RED ICE

by R. L. Crossland

  The hum changed pitch as two fox-bat jets broke through the fog bank forty feet above us. One had to veer radically to avoid the conning tower of the sub. I could make out people on its deck moving agitatedly. Its deck gun began to pivot.

  She’s not going to dive—she’s going to slug it out on the surface with jets! It was a brave but foolhardy stance.

  Matsuma and I were paddling as fast as we could—the bayonet wound in my left arm made it nearly useless. Chamonix’s kayak had almost reached the sub.

  I could imagine the radio exchanges between the pilots. They had a Chinese submarine in their sights. Our deception was complete, if that mattered anymore.

  The jets cracked overhead on a reverse bearing. The sub’s gun popped away ineffectually. They bracketed the sub with bombs. No use wasting rockets on a surfaced, dead-in-the-water, putative Chinese sub. Geysers of water spouted all around us.

  I could make out Dravit with his leg still in a cast on deck. Incredibly, Keiko was standing right next to him and they were tearing a pipe out of a crate. Except it wasn’t a pipe, it was a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Two Korean crewman handled another pipe.

  The jets made another pass. A rocket split off from the vapor trail of one jet. The other released a stick of bombs. The single rocket thrust up a geyser just beyond the sub. The fog had somehow upset its tracking system. The bombs detonated near the bow of the sub and tore away a portion of decking. They knocked everyone on the sub’s deck flat. Dravit, just aft of the conning tower, righted himself. He kneeled with his missile and a Korean sailor sighted the other. I couldn’t see Keiko. Where was she? Why wasn’t she standing?

  The jets started another pass, again coming from behind the sub. The Englishman and the Korean pivoted—and fired. Matsuma and I were twenty yards from the sub, all the rest were scrambling aboard. One side of the lead jet burst into flame and its engine began stopping and starting like a hiccuping Waring blender. The other jet made a hard turn and evaded the second missile. The lead jet still hung in the air, headed toward the sub—and in the last seconds I realized it was going to hit us.

  A great wall of ice water capsized the kayak. Inverted, I tore away the spray skirt and felt my body numb. Survival in ice water was a function of energy, and I was totally spent. I looked around for Matsuma. He was gone…smashed by the dying plane. I tried to swim but my numbed arms barely moved. I could see the sub clearly, as clearly as I had ever seen anything in my life—even make out faces of people as they vaulted down the hatches, preparing to dive the sub. I was sinking, waves washed over my head. In the corner of my eye I saw a splash. Where was Keiko?

  So this was what it was like to die.

  It was a peculiar dream. Keiko was swimming with me, crying. She kept tugging at my hair. I tried to make her stop but she wouldn’t; Dravit was on a dark black riverbank with the muzzle of a grease gun pointed into a hole with a hinged lid like a garbage can. He kept looking over at us anxiously and talking into the hole. It took forever for us to get to the riverbank, but when we did men came out of the hole and dragged us into it. I didn’t want to go.

  Dravit had played dirty. It had occurred to me when we had loaded the sub that we had an inordinate amount of ordnance. Dravit had arranged to load several extra crates of C-4 and the Stinger missiles in Chinhae. He had concealed charges throughout the sub as a precaution. When the sub’s skipper had been reluctant to wait extra hours for us, Dravit had played his wild card. Only he knew how to disarm the already-armed charges—which he promised to do once the sub had recovered the raiding party. An insane, and altogether genuine gleam in Dravit’s eye was all it took to convince the sub’s captain that Dravit would willingly blow up himself, the sub, and its crew. The sub’s captain had decided then, Dravit later related, that “the proper thing to do” was wait for us.

  The sub and its skipper redeemed themselves on the way back. With the entire Soviet navy looking for us, they eluded Russian antisubmarine-warfare forces, using shallow water, coastal ice, thermoclines, and other tricks I did not quite understand.

  CHAPTER 27

  After we negotiated the La Pérouse Straits, it was just a matter of tying up loose ends. I was told Vyshinsky, in improving health, demanded to shake the hand of every sailor on the boat as we left the straits.

  Matsuma was dead. The Sea of Okhotsk had finally made its claim, and I did not look forward to returning to that Ainu fishing village with news of a dead patriarch. I knew how they would take it, though—with the same samurai-like stoicism Matsuma had shown.

  As for Puckins, I intended to have Kurganov set up a generous trust fund for his family.

  Gurung’s thigh, it appeared, would take about six months to fully recover. The hollow scar would never fully disappear, a prospect he relished. Chamonix’s shoulder would heal in three months but remain stiff for life. My arm would take the same amount of time to heal. Wickersham, untouched, thought better of his horse trade for the Evenki amulet.

  I turned over the crypto assembly and code books to the sub’s classified-materials officer. The procedure for securing them was so complicated I knew he wished they’d deep-sixed with one of the kayaks. Well, that was done and Mr. Kim hadn’t even had to sell his mother.

  Keiko, who hummed Japanese songs to herself when she thought I wasn’t looking, gave me such a scolding I knew all was well again. She was a woman to come home to.

