North Cape

CHAPTER 18

Larkin paced slowly back and forth before the insulated windows fronting the dimly lit bridge, apparently oblivious to the scene around him. At eight consoles, eight technicians sat hunched before the banks of instruments. The atmosphere was heavy with depression. Nothing had been heard from the shore party for nearly twelve hours. During that time the shadowy Soviet submarine had moved slowly out of the Porsangerfjord and rounded the point to slip carefully down the northern coast of the island at a depth of sixty feet.

The RFK, standing twenty miles offshore, had long since run out of the freakish waterlayer conditions that had expanded her sonar range earlier in the day. In fact, reverse conditions were now in effect. The RFK’s sonar gear had an operational echo-ranging capability of thirty-eight miles under optimum conditions. Now she was able to pick up firm signals only at a maximum of twenty-two miles. Beyond that the decreasing signalto-noise ratio wiped away any traces of the target. In spite of the trouble with the sonar gear, they had been able to follow as the submarine had moved twice from the southeastern end of the island in Porsangerfjord to its mouth on the western side, and then out into the Barents Sea to proceed slowly down the coast as if searching out a landing site. They passed the point of beach where the American party had landed, and continued down the coast. At first Larkin had thought, as the submarine had come to a stop to lay off the coast with only the sail showing, that they were examining the terrain. Now he was not so sure. The sub had remained surfaced for twenty minutes, long enough to have launched a raft. If indeed a second party had gone ashore they would logically have landed several hours travel up the coast from where Folsom and his men were. Larkin had no firm idea of just how fast and far they had traveled, but his last radio contact with Folsom, several hours after they started out, had put him a mile west of where the sub came to a stop. By the time the submarine had arrived off the coast in the late afternoon, Folsom would certainly have moved several miles farther west. Evidently the Soviet commander had misjudged the Americans’ rate of progress.

His face betraying none of the anxiety he felt, Larkin continued his pacing back and forth across the bridge, stopping now’ and then to examine a scope over a technician’s shoulder. If ever there had been a hand-picked crew aboard any United States Navy ship, the small complement of eighty men aboard the highly automated RFK were it. Every man had been personally requested by Larkin, many from personal knowledge of their capabilities and the rest from service records. They were the best there was, he knew. And he had drilled them mercilessly into an operational team in which every man knew exactly what was expected of him — the basis of proper and workable military discipline. It was not, however, the crew’s reaction to the tense situation facing them — or their future performance — that he was worried about. Each and every crew member was aware that the Russian submarine they were stalking could easily be carrying nuclear missiles. And at a few miles, even if their missile defenses were quick enough to destroy incoming weaponry, any nuclear explosion could be fatal to the ship’s crew. No, Larkin was not worried about the crew. They knew what they faced, and had known since the day they agreed to sign on — that this possibility was more likely to come to pass on the RFK than on any other operational ship of the Navy. For a moment the grim humor of the situation relaxed Larkin’s mind. The ship, the most advanced in any navy in the world, the one always earmarked for just such clandestine operations as played tag with nuclear destruction, had been named for a man whose overriding concern was the nuclear disarmament of the world. Larkin shook his head and turned to face the line of windows.

The cold seas were running savagely; there was no relief for his introspective mood from that quarter. Larkin swung himself into the high seat before his own console. The meteorological officer two consoles away tore off a Xerox and reached over to hand it to him. Larkin took it with some misgivings. But it was only the quarter-hourly weather report indicating moderating seas for the next thirty-six hours. He turned again toward the window.

