Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Under the sickly yellow glare of mercury vapor floodlights, Linder watched the newly falling snow scatter in all directions by powerful gusts of wind. Two or three inches of fresh flakes had settled and drifted across the airfield’s apron where the prisoners stood, stomping their feet and flapping their arms in a vain effort to stay warm. Beyond the tarmac, snow lay at least a foot deep, with drifts two or three times that height. Like most of the prisoners, Linder was dressed in light coveralls and sneakers, without hat, gloves, or overcoat. His misery at being thrust out into the subzero air was compounded by hunger, thirst, muscle cramps, and disorientation from spending the day chained to his seat in a windowless aircraft.

  Following the example of those around him, Linder soon left the huddle briefly to empty his bladder into the nearest available snowdrift. When he first heard distant shouting behind him, he paid no attention. But when he felt a crushing blow to his right shoulder from a guard’s baton and heard the deep-throated bark of a dog closing in on him, he ducked and sidestepped to avoid another blow, or worse.

  “Ride’s over, boys,” the dog handler bellowed over the animal’s snarls. “Time to form up. Let’s go.”

  The guards herded Linder and the others toward a narrowing at the far end of the apron, where pine branches had been woven through the chain-link fence to break the wind. Inside the funnel-like pen, a trench latrine had been dug but no one stepped out of line to use it. As the milling crowd reached the narrowest point of the funnel, the guards forced the prisoners to line up two abreast, then directed them into a second pen, where civilian orderlies ordered them to strip naked to receive new winter uniforms.

  Linder hesitated at first for fear of the cold, then looked around at the others hastily shedding their cotton coveralls and scampering toward the tables where fresh winter-regulation outfits were being issued. One of his queue partners was a short man of middle age who had apparently lost plenty of weight while in detention; the folds of skin that had once been his paunch hung loosely at his waist. Examining his own figure, Linder found pale, flaccid flesh and atrophied limbs. Two months of forced idleness had taken a heavy toll on his physique, leaving him to question how much stamina he could muster for the long march ahead.

  But that thought faded quickly as he tossed his old clothes into the flames rising from a blackened oil drum and advanced to receive his new uniform: hooded winter coveralls in dayglo orange with the letters “CLA” printed in six-inch black letters front and rear and down each thigh; polypropylene long underwear; a thick fleece balaclava; oversized arctic gloves with drawstring lanyard; polyester sock liners; and thick-soled rubberized boots. Each man was also issued a compact mess kit with an insulated mug that hung by a clip from the prisoner’s belt.

  Linder dressed quickly, feeling a sudden euphoria from the added warmth as he donned each successive article of clothing. When fully dressed, he turned to warm himself in the heat of one of the oil drums, but was prodded forward by a jab in the ribs from a guard’s baton to make room for prisoners behind him. Once outside the makeshift windbreak, Linder emerged once again into a screaming wind that brought tears to his eyes and forced the breath back into his lungs.

  In the next section of fenced compound, orderlies counted the men into squads of ten, each with a randomly assigned leader, and shackled five squads each to a long cable trailing from the back of a waiting truck. Linder’s position was toward the rear of his truck’s cable and, as he peered forward, the image of his fellow prisoners attached in pairs along the cable reminded him of an extended dogsled team, except that in their case the sled preceded the dogs. When Linder’s turn came to be attached, the frigid steel of the handcuff stung Linder’s flesh and left a span of wrist exposed to the wind no matter how he adjusted his glove and sleeve to cover it.

  In the meantime, two more C-130s had landed, each carrying a hundred additional prisoners. While the early arrivals waited for the newcomers to receive their fresh coveralls, those awaiting assignment to a truck and cable kept warm by pacing along the perimeter fence of an adjacent holding pen with dozens of other men in a circular procession, like pilgrims circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca. Meanwhile, as soon as a truck cable was fully populated with prisoners, the truck left the fenced compound to make room for another vehicle.

