Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ten minutes earlier, wedged into cover just above the ice-floe edge, Rake had fixed a rocket-propelled grenade on a launcher, hoping to hell he wouldn’t have to use it. If he did, he would need to destroy the approaching helicopter with one shot because he doubted he would have time for a second. Smoke from the grenade propulsion would expose his position. The trick with this weapon was to fire and move. But the only place he could go was onto the sea ice, where he would be a perfect target for the helicopter’s fire power. He wished the helicopter crew would adhere to basic military rules and stay at least four hundred meters away from the hillside and out of range of an RPG or assault rifle. At that distance, thermal imaging would only create confusion and they would have difficulty spotting him. But those were rules for regular troops, and these were special forces whose mission must be to kill or capture him. The weather was clear too, and there were stars, the moon, and clarity of vision. If he were them, he would take the risk and come closer.

His analysis was right. The Russian helicopter flew around the north edge of the island and followed contours that rose almost straight up. At one point, the aircraft was so near that its rotor-blade draught ripped away the snow that gave him cover. Rake could see outline figures of soldiers inside. He counted four, but there would be others. The helicopter pulled away, climbed like an elevator, then began a slow vertical descent for the real search. Floodlamps lit the landscape that men would be scouring with trained eyes. Thermal imaging would pinpoint him. He could only stay hidden for so long, a minute, probably less. Within a few seconds of them spotting him, he would be dead.

Rake steadied the launcher against his shoulder and adjusted the sight. The crosswinds were well over ten miles an hour, which skewed his chances of a first good hit. He needed to allow for helicopter draught too, and that changed from moment to moment. He made ready the second grenade just in case. He scanned the landscape, checking for cover out on the ice. At about seventy-five meters, he thought he saw an ice wall. This was a glass-half-full view of the world, the part of Rake’s character that Carrie said she found attractive, the belief that he might be alive enough to take another shot if he failed with the first, might even make it out to new cover on the ice.

Rake waited, letting the aircraft get closer, gauging the wind, judging distance, what the enemy could see. Then, when the helicopter was less than a hundred meters off the hillside, the arc of the lamps sweeping down towards him, Rake tightened his finger on the trigger. The fuel tank would have the most impact. But he needed the fattest target area and the fuel was in the tail, too slender. He tilted the launcher up, waited a beat longer; it turned out to be a beat too long. Heavy machine-gun fire smashed into the hillside above him. Rounds sparked off rock. Snow sprayed across his goggles. It was random firing, to flush him out, but the next burst could cut him in two.

Rake fired.

A huge cloud of blue and gray smoke enveloped him and trailed out towards the aircraft. His position was exposed. Rake loaded the next grenade while expecting a wall of hot lead to cut into him.

Nothing came.

His shot hit the underbelly, violently tilting the aircraft backward. He fired again. More blue and gray smoke, and the fuselage peeled open like a can. Flames spread back toward the tail. The aircraft rolled away. As the pilot tried to keep control, it lurched the other way, and that was when he saw a flash of blonde hair. Carrie turned towards the window, its glass blackening with fire, her eyes dark with terror.

Rake dropped the grenade launcher into the snow. How he could have done that? Why hadn’t he thought? That’s how their twisted minds would work; use a civilian as bait. Then why didn’t they make her more visible? If he’d seen her, he’d never have…

A shrieking whine came from the stricken aircraft. The rear rotor blades stopped dead. Flames encased the tail. The fuselage was torn and the pilot had no rear power. He would only have a few seconds left in the air, to hunt for the safest glide angle, struggling to stop a lethal spin.

Rake scrambled out of the crevice onto the sea. The ice was patchy as if walrus had been there, their body warmth melting it. Thick broken ice sheets floated in channels of dark water. The pilot managed to get the nose up, but there was no way the aircraft could get back to base. A soldier smashed his rifle butt through a cracked window. Rake ran out into full view, jumping over weak ice patches. He moved unpredictably to avoid being a target, but deliberately made himself visible to show the pilot where the thickest ice was, the safest place to crash land. The ice around them was weak. It got stronger bit by bit further north, not far, maybe half a mile. Rake pointed and gave the pilot a thumbs down. Bad here. He raised both arms, hands vertical like parallel blades, slicing them down repeatedly towards the north. Good there. Trust me.

The pilot powered the blades, pitching the nose up like a rearing stallion, the tail ablaze, wild flames dancing, reflected on the ice. Rake glimpsed Carrie again. She looked at him, rigid, focused, her terror gone. ‘So sorry,’ he mouthed. ‘I love you.’ It was ridiculous. She wouldn’t hear, couldn’t lip-read it from that distance. Could she even see him; would she understand? But he had to do it, because in a few seconds she could be dead. Her expression didn’t change.

