The entire scenario unfolded as a slow-motion dream. Each action was drawn out to a nervous breaking point and Teleman was almost convinced that the Russian would blur into motion and pluck the pistol from his unresponsive fingers. Then Folsom was moving out of the line of the muzzle and extracting the rifle from the dazed guard. Folsom glanced at Teleman from his kneeling position and shook his head in wonderment. Feeling very aged and decrepit, Teleman got to his knees, then both Teleman and Folsom faced the five Russians in the front of the tent.
“The first one who makes the slightest move gets shot,” Folsom intoned solemnly. They stiffened as one man and swung around. The same shock suffused the five faces as had colored the face of the guard. Finally the one who spoke English managed to stammer out a confused question. His answer was the roar of the heavy military rifle tearing a hole in the tent flap. Folsom said nothing more, merely glared over the rifle barrel, his meaning intently clear in the acrid cordite fumes filling the tent. Satisfied that they were thoroughly cowed, Teleman crawled around behind Folsom and went to work on the lengths of nylon cord binding Gadsen and McPherson.
“All right; if you are all ready let’s move out.” Folsom finished a quick survey of the tent and motioned toward the tent flap. He turned once and grinned back at the miserable and bound Soviet troopers as Teleman, Gadsen, and McPherson, shouldering a large bundle, pushed past him and out into the cold. “Have fun boys. We’ll send the Norwegians back for you. Strasvechil.”
“Oh… that means ‘Hello,’ Pete,” Gadsen chortled.
“Oh, yeah… how ’bout that?”
Still grinning, he followed the others out and they turned southwesterly. The Russians had been stripped of their clothes down to long underwear and socks. Their clothes were in the bundle McPherson was carrying. Without clothes, these six Soviet troopers would he unable to chase them farther. Five minutes exposure in the bitter, subzero weather would kill them if they tried. Instead, they were left with an ample supply of fuel, at least enough to last until the Norwegians or their own comrades could rescue them from their predicament.
The four men, heightened with the excitement, almost, but not quite looked forward to the remaining miles of the trek across the tundra and down through the edging cliffs that would bring them to the Norwegian naval base. Even the fact that Folsom had added an extra three miles to the trek to take them far south of the anticipated second party did little to dim their spirits. In a matter of five or six hours at most they would be trudging into the safe hands of the Norwegians. The warmth of that reception they would worry about when the time came. The worst that could happen would be internment—
preferable under any conditions to the MVD cellars in Murmansk. Although still exhausted by the three days and more of exposure to. the Arctic storm, the several hours of forced rest had done much to revive them. Teleman was completely clear-headed, though still experiencing brief periods of dizziness and disorientation from the remaining drug residues. Even so, he was confident that he would make it through. What shape he would be in he did not know, or even much care any more. Just to make it through, that would be enough now. Folsom set an easy yet steady pace. The four men moved along under the brightening aurora borealis. They were strung out in a line one hundred yards long, Folsom leading off, Gadsen second, followed by Teleman and McPherson, with his bundle of clothing, acting as rear guard.
McPherson, as he strode along carefully watching Teleman, smiled to himself every once in a while, recalling the scene in the tent. The first he remembered after falling asleep in the overheated tent was Teleman sawing away at his, McPherson’s, bonds with the guard’ s knife. It had taken him several moments to awaken enough to realize what was happening. The Russian troopers had been lined up in front of the tent and ordered to lean precariously forward with legs and arms spread and hands on the tent wall, which provided a not-too-firm support. Folsom had watched every move with the heavy Russian army rifle cocked and ready as the Russians stripped under his watchful eye. Gadsen, cradling a Russian submachine gun, had joined him, making pointed comments in Polish, which some of the Russians understood.
McPherson shook his head. First he runs away and manages to get us all captured because we were so intent on trying to bring him around that the Russians just walked up on us, then he pulls a pistol and we all walk away.
“Hey, Major,” he yelled ahead to the stiff figure. Teleman turned his head to glance at the burly sailor.
“Hey, Major, when you get tired of this airplane nonsense, I’ll get you into the SEALS—if you promise to lay off the acid!”
It was close to four hours of very nearly steady travel before the party reached the first indications of the cliffs leading down to the Norwegian base, still two miles distant around the headland. The going had been both easier and faster than they had expected. So far they had seen no sign of the supposed pursuing forces and Folsom had about decided that any threat of a third party had been pure imagination. The Soviets could not carry unlimited manpower aboard the submarine. In any event they had swung nearly three miles south of their former line of march and so had probably avoided them. Folsom called a halt and hunkered down to wait while each man trudged up. During the long march the line had gradually lengthened until Teleman and. McPherson were half a mile behind. Teleman was still walking under his own steam, but the set, agonized look on his face was an eloquent indication of his physical condition. McPherson had discarded the bundle of winter clothes three miles south and west of the tent, pitching them behind one of the hummocks of tundra grass growing in the otherwise desolate plain of snow and ice.
While he waited, Folsom scanned the area ahead with the binoculars, knowing that the roughest part of the journey still lay ahead. Seen through the field glasses, the tundra in front of them appeared little different from what lay behind unless one noted the low ridges and hummocks that marked the edge of the coastal cliffs. How high, and how rugged they would be to negotiate, he had no idea. He only hoped that they would not prove impassable. The edge of the cliffs were, he judged, now less than a mile ahead. He swept the glasses to the north, but the terrain was bare of any movement or sign of life. As the others drifted up he hunkered down on his heels and waited. The continuous walking through the savage, subzero cold was fast reducing them to walking ghosts. The euphoria that had infused them on leaving the tent had long since evaporated during the gruelling hike. Folsom knew that the stick figures in their flapping Arctic gear clustering around him were close to the very last extreme of physical effort. If any of them felt the way he did… and Teleman for one was in even worse condition… Briefly he described the route ahead. All knew that the only information about the cliffs came from the topographical map he carried in his pocket. How reliable it was, they did not know. Guriously enough, their lives might depend in the next few hours on some remote German cartographer of the defunct Third Reich Vermacht The map had originally been drawn for the Nazi Occupation forces in Norway. Teleman groaned and got to his feet, swinging his arms. “Hell man, I don’t care how hard it’s going to be, let’s just get it over with. If I spend much more time in the great outdoors, all you’ll have left to carry back will be a solid block of ice.” Folsom nodded and stood up. “Okay with me too. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The small party struck out toward the fringing hummocks. After a few hundred yards the hummocks began to turn into slab-sided hills as they emerged in the deceptive light. Shortly the party had reached the base of the first line of hills and began the steep climb to the top. Before they had gained half the distance Folsom ordered a halt while they tied themselves in line with a length of nylon rope. In their weakened condition a misstep resulting in a fall would take the individual all the way back down. And they did not have strength to waste reclimbing hills. It took the four men twenty minutes of climbing to reach the gently rolling crest, less than four hundred feet above the level of the plain. Folsom untied the rope from his waist and walked forward to where the downward slope began and-pulled the field glasses from beneath his parka.