Roger Crossland - Red Ice

Without hesitation, Gurung and Chamonix, acting as scouts, slipped over the side. It seemed like hours before they blinked the all-clear signal by light to us from shore. Then the rest of us slid over the slick black thwart tubes with our bags and shotguns. Lutjens stayed aboard as a boat guard. I made a mental note of two distinctive rocks as a navigational range. They’d point the way to the F470 when we returned.

There’s nothing like a night dip in dark, frigid waters to make you doubt your sanity. The shock of the cold water against the dry suit makes you inhale sharply and wonder if you’ll ever master regular in-and-out breathing again. A night swim has that deceptive peacefulness that foreshadows doom.

Swimming in pairs, we let the waves wash us in to shore and smash us against the rock-strewn beach. A barnacle-encrusted rock scraped at my knee and I felt a cold trickle of seawater flow down my shin. Dravit nearly lost his equipment bag to a heavy breaker and Puckins’s shotgun clattered against a rock. Quickly, Gurung and Chamonix led us to concealment below an overhanging cliff.

Like so many volcanic islands, Kunashiri rose from the sea in a series of rocky sloped surges. This was the most desolate portion of the island. The wisps of fog, the heavy waves on the seaweed-covered beach—it would have made a picturesque setting for some less grim activity. But we didn’t have time for reveries, the port and main village were still several miles away. We changed hurriedly into camouflage uniforms, turtlenecks, and watch caps.

Gurung clicked his tongue against the side of his mouth to catch my attention. He pointed up and about ten yards farther down the ledge. A small red spot glowed above the edge of the cliff. As I started, I gradually made out the silhouette of a man with an AKM rifle, a fur hat, and the long gray belted coat of Soviet winter field dress.

“Approaching sentry—not to stalk just now,” he whispered thoughtfully. “Too much smoking.”

I understood. The worst time to attempt to take out a sentry was when he was smoking. In most militaries, smoking on sentry duty is forbidden, so when sentries do smoke, they are extra wary. They aren’t wary of some enemy stupid enough to be out on a miserable night like this, but wary of their own sergeant of the guard—who knows how to make sentries even more miserable.

“I am tempted to turn him in,” Gurung said with mock anger.

Several minutes later, the glow dropped to the ledge. With my nod, Gurung pulled out his big kukri and tested the knife’s edge with his thumb. He turned noiselessly, and then glided along the base of the cliff beyond the sentry. The sentry was very close and we shrank into the overhanging cliff. I could just make out the stocky Gurkha methodically scaling the cliff with the kukri in his teeth. Moments later, the sentry crashed down from the cliff in two distinct thumps—head and fur hat, body and rifle.

“Son of a bitch!” Puckins exclaimed as the body rolled toward him, stopping inches from his feet.

“Get the greatcoat before it gets bloody,” Dravit ordered. “Never a bad idea to have an enemy uniform.”

The ever-gloomy Chamonix, still in his dry suit, jammed the segmented body between two large rocks in the surf zone and piled rocks over it. In a few days, the body would work loose and drift onto the beach. The only man who fit the Russian’s uniform was the man who had buried him—Chamonix.

We tucked our dry suits and fins into the haversack we’d brought in the watertight bags. Then we began our ascent, with Chamonix close behind us wearing the uniform of a corporal of naval infantry—his AKM at the ready. Shortly, we reached the shoulder of the cliffs.

“There it is. That dirt road should eventually lead us into the main village. It’s on one of the pre-World War Two maps I found.”

We patrolled along two parallel ruts, which soon became a potholed macadam road. Twice the oncoming, fog-rimmed headlights of military trucks forced us to dive headlong for the cover of drainage ditches.

By 0200, we had reached the main village. A massive seawall defined the rim of the harbor, and below the wall stretched a half dozen yards of pebble beach. We kept in the shadow of the seawall until we were even with the point where the old map indicated the police station would be. The single-story building that abutted the seawall evidently hadn’t changed purposes in forty years. It was still a police station. As Dravit and I had guessed, the Ministry of State Security building was not far away—in fact, a sign indicated it was the large old building of pre-World War II vintage on the landward side of the police station. The imposing two-story concrete building towered over the police shack. A foghorn, strange and haunting, sounded in the distance.

I hand-signaled for Gurung, our point man, to reconnoiter the two buildings. A half hour later, he reported that the first building was a joint civil and military police station, with a policeman posted outside on the road that led to the seawall. The second building, the State Security building, was darkened except for an inner hallway. A VOKhk guard sat in the hallway and made rounds of the building at regular intervals.

We wound our way to the street, which ran behind both buildings and moved single file down the three-foot-deep stone drainage trench that bordered it. This street divided two rows of shops—all closed—but whose owners lived in their back rooms. Farther down, a saloon resounded with the singing and carousing of Russian soldiers. The State Security building stood right behind the saloon. We vaulted a fence and ducked into the long row of shop backyards. A slow-motion steeplechase through tiny gardens, over plank fences and bamboo trellises, and around large fish baskets ensued. Finally, we arrived at the hazy void between the saloon and the ministry building and scrambled over the fence that separated the two.

The lower windows of the ministry building were protected by steel bars. The upper windows were balustraded and covered with shutters. Gurung pointed to the built-up ridge crest at the peak of the tiled roof and then to the quoins leading like rungs up the corners of the building. I waved Chamonix forward. The straight-backed legionnaire stood an impressive six foot four. He immediately recognized what Gurung had in mind and, dropping his haversack, pulled out a rubber-coated grappling hook and a coil of yellow left-lay mountaineering line. He backed away from the building and began to swing the grappling hook like a pendulum to gauge its weight and feel. In a sudden release of energy, he hurled the hook just short of the ridge crest and watched it bounce noisily down the tiles. We waited several minutes to see if we had attracted any attention. Apparently, the nightly ruckus at the saloon had dulled the neighbors to things that went bump in the night.

The legionnaire’s second toss caught the ridge crest solidly. He gave it three strong tugs and then kept steady tension on the line. Meanwhile, Gurung clambered from quoin to quoin until he was at a slightly higher level than the upper set of windows. Next, Chamonix angled the line over to the Gurkha. Gurung transferred his weight to the line and let Chamonix jockey the line to the balustrade of the nearest window. A resounding crack from above indicated that one of the ridge tiles had given way and the grappling hook had come loose. Gurung threw out his arms and started to fall.

The Gurkha lunged for the balustrade, his boots clawing for footholds in the air. With one hand he caught a pillar as the grappling hook plunged past him. For a few moments he just oscillated by one hand. Then he mustered the reserve to thrust his free hand to the railing and kip over the balustrade. He was safe.