The pilot gave his wounded aircraft a final burst of speed, then cut the engine, letting the blades rotate freely in the air to give more stability. It kept going forward, foot by foot, but not far enough. Either he could try to reach stronger ice and risk a mid-air explosion. Or he could take a chance and crash-land on weaker ice. Rake watched him conduct a work of art. The pilot brought the helicopter down so that the burning tail brushed the ice to dampen the fire to try to stop it catching the fuel tank. Some flames were extinguished, but not all. Then he could hold it no longer. He levelled out and the skids settled heavily on the ice.

Rake unclipped a radio from his belt and called through, knowing that both sides would pick up: ‘Tin City. Tin City. This is Captain Rake Ozenna. Do not intervene in aircraft activity on northern edge of Little Diomede. Repeat — do not intervene. Russian aircraft is down with casualties. This is a humanitarian operation. Let Russia handle it.’

‘Copy that,’ came the American voice across the crackling channel.

A blade of wind cut through a smashed window into Carrie’s face. A soldier opposite was slumped, his foot shredded by shrapnel that had torn up from under them. She couldn’t tell if he was even alive. Another had his hands clasped over his eyes, and blood streaming out from between his fingers. Chilled air mixed with tail-fire heat sent warmth and cold into the cabin.

‘Out! Now!’ Vitruk shouted.

She unclipped her seatbelt just as the helicopter jolted, throwing her against Vitruk. It stabilized, then with a scraping of metal the ice gave way, and the side of the aircraft fell through. A spray of frozen water flew up into her face, unforgiving and brutal.

Vitruk slid the door far enough back to climb out. He reached down and pulled Carrie to him, gripping her arm as she started back towards the burning wreckage. ‘The wounded!’ she shouted.

‘Get back. Further!’ yelled Vitruk.

The pilot was out, guiding them to a firmer area he had identified twenty meters away. Soldiers stumbled from the wreckage. They carried two wounded colleagues and brought them to Carrie. The one with the injured foot had bled out. He was dead. The other would live, though probably blinded. Carrie recognized the faraway throbbing of an engine which became louder as three helicopters reached them from the base. Their floodlamps lit up the survivors. She could see Rake still there, a tiny distant solitary figure, so far away that he was long out of small-arms range. Vitruk’s gaze was on him too. An incoming helicopter snapped on more lights and broke away towards him.

A jagged piece of shrapnel protruded from the eyes of the wounded soldier. They lowered him onto a thermal blanket. Iced blood was hardening on his face. His teeth chattered violently, pushing the embedded metal towards his brain.

‘He needs to get to the base!’ Carrie opened her medical bag to give him a shot of morphine. Suddenly, alarm spread across Vitruk’s face and without warning he hurled himself against Carrie, bringing her down. Her face was pressed hard into the ice, cold stinging her skin, Vitruk’s weight on top of her. She heard a high shrill whine of wind that at first sounded like a gust kicking up surface snow. But it was the fuel tank of their helicopter exploding. A fireball rose into the air, throwing a hot cloud of aviation vapor over them, and a plume of thick black choking smoke, laced with orange flame, that faded and was taken by the wind. When Vitruk finally let her up, she turned to her surviving patient, but didn’t have to check his heartbeat to know that he too was dead.

Four soldiers stood up, readied weapons, adjusted snowshoes, and set off to find Rake on the wasteland of cold that stretched out endlessly in front of them.

Rake concentrated on Carrie. From where he stood, he could see that she was alive and seemed uninjured, scrambling away from the crashed helicopter. Then came the fuel-tank blast which hid her in smoke. Then it cleared and he watched her get up. She put her glove to her face in what looked like a regular frostbite check after skin contact with ice. She examined a patient. Carrie was doing what she did best, being fine, being with the wounded.

Then Rake saw four men moving towards him like sentinels, meaning that he was exposed and they knew where he was. He had to get himself into cover.

All he had was a Makarov 9mm pistol and a Vityaz automatic rifle with no reputation for accuracy. Its two-hundred-meter outer range was about where the enemy was now. The rest of the equipment lay scattered on the hillside behind him.

To surrender would be suicide. Russia needed to display his dead body. To his left stood the ice wall he had identified earlier. Over the winter, ice walls grow like snowballs gathering soft snow. Their origins are iceberg slither that appears above the water. Then in gale after gale, water and debris flung against them make them bigger each time. Rake had seen ice walls in many shapes. This one looked low and long, no more than four feet high, but it could extend fifty feet down towards the seabed. He judged it to be at least six-feet wide which was enough to stop a high-velocity small-arms bullet. If he could get there, he might be able to take all four men before another helicopter came close. As he ran towards it, he saw the flash of a shot. It went very wide, probably out of range. That was good. It meant his enemy was angry and impatient.

More gunfire chipped off the top of the wall, spraying ice pellets towards him. He made it to cover and lying flat, elbows embedded in snow, he tried to line up a shot. The wind was erratic and he hadn’t sighted the weapon for the cold. His target was moving too quickly, but if he could not make a kill now, it would mean close-quarter fighting. They weren’t far away, but they had separated and were approaching from both sides. Even he wasn’t good enough to take them all. He didn’t know a man who could.

