Joe Poyer - North Cape

McPherson shook his head. First he runs away and manages to get us all captured because we were so intent on trying to bring him around that the Russians just walked up on us, then he pulls a pistol and we all walk away.

“Hey, Major,” he yelled ahead to the stiff figure. Teleman turned his head to glance at the burly sailor.

“Hey, Major, when you get tired of this airplane nonsense, I’ll get you into the SEALS—if you promise to lay off the acid!”

It was close to four hours of very nearly steady travel before the party reached the first indications of the cliffs leading down to the Norwegian base, still two miles distant around the headland. The going had been both easier and faster than they had expected. So far they had seen no sign of the supposed pursuing forces and Folsom had about decided that any threat of a third party had been pure imagination. The Soviets could not carry unlimited manpower aboard the submarine. In any event they had swung nearly three miles south of their former line of march and so had probably avoided them. Folsom called a halt and hunkered down to wait while each man trudged up. During the long march the line had gradually lengthened until Teleman and. McPherson were half a mile behind. Teleman was still walking under his own steam, but the set, agonized look on his face was an eloquent indication of his physical condition. McPherson had discarded the bundle of winter clothes three miles south and west of the tent, pitching them behind one of the hummocks of tundra grass growing in the otherwise desolate plain of snow and ice.

While he waited, Folsom scanned the area ahead with the binoculars, knowing that the roughest part of the journey still lay ahead. Seen through the field glasses, the tundra in front of them appeared little different from what lay behind unless one noted the low ridges and hummocks that marked the edge of the coastal cliffs. How high, and how rugged they would be to negotiate, he had no idea. He only hoped that they would not prove impassable. The edge of the cliffs were, he judged, now less than a mile ahead. He swept the glasses to the north, but the terrain was bare of any movement or sign of life. As the others drifted up he hunkered down on his heels and waited. The continuous walking through the savage, subzero cold was fast reducing them to walking ghosts. The euphoria that had infused them on leaving the tent had long since evaporated during the gruelling hike. Folsom knew that the stick figures in their flapping Arctic gear clustering around him were close to the very last extreme of physical effort. If any of them felt the way he did… and Teleman for one was in even worse condition… Briefly he described the route ahead. All knew that the only information about the cliffs came from the topographical map he carried in his pocket. How reliable it was, they did not know. Guriously enough, their lives might depend in the next few hours on some remote German cartographer of the defunct Third Reich Vermacht The map had originally been drawn for the Nazi Occupation forces in Norway. Teleman groaned and got to his feet, swinging his arms. “Hell man, I don’t care how hard it’s going to be, let’s just get it over with. If I spend much more time in the great outdoors, all you’ll have left to carry back will be a solid block of ice.” Folsom nodded and stood up. “Okay with me too. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The small party struck out toward the fringing hummocks. After a few hundred yards the hummocks began to turn into slab-sided hills as they emerged in the deceptive light. Shortly the party had reached the base of the first line of hills and began the steep climb to the top. Before they had gained half the distance Folsom ordered a halt while they tied themselves in line with a length of nylon rope. In their weakened condition a misstep resulting in a fall would take the individual all the way back down. And they did not have strength to waste reclimbing hills. It took the four men twenty minutes of climbing to reach the gently rolling crest, less than four hundred feet above the level of the plain. Folsom untied the rope from his waist and walked forward to where the downward slope began and-pulled the field glasses from beneath his parka.

Standing on the crest of the hill, he could make out the sheen of the fjord waters below. Between the hill on which he stood and the final line of cliffs leading down to the fjord were a series of rugged and broken hillocks and cols of bare rock, resembling the snaggle-toothed mouth of some mythical Scandinavian giant wrenched up from the fringing rock.

Disappointment crashed down on Folsom. They would have at least another hour of rugged climbing before they could reach the fjord. And then there still remained the hike to the Norwegian naval base, out of sight around a headland a mile or so north. So damn close… so damn close…

Folsom turned away from the depressing scene and trudged back to where the others waited and sank down beside them.

“There’s a stiff climb ahead,” he said bitterly. “Another hour of climbing before we hit the cliffs.” He picked up his, carbine and fiddled with the stock. After a moment of silence, McPherson stood up and took the glasses to search the horizon to the east and north. The four-hundred-foot height of the. hill gave him a wide scope of vision. hi the uncertain light he almost thought he had spotted their tent far to the north and east, but when he tried to find it again, he failed. Finally he swung around restlessly and went back to the far side of the hill. The spectral figures of Folsom, Teleman, and Gadsen joined °him as he went past.

Folsom accepted the glasses again and, after another moment’s hesitation, trudged to the rim of the hogback and lay down full length in the snow. The expanse of frosted rock stretched away below him, resembling the familiar waves of the Arctic storm, each crest of rock capped with a dusting of snow. He rewarmed the eyepieces in his hands. Directly below, the hillside sloped away at a gentle angle until it met a sharp drop of some forty or so feet to a shelf of granite, a man’s height below that. From there the slope was gentle for a half mile until it rose abruptly to a sheer rock wall that, from this distance anyway, offered little hope of hand-or footholds. He shifted slowly south, Ending-nothing that would indicate an easier way, then north. After several minutes he located a shelf that seemed to have been slashed out of the rock wall, forming a small pass that cut through at mid-height. From what he could see of the other side, there were no impassable obstacles.

He rolled over and sat up. “I think maybe there is a way to at least get through that rock wall down there.”

Teleman nodded painfully and shifted the burden of the Russian carbine he had been carrying since leaving the tent. So far he had successfully resisted McPherson’s attempts to exchange it for his own lighter AR-18. Teleman shifted the carbine on its sling around his neck and shoulder and nodded. “After having come so far, it would be a shame to quit now.”

McPherson nodded.

“I guess that makes it unanimous then,” Gadsen said. “Let’s move out.” Once again Folsom watched the motley crew of scarecrows assemble and rope themselves together. On the verge of exhaustion, as he himself was, he marveled at the deep reserves in Teleman that enabled the man to go on.

They headed down the slope with the shuffling gait of tired men, each fighting to retain his foothold in the hard-packed snow of the windward side. At the foot of the hogback they halted while McPherson hauled a longer rope out of his pack and fastened one end into fixed loop.

“You first, Commander?”

Folsom nodded and slipped the noose over his head and down under his shoulders. He backed off a ways and tested the firmness of the knot by pulling against McPherson, then swung carefully over the edge of the steep slope and half slid, half climbed down until he was just above the vertical drop to the shelf. He glanced up at McPherson and waved one hand for slack and disappeared abruptly over the edge. He reappeared a moment later, standing on the ledge and slipped the noose off. McPherson pulled it up and motioned Gadsen to go next. Gadsen followed Folsom down, and, in minutes, McPherson was hauling it up for Teleman.