by Joe Poyer
The open area was several hundred feet across, large enough for the wind to have full play. As a result the surface toward the center was a smooth expanse of unbroken snow, while the southern end was drifted high. He thrashed out into the glade, making as deep a trail as he could. At the first line of drifts he threw himself down and kicked and thrashed for a moment, then stood up to survey his work. Even at the rate the snow was drifting this would remain for at least an hour. Satisfied, he carefully retraced his steps back to the trees on the same side of the clearing that he had entered and backtracked for several yards. A low-hanging branch gave him the opportunity to swing up and out of his trail and head deeper into the forest at a wide angle from the track he had made going in.
Certain that he had both sidetracked the Russians and done as much damage as he could for now, McPherson trotted to the edge of the forest and, once out into the open, made for the edge of the cliffs and the comparatively easy going of the wind-swept rock. A couple of hours spent floundering around in the deep snow and woods should tire the Russians enough to delay them by at least four to six hours. Smiling happily to himself, he ran steadily on.
CHAPTER 17
When Teleman awoke for the second time, the period of disorientation was immeasurably shorter. In fact, after the dimly remembered cold and wind on the cliffs, the stark, blue walls of the tent, with the litter of survival gear and Arctic clothing, seemed almost comforting. Across the tent, cleaning one of the carbines, knelt the man who had introduced himself as the ship's executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Peter Folsom. A second sailor, the one who had been asleep next to him before, worked over a pair of makeshift snowshoes. He was a small, almost rat-faced' young man, Teleman thought, and he was instantly sorry for the comparison: . He hated snap judgments, but was forever making them and usually regretting it later. Teleman grimaced and shifted his head for a better look. Unconscious of the scrutiny, the other worked on, face screwed up in his effort to twist the webbing strings of the netting tighter over the frame.
He had a pile of dishwater blond hair that could only be described as unruly, trite though the description was. It was his hands that Teleman noted almost at once. They had long, tapering fingers, but unlike most thin hands these were at once powerful- and sensitive.
The sailor looked up from his work and a pleased smile crossed his face.
"Hey, boss, I think our partner in crime is awake."
Folsom looked away from the rifle and grinned as well. "So he is. How are you feeling this time around?"
Teleman pushed a hand out of the sleeping bag and rubbed his forehead. "Other than the damnedest headache you ever heard of, all right, I guess."
"Feel like you're up to some traveling?"
"Traveling!" Teleman struggled into a sitting position. The effort left him dizzy and weak. Folsom got up swiftly and crossed the tent, grabbing up a pack as he came. He helped Teleman to sit up and shoved the pack behind his back for support.
In the sitting position, Teleman could see that the sailor he had been introduced to earlier, McPherson, was now against the other wall, wrapped in a sleeping bag.
"What about this traveling? Out to the ship, maybe?"
The grin disappeared from Folsom's face to be replaced with a worried frown. "I'm afraid not. The seas are too rough to launch the helicopter and our lifeboat got smashed up as we came in. Now the waves are too high to launch another with even a hope of reaching the beach in one piece. So it seems we are pretty well cut off from the ship."
Teleman absorbed this for a moment "Then what's the next step?"
"That's where the traveling comes in. There is a Norwegian-NATO naval air base about twenty-five miles down the coast. We are going to have to head for it."
-You mean we have to walk twenty-five miles?" Teleman was astounded. He doubted right now if he could walk twenty-five steps, let alone twenty-five miles, and said so.
Folsom gave him a wan smile. "I know how you feel, or at least I think I do. I am not so sure that any of us can do it. The weather out there is like nothing you have ever seen before, worse even than when you landed yesterday."
The executive officer smiled at the surprise on Teleman's face. "Yeah, early yesterday in fact. You've been out for the twenty-four hours since we found you."
"Good God, I had no idea . . ."
"Don't feel bad about it. You were in pretty rough shape when we picked you up.
Another few minutes out there and we would have had to chip you out of a block of ice."
Folsom turned. "Julie, wake Mac up. We got some talking to do, then we had better make tracks."
Folsom stretched across the mound of gear and pulled another pack to him. While McPherson went through the motions of waking up, Folsom rummaged through the contents of the pack and came out with a zippered, waterproof plastic map case. He selected one
and spread it out next to Teleman's sleeping bag while. the other two gathered around.
McPherson crawled up on his knees, scratching his heavy black beard. He smiled shyly again at Teleman and stuck out a hand. "Glad to see you awake again, sir."
"This joker here," Folsom said, indicating the other sailor, "the one you haven't been formally introduced to, is Chief Warrant Officer Julian Gadsen. He's another free-loader.
His specialty is driving the captain's launch—and eating."
Gadsen chuckled and reached a band through the maze of shoulders and shook Teleman's hand. Teleman discovered that at least part of his first impression had been right. Gadsen'
s hands were indeed strong. Obviously Gadsen was something other than what Folsom suggested—a seagoing taxi driver.
"I didn't get a chance to tell you before because you dropped off to sleep again, but we're all three from the U.S.S. Robert F. Kennedy."
Immediately, Teleman glanced sharply at Folsom.