  We transferred to picket boats outside Chinhae. Vyshinsky had recovered enough strength while on the sub to walk by himself. Only Gurung would have to be carried off by stretcher.

  Kurganov stood at the end of the pier in a heavy coat with a fur collar. Several men surrounded him, including reporters with cameras. Sato stood inconspicuously off to one side.

  “Who invited him?” Wickersham growled, pointing down the pier. Far behind Kurganov stood Ackert in a knee-length fur coat. He had several men with him, including a U.S. Navy captain in a reefer jacket.

  Vyshinsky, still very weak, moved to the rail and braced himself against a stanchion. Kurganov’s face metamorphosed into a melancholy smile. Throughout his life, smiling had been a pleasant but infrequently enjoyed exercise. He called out something to Vyshinsky that I didn’t catch. Almost before the lines were over, Vyshinsky and Kurganov were embracing in moist-eyed joy.

  We dodged the reporters as professional hazards. They would have a good enough story, venturing how Vyshinsky escaped from Mother Russia. After the four of us had jostled our way through the clicking cameras, we…I began the long walk down the pier. Ackert took a few steps to meet me, with his hand outstretched.

  “Fine job, simply fine job. Thought I should try an’ stop you, you were going against current policy, ol’ buddy. If my superiors had ever… Well, no harm done and the Koreans have agreed to share the crypto gizmo with my Company buddies. Why, they’re real pleased. Hell, no hard feelings, Fraze.”

  The punch started somewhere down near my knees. It caught him in the side of the jaw and jarred him, but that was all. He took a couple little half-steps and swiveled his head as if to shake the punch off. His face flushed. For once he lost his honey-tongued composure.

  “You take this sleazy band of no-count trash on a little ski trip and now you’re a bunch of heroes. So what? For me, it all counts the same toward twenty. In your case it don’t count toward nothin’. Well, boy, stand by, cause ol’ Ackert’s gonna mess you up so bad, your Nip honey ain’t gonna want what’s left.”

  He swung flat-footed into the bandaged part of my left arm. My knees sagged and nearly buckled. The pain made my eyes water. His football instincts made him dive for my legs but I sidestepped and brought my knee up into his face. When he came up I slammed him hard below his left ear and he stumbled by.

  He straightened up with a surprised look on his face; one eye was puffy and the side of his face was discolored.

  Some of the men with him tried to intercede but Chamonix and Wickersham checked two of them off the pier. Dravit swept the legs o
ut from under a third with his crutch. The Navy captain stood by impassively.

  Ackert came again, this time wailing in with a flurry of punches—then dived for my legs before I could dodge. I hit the concrete with a wrenching thud. I could tell he meant to get me down, hold me down, and rain the punches from on high. But as soon as I hit the pier I rolled into him so he could not make full use of his massive arms. I could not afford to fight him rolling on the deck—he had too many pounds on me.

  My tanto dagger had clattered to the concrete during my fall. Ackert grabbed for it, but Wickersham kicked it skidding down the pier.

  I faked an attempt at a choke, then scrambled to my feet. He followed me up. Without missing a beat, he aimed a volley of punches at my head. It felt as if my head was going to be snapped clean off and I could feel one eye closing. I tasted blood in my mouth.

  Ducking under one of his punches, I crouched into ippon seoi nage, a judo single shoulder throw. My execution wasn’t clean and for a second Ackert hovered head to earth before he came down, with his full weight, against a bollard. He brought himself up on all fours, holding his right shoulder lower than his left. His collarbone was broken.

  He climbed to his feet and then registered a punch that seemed to snap my head clean back to my shoulder blades. He followed with a kick at my kneecap. I had barely time to raise my leg. He hit my shin instead. His kick stung unbearably and my leg wouldn’t bear weight. He tried again. I counters wept with my left leg. Caught off balance, he hit the pier with the back of his head.

  He put up his hand to signal enough. I would have none of it. All I could see was Chief Puckins bleeding his guts into the snow with a guilty look on his face. I raised Ackert to his feet by his collar. He put my bandaged arm in his bear-trap grip and brought his knee up into my groin before I could turn my hip. I slumped but adrenaline was pumping into my system out of fifty-five-gallon drums and the pain was filed for future appreciation. A hard right cross had effect this time, and Ackert’s knees buckled. He sank to his knees. Arm weary, I managed to drum a boxer’s speed-bag tattoo into his wobbling head. Right, right, left, left. It must have taken two dozen punches before he toppled face first into the pier.

  I stumbled a bit, at last feeling the full impact of the knee to the groin. My left arm was bleeding again and I couldn’t see out of my right eye. My shin was swollen but unbroken.

  The captain remained where he had been. Then he did something strange. He winked. He winked as if in slow motion—a restful wink, a peaceful wink.

  But—simply—in Charon’s traces there was no rest or peace.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published by Charter/Diamond Book.

  Copyright © 1990 by R. L. Crossland

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3069-4

  Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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  New York, NY 10038

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