After the sixth hour Folsom began to call five-minute halts every half hour or so, but after the morning and the brief brightening of the five to ten minutes of clouded sunlight at noon, they rested standing. No one dared sit or lie as the cold deepened and their exhaustion grew. Once down, they knew they would never be able to get up again. Finally even McPherson dared not rest for more than a few moments. By late afternoon they had entered another branch of the forest, this one clutching the coast. The pounding of the surf was violent in the almost still crystal air. The wind had suddenly died away to a light breeze and the continuing heavy snowfall did little to muffle the crash of waves against unyielding stone. The trees, stunted and twisted by years of storm, were widely spaced and unchoked with the undergrowth that had marked the inland forest. But the trees, forced to grow lower, made up for the lack of brush with low-hanging branches pregnant with fresh snow. At 1600 that afternoon the wind had stopped completely. The tired party of four men came to a stop. For the last hour Teleman had been traveling in a semi-daze, barely conscious. But now even he was revived momentarily. Folsom peeled back his face mask and hood and the others followed suit. He turned his head in a slow circle, searching for any trace of breeze. The air was silent, barely moving. The intense cold seemed even more pressing now in spite of a lack of wind to stir it across their exposed faces. The wind-scattered trees of the stunted forest were immobile, drooping even lower with the steadily accumulating snow.
The small party began to stumble forward again, reeling under the load of their weariness and the heavy, depressing atmosphere that had descended with the cessation of the wind. Even McPherson was growing exhausted. His gait grew less and less steady. Teleman exerted a tremendous effort and managed to walk upright by himself for a few moments before the snowshoes caused him to stumble. From then on each of the three sailors took turns supporting him.
A muffled crack sounded somewhere behind them. Instantly they were on the ground, searching for cover in the meager waste. For long moments they lay, all thoughts of their weariness forgotten. Folsom shifted his carbine and peered over the barrel, trying to penetrate the snow-filled landscape, then after a moment he got shakily to his feet, laughing softly.
“Come on you deadbeats. Up and at ’em.” He helped Teleman up as another sharp rifle report was beard.
“Trees,” he explained shortly. “The cold is beginning to crack the damned trees.” By 1800 they reached the edge of the tundra. The jut of the coast pulled away to the north at this point, heading into a region of higher ground which the line of cliffs rode in lazy undulations of crags and clefts. McPherson edged out into the beginning of the tundra plain and knelt to brush the accumulated snow from the frozen dirt and rotting vegetation that overlay the hard surface of never-melting ice. After a few moments he motioned the others out.
Folsom; Gadsen, and Teleman followed him out to where he was staring at the darkness that obscured the way ahead. Behind them a three-quarter moon was beginning to break through the rack of clouds, its pale gold light lending a warm tint to the ghostly, wasted landscape. Teleman reversed his carbine and sank to his knees, leaning on the gun for support. He had been profoundly grateful when the wind had died; at these temperatures snow froze into solid crystals of ice, tiny particles that, whipped by the wind, worked their way between snow mask and hood and glove and cuff. After hours of exposure Teleman felt as if his wrists and neck were ringed by crusts of burning ice. His gratitude had been short-lived, however. As the wind had died the cold had deepened, until now he guessed it was close to forty below zero.
Folsom dropped down beside him. “How are you feeling?” When Teleman, too tired to speak, only nodded, he grinned in sympathy. “We’ve covered about thirteen miles so far. I think it’s going to be a little easier from here on in. The map shows this tundra stretching almost to the base. At least we can get rid of these damnable snowshoes.”
Teleman nodded again, barely aware of what Folsom said. His mind was wrapped in a warm haze that not even the bitter cold of the Arctic could penetrate. Folsom’s words meant nothing to him… he was suspended in a sort of limbo through which he floated not caring what happened to him. But when Folsom’s arms went under his to help him to his feet, the haze failed and he was suddenly back in the hell of cold and wilderness. Gadsen cut the thongs that held the snowshoes on, then *collected the four pair and tied them onto his pack. He said nothing and neither did the others. Each man was conserving every last bit of energy he possessed with all the avidity of a miser. Each knew that to expend even the tiniest fraction could mean the difference between reaching the base and freezing to death within sight of it.
The four men struggled on, pushing as far into the tundra as possible before stopping for the night. Teleman continued to move mechanically in the semi-daze that had overtaken him earlier, but the rest had refreshed him somewhat and he was now able to stumble forward by himself. He had long ceased to feel the cold as such, to feel it as anything but an iron pain clamped down upon his entire body. His heart, he was dimly aware, was beating at the same trip-hammer rate that had alarmed him during the final moments of flight. Every movement was sluggish in the extreme, and he no longer thought about the damage being done to his body by the impossible stress being placed on it by the intense cold and the bone-breaking task of hiking twenty-five miles through subzero cold. He longed for the warm hospital bed and the intensive care that normally followed each flight. Instead he moved in a world of his own, in which the glimmering moon and the pale stars beginning to show as the clouds were slowly torn to pieces by the aftermath of the storm were a blur overhead. He had even stopped concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. His subconscious had now taken over the task of moving his legs in proper rotation. He was only hours from death and he no longer cared.
CHAPTER 18
Larkin paced slowly back and forth before the insulated windows fronting the dimly lit bridge, apparently oblivious to the scene around him. At eight consoles, eight technicians sat hunched before the banks of instruments. The atmosphere was heavy with depression. Nothing had been heard from the shore party for nearly twelve hours. During that time the shadowy Soviet submarine had moved slowly out of the Porsangerfjord and rounded the point to slip carefully down the northern coast of the island at a depth of sixty feet.
The RFK, standing twenty miles offshore, had long since run out of the freakish waterlayer conditions that had expanded her sonar range earlier in the day. In fact, reverse conditions were now in effect. The RFK’s sonar gear had an operational echo-ranging capability of thirty-eight miles under optimum conditions. Now she was able to pick up firm signals only at a maximum of twenty-two miles. Beyond that the decreasing signalto-noise ratio wiped away any traces of the target. In spite of the trouble with the sonar gear, they had been able to follow as the submarine had moved twice from the southeastern end of the island in Porsangerfjord to its mouth on the western side, and then out into the Barents Sea to proceed slowly down the coast as if searching out a landing site. They passed the point of beach where the American party had landed, and continued down the coast. At first Larkin had thought, as the submarine had come to a stop to lay off the coast with only the sail showing, that they were examining the terrain. Now he was not so sure. The sub had remained surfaced for twenty minutes, long enough to have launched a raft. If indeed a second party had gone ashore they would logically have landed several hours travel up the coast from where Folsom and his men were. Larkin had no firm idea of just how fast and far they had traveled, but his last radio contact with Folsom, several hours after they started out, had put him a mile west of where the sub came to a stop. By the time the submarine had arrived off the coast in the late afternoon, Folsom would certainly have moved several miles farther west. Evidently the Soviet commander had misjudged the Americans’ rate of progress.