by Joe Poyer
were his own. Thoughtfully, he took out his flashlight and compass. Shading the lens with his gloved fingers until only the merest shaft of light shone through, he took a bearing, then faded back into the woods, moving due east, the hooded flashlight casting a wide but faint circle of light onto the snow. He was taking a desperate risk, he knew, but there was no other choice. After 350 paces, he stopped and retraced his steps carefully, searching the ground as a double check once more until he reached the clearing. There he paused, then shook his head and started due west. Three hundred and fifty paces in the snow was a quarter of a mile; three hundred on level ground. At the 267th pace to the west he spotted them; a double set of crisp indentations that indicated a man moving carefully in the deep snow. Without wasting another moment, Gillon turned and trudged back to the clearing. Skirting the edge and staying well into the trees, he stopped only long enough to check that he was moving to the northwest, in the same direction as the tracks, and, with the flashlight well shielded, moved off at a trot.
Forty minutes of fast travel put him nearly two miles north of the clearing. He was sure that the officer would not have changed his cautious mode of travel. . . at least until he had gotten well clear of the trees. The forest had thinned considerably, as he had remembered, and with the moon rising now above the mountain peaks that formed the horizon to the east, he knew he would have no trouble spotting anyone moving across the open expanse of snow, the only route that led back up and over the ridge and the one which they had crossed during the afternoon, risking the chance they would be spotted. It had obviously been a bad risk.
Gillon, winded and his face an insane rictus of pain, clutched at his side and forced himself up the shallow slope at a dead run until the tops of the trees were below him.
Then he sank down in the snow and leaned his head on his carbine to catch his breath.
After several minutes his breathing began to ease and he became aware that he was terribly exposed on the slope in the light of the full moon. He burrowed back into the snow for both concealment and warmth, pulled his white hood down over his head and waited.
For one entire hour Gillon shivered uncontrollably until he was reduced to a semiconscious state in which only the intensity of his concentration kept him awake.
Even so, it was several minutes after he caught the first flicker of movement before he realized that it meant anything.
The moon was well up, flooding the slopes with pale light. Something was moving purposefully toward the ridge where Gillon watched and waited. He had already decided that he dare not risk a rifle shot, as he had no idea how far away any larger parties of Chinese soldiers were. But if they were within hearing distance – and on a still night like this and clear of the trees, sound would carry for miles – they would be down on him quickly.
Accordingly, he waited until he was certain that the figure moving towards him was the Chinese officer, then he scrambled down the slope while the other was still in the forest, and took up a position just inside the trees and near where he figured the other must pass.
Wishing to God that he had a silenced pistol, he waited.
Ten agonizing minutes passed before he heard the crunch of snow beneath boots.
Moving quietly, Gillon slipped closer toward the sounds. He would only get one chance, he knew; one and if he missed, he would be dead, now or later. The man had shown that he had his wits about him and did not panic easily and with this in mind, Gillon approached him with the utmost caution. He was moving downslope now, a relatively steep slope. He had the advantage of terrain and surprise, plus he was somewhat rested while the other man was not and even now was stopping every few paces to catch his breath. Gillon first saw him clearly while still some twenty yards away. He appeared completely unaware that Gillon was near since he was not troubling to conceal his movements and his rifle was slung across his back. Gillon moved quietly until he was directly in his path, but concealed behind the trunk of a fair-sized spruce. The moon was shining across the man's shoulder silhouetting the tree but at the same time causing his shadow to lead him by several feet.
Gillon watched, judging his location by the progress of his shadow. Now he could hear his deep, racking sobs for breath, his breathing so terrible that it was a high-pitched whistle. The shadow came level with the tree trunk, then moved ahead to merge with the darkness. Gillon had estimated that the shadow was ten feet long . . . four or five steps ...
one ... two . . . three ... his knife was cradled in his hand, held low against his thigh . ..
four .. . he exhaled carefully, emptying his lungs ... five!
Gillon sprang from behind the tree, left hand, the empty hand, arcing up for the man's breastbone. The Chinese, caught by surprise, still was able to react fast enough to fall back a step, his right hand snapping from the elbow at the same time to deflect the blow, as Gillon had_ known it would. His own right hand snaked beneath the upraised arm and the knife slammed into the solar plexus. The Chinese stared at him a moment, closed his eyes and swayed forward without a sound against him. Utterly shaken, Gillon stepped back and let him slip down. He turned away and, after a bit, vomited hard into the snow.
The sky was shifting from black to meager gray as Gillon edged along the lip of the canyon, searching for signs that marked the spot where they had made camp well back into the woods. It had taken him three hours to drag the body deep into the forest, wipe out all indication that anyone had passed that way, and travel back along the way he had come, dragging a thick spruce branch to wipe out his trail. He reached the clearing an hour before dawn. Jones's body was still lying a little apart from the four soldiers. He dragged each of them deep into the trees and covered the bodies with snow, the only burial possible. He found the sixth soldier nearly thirty feet away from the clearing; he had not been killed immediately by the exploding grenade after all but, wounded as he was, the cold night had finished him. Gillon took his cap and rifle, then covered him with snow where he lay.