The seas, this close onto the coast, were no longer breaking over the bow in huge runnels of water, but the waves were still running forty feet or better. The lingering half light of the short midwinter day was still bright enough to show the grayish-green color of the half-frozen surface as it billowed up into sharp-edged mountains only to be struck broadside by violent winds that sheered off the crests, as neatly as would a razor, in long foamy streamers. The seas might be in the process of moderating, but here on the Norwegian north coast, exposed to the full force of the dying gale, actual conditions were showing little support for such optimistic predictions. As he continued to gaze out the ports, his mind turned to the supplementary orders that had come in over the private channel minutes earlier. The gist of the orders was that Larkin was empowered to notify the Norwegian Government and request their assistance if the situation got out of hand too rapidly for long-distance consultation. If that was not forthcoming, then he was instructed to ask for asylum for the pilot and his three crewmen. He was not, and the not was underlined, allowed to do so except in the most extreme emergency.

But it was the last paragraph of the message that added a few more gray hairs to his head. The message stated that he was to use all powers of persuasion at his disposal to rescue the pilot if the Norwegians should prove to be uncooperative — as they had every right to be, he thought. It was utter nonsense for the State Department not to notify the Norwegian Government as soon as possible. Not only could they render valuable assistance, but for God’s sake, it was their country and they were allies. He might have his orders to bring Teleman out with all of the force at his disposal, but he was damn sure that no copy of any such message existed in Washington. Washington, if caught, would merely claim that it was a transmitting error or that Larkin had exceeded his authority. In any event, if he had to act pursuant to those orders, the entire wrath of both governments would fall on him like a ton of bricks. His naval career would be at an end. And, if he did not act in accordance with the orders, he would be either secretly court-martialed or shunted out of the Navy. It had happened before, he knew. And Larkin could count at least fifteen qualified naval officers waiting to step into his shoes.

It was no wonder that Larkin got out of the high seat and resumed his pacing. A lesser man would have gone screaming off the bridge in frustration. It was nearly 2100 before Folsom called a halt for the night. During the last few hours they had straggled into a line over a mile long. McPherson, still the strongest of the party, had taken up the tail-end position to act as rear guard and to make sure no one was left behind in the snow-filled wastes. Teleman was only a few paces ahead of him. Folsom had chosen the campsite on the basis of time rather than location. The tundra stretched for miles in all directions, flat and unbroken except for two miles north, where one could barely make out the faint line of cliffs against the night sky. As he waited for the others to catch up, he felt as if he were standing in the middle of a flat dinner plate whose white lack-of-color under the three-quarter moon and cloud-free sky reflected enough light to hurt his eyes after the deep gloom of the past day. If the snow had not been fresh Folsom knew there would have been virtually no light reflection from the surface. Ice crystals would have tended to absorb light and reflect only a little at random. He had witnessed this phenomenon before while aboard a destroyer standing off the Great Ice Barrier in the depths of winter. The icy surface had reflected virtually no light unless it was coated by fresh snow.

Gadsen staggered — literally staggered — up and sank down in the snow a few feet away. He sat, knees drawn up and head down, for several minutes before regaining breath enough to speak coherently. Folsom, glancing down the trail of disturbed snow they had left, could see McPherson and Teleman approaching, still more than a hundred yards away.

“Cod, if you hadn’t… stopped… I would have collapsed. in another few feet.” Gadsen managed to force out between ragged gasps for air.

Painfully, Folsom,shrugged out of his pack and let it fall with a solid thump to the frozen ground. His voice when he spoke was as weary as Gadsen’s, reflecting none of the lightheartedness of the words. “Courage me boy, only another nine miles to go.”

“Courage hell… the only thing that keeps me going… is the Russians…”

“Yeah,” Folsom said, nodding. “I just hope to hell that they are as bushed as we are.” He watched the approaching pair and saw one fall heavily. The other bent over and slowly helped him to his feet.

“Come on, Julie. Can you make another few yards? I don’t think those two can.” Gadsen nodded, got up, and followed Folsom back to where McPherson had stopped to wait as he saw them returning. By the time Folsom and Gadsen had reached him, he had already unpacked the tent and was in the process of rigging the lightweight metal frame. Teleman half sat, half sprawled on the snow, watching him work with dull eyes. While Gadsen helped McPherson with the tent, Folsom came over and knelt beside the exhausted pilot.

“How do you feel?”