  When the last squad from the final aircraft hooked up to its waiting truck, a convoy of some six hundred prisoners plus nearly a hundred guards, orderlies, and support staff trudged through the snow to where the airport road met a bypass road skirting the town a couple of hundred meters to the east. At the intersection stood a crudely made sign that read “Welcome to the Yukon—Land of Opportunity.”

  After slogging behind the truck at a slow pace for nearly a mile, Linder’s team halted at a steeply banked river about a hundred fifty meters wide. The only means of crossing, other than on foot over the ice, was an antiquated wood-and-cable suspension bridge too narrow for even a light pickup truck to negotiate. The trucks stopped at the bridgehead, the cables were unhitched from the trucks and each string of fifty men, still shackled to the cable to prevent escape or suicide, crossed the bridge under the threat of gunfire from soldiers fanned out on either side.

  As Linder’s squad waited to take its turn, a series of murmured messages spread from the front of the line to the rear. The messages conveyed that this was the Pelly River, the town’s name was Ross River, and they were on the North Canol Road, built during World War II to connect oil fields of the Northwest Territories to Yukon refineries located hundreds of kilometers to the west. Their destination, according to the messages, was a logging and mining camp in the McKenzie Mountains, near the Yukon’s eastern border with the Northwest Territories. Depending on which camp they would inhabit, their march might take up to a week.

  Linder had no basis for disputing the information’s accuracy and was not particularly curious about the name of the town where they landed or the camp to which they were headed. For him, the central question, brought home to him by the length of the trip ahead, was whether it might be better to perish en route after a day or two of suffering or to die by inches at hard labor in a strict regime camp from which he had little or no hope of release or escape.

  Before Linder could give the matter further thought, his team’s cable was unhitched from the truck and the men were led across the bridge. As he peered out over the icebound river below, he wondered how far the Pelly River flowed before emptying into a larger river and from there eventually into the North Pacific. Might he be able to reach the sea by following the ice in winter or drifting downstream by small craft in summer?

  This train of thought led Linder to recall his urge earlier that fall to escape by sea from Beirut to Cyprus. His intuition had been correct, he realized. He could have escaped then, at least for a while. His chances had most certainly been better then than they were now. Linder looked at the snow and ice all around and thought of his arrival outside Beirut’s Hotel Cavalier. A short laugh escaped his chest when he remembered stumbling on the ice cubes dumped at the curb, and stepping over a heap of discarded ice in a back alley on Phoenicia Street. He should have paid more attention to omens, he thought. Then he lowered his head against the gathering wind.

  On the far side of the suspension bridge, other trucks were waiting, most of them of military issue, some with snowplows, and all equipped with oversized studded tires or chains and painted in a blue-gray winter camouflage pattern. Interspersed among the trucks were several mobile field kitchens and civilian SUVs along with a pair of truck-mounted campers set aside for officers and senior enlisted men.

  Linder counted nearly a hundred troops and a dozen or more officers assembled for the trip. Their contingent included twenty or more Alsatian and Belgian Malinois dogs and their handlers, who rotated between guard duty and rest periods under blankets in the cargo holds of the trucks. The guards and dog handlers all wore hooded winter-camouflage coveralls, Russian-style hats with fold-down earflaps, and special trigger-finger mitten
s. While on guard duty, each soldier carried an assault rifle on a sling with a large-capacity magazine. And each young soldier appeared as strong and as well fed as the prisoners were weak, starved and demoralized.

  When all the squads had been hitched up, the vehicles and men formed a long untidy column, with armed guards placed at the head, tail, and flanks. Amid muffled shouts and moans, word passed from the front of the column that the convoy would march all night if necessary to make progress ahead of a storm approaching from the north.

  “Forward, march!” the guards ordered up and down the line a few minutes later. Then about half the troops climbed over the tailgates to ride aboard the trucks while the others flanked the column of prisoners with rifles slung at the ready. The moment the lead truck blew its horn, the others sounded off in turn and set off slowly eastward toward the Yukon’s mountainous border with the Northwest Territories.

  Linder shambled forward with his squad, head bent against the wind, up to his knees in heavy snow churned up by the men ahead of him. Despite his hood and balaclava, before long his ears became icy cold, his nose numbed to the touch, and his eyes streamed with tears from the wind.

