Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

THIRTY-FIVE

On a small table lay the phone on which Carrie had spoken to Stephanie Lucas. It was ringing, but Carrie couldn’t reach it. Her left hand was cuffed to a vertical metal rail, on the chair where Joan had sat. Vitruk was by the doorway, headset on, deep in conversation. When Vitruk had brought her in, she noticed a strained and concentrated atmosphere, and fewer than half a dozen men who had now left. In the hour she had been here, she had counted four helicopters taking off and three coming in. She guessed Vitruk was emptying the base because he expected a strike as soon as Holland was sworn in. Rake was somewhere out there, but she couldn’t imagine what he was doing, what he was thinking. She couldn’t place her fiancé in her mind because she wasn’t sure any more who he really was.

The soldier who had been shot in the legs lay awake, staring, eyes wide open at the ceiling, occasionally mumbling to himself. The other man was silent and still. Akna slept. The corpse was gone from the bed across the ward. The pediatric surgeon had gone, too, and he had done a bad, rushed job. In the incubator, the baby wriggled, awake, mouth open, crying, but no sound came out. Iyaroak was badly positioned with the weight of her head on the wound. Blood clotted the bandage that needed changing. Bacterial meningitis and encephalitis were a real risk, and Carrie had no idea which antibiotics they were using, if any.

Hailstones pounded loudly on the military canvas. She heard the slow throbbing of another helicopter starting up, ferrying men out of the base. It took off. The fifth. The phone ringing stopped, then the keyboard flashed with an incoming message. Vitruk could see it, but kept talking. Carrie stared at him, the cuff cold on her wrist.

Vitruk listened to the measured argument of President Lagutov over the phone while watching Carrie, her expression thoughtful and angry. He had ordered an evacuation of the base and had only a skeleton of highly trusted men left.

‘The Americans are calling us constantly and we are stalling,’ said Lagutov, sounding resigned but determined. ‘Sergey Grizlov tells me to negotiate, but my faith remains in you, Alexander, to make this work for the Motherland.’ There was barely a cigarette paper between the success and failure of any military operation and Lagutov was giving Vitruk that one last high-risk shot.

‘Thank you,’ said Vitruk. ‘Sergey would make us Western puppets again.’

‘I have authorized you for Kavkaz,’ said Lagutov, referring to the Russian military communications system used for a nuclear-missile launch. ‘You will receive unlocked codes in the next five minutes. You are the only one with these.’

As the line was disconnected, Vitruk looked across to the ring tone coming from the phone just out of Carrie’s reach. He would deal with it, but only after he had one more piece of information. An hour ago, General Dmitri Alverov was still thirty minutes out from North Korea’s Toksong missile-launch site. He had assured Vitruk that if the North Korean engineers had followed orders, they would be able to launch within an hour of his arrival. Vitruk called through again. Alverov had arrived and the team was at work. ‘It needs to be just after the inauguration,’ said Vitruk.

‘Without a warhead, we can,’ said Alverov. ‘The missile would be more accurate without it.’

‘The first from the silo will be unarmed,’ said Vitruk. ‘The second mobile launch will be armed.’

‘Armed?’ It wasn’t a question, more an exclamation of excitement, a departure from his usual scientific detachment. ‘That will be a great pleasure, sir.’

‘Is your team united?’

‘We cannot let the past years of humiliation go unpunished.’

Vitruk was convinced that Alverov’s mood was being reflected throughout Russia. Once the Americans had hit this base, the Russian people would fall in behind him and Vitruk could push through a decisive victory. He had already decided that Pearl Harbor would be the most symbolic target. America could beat Japan, but never Russia.

Driving pellets of hail smashed against Rake’s goggles as he stood between two men in the last stages of exhaustion. The power of the ice storm cut visibility to just a few feet. He couldn’t see Henry because of the swirl in front of him. But he could hear his voice, and Henry’s fury carried on the wind. When Rake cupped his hands protectively around his goggles, he could make out Don Ondola, silent, passive, a giant of a man, whom Henry would kill if he had the chance, but whom they all needed to stay alive.

Henry was a level-headed man, except on the issue of Ondola. Henry had raised him like a son and saw his crimes as a personal betrayal. He had given evidence at the murder trial, framed in a way that would cause Ondola to be locked away for life without parole. Ondola had said he was sorry. He broke down in tears, but had meant it only because he was sober. As soon as he touched drink the monster in him would return. Henry had pledged that if his adopted son ever became a free man again, he would kill him.