“Tuck”

“That’s what I figured.” Folsom peeled Teleman’s mask off and studied the graying face while he fumbled with his own mask. The pilot’s face was drawn and white and covered with yellowish cold blisters. Teleman had been shivering ever since the afternoon rest stop. Folsom had noticed it earlier, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, even though he knew the combination of shivering and difficult exercise of hiking across the uneven, snow-covered tundra had completely worn the man out. But he had not dared stop earlier. So far they had seen no sign of the Russians pursuing them and he wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Folsom helped Teleman up and into the tent. He did not wait for Gadsen to pump up the stove and get it going, but hustled Teleman into a sleeping bag fully clothed, between the last of the chemical heating pads.

After a few minutes of steady pumping and priming Gadsen got the stove going, and shortly the temperature had risen to the freezing mark inside the tent. Gadsen adjusted the flame to keep it at that temperature and laid four ration packs on the cover to warm.

“If this cold gets any worse,” McPherson said a few minutes later as the four men ate, “it’ s going to be the roughest last few miles you ever saw.”

“I’ve been thinking, about that all afternoon,” Folsom said. He laid the empty ration pack down and stretched out on his sleeping bag, using his pack for a back support. The ration pack dropped from Teleman’s hands. He was too weak to hold it any longer. It fell softly onto the folds of the sleeping bag and for the moment no one noticed. He was barely awake now, struggling to keep his eyes open long enough to listen to the conversation. He had never been so tired in his life. Circulation was beginning to return to his feet and hands and the pain was as unbearable, as he had feared it would be. In spite of the agony he felt that, if he once closed his eyes, he would sleep forever. To stay awake he massaged the tender skin of his face.

“The Russians will be desperate to catch us by now. They will have found the lifesphere ten hours ago at the least. And the life-sphere will tell them that we came from a ship, an American ship at that. What they will want to know at this point is whether or not the Norwegians are involved. But you can damn well bet that they will be searching with everything they have to locate the ship.” Folsom stopped for a moment to think.

“I feel sure,” he continued, “that even if they think some Americans have gotten ashore to find Teleman here — especially after Mac shot the hell out of them — they are not going to be scared off by the possibility of a pitched battle. In fact, I would even be willing to bet that they are figuring just as we are — that we don’t dare get the Norwegians involved at this point. So, if anything, the Russians are going to move faster and harder.*

Folsom stopped to examine the three haggard faces peering at him in the dim light of the stove. Bone-breaking fatigue was on their faces, Teleman’s especially. The hike under normal circumstances would have been nothing to these men, but the intense cold, Teleman’s deteriorating condition, the wind, deep snow, and exceedingly dry cold all combined to sap strength at a magnified rate. His own legs and feet were screaming with returning circulation and fatigue. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he was able to still his shaking hands, Earlier in the afternoon a thought had occurred to him, a possibility that should have been amply clear to him earlier. He was extremely angry with himself for not having thought of it before. The only excuse he could make was the cold, the cold that sapped every last bit of strength, that required the utmost concentration just to place one foot in front of the other, the cold that required of you that no outside considerations interfere with this concentration because, if they did, you would find yourself slowly freezing to death, prone in the snow, without any awareness of having stopped moving minutes before. He was apprehensive about releas-ing this bombshell. Not only was endurance at the bottommost point for the three men facing him, but so was morale. It would not take much at this point for them to give up and climb into their sleeping bags. If this happened the Russians would certainly find them in a few hours at the most.

“Whether or not the Soviets will travel all night,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully at first… then Folsom realized that he need not he careful, that these were not men to give up so easily after having come so far. If that had been the case they would have done so hours before…. He began again. “I did not think of this until a few hours ago, but the submarine… there will be no need for it to stay in the Porsangerfjord. In fact, it will probably put out to sea to keep pace with the search party.” The other three continued to watch him, flickers of apprehension growing in their faces.