Then he had marched due south by his compass until he came to the edge of the canyon.
Figuring that he was
still east of the camp, he had gone that way for nearly two miles before he was convinced that he was mistaken. Two more miles west along the canyon rim, then another mile and he finally cut two sets of snowshoe tracks leading back into the trees.
A few minutes later, he whistled on the edge of the camp and found Dmietriev on watch, completely unaware that he and Jones had even been gone. Gillon was scheduled for the last watch and Dmietriev had been about to wake him.
Gillon handed him the cap and the rifle and described what had happened as briefly as he could, that Jones had been killed and that they were being followed by a patrol of Chinese mountain troops. Fending off Dmietriev's questions, he roused out Stowe, Rodek and Leycock and while they packed, told them as much as he thought warranted, mentioning nothing about the alternate rendezvous. At his suggestion, Leycock broke out the radio and in a few minutes, Dmietriev recorded a brief report in Russian describing Jones's death and the presence of the Chinese in the area. Leycock switched the radio on and inserted the tape cartridge. A high-pitched squeal sounded when Dmietriev pressed the transmit button and the message was sent in less than a second . . . far too fast for the Chinese to have obtained a fix; even with automatic triangulation equipment and assuming that they knew the exact frequency.
They waited the required five minutes for the Russian control station to clear the report, then signed on again. This time Dmietriev asked that an aircraft be standing by at the first landing site five miles east at sunset. Confirmation came through immediately and with it the bad news that weather was moving down out of the Arctic, pushing a high front loaded with snow into the Tien Shan. They could expect a further drop in temperature and heavy snow tomorrow night. The aircraft would be waiting for them at 1700 hours. Gillon nodded and Leycock signed off. Not giving them even a minute in which to question him, Gillon snapped out a series of orders and five minutes
later, they had broken camp and were snowshoeing through the trees to the canyon's rim.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shortly after dawn it had begun to snow, hours earlier than the prediction had led them to expect. Gillon stood beneath the branches of a tall spruce and stared up at the dark sky and worried about the pickup aircraft. They had covered the five miles from last night's camp to this spot overlooking the rendezvous site in three hours and immediately dispersed into the cover of the forest. The site had been empty on their arrival and an hour later, he had finally called Rodek in to make a wide sweep of the area for several miles around. There had been no need to caution him to watch for parties of Chinese ski troops; in the brief explanation that he had given before they broke camp, the four men had been disbelieving then angry in their first shocked reaction to the news of Jones's death. Stowe, as expected, had been the most vociferous. But none of them had objected when Gillon had begun to give orders and although Stowe had hesitated, even he had obeyed with alacrity. So far, he had been able to avoid any direct questions as to what he and Jones had been doing away from the camp.
Gillon had no doubt that his reign as group leader would last only until one of them – and undoubtedly it would be Stowe – balked. In the meantime he had to consolidate his position as much as possible if he was to retain any backing at all. The last thing he wanted was Stowe to start giving orders with his usual thoughtless rush into everything.
He felt that if he could give a believable reason why he and Jones had left the camp that he might be able to depend on Dmietriev's backing, since he had, so far, shown absolutely no inclination to push himself forward. And if Dmietriev supported him, he felt certain that Rodek would follow as well.
Leycock, however, was the unknown factor. Leycock like Stowe and Jones was a professional intelligence operative and how he would feel about Gillon, an amateur, giving him orders, Gillon could not even begin to guess. There had been a certain amount of antagonism between Leycock and Stowe so far and he was fairly certain that Leycock would not react kindly to Stowe taking on Jones's role. And like Dmietriev, he had shown no inclination to question any of Jones's decisions.
The one thing that they, •as a group, must not allow was a breakout in discipline.
Someone must make the decisions and the others must carry them out immediately and without question if they were to survive. They could not, under any circumstances, waste time arguing the merits of a decision. There was no doubt in Gillon's mind after last night that they were being pursued closely by Chinese patrols. One moment's inattention, one hour's delay and they could all be killed or captured. The one unfortunate thing was that there had not been time to take the others to the clearing and show them the bodies. The Chinese AK-47 and the cap had certainly shaken them up, but other than that, they had only his word for what had happened.
With these men, he knew that he could not force obedience; obedience only came from respect. Both would have to be earned and then would be given only as long as merited.
Each and every one of them had certainly studied in detail the numerous theories of leadership and could probably quote to him at length from any one of a hundred authorities. These were four men who would not be taken in by any sham on his part, he realized uncomfortably.
Rodek came in at 1700 hours to report no sign of anyone in the area. He was dead tired and Gillon ordered him down for as much rest as he could get. He called in the others after that, having already decided long since that they had no other choice than to head for the alternate rendezvous site. From what Jones had told him, he knew they would have to be there by noon tomorrow or Liu and his people would have disappeared. Liu was playing this whole thing extremely close and Gillon was fully aware that he had to follow Jones's plan exactly.
