Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  The line was taking time to assemble. Even above the helicopters he could hear the tinny quack of radio talk.

  The men were stamping up and down on their skis. In padded white snow rig, he saw, hooded; automatic weapons slung round their necks. They were beating themselves with gloved hands in the biting cold. With his anorak merely stretched over him he was freezing up himself, the sweat instantly gone.

  But the spacing between them, he saw, was very murky. And they would be looking, after all, for a hurrying figure on skis. If he could get them to pass him … He began manoeuvring himself sideways between two of the stamping figures. And had not yet made it when the line stiffened suddenly and moved forward, and he went prone, skis underneath him, anorak drawn over his head.

  He was just a hump of ice, he prayed. And they had only now started, not yet accustomed to the task; were seven or eight metres on either side of him.

  He heard the rumble of engines, the swish of skis, and held his breath. And they were past. They’d passed. He held it a while longer before daring to get his head up and look back. Yes. Fading into fog. He buckled the skis on, got back in the anorak, and immediately set off, very fast, on the tracks left by the vehicles. And at once stopped. No! His own tracks! They’d spot them. Were certain to – maybe not right away. But soon, not a doubt of it. Would come chasing after him. Vehicles would get to him long before he could reach –

  He turned and went back. Went rapidly, in the ski tracks, and in a minute had caught up with them, saw the flickering line of torches, the wide hazy beams of the vehicles. The drivers would be peering ahead. A skier next to a vehicle, immediately next. He came behind the man, careful not to tangle skis, and hooked him at once, one arm round his neck, a glove in his mouth as it opened. The neck he could have broken immediately, but the face as it hinged back was that of a Yakut lad, maybe eighteen, the eyes innocent and astonished.

  He caught the boy’s heavy torch, and hit him with it. It struck only the padded hood and, swearing, he left the glove rammed in the mouth, and wrenched the hood back and hit him again, two solid thuds, and had him on the ice. He wrenched the gun off his neck and smashed the stock hard against the boy’s temple. The tunic top was in one piece and he yanked it off him and got it on himself. It was weighted, equipment dangling at the back. He couldn’t do anything about the trousers. He left the trousers, also his own anorak, took his glove, hung the gun around his neck and set off rapidly after the patrol. In a couple of minutes he had reached it and taken up position next to the half-track.

  All as before, the line swishing steadily forward, torches pointing ahead. He got the boy’s torch pointing that way.

  With gloves on, he couldn’t feel the parts of the little automatic weapon. He’d done a course on it at the camp. He fumbled with it, identified the safety, snicked it off, found the trigger and pulled. A rapid burst spat out – and with immediate effect. The torch nearest in the fog turned towards him and he saw the half-track driver peering sideways out of the window at the white-hooded figure now waving frantically beside him.

  He was signalling with the torch, shouting. ‘He’s there! Just turned – going like hell! Going back!’ He put another burst ahead, saw his neighbour do the same, was aware the half-track driver had increased speed, shouting into his radio, and that gunfire was now sounding off along the line.

  He let it go and turned and sped back, keeping to the tracks. Fifteen minutes at least, maybe twenty, for them to sort out the confusion, longer still for them to decide what the hell to do about it – also where the missing man had got to.

  He came on the man very rapidly, still crumpled on the ice. The slender young face was solemn in sleep, mouth open, breath gently steaming. He wrapped him in the anorak, shoved his head in the fur hat. The boy’s gloves had been half pulled off, and he pulled them on again. Frostbite, hypothermia – he couldn’t do anything about it. I’m sorry, he told the Yakut.

  The boy was still attached to his skis, now crossed on the ice – an altogether better pair. He quickly took them off him, with the ski sticks looped round the wrists, and got them on himself. There was a torch lying on the ice – his own, he saw; evidently fallen out when he had left the anorak. Now he switched it on and left it, for the Yakut to be found, and told him again he was sorry, and took off.