“When the search party finds that we left without waiting for them, they will probably inform the submarine, which will then break all speed records moving down the coast to drop off another party, well ahead of us. It will be quite plain to them where we are heading. They can read a map as well as we, and they will know that we sure as hell are not going to head inland to Kistrand. If they do drop another party, then they’ve got us in a vise.”

The other three reacted with varying degrees of anger or disgust, mostly directed at themselves for not having seen this possibility before. Teleman was awake now, the pain and fatigue of his screaming muscles forgotten for the moment.

“Okay, what do we do then?” Gadsen asked.

Folsom rubbed both hands across his face, massaging his weary eyes and wishing to God he had never left the Pentagon. “Well, first we all need sleep. So we take four hours out. That means we stop six hours and everyone but Teleman will stand a two-hour watch. Teleman is out, he needs all the sleep he can get.”

He ignored Teleman’s angry but feeble protest and continued. “Two hours each on watch will give us four hours of sleep. I’ll take the first watch, Mac, you take the second and Julie the last.” They nodded in agreement.

“What about tomorrow?” McPherson asked. “If we stop tonight, the Russians are going to be breathing down our necks.”

“I agree,” Folsom replied. “But I don’t see what else we can do, We all need rest too badly to move on any farther tonight. I don’t think it will do us any good to turn inland and try and approach the Norwegian base from the south. They will probably be watching for just such a move. I would guess the submarine will drop the second party as close to the base as they dare and work them back toward the first group. So about the only option left us is to make tracks for the base as fast as possible and hope to God that somehow we will miss the second party.”

“How about letting the RFK know?”

“No good. If we use the radio they’ll pick us up and pinpoint our location right down to the last meter. I can’t conceive of them not keeping a watch on the possible frequencies that we might use. All we can do is wait until they find us before calling for help. The captain should be able to figure some way to give us covering fire… if not, then he can contact the Norwegians for help.”

The four sat in silence for several minutes before Gadsen commented, “I sure as hell wouldn’t give a plug nickel for our chances.”

“Don’t quit yet,” Folsom warned. “We still have a couple of things in our favor. Number one, they have to move a lot more carefully than we do. They never know when Mac is going to open on them again, or even the Norwegians for that matter. They are in unfriendly territory. We, at least, can be assured of asylum in Norway. They can’t.

“Number two, they don’t know where we are, at least exactly where we are. And they don’t know that the ship is standing off the coast… at least I hope they don’t.” The silence descended again, unbroken even by the roaring wind that had been their constant companion for so long. The silence was thick, thick and heavy with the threat of their total exhaustion and potential capture. Teleman settled down into the sleeping bag and pushed his thawing feet against the chemical warming pad. In spite of his utter exhaustion, his mind was churning with the implications of Folsom words. They did not have much chance. That much was clear to a blind idiot. There was still nine miles to go to the Norwegian base, nine more miles that would take them all day tomorrow in their steadily degenerating condition. He knew that he could not make it and he doubted very much if the others would be able to either. The temperature was dropping fast, and six miles over the frozen, knee-high tufts of tundra grass in forty-below weather was too much to expect of any man. His mind began turning insidiously back to the thoughts that had nagged at him during the endless day. Which of the three men had the orders to kill him?

Teleman groaned inwardly. He was certain that one of them would try to kill him, but which one. He could not watch all three at once. McPherson had the training and the skill, that he knew. He had also been very solicitous of him all day, almost carrying him since noon. But Gadsen — he had not learned very much about the man at all. Except for a few wise comments on their predicament during the day, he had not spoken much…. In the middle of his self-created maze of danger, Teleman’s brain blanked and he was deeply asleep.

“Well, we can only wait and see what the new day brings,” Gadsen sighed. Folsom pulled on his face mask and gloves. “Yeah, I guess so.” What else was there to say? he thought.

He slammed a new clip into his carbine and shoved extras into a pocket. “Night-night.” He grinned and pulled the face mask tight, then pushed through the tent flaps and crawled outside.