"Now wait," Folsom said, "I'm aware of what's going on. These two aren't, but. at this point in the situation we are all in, you don't have to worry. Both are cleared about as high as you can go. You have to be to get assigned to the RFK."
Teleman thought about it a moment. "Okay," he said tightly, "maybe you are right for now. I'm in no position to bargain at the moment. But let's just stay away from that area right now."
Folsom nodded. He could see that Gadsen and McPherson were doing their best to maintain noncommittal smiles. He knew that security procedures do funny things to people, particularly when they are not privy to the secrets being discussed. Innuendoes or oblique references always create hostilities no matter how much you realize the need for security and secrecy in military or defense affairs. He only hoped that Teleman wasn't going to turn out to be a son of a bitch on such a minor matter—at least at the moment.
Teleman was well aware of what Folsom was thinking. He could see by the withdrawn expressions that maybe he had overstepped a little. He was about to say something to ease the situation when the thought suddenly occurred to him that he really did not know who these people were. The idea that they could be. Soviet agents acting out a part was half rejected in his mind as being overly dramatic, when angrily he pushed the modifying thought down.
It was not too farfetched. It was not any more farfetched than his flying a supersecret aircraft at one to two hundred thousand feet over the continent of Asia for five and six days at a time, or that they should shoot him down and on, of all places, the North Cape of Norway. He studied the three men gathered around him and for a moment found himself ready to listen •for traces of a Russian accent. That did it. He burst out laughing.
The three sailors were taken by surprise. "Now what the hell are you laughing about?"
Gadsen demanded.
Teleman laughed even harder. "You . . . wouldn't believe .. it if I I. . . I told you," he choked out at last. Then he went into throes of hysterical laughter. Gadsen and Folsom exchanged glances, then Julie leaned forward and slapped him sharply, once, then twice.
The second slap brought Teleman around
and he stopped, shut his eyes, and sank back down into the sleeping bag. In seconds he was sound asleep.
"Well, I'll be damned," Folsom said.
"You probably are anyway, chief," Gadsen snorted. "That was a classic case ,of nervous release. God, what that poor guy must have been through lately. Judging from his reaction, he must have been close to a complete nervous collapse. Now he'll probably sleep for an hour or two, then when he wakes up he'll be all right."
"Julie"—Folsom clapped him on the shoulder—"even if you never finished medical school, you are a definite comfort to have around. Come on you two," he said, shaking his head, let's get this junk ready to go."
This time, as Teleman slept, he dreamed that he was back in the A-17, being pursued by a series of Falcons. As each aircraft rose to replace the one ahead it closed quickly and fired a missile.. The ice-sharp clarity of the Asian terrain unreeling before him shifted'
with the watery changes of dreams, but somehow the mass of the Himalayas to his right never varied, either in view or intensity. He was passing so close to the bulk of the mountain flanks that he could clearly see a Mongolian sheepherder, mounted on a wiry pony, waving to him. As he watched the man, the A-17 came to bang opposite, so close that the wing tip, fully extended, seemed to brush along the Mongolian's cap. The sheepherder glanced back along the way Teleman had come, and turning himself, Teleman could see through the solid wall of the cockpit the entire valley spread out below. Close behind were two Falcons, so close that rockets emerging in slow motion from the pods on either side of the aircraft's nose were already visible.
Both he and the sheepherder turned at the same moment to stare directly at one another.
The Mongolian began to wave at the following aircraft, his face suffused with the agony of helplessness. Teleman turned again, and this time the rockets had traveled half the distance and grown in size until they were as wide as freight cars. They traveled in three sets of pairs and seemed to reach out to encompass him. The Mongolian was still waving desperately at his wings. Sittihg in the pilot's couch, face pressed against the glassite of the view port, Teleman could not understand why the A-17 was not moving. The sound of the engines thundered in his ears, yet the aircraft would not budge.
The Mongolian vaulted from his horse and ran forward to grasp the extended wing and, with a mighty heave, wrenched it backward. Then Teleman understood. With a last glance back at the rockets reaching out hungry hands for the tail section of the A-17, he threw the switch that swung the wings back. The aircraft vaulted forward, instantly leaving the now smiling face of the sheepherder disappearing in the distance. The crazy patchwork of the dream began to flow backward into a smooth whirlpool that suddenly sprang high and Teleman was sitting both upright and awake.
Folsom sprang up, startled by Teleman's sudden movement. "Ye gods, you startled me."
Teleman looked around for a moment, not quite sure what was reality and what was dream. "Where are my clothes?" he asked thickly.
Cadsen picked up a pack and crawled over to Teleman's sleeping bag. "The clothes you arrived in are not the kind you want to wear when hiking in the Arctic, my boy." He opened the pack and pulled out a pair of wide-mesh nylon underwear, lined ski pants, a loose nylon sweater, and a quilted dacron parka and hood and pushed them toward Teleman.
"Put these on. I think you'll find them quite a bit warmer than a flight suit."