  It had taken no more than two minutes and now he went fast, on good skis, unworried by the ice pillars, in no doubt where the vehicle tracks were leading; and after another kilometre was aware that the helicopters had gone. He could hear them well behind. They’d been called off, were now giving support to the men hunting him.

  Soon he had stopped counting; no longer any point. His paces had greatly lengthened, a thousand of them now obviously much more than a kilometre. And going very much faster. In only minutes the island would be there in front of him. He could almost feel it, the solid mass of it, all his senses alert, all his exhaustion dropping away.

  There would be men lined up, he had no doubt. And sensing devices. It was after all the most advanced of the electronic outposts, right on the border. The equipment would mainly face the other way, but the extremities of the place would certainly be covered. It struck him that he wasn’t going to make it out on the ice: no question of simply going round it. He would be located immediately. He would have to get on it, behind the sensors, a thought that lit up in him suddenly like a bonfire.

  Which in the same moment took material form immediately over his head. Amid a great whooping of sirens a flare had gone up. It arced obliquely, descending over him, and from a dozen points others instantly arced. The fog all round him became a brilliant aquarium green, shot through suddenly by a blinding narrow-beam searchlight. He skied crazily through it, waving his torch and yelling.

  ‘Hey, hey! We’re on to him!’ He was panting hard. ‘He’s doubling back there. You got the flares ready?’

  ‘Flares? What flares?’

  Behind the beam, white-hooded figures had materialised, guns at the ready. Several military jeeps were standing by, he saw.

  ‘Christ, we yelling for them! This man moving fast – already he broke the line once! I tell you, we don’t move it here, we lose him. What’s the cockup with the radio?’

  ‘Operations! Operations!’ One of them was shouting into a handset. ‘They’re calling for flares out there. They’ve spotted him and they need – What? Wait a minute. Who’s saying this – what mob you from?’ he said.

  ‘We’re all split up. They send me back – a tracker, I’m to lead a jeep there, with plenty flares for Christ’s sake! Here – I go to Operations myself.’ He blinked around him, dazzled. ‘Where they keep the Operations here?’

  While the man shouted into the handset, others were now surrounding the tracker. ‘You one of the new recruits, then?’

  ‘Sure. Know the country, don’t know too much this army. Where they put the Operations?’

  He was already slipping out of his skis. In the many lights that had now come on he saw that all of them had skis strapped to their backs. The whole company was standing on a wide platform, cleared of snow, under the overhang of a cliff. A ramp, evidently for vehicles, led up from the platform, and at either side of it a walkway faded away into the fog.

  ‘They sent back a tracker!’ The man was still shouting into the handset. ‘Some fuck-up with the R/T, he says … Well, I can’t fix up – Okay, check it out … They’re checking it out. You can’t go up there,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Christ – they’ll lose him! Is too slow here. Is slow picking me up, even! How soon you see I’m coming, man?’

  ‘Corporal – you call me corporal,’ the man said. ‘And the sensors picked you up, animal! They’re heat sensors. What do you understand?’

  ‘This fucking island I understand – is why they pay me. This fellow get through, you’ll see. I go take a look round the point. I think maybe needs men there − not sensors! When I fire off a few shots you know I beat the sensors, eh? I’m back four, five minutes. For the car
and the flares!’

  He took off at once – took off at his tracker’s half-trot, and so confidently that they simply watched him. He took off along the left walkway, carrying his skis, and found it sloped upwards a little, and gave it half a minute, and got off it.

  He felt over the edge with a ski and found it was a fair drop now. He sat and found he was sitting on the equipment belt. The ski holster was there, and a spare magazine for the gun, and a line and pick, and a hunting knife. He eased himself off them and dropped to the ice, and got into his skis.

  He skied out seventy paces and looked back and could see nothing. The sensors had picked him up at roughly two hundred metres. That was the range he had to stay inside. They had seen him go left. Now he went right. He went fast for two hundred paces and decided he had better turn in and keep contact with the island to be sure he wouldn’t overshoot it.