The cold air hit him with the force of a truck, sucking the warm air from his body. Still on his knees, he curled into a tight ball, coughing into his fur-lined mittens, breathing slowly to avoid frosting his lungs. In a few moments the spasm passed and he straightened out, face still buried in his gloves while he breathed carefully to regain his breath. Even through the fur and nylon parka, the touch of the air was like hot iron. He stood up and began beating his arms together. We have to walk nine more miles through this, he thought, and he knew that they would never be able to make it, no matter what the circumstances were, no matter what the prize, up to and including life itself. It was an impossible task. But deep inside he knew that they would do it or die trying. Just as the Russians would catch them or die And he also knew that the Russians would not be waiting out the night in a tent — they would be using the night.

The harsh moon was a quarter of the way up in the sky. Its light falling on the freshly snow-covered ground gave him visibility almost to the horizon in every direction. The wind had died away completely, and in the frigid, still air his breath froze instantly, wreathing his head in a clammy fog if he stopped too long in one spot. The moon highlighted the tundra, with the hummocks of grass standing out in bold relief. Folsom had never dreamed it could be so cold. He had never experienced anything like this before.

The stars burned in the sky in spite of the moonlight, and the air was so cold and dry that he could detect no trace of ring around the moon. As if to form a backdrop for the unearthly beauty of the moon, the aurora had sprung into the northern sky, shimmering curtains of color that fluctuated and flowed in the gentle breeze of the electron stream arising eight minutes away in the sun’s corona. At any other time he would have been entranced with the shifting tapestry of color and form, but not tonight He moved slowly away from the tent, walking carefully around the tufts of frozen grass as they had been doing since entering the tundra. Not one of them could afford a twisted ankle now. Folsom stopped to peer around. He could see nothing on the waste of frozen terrain in any direction. At this point he knew that they were about seven miles from the sea. But in the crystal air the fury of the sea against the cliffs was faintly audible. At a thousand yards distance from the tent Folsom turned and began to move in a circle, with the tent as the center point. He would leave tracks in the snow, tracks that the Russians could not miss, but it didn’t matter. Tomorrow the Russians would find the campsite anyway.

There were two directions from which the Soviets could approach: east or west. The main party would come from the west

Although Folsom did not make the mistake of discounting them, he was fairly certain that this group, after traveling for almost a day longer than themselves, would be as exhausted. It was the group from the east, the expected second landing party, that he was worried about. They would be fresh.

Folsom concentrated his attention then on the east and the west. After forty minutes of plodding around the mile-long circle, it became a question of whether he could last the remaining hour and twenty minutes. Even with the most intense concentration and violent shivering and the continual plodding, he had to fight desperately the sleep that would steal quietly into his mind. Sleep that made him the same promises of warmth that it had made to Teleman all day, sleep and the warmth that his body craved now more than anything in life.

Folsom strove to shake off the exhaustion that was wearing him down, reaching at his eyelids with sandpapery fingers, and forced himself to keep plodding. Somewhere in the back of his mind, as he trudged through the endless circle under the erratic northern lights filling the sky with trembling curtains of fire, somewhere deep, almost below the conscious level, something was wrong, but his mind was too hazy, too sticky and numb, to pinpoint the sense of wrongness. Vaguely he realized that the missing factor was important, but the longer he walked, the more time that passed, the farther away the vagrant thought slipped. Now it was beyond his capability to muster the necessary energy to concentrate, and soon it had slipped completely from him.

On a sweep to the north,’ half asleep and mumbling to himself, McPherson came up behind and laid a hand on his shoulder. Folsom felt the big man’s hand grasp at his parka and automatically swung around, the butt of his carbine whipping through a vicious arc at the other’s unseen midsection. Orly Folsom’s tired reflexes saved McPherson from a solid clout in the belly. McPherson caught the rifle in one huge paw and stopped it, then gave Folsom a gentle shove toward the tent and watched him stumble away before he too began the chase around the endless circle.

