Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) (38 page)

Alone as he was now. Colonel Rukovsky looked off across incredible distances behind him. Far below he could see a helicopter setting down. Three trucks were toiling up the very bad road, looking no larger than ants, although he knew the tops of their radiators were as high as his head.

Whatever else the American’s escape had done, it had brought him here to this unbelievable beauty, which otherwise he might never have seen.

A cold wind blew along the mountain, and he shivered. There were ghosts riding this wind, strange ghosts born of this strange, almost barren land. Far to the west and against the horizon was the Verkhoyansk Range.

He paused, hearing a bird in the brush near the larch. It was a nutcracker; he remembered them from his boyhood.

What had Alekhin meant, saying he was through? It was absurd, but the words rankled. They stuck like burrs in his thoughts, and he could not rid himself of that dire warning.

He was near the haglike trees he had seen, and close up they looked even wilder. One of the trunks was battered and beaten, struck hard by something until the bark had been shattered into threads. Suddenly he remembered a brother officer, a hunter of big game, who had told him of wild rams battering such trees, butting them again and again in simple exuberance and lust for combat.

He paused again to catch his breath. The altitude was high and the air was thin as well as being crisp and cold.

Far off, he thought he heard a shout. Looking around, he could see nothing.

Then, high up on the mountain, Alekhin appeared, pointing. Rukovsky ran forward, looking across the canyon.

His men were lined out, moving in their skirmish line across that vast field of snow above the canyon’s edge.

Then, from somewhere down in the gorge, came a shot.

Colonel Rukovsky saw then a sight he would never forget. His men, twenty-odd of them, were on the field of snow when the shot sounded in the depths of the canyon. An instant of trembling silence when the sound of the shot racketed away along the rocky cliffs, and then horrified, he saw that whole vast field of snow start to move!

There was an instant of frozen stillness as the snow moved, and then his men scattered, some running forward, some running back, a few crouching in place looking for something they could grip. And there was nothing. The whole mountainside seemed to be moving, and then, with a thunderous roar, the snowfield gathered speed and swept toward the rim of the gorge.

Spilling over the lip, it fell like a Niagara of snow into the vast depths below!

One moment he saw his men, swinging arms wildly, fighting to stem the tide; then over they went, and far away as he was he seemed to hear their screams, screams that he would never forget. And one of those who fell was Captain Obruchev, engaged to his sister.

After the roar of the avalanche, silence.

Chapter 38

M
AJOR JOSEPH MAKATOZI crouched beside a giant spruce, looking up the canyon. He was sheltered from the wind, always a major consideration, and his coat made from the hide of a mountain goat was warm. The pelage of the mountain goat is the finest, softest, and undoubtedly the warmest of any animal. Being white, it blended well with the occasional patches of snow. His pants were made of the same material.

From beside the spruce, he had seen the patrol start across the snowfield. This was war, and they were hunting him to kill or capture. And capture meant eventual death.

He watched them move out on the snowfield with exasperation. What could their commander be thinking of? Certainly, he was not a Siberian, but any Russian accustomed to mountain travel should know better than to walk across a slope that was obviously unstable.

He found himself almost hoping they would make it across, but if they did they would be in a position to see into his hanging valley, and they might even see him in his hideout above it. Certainly, a man with a good glass would be able to pick him out. And he was, for the time being, tired of running.

Joe Mack knew that in such cases, with snow poised to start, a sudden shout or a shot might be enough to start it, particularly in the narrow confines of the canyon.

Their movements on the snowfield might be enough to start a slide, but he could not leave it to chance. He lifted the AK-47 and fired.

He did not aim, because he had no plan to hit anything. He did not know the accurate range of the weapon, although all guns carried farther than most people believed, but the men were a good half mile away. He simply fired, and whether it was their movements or the shot he did not know, but the slide started.

At least two of the soldiers at the rear threw themselves back off the snow, while another two or three had not reached it, but for the others there was no chance.