Rake did not pull the trigger. His finger was not even inside the trigger guard. But bullets tore into one soldier’s face, destroying the head and sending out webs of blood as he fell to the ground. A second soldier, although thirty yards away, died in exactly the same way. A sniper’s shot. The two surviving soldiers ran towards him, firing at the same time. Their bullets smashed uselessly into the wall. A third soldier was hit in the legs, his screams shrill and haunting like those of any young men suddenly wounded.

Rake heard the low-pitched whine of a snowmobile coming fast from the east. The fourth soldier flattened himself on the ground.

In camouflage, Arctic white, the snowmobile was military issue. From the tone, it would have carried a 1,000-cc engine, and could be moving at sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour, slowing to navigate an ice hazard, then speeding up again. The driver looped around checking each of his targets and signaling Rake to keep the fourth soldier covered. Rake tensed, trigger poised, but the Russian surrendered. The driver took his weapons, stood him up and pointed for him to walk back to his people. The soldier obeyed. Whoever this was, he was alone; he didn’t want prisoners, but he didn’t kill for the sake of it.

The snowmobile approached and Rake saw the driver was encased in the full skin of a polar bear. It would have weighed more than fifty pounds, but Don Ondola carried it with no more effort than an overcoat. The last time Rake had seen Ondola he was in court and Rake stood as character witness. There wasn’t a lot to say when a man got drunk, killed his wife, and raped his daughter, although that last one wasn’t even on the charge sheet. Ondola might be the finest outdoorsman in Alaska. He might have saved Rake’s life the day Tuuq left him to die in Uelen. But drink is drink, murder is murder, and the law’s the law. He had asked Rake only one favor and that was send him the polar-bear hide in prison.

Ondola pulled up next to Rake, got down, and lifted the skin. His face was thin, skin stretched and creased with a grin. ‘They said I could find you out here,’ he said, as if bumping into Rake in the village. ‘How you doing, Rake?’ A gloomy mist swept along the ground. Lights from the Russian troops were blurred, and the beams of floodlamps splayed and bounced off the whiteness.

Cluttered with gear, filled with appreciation, Rake embraced him. ‘So, you brought the marines across from the mainland?’ he asked.

Ondola nodded. ‘They’re on standby. They’ve been told to stay put.’

A siren started up from near the crashed Russian wreckage. Both men watched through binoculars. A medical helicopter hovered inches above the ice. Two bodies were lifted on board. Carrie climbed up, followed by the commander and others. The door slid shut and the aircraft turned quickly and flew nose-down, low and fast, towards the Russian base.

Rake and Ondola didn’t have long. The Russians would come for them again, with more men and aircraft.

‘You heading across there?’ asked Ondola.

‘Those are my orders unless they sent you here to tell me different.’

‘They didn’t send me, Rake.’ Ondola fidgeted with his weapon. ‘I split. I’m not going back to prison.’

‘You’ll be running all your life.’ Many times, Rake had tried reasoning with Ondola, but his brain wasn’t wired like that.

This time, Ondola pre-empted him. ‘Up here,’ he flattened his hand on his head, ‘I don’t think straight and I do bad things. Only place I’m any good is out here in the wild.’ His mind might be tortured, but his face was calm and, given what he had just done, he seemed untroubled. ‘I heard Akna’s over there, with a baby.’

‘She is.’ Rake scanned the landscape.

‘I’ll get you there,’ said Ondola.

Rake glanced at the snowmobile. ‘No chance with this.’

‘No. They’d cut us down. I brought more skins.’

The best camouflage on the ice was animal skin, seal, walrus, polar bear. No synthetic material matched it. Ondola took a collapsible sled from the back of the vehicle.

‘Go back,’ said Rake. ‘It’s not worth it.’

‘I need to see Akna. Tell her I’m sorry.’

The ice was harsh, shimmering, with shades of contrasting gray, white, and darkness. It reminded him of a burning hot desert in Iraq. ‘They sent Nikki to get me,’ said Rake.

‘Nikki Tuuq? Is he out here?’

‘Yes. Somewhere. I saw him with Timo.’

Ondola pulled a magazine from his weapon as if checking it. ‘How is Timo?’ he asked softly. Timo was Akna’s half-brother. Ondola had raised him like his own son until the night he killed Akna’s mother.

‘Timo’s fine. Henry’s watching over him now.’

‘Henry wants me dead.’

They lifted the skins onto the sled. Rake wanted to say more, to persuade Ondola to serve his time so he could walk free and try to get better. But not here. Not now. And besides, Ondola’s mind was set.

‘Can I beat Nikki Tuuq?’ asked Rake.

‘You can’t,’ said Ondola. ‘Not alone. Nikki’s too good. You’ll need my help.’