by Joe Poyer
Almost at the same time, the radio operator was back on the speaker. "We have it all taped, sir."
"Good, get it off immediately with a top priority rating. I want an answer in five minutes, sooner if possible."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Larkin got up and walked over to the plotting table, swaying with the motion of the ship.
He stared down at the map, then picked up the pair of dividers from their holder and began to measure off the distances between Folsom and the Russians. He walked the dividers carefully over the distance and found that he did not like the story they had to tell. Less than twenty-two miles separated the two groups—twenty-two miles that the Russians would not waste any time at all in covering. The only thing in Folsom's favor so far was the fact that the Russians did not know exactly where the ship was. But, even so, in spite of the storm and difficult terrain, the Russians would find them within twenty-four hours. He did not know exactly how many troops had been landed, but he was ready to lay odds that they would split up, one party marching along the top of the cliffs where they could search the coastline below while the other moved inland a mile or so. The beach party could not fail to spot the wrecked lifeboat. Once they had that, it would be only a matter of time until they found the camp.
Larkin turned back to his console and dialed the weather channel, although he already knew what it would say. But then one could always hope. So -it was no surprise when he found that both. the Greenland and Iceland weather stations were still predicting: another thirty-six to forty-eight hours of heavy seas and high winds along the Norwegian coast.
They expected the winds to begin dropping in about twenty-four hours, but at sea they would remain strong enough to preclude launching the helicopter.
"Damn, damn," he muttered to himself. Folsom was really in for it now. He returned to the plotting table and bent over the map and with the dividers measured out the distance to the Norwegian Coast Guard Station and then to the NATO base. The distance to the coast guard station was shorter by eight miles, but the route would take them directly into the arms of the Soviets. The only refuge, then, was the Norwegian-manned NATO
base, twenty-six miles from where Folsom had pitched the camp—that or the interior of the Cape area, and Larkin doubted whether the pilot would survive for long there.
"Radio room to bridge, we have the translation."
"Go ahead," Larkin ordered.
"'Shore party calling ST-101, shore party calling ST-101.' This was repeated six times, sir. Then, 'We have landed without injuries. Lifeboat is badly damaged. Will begin search immediately. Radio contact will be re-established hourly on this frequency.' End of message. There was no reply from the ship, sir. They used a standard band, short-range radio at 120 kc."
"Very good. Establish a continuous monitoring watch as of now. Feed everything you pick up to Virginia, top priority, after running it through the computers for translation. I want Virginia's literal translation as a check."
"Aye, sir."
Larkin turned to Bridges, still seated at Folsom's console. "Well, Mr. Bridges, we are off.
Gontact Mr. Folsom and tell him what has happened. Tell him I will call him again at"—he looked at his watch—"0600 with instructions . . . ah, amend that to suggestions. In the meantime, they are to get all the sleep they can. Also, they are not to call us except in an emergency. No sense in letting their position be pinpointed."
"Aye, sir." Bridges turned to the radio operator as Larkin went below for some badly needed rest.
Teleman came slowly awake to the sound of a hushed voice. For several minutes, still drugged with exhaustion, he lay in the sleeping bag, scarcely aware that he was awake.
A darkness, half dispersed by a light source that he could not see, drew a curving line directly above his eyes. For a minute he thought he was back in the aircraft, looking down on the earth from two hundred thousand feet, seeing the bisecting dawn line. The lighted portion of whatever it was above/below him, he could not tell which, was a darkish blue color, the same as the earth from altitude at dawn. The other half was dead black and the bisecting line itself was fuzzy, shading through a spectrum of bluish gray from light to dark.
The voice puzzled him, but as yet he was not able to turn his head, for some perverse reason. Gradually he became aware that he was stripped to the skin and covered with some kind of heavy, heated material. Then he remembered the intense cold, the cold and the wind.
