Cole's impression of the man on the left was that he was a big son of a bitch. The furniture looked too small for him, like maybe he was sitting in a chair meant for a kindergartner. He had shoulders the width of a fireplace mantel. The big hands on the table in front of him nearly smothered a coffee mug. Despite his intimidating size, his face was placid and almost simple — a gentle giant.
The second man took longer to notice, but he was just as hard to forget. At first, it was almost as if Cole was looking in a mirror. The second man had the same lean build and appeared to be of similar height. That was where the similarity ended. This man had dirty blond hair that was a little too long for a soldier's. He had dark eyes rather than Cole's cut-glass ones. The contrast between his light-colored hair and dark eyes was disconcerting, like wearing a striped tie with a plaid shirt. A twin set of scars ran along his cheeks. They were not fresh war wounds, however, but long faded — scars from some childhood injury perhaps. The man seemed to struggle to contain either nervousness or energy — one foot was tapping away when Cole and Vaccaro walked in, and never stopped during the briefing.
"Gentlemen, here's the rest of our team. This is Cole. And this is, uh—"
"Vaccaro."
The major nodded at the big man. "The big guy here is Samson. And that's Honaker. He's our team leader."
The big man smiled agreeably. He heartily shook hands with Cole and Vaccaro.
“Samson, huh?” Cole asked.
The big guy nodded. “Uh, huh. You know, like in the Bible.”
Honaker nodded in their direction and offered a forced smile as an afterthought.
"Like you guys, Samson here landed at D-Day," Dickey said. "Since the war ended he has done some work for the OSS."
"OSS?" Cole asked.
"Office of Strategic Services."
"Never heard of it."
"You aren't supposed to," Dickey said. "That's the whole idea. Honaker here was recommended for this mission based on his reputation, just like you. He’s also done a little work for the OSS. He speaks some Russian, which might come in handy where you're going. We served together for a while in Italy, so Honaker and I go way back.”
Cole cocked his head; he was getting a vibe off Honaker that he couldn’t quite make out, like the dying vibration of a banjo chord. The man’s dark eyes were inscrutable as they flicked from Cole to Vaccaro.
“Is this the whole team, Major?” Cole asked.
“You’re looking at it.” Dickey held up a hand as if he had a question. “Just so you know, we’re not going to use military ranks from here on out. Technically, this is not a military operation. It's also hush, hush. Nobody outside of this room is to know about it. Agreed?"
"Sure."
Major Dickey handed out some sort of report. To Cole’s eyes, the words marched meaninglessly across the page, and he handed the pages on to the next man without comment. The last thing he wanted was for the team to realize that he couldn’t read.
Dickey spread a map on the table and the four men bent over it. Cole felt more confident — you didn’t have to read to understand a map.
Dickey remained standing as he began to lay out the mission. "Gentlemen, as you know, our mission is to rescue Senator Whitlock's grandson from a Soviet Gulag where he is being held captive. It took a while to determine where he was located — believe it or not, there are more than fifty of these camps across Russia.”
Samson let out a low whistle. “That many?”
“These are re-education camps for the most part,” Dickey said. He said it in such an earnest way that it almost sounded as if he were defending the Gulag system. “These are people who have spoken out against the government in some way, so they have been sent to the Gulag to be re-trained through hard labor to be better Soviets.”
“Hell of a country,” Samson said.
“The American POWs have been divided among several such camps,” Colonel Dickey continued. “I’m not going to lie and tell you that getting Lieutenant Whitlock out is going to be easy. We don't know what condition he's in, or all of the challenges you may face. I do know one thing, which is that we have a very limited window of operations due to the weather. The Gulag camp is located in a region known as Vologoda, which is closer to the Arctic Ocean than Philadelphia is to New York.”
“So what you’re saying is that it’s cold,” Honaker said.
Dickey nodded. “There is a short autumn in this area of the Soviet Union. Basically, winter sets in once the first storm hits in October. We're talking about snow, maybe even blizzard conditions, long before the kids back home are trick or treating. Given our current date, we are looking at maybe a two-week window to complete our mission before the weather starts to get dicey.”
“Not much time,” Honaker said.
“Then there is the political situation to consider. You are going to be flying out of Finland, which borders the Soviet Union. It's a big border, more than eight hundred miles long. The Finns don't necessarily love the Soviets, but they need to make nice with them because they're neighbors. Any cooperation they extend will be very limited.”
“What you’re trying to say is that Finland is another limited window of opportunity," Honaker said.
"The senator is pulling some strings and working the back channels. He's setting it up to look like an official diplomatic visit. Mending fences after the war, or something like that. It appears that the Finns will let us fly out of there, and look the other way when we walk back in. After that so-called diplomatic visit ends, all bets are off. So, you're really gonna have to hoof it to get back across the border in time.”
Cole spoke up. “It’s Russia that I’m concerned about. What kind of countryside can we expect?”
Dickey sighed. "In a word, inhospitable. There's a whole lot of nothing. There are some villages, but essentially it’s a wilderness full of swamps and forests. The Russians call those forests taiga. I understand it’s mostly evergreen forest like you see up in Maine and Canada. There aren't any particularly large rivers that you’ll need to cross so long as you play things right, but you will have to ford some smaller waterways.”
Cole thought that Dickey sounded as if he had memorized some sort of encyclopedia entry, fancy words and all.
"Don't forget the wolves," Honaker said.
"Right. Vologda, and the region next to it, Kirov, has a wolf problem. Two winters ago, wolves killed something like sixty people across the region when the game became scarce. But you won't be sticking around there long enough to encounter any wolves."
"Wolves?" Vaccaro looked pale. "Any other wildlife we have to worry about?"
"If the weather was going to be warmer, I would warn you about the asiatic pit vipers. They should be hibernating by now. There are some bears around, mostly up in the higher country, so they shouldn’t be a problem." Dickey clapped his hands, which made Vaccaro jump. "Anyhow, your main problem is going to be the two-legged kind of animal. Once the Soviets figure out that their precious American prisoners have escaped, they will give chase. The good news is that they won't have much of an advantage because there are almost zero roads. Anyone who comes after you is going to have to do so on foot."
“What if there's more than one American?" Cole wanted to know.
Dickey held up one finger. "You need to concern yourself about one man. Lieutenant Whitlock. We don't know how many other Americans the Russians are holding there, but trying to liberate any others is just a recipe for failure."
"That don't seem right to me," Cole said. "We're goin' all the way to Russia and then we just leave any other poor bastards behind?"
"That's the mission, Cole. You get Lieutenant Whitlock and get to Finland. Nobody else."
"I don't like it."