Joe Poyer - North Cape

But it was the last paragraph of the message that added a few more gray hairs to his head. The message stated that he was to use all powers of persuasion at his disposal to rescue the pilot if the Norwegians should prove to be uncooperative — as they had every right to be, he thought. It was utter nonsense for the State Department not to notify the Norwegian Government as soon as possible. Not only could they render valuable assistance, but for God’s sake, it was their country and they were allies. He might have his orders to bring Teleman out with all of the force at his disposal, but he was damn sure that no copy of any such message existed in Washington. Washington, if caught, would merely claim that it was a transmitting error or that Larkin had exceeded his authority. In any event, if he had to act pursuant to those orders, the entire wrath of both governments would fall on him like a ton of bricks. His naval career would be at an end. And, if he did not act in accordance with the orders, he would be either secretly court-martialed or shunted out of the Navy. It had happened before, he knew. And Larkin could count at least fifteen qualified naval officers waiting to step into his shoes.

It was no wonder that Larkin got out of the high seat and resumed his pacing. A lesser man would have gone screaming off the bridge in frustration. It was nearly 2100 before Folsom called a halt for the night. During the last few hours they had straggled into a line over a mile long. McPherson, still the strongest of the party, had taken up the tail-end position to act as rear guard and to make sure no one was left behind in the snow-filled wastes. Teleman was only a few paces ahead of him. Folsom had chosen the campsite on the basis of time rather than location. The tundra stretched for miles in all directions, flat and unbroken except for two miles north, where one could barely make out the faint line of cliffs against the night sky. As he waited for the others to catch up, he felt as if he were standing in the middle of a flat dinner plate whose white lack-of-color under the three-quarter moon and cloud-free sky reflected enough light to hurt his eyes after the deep gloom of the past day. If the snow had not been fresh Folsom knew there would have been virtually no light reflection from the surface. Ice crystals would have tended to absorb light and reflect only a little at random. He had witnessed this phenomenon before while aboard a destroyer standing off the Great Ice Barrier in the depths of winter. The icy surface had reflected virtually no light unless it was coated by fresh snow.

Gadsen staggered — literally staggered — up and sank down in the snow a few feet away. He sat, knees drawn up and head down, for several minutes before regaining breath enough to speak coherently. Folsom, glancing down the trail of disturbed snow they had left, could see McPherson and Teleman approaching, still more than a hundred yards away.

“Cod, if you hadn’t… stopped… I would have collapsed. in another few feet.” Gadsen managed to force out between ragged gasps for air.

Painfully, Folsom,shrugged out of his pack and let it fall with a solid thump to the frozen ground. His voice when he spoke was as weary as Gadsen’s, reflecting none of the lightheartedness of the words. “Courage me boy, only another nine miles to go.”

“Courage hell… the only thing that keeps me going… is the Russians…”

“Yeah,” Folsom said, nodding. “I just hope to hell that they are as bushed as we are.” He watched the approaching pair and saw one fall heavily. The other bent over and slowly helped him to his feet.

“Come on, Julie. Can you make another few yards? I don’t think those two can.” Gadsen nodded, got up, and followed Folsom back to where McPherson had stopped to wait as he saw them returning. By the time Folsom and Gadsen had reached him, he had already unpacked the tent and was in the process of rigging the lightweight metal frame. Teleman half sat, half sprawled on the snow, watching him work with dull eyes. While Gadsen helped McPherson with the tent, Folsom came over and knelt beside the exhausted pilot.

“How do you feel?”

“Tuck”

“That’s what I figured.” Folsom peeled Teleman’s mask off and studied the graying face while he fumbled with his own mask. The pilot’s face was drawn and white and covered with yellowish cold blisters. Teleman had been shivering ever since the afternoon rest stop. Folsom had noticed it earlier, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, even though he knew the combination of shivering and difficult exercise of hiking across the uneven, snow-covered tundra had completely worn the man out. But he had not dared stop earlier. So far they had seen no sign of the Russians pursuing them and he wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Folsom helped Teleman up and into the tent. He did not wait for Gadsen to pump up the stove and get it going, but hustled Teleman into a sleeping bag fully clothed, between the last of the chemical heating pads.

After a few minutes of steady pumping and priming Gadsen got the stove going, and shortly the temperature had risen to the freezing mark inside the tent. Gadsen adjusted the flame to keep it at that temperature and laid four ration packs on the cover to warm.

“If this cold gets any worse,” McPherson said a few minutes later as the four men ate, “it’ s going to be the roughest last few miles you ever saw.”

“I’ve been thinking, about that all afternoon,” Folsom said. He laid the empty ration pack down and stretched out on his sleeping bag, using his pack for a back support. The ration pack dropped from Teleman’s hands. He was too weak to hold it any longer. It fell softly onto the folds of the sleeping bag and for the moment no one noticed. He was barely awake now, struggling to keep his eyes open long enough to listen to the conversation. He had never been so tired in his life. Circulation was beginning to return to his feet and hands and the pain was as unbearable, as he had feared it would be. In spite of the agony he felt that, if he once closed his eyes, he would sleep forever. To stay awake he massaged the tender skin of his face.

“The Russians will be desperate to catch us by now. They will have found the lifesphere ten hours ago at the least. And the life-sphere will tell them that we came from a ship, an American ship at that. What they will want to know at this point is whether or not the Norwegians are involved. But you can damn well bet that they will be searching with everything they have to locate the ship.” Folsom stopped for a moment to think.

“I feel sure,” he continued, “that even if they think some Americans have gotten ashore to find Teleman here — especially after Mac shot the hell out of them — they are not going to be scared off by the possibility of a pitched battle. In fact, I would even be willing to bet that they are figuring just as we are — that we don’t dare get the Norwegians involved at this point. So, if anything, the Russians are going to move faster and harder.*

Folsom stopped to examine the three haggard faces peering at him in the dim light of the stove. Bone-breaking fatigue was on their faces, Teleman’s especially. The hike under normal circumstances would have been nothing to these men, but the intense cold, Teleman’s deteriorating condition, the wind, deep snow, and exceedingly dry cold all combined to sap strength at a magnified rate. His own legs and feet were screaming with returning circulation and fatigue. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he was able to still his shaking hands, Earlier in the afternoon a thought had occurred to him, a possibility that should have been amply clear to him earlier. He was extremely angry with himself for not having thought of it before. The only excuse he could make was the cold, the cold that sapped every last bit of strength, that required the utmost concentration just to place one foot in front of the other, the cold that required of you that no outside considerations interfere with this concentration because, if they did, you would find yourself slowly freezing to death, prone in the snow, without any awareness of having stopped moving minutes before. He was apprehensive about releas-ing this bombshell. Not only was endurance at the bottommost point for the three men facing him, but so was morale. It would not take much at this point for them to give up and climb into their sleeping bags. If this happened the Russians would certainly find them in a few hours at the most.