RED ICE

by R. L. Crossland

  We patrolled along two parallel ruts, which soon became a potholed macadam road. Twice the oncoming, fog-rimmed headlights of military trucks forced us to dive headlong for the cover of drainage ditches.

  By 0200, we had reached the main village. A massive seawall defined the rim of the harbor, and below the wall stretched a half dozen yards of pebble beach. We kept in the shadow of the seawall until we were even with the point where the old map indicated the police station would be. The single-story building that abutted the seawall evidently hadn’t changed purposes in forty years. It was still a police station. As Dravit and I had guessed, the Ministry of State Security building was not far away—in fact, a sign indicated it was the large old building of pre-World War II vintage on the landward side of the police station. The imposing two-story concrete building towered over the police shack. A foghorn, strange and haunting, sounded in the distance.

  I hand-signaled for Gurung, our point man, to reconnoiter the two buildings. A half hour later, he reported that the first building was a joint civil and military police station, with a policeman posted outside on the road that led to the seawall. The second building, the State Security building, was darkened except for an inner hallway. A VOKhk guard sat in the hallway and made rounds of the building at regular intervals.

  We wound our way to the street, which ran behind both buildings and moved single file down the three-foot-deep stone drainage trench that bordered it. This street divided two rows of shops—all closed—but whose owners lived in their back rooms. Farther down, a saloon resounded with the singing and carousing of Russian soldiers. The State Security building stood right behind the saloon. We vaulted a fence and ducked into the long row of shop backyards. A slow-motion steeplechase through tiny gardens, over plank fences and bamboo trellises, and around large fish baskets ensued. Finally, we arrived at the hazy void between the saloon and the ministry building and scrambled over the fence that separated the two.

  The lower windows of the ministry building were protected by steel bars. The upper windows were balustraded and covered with shutters. Gurung pointed to the built-up ridge crest at the peak of the tiled roof and then to the quoins leading like rungs up the corners of the building. I waved Chamonix forward. The straight-backed legionnaire stood an impressive six foot four. He immediately recognized what Gurung had in mind and, dropping his haversack, pulled out a rubber-coated grappling hook and a coil of yellow left-lay mountaineering line. He backed away from the building and began to swing the grappling hook like a pendulum to gauge its weight and feel. In a sudden release of energy, he hurled the hook just short of the ridge crest and watched it bounce noisily down the tiles. We waited several minutes to see if we had attracted any attention. Apparently, the nightly ruckus at the saloon had dulled the neighbors to things that went bump in the night.

  The legionnaire’s second toss caught the ridge crest solidly. He gave it three strong tugs and then kept steady tension on the line. Meanwhile, Gurung clambered from quoin to quoin until he was at a slightly higher level than the upper set of windows. Next, Chamonix angled the line over to the Gurkha. Gurung transferred his weight to the line and let Chamonix jockey the line to the balustrade of the nearest window. A resounding crack from above indicated that one of the ridge tiles had given way and the grappling hook had come loose. Gurung threw out his arms and started to fall.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Gurkha lunged for the balustrade, his boots clawing for footholds in the air. With one hand he caught a pillar as the grappling hook plunged past him. For a few moments he just oscillated by one hand. Then he mustered the reserve to thrust his free hand to the railing and kip over the balustrade. He was safe.

  Immediately, he set to work on the shutters. They were old and poorly maintained. Gradually, he managed to pry enough space between them to pop the hooks with his knife. Using a pry bar, he raised the window and peered in. Then he disappeared through the window.

  Seconds later, he was beckoning for the free end of the mountaineering line. Gurung anchored it to the balustrade while Chamonix tied off the other end to a fence post. The sloping line, now taut, could not be seen from the lower window. Dravit was the first to hoist himself up the line, then Puckins, and then myself. Chamonix, in his Russian uniform, posted himself at the base of the building and attempted to look routine and nonchalant.

  From the second story, I could just distinguish the rest of the village through the night mist. A gray carpet of chimneyless roofs stretched uniformly in all directions. The pattern was marred by thirty-five years of deterioration, a few Russian-style chimneys, and an occasional concrete shoe box.

  We closed the shutters and entered the passageway. The title and responsibilities of each official were etched with bureaucratic orderliness to the left of his office door. The Corrective Labor Colony Section held the third office on the left. Its door was locked.

