Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

TWENTY-FOUR

A Russian soldier strapped Carrie into the seat of the helicopter and removed her goggles. Frozen air sliced into her eyes, bringing tears. The aircraft vibrated as the pilot powered the engine. Carrie held her medical bag on her lap. The soldier pulled off her hood and put a pair of red headphones on her. Radio static replaced the wind’s roar. Then soldiers loaded three body bags — the men Rake had killed. The tops of the bags were open. Each corpse had a number inked on the forehead. Flood lamps came on, throwing out long dark shadows that raced along the rocky coastline. A gray haze hung over the ice, reminding her how Rake described so vividly the winter sun barely rising above the horizon before quickly setting again.

She heard a burst of Russian voices through the headphones, then the pilot speaking in English. ‘American Air Force, American Air Force. This is Russian medical helicopter RF-800238. We are taking off from Krusenstern Island, Little Diomede, on a humanitarian mission. Repeat — a humanitarian mission. American medical doctor Carrie Walker is assisting us. We need safe passage. Repeat — we need safe passage.’

‘Stay where you are,’ came an American military response. ‘Repeat. Do not take off. We are waiting instructions. Remain on the ground.’

Her headset went quiet. Carrie felt the energy of the rotor blades speeding up, thrashing around and around. The pilot flipped buttons. His co-pilot scanned the landscape with binoculars. The two side doors stayed open. A soldier on each side brought down heavy machine guns with belts of ammunition. Carrie was alone in a middle seat, her face numb with cold, her mouth dry. Four soldiers sat in front of her.

The helicopter lifted off, shaking the exposed heads in the body bags. One jerked to the left as the aircraft skewed with a gust of wind. Carrie recognized it as the young soldier Rake had killed in the school.

Instead of turning west towards the big island, they climbed straight up with the nose pointing towards the hill. Wind screeched around her. They rose above the village, its housing clinging to the hillside. Within seconds they were over the top.

Sound came again through her headphones. A different American voice: ‘Russian military helicopter RF-800238. You are flying illegally over American territory. You must leave immediately or risk being shot down.’

‘American Air Force, we are on a humanitarian mission,’ said the pilot. ‘Safe passage is required under international law.’

‘I will not warn you again.’

Yumatov’s voice came in, ‘Dr Walker, press the talk button on the cable. Tell them who you are and what you have on board.’

With her hands inside her gloves, she fumbled until a soldier did it for her. ‘This is Dr Carrie Walker. I’m one of the Americans being held captive. I am on board this helicopter to retrieve the young American woman and her baby and bring them home.’

‘Dr Walker, this is Sergeant Jim Gardiner from the Elmendorf-Richardson base in Anchorage. Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I’m OK.’

‘Is the aircraft armed?’

‘Tell him exactly as it is,’ said Yumatov.

Two searchlights came on from each of the skids showing a landscape of snow and rocks.

‘There is a machine gun on either side of me,’ said Carrie.

‘International regulations require arming of aircraft for protection against polar bears,’ said Yumatov.

Irritation crept into Gardiner’s tone. ‘OK, Colonel. No one’s cracking jokes around here. Get your aircraft back down on the Little Diomede helipad and no one’s going to get hurt.’

The top of the island was a white plateau speckled with dark rocks. The pilot bought the aircraft to a hover. He turned westwards and tilted the beam of his spotlight. Snow blew across the surface from the rotor blades, and when it cleared Carrie saw a scene that took her straight back to the worst human carnage of Iraq. An overhead light shone on her face.

‘These images and our conversation are now being broadcast live on Russian television,’ said Yumatov. ‘The internal camera is showing Dr Carrie Walker. Are you hearing me, Sergeant Gardiner?’

‘Copy that.’

‘We need Dr Walker to confirm that these men are dead and to treat the wounded if any have survived.’

‘Copy that.’ Gardiner’s voice stayed flat and carried no reaction.

‘We came here on a humanitarian mission to save a young woman’s life. Your government must answer to the international community as to why nine of our comrades have been murdered in cold blood.’

‘Copy that.’

