North Cape (19 page)

Even though the wind had died, the going was not that much easier. The forest thickened quickly with dense stands of frozen pine. The ground, in spite of the intense cold, had become soggy underfoot, almost on the verge of muskeg, and after nearly an hour more of walking he had covered little more than a mile. Teleman had never seen such forest this far north of the Arctic Circle. He decided that it must be due to the lastgasp effects of the Gulf Stream. Current as it finally dissipated off the North Cape. He recalled that in Alaska, in the foothills of the Brooks Range nearly two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, there were similar fir forests. Then, strangely enough, the pines thinned rapidly, almost in a matter of yards, it seemed. The forest gave way to scattered brush and glacial boulders. Even though the ground was rough, full of snow-covered and treacherous rills, Teleman found it easier walking than the thick forest. But on the verge of exhaustion as he was, it hardly made a difference. Even so, he hesitated on the edge of the last stand of trees. He could see almost a hundred yards ahead now through the driving snow. The compass still showed him to be on course, but the open ground ahead would provide no cover from searching Soviet aircraft. Against that expanse of ice-cold white, on an IR screen he would stand out like a neon sign in a desert. Nor could he hope to burrow far enough into the snow to escape detection.

Finally, after several minutes of almost incoherent self-debate, which to his surprise he found he was conducting aloud with himself, in a weary fit of exasperation, he shook his head and started forward. To hell with it, he thought. If they were going to find him, they were going to find him and that was that. If he did not make the coast shortly he was going to die anyway. Almost imperceptibly at first the ground beneath his feet began to climb. The snow, slowly turning to sleet that drummed down onto him, plastering his hair against his head, which he had forgotten to re-cover with his hood, obscured his vision—

vision that now was almost useless as his brain refused to sort and display images properly. The half snow, half sleet was melting and beginning to trickle down his ebony face and seep beneath his collar.

Teleman stumbled in one of the rills; he had stepped onto what appeared to be a solid surface. His foot had gone through the thin crust of. ice and his leg jarred down stiffly, pitching him forward. For minutes he lay half stunned until some inner instinct lifted him up and sent him stumbling forward again. It was several minutes later that he realized he had fallen.

After that his head seemed to clear a little. Teleman felt the wetness of his scalp and raised the hood. Ahead he could see a fairly large stand of bush, which appeared similar to cottonwoods, Almost without thinking he veered, and a moment later threw himself down beneath the outspread branches and rolled in as close to the base of the bush as he could.

He had never seen such godforsaken country. The sleet and snow swept across the almost barren muskeg with an ululating keening. The gray sky pressed down thickly and the galling snow lent additional oppression to the landscape. The entire scene reminded him of Dante's description of the tenth circle of hell, so unreal and remote from earth it seemed. The predominate color was gray: gray sky, gray snow, gray rocks, gray trees, and he was the doomed soul, doomed to wander forever in this gray hell searching for the stream of Lethe. Teleman shivered at his morbid thoughts. He could feel what little heat remained in his body quickly dissipating. He knew that he had to get up and keep moving or else he would very quickly freeze to death. But soft tendrils of sleep were curling around his eyes, forcing them closed. With a quivering effort, he forced them open again and struggled to his feet. He faced the snow and rising wind and went on. Now; as the sleet stopped and-the snow fell thicker, blotting away every trace of detail in the barren landscape, he was moving on a treadmill in the middle of white nothingness. For hours it seemed to Teleman, he struggled onward as the wind rose higher, until he was again facing a thirty-knot wind. With vicious suddenness, the wind would quarter, driving him far off course. He no longer knew whether he was moving north. He had dropped the compass sometime back and now had nothing against which to check his direction. Far down in the depths of his conscious mind, he knew that, as long as he kept walking in the direction with which the terrain rose, eventually he would come to the coastal cliffs. Whether or not he would last that long never occurred to him now. Only his survival training was driving him forward, forcing him to plod forward rather than drop in his tracks to freeze to death.

