Kolymsky Heights (37 page)

At his second kilometre the roaring in the air was deafening and continuous. They were directly over his head now. Hovering; going on a little; hovering again.

The rotors thrashed away, a shattering row, but disturbing the fog very little. He could see the yellow haze of their searchlights. He couldn’t see the machines. And he knew they couldn’t see him. They were keeping altitude. And he now understood the reason why. The same reason was giving him problems.

The strait was no longer flat. Towards the centre of it huge hummocks had begun to appear, windswept snow funnelled between the mainland and the islands, now turned into pillars
of ice. They loomed suddenly, disappearing up into the fog, very high, high enough anyway to keep the helicopters off him. But in side-stepping them he had lost his track.

Twice when the racket above had gone ahead he had taken a risk with the torch and shone it back to see the ski marks, had even gone back to check them. But the ice pillars were enormous, ten metres wide at least, and in pacing sideways from them he couldn’t be sure he was still parallel.

Now, the ground itself was exhausting him. The stubby skis were too short, sinking into the recent snow. The row, the exhaustion, the uncertainty had addled his brain, as he suddenly realised. He didn’t have to worry about direction. The bloody helicopters were directing him.

Their job was to stop him rounding the island. They knew that first he had to reach it. Only eight kilometres to go. The two kilometres he had done in under ten minutes, despite the conditions. He was sweating under the anorak, could feel it trickling under his fur cap. He gulped the freezing fog, poled himself rapidly on, one ski after the other; still counting.

980 … 990 … Another kilometre. Seven to go.

The machines hammered and swished above his head. Hovering; advancing; hovering. Hazy blurs, bobbing there, searching. Keeping pace with a man on skis. When he was too close to the island they would have to land and face him. Or if the ice was flat, come at him at ground level. And they surely wouldn’t be alone. The place was a garrison. Men could be lining up there now; a final barrier. But what else was there for him? No other place to go now.

Because there was no other place to go, he planned this one. He had scarcely any idea of it. A kilometre of rock, the Eskimos had said; and on the other side of it, the American island – only four kilometres farther. When the fog lifted it should be visible. But when the fog lifted, he would also be …

Well, to hell. While there was fog he had to use it − at least get himself in position …

First ski within reach of the island.

Then turn left or right, to the end. And go round it and up the other side. At five hundred paces the opposite island would immediately face him. If trouble was waiting there, other noise, the Americans would probably respond with their own, which also could direct him. Even now he was only minutes away. Another kilometre had passed, the fourth. In under the hour he could be over the international line.

He was aware suddenly that there
was
other noise. Not aircraft noise. A steady rumbling ahead. And dimly through the fog saw the hazy glow of headlights; and in the same moment recalled what the Eskimos had said. There were vehicles on the island. They came out on ice manoeuvres. They had come out for him.

He went flat on the ice immediately. And immediately saw a line of them ahead. In line abreast ahead, not more than a hundred metres ahead. And in the same instant, from the ground, saw that something was happening to the line. The two sets of headlights facing him had stopped and the others were fanning out. From the vehicles facing him lights began to flicker, hazy stars descending in arcs; which after a moment he translated into men with torches. They had jumped out of the vehicles, were strapping on skis.

He was rapidly getting out of his own skis – spreadeagled too obviously on the ice. And also out of his anorak – too visible on it. He swiftly got the white fleece lining uppermost and went flat under it. The men on skis were spacing into a formation. The other vehicles had faded into fog, only the two facing him now visible. And they too were spacing out. The men, the machines, seemed to be placing themselves fifteen metres or so apart. Lining up for a ground sweep. Jesus! He’d been right to drop. A moving figure would soon enough have been seen. He couldn’t outflank vehicles. Half-tracks, he now saw, personnel carriers. But what now?

The line was taking time to assemble. Even above the helicopters he could hear the tinny quack of radio talk.

The men were stamping up and down on their skis. In padded
white snow rig, he saw, hooded; automatic weapons slung round their necks. They were beating themselves with gloved hands in the biting cold. With his anorak merely stretched over him he was freezing up himself, the sweat instantly gone.