  The lead truck set off at a slow walking pace, gradually accelerating until it was a struggle for many of the prisoners to keep up. Though the column slowed on occasion when the lead trucks hit deep snow, it sometimes accelerated without warning, causing weak or inattentive prisoners to tread on the heels of the men before them or be trodden upon in turn.

  Linder cursed his rotten luck at being placed near the end of the chain. Every slowing and acceleration at the front of the column was magnified at the rear, requiring extra effort to keep pace and giving added pain when the cable tugged remorselessly at his wrist. Within the first hour, the handcuff rubbed his skin raw and only the numbing cold kept the pain within limits.

  Linder recognized no one in his squad from among those he had seen aboard the plane. His partner across the cable was of Asian descent, possibly Korean, and appeared to be in his mid-twenties. Though he did not speak to Linder or meet his gaze, his watchful eyes darted about constantly, leaving the impression of being on alert against attack at any moment. Linder wondered whether the man might be mentally unbalanced and resolved to watch him closely for signs of breakdown.

  The column marched without a stop for what seemed like three or four hours before it halted in a rocky defile. There the prisoners were permitted to sit or squat in the snow, while orderlies poured them scalding sweet coffee from mobile field kitchens that rolled up and down the column. The sensation of taking that first sip of steaming coffee and feeling its warmth spread through his body was pure bliss. But the euphoria it didn’t last. By the time he downed the last gulp from his insulated mug, it was already cold.

  During the half-hour rest stop, most prisoners in Linder’s squad sat beside the cable to which they were bound and silently cursed the snow and the steady north wind. At last, the lead truck blew its horn and moved forward, taking up the slack in the cable and forcing the men to their feet. Now, Linder felt grateful not to be at the head of the column, where the prisoners had to struggle through the ankle-deep snow left by the partially raised snowplows and trample it down for those behind them. After settling into a steady pace, Linder closed his eyes and obeyed the relentless tug of the cable. He had only a vague notion of where he was and where he was going.

  During the initial three-hour march, not once had Linder spotted the lights of a distant settlement. Judging from the disused ferry dock under the footbridge at Pelly River and the lack of an ice-road on the river, he guessed that no year-round settlements existed east of the Pelly other than those of the Corrective Labor Administration.

  He recalled from news accounts some five years earlier, when the U.S. had annexed portions of southern Canada following CWII, that most of the hydrocarbon- and mineral-rich areas in that country’s western provinces had been placed under martial law, and that many of the local inhabitants had been forcibly relocated to other provinces. From that time on, civilian residence and travel permits for northern Alberta and British Columbia were issued only to those who worked in strategic industries like oil and gas extraction and who passed a background check.

  Northern settlements that depended primarily on tourism, hunting, or fishing became ghost towns overnight while forced labor camps sprang up to support state-owned logging, mining, and oil-drilling enterprises. If there were any oil-drilling or mining in this part of the Yukon, Linder figured that all of its employees would require a government clearance, which meant that an escaped prisoner would be a fool to expect any help from them.

  After the coffee break, the column trudged forward for what Linder estimated were another two or three hours, before pulling off the road for supper. The mobile field kitchens went to work at once, brewing hot water for coffee and freeze-dried entrees for the guards. But there was to be no hot meal for the prisoners that night. Instead, orderlies paced up and down the column dispensing coffee and two foil-wrapped ration bars per prisoner, to be eaten with one’s free hand while the other hand remained fixed to the cable. Linder ate both ration bars before his coffee arrived, then sipped the scalding liquid quickly before the subzero wind robbed it of its life-giving warmth. In little less than an hour, the trucks lurched forward once again and the cables dragged the men back to their feet.

  But by this time, Linder could see that many of the weaker men were unable to keep pace. Until now, when a man stumbled or collapsed, his neighbors had heaved and strained to keep him on his feet until the next rest break. But after the meal break, many who collapsed en route begged to be unshackled and left behind to find release in death. If a fallen prisoner failed to revive, one of his neighbors called the nearest flanking guard, who would descend upon the unfortunate wretch, cursing and kicking and tugging at his wrists to bring him back to his senses. If he recovered, the appalling struggle went on.