  Dravit tested the transom. It was locked, too. He reached into one of his cargo pockets and unrolled a cloth tool kit on the floor.

  “It’s a key-lever tumbler; this may take some time.”

  He inserted a Z-shaped tension tool into the keyway and applied pressure. Then, with a curved pick, he began locating the individual tumblers, raising each one to the unlocked position. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  Precious minutes passed.

  “Open, yon great muckin’ door of the bloody Bolshies.” He pushed the door open cautiously. “Ah, the old magic’s still there. Remind me to tell you about my night in the strong room at Pusan.”

  Dravit went through the desks and cabinets, skimming every document by flashlight. There were reams of documents. If the camps’ prisoners could have eaten the documents they generated, they would have grown fat.

  A half hour went by. An hour. An hour and a half. “Got it! Got it! Got it! Just like the bloody Bolshies to wallow in ruddy paper,” Dravit exclaimed under his breath. He drew the Nikonos from his other pocket and clicked away.

  We nearly didn’t hear the footsteps moving down the passageway. The guard had walked past the office earlier. This time he hesitated before the relocked door. Dravit and I ducked behind some desks with Gurung. The bolt shifted in the lock. Puckins slipped behind the door just as it opened. The guard swept his light across the room. As he stepped forward to look behind the desks, Puckins dropped him with a sharp tap, using the butt of his shotgun.

  The four of us dragged the unconscious guard to the bottom of the stairway, just out of sight of the front doorway. We positioned him as if he had fallen. As we were about to turn away, Gurung pulled a flask from his jacket and sprinkled some fluid over the VOKhk guard.

  “Oh, sergeant of the guard being very much pissed if finding guard in such condition,” Gurung signed. “I know surely this guard will not report irregularities of the evening to his sergeant, him now smelling of cheap vodka. I know, having much fear of sergeant of the guard myself for many years.”

  He returned down the passageway chuckling elfishly.

  “We do have our fun,” Chamonix mumbled dourly on hearing of Gurung’s prank when we rejoined him outside.

  Chamonix’s words were premature. Our return to Hokkaido was anything but fun. By the time we returned to the seawall, the wave height had increased and the fog had grown thicker. We moved as quickly as was safe down the road to our original landing point. Once there, we noticed a vehicle parked on the dirt road and heard Russian voices. So as a precaution, we entered the water farther down the beach, then located the rock range. Lutjens and the rubber boat were right where we’d left them. The first thing I remember seeing was the yawning muzzle of his shotgun as he challenged us from the bobbing boat. He pulled us aboard and started the engine. Once I had given him the course heading, we all leaned back and relaxed. The sense of relief was as potent as hot sake on an empty stomach. The rolling swell rocked everyone but Lutjens asleep.

  “Heave to, rubber boat,” a voice called out in Russian. “You Japanese fishermen never learn, do you. Time
in one of our corrective labor colonies will cure you of that and many other things.”

  The voice laughed. It carried over the gurgling rumble of a patrol-craft engine. They couldn’t have picked us up on radar. Our courses must have intersected by pure chance.

  The dark silhouette of a patrol boat, with its officer of the deck, helmsman, and two lookouts outlined clearly, parted the fog. One of the lookouts trained a .51-caliber machine gun on our frail craft.

  We froze. What could we do now? A vision of the camp flashed through my mind. Perhaps we would be seeing Vyshinsky sooner than we had expected. What now? Had to hold this show together.

  “Lutjens, steer straight for them,” I whispered. “Dravit, you’re a captain of naval infantry, hard of hearing and mean.”

  I held my breath.

  Dravit looked at me peculiarly. “Have a go.”

  “Boat, this is Captain Dravonitch, Naval Infantry. What are you doing in this sector? This area has been cleared exclusively for us by the Kurils Naval Infantry command. We are engaged in a classified operation. What is your authority to be here?”

  I could see the officer’s face. He was puzzled. Our dry suits could have been Russian and Chamonix did have a Russian greatcoat across his lap. The boat officer’s thin lips twisted into an arrogant sneer.

  “I know of no such clearance. I am Lieutenant Deltchev, Navy. Let me see your orders.”

  “Orders! And where would I keep orders in this monkey suit? Lieutenant, who in the name of the Worker’s Paradise gave you your commission?”