Rake and Ondola had found Henry in the cover of the ice wall, watching Joan walk out from the coastline. He had escaped the base with the barest of protection and was rigid with cold, scarcely able to move. They gave him a hide and warmed him. Ondola climbed the wall and set up his firing position with the aim of killing Vitruk. Only then did Henry reveal himself by running towards Joan. Rake and Henry brought Joan to safety as Ondola killed two Russian marksmen, but failed to hit Vitruk. He escaped after a field of lethal machine-gun fire cut the ice around him and left his polar-bear skin as a calling card not to mess with the Eskimos. Now, in the shelter of the wall, Joan brewed coffee and prepared military self-heating meals that Rake had taken from the Russians.

Despite where they were, all they were up against, Henry stubbornly stuck to his pledge, even though Ondola had just saved his life, even though he knew he could never beat Ondola in a fight. Ondola had arrived back as the weather turned bad again, and Henry confronted him. Rake stepped in between them. The environment was at least as lethal as a human enemy, he said, and if they fought between themselves, the weather and the ice would take them all.

Ondola beckoned Rake, who took a step towards him just as a whistling gust roared through. He almost slipped, but steadied himself in time. ‘You and Henry go to the base,’ shouted Ondola. ‘I’ll watch your back, keep Joan safe. I’ll handle Tuuq if he comes.’

Rake pointed to Little Diomede. ‘Joan wants to go home. Can she make it alone?’

‘To the village, yes. She cannot get around to the Americans on the east side.’

‘Eat with us while we have cover,’ said Rake.

Ondola shook his head. ‘Henry won’t—’

‘I’ll handle Henry.’ Rake took his arm. ‘You need energy.’

Like pushing into a tidal surge, Rake led them against the weather, noise drowning out everything. He sensed rather than saw Henry until he blocked their path, stopping only inches away. ‘Keep him away, Rake. I swear by God—’

‘We need him.’

‘We don’t.’

‘He’s sick in the head, Henry. He needs help.’

‘He murdered—’

‘Out here, Eskimo does not harm Eskimo, whatever the past,’ shouted Rake. ‘We will feed him, and when it’s over I will return him to the prison. You have my word.’

‘Or I’ll kill him.’

‘If it comes to that, I’ll kill him to save your hide.’

Once behind the ice wall, the clatter of flying hail fell silent. The wind dropped, and they ate fast and hungrily and were done in minutes. Henry drew a plan of the base in the snow, explaining the hangars, the main building with the control room, and the field hospital tagged onto the back. ‘If Carrie is still there, she’ll be in the field hospital here, or in the room directly on the right inside the main door. This long room that runs into the hospital is the control center.’

‘Vitruk’s quarters?’ asked Rake.

‘None. It’s too small, too crowded.’

‘What about the bunker?’ said Ondola. ‘Deep, down a long staircase, where they kept Uncle Anik when he was arrested in 1988.’

‘I didn’t see it,’ said Henry.

Anik, an obsessive hunter, had followed a herd of walrus into Russian waters. The cold war was full on, and he spent a month deep in an airless Soviet bunker on Big Diomede. Or so legend had it.

‘So how do we get in?’ asked Rake.

Henry drew the pier and gun positions along the coastline. Ondola added the ice wall.

‘Can we do it from there?’ asked Rake. ‘We use the ice wall as cover?’

Henry and Ondola shook their heads. ‘This whole side is exposed,’ said Henry.

‘Then we go here.’ Rake used a spike of ice to show the spot on Henry’s map where a cove would be. It was a third of a mile from the base. When growing up, they had played at trying to cross to Big Diomede undetected. This was the only place where intrusive rock formations blocked the lines of sight from the ridge watch towers. ‘Has anyone been caught here?’ Rake asked.

Henry forgot his animosity for a moment as he looked at Ondola. Both men shrugged as if to say neither knew, which meant no one had. If they made it onto the tiny rock beach, they would be clear.

‘Then the Russians might not have it covered.’ Rake pointed to other landing spots to the south. ‘Here, here, and here people have been intercepted, and this is where Anik was caught. I reckon if the weather stays bad we have a chance of getting in undetected.’

‘I’ll be a decoy,’ said Joan. ‘Go to one of those places with a white flag. They won’t shoot.’

Rake didn’t like it. After Ondola’s killing of the two snipers, the soldiers would be nervous and trigger-happy. ‘It’s too dangerous. Joan, you come with us as—’

Rake was about to say more when they heard a dog’s howl. A quiet wind carried it towards them from the direction of the Russian base. At first it was soft, undulating, almost singing, but it became loud, a throbbing cry, piercing, cutting through the air. It stopped abruptly and Rake’s radio sprang to life. ‘Watch the sky, yellow Yankee coward. It’s my orders to cut my brother until he dies.’

To the west, over the coastline of Big Diomede, a trail of glowing yellow sparks climbed into the sky. For a moment, Rake thought it was machine-gun tracer. But the trajectory was wrong and it kept climbing until, like a firework, it burst into a shower of green stars that lit up a large area beneath, before streaming away, extinguished by the wind.