  When blows failed, the guards passed word up the column and waited for the procession to stop before unshackling the fallen one, stripping him of his clothing and boots and burying him under a heap of snow, dead or alive. This happened on the average of once or twice during each hour spent on the march.

  After another three hours, the column stopped in a clearing among low spruce-covered hills just off the road. The trucks parked in a semicircle around the edge of the clearing, after which orderlies unshackled the prisoners’ wrists from the cables. Meanwhile, troops took up positions along the road and around the perimeter of the clearing, with additional sentries posted in the woods. The officer-in-charge passed word that the prisoners would receive coffee and then would then have six hours to sleep before breakfast, after which the journey would begin anew.

  Linder no sooner finished his coffee and rinsed his cup with snow than a crushing sense of hopelessness overtook him. In that moment, the wind shrieked across the clearing, sending snow up his nostrils and inside his hood and sleeves until the coffee’s recent warmth was barely a memory. All around, men stood in the calf-deep snow, some shivering uncontrollably, and met each other’s gaze with forlorn expressions. The snow fell more thickly now and lay in drifts up to a man’s waist in the lee of the trees.

  But this period of standing about aimlessly lasted only a short time, as it was a matter of survival to evade the paralyzing blast of the wind. Soon one innovative squad began scraping heaped snow into a rough semicircular windbreak. The idea spread rapidly and soon rimmed half-craters appeared all over the compound as men scraped and scratched with numbed fingers down to the rock-hard earth before stretching out behind the built-up rim, bodies packed tightly together to evade the wind’s jagged teeth.

  As he watched the frantic digging, Linder spotted several men near the perimeter following the example of search-and-rescue huskies who had burrowed deep into high snowdrifts. He found a drift of his own in the lee of a lone spruce, fell to his knees and dug a cavity spacious enough to contain him. Then he crawled inside and lay in a fetal posi
tion so that his back faced the storm and a breathing space remained around his face. Provided he didn’t suffocate, he might actually survive the night. But if he did not, the prospect of dying painlessly in his sleep did not trouble him, given the agony that awaited him on the march the next day and the day after. Now not even the fear of nightmares was enough to deter him from seeking rest. Without another thought, he dropped off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Linder did not stir again until a fellow prisoner stepped on him en route to the mess line. He awoke with a start amid the blare of truck horns and guttural orders barked from loudspeakers. Wiping the snow from his eyes with his gloved hands, he was relieved to find that he could still feel his fingers and toes. But as he rose shivering to his feet, his breath caught at the stiff wind bearing down from the north. Following his neighbors, he rushed off to join the coffee queue.

  A row of military-style field kitchens awaited the prisoners inside a temporary barbed-wire enclosure. Each cart, which resembled a lunch wagon of the sort that parked outside factories or sports events, sent plumes of steam into the sky as it brewed coffee, prepared oatmeal, and baked fresh bread.

  Upon catching the aroma of coffee and bread, Linder saw several prisoners toward the front of the queue break ranks to charge the cart. Moments later, the nearest guard officers fired a burst of submachine gun fire into the air and signaled for dogs to be unleashed. Upon seeing the dogs hurl themselves at the men who had rushed forward, Linder and the remaining prisoners instantly obeyed the command to drop and sit. In the face of such crushing cold, hunger, and violence, only the insane or suicidal dared to resist.

  When order had been restored, the prisoners were shunted between strands of barbed wire toward the field kitchens, where servers poured each man a mug of sugary coffee, filled his mess tin with oatmeal topped by a pat of margarine, and issued him a brick-sized loaf of bread. Linder’s turn came after about twenty minutes of waiting in the cold. By the time he received his coffee, his hands were so numb that he feared he wouldn’t be able to hold the mug. Following the example of the man before him, he stacked his bread and mess tin on top of his mug and pressed down with his right hand while supporting the mug’s bottom with his left so that he did not have to depend upon his lifeless fingers to grip the tin or the mug handle.