Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

FORTY-ONE

Rake paced the edge of the helipad of Little Diomede, taking in the rush of activity around him. Nearby, Carrie sat on a rucksack, in the shadow of a slowly turning rotor blade that changed her face from dark to light and back again as she sorted through her medical bag. Boots crunched through snow, soldiers, doctors, social workers, engineers, all deployed to mop up a war zone on American soil. Floodlamps lit the village like a stage. Noise from snowmobiles and aircraft drowned conversation, which was just as well because Rake and Carrie had tried talking and it hadn’t worked.

As soon as Rake had reported the Russian base clear, he rifled through Vitruk’s coat to find the key and unlock Carrie’s cuffs. He helped her to her feet and embraced her. He told her he loved her. Thank God! She was OK! They were safe. It was over. He talked too much and she stayed quiet. Different people. Different reactions. He wanted to hold her, carry her off like in a story. But she was stiff, holding him, then pushing him away, holding him again. Prusak, the White House Chief of Staff, called and told Rake to film Vitruk’s ID; to show the American flag, which he did with Henry. Troops arrived on a Black Hawk and hoisted a bigger one on the Russian flagpole, and the helicopter flew them all back to Little Diomede where they had medical checks and debriefs.

‘All that killing you did was needed,’ said Carrie, trying to explain, her eyes were everywhere, except on him. ‘But I don’t know if I can love you with it.’

You knew, he wanted to say. You met me like that. But he didn’t feel like justifying. Not to Carrie. They had been together at the start and the end. In between, they went through their own horrors, and ejecting horror takes time.

That was how they ended up, him pacing, her sitting floodlit under roaring aircraft engines, Carrie to Brooklyn, Rake staying on the island because the army needed him.

She wore a new dark green army jacket, hair tufting out of the hood. Her eyes carried a long-distance stare. Her mouth kept shaping itself as if she were about to speak, shout something to him above the noise. But he heard nothing, and his imagination may have been willing it, playing tricks. He wanted to shout out to her, but what to say. No point yelling for something that no longer exists. She was a Brooklyn East Coast liberal, he an Eskimo soldier from the Diomede. They did hostile places well together, but only a crazy person would imagine the kids and white picket fence thing could ever work. He didn’t know how to keep Carrie, didn’t know what would happen if he lost her. Rake had never been so afraid.

He heard Timo’s voice. ‘Uncle Rake, Uncle Rake, they need you.’ Timo, the kid who almost got them all killed, ran up, panting with excitement, burning energy, wearing the same loose thin anorak. Carrie stood up, animated, drawing on the boy’s energy. She held both his hands. ‘How are you, Timo? Are you feeling better?’ She lifted the hood of his jacket to feel his forehead.

‘We all think you’re great, Dr Walker.’ Timo’s voice quivered.

‘Your uncle is great, too,’ Carrie glanced at Rake. Warmth flashed through her eyes, then vanished.

The pilot walked across. ‘We’re good to go, Dr Walker.’

Rake went to help with her rucksack, but Carrie was faster and picked it up herself. She got into the helicopter, buckled up, and put on headphones. The rotor blades powered up. Rake held Timo close against the down draught. He watched to see if Carrie would say something, just a word, even a signal. But the window was dirty and the light awkward. Maybe she did and he missed it. Then, as they took off, Carrie did touch her lip with her finger and gave a short wave.

The helicopter turned into the wind and rose in the sky, getting smaller and smaller until it became a black dot lost among the flocks of birds drawn out of the hillside by its noise. Rake wasn’t sure he had ever understood white people.

Timo led them up the hillside where they heard singing and the rhythm of seal-skin drums. Henry and Joan stood over two open coffins. The bodies of Don Ondola and Nikita Tuuq, recovered from the ice, lay side by side in the burial ground. They had fought. They were family. Only the governments of white men had separated them. Flames lit the faces of villagers as they honored their dead with hunting songs from the islands of the Diomedes.