But the spacing between them, he saw, was very murky. And they would be looking, after all, for a hurrying figure on skis. If he could get them to pass him … He began manoeuvring himself sideways between two of the stamping figures. And had not yet made it when the line stiffened suddenly and moved forward, and he went prone, skis underneath him, anorak drawn over his head.

He was just a hump of ice, he prayed. And they had only now started, not yet accustomed to the task; were seven or eight metres on either side of him.

He heard the rumble of engines, the swish of skis, and held his breath. And they were past. They’d passed. He held it a while longer before daring to get his head up and look back. Yes. Fading into fog. He buckled the skis on, got back in the anorak, and immediately set off, very fast, on the tracks left by the vehicles. And at once stopped. No! His own tracks! They’d spot them. Were certain to – maybe not right away. But
soon
, not a doubt of it. Would come chasing after him. Vehicles would get to him long before he could reach –

He turned and went back. Went rapidly, in the ski tracks, and in a minute had caught up with them, saw the flickering line of torches, the wide hazy beams of the vehicles. The drivers would be peering ahead. A skier
next
to a vehicle, immediately next. He came behind the man, careful not to tangle skis, and hooked him at once, one arm round his neck, a glove in his mouth as it opened. The neck he could have broken immediately, but the face as it hinged back was that of a Yakut lad, maybe eighteen, the eyes innocent and astonished.

He caught the boy’s heavy torch, and hit him with it. It struck only the padded hood and, swearing, he left the glove rammed in the mouth, and wrenched the hood back and hit him again, two solid thuds, and had him on the ice. He wrenched the gun
off his neck and smashed the stock hard against the boy’s temple. The tunic top was in one piece and he yanked it off him and got it on himself. It was weighted, equipment dangling at the back. He couldn’t do anything about the trousers. He left the trousers, also his own anorak, took his glove, hung the gun around his neck and set off rapidly after the patrol. In a couple of minutes he had reached it and taken up position next to the half-track.

All as before, the line swishing steadily forward, torches pointing ahead. He got the boy’s torch pointing that way.

With gloves on, he couldn’t feel the parts of the little automatic weapon. He’d done a course on it at the camp. He fumbled with it, identified the safety, snicked it off, found the trigger and pulled. A rapid burst spat out – and with immediate effect. The torch nearest in the fog turned towards him and he saw the half-track driver peering sideways out of the window at the white-hooded figure now waving frantically beside him.

He was signalling with the torch, shouting. ‘He’s there! Just turned – going like hell! Going back!’ He put another burst ahead, saw his neighbour do the same, was aware the half-track driver had increased speed, shouting into his radio, and that gunfire was now sounding off along the line.

He let it go and turned and sped back, keeping to the tracks. Fifteen minutes at least, maybe twenty, for them to sort out the confusion, longer still for them to decide what the hell to do about it – also where the missing man had got to.

He came on the man very rapidly, still crumpled on the ice. The slender young face was solemn in sleep, mouth open, breath gently steaming. He wrapped him in the anorak, shoved his head in the fur hat. The boy’s gloves had been half pulled off, and he pulled them on again. Frostbite, hypothermia – he couldn’t do anything about it. I’m sorry, he told the Yakut.

The boy was still attached to his skis, now crossed on the ice – an altogether better pair. He quickly took them off him, with the ski sticks looped round the wrists, and got them on himself. There was a torch lying on the ice – his own, he saw; evidently
fallen out when he had left the anorak. Now he switched it on and left it, for the Yakut to be found, and told him again he was sorry, and took off.

It had taken no more than two minutes and now he went fast, on good skis, unworried by the ice pillars, in no doubt where the vehicle tracks were leading; and after another kilometre was aware that the helicopters had gone. He could hear them well behind. They’d been called off, were now giving support to the men hunting him.

Soon he had stopped counting; no longer any point. His paces had greatly lengthened, a thousand of them now obviously much more than a kilometre. And going very much faster. In only minutes the island would be there in front of him. He could almost feel it, the solid mass of it, all his senses alert, all his exhaustion dropping away.

