Roger Crossland - Red Ice

“Gave away my good-luck piece awhile ago,” he said to himself. “Kid trades harder than a Singapore Chinaman, but I just had to have that neckpiece. Can’t afford to be without a charm now. No, don’t want to run out of luck this far from home.”

I could feel everyone tense. This talk of luck put everyone on edge.

It snowed until late the tenth day, the day of our first scheduled submarine pickup. We set out that night for the coast. We were still about a day and a half’s travel from where we’d buried the kayaks. We would have to travel as far as we could by night and then burrow into the snow during the day. I dreaded this impending day bivouac in the snow. We would be without tents or sleeping bags.

Another matter made me anxious. The submarine was scheduled to be on station to pick us up at midnight of the tenth day and if we didn’t show, to try again at a different location on the eleventh day. We weren’t going to make that first pickup. Making the second pickup would call for fine timing. We must make the second pickup. I didn’t expect the Korean sub to wait around for us if we didn’t.

We skied through the night as rapidly as we could, and when day came we fashioned snow caves. We crawled into three separate caves and waited for dark. One slow-burning candle and two bodies per cave brought the interior temperature of each up into the high thirties. No one slept much. It was too cold, anyway the constant drone of SU-19 jets overhead dispelled any thought of rest. The jets flew search patterns in and out of the surrounding ridges. Twice, pairs of jets cracked by right overhead.

“Flamin’ jets are up and down more often than a hooker’s skivvies,” Wickersham observed with typical hostility. For the most part we shivered in silence.

That night we covered the last miles to the coast. By some freak of nature the temperature rose above freezing. We hit the coast north of our original landing point and had to ski south until we found the stand of stunted birch that marked the kayaks. We departed quickly, abandoning a kayak and not bothering to pull on our dry suits.

After a brief portage, we found a freshly formed channel and slipped our three remaining kayaks between the masses of ice. The rise in temperature had brought fog with it. It seemed we were never very far from fog. This stuff rolled by in uneven patches, which at no time permitted visibility of more than one hundred yards. The mist that glided over the ice fields was like smoke passing over some burned, broken, forgotten place.

With Vyshinsky tucked into Chamonix’s kayak, we brought the kayaks into single file. We began to paddle up the narrow channel, which opened into a larger channel, and then, we hoped, open water. Unfortunately we were not moving as fast as I had hoped, though it appeared we would just make the rendezvous.

Matsuma heard it first—the slow gurgling noise of marine engines at near idle. Carefully laying our paddles across the kayak thwarts, we drifted and waited. If we kept still perhaps the danger would pass. Matsuma opened his end of the spray skirt, reached down to the recoilless, and hefted it to his shoulder. I searched the fog hoping that the noise was coming from a not-too-watchful fishing boat. The chances, however, of meeting a civilian powerboat in these waters were slim.

Then, abruptly, I could trace the outline of a Russian P-class torpedo boat. And then a second P-class. For a second their silhouettes were clear, then they faded back into the fog. I armed several high-explosive projectiles. Armor-piercing rounds would just go in one side of their thin-skinned hulls and out the other. Riding as low in the water as we did, with the mist and icy backdrop concealing us, we still had a chance. I agonized over whether we should initiate fire. There was only one possible answer once they began their turn into our channel. Now they lay between us and the open sea.

Matsuma and I rotated the bow of the kayak forty-five degrees so that the back blast of the recoilless wouldn’t hit the kayaks behind us.

“Get the rear boat’s pilothouse,” I whispered. Matsuma studied the sights. With the rear torpedo boat out of control, neither could turn or back out of the narrow channel. Then, if I could load and Matsuma could resight fast enough with 25-millimeter and .51-caliber fire raining down on us, we might have a chance.

“Ready?” Matsuma said without turning his head.

“Fire in the hole,” I yelled, and tapped him on the shoulder.

Bawhummp .

I looked up to see the pilothouse on the second torpedo boat had flattened over to one side like a folded top hat.

Fifty-one-caliber fire began to rake the ice floes around us. The 25-millimeter mounts fixed without aiming. They weren’t sure where we were. The lead boat fired a torpedo blind and it boiled under all three boats, exploding a hundred yards behind us into ice.

The wet cold made my fingers clumsy as I loaded the second round. We had to keep the lead torpedo boat from transmitting a call for assistance.

“Fire in the hole.”

Bawhummp .

The pilothouse of the lead boat burst open at its seams. The helmsman on the O.O.D. were tossed high into the air.

The deck gunner on the rear boat had the right direction but the wrong elevation now. Rounds whined overhead. The twin 25-millimeter mounts were making wild slashes at the ice fields. All their guns winked fire without stop. My ears were ringing again. I jammed another round in. The lead boat was beginning to turn, using only its engines for steering.

Bawhummp .

The lead boat exploded into a burning hulk, its fuel tanks ablaze. It lit the area and melted away the fog. The deck gunner on the remaining boat could now see us clearly, though the crews of the 25-millimeter mounts were still firing blind from their shielded positions. I loaded. The deck gunner had us now and stitched a burst into Wickersham and Gurung’s kayak. He placed rounds below their waterline.

Bawhummp .

Matsuma had rushed the shot. It blew away a section of deck and the deck gunner fell away from his machine gun. I loaded. Another figure darted out of the hull for it and swiveled the muzzle toward us once again.

Bawhummp .

The second torpedo boat broke into two flaming halves and burned intensely. All that remained of the first boat was a smoking hole in the latticework of free ice. The stench of burning diesel fuel was overpowering.

We had no way of knowing if either boat had transmitted. Gurung had lost a chunk of upper thigh to a .51-caliber bullet. It was all he could do to muster the strength to stuff bits of his torn jacket into the bullet holes below the waterline. I could tell he was close to spiraling into shock. He couldn’t paddle. Wickersham taped over the other holes and tied together the splintered thwart braces, then bailed the kayak dry.

The men were at the end of their ropes. We felt weak and rickety from the unrelenting strain. Each kayak crew had to watch the other to make sure no one fell asleep or collapsed unnoticed.

Our second pickup point was near a stone reef. We paddled to where I figured it ought to be. It wasn’t. I wondered if it mattered, we were already two hours late for the rendezvous.

We paddled in an ever-growing circle until we found the reef. Everything seemed vague and hazy. It took me ten minutes to make thirty-second decisions. Was it exhaustion or hypothermia, and did it really matter anymore? The submarine was nowhere in sight. We were overdue. By rights we would never see the submarine again. I decided not to decide what to do next. We secured a grappling hook between two icy bits of rock on the reef, rafted together, and slept beneath the blanket of fog. If we were going to be discovered we were too exposed and weary now to resist.