When the roar of the slide ceased and snow puffed up in a thick cloud, he settled back against his tree and waited. He was relatively secure. There was nowhere on this side of the canyon that overlooked his hideout and no way it could be easily reached except above and behind him, and even that was not a simple way.

He guessed that the patrol he had seen was but one of several. No doubt they had planned to work along both sides of the canyon, but only an officer unfamiliar with such mountains would have attempted it. In such canyons there are usually several levels left by the water in cutting its way through the rock and carving out the gorge. A thorough search might be made on one level while leaving unseen hiding places on the next. Of course, many of these were visible from across the canyon, as his would have been had the patrol crossed the snowfield.

The tilted slope opposite him and somewhat higher was now almost bare of snow. He could see several men huddled together, who seemed in shock. He did not blame them. The snowfield had extended several hundred feet above them and back. It must have seemed that the whole side of the mountain was moving. As he watched, the men turned and started back the way they had come, occasionally turning to look back as if in disbelief of what had happened.

Going to the little hollow at the back of the bench, he built a small fire of dry wood that gave off almost no smoke. He made tea and a thick broth of meat scrap and melted snow. Occasionally he peered through the trees, and always he listened. Alekhin was out there somewhere.

The months of living in the snow and cold had built his resistance to it. It had begun to warm up, and at thirty degrees below zero he was almost warm. He remembered long ago reading an account of Byrd’s men in Antarctica shoveling snow, stripped to the waist at ten degrees below zero. Given a chance, the human body had an amazing capacity for adapting itself to changing conditions.

Undoubtedly a patrol was coming along on his side of the canyon. Knowing the terrain, he knew that the patrol must either be well scattered or fail in covering the area. The nature of the country left only a few possible routes.

His present position was invisible from below. Looking up, they would see only a forested mountainside much too steep for travel. From below, as he had seen for himself, there was no indication of the little bench on which he was camped.

The only possible way of seeing it was from across the gorge where the soldiers had been headed who were carried away by the avalanche. He had meat, and he could afford to sit tight. Hard as it was to remain still, that was just what he must do. The risk was great, yet he needed the rest.

The very nature of the traps he had left behind denied him the chance to know if they had worked. If nothing else, they would make his pursuers move more slowly and with greater caution. Yet now he was within a few hundred yards of at least two such traps.

Here he was sheltered from the wind and from observation except by aircraft, and if he was under the trees they might see his hideout but not him. However, sighting the hideout might lead to a search. Was there communication with the ground forces by radio? He had to believe there was, although there might not be.

Under the trees he found a viewpoint that permitted him to see both possible entries into the hanging valley below him.

Suddenly, on the trail opposite, a soldier appeared. He was only two or three steps above the flat white stone Joe Mack had undermined.

The soldier halted, his weapon ready. He was surveying what he could see of the surprising little valley. He turned and spoke over his shoulder to someone; then another man appeared. Joe Mack could not see his insignia, but supposed him a noncommissioned officer.

There was no way they could see more of the valley without descending into it. As if on command, the soldier started forward; he hit the step above, moving fast, and then he stepped down hard on the flat white stone, as it was somewhat lower than a normal step. Instantly the stone tipped and slid, and the soldier came down hard. The fall was no more than fifteen or sixteen feet, but it was immediately apparent that the fallen soldier had broken his leg.

Others gathered around him while two or three descended into the valley and began a search. An injured man was better than a dead man, for it would take at least two men to carry him back to where he could get attention.

An improvised stretcher was made while two other soldiers attempted to restore the broken step in the path. Joe Mack, resting in his brush hideout, waited and watched.

Only minutes passed before a helicopter appeared. It swung around and surveyed the hanging valley, but appeared to ignore his hideout, which from the air must have seemed no more than a small ledge on the side of the mountain above the valley, a place of no consequence. Unless Alekhin was in that helicopter.