There would be men lined up, he had no doubt. And sensing devices. It was after all the most advanced of the electronic outposts, right on the border. The equipment would mainly face the other way, but the extremities of the place would certainly be covered. It struck him that he wasn’t going to make it out on the ice: no question of simply going
round
it. He would be located immediately. He would have to get on it, behind the sensors, a thought that lit up in him suddenly like a bonfire.

Which in the same moment took material form immediately over his head. Amid a great whooping of sirens a flare had gone up. It arced obliquely, descending over him, and from a dozen points others instantly arced. The fog all round him became a brilliant aquarium green, shot through suddenly by a blinding narrow-beam searchlight. He skied crazily through it, waving his torch and yelling.

‘Hey, hey! We’re on to him!’ He was panting hard. ‘He’s doubling back there. You got the flares ready?’

‘Flares? What flares?’

Behind the beam, white-hooded figures had materialised, guns at the ready. Several military jeeps were standing by, he saw.

‘Christ, we yelling for them! This man moving fast – already he broke the line once! I tell you, we don’t move it here, we lose him. What’s the cockup with the radio?’

‘Operations! Operations!’ One of them was shouting into a handset. ‘They’re calling for flares out there. They’ve spotted him and they need – What? Wait a minute. Who’s saying this – what mob you from?’ he said.

‘We’re all split up. They send me back – a tracker, I’m to lead a jeep there, with plenty flares for Christ’s sake! Here – I go to Operations myself.’ He blinked around him, dazzled. ‘Where they keep the Operations here?’

While the man shouted into the handset, others were now surrounding the tracker. ‘You one of the new recruits, then?’

‘Sure. Know the country, don’t know too much this army. Where they put the Operations?’

He was already slipping out of his skis. In the many lights that had now come on he saw that all of them had skis strapped to their backs. The whole company was standing on a wide platform, cleared of snow, under the overhang of a cliff. A ramp, evidently for vehicles, led up from the platform, and at either side of it a walkway faded away into the fog.

‘They sent back a tracker!’ The man was still shouting into the handset. ‘Some fuck-up with the R/T, he says … Well,
I
can’t fix up – Okay, check it out … They’re checking it out. You can’t go up there,’ he said.

‘Jesus Christ – they’ll lose him! Is too slow here. Is slow picking me up, even! How soon you see I’m coming, man?’

‘
Corporal
– you call me corporal,’ the man said. ‘And the
sensors
picked you up, animal! They’re
heat
sensors. What do you understand?’

‘This fucking island I understand – is why they pay me. This fellow get through, you’ll see. I go take a look round the point. I think maybe needs men there − not sensors! When I fire off a few shots you know I beat the sensors, eh? I’m back four, five minutes. For the car and the flares!’

He took off at once – took off at his tracker’s half-trot, and so confidently that they simply watched him. He took off along the left walkway, carrying his skis, and found it sloped upwards a little, and gave it half a minute, and got off it.

He felt over the edge with a ski and found it was a fair drop now. He sat and found he was sitting on the equipment belt. The ski holster was there, and a spare magazine for the gun, and a line and pick, and a hunting knife. He eased himself off them and dropped to the ice, and got into his skis.

He skied out seventy paces and looked back and could see nothing. The sensors had picked him up at roughly two hundred metres. That was the range he had to stay inside. They had seen him go left. Now he went right. He went fast for two hundred paces and decided he had better turn in and keep contact with the island to be sure he wouldn’t overshoot it.

The last twenty paces he took slowly until he could just make out the presence of the massive bulk in the fog. Then he continued alongside it, keeping contact. It took barely three minutes to reach what seemed to be the end. He went in closer, and found that it was. The great hump had turned inwards. He followed its fretted shape round until it turned again and straightened out, and he knew he was on the other side.

Now he took off again, long loping paces, a hundred, two hundred, very fast.

If the rock went a kilometre, another two hundred paces would get him to the middle. But he knew now he wasn’t going there. The other island was opposite – just four kilometres away, with the international line only half that distance. He could go for it immediately – a mile and a quarter! One frantic dash, and he’d be over it. Safe.