  The last twenty paces he took slowly until he could just make out the presence of the massive bulk in the fog. Then he continued alongside it, keeping contact. It took barely three minutes to reach what seemed to be the end. He went in closer, and found that it was. The great hump had turned inwards. He followed its fretted shape round until it turned again and straightened out, and he knew he was on the other side.

  Now he took off again, long loping paces, a hundred, two hundred, very fast.

  If the rock went a kilometre, another two hundred paces would get him to the middle. But he knew now he wasn’t going there. The other island was opposite – just four kilometres away, with the international line only half that distance. He could go for it immediately – a mile and a quarter! One frantic dash, and he’d be over it. Safe.

  Suddenly, without further thought, he did it: left the rock behind him and headed out into the strait.

  He had made fifty paces when the sirens went off.

  His first thought was that he had set them off.

  But almost at once a tremendous whooshing and roaring in the air told him otherwise. The helicopters were back. And this side of the island. Not only helicopters – vehicles, a confused uproar of vehicles, coming from the left and from the right.

  But going where? Confused, disorientated, he stopped, trying to make out where.

  Several events, at this time, were taking place simultaneously, the details of every one of them changing by the minute.

  The general was changing them, in Tchersky.

  He sat with two telephones, talking to the island and the airbase. A few minutes before, the hour almost up, he had confirmed his order: all forces to be ready to transfer the search to the other side of the island. Were the vehicles in contact? Yes, in contact. And the helicopters? All in contact.

  Then go.

  And almost immediately, chaos, confusion, contradiction.

  The surface force reported they had sighted and were pursuing a man, who had turned back to the mainland.

  The island reported the arrival of a tracker, requesting flares for the pursuing surface force.

  The surface force reported they had requested no flares and sent no tracker. But they were missing one man.

  Hoarse now, the general rapidly took a grip on the situation. Was the tracker still on the island? Yes, he was there; with a platoon of patrol jeeps waiting on the beach platform below.

  Then hold him. Hold him at once. Report back at once.

  And at once the report back. The tracker was not now on the beach platform. Two minutes ago he had gone on an urgent mission to inspect the defences at the north point of the island.

  The general, his ears singing, absorbed this information; also, on the map, the distance to the international line. The man could be there in minutes. But not in two minutes.

  Abandon the search.

  This was the first change of plan.

  All jeeps at once to the international line. Every available man to go there. The island’s helicopters, the air force helicopters, the surface force – all to proceed there at speed. All personnel to disembark and form a chain, blocking access to the opposite island. The man to be brought down on sight – disabled, legs shot to pieces if necessary – but not killed. Imperative he be taken alive.

  Moments later, advised by the island that gunfire was not permitted within 500 metres of the line, the general amended his order.

  The force would not now form up on the line. It would form up 250 metres before the line. But firing orders still to stand.

  A minute later, on further advice, another change of orders. With all the activity ahead, the man might turn north or south. It would take him longer but still give him time to bypass a static force – the fog was expected to last another hour. Suggest jeeps be detached to cut him off before he could reach the line.

  Agreed. Wait till the half-tracks arrived – in minutes now – then detach the jeeps. Catch the man on the ice.

  But the man was no longer on the ice.

  61

  At first the sheer numbers had stunned him. Helicopter after helicopter, a great stream of jeeps, then the half-tracks, all thundering away out into the strait. Sent to chase after him, to pick him up before he could reach the line.

  But soon he knew it couldn’t be so. They’d gone too fast − just racing to block the line before he could cross. Once the men had disembarked and the little island was sealed, vehicles would be spared to hunt him – jeeps probably, zigzagging fast on the ice between the islands. He had to get off the ice.

  This side of the island was deeply fretted, eroded by tides in the narrow channel. The Eskimos had said that in summer they camped in rocky bays, that seals came up on slabs then. Perhaps there was a place to hide there. He made fast work up the coast, and came on slabs, a great line of them.