"Yes, and hurry too. We were just about to wake you." Teleman did as he was told, fumblingly at first as his tired brain sorted out fact from dream fiction. Some of the iron weariness had
left him after his long sleep. But not enough, he thought. His body was still sluggish,•
although he knew he would lose some of that once out into the cold fresh air. But he knew damned well that he would never be able to walk twenty-five miles . . . why did they have to walk twenty-five miles anyway? He could not remember at first, then gradually, as the cobwebs cleared away, he remembered snatches of conversation they had had earlier. Teleman pulled the parka over his head, found his .22 revolver on top of his pack, and surreptitiously tucked it inside. Then, with the boots in his hand, crawled over to where the other three were clustered around a map.
"Our Red friends," Folsom started without preamble as soon as Teleman joined the circle, "appear to want to welcome us to the land of the midnight sun." In spite of the flippancy of his words, his voice was grim.
"We were informed about twelve hours ago that a suspected Russian submarine had landed a party of eighteen men about twenty-two miles southeast of here in Porsangerfjord. Then the sub withdrew' a few miles and submerged. The landing party headed westward, apparently searching for you," he said glancing up at Teleman.
Teleman shook his head in confusion. "How the hell would they know where I was?"
Folsom grinned wryly. "I suppose if we could track you down by radar they could too:'
"But that's impossible. The ejection capsule carries its own ECM gear. They would never have been able to track me."
"Could be," Folsom admitted, "but somehow they are onto you. Maybe they just figured that you would have bailed out somewhere along the coast and as a last-ditch measure sent out the landing party in the hopes of picking you up.
"Be that as it may, they are out looking for you. Three hours ago Mac, here, got back from a little delaying action. He waylaid the party about twelve miles down the beach, shot them .up a little, then led them off into the forest. He estimates we gained about six hours while they sort themselves out of the trees enough to realize they have been tricked. When they figure that out, they will head west again, even faster."
"Do you think they know exactly where we are?"
"I don't think so. If they did, they would have come straight here. As it is, Mae says they have one group down on the beach and the other along the top of the cliffs."
"Well if that's it," Teleman said with a deep sigh, "then there isn't much to worry about. I landed about five miles into the trees. The capsule contains a self-destruct mechanism that literally reduces the thing to a lump of metal. If it's still snowing, it ought to be pretty well covered up by now. How far back from the cliffs are we?"
"Wait a minute," Folsom said quietly. "It's not that simple. We are about a mile back from the beach. And we could move the tent farther south if I thought it would do any good. But our lifeboat is still on the beach. And the damned thing weighs about three tons. There is no way to move it, short of using explosives, which we haven't got. So the Russians are going to find us if we stay around."
"Now there is a problem there, isn't there?" said McPherson, peering through the tent flap.-In spite of himself, Teleman shivered in the icy touch of the Arctic wind.
"It looks as though the wind will be kicking up the sea pretty badly by now. You can even hear the waves smacking into the cliffs. On top of which, the snow is so thick that you can't see your hand in front of your face. -That rules out the helicopter on two counts. . . . So we walk."
"Walk?" Teleman repeated weakly.
"Walk. All the way to the Norwegian naval base, or at least as far in that direction as we can to stay ahead of the Russians. We walk until the helicopter can get in to pick us up or we reach the base."
Gadsen, who had been studying the map, looked up. "Commander, you've studied this place pretty thoroughly, just what kind of a base is it?"
"It's now a combination radar and naval station. Pretty heavily defended and with some outmoded coastal artillery left by the Nazis, but supplemented with Hawk missiles. Our Ruski friends won't risk outright aggression to get Teleman back—at least I hope they won't—and if they do the Norwegians know how to use both the missiles and the artillery."
"Well why in hell don't we call them up and ask them to send some help. They 'must have Sno-cats or something like that" Folsom looked pained for a moment. "Come on, you know the
answer to that as well as I do. The old man says no. And that is that."
Teleman glanced away, slightly ash
amed. He knew why the "old man" said no. And he knew that Folsom was practicing a slight deception. The old man was not the commanding officer of the RFK, but his own boss sitting warm and comfortable somewhere in the Virginia foothills. They could not ask, except as a last resort, for help from the Norwegians because he was not supposed to be in Norway. The United States had no authorization from the Norwegian Government for overflights. And the only way to avoid embarrassing questions and strained relations was not to let the Norwegians know that he was in Norway. So they would have to start walking toward the base in the hope that something would happen—either the weather would moderate or else they would be able to get some other kind of aircraft in to pick up the party. If all else failed, they would have to walk in on the Norwegians. The problem at the moment was to stay far enough ahead of the Russians to keep from being captured.
Teleman's head ached with the intensity of tightening thumb screws. In addition to being weary beyond reason, his vision was hazy and full of wild afterimages resulting from the microtraces of lysergic acid remaining in his system. As he sat across from the executive officer he was positive that ample precautions had been taken to ensure that he would not be captured by the Russians. But which of the three sailors had orders to kill him if capture appeared imminent?
Was it Folsom? he wondered. Folsom knew too many details, knew the vital importance of his missions—details that could not be gained by conjecture alone. If not Folsom, which of the other two? McPherson, if what Folsom had told him was true, had hiked eleven miles one way to waylay the Russians. A former member of the SEALS, he would know all about assassination. But, on the other hand, he knew nothing about the other—
