Roger Crossland - Red Ice

I pulled Chief Puckins aside. “See if you can come up with seven shotguns—the kind with magazines, not the double-barreled variety.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Our weapons for the ultimate raid are waiting for us in Korea. We haven’t time to smuggle military weapons into Japan, and we’re going on an excursion tomorrow. Pick up one hundred forty rounds of buckshot, too. Tell Chamonix I want Wickersham to get some six-round magazine extensions flown in. Customs will never catch on to them. They’re too innocuous looking.”

Puckins sauntered off with his forefingers aligned, shooting imaginary clay pigeons.

“Henry”—I motioned to Dravit as we waited for the troops to show up—“we’ve got some business to attend to. It’s going to churn up your training schedule.”

“Quite right. We were getting into a rut anyway. A little skulduggery?” he queried brightly.

“We’re going to read Ivan’s mail. Break out the Zodiac F470, its motor, and the dry suits. Have Lutjens test the Nikonos camera and load it with fast film. I’ve got Chief Puckins rounding up some shotguns; they’re the only firearm we can come up with in Japan on such short notice. Let’s take a half dozen of our best students.

“One other thing. I’m going to call to Yokohama and have Keiko charter Matsuma’s fishing boat for a little night fishing. He’ll probably appreciate the night off.”

Russian gunboats regularly patrolled the Russian half of the foggy Nemuro Straits between Hokkaido and Kunashiri. Sato had ventured that the volcanic topography of Kunashiri limited the possible location of the Corrective Labor Colony Section offices to the main village on the island. Dravit and I knew that once we found the offices, we would have to play it by ear.

By remote good fortune, no moon pierced the tendrils of fog drifting over Matsuma’s village as we drove among the shanties. I was walking to where Keiko said the dinghy would be beached when Matsuma stepped out of the shadows.

“Matsuma-san, you needn’t be here. We chartered the vessel bare boat.”

“It is not my boat. You wanted a boat with radar. My boat doesn’t have radar. It is a friend’s boat.”

“But the arrangement was just for the boat, the boat alone….”

“I arranged for the boat, and I will pilot it. That is the situation, take it or leave it.” His voice was cool and mocking. Puckins had worked around to one side of Matsuma. The others were unloading gear.

“Look, there won’t be enough room for you. We’re going to have quite a few men aboard, and some special equipment…”

Puckins struck like a cobra. In seconds he choked Matsuma unconscious with a come-along grip. Puckins gently lowered him to the gray sand, rolled him over, bound his wrists with plastic handcuffs, and taped his mouth.

We had no choice in the matter. We had to see that quarterly report tonight. There wasn’t time to find another boat.

Puckins and I put him in the dinghy and signaled the others to assemble the gear on the beach. Puckins rowed out to the boat with Matsuma, and when he returned, we loaded the dinghy and the now-inflated rubber boat, or F470. We managed to load the old fishing boat quickly. I looked into the cabin to see how Matsuma was doing. Who would give me coastal information about the Sea of Okhotsk now that we had alienated Matsuma?

Matsuma was sitting upright. The corners of his mouth beyond the tape were curved in a great smile. Baffled, I tore off the tape to see what the devil he was laughing about.

“ Okiijodan, ne ? Big joke, yes? You think I did not know you were not anthropologist from beginning. You think all old men are fools? Your Keiko, she told good story, but I asked around, and her friends say she has an Amerikajin friend who looks like you. That friend is no anthropologist. More like ronin , masterless samurai,” he guffawed through clenched teeth. “That is, if a foreigner could ever come close to being samurai.”

“Now, you try to start boat without Matsuma’s help.” I tried to start it as the men in the F470 pulled alongside. The key turned, but it wouldn’t start.

He smiled superiorly. “I have hidden part, will take maybe all night to find.”

I knew when I was licked. “Okay, okay, what’s the deal? What do you want?”

“You seem very interested in the Sea of Okhotsk. I think you intend to do harm to the roshiajin . I wish to do harm to the roshiajin , too. I have a debt, an obligation to my brothers…”

He could only mean the Japanese with whom he’d been imprisoned.

“…to show the roshiajin they are a country without honor.” His jaw muscles tightened. “They are a country without shame.”

“What do you want from me?” I said, fully knowing what was to come.

“Let me go with you. My heart burns to watch roshiajin die. They deserve to die the way they made my brothers die.”

The Japanese concept of giri had a strong hold on some. Giri was an all-consuming obligation of honor entered into on behalf of one’s comrades. Revenge in its name carried no stigma. Rather, such actions reflected one’s commendable personal integrity and strength of character. Giri did not stem from some contrived fit of pique, but from a sincere sense of obligation.

I sized him up. He was physically up to it. Fishing was grueling work. Yet he had no military experience.

“We are not going on a vendetta. You will take orders from me, an Amerikajin , a foreigner. If you cannot take orders, you will not live to return with us, if we return at all.”

He nodded.

“We are going to attack a corrective labor camp. Don’t let the others know just yet. Before we’re through, you’ll see plenty of Russians die, all right. And then again, you may end up right back where you started—in one of those camps again, along with the rest of us.”

His eyes flared. “I will die first.”

“You may. Very well, we need your help, no doubt of that. You may come along provided you meet the standards everyone else has had to meet. Tonight we’re going to make a covert raid on Kunashiri. You’ll stay with the fishing boat on this side of the straits. We’ll straighten this all out when I get back. Now let’s get under way.”

After I cut away the handcuffs, he rummaged belowdecks for a few minutes, and then the ancient engine rumbled to life. I took a quick look at the radar. It was an inexpensive bottom-of-the-line model.

By now, everyone was aboard, and the inflatable half-deflated below the gunwales of the boat. The men of the landing party were oiling down their shotguns and wrapping them in plastic bags. They put their camouflage uniforms in watertight canoe bags. The two boat guards, Wickersham and Lutjens, stood lookout with their short-ranged weapons.

“We should have brought some rocks aboard,” Wickersham muttered, “Could throw rocks farther than I can shoot this fowling piece.”

Using our chart, I showed Matsuma where we intended to launch the F470 and where we wished to be picked up.

At about 2230, we loaded the inflatable and headed for the rocky shores of Kunashiri. Wickersham and Matsuma stayed with the fishing boat. The rest of us—Dravit, Chamonix, Puckins, Gurung, Lutjens, and I—all clad in dry suits, wedged into the small inflatable boat. Our muffled outboard engine pushed us along at about five knots. Seaweed kept jamming the prop, so we stopped periodically, cursed silently, and prayed intently the engine would restart. The seaweed of the Kurils was notorious. I figured a good sprinter could race from island to island in the chain, just resting quick footfalls on the seaweed.

We didn’t see land until we nearly ran into it. Visibility in the fog was about one hundred yards. We heard breakers and then a great black cliff loomed ahead of us. I had Lutjens cut the engine and drop anchor.