  They began in a heap at one side of a small inlet, and extended out like a breakwater, huge rocks, mainly flat, all iced. He skied along the line, peering for a cavity. He could see there must be gaps between the rocks, but snow had iced up a continuous wall. There was no way into the wall, and he couldn’t climb it with his skis. He also couldn’t tell how much farther out it went. They could be at the end hunting him at any time.

  He skied rapidly back to inspect the inlet, and saw the Eskimos had used it; the beach sloped sharply upwards and bits of their gear still littered the slope. A windlass for hauling boats, its tarpaulin blown open; a few nondescript humps now iced over; an abandoned lantern, hanging in an opening of the cliff face. He went in the opening, found a sizeable cave, and looked swiftly round it with his torch.

  There was a fireplace; heavy seal hooks in the roof; a rock bench for handling the carcases. He’d seen this before in the north. Nowhere to hide here. He turned and went out fast, almost at once taking a tumble on the slope as he hit a couple of the humps. He picked himself up, looking at the humps.

  Seabirds, frozen. There were four of them, caught by winter. And after the Eskimos had gone. The Eskimos would have taken them for bait. They’d fallen. He looked up the rock face. There would be an eyrie up there. In the torch beam a hollow showed in the pitted face, ten, twelve metres up.

  No way up there, with the cave opening in between.

  He shone the torch either side of the hollow, and saw there had been a rock fall to the right; a jagged ledge was exposed in the cliff face there. The ledge ran above the first tumbled slabs. From the slabs it looked possible to get to the ledge; and from the ledge, the eyrie.

  He went to the slabs, knowing it was a crazy risk to take. But the breakwater effectively stopped him from skiing farther anyway. He rapidly got out of the skis, holstered them on his back, and tackled the slabs.

  Icy smooth, no footholds. He reached behind him for the coiled rope in the tunic belt. The plaited nylon was hooked to its little ice pick. He slung the pick, managed at the fourth try and hauled himself up the slab.

  High; three metres. From the top he could see the outline of the eyrie. Still seven or eight metres above, and to his left. Hazy in the torch beam but with a long shadow inside.

  He looke
d up at the ledge, and flung the pick – flung it repeatedly until it caught. He tugged hard on it with his full weight: a long, long drop this time. Then he twisted the gun on its strap round to his back, and started up.

  The battered rock had footholds, slippery, unreliable, but giving purchase. He walked up the cliff face, hand over hand on the rope, and when his head came level with the ledge felt carefully with his feet for a hold and swung himself up.

  He knelt there a moment, released the pick, gathered the rope in his hand and slowly raised himself.

  The ledge was glassy with ice, very narrow; no room to turn. He faced into the cliff, and edged sideways along it, watching his feet.

  He couldn’t see the eyrie until he was at it. The cliff bulged out slightly and suddenly there was no more ledge.

  He stood quite still, his arms on the cliff, and looked sideways at the eyrie. An irregular hole, very jagged; a metre wide, about the same high. It had its own small ledge, slightly below, evidently the perch from which the birds had fallen, and above it another, like an overhanging brow.

  He kept his arms on the cliff, extended a foot sideways and lowered it to the perch. The brow above was so slight there was almost nothing to hold on to. He got a gloved hand on the icy rim, steadied himself, got the other foot quickly on the perch and threw himself in. The skis snagged behind him in the opening and he was held for a moment before he wriggled them, and himself, inside and found he was on his knees on a floor.

  He stayed there panting for a while. Then he took the gun and the skis off his back, helped himself to one of the Yakut’s cigarettes, and sat and smoked it with his eyes closed.

  This was a few minutes after eight in the morning, and he had some thinking to do.

  The Greater Diomede island, on its east-facing cliff, is dotted with bird eyries and Porter was in three of them while the fog lasted. The first, above the so-called Seal Causeway, he decided was too obvious a place to hide in, and he didn’t stay long. The second was where he hid what was in the body belt. (A half of it, for one disk was still on him when he was cornered.) The third was where he was brought down.