by Joe Poyer
The next mile was an easy slope downhill leading to what Folsom had optimistically termed the pass through the rock wall that now stretched above them. Close-up the wall did not appear as formidable as it had through the glasses, but still the pass offered an easier and less strenuous climb.
The faint touches of wind that had begun to spring up again on the plain were stronger among the rock formations. The weirdness of the tiny valley was accentuated by the aurora borealis, which, at the same time, made seeing so difficult that Folsom had been forced to an easier pace than he would otherwise have chosen. Even so, they had covered the mile to the pass quickly enough. The pass was a natural path leading up, twisting through the rock until it disappeared around a curve several hundred feet away. For a moment Folsom hesitated to start forward. The narrow way was an ideal ambush site.
Ridiculous, he thought, there was no way in the world that the Russians could have selected this particular place to lie in wait. . . . Folsom snorted and started the climb.
CHAPTER 20
Folsom had been partially right The pass, such as it was, had been clear through the rock barrier barring their way to the narrow ledges that marked the beginning of the steep slopes leading down to the fjord. The Russians spotted them as they were midway in their descent.
The four had reached the top of the pass and rested for a few minutes before going on.
On the narrow ledges between the top of the 'pass and the edge of the cliffs they were buffeted again
by the stiffening winds blowing in from the sea. After a brief exam-nation of the cliffs Folsom was surprised with the apparent ease
with which they could make the descent Although steep, the cliff face—sheltered from the generations of wind in the deep fjord, which had worn the seaward-facing rock smooth—was broken and channeled enough to present an almost ladder-like descent of its 16o feet They began the climb down to the beach with some faint degree of optimism.
It was Gadsen who first heard the faint rifle report and saw the spurt of rock indicating where the bullet had struck. His warning shout thrust them under an overhang into the cover of the wall itself, from which they tried to spot the Soviets on the cliff top. The overhang was invisible from above and prevented a clear shot from the top of the cliffs.
It had been pure luck that someone, overeager perhaps, had fired too soon. In any event, the four Americans were safe for the moment
But only for a moment There were several alternate ways leading down from the cliff edge and the Soviets could flank them
easily and within minutes. While the overhang furnished cover from above, there was nothing to use as shelter against fire coming from either side. The four men knew that they had to move and move fast.
"Down that way, throt.gh the cleft," Folsom shouted over the wind gusting through the rock crannies. "One at a time. Mac, lead off. When you reach the cleft, give us covering fire."
McPherson nodded, crawled to the edge of the overhang, and peered carefully upward.
Nothing moved on the cliff tops, above or on either side. He looked down and spent a few seconds examining the route he would follow. Then, satisfied, he came to his feet and plunged downward to a narrow shelf, ran lightly along it for several feet, and vaulted over a boulder into the shelter of a slot in the rock wall. A single shot snapped after him, but no spurt of rock indicated where the bullet had struck. McPherson waved a hand over the top of the boulder to show that he was all right A moment later Teleman saw the muzzle of his carbine appear and he nudged Gadsen.
"Let's get set," he muttered.
`You first, Major," Folsom said tightly, "and don't stop. Just go!' Teleman nodded.
McPherson popped up and fired a fast burst, then ducked back down again to scramble to the far end of the slab-shaped rock. A fusilade of rifle fire danced off the rock where he had been. McPherson waited for it to die away and jumped up to fire again, a long burst this time that raked across the top of the cliff. Teleman scrambled forward at the same time. As he dropped onto the ledge he thought he heard a faint scream, but the sound whirled away on the wind, almost instantaneously. It sounded as if it had come from above, but he couldn't be sure. He shuttled along the ledge awkwardly, wondering if it had come from McPherson, until he heard Mac's carbine stuttering again, and he concentrated on his running.
The ledge was less than eighteen inches wide and the footing treacherous with scattered rock and shale. As he neared the end he slipped and fell forward onto the boulder with stunning force. His head glanced off the rock and exploded with pain. Feebly cursing, he dragged himself over, almost directly beneath Mc- Pherson's carbine, and slid down the other side. Seconds later
Gadsen fell over on top of him and Folsom followed in a dive that just missed the tangle of arms and legs.