‘Do more than that, damn you. Guarantee us safe passage.’

‘I am awaiting orders, Colonel.’

Jagged granite rocks, caked in ice, stuck out from the snow. The helicopter was inches from the ground, swaying so erratically that Carrie couldn’t see any way to get down to examine the bodies. In any case, none could have survived. She had seen plenty of gunshot deaths. But these were different. This was Rake’s work. One by one, bullet by bullet, he had killed each one of them. A couple had died cleanly, but three of them had been torn up and mutilated by lead.

The four soldiers facing her unclipped their belts and jumped out. They loaded the dead into the back of the aircraft and signaled to the pilot. Rake had killed five. Four men were taking their place. Her headphones echoed with the emptiness of radio static.

The pilot took the helicopter up and turned towards Big Diomede. An eerie band of cloud ringed the island. She saw the shapes of observation posts dotted along its looming ridges. At the bottom, ice glowed against dark rocks. She found herself leaning out, looking down, following tracks in the ice, seeing water flows, huge serrated blocks taller than a person and flat white like a skating rink. She hoped she would see Rake. She scanned the landscape for her killing machine of a fiancé while waiting for an American missile to shoot them down.

As they came around the northern edge, she saw the military base, rows of helicopters, their blades drooping, people moving around, and long white concrete buildings with gun emplacements on the roofs. She counted ten helicopters, six white and four green, of varying sizes. The three biggest, with two sets of rotor blades, were for transport. There were more inside the large open hangars. There were no fixed-wing aircraft, and the short airfield didn’t look big enough to take one. Men wheeled trolleys towards them. She smelt aviation fuel. The base formed part of the curve of the mountainside, and with the snow it was difficult to tell what was natural, what was concrete, and what had been hewn out of the granite. The wind was weaker around this side of the island.

Two men in dark green overalls helped her down from the helicopter and led her across the tarmac towards the long single-story building. A wooden plaque of the Russian flag was displayed above the entrance. As the door slid open, she was faced with plastic transparent strips hanging down as extra protection against the weather. She walked through them into a small hallway with bright overhead lights. Warmth hit her face, and the sudden change of temperature set her blood tingling. In Russian, she asked to see the patients. The men led her into a room on the right that looked like a reception area with a set of black leather sofas and chairs and a meeting table. There was a line of stainless-steel food containers on warmers. The soldiers left the room, closed the door, and locked it.

Years of emergency medicine had taught Carrie to eat and sleep whenever she had a chance. The meal was a beef stew with cabbage and rice. She ate fast, not realizing how hungry she was. She washed it down with bottled water and felt strength return. She poured a cup of coffee, black, no sugar.

The door opened with a flourish. She had expected a military person to be in charge, but the short stocky man who strode in was dressed in a dark pinstripe suit with a tiny Russian flag pinned to his right lapel. ‘How is your meal?’ he asked in English.

Carrie stood up, coffee cup in hand. ‘I need to see the mother and baby. Then I will determine if they can safely be taken back to the island.’

‘I’m Admiral Alexander Vitruk, commander of the Far East Military District.’ He spoke fluently, his English, like Yumatov’s, laced with an American accent. He poured himself a small cup of coffee and downed it quickly. ‘Come, then, if you’ve finished; I’ll take you to them.’

He held the door open. Several men fell in behind as they led her into a control room with rows of computers and television feeds on the wall. On one screen, there was a split image of Carrie in the helicopter and a map of the Diomede islands. Vitruk took her through a tented walkway warmed by large overhead electric heaters into a mobile field hospital. She had worked in many. This had six beds, three on each side. Akna was the only patient, on a drip, propped up in bed holding her baby daughter.

Carrie wasn’t a pediatrician but she didn’t like what she saw. The head looked enlarged and the baby wore a gray woolen hat often used for premature births. A monitor recorded Akna’s heart and breathing, which were within an acceptable range. The incubator was on the left side of the bed. Rake’s uncle and aunt, Henry and Joan Ahkvaluk, sat together on two upright wooden chairs to the right. They stood up when they saw Carrie.