The trees were totally gone, as was the brush. Dimly he knew that he was struggling to climb a steep hill. By now Teleman was nearly asleep, only his subconscious operating his body. He neither knew nor cared where he was or what he was doing except on the dimmest conscious level. But still he went on, climbing the bill that stretched away before him, apparently forever.

Suddenly the wind died for a moment and the snow swirled away as if a curtain had been drawn. Teleman was standing on the lower lip of a hill, which in actuality was the back side of the cliffs leading to the coastal waters. Then the wind came again and the snow fell harder around him. Teleman went to his knees and began to crawl forward, blindly until he had worked his way to the top and the forward edge, which was sheltered from the wind and where the snow fell more thinly than it had before. There was no place for the wind to whirl snow from the drifts to add to the blizzard. He could see, far below, the pounding sea—the waves tall and cold green, smashing into the jagged baseline of the cliffs less than thirty feet away. The waves swept in from the sea in tremendous combers that, as they approached the cliffs, curled up, drawing a paler line at the fold and collapsing against the restraining wall of rock with a shattering roar. Teleman saw that there was no beach. If there had ever been, it had surely been washed away under the onslaught of the waves. The snow was now so heavy that he could see no more than a few hundred —feet out to sea.

After-a few minutes more, the wind slicing it from the sea with the keenness of a razor forced him back from -the cliff edge. Teleman carefully backed away and then moved along paralleling the crest until he found a depression surrounded by two large boulders, which offered some protection against the wind.

Teleman huddled into the lee of the rocks and shrugged off the pack. He sat on his heels, leaning back against the rock, and let the weariness that was exhaustion flow through him. If he could only stay awake long enough to contact the ship, he thought. If the Russians did not pick up the transmission, if the ship was there, if they could get a boat in, if they could beat the Soviets to him

.. if . . . then he would have made it. In spite of his tiredness, he grinned weakly before pulling the pack over and digging through it for the radio. Those were some pretty large ifs.

The lightweight unit was almost too much for the meager remains of his strength. Teleman pulled the radio to him and leaned it against a rock. His numbed hands refused to curl around the tip to the antenna for an endless time before he managed to pull it out.

"Target One, do you read me? Target One, do you read me?" The dials were softly illuminated and the power light was glowing red. His watch showed nearly thirty minutes past the time the ship should have come into radio range. The radio had both military and VHF-FM side bands. The VHF was for short-range lineof-sight work, not much more than fifteen miles. The military side band gave the transceiver a range of nearly two hundred miles. He used the VHF-FM band, hoping that the Soviets would not be monitoring within that range. Somewhere out there the ship should be standing less than five miles off the coast, waiting for his call.

"Target One, Target One, do you read me? Do you read me?" The small radio sputtered with a faint static composed of low rumblings overlain with a high-pitched hissing. Teleman wondered momentarily where the hissing was coming from. The transceiver employed transistors and printed circuitry, not vacuum tubes. Kneeling in the soft, powdery snow, Teleman tried again and again to raise the ship. In the nine hours since he had last had communication with the RFK innumerable things could have happened. Soviet aircraft or submarines could have found her .. . could have attacked . . . sent her to bottom . . . could have .. . hit seas too much . . . where hell was . .

. damned ship .. . could not last . . . much .

Teleman had lost all feeling in his feet and hands and was forced to use his clenched fist to work the transmit switch. Over and over he repeated his monotonous call, his voice becoming weaker and weaker until he was barely whispering into the microphone. He huddled on his knees, back against a sheltering rock, drifting hypnotically with the falling snow, whispering over and over again his call signal as the snow began to cover him with a soft, warm blanket. The will to stay awake was gone. He no longer even thought about the importance of staying awake. After a while he became aware that he had stopped calling. The radio was there in front of him, half covered with snow. He wanted to move closer, check the settings, but somehow he could not. It was as if he were paralyzed.

Still kneeling, half bent over the radio, his mouth half open, he decided to rest a moment then try again. Almost without volition, his eyes closed and the warm softness of sleep began to infuse his body.

