Roger Crossland - Red Ice

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 camp. 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.