‘Are you guys OK?’ she asked.

‘The baby is very sick,’ said Joan. ‘She has water on the brain, and they don’t know what to do.’

Carrie looked for a bedside clipboard. There was none. ‘What medication is she on?’

‘They won’t tell us.’

She took a tube of antiseptic gel from her pocket, sanitized her hands, and put on a pair of blue polymer medical gloves from her medical bag. She sat on the bed. ‘Akna, I’m Carrie. Remember? I was with you before you came here.’

Akna stared at her, eyes dulled by drugs. American military painkillers weren’t subtle. Russian ones would be even worse.

‘You’ve given her a name, Iyaroak. It’s beautiful.’ Carrie checked her pulse, which was slow. She pulled down the covers to see the Caesarean wound. It was clean, without infection. But the stitching was rough, and Akna would be scarred there for life. She put the covers back and turned her attention to the baby. Gently, she slid back the woolen hat. Iyaroak didn’t react. Her eyes were tilted down, which was a symptom matching what Joan had described, corroborated by the head size. The soft bones of Iyaroak’s skull were being pushed out by cranial fluid that was not draining away as it should, instead putting pressure on the tiny unformed brain. If it were not treated immediately, Iyaroak could be left seriously disabled with brain damage. Or she would die.

‘A word, Admiral.’ Carrie walked away from Akna. Vitruk followed. ‘The baby has hydrocephalus. She needs urgent scans and pediatric surgery.’

‘Yes. It is why you are here, to treat here.’ Vitruk spoke calmly, but with concern in his eyes.

‘I can’t do that. She needs a specialist and a big hospital. Nome, or better — Anchorage.’

‘We can’t fly her there.’

‘One of our helicopters can pick her up from here or Little Diomede.’

‘We can’t allow them over. That is the problem. Politics are in the way.’

Carrie controlled her exasperation, a field doctor up against bureaucratic stupidity. ‘OK. Let’s keep her in Russia. Which is your nearest big hospital?’

‘Providenya. But it’s best it’s done here.’

Part of Carrie felt Vitruk was being helpful. Part of her knew she was missing something. Given all that was going down, why was the survival of this baby such a big deal for the Russians? She understood the propaganda value of keeping Akna and Iyaroak alive. But things had moved on. She looked hard into Vitruk’s expression, but couldn’t read him. ‘I can’t treat her here,’ she said. ‘The valves that drain the fluid into the bloodstream are not working. We must operate by making an incision into the skull through which the fluid can drain. A tiny man-made valve gets inserted there. For that you need a pediatric neurosurgeon, the valve, and a scanner, and you don’t have any of that here.’

‘When will she need this?’

‘Now.’

‘It would take hours even to get her to Anchorage or Providenya. How long before the condition is irreversible?’

‘Impossible to say. But this baby’s life is in danger, period. Let me talk to the doctor who carried out the Caesarean section and I might be able to judge more.’

‘He has left for another emergency.’

Like hell he had! But there was no point in challenging. Carrie ran through options. The best was to fly Akna and Iyaroak directly to hospital in Nome and second best to Providenya. It was better to stay here in the field hospital than be stranded on Little Diomede where there was nothing. She often welled up with anger that governments always had enough money to drop bombs and send soldiers to war, but when it came to saving children they would just wring their hands and shake their heads. And that thought, then, gave her an idea.

‘Fly in a pediatric neurosurgeon from Providenya or Vladivostok, together with the equipment needed. We can sterilize this area for the operation.’

Vitruk nodded thoughtfully. ‘I will relay your very helpful suggestion to Moscow and Washington. Thank you, Dr Walker.’ A smile seeped to the edge of his lips. ‘You will now come with me to Little Diomede to tell us what is needed there to keep little Iyaroak safe on her return.’ Charm bled from his face and Carrie realized she had been tricked. She glanced towards Henry and Joan, whose expressions confirmed it. By suggesting a way forward, Vitruk would portray Carrie as his ally, colluding with him in the occupation of Little Diomede.

‘I’ll stay with my patients,’ she said firmly.

