Joe Poyer - North Cape

“Julie, check that cut,” Folsom snapped. “Mac, what’s the situation?”

“About seven of them, I think. One was going over the edge when I hit him. He got hung up on that spur of rock there,” he finished.

Folsom pulled the binoculars from beneath his parka and turned them on the cliff tops. In the brightening light of midday he could make out a green-clad arm draped over the same out-thrust of rock McPherson had pointed out. Nothing more. The cliff top was bare.

“Okay, you convinced them to keep their heads down anyway. I think we have enough cover, if we move fast and stay close to the rock, to make it down to the beach. We should be able to reach that headland before they hit the beach.” He turned to Teleman and squatted down beside him, where Gadsen was wrapping a piece of cloth around Teleman’s forehead. The make-shift bandage was already stained bright red, but the blood was congealing quickly in the cold. Folsom had caught a glimpse of the cut before Gadsen had gone to work on it. An ugly gash across the bend of the forehead on the right side, almost three inches long. The fall on the rock had laid the skin open to the whitish bone.

“That cut is going to leave a nasty scar,” he murmured as Gadsen tied the bandage tight and sawed off the ends with his sheath knife.

“Big deal,” Teleman muttered.

Folsom backed into the shelter on the cleft, stood up, and carefully edged forward until he could just see over the boulder. The sun was just edging above the horizon as they went over the top. Now the line of the cliff was back-lit with what to his night-adjusted eyes appeared as full daylight. Down in the cleft, where the sun would not reach until at least May, he knew that it was still pitch dark. He was counting on the gloom in the southwestward-facing cliff to provide as much shelter as the rock.

He watched for a full minute before he caught sight of someone moving on the top. As he watched, the figure crawled cautiously to the edge and peered over. Folsom motioned to McPherson to raise his carbine. Mac joined him quickly and as Folsom fired a snap shot Mac followed up with a burst. The figure rolled back. Whether or not they had hit him was impossible to tell. Folsom watched for another minute to see if he would try again.. McPherson nudged his arm and pointed to the left of where the figure had appeared. A soldier, almost invisible in his green uniform as he slid over the edge into the gloom, caught Folsom’s eye. He nodded to McPherson and together they poured bursts of fire at the figure. But they were too late. The trooper had made it into shelter.

“All right,” Folsom called softly. “Let’s get out of here before they start tossing grenades down.”

McPherson led the way down the cleft, and, singly, they made a dash out of the cleft into the shelter of another overhang. No shots were fired after them. The way down would have been no trouble to rested men, but in their exhausted condition, the journey was another nightmare of snow-covered rocks and icy sheathing. They moved from cover to cover, never daring to pause for rest as they slipped and slid and climbed down and around the cliff face. Near the base they encountered a sloping pile of rubble that eased the steep descent SOME, what, but threw in their path another obstacle of large boulders and chunks of fluted rock that had to be circumnavigated and wriggled through rather than climbed over.

Twenty minutes later they were on the pebbled beach. In spite of their desperate need to go on, Folsom called a rest halt. Teleman sprawled out on his back, barely conscious of the biting cold and snow that lay thickly in the shelter of the fjord. The soft lapping of the waves against the shore less than a hundred yards away belied the fury of the storm, whose final traces they were still experiencing. Teleman lay, gasping for breath. Above him, he realized for the first time that the sky was brightening quickly. The gap of space between the narrow walls was changing to velvet blue and the stars were disappearing from sight.. The wavering aurora borealis had all but evaporated in the sunlight, weak as it was. This was the first sunlight he remembered seeing since several hours before he had ejected, and for some reason it felt good. The steadily increasing light gave him a measure of badly needed hope.

He sat up. “Commander,” he croaked, “I don’t even know your first name.” Folsom rolled over on his side and grinned lopsidedly. “Hell, you don’t do you? It’s Pete.”

And he stuck out his hand.

“Glad to meet you… hell of a place for it though.” Then he remembered: “How about the radio. Since everyone knows where we are now, maybe you should tell the ship.”

“Yeah… Julie, break out the radio and see if you can raise the ship. If not, then the Norwegians. We’re gonna need some help, man, and fast.” Gadsen pulled the transceiver out of his pack and, as they started down the beach in a half walk, half trot, began to fiddle with the dials.

“Hell of a note if the Russians get us two miles from the Norwegian base.”

“Don’t worry, Major, soon as we round that headland, orders or no orders, I’m going to fire every damn flare I got.”

The low profile of the headlands rose starkly out of the sea off the portside of the U.S.S. Robert F. Kennedy as the battle cruiser ran past the eastern entrance to the fjord. The cruel gray waters of the Barents Ka were still running heavily and even from two miles out the bridge crew could make out the dash of spray rising from the fringing rocks. The, fjord was dangerously narrow for any ship the size of the RFK, even one as well equipped with underwater navigational aids as she was. Only cutters called at the Norwegian naval air base through the fjord. Larger ships unloaded, when they had to, in the deep-water port on the Norwegian Sea side and supplies were trucked five miles to the base on the all-weather road. But for the most part, resupply was accomplished by aircraft.

At sea the winds were still running an average of thirty-seven knots, as Larkin had known they would be. Now he sat helplessly, eight line-of-sight nautical miles away from the shore-based Norwegian help, and he was still powerless to do anything to request their aid. In addition, they had long since lost the submarine as it had entered the fjord. He was, however, very certain that the sub was still deep within the rock walls, and that it was going to get a very nasty surprise when it tried to leave. But for the moment there was little or nothing that he could do. Daylight had come with a vengeance. The aurora borealis had been driven away by the low-hanging but brilliant sun as it edged farther across the narrow band of sky for its brief two-hour appearance. The uncertain light of the aurora borealis had been almost worse than no light at all. Its constant flickering and dim glow made firm visual sightings impossible. In spite of this handicap, Larkin had managed to sketch the outline of the fjord’s mouth on a pad to fix the details in his mind and had marked in the rough positions of both ships. The radar provided an approximate outline of the fjord walls for a distance of three miles into the meandering canyon and indicated just enough room to swing the ship almost on the axis point of her keel. The sonar confirmed the chart depth markings. There would be sufficient room beneath her keel Larkin tapped the pencil on the pad and made his decision.

“Mr. Bridges, lay a course into the fjord six thousand yards up from the mouth. We’ll swing about and sit there until we see how things are going to shape up.” Bridges acknowledged the orders and picked up the microphone to the engine room. Slowly the RFK got under weigh and, at eight knots, began to edge her way carefully into the mouth of the fjord. Larkin got up from his console and shrugged into his parka, picked up a pair of binocolars, and went out onto the catwalk The night, with the stiff wind, was bitterly cold. He dialed the proper lenses into place and began to search the fjord mouth from side to side.