He mustered the will to turn his head. For a moment the scene refused to focus and vertigo gripped him, spinning him end over end. Gradually the picture before him steadied and he slowly began to make out details. The first was the fabric line of a sleeping bag. Beyond, the hunched backs of two other men bending over something hidden by their bodies. Various pieces of gear were stacked around the walls of the tent. The lantern casting the dim light was suspended from the center of the tent, a heavy flashlight, giving off a steady light.
Both men were unaware that he was watching and wondering who they were and where he was. Then in a rush the memories came back as that part of his brain cleared with an almost physical jolt. He remembered the aircraft, the long flight across Asia, the desperate running from the Russian interceptors, the ejection over the North Cape. The last thing he remembered was a. hissing flare landing nearby.
As the fuzziness evaporated, Teleman began to realize that he had been picked up by somebody. But Russians, Americans, or Norwegians? He turned his head again to see the man whose back was nearest him nod two or three times, then reach out to part the tent flaps. Immediately a gust of wind danced in, bringing whirling snow with it.
"As far as we know right now, they sent only one boatload, maybe twenty men in the landing party." The voice that came over the radio was almost lost in the sound of the wind battering the tent.
"Any idea how long it will take them to get here?"
Teleman felt a flood of relief pour through him. At least they spoke English. They must have come from the rendezvous ship, he thought.
The tiny radio voice came again. "The MTI radar shows the coastal cliffs in that area as quite low and sloping back into what the map indicates as a level plain. I don't see them waiting until the 'storm lets up. They are east of you by twenty-two miles."
"Well, assuming that the terrain isn't much different from what we've seen here, rd say it would take them nearly twenty-four hours to get this far. I'd also guess that they don't know exactly where the pilot went down, or else they might have tried a landing farther up the coast."
"That may be. But of course if they had wanted to avoid detection as much as possible they would. have landed in Par-sangerfjord. It's the only sheltered spot along the entire coast all the way to the naval base."
'Well, unless the weather changes drastically, I'll go along with your estimate of twenty-four hours. They have an awful lot of searching along the way to do in the meantime."
"Yeah. I just hope we are reading the situation right and that they somehow did not track our boy by radar or somesuch. I'd look mighty foolish if they came marching in several hours from now, not even winded."
He glanced around and saw Teleman staring at him. Folsom's eyes widened in surprise and he waved a hand in greeting. Teleman •continued to stare at him, too tired and fuzzy to do more. Folsom finished the report quickly and signed off. Then he crawled back to the sleeping bag in which Teleman lay.
"How do you feel?" he asked as he reached into the sleeping bag for Teleman's arm to take his pulse. In contrast to the rapid, fluttery 166 beats per minute that he had exhibited several hours ago, his pulse had now slowed to 93, above normal, but probably due to the drug residues remaining in his system.
"Beat," Teleman said weakly.
"Other than that?"
"Nothing. I think I could . . . sleep for a week."
:Folsom grinned at him. "Yeah, I bet you could." He looked around at the sailor still folding up the radio and called him over.
"I want you to meet one
of your helpmates. This character has an itchy trigger finger, or at least thinks he does," Folsom amended, grinning. "He's our chief gunnery officer—an empty title as we have no guns except for a one-inch popper for salutes. We stole him from the SEALS just for jobs like this. His name, and this you won't believe, is Beauregard Hubert McPherson, which probably accounts for the majority of his, fierceness," Folsom added.
McPherson grinned sheepishly and said, "Hello," his big, warm hand all but engulfing Teleman's.
Teleman looked up into the large, round face hanging over him like a second moon and smiled feebly, but did not find the strength to reply. Folsom saw that he was still exhausted and he and McPherson backed off.
"Okay, get some more sleep. We'll make the rest of the introductions later."
-
Teleman nodded once and then was sound asleep. The two sailors looked down at the sleeping form and both shook their heads at the same time. "I'll bet that guy has really been though hell," McPherson murmured.
Folsom was silent a moment, then: "Yeah, and I bet he'll go through more before we are out of this."