Always, he must remember Alekhin.

The soldiers were laboring back up the path, and he lay quiet, watching them. At last they were gone, and he added spruce boughs to his bed. Taking a chance, he kindled a small fire of dry wood and broiled some meat from the mountain goat. He ate well, drank tea, and extinguished his fire. Again he took a look all about and then returned to his bed.

Lying on his back on the boughs, he stared up into the branches overhead. He had done the right things, made the right moves. Even so he had been lucky, indeed, and such luck could not be expected to last.

He sat up and in the dimming light, studied his maps. Ahead of him lay lower and fewer mountains and many small lakes and tundra. Places to hide would be infrequent, and much of the time he would be traveling in the open.

For three days he remained on the small bench, cold most of the time, having a fire but rarely with which to make tea and boil meat. He saw no more soldiers, although twice planes flew over and once a helicopter. Once, on the far side of the hanging valley, he saw movement in the brush, but nothing appeared. If it was a wild animal, it did not emerge.

He lighted his fire only when the wind was taking the smell of it out over the gorge. He always used dry wood, avoiding smoke.

On the fourth day, he decided to move. Carefully, from a hidden place among the trees, he studied possible routes by which he could keep under cover. He selected a possible destination, although that would vary according to what he found when he arrived. While in camp he doubled his supply of arrows and found two new and better chunks of iron pyrite, which he partly covered with rawhide for a better grip when striking a fire.

He started before dawn on the fifth day, impatient to be off. He went out to the north and stayed under cover of the trees. Now he took special effort to leave no trail. Although he did not like the added weight, he kept the AK-47.

Topping a ridge, he looked over the vast panorama of mountain, forest, and valley toward the east and south. Timbered ridges marched away in endless procession, with hollow basins, ridges of slide rock, patches of snow, and here and there what seemed to be glaciers. Beyond that were great crags and the cone shapes of ancient volcanoes. Avoiding an easy path into the woods, he took a mere goat trail up into the crags and crouched there to study the country. The more he saw of it, the more he was inclined to cut back to the southeast and try to stay clear of regions of small lakes and tundra. It would be much the longer route, but offered better chances of finding cover, as well as wild game.

That night he decided he would turn southeast and try to reach the Kolyma Mountains above Magadan and then follow them to the northeast.

Every few minutes now, he checked his back trail. That somebody was following him he was quite sure, and he began to think of a trap, a very subtle one that might fool even Alekhin.

Dipping down into a narrow opening between two appallingly sheer gray cliffs, he walked along a sandy floor, crawled over boulders, and wended a precarious way through a forest of tumbled rock. Here and there were patches of snow and narrow crevasses into which a man’s foot might slip, breaking an ankle. Growth was scarce except for lichens.

Except for his carefully husbanded tea, his food was almost gone, so he watched for any kind of wild animal that he might kill.

Several times he glimpsed grouse, or ptarmigan, but it was midday before he was able to kill one with his sling. He had just climbed down over a steep wall of black rocks and at their base came on a pile of driftwood stacked up against boulders by the rushing waters of spring runoff in past years. He made a small fire, broiled and ate the grouse, and then carefully covered the feathers and bones.

Looking back up the narrow gorge down which he had come, he was amazed. He must have descended more than a thousand feet, and watching, he could see no signs of movement behind him or on the cliffs above. Finding a break in the canyon wall, he turned into it and climbed steeply up, crossing a wide belt of slide rock that sounded, as he crossed it, like walking on piles of empty bottles. At the top of the slide, he found a few inches next to the cliff where he could walk. The towering boulders at the place he had started his climb now looked like mere pebbles.

Trees choked the great crack up which he was traveling. Mostly spruce and fir, there was a scattering of larch and an occasional dwarfed and gnarled cedar. There was much debris, broken branches and fallen trees, many of them mere bare poles now. He found some long-dead bark and gathered tinder for a fire whenever he might decide to stop.