  Deltchev stiffened and focused questioningly on the shotgun resting in Dravit’s lap. The lookout at the machine gun pulled his thumbs from the trigger plates and leaned back. A couple of officers bickering, he might as well stand back and enjoy the fun. A second later the lookout was slammed back over the engine box by a shotgun blast, Deltchev and the other lookout slumped to the deck, wounded, as at the same time our rubber boat nearly capsized from the recoil of our discharging shotguns. The helmsman dived into the cabin and in the subsequent silence I could hear the clanking sounds of hatches forward being buttoned up. There had to be a few more crew members aboard. The wounded second lookout lunged for the machine gun and managed to stitch several rounds into our rubber boat before a half dozen shotgun rounds made him disappear in a blood-red mist. Some of our men had been hit, I could not tell how badly.

  I vaulted into the patrol boat and put two rounds apiece into the radio antenna, the radar scanner, and the compass. Skeins of smoke swirled into the sea mist. The pungent smell of ozone from the shattered equipment was everywhere.

  Let them find port now, let alone bother us again in this fog. I spun the helm over and stepped back down into the F470.

  “Bullying fisherman isn’t as easy as it used to be,” I bellowed in Japanese for the benefit of the surviving crewmen.

  Then to our own people, “Cast off!”

  The .51-caliber rounds had destroyed our tube on the portside, punctured the floor plating, and silenced the outboard. Chunks of the motor had hit everyone, causing minor bleeding. Chamonix’s leg had been gazed by a round and Lutjens had been peppered by pieces of splintered paddle. We jettisoned the outboard and its gas tank. The rubber boat limped back into the fog with some swimming alongside, while others attempted to straddle the starboard thwart and paddle with shotguns. It was 0500.

  Fighting the heavy seaweed, we struggled to keep our heading to the rendezvous point. Everyone worked hard, but I knew we were largely at the mercy of the frigid currents of the Nemuro Straits.

  At about 1000, a cold rain washed away the fog and we found we were on the safe side of the Nemuro Straits. The fishing boat was southeast of us and we attracted their attention with a small survival mirror.

  Wickersham and Matsuma brought the fishing boat alongside. Everyone was numb from exposure and we’d abandoned swimming and paddling hours before. Puckins’s teeth chattered like castanets, and, dazed, Lutjens groaned softly.

  Wickersham reached down from the boat and hoisted men aboard like wet kittens. Matsuma reached for Gurung, who was babbling in hypothermic stupor.

  “Keep away from me, Japanese devil. I am Amarsing Gurung, whose father killed more Japanese soldiers than you have teeth in your head,” he said absently. “There being a Russian soldier last night who tasted the kiss of the kukri of Rifleman Gurung.”

  Matsuma smiled gently and dragged the soon-unconscious Gurung up over the gunwale.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Norwegian wood stove crackled and sizzled in our hotel suite. After thawing out, I had slept for twenty-four hours straight. Each one of us had experienced some of the cold-induced symptoms of hypothermia—the dopey sense of well-being, headaches, lethargy—for which rest and warmth were the best therapy. My side was tender where a bit of outboard motor housing had broken the skin. My thighs and knees ached as they always did after a patrol. Legs seemed to absorb most of the tension.

  Dravit and Chamonix sat across from me. Neither looked very happy.

  “…and I didn’t bother to ask Chamonix to develop the film until just a few hours ago. It didn’t seem necessary.”

  He tapped his pipe against the stove.

  “The film had been overexposed—all of it—not just the six photographs Captain Dravit had taken,” added Chamonix.

  “There were several beads of water within the housing of the camera. You know how watertight a Nikonos is. I opened it with dry hands. The film is useless to us now. Merde! All our efforts for nothing.”

  The sullen Chamonix was even more laconic than usual. The legionnaire carried some undisclosed bitterness. He rose, stood rigidly erect, then walked to the door and left the room with a sharp salute and a click of heels. The .51-caliber bullet that had grazed his thigh had been a tracer and instantly cauterized the wound. He didn’t permit himself the luxury of a limp. Vinegar may have flowed through his veins, but the old trooper was flawlessly competent.

  “There’s no doubt about it, is there?” Dravit stretched his legs, placing his heels on the stove. “Our tight little band has been penetrated.”

  “Can you remember any of the information from the quarterly report?”

  “I can remember it all,” he said with a smirk. “It was too hard to come by to trust exclusively to a camera.”