He pulled them open with a jerk, for a moment dear-headed

and wide awake. The radio was spitting and crackling at him. He stared, then with an effort that, literally, almost killed him, reached out his frozen hand and pushed the receive switch. The answer drew his conscious mind back from the brink of the killing sleep and summoned his will and strength to go on a few minutes longer, drew it up from some dark recess of his body.

"Beatle, this is Target One, Beatle this is Target One, do you read me? Do you read me?" The voice on the other end of the tight radio beam could not conceal the anxiety beneath the calm exterior of the professional radio operator's voice.

"Target One?" he managed to croak, not knowing whether his voice was loud enough to be heard.

The radio operator's voice, almost lost in the storm of strange-sounding static, came over the tiny speaker again:

"Leave your transmitter on, we are getting a position fix." For a long time Teleman digested the message, trying to force his leaden mind to understand. Then he pushed the transmitter switch to position identification and a second transmitter built into the radio began sending out a tight VHF beam that the ship would ride in.

A voice that Teleman recognized as belonging to Larkin broke in. "We are standing off the coast about a mile from where you appear to be. Can you fire a flare to pinpoint your position?"

Teleman stared vacantly at the radio. Larkin tried again. "Can you fire a flare to pinpoint your position?"

The radio operator pressed his earphones to his head, then turned the gain up another notch.

"Is he still there?" Larkin asked.

think so, sir, •the transceiver is still on position • fix and—" The radio operator was interrupted by Teleman's faint voice. "Will shoot ... flare .. ." Teleman pulled the pack to him and fumbled through the contents. His hands were so cold they refused to work, and in an agony of frustration he dumped the canvas bag, scattering the contents. Grawling painfully forward, he got to his knees again and scrabbled through the snow for the VERY pistol. After a few moments his fingers encountered the leather holster and he drew it toward him. He sat back against the rock and, using both hands, wedged the grip between his knees. Then he pushed' the restraining clip forward and pulled the breech open. With his teeth he pulled a cartridge out of the bandolier fastened to the bolster, transferred it to. his hands, then into the pistol. Teleman sat back, exhausted by his efforts. For a minute he sat, gathering strength. Then he hunched himself around until he was pointing in the direction of the sea and tilted the barrel of the pistol up to a steep angle. He forced two fingers through the trigger guard until the pistol went off. The flare arched up and quickly lost itself in the falling snow. Five seconds later Teleman saw the flare explode as a bright flash of light that began slowly to drift down. Even through the snow he could trace its crazy undulations as the tiny parachute was shaken and thrown from side to side by the wind. It landed in the snow not fifty feet away and Teleman stared stupidly at it as it sputtered and hissed to extinction.

As he sat watching the flare he heard Larkin's voice calling over the far-away transmitter saying that the flare had been seen. He sodded his head in reply and, as the last of the flare died away, slipped into unconsciousness, still staring at the spot where it had landed.

Five minutes later and Teleman would have seen the Robert F. Kennedy moving majestically through the thirty-foot waves less than a mile offshore, rolling and pitching certainly, but less than would have been expected with a conventionally designed ship. Her rounded deck, almost flush with the water, gave the appearance of a half-submerged submarine as she slipped through the waves. Her deep wing-back bridge, canted aft, seemed to flow smoothly into the rear deck and thence into the sea, with no perceptible change in structure.

Above, the leaden sky glowered down on equally leaden seas. Larkin, standing on the narrow catwalk from which hours before he had fought to turn the ship from the rampaging sea, raised his face to feel the thick, wet flakes filtering down and grimaced as they melted on his upturned face. Both he and Folsom had come out onto the catwalk for a few moments of privacy while they discussed various means to reach the downed pilot.

"I have never seen the temperature rise so quickly after an Arctic storm," he said. "If this keeps up, we'll have rain in another hour."

Folsom's face was clouded with worry as he surveyed the sky, the seas, and the dimly seen cliffs to port.

"I only wish I knew what the hell it meant," Larkin growled. The battle cruiser was maneuvering off the cliffs at less than six knots. The waves, marching in rank down from the Great Barrier two hundred miles to the north, first were lifted by the narrow continental shelf then flung forward across three miles of shallows until they smashed into the base of the ;cliffs on the