Vitruk’s eyes narrowed. ‘You need to come with me. It is not only the lives of your patients that are at risk. The situation is already dangerous.’

‘You’re the one that made it dangerous, Admiral,’ Carrie said, her temper rising. ‘You don’t have to send soldiers with machine guns to fly out a sick mother.’

‘And in return your demented boyfriend killed my men.’

‘Fuck you.’ Carrie stepped to one side to go back to the bedside.

Vitruk blocked her. ‘Swear all you like, but our doctors tell me this baby’s hydrocephalus is congenital, probably because the father is such an animal that he screwed his own daughter for this baby.’

Vitruk stood directly in front of her with soldiers, weapons in hands, on either side. She pulled herself back from the cusp of breaking a golden rule of medicine — never lose your cool. Politicians shout. Doctors save. Her duty was not to pick a fight, but to save Iyaroak’s life. ‘OK, Admiral,’ she said, switching to her most warming doctor-patient bedside manner. ‘I will come with you. What exactly is it you need me to do?’

Her broad smile caught Vitruk off guard. Confusion spread across his face, so Carrie spelt it out. ‘You’re the guy with the guns so I’ll do what you say, but on condition that what I do for you saves Iyaroak’s life. And that will help you because you plan to use a sick baby and a blonde doctor as your propaganda poster in the big swinging dick game Russia is playing with my government.’

Vitruk’s face drew in on itself, as if he had anticipated a negotiation. ‘Anything else?

‘Joan and Henry stay with the patients,’ Carrie replied in the same blunt manner. ‘You fly in a pediatric surgeon for the operation. I join your propaganda machine.’

‘You have my word. So, we have a deal.’ Vitruk pulled on his gloves. ‘Now we go.’

TWENTY-FIVE

Little Diomede, Alaska, USA

The pounding of the Russian helicopter engine woke Rake from a short sleep in the shelter of a hillside crevice. There was thick fog, and tiny hailstones swirled in a wind eddy at the entrance. He reached outside and checked the straps of the sled. They were tight. The sled remained secure, hanging near-vertically from a spiky boulder from which Rake would lower it down the hillside.

His radio crackled and a voice came through in broken English. ‘American Air Force, American Air Force. This is Russian medical helicopter RF-800238. We are returning to Russian island of Krusenstern, known to you as Little Diomede. We insist on safe passage.’

Rake looked for the helicopter. Freezing fog hung in clumps like icebergs in the sky. Fifty yards to the west there was a break and he saw it approaching in a wide loop. Its searchlight soaked into the fog. As it got closer, the rotor draught broke ice shards off the hillside.

They must be searching for him.

The engine labored, its pitch higher than it should be. He checked through binoculars and saw that the helicopter was tilted forward. Its skids were weighed down by ice which would be hardening as it flew through more fog. Freezing fog clung to aircraft metal like a boot gathering mud in a field. The pilot needed to head towards warmer air because soon it would be too heavy to stay up.

An American voice replied on the radio: ‘RF-800238. You are flying illegally over American territory. You were warned earlier. Return to your base now or you will be shot down.’

Rake wasn’t a pilot, but he had flown in plenty of aircraft through Arctic conditions. As the helicopter came into full view, he saw the skids were coated solidly with ice. He couldn’t identify any deflectors around the engine cowlings that would prevent ice or snow being drawn in. No pilot would deliberately take his aircraft through freezing rain unless in an emergency or under orders from a superior officer. Through the cockpit glass, Rake could just make out the face of this pilot, speaking into his headset to the US military with a tone of controlled frustration, a professional, following orders with which he didn’t agree.

If the aircraft stayed where it was, more ice droplets would gather on the rotor blades and other sharp edges, putting on hundreds of pounds of weight. Once formed, the ice could break loose from anywhere at any time, changing the airflow dynamic and plunging the aircraft down or throwing it against the hillside.

