The helo wasn’t racing back. No need to. No one on that godforsaken coastline was going to go anywhere fast. He knew it. They knew it. Shit!
He faltered and stopped for a minute as one of his shoes began to slip off. It would be foolish to leave it behind, just on the off chance that he might get away this time. He stopped, reset his foot in the muck, gripped with his toes, and lifted. The foot came out with the same sucking sound, the shoe still on it, covered with mud, only the small amount of sensation he had left in his feet convincing him that the shoe was still there.
Checking the angle on the helo, he saw it closing in steadily but still not quickly. Perhaps there was a chance to make it. With ten yards to go, he literally dove toward the scrub, arms stretched in front, waving in the air.
And then he was free, his feet suddenly released from the mud. It threw him off balance, and before he could catch himself, he was pitching forward, no longer held up by the thick silt. Putting his hands out, he covered the last few yards on all fours like a crab, rolling under the brush. Breathing with deep, racking sobs from the exertion, he pictured tracks across the mud of that stream pointing out his frail hiding spot — just like landing lights.
The beat of the rotors were sharper than when he awakened before. Now all his senses were alert. Not only did he know where he was and what he was trying to do, he also knew that he’d now covered all of three hundred yards and was cowering under a bit of scrub brush like a dog waiting for the whip to fall. The deep breathing helped. The oxygen, the blood racing through his system, all of his muscles active for a few brief moments, each of these were warning him, making him more alert. Moments before, he had been thinking hypothermia, that slow reduction in the body’s temperature until all feeling and caring disappeared and you gave up. Now there was no intention of giving up. Just don’t be so damn stupid next time — if there is a next time. Don’t try to outthink a helo, Ryng. If you let it go away, it’ll let you go away.
And then it was directly overhead, the rotors again beating the dust and pebbles into his skin with a deafening roar. It banked slightly, passing within yards of the cliff, then swung back over him, crossing the stream toward his first hiding place, then again sweeping back over the stream.
This is it! Ryng thought. It’s following the goddamned wounded beast, the blood in the snow. But it passed overhead again, moving down the shoreline, then out over the water.
Ryng waited, his body immobilized, his brain still unable to ascertain why the helo hadn’t gone into a hover directly above him before blasting wildly with its machine guns. Then the sound drifted farther away. He turned his head. Off over the water, he could see the helo headed in the direction of Longyearbyen. He could tell by the sound of the engine that it was traveling close to full speed. It wouldn’t be back — at least not until it was refueled.
He sat up amazed, shaking his head over his good luck. Then he stood, searching the stream. There were no prints! Looking more closely, he saw that the water, an opaque, milky mixture from the detritus that flowed from the glacier, had quickly covered his tracks. Already the silt was beginning to fill the holes where his feet had been.
With the knowledge that there was no time to ponder his good luck, he turned west, moving off at a good pace. If he were hiking under normal conditions — on flat ground, no mountains, no streams, no tundra — he could cover the distance in five or six hours. He was in good enough condition, but there was that slight problem of mountains and streams and tundra, not to mention the beating his body had taken recently or the probability that helicopters, perhaps more than one, would be back. And there was another problem — the fact that he had no weapons.
As he traveled, sometimes changing his pace to a trot, he reviewed the time that had passed since landing on Spitzbergen. He decided it had to be mid to late afternoon, and that he had anywhere from eight to ten hours left before the others were picked up by the Norwegian boat.
An inlet lay ahead that cut into a narrow valley. Ryng wanted desperately to get away from the narrow beachhead he was now covering. Its 150-yard width offered very little protection, a thought that kept him looking over his shoulder in the direction of Longyearbyen every minute or so. His chart showed a stream, a real one this time, that coursed out of the mountains to this inlet. It appeared narrow and deeper than the glacial runoff that had almost trapped him.
It was a few miles from the spot where the last helo had passed over him. There was no mud or silt to form a plain in this one, or at least it was hemmed in by the natural gully of the stream. Ryng fell to his knees, cupping the water and sipping slowly from his hands. Not too fast — his stomach was empty. Then he bent farther over and splashed the water over his face, onto his head, and down his neck. He could feel the caked mass in his hair breaking up under the makeshift bath and thanked whatever had saved him for also being sure that nobody saw him looking like that. The water was cold, but the exertion had warmed his body to the point that his earlier chill was gone. Ryng knew that if it had been a few weeks later, or one more of those arctic storms had come over the island, that his odds of getting away would have been very slim indeed.
After sipping some more of the water, he extracted the chart from his shirt. It was as accurate as Naval Intelligence could make it. As soon as the Norwegians had reported strange happenings in their territory, intelligence satellites had been repositioned to photograph the entire island. Highly specialized cartographers had then compared the photos to the latest charts in stock. It was a necessary exercise because they could detect annual changes in a particular area — in this case, the terminus of glaciers and the places where a man could and could not pass freely.
The stream he now sat by would be of no use. It worked quickly back into the mountains in a series of sharp falls. And at this point, the coast of the harbor narrowed even more than its current 150 yards. The cliffs facing across toward the Soviet base became sheer — impossible to climb.
He would have to cross the stream a few hundred yards up, then turn into the higher country. While the cliffs facing the harbor were impossible, their reverse side was much gentler, sloping into a series of glacier-scooped hanging valleys. Water runoff from the receding glaciers allowed some vegetation that would provide cover from time to time. Ryng could make it almost in a straight shot, except for the last peak, which was part of a westward-facing range — toward the ocean and safety. That one was steeper and would involve climbing in snow on one side and likely a long slide down the other, for he would briefly find himself crossing year-round snowfields.
As he slipped the chart inside his shirt, a growling in his stomach reminded him how empty it was. There was little chance of finding anything to eat. Svalbard was so far north, merely a thousand miles or so from the North Pole, that only a few species of animal life could survive here. Although polar bears, reindeer, and sea birds seemed to thrive in the harsh climate, Ryng had nothing that could kill one. Better to forget the hunger and concentrate on getting the hell out as fast as possible, Ryng realized. If he didn’t get to the meeting place in time, he could plan on a most unpleasant stay.
For the next half hour, he climbed a slope toward the first valley. The climb was gentle at first and then steeper as he came near the lip. Once over the top, there was another gentle slope where he could again pick up his pace without tiring himself. There were no trees, nothing that might provide a hiding place when they came back searching for him — which was another aspect to worry about. There was no longer the early warning of the helo coming across the broad harbor. The peaks would blot out the sound, and he would know nothing about them until a helo cleared a peak and came down toward him. They had the advantage this time.