'We've set up camp, but the snow-hole's not finished. Our deceptive plan's okay: our tracks come up behind this escarpment. We can hold this spot for days.' He turned to O'Malley:
'Okay, Paddy, organize the sentry roster. We'll set sentries as soon as the captain's finished his brief.'
'Right, Corp. D'you want a buddy-buddy list?'
Burns nodded. Each man, paired off with an oppo., was responsible for checking him regularly for the first signs of frost-nip or frost-bite, when the evil-looking waxiness began showing on the extremities: nose, fingers, ears. If one man fell out on patrol, his buddy would be watching, but he had to get himself up if he fell.
Then they heard the whine of the Land-Rover churning the snow at the entry to the defile. O'Malley had already prepared tea; they saw the two shadows stumbling on their shoes up the slope. Burns saluted and showed them to the fire.
'Gather round,' Stoddart snapped. 'Saves time —'
They listened in silence as he brought them up to date:
'The Soviets are moving up to their no-go lines on the central front in Europe. Their third motorized infantry division is now poised on Finland's eastern frontier at Kuolayarvi. It arrived by rail and is only three hundred miles from us. The Russians are telling the world that the Finns are asking for help to save them from Norwegian aggression. My latest bit of bad news is that their Northern Fleet is out; it sailed for exercises yesterday into the Barents Sea.
'45 Commando is at Red Alert, and in its prepared positions up north. Backing them up, from Kaafjord southwards, is 42 Commando, of which we form a minor part.' Captain Stoddart glanced around at them all, his detachment, men he had known since they had all joined Icarus from Poole. He had trained them, worked them up to their present efficiency. 'These, Corporal, are the orders for your section:
'Sierra section is to stop the enemy advancing down that road,' and he jerked his head towards the drop overhanging the £78, the main road dividing Skibotndalen which ran down from the Finnish frontier to Lyngenfjord.
'We'll get plenty of warning, because the Russians can't enter Finland without violating her neutrality; unless, of course, they persuade themselves that they've been invited in. They'll have to come down the £78 from Rovaniemi, the rail terminus in the centre of Finland. That means a two hundred mile trek up the £78, which is just on the Finnish side of the Swedish border, until they reach Lake Kilpisjarvi, just on the other side of the Norwegian frontier post. If we haven't heard of Russian movement up the £78 by then from our Finnish intelligence or satellite reconnaissance, something will have gone wrong somewhere.
'Corporal, your job's the same as that for all the Royals: if the Russians attack with their thousands of tanks — if they come flowing down that road…' He pointed to the ravine below, '… Let them roll over you; let 'em go. Then halt the infantry who'll be coming up behind the tanks — zap their stores. Zap their supplies, their centralized organization — and later, if need be, their army of occupation. Our job and 45's job is to hold the bastards up for twenty-four hours to give the reinforcements time to deploy. If we've succeeded in delaying them, then we've justified our existence. Our little lives, Corporal, will have been well spent.'
Burns watched the men around him. By the glow of the dying embers their faces were immobile, blocks of granite, each with his own thoughts. Burns had heard Stoddart's harsh message too often — okay for single men who didn't have women depending upon them, okay for those who didn't know what it was to nurture a loving family…. But Stoddart's spiel was not finished:
'After that, if there're any survivors, disperse to the mountains. Survive off the terrain. Organize resistance groups to cause the enemy as much damage as you can: supply lines, communications, anything — then our Commando's existence will have been justified…' Captain Stoddart hesitated, then stood back abruptly from the dying fire. 'Good luck,' he said. ' Get in radio touch at a quarter past the hour. Good luck, all of you.' He gazed wistfully at the red embers. 'And this must be your last fire. We're not playing any more.' They watched him disappearing into the night, a flurry of snow shrouding him as his head and shoulders vanished beneath the steep slope.
They kicked out the fire and prepared for the night. While the others finished off the roof of the snow-hole, O'Malley and his buddy, Lenny Holmes, started throwing the supper together. The naphtha double burner was efficient but dangerous — it flared too easily.
'Here, Grant and Tucker: get your planks on,' Burns ordered two marines who were standing idle. 'Before I set the sentries, we'll make a last recce before the night. We'll ski down to the road, then make our way up on shoes to the border.'
It was good to be on skis again, their rifles slung across their shoulders. Burns led, taking it gently though the birch wood. The going was relatively easy after the first two hundred feet, down which the)' side-slipped. Then after a gradual schuss down to the road they broke off to fix their snow-shoes by the light of a hazy moon.
A small lake half-filled Skibolndalen which led up to the Norwegian-Finnish frontier post. Burns kept below the lip of the road, then flogged along the edge of the lake. The going was hard but he was glad to find the rhythm returning to his legs. The exercise was doing them all good. It was uphill going to the plateau above them; there, his map showed, stretched a vast tract of water, Lake Kilpisjarvi on the Finnish side, a lake four kilometres wide and seventeen long. It would be frozen solid like all the others, but he would take a look at the frontier to orientate himself in case bad weather hit them. They moved on in silence, each in the other's tracks. They saw the yellow lights of the customs barrier; the snow-mantled chalet; and further back, the desolate encampment which was the northern fringe of the iron curtain separating the two different worlds. The Norwegians got on well with their neighbours, though fraternization was discouraged by the Finnish officials. It was difficult, Burns imagined, to prevent the interchange of locals from the town of Kilpisjarvi, six kilometres further up the E78.
They remained motionless a few minutes, orientating themselves, the vapour of their breath freezing, mini-stalactites forming on their eyebrows. The picture was one of utter desolation, nothing moving, no traffic on the road. All good men were inside their homes, snug with their womenfolk — the nearest Russian was three hundred miles away to the east. It was the poor sods in 45 Commando who were shit-scared tonight, sentries stamping numbed feet in the cold, less than ten miles from the Russian hordes who were swarming along the northern frontiers of the Finnmark plateau. It was eyeball-to-eyeball stuff up there, glaring at each other across frontiers which ran only twelve miles from the sea. There'd be no fires in the ambush positions up there….
'Look, Corp.'
Tucker was pointing towards the invisible lake, a vast snow-field covering the ice, which stretched into the distance. A mysterious grey sheen, tinged yellow at the edges, was reflected upon the base of the cloud covering the Finnish slot abutting Sweden and which poked, like a finger, into Norwegian territory.
'Must be the lights from the causeway,' Burns said, remembering the narrow isthmus which cut Lake Kilpisjarvi into two. 'Swedish customs post, likely.' He turned, impatient to set the sentries, so that he could turn into the snow-hole for an hour or two. He could strip off inside and get some real sleep. ' Get your planks on,' he told them. ' We'll cut across the small lake.'
He was becoming irritable, waiting while Grant fiddled endlessly with his boots. Grant was a good Marine but desperately slow: he was always holding up the others, even across country when they tried to crack on the pace.