“How far do you think Teleman managed to get?” he asked McPherson.
“I doubt if he could have gone much farther. I’m surprised we haven’t found him yet. He was in pretty bad shape when we stopped. We’ll be lucky to find him alive,” McPherson finished bleakly.
Folsom swore savagely. “The old man will have my head if we don’t.” Gadsen, looking miserable, rubbed his face with gloved hands. “I don’t see how the hell he could have gotten out of that tent without me seeing him,” he muttered.
“Hell, how were you to know that he would take off? You weren’t watching him. You were watching for the Russians. If there is any fault here at all, it’s mine. We should probably have rigged up something to wake us…” Folsom shook his head. The “what-if” line of excuse-making was a waste of energy. He stood up and took a last look at the Russians through the glasses, then swept the east once more. The two scouts had almost reached the tent. He knew it could not take them much longer to find out that their quarry had flown the coop. Whether they would automatically assume that the Americans had left ahead of them or would discover their tracks was a toss-up. In either case he wanted to get as far away as possible. Nothing had shown on the eastern horizon yet, but somewhere out there another Russian party was approaching. He wished to God he could get in touch with Larkin. Suddenly he felt completely inadequate to cope with the situation.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said quietly, starting south again along the parallel set of tracks that Teleman had left.
Teleman’s tracks were becoming more and more irregular as they trudged on. Shortly they came upon the spot where their quarry had first fallen. The depression in the snow, almost invisible in the uncertain light, showed that he had fallen cleanly and gotten up again without hesitation. Not daring to pause, the three sailors pushed on. Now the pace that Folsom had set was beginning to wear heavily. Their breath was coming in gasps of exhaustion, their half run, half trot beginning to flag. When they reached the second indentation in the fresh snow surface Folsom waved them to a halt. Gasping for breath and leaning heavily on their carbines, they knelt in the snow. Finally, after a few minutes, McPherson dragged himself forward a few yards and came back with Teleman’s insulated canteen. The three looked at one another and with the same thought were up and running at once. Within the next few hundred yards they found his carbine, the lightweight pack, and finally the spot where he had fallen the third time.
Folsom looked around wildly but the horizon ahead was bare. In the past few minutes the aurora borealis had grown in intensity, but its wild gyrations made visibility even poorer. All three were gasping hoarsely for breath, barely this side of collapse themselves. But not once did they stop to consider their own bodies. The thought uppermost in their minds was: If they were this bad off, how much worse was Teleman?
With a hoarse command from Folsom, they started forward again. By now they had come three miles from the tent. The tent and the Russians were lost in the gloom on the northern horizon. For the first time since he had landed on the. North Cape, Folsom began to hope for a resurgence in the high winds that had buffeted them all through the day, or better yet, another blizzard. Given either to wipe out the last traces of their trail and they might win yet. But the cloudless sky offered the hope of neither. They were running again, running with the desperation of exhausted men who must run to save their lives and that of a comrade. Under the eerily lighted sky they raced on across the snow-covered expanse of the tundra plain in pursuit of the staggering track of the delirious pilot.
Once they stopped for a brief rest and Folsom searched the horizon with the binoculars. There was no sign of pursuit in any direction. But he knew that condition would not last. Then they were off again, to stop almost immediately. Gadsen had seen it first, a lump of rags huddled into the snow.
Complete and utter silence had descended over the vast reaches of the North Cape. Along the shore the storm-raised combers continued to pound against the rock with monotonous regularity. But inland nothing moved on the plain of snow. It was as if the cold had frozen even the air into immobility. Folsom knelt down by Teleman’s body and turned him over slowly. He pushed back the neck flap, pulled off one of his own gloves and felt for a heartbeat.
“I’ll be damned. He’s still alive,” he said wonderingly. “You’re kidding,” Gadsen said, dropping down beside him. “How the hell could he be?” Folsom shook his head and rebuttoned Teleman’s neck flap. “You’ve got me. Now, how do we get him out of here?”
McPherson shrugged out of his pack and reslung his rifle. “I’ll carry him.”
CHAPTER 19
The strident sounds of the battle alarm echoed through the ship. No practice situation now; each crew member understood fully that this was the real thing. Lieutenant Commander Bridges, strapped into the seat of the executive officer’s console, watched the battle lights flick from amber to green as each station reported in. A hard knot of both fear and excitement was building in his stomach as the track of the submarine, relayed to his console from the large bridge display, began to move steadily towards the battle cruiser.
“All stations manned and ready, sir,” he reported, as the last light, the security room, turned green.
“Thank you, Mr. Bridges,” Larkin said calmly. “Bring her around on a course of op° and ten knots, rig for silent running. All ECM to on.”
Bridges punched the heading into the computer console and stabbed down the ECM gear switch. The computer control net within the ship allowed either the captain or the executive officer to control the ship during battle stations, thus avoiding the delays encountered in relaying orders through the helmsman and then to the engine room. Larkin still preferred to sit aloof on his high seat and give orders, leaving it to the executive officer to handle the ship. No provisions had been made for controlling the ship from any other location, nor was there need. In nuclear sea warfare there is no such item on the shipwright’s bill of materials as armor plate. And conventional weapons were of no value against the U.S.S. Robert F. Kennedy, as she was well,protected by her speed, defensive weaponry, and ECM gear. A direct hit on the bridge would not matter. A hit with nuclear weapons within 500 yards would destroy her utterly. Within one mile, a direct hit would probably kill the entire ship’s complement with radiation. Larkin had not moved his eyes from the holographic map display since the Russian submarine had turned toward them and begun to run out to sea, directly away from North Cape Island, where it had lain since early that afternoon. Since 1500 the RFK had tried in vain to maintain a radar and sonar watch on the submarine, but its proximity to the rock walls of the cliffs edging the island had created a maze of conflicting signals. All during the long afternoon and evening, the feeling that the Russians had indeed landed a second party had grown. Now, with the submarine moving for a third time, it could mean either that the Soviet commander had realized his mistake and was moving to land a third party ashore between Folsom and the naval base, or that the RFK had been spotted. Long, agonizing minutes passed with the speed of a glacier’s tread as the submarine increased its speed to twenty-two knots on a course that would bring an intercept in less than an hour. Finally, after twenty minutes, the submarine came about to a course paralleling the west coast. Larkin let loose a sigh of relief that was lost in similar sounds from the other eight men on the bridge. The submarine was still unaware of their presence. But an even greater dilemma now presented itself to Larkin. His theory, that the submarine was moving down the coast to drop the third shore party as close to the unsuspecting naval base as it dared, from which they would then work their way back to meet Folsom, was confirmed.