Roger Crossland - Red Ice

It had turned cold again by the time I awoke.

We bobbed in the low chop off the reef in the predawn light. We had missed our primary and secondary rendezvous. Earlier, during the briefing aboard the sub, I had noticed Commander Cho had only half-heartedly acknowledged my mention of a secondary rendezvous. People who missed their primary did so for a reason and seldom made their secondary. I wouldn’t be surprised if the submarine was cruising the Sea of Japan now.

“There! There! It’s over there. I am seeing it very clear, there.” Gurung pointed north. There was nothing there.

The effect of strain and fatigue on the minds of men adrift in small boats was well known. Sometimes only one man was affected, often there were group delusions. That would be the final humiliation, to go out in a series of phantom ship chases across the Sea of Okhotsk.

“Take it easy, you sure you saw something over there?”

“Yes, being right over at the edge of the fog bank. Right….” He pointed again and began to feel foolish. He looked down at his wound. “Well, I guess…”

“No, he was wrong. It was over that way!”

Now Wickersham. Was this how it was going to end? I tried to follow his outstretched arm. I had trouble concentrating.

Then, like some plumber’s sea monster, the dull black periscope cut the sea, leaving a feather of white foam. It headed straight for us, then surfaced. It lay dead in the water not more than a few hundred yards away. Though it remained stationary, it seemed to move in and out of the fog, sometimes disappearing altogether.

In the distance I could hear a high-pitched hum. At first I thought it came from the submarine. It grew louder. Then as it drew nearer I gasped in recognition and dug deeply with my paddle.

“We have to make it to the sub—now! Fast as we can make it. Dig in. Chamonix, you’re first aboard with Vyshinsky. Just get him aboard, forget the gear….”

The hum changed pitch as two fox-bat jets broke through the fog bank forty feet above us. One had to veer radically to avoid the conning tower of the sub. I could make out people on its deck moving agitatedly. Its deck gun began to pivot.

She’s not going to dive — she’s going to slug it out on the surface with jets! It was a brave but foolhardy stance.

Matsuma and I were paddling as fast as we could—the bayonet wound in my left arm made it nearly useless. Chamonix’s kayak had almost reached the sub.

I could imagine the radio exchanges between the pilots. They had a Chinese submarine in their sights. Our deception was complete, if that mattered anymore.

The jets cracked overhead on a reverse bearing. The sub’s gun popped away ineffectually. They bracketed the sub with bombs. No use wasting rockets on a surfaced, dead-in-the-water, putative Chinese sub. Geysers of water spouted all around us.

I could make out Dravit with his leg still in a cast on deck. Incredibly, Keiko was standing right next to him and they were tearing a pipe out of a crate. Except it wasn’t a pipe, it was a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Two Korean crewman handled another pipe.

The jets made another pass. A rocket split off from the vapor trail of one jet. The other released a stick of bombs. The single rocket thrust up a geyser just beyond the sub. The fog had somehow upset its tracking system. The bombs detonated near the bow of the sub and tore away a portion of decking. They knocked everyone on the sub’s deck flat. Dravit, just aft of the conning tower, righted himself. He kneeled with his missile and a Korean sailor sighted the other. I couldn’t see Keiko. Where was she? Why wasn’t she standing?

The jets started another pass, again coming from behind the sub. The Englishman and the Korean pivoted—and fired. Matsuma and I were twenty yards from the sub, all the rest were scrambling aboard. One side of the lead jet burst into flame and its engine began stopping and starting like a hiccuping Waring blender. The other jet made a hard turn and evaded the second missile. The lead jet still hung in the air, headed toward the sub—and in the last seconds I realized it was going to hit us.

A great wall of ice water capsized the kayak. Inverted, I tore away the spray skirt and felt my body numb. Survival in ice water was a function of energy, and I was totally spent. I looked around for Matsuma. He was gone… smashed by the dying plane. I tried to swim but my numbed arms barely moved. I could see the sub clearly, as clearly as I had ever seen anything in my life—even make out faces of people as they vaulted down the hatches, preparing to dive the sub. I was sinking, waves washed over my head. In the corner of my eye I saw a splash. Where was Keiko?

So this was what it was like to die.

It was a peculiar dream. Keiko was swimming with me, crying. She kept tugging at my hair. I tried to make her stop but she wouldn’t; Dravit was on a dark black riverbank with the muzzle of a grease gun pointed into a hole with a hinged lid like a garbage can. He kept looking over at us anxiously and talking into the hole. It took forever for us to get to the riverbank, but when we did men came out of the hole and dragged us into it. I didn’t want to go.

Dravit had played dirty. It had occurred to me when we had loaded the sub that we had an inordinate amount of ordnance. Dravit had arranged to load several extra crates of C-4 and the Stinger missiles in Chinhae. He had concealed charges throughout the sub as a precaution. When the sub’s skipper had been reluctant to wait extra hours for us, Dravit had played his wild card. Only he knew how to disarm the already-armed charges—which he promised to do once the sub had recovered the raiding party. An insane, and altogether genuine gleam in Dravit’s eye was all it took to convince the sub’s captain that Dravit would willingly blow up himself, the sub, and its crew. The sub’s captain had decided then, Dravit later related, that “the proper thing to do” was wait for us.

The sub and its skipper redeemed themselves on the way back. With the entire Soviet navy looking for us, they eluded Russian antisubmarine-warfare forces, using shallow water, coastal ice, thermoclines, and other tricks I did not quite understand.

After we negotiated the La Pérouse Straits, it was just a matter of tying up loose ends. I was told Vyshinsky, in improving health, demanded to shake the hand of every sailor on the boat as we left the straits.

Matsuma was dead. The Sea of Okhotsk had finally made its claim, and I did not look forward to returning to that Ainu fishing village with news of a dead patriarch. I knew how they would take it, though—with the same samurai-like stoicism Matsuma had shown.

As for Puckins, I intended to have Kurganov set up a generous trust fund for his family.

Gurung’s thigh, it appeared, would take about six months to fully recover. The hollow scar would never fully disappear, a prospect he relished. Chamonix’s shoulder would heal in three months but remain stiff for life. My arm would take the same amount of time to heal. Wickersham, untouched, thought better of his horse trade for the Evenki amulet.

I turned over the crypto assembly and code books to the sub’s classified-materials officer. The procedure for securing them was so complicated I knew he wished they’d deep-sixed with one of the kayaks. Well, that was done and Mr. Kim hadn’t even had to sell his mother.

Keiko, who hummed Japanese songs to herself when she thought I wasn’t looking, gave me such a scolding I knew all was well again. She was a woman to come home to.

We transferred to picket boats outside Chinhae. Vyshinsky had recovered enough strength while on the sub to walk by himself. Only Gurung would have to be carried off by stretcher.