  He handed me a scrap of paper. It read: “Garrison of Camp R-3; 43 militarized police—15 with radio or electronics specialties; 207 prisoners; Vyshinsky still carried on the camp roster as special prisoner.”

  I placed the scrap in my pocket.

  “Put all that on the stock of my shotgun with a grease pencil when we were in the administration building. Didn’t think of it then, but on the way back the bleedin’ camera was on the boat, where anyone could get at it.”

  Penetrated—it was bad enough to have others working against us. But one of our own?

  “Skipper, it’s about time for the first cut.”

  Now that we knew the size of the garrison, we could determine the number of men we would need. “Well, it’s a trade-off: the more men we take, the better our chance of success in a firefight, but the greater our chance of detection—and the more cumbersome the logistics. Let’s make it the Kunashiri eight and take Alvarez and that South African, Kruger, as alternates. Send the rest home with the bonuses.”

  The turncoat had to be one of the Kunashiri eight, but they were my most valued men. I couldn’t afford to eliminate any one of them.

  I jammed a few more logs into the stove, but it didn’t help. I didn’t seem able to get warm.

  The new men were part of the two dozen who’d been recruited in Marseilles. These were the next most talented after Chamonix, Gurung, and Lutjens, and they showed promise.

  Juan Ortega Alvarez was a Miami Cuban who specialized in heavy weapons. His high cheekbones; broad, straight nose; and heavy beard made it possible—depending on the depth of his tan—to pass for any nationality inhabiting the zone between 15° South and 35° North latitude
. Nearly as massive as Wickersham, his bulk was less sculpted and more evenly distributed than the Wisconsinite’s.

  Alvarez found growing up in Miami’s Little Havana a painful, stifling experience. There were pressures, always pressures. His uncle and a brother-in-law had died at the Bay of Pigs. Pressure: he must be prepared to do his part when the next revolution came. He was a mediocre student. Pressure: he was a Cuban and must bring credit upon his family and nationality. He had no occupational goal. Pressure: he must enlist in the Army until he arrived at some other trade valuable to his community. The pressure from family and friends was subtle but deadly.

  Halfway through his reluctant enlistment, he realized he liked the life and volunteered for Special Forces, where his bilingual background would be an asset. Despite Army regimentation, he felt freer than he’d ever been in Florida, straitjacketed by the rigorous standards set by desperate, disillusioned émigrés. Ironically, with this sense of freedom came a new pressure, the internal pressure of a growing sense of destiny. It was not that unusual. A haunting sense of destiny was something I, too, could understand. After his second hitch, he left the Army to free-lance so that one day he would have the experience, credentials, and contacts to leave a mark on Cuban history. Castro couldn’t live forever; when the time came, Alvarez would be ready to contribute.

  And there was Kruger. It took only one word to set Johannes Kruger trembling: that word was women. He wore a badgered look, a seedy walrus mustache, and no visible muscles. He stammered, too—he had always been that way and it had never mattered—all his troubles emanated from his pursuit by women. Life had been relatively quiet for him as a “recce” corporal with the South African Reconnaissance Commandos. A bit of tracking, an occasional fire-fight with a handful of Cuban-trained Angolans, it was all downright peaceful compared to what followed. After his discharge, Kruger drifted north to Kenya and eventually took a job as a white hunter. He didn’t mind the fact that Kenya had a Kaffir government. After all, it didn’t govern much worse than those bandits in Pretoria, and anyway it wasn’t Marxist. He just didn’t mind. It was the white-hunter job that started it all—this trouble with women. Predatory, continent-hopping socialites who were in the habit of seeking ornamental, absentee husbands stalked white hunters like their male acquaintances stalked wild game. Kruger didn’t mind that, either; conversely, he played it to the hilt. He juggled three transcontinental marriages simultaneously. His expeditions into the bush provided required excuses and much-needed rest during those rare instances when all three wives were in Nairobi at once. It couldn’t last. It didn’t. One night he came home unexpectedly to find wife number two in bed with another man. In a shocking reversal of tradition, and in the heat of the moment, the lover shot the husband. “B-b-bloody fool, if he’d only waited a moment I would have said, ‘Excuse me, I seem to have the wrong flat.’” A battery of lawyers, wives, and girlfriends drove the hobbling Kruger out of Kenya and into the more celibate Brotherhood of Arms.