It was then, as he shifted his gaze to the main cabin, that he spotted Carrie, sitting rigid, staring ahead, a spotlight shining straight onto her face. It was deliberate. They were using her to tease him out. If he stayed silent, there was a real risk of the helicopter being shot down. If he intervened, he would reveal his position. There was also a good chance the Americans wouldn’t open fire and an equally good chance that the Russians would find him anyway. Rake pressed the transmit button of his stolen radio. ‘This is Captain Ozenna. Do not shoot this aircraft. An American physician is on board. Repeat, do not shoot down this aircraft. Do you copy?’

‘Copy that,’ came the American voice, subdued.

‘The aircraft is in extreme danger. It is iced up from freezing rain.’ He repeated it in Russian so the pilot would hear directly. He added, ‘You need to land immediately. Nose up, stay at an angle, and power into the crosswind as you come to the helipad.’

Carrie turned her head as if scanning the darkened hillside for him. The pilot glanced across, then back to the fog in front of him. He powered the engine, following Rake’s instruction. A layer of ice cracked and fell from the tail, and the helicopter skewed to the right. The light on Carrie snapped off. Rake closed the radio. He had to get away.

The helicopter’s noise faded to a whisper, sucked away by the wind. Directly beneath him the hill fell in a near-vertical drop onto a shoreline of rocks. Rake knew of one narrow passage there to get a sled onto the sea. Even then, there might be ice blocking it or it could be covered with a fast-flowing current of water.

He was out of time to think and judge. From the sled, he took one bag with two Kalashnikovs and one rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, a second bag with grenades and magazines of ammunition, and a third with food. The other bags stayed on the sled. He loosened the rope securing it to the rock until it slipped out of the noose. It lurched downward in a rapid succession of jerks before running lightly on smooth fresh snow, gathering speed until it hit a rut and tipped head on, falling onto its side and spilling the bags it was carrying. Sled and bags tumbled down. One smashed against a sharp granite edge, which ripped it open. Others bounced off rocks and skidded down ice. There was a chance that something would survive, cushioned by snow or caught in an eddy of water; an equal chance that none would.

His breath lingered in the frozen air as he studied the ghostly whiteness that spread between him and the Russian base. Some areas were well-packed and hard. Some were covered with fresh snow making it difficult to tell what thin and bad ice was underneath. He strapped the harness that should have lowered the sled around his shoulders and waist, balanced his packs, and loosened the metal brakes on the ropes that would regulate his descent.

The main thing he remembered from his first-ever visit to New York was that Little Diomede stood at about the same height as the Empire State Building. As a kid on a summer’s night, he could run up to the top in less than fifteen minutes. Ever since then, whether going up or down, Rake thought of that iconic American building.

Treading delicately, he lowered himself to his first footfall and stopped, checking his balance and direction. Abruptly, a splutter from the radio that, for a moment, Rake thought was the wind. But it was a familiar voice. ‘Hello, yellow Yankee coward. I thought I told you to go home.’

Rake scanned the landscape and imagined Tuuq out there somewhere, waiting. Tuuq spoke again. ‘You’re a coward who can’t protect his woman.’

Rake had to work out where Tuuq might be. But in that forbidding moonlit expanse, he also needed to keep himself invisible. From around the headland to the south, he heard the slowing throb of a helicopter coming in to land. It meant Carrie was back on Little Diomede and safe, at least from being killed in an air crash in freezing fog.

Just before the radio crackle faded into a static-laden calm, he heard Tuuq’s taunting voice again. ‘I will find you, yellow Yankee coward. And I will kill you.’

Inches above the helipad, a gust tilted the helicopter to the right, tipping the rotor blades towards the ground. The aircraft jerked back upright, and a slab of ice fell off the side, shattering like glass. The skids settled. Two soldiers hacked away the ice that jammed the door shut. Vitruk removed his headset. ‘Do exactly as I say,’ he shouted to Carrie above the engine noise. She held her medical bag on her lap, looked straight at him, and didn’t reply.

Yumatov opened the door and saluted. Spray from the downdraught peppered his face. Vitruk stepped down. Yumatov held Carrie’s elbow to help her out. A television crew was on the helipad filming them. Soldiers worked around the aircraft, clearing it of ice. A six-man Spetsnaz unit stood to one side, ready to climb in. ‘Their orders are to find your lover and kill him,’ said Vitruk.

