free of them. Free of noncombatants who retain us, and more often than not, betray us. No one’s really free of them, I guess, but at least out here I can cultivate the illusion. Yes, for the moment I’m free of their fickle hypocrisy, and among warriors whose codes are simple, often constant.”