Roger Crossland - Red Ice

Outside, small-arms fire peppered from the cooler. Several officers in a rush for the half-tracks had been unable to make it past the cooler. So they had dug in. A few bodies sprawled in the snow outside the officers’ quarters. Puckins and Gurung had picked them off from their eyries. No more than four or five officers could have made it as far as the cooler.

A guard using two zeks as human shields moved out of the shelter of the cooler in the direction of the half-tracks. It was the beer-barrel sergeant. With his free hand he wrenched the prisoners between him and the guards’ barracks. Seconds later he flopped forward, leaving the two zeks bewildered. Puckins had, from on high, plinked the beer-barrel sergeant off with a single round. The zeks hesitated, then scurried out the gate into one of their barracks.

Wickersham, Kruger, and Matsuma had the Type 67 inside the guards’ barracks now and were considering whether to place it out a window or on the roof.

“Can’t return fire on the cooler. Might hit a prisoner,” someone said.

Kruger fell forward with a dark blue hole in his forehead. We ducked instinctively.

“Don’t bother. Just keep the fire aimed up over the cooler until Gurung and Puckins can work up behind the bastards.” Puckins and Gurung had already left the towers and were making a wide circle behind the barracks.

“They’ve stopped firing,” said Wickersham warily.

Three VOKhk officers in gymnasterka tunics hung out the cooler windows by their heels. Each had a prison spoon handle thrust deep below the corner of his jaw. All were decidedly dead. The zeks had settled old scores.

Two shadows raced out the inner fence gate toward the half-tracks.

“The recoilless,” I yelled. Matsuma and Chamonix grabbed the weapon and its ammo. Putting on our skis, we flashed through the gate. One VOKhk guard worked frantically to bring an RPK machine gun mounted in the half-track to bear, as the other started the engine. Chamonix kneeled and Matsuma loaded. The half-track blossomed into flame and the two guards—what was left of them—slumped forward, burning like candles.

Other than the ringing in my ears it was very quiet.

“Shall we,” Chamonix bellowed into my deafened ear, “attend to the liberation.”

“Look what we found.”

Gurung and Chief Puckins herded five Russian guards in front of them—the only survivors. I didn’t like the look in Matsuma’s eye. Giri again.

“Matsuma, gather up the four gang bosses and invite them to the commandant’s quarters. It’s time for that briefing you’ve prepared. Tell the other prisoners not to start running off on their own—we’re going to help them with an organized escape.”

It was better to keep Matsuma busy. The Japanese say that with some debts of honor one can only begin to pay one one-thousandth of the debt. I didn’t want him reducing the fraction’s denominator.

Matsuma turned to a group of prisoners standing uneasily on a barracks’ stoop. Their features were a map of the Soviet Union—Yakut, Kazakh, Uzbek, Belorussian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian. One Mongolian girl reminded me of Keiko. Ivan bestowed his favors with equanimity. The USSR is an equal-opportunity oppressor.

“We come as friends…,” he began.

I turned to Puckins. “Lock them up in the cooler. Some of their friends should be by to release them shortly. Then take some of the C-4 and blow out the insides of the radio shack after you pull those items we need. That way Ivan won’t realize what’s missing.

“One other thing, Chief. Have someone smash the radios in the half-tracks. Then have Gurung and Wickersham gather up any ammo they can find. We may need it.”

“Right, sir.”

He returned in half an hour.

“Here they are, the crypto assembly and the code books.” He held out several looseleaf binders and a mass of electronic circuitry about the size of a typewriter. “The charges are set.”

“Good. Very good.”

The radio shack erupted in fiery splinters, shattering the false dawn. Tiny bits of knobs, wires, and metal plate hummed down around us. What was left of it burned in indifferent competition with the guards’ barracks/pyre. Prisoners, in a festive mood, milled about the two bonfires. In Siberia, holidays were where you found them.

“Who are you?”

The four gang bosses sat in the center of the commandant’s office. We stood along its sides. Light flickered from a kerosene lantern onto the commandant’s well-appointed oak desk. Matsuma and Gurung stood in front of them without their exposure masks.

Matsuma pealed off his white overblouse to reveal a green quilted jacket with red collar flashes but devoid of insignia. He moved stiffly. I guessed the hit to the body armor had broken a rib or two. “We are soldiers of the People’s Republic of China. We are liberating all the concentration camps of the Russian imperialists in this area and seizing the Trans Siberian Railway.”

“Are we your captives?” asked an Armenian gang boss with a heavy beard.

“By no means. We have admired the courage of you who have challenged the Kremlin adventurists. You are free to go. In fact, that is why we have asked you here. One gang will divide up the camp’s food and supplies into four equal parts. Then, by lot, the other gangs will be allowed to choose which quarter they want. It will be up to each gang boss to parcel up the supplies among his individual gang members. You should take the three remaining half-tracks and the train. That’ll give you a head start. Head in different directions for about half a day, then abandon them and split up. We figure a VOKhk relief detachment will get here by rail within twenty-four hours.”

A straw-haired old boss with deep-sunken eyes stood up. “Can you help us get into China?”

“No,” Matsuma stated firmly. “We have liberated you, that is all we can do. Escape for us, in the event our army does not succeed, will be difficult enough.”

“How can we possibly survive?”

“I don’t know. All I can say is winter is nearly over and this is a large, sparsely settled region. With the guards’ portion added in, you’re going to have more food than you would have had otherwise. Anyone who wishes can of course stay in the camp until the raid has been discovered and the new guards arrive.”

“Not bloody likely,” another gang boss said, then spit for emphasis. It left a dark spot on the commandant’s Persian rug.

“They don’t look very Chinese to me. Some of these men are too big, even for northern Chinese,” a short gang boss with Mongolian features and no teeth said, pointing to Chamonix and Wickersham, “and why are they still wearing masks?”

Matsuma looked to me.

“Tell them we freedom fighters of the People’s Republic do not observe class or race distinctions. Ours is an international struggle.” I said to Matsuma in Japanese. He translated.

They guffawed.

“And it is in your self-interest for us to be Chinese. If we are Chinese, the Kremlin must order a border-long mobilization. If any zek reveals to anyone we are not, then the Kremlin can concentrate all its resources into catching us and recapturing you. Convince your zek gangs that we are all dog-eating Chinamen and be content. There is an ancient Chinese proverb: ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”

They nodded understanding.

“One more thing,” I said. “Where is Special Prisoner Seven Thirty-four?… Vyshinsky?”

“That goner? He’s in sick bay.”

The old man raised himself up on his elbows. There was no color in his drawn features and his eyes were rheumy. Those pallbearer’s eyes .