Charles Taylor - First Salvo

As he reached the critical point, Ryng felt the body begin to relax in his arms, and for a reason he would never understand, he relaxed the pressure. But as soon as he relaxed, Bulgan’s elbow stabbed into his stomach and his heel crashed down on Ryng’s instep. Give him an inch and he’ll kill you! Ryng thought, plunging back into the death struggle.

With a quick effort, Ryng snapped the man’s neck, and Bulgan’s body went rigid, then slumped in his arms, a permanent dead weight.

The body slid to the ground. Without looking back, Ryng trotted down to where the rifle had landed. Useless! The stock was broken, the barrel bent.

He again searched the horizon. Nothing. Wait — there was something there. Smoke. A black smudge where sea and sky joined. He thought he could make out thick clouds billowing upward, but it was too distant to be sure. More often than not steady black smoke at sea meant a ship was burning. But whose?

There was nothing to do but wait. Sharp bluffs to the south kept him from setting out toward the original meeting place. It seemed to him that the Harriers might have radioed his position back to their carrier when they took out the helo. If some intelligent soul put two and two together, they might figure where Ryng had come over the peak and where he’d come down to the shore. If they knew enough about him to allow the Harriers to take a moment off from their mission, someone must have the word out that he was worth rescuing. No telling how they’ll do it; they could turn up any time. And if he wasn’t available, no one was going to wait for him. With that, he moved off downhill at a good pace, aware now of the pain which seemed to take over every muscle and every joint in his body.

At the base, there was a narrow beach below a shallow rocky escarpment. Ryng saw the path down to the beach, but he chose to remain above it, giving himself a better vantage point for anything that might turn up.

Now inactivity brought on a chill. The air was cold, though probably not as cold as it had been for the past ten hours. But up until now he’d been in motion, or maybe his adrenaline had been pumping so hard that he was unaware of the temperature.

It couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees out, if that. More than likely, it was probably a nice day for this far north. Moreover, to have no rain this time of year, not even the normal cloud cover, had been to his advantage, allowing him to survive this far. He had no intention of giving in now.

Considering that no one knew exactly where he was, or even if he was alive, he looked for a way to protect himself. He had nothing to eat, his clothes were in shreds, his body raw and bruised, and any change in the weather would kill him within twenty-four hours.

Ryng set about searching for material to build a shelter, but that was fruitless. Because of the land’s proximity to the North Pole, there were no trees. The ground cover of the tundra did not cling to the hillsides, and mosses and lichens were the only plant life. Only polar bears and reindeer ranged the islands, and the arctic terns and puffins nested according to their environment. Man was not meant to live here. The land was cold, gray, and barren.

Wandering the edge of the cliff, Ryng soon satisfied himself that there was no driftwood below of particular value. After all, there were no wooded islands in that part of the world and nothing afloat other than fishing boats. Accepting the fact, he determined the next best plan was to find some shelter from the wind. He located a rocky enclosure by the cliffside, providing a full view of the horizon. All that was left was to wait, conserve what little energy remained, and hope. There was no going back over the top.

He was not surprised when he awoke somewhat later.

He knew he had only dozed, but there was no telling for how long. There was little change in the position of the sun at this latitude, whether he had slept an hour or five hours. He felt cramped and moved to stretch his muscles. Pain washed over him as he made the initial effort. He seemed to have bruises on top of bruises. Where scabs had formed over scratches and cuts, they cracked open and blood seeped onto his skin. His head throbbed.

For a moment his eyes would not focus. The tender skin at the corners cried out when he rubbed at them with raw fists. The smoke on the horizon came into focus first. It was thick and black and it stretched across the sky to the north, gradually thinning as the winds dispersed it. Whatever it was, Ryng assumed there was big trouble, for fires at sea that lasted this long were probably out of control. Was it a ship in distress? Was that what was supposed to have rescued him?

His eyes crisscrossed the ocean. To his right — to the northwest — he saw what seemed to be a spit of land. Remembering the island that had been offshore when they landed, he assumed he was now to the south of that, probably closer to the entrance of the harbor than he’d expected. Dividing the ocean into sections, he returned his gaze to each one three times, rechecking to make sure he hadn’t missed a thing.

There! His eyes flicked back to a spot on the surface. He blinked. Nothing. Wait! There was something along with a flash of white! There were whitecaps with the steady breeze, but this one speck remained on the surface, moving. Ryng cupped his hands to his eyes, squinting as if they were binoculars. He focused on that spot and now the ethereal became solid. There was no doubt in his mind. He’d seen periscopes before. Now the speck rose higher, circling the compass, he assumed, checking both the surface and the air. Then more apparatus appeared, radar and electronic gear probably, probing the airwaves for any foreign electronic signals that might mean disclosure.

He waited, pausing between each breath until he realized the ache in his lungs was self-induced. Whose submarine was it? Would he be able to identify it from that distance? Then taking his hands from his eyes, he realized it wasn’t that far away — a mile, maybe a bit more. Whoever the crazy son of a bitch was, he was taking that boat into shallow water — a very dangerous move if war was still imminent.

Then the periscope was followed by the sail of the submarine. There was little wash around it; the sub was almost dead in the water. As the hull came into view, he knew it wasn’t American.

U.S. subs carried their sail well forward. It wasn’t Russian either — their sails were generally more sleek, closer to the hull on the nuclear boats, and by the shape of the hull, he knew this was nuclear. What the hell , he thought. The only others operating around here must be British . He rose from his position, slowly, painfully, realizing full well that no one was going to see him there.

He watched people come out of the sail onto the tiny deck. They fumbled with something for a few moments, then he saw that they were handling a rubber boat of some kind. In a few moments, it slid over the side. A man climbed in it, fumbling near one end. Soon the rubber craft pulled away from the mother boat, moving quickly enough to be propelled by some kind of motor. As mysteriously as it had come, the submarine sank below the surface with a slurry of bubbles and froth.

Now is the time , Ryng decided after watching the boat bob over the rough offshore chop. There was no reason such an occurrence could take place in this nowhere land unless someone was taking the trouble to find out if he was still alive. Maybe the Harriers had reported that the Soviet helo was firing at something other than puffins, and in that location, an intelligence type would have to put two and two together and figure that someone on the SEAL team that went into Longyearbyen might have escaped. There could be no conceivable reason to think otherwise.