Teleman was at the bottom of a long shaft. Above, the velvet-black sides of the hole spiraled up to an undefined blob of half light, a formless nothing. His mind refused to work, refused to coordinate sensory impressions, was mired in a haze of quicksand. He fell sharply… Teleman sat up in the darkened tent and waited for the shapeless blurs of darkness to form into patterns that represented walls of the tent and pieces of gear scattered about. The hoarfrost from their breathing was growing thick on the nylon walls. The suddenness of awakening had disoriented him for several panicky minutes before he realized that huddled next to him in sleeping bags were both McPherson and Folsom, and Gadsen’s sleeping bag was empty. That told him that it was the last watch before they would move on again. After the few hours of sleep, his mind and senses were preternaturally sharp. He did not realize that this was due to almost complete exhaustion and that it would melt away after the smallest exertion, leaving him again a semiconscious drone. He got quietly out of his sleeping bag and fished out the chemical heating pads. Of the three that Folsom had put in with him, only one retained any heat at all. He tucked it underneath his parka against his chest and picked up his carbine, a ration pack, and face mask and moved quietly to the tent flap.

When he poked his head out through the tent flaps, the mask, still heated from the tiny stove, warmed the air passing into his lungs to a breathable temperature. The combination of aurora borealis and moonlight illuminated the surrounding tundra with mid-evening intensity. After a moment he caught sight of Gadsen coming up from far to the east. The sailor was walking slowly, stopping every now and then to search the horizon carefully through the field glasses.

Teleman squirmed through the flaps and in a crouching run started south. After two hundred yards he flung himself flat in the snow and wriggled around to see if Gadsen had spotted him running from the tent. Gadsen had not and was now coming around the far side of the tent, almost a mile away from where he lay. Teleman decided to stay put until Gadsen had completed that part of the circle and started around again to the east. In his white parka he would be invisible at half the distance. So he lay unmoving in the snow, watching as the distant figure traveled farther around in his wide orbit. What chain of reasoning had prompted him to leave his companions and strike out on his own he did not quite understand.

He realized that he was carrying extremely vital information the American state-of-the-art in electronic countermeasures, aircraft and engine design and sensor technology. He also knew that this information locked away in his brain could easily be unlocked by the Soviets, and, therefore, he was much too valuable to let himself fall into their hands. Folsom, McPherson, Gadsen — all, or one, meant to kill him. Only that factor was ice clear in his drug-crazed mind.

What Teleman had endured in the past seventy-two hours might easily have killed a lesser man. Instead of recovering in the special-care unit of a military hospital, he was staggering around the North Cape of Norway in the midst of the century’s worst Arctic storm. His body still contained microresidues of the various psychic and-physical energizers and, without the compensating PCMS, was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. The momentary hysteria hours before, which had sent him into a shallow coma that Folsom and Gadsen had mistaken for sleep, had been the beginning. The deepening cold endured since then was affecting the action of the drug residues, changing and catalyzing their effects to an extent never before tested. As a result Teleman’s mind burned with the steady intensity of an arc lamp. As he lay in the snow his mind was busy collating drug-affected impressions, misunderstood facts, and skewed extrapolations, all of which only served to reinforce his conviction that those helping him were actually his assassins. Forgotten was the intense effort, at the risk of their own lives, that had already been expended to aid him.

As Gadsen disappeared around the far side of the tent, Teleman got shakily to his feet and began to run at little more than a half trot due south. He had no firm plan in mind for his escape. The sudden awakening minutes before had brought only the galvanizing need for escape. Somewhere deep in his mind was the idea of heading south for several miles, then turning east into a shallow arc that would bring him to the naval base from the southeast at an angle great enough to pass unseen by Folsom and the others. If they had already arrived at the base he would simply denounce them as his would-be killers and claim asylum.