CHAPTER 16
Beauregard Hubert McPherson, Chief Petty Officer, United States Navy, and former member of the SEALS, the naval version of the U. S. Army Special Forces, shifted the AR-18 carbine to his left hand, and with his right eased himself down into the slippery defile leading to the beach. Half sliding, half climbing, he went down through the thick snow from rock to rock until he reached the beach. Once there, he did not hesitate, but turned east and began loping down the beach in an easy, ground-covering jog. The snow, whipped by the wind into swirling curtains, was heavier along the water's edge than it had been above the cliffs, which was just what he wanted. Not only would the thick snow shield him from anyone approaching, but it would also serve to cover his tracks completely, something he could not depend on the drifting snow to do above the cliffs.
He pushed on steadily for two hours, often having to climb over rock piles washed into weird positions by eons of waves and Arctic storms. Once he had to reclimb the cliffs when the beach, often little more than a narrow thread, ran out. As he trotted he kept a sharp lookout toward the sea, even though the snow was so heavy that visibility was zero after fifty feet at best. But McPherson was a careful man. He had fought with the SEALS
in Vietnam five years before, raiding into the delta in small parties to perform kidnapings and assassinations of leading Viet Cong terrorists. They brought the same type of terror to the Viet Cong that the V.C. had used so successfully against the South Vietnamese. After Vietnam had come assignments in Thailand and Cambodia, and, finally, the famous raid into China to rescue the crew of a United States Intelligence ship captured on the high seas.
McPherson, in short, was an expert on survival under the worst possible conditions and had proven it time and time again. A SEAL had been assigned to the U.S.S. Robert F.
Kennedy at the request of the Secretary of the Navy, who had been far-sighted enough to realize that a SEAL's talents might be needed at some future date. The pilots of the A-17
recon aircraft were the most valuable commodity in the world. Standing orders to the RFK, the Remote. Mission Control Point as she was known by the twenty or so men privy to her actual missions, were to get back the pilot of a downed aircraft at all costs, although McPherson was not one of those few who knew the exact nature of the missions that Teleman performed.
But even so, he continued down the beach at an easy run, heading for a point of land some eight miles west of Varangerfjord, which he and Folsom had estimated the Russians would reach by 1100. It was 1030 now, and he still had approximately two miles to go.
The wind was blowing in fiercely from the sea, driving the snow in ragged gusts, when McPherson found the point. High up on the cliffs and folded in among a series of chimneys and crags, McPherson found a cleft that was hidden from sight above and below, yet would afford him a clear view up and down the beach or at least it would have if the snow had not been so heavy. As it was, his effective seeing distance was almost nil at times.
But it was all McPherson needed. Directly below, the beach described a narrow, inward-turning arc. A small barrier of rocks, piled up by countless generations of waves, drew a dam from the base of the cliffs to the water. To negotiate the dam, a man would either have to climb up and over, which would leave him fully exposed for several minutes while he did so, or else work part way up the cliffs over a series of icy ledges. His hiding place afforded a view along the rim. The rock peaked at this point so that McPherson had a clear field of fire downhill, enabling him to control the terrain within rifleshot inland.
As he sat in his well-shielded cubbyhole, he reviewed Folsom's orders. The object of this little jaunt was to delay the advancing Russians as much as possible. By attacking them here, nearly eleven miles from the camp, then retreating as fast as possible, Folsom hoped to fool the Russians into thinking that they faced a sizable party. If it worked, the Russians already on the beach would call for reinforcements and, if everything went as it should, wait until they were landed.
