But the spacing between them, he saw, was very murky. And they would be looking, after all, for a hurrying figure on skis. If he could get them to pass him … He began manoeuvring himself sideways between two of the stamping figures. And had not yet made it when the line stiffened suddenly and moved forward, and he went prone, skis underneath him, anorak drawn over his head.
He was just a hump of ice, he prayed. And they had only now started, not yet accustomed to the task; were seven or eight metres on either side of him.
He heard the rumble of engines, the swish of skis, and held his breath. And they were past. They’d passed. He held it a while longer before daring to get his head up and look back. Yes. Fading into fog. He buckled the skis on, got back in the anorak, and immediately set off, very fast, on the tracks left by the vehicles. And at once stopped. No! His own tracks! They’d spot them. Were certain to — maybe not right away. But soon, not a doubt of it. Would come chasing after him. Vehicles would get to him long before he could reach –
He turned and went back. Went rapidly, in the ski tracks, and in a minute had caught up with them, saw the flickering line of torches, the wide hazy beams of the vehicles. The drivers would be peering ahead. A skier next to a vehicle, immediately next. He came behind the man, careful not to tangle skis, and hooked him at once, one arm round his neck, a glove in his mouth as it opened. The neck he could have broken immediately, but the face as it hinged back was that of a Yakut lad, maybe eighteen, the eyes innocent and astonished.
He caught the boy’s heavy torch, and hit him with it. It struck only the padded hood and, swearing, he left the glove rammed in the mouth, and wrenched the hood back and hit him again, two solid thuds, and had him on the ice. He wrenched the gun off his neck and smashed the stock hard against the boy’s temple. The tunic top was in one piece and he yanked it off him and got it on himself. It was weighted, equipment dangling at the back. He couldn’t do anything about the trousers. He left the trousers, also his own anorak, took his glove, hung the gun around his neck and set off rapidly after the patrol. In a couple of minutes he had reached it and taken up position next to the half-track.
All as before, the line swishing steadily forward, torches pointing ahead. He got the boy’s torch pointing that way.
With gloves on, he couldn’t feel the parts of the little automatic weapon. He’d done a course on it at the camp. He fumbled with it, identified the safety, snicked it off, found the trigger and pulled. A rapid burst spat out — and with immediate effect. The torch nearest in the fog turned towards him and he saw the half-track driver peering sideways out of the window at the white-hooded figure now waving frantically beside him.
He was signalling with the torch, shouting. ‘He’s there! Just turned — going like hell! Going back!’ He put another burst ahead, saw his neighbour do the same, was aware the half-track driver had increased speed, shouting into his radio, and that gunfire was now sounding off along the line.
He let it go and turned and sped back, keeping to the tracks. Fifteen minutes at least, maybe twenty, for them to sort out the confusion, longer still for them to decide what the hell to do about it — also where the missing man had got to.
He came on the man very rapidly, still crumpled on the ice. The slender young face was solemn in sleep, mouth open, breath gently steaming. He wrapped him in the anorak, shoved his head in the fur hat. The boy’s gloves had been half pulled off, and he pulled them on again. Frostbite, hypothermia — he couldn’t do anything about it. I’m sorry, he told the Yakut.
The boy was still attached to his skis, now crossed on the ice — an altogether better pair. He quickly took them off him, with the ski sticks looped round the wrists, and got them on himself. There was a torch lying on the ice — his own, he saw; evidently fallen out when he had left the anorak. Now he switched it on and left it, for the Yakut to be found, and told him again he was sorry, and took off.
It had taken no more than two minutes and now he went fast, on good skis, unworried by the ice pillars, in no doubt where the vehicle tracks were leading; and after another kilometre was aware that the helicopters had gone. He could hear them well behind. They’d been called off, were now giving support to the men hunting him.
Soon he had stopped counting; no longer any point. His paces had greatly lengthened, a thousand of them now obviously much more than a kilometre. And going very much faster. In only minutes the island would be there in front of him. He could almost feel it, the solid mass of it, all his senses alert, all his exhaustion dropping away.
There would be men lined up, he had no doubt. And sensing devices. It was after all the most advanced of the electronic outposts, right on the border. The equipment would mainly face the other way, but the extremities of the place would certainly be covered. It struck him that he wasn’t going to make it out on the ice: no question of simply going round it. He would be located immediately. He would have to get on it, behind the sensors, a thought that lit up in him suddenly like a bonfire.
Which in the same moment took material form immediately over his head. Amid a great whooping of sirens a flare had gone up. It arced obliquely, descending over him, and from a dozen points others instantly arced. The fog all round him became a brilliant aquarium green, shot through suddenly by a blinding narrow-beam searchlight. He skied crazily through it, waving his torch and yelling.
‘Hey, hey! We’re on to him!’ He was panting hard. ‘He’s doubling back there. You got the flares ready?’
‘Flares? What flares?’
Behind the beam, white-hooded figures had materialised, guns at the ready. Several military jeeps were standing by, he saw.
‘Christ, we yelling for them! This man moving fast — already he broke the line once! I tell you, we don’t move it here, we lose him. What’s the cockup with the radio?’
‘Operations! Operations!’ One of them was shouting into a handset. ‘They’re calling for flares out there. They’ve spotted him and they need — What? Wait a minute. Who’s saying this — what mob you from?’ he said.
‘We’re all split up. They send me back — a tracker, I’m to lead a jeep there, with plenty flares for Christ’s sake! Here — I go to Operations myself.’ He blinked around him, dazzled. ‘Where they keep the Operations here?’
While the man shouted into the handset, others were now surrounding the tracker. ‘You one of the new recruits, then?’
‘Sure. Know the country, don’t know too much this army. Where they put the Operations?’
He was already slipping out of his skis. In the many lights that had now come on he saw that all of them had skis strapped to their backs. The whole company was standing on a wide platform, cleared of snow, under the overhang of a cliff. A ramp, evidently for vehicles, led up from the platform, and at either side of it a walkway faded away into the fog.
‘They sent back a tracker!’ The man was still shouting into the handset. ‘Some fuck-up with the R/T, he says … Well, I can’t fix up — Okay, check it out … They’re checking it out. You can’t go up there,’ he said.
‘Jesus Christ — they’ll lose him! Is too slow here. Is slow picking me up, even! How soon you see I’m coming, man?’
‘Corporal — you call me corporal,’ the man said. ‘And the sensors picked you up, animal! They’re heat sensors. What do you understand?’
‘This fucking island I understand — is why they pay me. This fellow get through, you’ll see. I go take a look round the point. I think maybe needs men there − not sensors! When I fire off a few shots you know I beat the sensors, eh? I’m back four, five minutes. For the car and the flares!’