McPherson crouched down beside them. "Everybody get here in one piece?"
Teleman sat up, massaging his forehead, and his hand came away coated with blood. So what else is new, he thought with resignation.
"Julie, check that cut," Folsom snapped. "Mac, what's the situation?"
"About seven of them, I think. One was going over the edge when I hit him. He got hung up on that spur of rock there," he finished.
Folsom pulled the binoculars from beneath his parka and turned them on the cliff tops. In the brightening light of midday he could make out a green-clad arm draped over the same outthrust of rock McPherson had pointed out. Nothing more. The cliff top was bare.
"Okay, you convinced them to keep their heads down anyway. I think we have enough cover, if we move fast and stay close to the rock, to make it down to the beach. We should be able to reach that headland before they hit the beach."
He turned to Teleman and squatted down beside him, where Gadsen was wrapping a piece of cloth around Teleman's forehead. The make-shift bandage was already stained bright red, but the blood was congealing quickly in the cold.
Folsom had caught a glimpse of the cut before Gadsen had gone to work on it. An ugly gash across the bend of the forehead on the right side, almost three inches long. The fall on the rock had laid the skin open to the whitish bone.
"That cut is going to leave a nasty scar," he murmured as Gadsen tied the bandage tight and sawed off the ends with his sheath knife.
"Big deal," Teleman muttered.
Folsom backed into the shelter on the cleft, stood up, and carefully edged forward until he could just see over the boulder. The sun was just edging above the horizon as they went over the top. Now the line of the cliff was back-lit with what to his night-adjusted eyes appeared as full daylight. Down in the cleft, where the sun would not reach until at least May, he knew that it
was still pitch dark. He was counting on the gloom in the southwestward-facing cliff to provide as much shelter as the rock.
He watched for a full minute before he caught sight of someone moving on the top. As he watched, the figure crawled cautiously to the edge and peered over. Folsom motioned to McPherson to raise his carbine. Mac joined him quickly and as Folsom fired a snap shot Mac followed up with a burst. The figure rolled back. Whether or not they had hit him was impossible to tell. Folsom watched for another minute to see if he would try again.. McPherson nudged his arm and pointed to the left of where the figure had appeared. A soldier, almost invisible in his green uniform as he slid over the edge into the gloom, caught Folsom's eye. He nodded to McPherson and together they poured bursts of fire at the figure. But they were too late. The trooper had made it into shelter.
"All right," Folsom called softly. "Let's get out of here before they start tossing grenades down."
McPherson led the way down the cleft, and, singly, they made a dash out of the cleft into the shelter of another overhang. No shots were fired after them. The way down would have been no trouble to rested men, but in their exhausted condition, the journey was another nightmare of snow-covered rocks and icy sheathing. They moved from cover to cover, never daring to pause for rest as they slipped and slid and climbed down and around the cliff f
ace. Near the base they encountered a sloping pile of rubble that eased the steep descent SOME, what, but threw in their path another obstacle of large boulders and chunks of fluted rock that had to be circumnavigated and wriggled through rather than climbed over.
Twenty minutes later they were on the pebbled beach. In spite of their desperate need to go on, Folsom called a rest halt. Teleman sprawled out on his back, barely conscious of the biting cold and snow that lay thickly in the shelter of the fjord. The soft lapping of the waves against the shore less than a hundred yards away belied the fury of the storm, whose final traces they were still experiencing. Teleman lay, gasping for breath. Above him, he realized for the first time that the sky was brightening quickly. The gap of space between the narrow walls was changing to velvet blue and the stars were disappearing from sight.. The wavering aurora borealis had all but evaporated in the sunlight, weak as it was. This was the first sunlight he remembered seeing since several hours before he had ejected, and for some reason it felt good. The steadily increasing light gave him a measure of badly needed hope.
He sat up. "Commander," he croaked, "I don't even know your first name."
Folsom rolled over on his side and grinned lopsidedly. "Hell, you don't do you? It's Pete .
. ." And he stuck out his hand.