Even if the Russians did not wait for the reinforcements, McPherson could make the eleven miles directly back to the camp in under half the time it would take the Russians, as they would be traveling more slowly, fearful of ambush. Teleman needed all the time for sleep that they could gain for him. For the run :or the Norwegian base he was going to require every bit of strength he had. So, in fact, were they all After nearly an hour of waiting, a flicker of movement on the beach caught McPherson's eye. The wind, blowing laconically for the past few minutes, decided at that moment to freshen; and as the snow parted, he caught sight of three men dressed in Arctic gear, advancing toward his position, still several hundred yards away as yet. Carefully, McPherson edged first his parka hood, then his forehead over the edge of the cliff until his eyes were level with the ground. At first he saw nothing, but when he did he rather wished he had not. There was indeed a second party hiking along the top of the cliffs.
There were five men, spread out in a line reaching from the edge, three hundred yards inland. The wide separation between each man was going to make it hard to keep track of them all once they dropped into the snow for cover.
McPherson shifted his attention to the three men approaching along the beach. His eyes narrowed as he studied the situation. The wind was blowing hard enough so that it should effectively cover the sound of his firing from the men along the top of the cliffs.
By not revealing his position to the party advancing along the cliff tops, he might be able to damage the beach group and then get away before they could alert the others to flank him from the top. McPherson laid the carbine on the rock and sighted in on a featureless bundle of parka and boots trailing the main group on the beach by several yards. With luck he could knock him out and shift to the leadman before they realized they were being shot at. McPherson drew a deep breath and steadied the sights, then another movement caught his eye. One man was walking along the top with what appeared to be a portable radio. He was close enough to hear the report and perhaps see the muzzle flash if
McPherson fired. But he was also near enough to the edge so that he could be fired upon without the rest of the topside party noticing right away.
McPherson lifted his carbine and laid it on the shoulder of rock in front of him. He snapped the safety off and squinted down the barrel through the sights until the Russian was centered exactly. Slowly he opened both eyes and, as the man came into range, waited until he had approached to one hundred yards and slowly squeezed the trigger.
The snap of the .222 cartridge was lost in the wind and snow. McPherson glanced hurriedly around to see if the others in the party on the cliffs had noticed. Apparently they had not. The soldier, shot squarely through the chest, had dropped, then slid down into a crevice. But his rifle had fallen out of his hands and slithered down onto the beach, fifty feet in front of the advancing troops. One of them scurried ahead and bent to pick it up. H
is shout of surprise carried clearly to McPherson and, with a sigh, he shifted the rifle to cover the men on the beach as they dropped flat and wormed quickly under cover.
McPherson watched while the officer in charge ran up and examined the rifle. He stepped back quickly to examine the top of the cliff, then reached for his radio.
McPherson dropped him with one shot, then followed up with a raking blast that drove the others deeper into cover.
He poked his head up for a quick look at the cliff party still approaching and unaware. A rifle shot splattered the rock above his head, and then a ragged fusillade splashed snow and ice around him. He returned the fire briefly, more to make them pull their heads in than to do any damage. At this range and in the heavy snowfall there was little likelihood of them hitting him, and his only chance lay in carefully selecting his targets, one by one.
He did so and was rewarded by a thin cry and the sight of a body toppling out of the line of rocks. The volume of fire at his position increased. The Russians were quickly, but very gingerly, working their way closer to the shelter of the dam. Once they reached that point, he knew, it would be time to leave.
He opened up again with short bursts at the fleeting glimpses of uniforms below. The wind had increased sharply and, instead of working for him, was now beginning to work against him. Suddenly a flare burst almost directly over his position. McPherson forgot about the beach party and flung himself up to sight on the
members of the cliff-top party, momentarily transfixed by the flare. Before they could move he pulled the trigger and swung the muzzle, traversing the line of tiny figures. At the first report they dropped into the snow, but McPherson kept up the fire steadily for several seconds. Then he sprang out of the cleft and charged inland at a diagonal, leading away from the cliffs into the trees. He had a good lead and in his white snowsuit made an impossible target to follow. Quick rounds of desultory fire followed, but none hit close enough to be seen. In less than a minute he reached the trees, slowed to a trot, and continued for half a mile until he reached an open glade.