Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

EIGHT

Rake sat on the floor of the school gymnasium, legs crossed and hands linked on his head, as they had been ordered. Carrie was next to him, in the same position.

Household by household, soldiers rounded up more villagers, the kids with their tablets, headphones, music, and games; the older ones, defiant, edgy, some in awe, some doped out and barely able to stand. Knives, sharpened metal, anything that could be a weapon was confiscated. They were told to sit by the wall in the order in which they arrived.

So far, Rake had counted five M-8 helicopter landings. To save little Akna, Russia had sent in more than a hundred troops. Ten feet away, by the gymnasium wall bars, a soldier wearing a medical armband kept watch.

‘Do exactly as they say,’ Rake advised Carrie in a low voice. ‘And we’ll pull through.’

She shot him a tense look.

‘This isn’t the Middle East,’ he continued. ‘These are trained, disciplined men working under orders from their government.’

The gymnasium covered the school’s upper floor. A classroom, washrooms, a repair shop, and an office ran off its east side. Each room had a window looking out towards Russia, but none opened wide enough for a person to get through. The repair room door led outside and there was another at the northern end near a stairwell to the top floor. The skylight in the sloping roof was large enough for him to climb through. It was a thought. But then what? How to deal with the soldiers posted on the terrace below? And how could he leave Carrie?

Four soldiers walked in, followed by an exceptionally tall officer in full uniform. His epaulets carried two thin red stripes and three gold stars.

‘A moment, please.’ He raised his hands like an orchestral conductor. The hum of conversation stopped. ‘My name is Colonel Ruslan Yumatov. I understand this is very unusual for you, but I assure you there is nothing to worry about.’ He spoke in English with an American East Coast accent. Yumatov walked to the center of the gymnasium, flanked by two men wearing headgear with cameras on top which would be streaming live video back to the base.

‘We came here to save the life of Akna Soolook,’ he said. ‘She is now in surgery undergoing an emergency Caesarean section. The doctors tell me the chances for her and the baby are good.’

The colonel paused, as if waiting for a reaction. There was none. Experience passed down generations had taught villagers that the safest path was to stay quiet. Teenagers and difficult childbirth were no novelty to the village, nor were the white faces of an outside power.

Yumatov held up a folder. ‘To avoid another emergency, I’m asking you each to fill in one of these forms that contain basic health questions. My medical staff will take your blood pressure and, in another test, we will check for illnesses such as anemia with just a tiny pinprick of blood from your finger. You don’t have to do this, but it could save lives in the future.’

‘It’s work the US government should have been doing,’ muttered Carrie.

‘But Russia can’t just—’

‘They can if they’re saving lives.’ She was wound up. But they were a team. They would handle this together. Her face became harder. ‘You need to escape.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You need to get out of here and get help.’

‘Not without you.

‘I mean it.’

‘We’ll be fine. They’re not planning to hurt us.’

‘Not them. Us. If we’re still here when that creep of a new President takes over, he’ll come in guns blazing, and won’t care about eighty Eskimos locked in a school.’

Rake wanted to say she was overreacting. But she could be right. Could any US President allow the unauthorized presence of foreign troops on American soil? ‘You need to get yourself away from here, get word out and keep Bob Holland well away,’ she said.

‘The Russians are all over the island.’

‘If you want to protect us, just do it.’ Carrie took a phone out of her jacket pocket. ‘There are three contacts in here. Try SL first. She’s now the British Ambassador in Washington. I hit the town with her a couple of times in Moscow and Kabul. She’ll remember me.’ She slipped the phone into his pants pocket and, before he could stop her, pushed herself to her feet and walked towards Yumatov.

The Russian examined Carrie as she approached. ‘You are the doctor,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. Dr Carrie Walker. I was with the patient. I can help.’ Yumatov’s face creased with suspicion. His men, professional killers, were being asked to do the work of nurses. Yumatov would be reporting directly to the commander of Russia’s Far East Military District. The Kremlin would be listening in and watching. This was one day any military officer would have to get right.

‘Who was the man guiding in the helicopter?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know.’ Carrie held his gaze. ‘I’ve come to help your medics.’

‘You were with him when our teams arrived.’

‘I was with the patient.’

Yumatov gave his response an uncompromising edge. ‘What is his name, Dr Walker?’

‘I don’t know.’

Rake stood up. ‘That was me — Captain Raymond Ozenna. I’m a native of Little Diomede. Dr Walker wouldn’t know. She only got here today.’

Yumatov spoke in Russian and two soldiers moved either side and loosely held Rake’s arms.

‘What are you doing?’ exclaimed Carrie.

‘Captain Ozenna is going to our base to help with the patient.’

‘Then I’ll come too,’ said Carrie.

‘Your skills are needed here.’