‘You won’t get him,’ Carrie shouted back.

‘He’s not as smart as you think.’ Vitruk pointed to ice patterns on the helicopter where soldiers on stepladders were chipping it off the rotor blades. ‘He was wrong about the danger. Ice doesn’t make a helicopter drop out of the sky. The tail rotor clears because of heat from the engine exhaust. We could keep flying with even more ice than we have here.’

As he talked, Carrie looked around for villagers and could see none, only soldiers. There were no lights on in the houses. The television crew was setting up lights and two cameras on the school veranda, which must be for a set-piece interview.

‘So, you still have everyone in the gymnasium?’ she said.

‘Yes, because your government is being difficult.’

‘If you left, they would have nothing to be difficult about.’

Vitruk didn’t answer. Soldiers stared at her as Vitruk and Yumatov led her through the village. She detected anger in their gaze. Nine of them were dead and they must by now know of her connection to Rake. On a single order, they would unleash on her their violent frustration for revenge. A soldier opened the door as they approached the school. Inside they were enveloped in warm stale air and cigarette smoke. Men in the small hallway and dining room jumped to attention.

‘At ease,’ said Vitruk, the voice of a soldier’s soldier. He had been where they were. He had lost friends in battle. Men lining the corridor snapped their heels, and their eyes bored expectantly into Vitruk. If anyone could avenge their comrades it was him.

Inside the gymnasium, there was a smell of sweat and disinfectant, part locker room, part hospital. A baby cried, then another. A mother scolded. From a corner, a boy aired Vitruk a high five. Vitruk told Carrie to explain to him the medical problems she had found. She took him straight to Tommy Tulamuk, the skeletal addict she had saved earlier. A television camera followed. He was sleeping, legs up in the same fetal recovery position as when she had left him. She washed her hands with antiseptic gel. She pulled gently at his right ear and placed a thermometer inside. His temperature had stabilized at 37.2.

‘This patient has a narcotic overdose,’ she told Vitruk in English, aware of the camera filming her. ‘With alcohol, organ destruction is slow. With narcotics, vital organs can reach fragility without warning and suddenly fail. This man is now recovering, and he will live.’

‘Thank you, Dr Walker,’ said Vitruk smoothly. ‘Your work is invaluable to us.’

He walked through clusters of people sitting or lying on the floor, greeting the excited children with a pat on the head or a high five. Most adults, skilled at surviving in harsh environments, didn’t meet his gaze and watched with barely any expression. Vitruk reached the wooden exercise bars which stretched right along the back wall. As he prepared to speak, Yumatov beckoned Carrie away out of camera shot.

‘Villagers of Little Diomede,’ Vitruk began in English. ‘Thank you for your patience. I am Admiral Alexander Vitruk and I command this military district. Those are my soldiers who’ve been watching you from Big Diomede all these years—’

The way he spoke reminded Carrie of her father, using six words when one would do, trying to be loved while clinging on to absolute control. She worked out long ago that it wasn’t her father’s fault that he had been embedded into the Soviet mindset from birth. Vitruk recounted the emergency rescue and that now mother and child were doing well. He didn’t mention the hydrocephalus, nor did he mention Rake. He pointed out how surprised he was at the lack of health care on the island and praised ‘world-renowned trauma surgeon’ Dr Carrie Walker for helping to save lives. ‘Dr Walker’s team will make sure you have the correct supply of vitamin and diet supplements.’

A voice broke through from the back. ‘We don’t need no more white people telling us.’

Vitruk opened his hands in a pacifying gesture. ‘Only take it if you want it.’

‘Get the hell off our island.’

Vitruk’s expression remained cordial. ‘We will, and we’ll get Akna and little Iyaroak back to the community.’

To the left a door opened. One of the television crew tapped his watch. Without another word, Vitruk walked outside onto the veranda. Yumatov switched channels to show Vitruk lit by broadcast lamps standing against the backdrop of Big Diomede and the wreckage of the two helicopters on the sea ice.