Teleman trotted on for several more minutes under the wavering streamers of electrons decorating the sky. The weird light made seeing difficult and twice he tripped and fell headlong. The third time he fell he found that he could not immediately get up. Stunned more by the lack of movement in his legs than by the force of the fall, Teleman lay prone, able to move only his head. The few minutes of running had taken him well away from the vicinity of the tent. He lay now in a blank white desert where the only movement was the aurora borealis dancing solemnly overhead. After several minutes during which the cold penetrated his furs with ice-fingers, he was able to get to his knees and, using the carbine as a crutch, pull himself to his feet.

Teleman staggered forward again at a shuffle, leaning heavily on the carbine. But to his mind’s eye he was running as swiftly as an arrow. Only a few more hours, he thought happily to himself, and he would reach the naval station — well ahead of the others. Once there, he would tell them all that had happened in the past two days, tell them that both Americans and Russians had violated their territory. Maybe they would even let him go along when they went out to round up the intruders.

Now he was strong and fresh again. The territory unreeled beneath his feet as he bounded over the snow. On the horizon was the low bulk of the naval base and the slender stems of gun barrels thrusting out toward the sea. He was so close, he thought, that he could stop and rest awhile, for there was no sense in arriving so out of breath that he could not tell his story. He stopped and sank down in the snow. Only a few minutes rest and then he would finish the last half mile. The brilliantly lit base area was now clearly visible, even if it was a few feet above the ground. That would make no difference. He could jump that high. Funny, these Norwegians, that they should paint the buildings and the compound a bright green. It was a naval base… it should be blue…. Folsom came completely awake the instant Gadsen burst through the tent flaps.

“Off to the west, about a dozen men… a mile out.” Folsom was already shrugging into his parka as McPherson grabbed up his pack and twisted to wake Teleman. “Goddamn,” he bellowed.

Folsom swung around and stared at the empty sleeping bag. “For Christ’s sake, where the hell has he gone?” he roared. Gadsen popped his head outside and then back in again.

“Wherever it is, we ain’t got much time to look for him. It’s going to take these bastards about ten minutes to get here.”

Folsom stood stock-still in the center of the tent, his mind churning furiously as he tried to decide what had to be done next. “All right, leave everything here but the carbines and ammunition. Outside and keep low so they can’t see us.” The three men crawled quickly outside into the bitter air and huddled close to the ground. Folsom pulled the binoculars to his eyes and examined the approaching Russians. There were six men spread out into a skirmish line almost half a mile long, both ends beginning to curl around to flank the tent. Quickly he swept the horizon north and then south. Turning to the east, he scanned the snow carefully to the horizon, but saw no sign of any second party closing from that direction.

In the meantime McPherson had been searching the snow around the tent. He raised an arm and motioned the others to join him, then pointed at a line of tracks leading south.

“I’ll lay odds that’s our boy.”

“Okay, south is as good a direction as any now. We go get him,” Folsom ordered, his angry voice gritting through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you suppose got into him anyway?”

Neither Gadsen nor McPherson replied, and in moments, hunching low to the ground, they were running south along the line of tracks. McPherson had unslung his pack and was dragging it after him in a vain effort to wipe away the trail they were leaving. If anything, the temperature had fallen even lower in the past five hours. As the men ran they left long streamers of frozen breath hanging in the crystal air. Above them the multicolored aurora borealis glimmered and writhed across the northern sky and Folsom again felt the strange, nagging sensation that he had forgotten some vital point. But as his body began to tire after the insufficient three hours of sleep, he found himself concentrating to the exclusion of all else, on running.

They stopped after ten minutes and threw themselves prone in the snow to rest and check on the Soviets. Through the glasses Folsom could see that the Russian troops were less than a hundred yards from the tent. The northern and southern ends of the line had circled until the tent was in the center. They were lying prone in the snow while two soldiers were crawling up to the tent. Folsom rolled over on his back and waited for his ragged breathing to smooth. In the ten minutes the three had been running they had covered perhaps one mile at a half trot, half run. All three were severely winded, but at least, Folsom thought, they had put enough distance between themselves and the tent so that they could now go on without being spotted in the fitful light.

“How far do you think Teleman managed to get?” he asked McPherson.