"Glad to meet you . . . hell of a place for it though."
Then he remembered: "How about the radio. Since everyone knows where we are now, maybe you should tell the ship."
"Yeah . . . Julie, break out the radio and see if you can raise the ship. If not, then the Norwegians. We're gonna need some help, man, and fast."
-
Gadsen pulled the transceiver out of his pack and, as they started down the beach in a half walk, half trot, began to fiddle 'with the dials.
"Hell of a note if the Russians get us two miles from the Norwegian base."
"Don't worry, Major, soon as we round that headland, orders or no orders, I'm going to fire every damn flare I got."
The low profile of the headlands rose starkly out of the sea off the portside of the U.S.S.
Robert F. Kennedy as the battle cruiser ran past the eastern entrance to the fjord. The cruel gray waters of the Barents Ka were still running heavily and even from two miles out the bridge crew could make out the dash of spray rising from the fringing rocks. The, fjord was dangerously narrow for any ship the size of the RFK, even one as well equipped with underwater navigational aids as she was. Only cutters called at the Norwegian naval air base through the fjord. Larger ships unloaded, when they had to, in the deep-water port on the ° Nor- wegian Sea side and supplies were trucked five miles to the base on the all-weather road. But for the most part, resupply was accomplished by aircraft.
At sea the winds were still running an average of thirty-seven knots, as Larkin had known they would be. Now he sat helplessly, eight line-of-sight nautical miles away from the shore-based Norwegian help, and he was still powerless to do anything to request their aid. In addition, they had long since lost the submarine as it had entered the fjord. He was, however, very certain that the sub was still deep within the rock walls, and that it was going to get a very nasty surprise when it tried to leave. But for the moment there was little or nothing that he could do.
Daylight had come with a vengeance. The aurora borealis had been driven away by the low-hanging but brilliant sun as it edged farther across the narrow band of sky for its brief two-hour appearance. The uncertain light of the aurora borealis had been almost worse than no light at all. Its constant flickering and dim glow made firm visual sightings impossible. In spite of this handicap, Larkin had managed to sketch the outline of the fjord's mouth on a pad to fix the details in his mind and had marked in the rough positions of both ships. The radar provided an approximate outline of the fjord walls for a distance of three miles into the meandering canyon and indicated just enough room to swing the ship almost on the axis point of her keel. The sonar confirmed the chart depth markings. There would be sufficient room beneath her keel Larkin tapped the pencil on the pad and made his decision.
"Mr. Bridges, lay a course into the fjord six thousand yards up from the mouth. We'll swing about and sit there until we see how things are going to shape up."
Bridges acknowledged the orders and picked up the microphone to the engine room.
Slowly the RFK got under weigh and, at eight knots, began to edge her way carefully into the mouth of the fjord. Larkin got up from his console and shrugged into his parka, picked up a pair of binocolars, and went out onto the catwalk The night, with the stiff wind, was bitterly cold. He dialed the proper lenses into place and began to search the fjord mouth from side to side.
On the eastern flank of the steep rock walls plummeting almost straight down, a cluster of needle-sharp rocks reared up jaggedly from the sea bottom. The glasses showed waves dashing themselves furiously, but in vain, at this miniature bastion. Plumes of spray were probably topping sixty feet, he thought to himself. Those rocks might present a hazard if they possessed an underwater ridge jutting away into the mouth.
The western entrance was clear, at least of visible obstructions. At least two hundred feet separated the nearest possible approach for any underwater ridge extending from the eastern flank from 'the western walls, which were not quite as sheer in their drop to the water. There was barely enough room to take the battle cruiser through, but it could be done—if done carefully. Beyond the entrance there were only a few indications on the chart that suggested small islands. Once past the entrance, Larkin knew that he would be able to take the battle cruiser anywhere that the submarine could go. He did not trust the map, but he did trust the ability of the Soviet commander.