For a short time this morning, he had considered chucking the whole thing, but there was nowhere else
to go. It was fifty miles from where they were now, to the border, over some of the most rugged mountains in the world, and with only a two-day supply of food remaining they would never make it. Having come to that conclusion, he was angry with himself that he had not thought to search the dead soldiers for more food to add to their fast-dwindling supply.
Two days. Two days and they would have to be out of the Tien Shan, and with this snowstorm coming up he was not sure that they could do it. They were facing a march of fifteen miles yet tonight . . . fifteen miles in a heavy snow over completely unknown territory and in the dark as well. There was no hope for it and he trudged back to where the others waited.
Ten minutes later, a radio message had been sent to Ala Kul canceling the pickup and they moved out to begin the long trek to the alternate rendezvous point.
Gillon kept them all moving until nearly midnight. The snow had thickened to the point where even if it had been full daylight, they would have been little better off. The only thing in their favor was the fact that they were above ten thousand feet and the trees were sparse enough not to constitute a major hazard. All five men moved forward on snowshoes bent under the weight of the packs and their own exhaustion. One foot was thrust forward after another until finally legs rebelled and buckled, refusing to go further.
Leycock was the first to give out. He sank down into the snow and hollered for the rest of them to stop. Gillon judged that they had come nearly eight miles if his navigation by compass and map was correct. He shuffled back to where Stowe was waiting and double-checked his calculations against those Stowe had been making independently. Both sets differed by less than a mile and Stowe studied Gillon for a moment with what could almost have been respect.
`Surprised?' Gillon could not resist asking.
Stowe grunted and turned away. 'Let's go see what the hell's the matter with Leycock.'
Grinning, Gillon nodded and followed him back to
where Leycock was sprawled in the snow, leaning against his pack and massaging his legs.
'Damned muscle cramp, I guess . . . sorry, but I can't go any farther tonight.'
Gillon flashed his light around, but the steadily falling snow muffled everything beyond a few paces.
'All right. We might as well stop here as anywhere else. We've covered ten miles. We can do the rest easily -enough by noon ...'
He broke off as Leycock began to cough hoarsely and knelt down to shine his flashlight into his face. Except for the drawn, gray skin and bloodless lips suggesting exhaustion, Leycock seemed to be all right. His own legs were quaking to such an extent that he doubted that he could go any further himself.
The others agreed in relief and went quickly about rigging their tents.
Gillon helped Leycock and then made sure that he crawled inside his sleeping bag before he left him to set up his own. Then, before he could abandon himself to the sleep he desperately needed, he forced himself to make the rounds of the other four tents to make sure that each man had properly rigged his tent and was inside his sleeping bag, where he would not freeze to death. Guards, he considered, were an unnecessary precaution this night. There was absolutely no chance that anyone could have followed them in this heavy snow. Satisfied that he had done all he could, he crawled into his own tent.
The persistent buzzing of his watch woke him to a dawn equally as dark as the night and full of slanting, wind-whipped snow. The winds had gathered on the mountains during the night and were now raging down on the forest like an evil presence. Gillon went around to each tent, coaxing its occupant from an exhausted sleep, until they were all awake.
They ate a meager hot breakfast and shortly after 0600, were on the way again, the sky and the forest around them beginning to take on form and substance as the sky lightened.
All morning they pushed on and Gillon was troubled by a vague urging that something was wrong. It certainly, he thought bitterly, could not be said that their luck had changed unless it was to worsen. He wondered if their chances of leaving the Tien Shan were not approaching zero; if the Red Chinese did not get them, the weather would.
Then one of those atmospheric surprises common to the Tien Shan, common in fact to all temperate mountain areas where frictional heating often occurs as the winds surge through the high passes, happened. The wind, which had been steadily rising since dawn, threatening to turn into a major blizzard, dropped away to nothing. One minute it was whipping snow off the surface, the next, it had become only the faintest whisper of a vagrant breeze that now and then eddied the snow without disturbing its almost vertical fall. Within an hour, even the snow had diminished to flurries.
Ever since they had begun the trek to the alternate rendezvous, they had been climbing steadily; now the tall dense stands of timber had been left behind and Gillon realized that under the snow cover lay alpine meadow. The cloud cover remained thick and gray, cutting off the mountain peaks, and the long, upward slopes sweeping ahead of them had taken on the same funereal color, so that it was impossible to tell where snow ended and cloud began.
They struggled up the last ridge shortly before noon to see the terrain falling away to what appeared to be the mouth of a canyon still two miles distant and nearly a thousand feet below. It had begun to snow again, a mild snowfall that floated down gently.
Clusters of stunted, wind-twisted trees marred the otherwise virgin snowscape on the slope. To the east, a line of dense black scrub pine furred the lower, far side of the valley and grew in strength until they overlapped the ridge. According to the map, that ridge then gave onto a series of valleys stepping successively down to six thousand feet to divide the slopes of the Tien Shan from the western foothills of the Khalik Tau range that stretched away east to Mongolia, separating the Dzungarian Plain from the Taklamakan Desert.