“What about our chances of detection?” Alvarez questioned, watching Puckins’s fashion show. He was forever filing information for future use.
“With luck, we should make it to the camp. There are fewer people per square mile here than at the same latitude in British Columbia. Siberia’s lack of settlers was the reason for establishing the camps here in the first place. It’s not the sort of climate that encourages people to be outdoors noticing strangers or following unexplained tracks very far without good reason. Survival out here is enough of a struggle to discourage idle curiosity. We’ll just have to keep a lookout for trappers and herdsmen.
“As a small unit, camouflaged, and making the best of available cover, we should do all right. The wind will drift over our tracks in the open areas and the trees will hide them in the thickly foliated areas. Ivan may have a dogsled patrol like Greenland had during the Second World War, but I doubt it. He isn’t on a wartime basis, not way out here. I’d say our chances are respectable, but don’t hold me to it.”
The North Star was too high in the sky to use for bearings, so I had to rely on Ursa Major, or Cassiopeia, or Deneb, and selected times to find North. Taking out my barometer/altimeter, I checked the reading. The Dzhugdzhur Range paralleled the coast. As long as we were gradually gaining altitude, we could not be too far off. About eighty miles from the coast, before we reached the crust of the range, we should stumble on a railroad spur. The spur worked northward from the main trunk of the Trans Siberian Railway and terminated at the camp; If we reached the summit of the range first, we were too far north.
We shouldered our packs and donned our skis. Movement was slower than I had anticipated. The kayak voyage and ice portage had worn us down. Alvarez and Kruger broke trail while Puckins and Chamonix strained in the ahkio harnesses. We had fastened the two sleds together like a giant oyster. Though the fused container held the recoilless rifle, much of our ammunition, and the tents, it was relatively light. These remaining four skiers traded positions with these men at regular intervals.
About an hour before sunrise we stopped and pitched the Norwegian tents. Within each two-man tent, each pair fashioned a cold well and sleeping benches above it so that they would not be sleeping in the lowest, and therefore coldest, portion of the tent. Stripping down to his Norwegian-made polypropylene underwear, each skier brushed down his boots and outer clothing, then stuffed them into the foot of his sleeping bag in a waterproof bag. Then from his sleeping bag, one member of the pair boiled water for the freeze-dried food under the tent’s outer fly. A single slow-burning candle combined with the pair’s body warmth to keep the inside of the tent relatively warm, but hardly comfortable. It was an unwieldy, time-consuming way to camp on a long-range patrol, but in cold-weather operations, eighty percent of your energy went to survival, fifteen percent to military activities, and five percent to fighting.
My thermometer read fifteen below zero. When I awoke, a fine coating of frozen condensation covered the inner ridge of the tent.
The next night we moved with better speed through the rolling, rising taiga. Our file looked like a long green-and-white caterpillar with piston legs as it threaded its parallel tracks through the widely spaced trees. Kick, slide, kick, slide. Packs clung to backs and pounded at kidneys. Our weapons, never designed for ski troops, were heavy and awkward. Periodically we stopped to check the stars and melt snow.
“What is that white concoction?” Gurung asked, watching Wickersham wiping a lotion into his face and hands.
“Cold cream,” Wickersham quipped.
Kruger shifted his weight from foot to foot and clapped his hands against his sides. The cold was worse when we stopped. “I don’t s-s-see where it makes you look any better.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you saw what happened to the movie lady in Shangri-la, didn’t you? Well, it just so happens I have a limited supply available….”
“You have any vanishing cream?” Alvarez chimed in sardonically. The big Cuban was not about to let any of Wickersham’s pranks get past him. “That would sure make this jaunt a lot easier. Invisible raiders, yeah… ‘Stealth’ ski troopers.”
“Nope. Chief Puckins handles vanishin’ and materializin’. Different department altogether.”
The cold, dry air stung bitterly. Occasionally the wind swept down the valleys with such intensity that we had to wear suede face masks for protection. Once, when we were caught in a full-blown williwaw, we had to turn our faces away from the wind and seek whatever windbreaks we could find. Kick, slide, kick, slide.
As the second dawn approached, I estimated we had covered nearly thirty miles as the crow flies—ten in the first night, twenty during the second. Unfortunately, we could not ski as the crow flew because the increasing gradient often forced us to traverse slopes.
Even if the gradient had permitted, it was unwise to travel too long in a straight line. Since you couldn’t cover your tracks you had to hope they’d drift over, but often they didn’t. Each night before bivouacking, we left tracks in an ever-diminishing coil—resembling a watch spring—with the campsite at the center. In this way, we could hear pursuing trackers as they traipsed around us. At this point in our journey it was too demanding a drain on our manpower to post sentries. Half the group would be dead on their feet the next morning. Instead, we relied on our mobility and camouflage to protect us. As a further safeguard, Gurung strung alarm trip wires around the camp—high enough so animals wouldn’t trip them, low enough so humans would.
I realized we would soon have to change from night to day travel. The terrain was growing more rugged and we were hitting stretches of black taiga—thick expanses of fir and spruce, which made hauling the ahkio a nightmare. Secondly, cloud cover was creeping in from the west and would soon obscure the stars. Soon I would be forced to navigate by terrain features and my sun compass alone. Clouds did not hamper its value, but it required daylight.
Fatigue began to show in the men’s faces. No matter how well you prepared your tent and sleeping gear, you were never quite warm. Every time you shifted position in your sleeping bag, it took five minutes to get warm enough to sleep again. No one slept soundly and a heightened sense of survival stirred you awake at the snap of a frozen twig. Cooking was a miserable cycle of fumblings. First taking your mittens off to adjust something, then hurriedly jamming the same mittens on to numbed fingers in the futile hope of getting them warm again. Yet though cooking was torture, not cooking—and thereby forfeiting the fuel that kept you warm and moving—meant disaster.
The psychological strain was telling, too. Bundled in innumerable layers of hooded clothing, you found it easy to withdraw into yourself. It was called going “into the cocoon.” Though the hood brought warmth, it restricted your hearing and field of vision. Your thinking became sluggish and you were soon oblivious to all. When an entire group entered their individual cocoons, lethargy gained the upper hand and carelessness set in.
I decided to stop though we had only covered fifteen miles. Over the past hours, as each pair had taken the ahkio, their irritations erupted into hushed arguments, and those arguments generated wasted heat. It was time for a rest. I noted the temperature was thirty degrees below zero and the barometer steady.
I awoke at midday, bundled up, and left the tent to relieve myself. This routine function was always one of the most traumatic chores of cold-weather travel. When my urine sizzled as it hit the snow I knew something was wrong. I checked my thermometer again. It read fifty degrees below zero.