Twenty minutes later the Robert F. Kennedy was gently nosing her way past the entrance. The sonar gear showed an unexpected two hundred feet beneath her keel, even more than normal for Scandinavian fjords on exposed ocean coasts. Bridges was the conn and Larkin, with a microphone conveniently at hand, had again joined the lookouts on the catwalk. The slopes of the fjord slipping past were completely deserted, as they usually were. Only a fool would venture into this hellish terrain in these weather conditions—or even at midsummer for that matter. Not one sign of vegetation marred the granite structure of the walls. In sheltered recesses patches of snow could be seen, and occasionally long sheets of ice reaching from some unseen crevice stretched in a long icicle to the water. The walls on the eastern side were patently unscalable. Larkin knew that, unless the steepness and height of the cliffs grew less the deeper they penetrated, Folsom and his party could very well find themselves stuck on the cliff tops until the helicopter could be launched.
Larkin was heartened somewhat by the fact that the pitch and chop of the ship were lessening inside the fjord. The winds, obstructed by the narrow entrance, were rapidly diminishing in power and it was possible that the helicopter could be launched in a few hours. But for the moment the winds were blowing Force 6, between twenty-five and thirty-one miles per hour, and the waves running to five and six feet in a strange eddy of currents and crosscurrents deflected from the underwater walls. Time—Larkin needed time now more than anything else. What he was going to do when they spotted the submarine, he did not yet know. So far, past the entrance, he had been hugging the steep eastern wall, knowing that he would be invisible to the submarine's sonar as the reflections from the underwater walls scrambled.
The microphone whistled at him.
"Captain, we have a sonar contact, possibly the submarine."
"Bearing?"
"Dead ahead sir, on the western side. They are not using any ECM at all, so they must not suspect we are around. Range is five thousand yards."
Larkin thought for a moment. "Thank you." He keyed the bridge channel. "Mr. Bridges, all engines stop. Run a check on the ship status."
"Aye, sir."
Larkin turned back to the railing and stared down the fjord. A shallow bend in the fjord wall blocked' his view of the submarine less than three miles away.
The sonar had picked up the submarine under an outthrust of the wall that did not extend more than a few feet below the water line. With the ship's engines halted, the vicious rocking of the ship became more pronounced in the heavy chop. He watched the eastern wall, gauging to himself the speed at which they were being swept onto the knife-sharp ledges. It was faster than he expected. There was no possibility that they could maintain their position without running the engines. And if they did that, it would be only a matter of time before the submarine picked them up. Anchoring was out of the question. He needed mobility, instantaneous mobility. He could have that by standing outside the entrance and keeping an eye on what the submarine was doing.
For- the first time since taking command of the RFK, Larkin cursed the fact that she possessed no more than the i.5-inch salute gun. With a four-inch cannon, or even an antiaircraft gun, he would have merely steamed around the curve, leveled the cannons, and called for a surrender. With the submarine facing away from them and riding on the surface, he could have blown her out of the water if she resisted.
He almost hammered the railing in a measure of frustration. How in hell could he bring that damned submarine to terms? A boat party was out of the question . . . or was it? Ever since Teleman had been shot down, Larkin had been aching for a chance to take some kind of direct .action. Five thousand yards. They could be on that damned submarine before they knew what was happening. If the hatches were closed, as they would be in this chop, a couple of charges of gelignite would take care of that. Lookouts could be dealt with. His mind raced furiously as he
fc-rced himself to remain calm. He would need the whaleboat, eight men, carbines, gelignite charges. . . .
"Mr. Bridges, assemble an armed boat party."
Ten minutes later Larkin sat in the stern sheets of the whaleboat with the tiller under his arm as they pulled away from the almost flush afterdeck. Feeling somewhat like Horatio Hornblower, he had buckled a revolver belt around his waist and stuck a flare pistol in his pocket. On his signal Bridges would bring the RFK around the headland and run down on the submarine. Unless a second flare was fired, his orders were to run the submarine under. Larkin and Bridges both knew that this was absolutely the last resort in case the armed attack by the nine men failed. The battle cruiser bows, cutting into the hull of the submarine, would crumple to the first main bulkhead if that happened. But in any event the submarine would be sitting on the bottom of the fjord. It would then be Bridges' obligation to see that the same thing did not happen to the RFK.