Rake’s mind raced with bad choices. This was his chance. There would be a dozen opportunities to escape between here and the helicopter. Maybe Carrie even planned it this way. ‘If I am under arrest, Colonel, handcuff me,’ he said. ‘If not, let me walk as a free man.’ The grip on Rake’s arms tightened. He raised his voice. ‘If you want this to go well, you should remember there is one thing the people of the Diomede no longer tolerate and that is captivity by the white man.’

It worked. Rake had sowed the first seed of dissent and he felt resentful menace ripple through the gym. Yumatov was smart enough to sense it too. He issued orders for the soldiers to let go of Rake’s arms. They did. One held him from behind. The other patted him down and found a knife blade strapped around his left ankle.

‘Go, Captain,’ Yumatov said softly. ‘And, as you say, walk as a free man.’

The guards stayed with him, but kept their hands away. One was tall, head shaved, a powerful man, but with a face of youth and hope that could have made him a military poster model. The other was smaller, wiry, narrow eyes, ferret-like, tougher and probably more dangerous. His face carried a knife scar.

They assessed him like military escorts do. He wouldn’t give them time to draw an accurate conclusion. Two against one were probably the best odds he was going to get and those wouldn’t last long. He had a home-ground advantage. This was his island and his old school. He would move on his own schedule. He had a couple of minutes at best. The next soldiers would be around the corner.

Outside the gymnasium, Rake slowed at the top of the stairs where the wall was decorated with photographs of walrus and seal hunts and instructions on how to make kayak canoes and boats from animal skin. He started talking in his bad Russian about how skin boats were used to hunt marine life, even whales at times. Further along there were display photographs of bridges in American cities. God knew who put them there and why, but they bought him more time. ‘Brooklyn Bridge.’ He indicated an arty black-and-white portrait of the ageing bridge running out of Manhattan. The younger soldier paused to look.

‘And the Golden Gate,’ said Rake. ‘San Francisco.’

‘Move,’ said the older one.

Rake would have to take him first, and doubted he could do it without killing him. With two trained men, you often had to kill one to show the other that things were serious. ‘Maybe one day they’ll have a bridge like that between our two countries,’ said Rake.’ I’ve relatives over there, you know. In Uelen. You been to Uelen?’

At the bottom, stairs led straight into a corridor with rooms running off each side that turned at right angles into another corridor. More soldiers would be by the main entrance. He pointed to the boys’ restroom. ‘Give me a moment.’ The older one nodded. Rake left the door ajar. The young soldier kept watch. Rake kept up the chatter, explaining every detail. It was a big restroom so it could take a wheelchair. It had a high ceiling that gave a sense of space and there was a single shining white commode with a stainless-steel rail for the disabled.

He zipped up, flushed the bowl, and moved to the sink, taking time with the soap. In the mirror, he saw that neither man had moved. But their alertness levels had dropped. Naturally. This wasn’t Ukraine. They were watching a guy take a piss in a village school. He shook water from his hands, but kept the tap running as he reached for a paper towel. Rake caught the eye of the younger soldier in the mirror. ‘They have this idea for a tunnel. Chukotka to Alaska. Sixty miles,’ he said. ‘You heard of that? Sixty miles under the sea.’

The military equipment was standard — helmet with goggles hitched up on the rim, pouches on the Kevlar vest, a routine issue Vityaz automatic rifle, Makarov 9mm pistol, and a sheathed knife about five inches long, probably with a double-edged blade. The challenge was the radio that was in a pouch at the bottom of the Kevlar. Its wire trailed up to the mouth and earpieces. On an operation like this, it would be button and not voice activated to avoid clustering the radio channels.

He took half a step to his right, shifting his weight as he turned, towel screwed up in his hand, arm raised to drop it in the bin. The tap still ran. The toilet cistern was filling up; plenty of background noise. From the outside, Rake looked nice and relaxed.

Inside he was taut like a spring, and he needed to wind tighter. In a hairsbreadth of a second, he hurled himself forward, the heel of his hand smashing the younger soldier’s nose so that shards of cartilage protruded into the brain. He wrapped his arms around the helmet and wrenched back the neck, snapping it and severing the spinal cord. The man crumpled, but Rake held him up as a battering ram, crashing into the older soldier’s chest, a solid strike of Kevlar against Kevlar, helmet against helmet.

Rake let go of the dead soldier and kicked the older guard hard in the groin. As his legs buckled, Rake ripped out the radio wire. He fisted his bloodied fingers, pushing out the forefinger, and struck towards the windpipe.

The soldier was too fast for him, bringing up his arm, intercepting and gripping. He held it with enormous strength, his eyes narrowed into a pinpoint of focus. The two men’s faces were an inch apart.

‘Stop,’ said the soldier in Russian. ‘I will help you.’