“I doubt if he could have gone much farther. I’m surprised we haven’t found him yet. He was in pretty bad shape when we stopped. We’ll be lucky to find him alive,” McPherson finished bleakly.

Folsom swore savagely. “The old man will have my head if we don’t.” Gadsen, looking miserable, rubbed his face with gloved hands. “I don’t see how the hell he could have gotten out of that tent without me seeing him,” he muttered.

“Hell, how were you to know that he would take off? You weren’t watching him. You were watching for the Russians. If there is any fault here at all, it’s mine. We should probably have rigged up something to wake us…” Folsom shook his head. The “what-if” line of excuse-making was a waste of energy. He stood up and took a last look at the Russians through the glasses, then swept the east once more. The two scouts had almost reached the tent. He knew it could not take them much longer to find out that their quarry had flown the coop. Whether they would automatically assume that the Americans had left ahead of them or would discover their tracks was a toss-up. In either case he wanted to get as far away as possible. Nothing had shown on the eastern horizon yet, but somewhere out there another Russian party was approaching. He wished to God he could get in touch with Larkin. Suddenly he felt completely inadequate to cope with the situation.

“Come on, let’s go,” he said quietly, starting south again along the parallel set of tracks that Teleman had left.

Teleman’s tracks were becoming more and more irregular as they trudged on. Shortly they came upon the spot where their quarry had first fallen. The depression in the snow, almost invisible in the uncertain light, showed that he had fallen cleanly and gotten up again without hesitation. Not daring to pause, the three sailors pushed on. Now the pace that Folsom had set was beginning to wear heavily. Their breath was coming in gasps of exhaustion, their half run, half trot beginning to flag. When they reached the second indentation in the fresh snow surface Folsom waved them to a halt. Gasping for breath and leaning heavily on their carbines, they knelt in the snow. Finally, after a few minutes, McPherson dragged himself forward a few yards and came back with Teleman’s insulated canteen. The three looked at one another and with the same thought were up and running at once. Within the next few hundred yards they found his carbine, the lightweight pack, and finally the spot where he had fallen the third time.

Folsom looked around wildly but the horizon ahead was bare. In the past few minutes the aurora borealis had grown in intensity, but its wild gyrations made visibility even poorer. All three were gasping hoarsely for breath, barely this side of collapse themselves. But not once did they stop to consider their own bodies. The thought uppermost in their minds was: If they were this bad off, how much worse was Teleman?

With a hoarse command from Folsom, they started forward again. By now they had come three miles from the tent. The tent and the Russians were lost in the gloom on the northern horizon. For the first time since he had landed on the. North Cape, Folsom began to hope for a resurgence in the high winds that had buffeted them all through the day, or better yet, another blizzard. Given either to wipe out the last traces of their trail and they might win yet. But the cloudless sky offered the hope of neither. They were running again, running with the desperation of exhausted men who must run to save their lives and that of a comrade. Under the eerily lighted sky they raced on across the snow-covered expanse of the tundra plain in pursuit of the staggering track of the delirious pilot.

Once they stopped for a brief rest and Folsom searched the horizon with the binoculars. There was no sign of pursuit in any direction. But he knew that condition would not last. Then they were off again, to stop almost immediately. Gadsen had seen it first, a lump of rags huddled into the snow.

Complete and utter silence had descended over the vast reaches of the North Cape. Along the shore the storm-raised combers continued to pound against the rock with monotonous regularity. But inland nothing moved on the plain of snow. It was as if the cold had frozen even the air into immobility. Folsom knelt down by Teleman’s body and turned him over slowly. He pushed back the neck flap, pulled off one of his own gloves and felt for a heartbeat.

“I’ll be damned. He’s still alive,” he said wonderingly. “You’re kidding,” Gadsen said, dropping down beside him. “How the hell could he be?” Folsom shook his head and rebuttoned Teleman’s neck flap. “You’ve got me. Now, how do we get him out of here?”

McPherson shrugged out of his pack and reslung his rifle. “I’ll carry him.”