He held himself in check, concentrating instead on getting back on his feet. But it was so hard, and each time he rose up, his head spun.
In the woods he held onto a tree for support, and when he caught his breath he lurched a few feet to the next tree where he held up again. The cold, now that he was out of the wind, seemed even more intense than before. Japan was a long way off. An impossible distance, it seemed.
Working his way deeper into the woods, from tree to tree, Carter tried to make his brain work, tried to think out his situation. But it was difficult. Everything seemed so remote, so unreal.
Hansen had their radio. Carter concentrated on that thought. Together they would make their way to the coast where they had hidden the rubber raft. They would call the Silver Fish and she would come in.
Hansen would have to do most of the rowing out to the sub. But once they got beyond the surf close into shore, it wouldn't be so bad.
Carter stopped again to catch his breath. If they capsized, he knew he would not survive. Or if the submarine did not receive their signal and they had to stay the night and tomorrow here, he knew he wouldn't make it.
But he had the computer chip. If he and Hansen could get off the base without being detected, there was a very good chance the Russians would believe everyone had been killed in the sub pens.
He half fell, half slid into a narrow depression, then crawled up the other side. There were some strong lights ahead through the swirling snow. For a long time his mind would not make the connection; he simply stared dully at the lights and the moving snow not knowing what he was seeing.
But then it penetrated. He had made it to the edge of the woods. He was at the no-man's-land this side of the perimeter fence. The light was atop one of the guard towers.
He had come up from the canal, though, not the turning basin, which meant he was probably east of Hansen's hiding spot. But how far east? He had no way of knowing. Nor, for a very long second or two, did he have any idea which way was east.
Carter reared back into the woods, the full force of his predicament and his physical condition hitting him hard. He was going to need food and shelter. And very soon, or he simply would not make it; he would wander around in circles out here until he either froze to death or the Russians picked him up.
Holding onto a tree, he stared at the lights through the snow and tried to make his head work. Tried to reason it out.
Hansen was off to the right. He would be very near the edge of the woods. He would be waiting.
Carter stumbled off in that direction, every muscle in his body screaming for relief. For rest.
Once again time seemed to take on a meaning of its own. The only thing that was important was moving forward. At all costs. Each time he fell he dragged himself up, until in the end he found himself lying facedown in a huge patch of bloody snow.
He pushed himself up and looked from the blood across to the fence. There were no patrols in sight, nor did it seem as if the hole they had cut in the fence had been disturbed.
But something had died here. There were signs of a terrific struggle in the snow. He tried to sort it out, but there were so many footprints everywhere… then he had it.
Carter crawled to the very edge of the woods and looked out across the no-man's-land toward the fence. Two separate trails of blood led straight across. Two trails. Hansen, and who else?
Mindless now of his own injuries, of his battered body, Carter got to his feet, stumbled out of the woods, and made his way across the no-man's-land, the snow and wind hitting him again now that he was out in the open.
At the fence, the opening had been shoved back in place and there was blood around it and on the other side. On the outside of the fence.
He looked through the mesh toward the hill that led up away from the base. On the other side was the rocky coast off which the Silver Fish was waiting beneath the water for the rendezvous message… a message that would be impossible to send now that Hansen was gone with their only remaining radio.
Also over the hill was the fishing village of Sovetskaya-Senyev. The villagers no doubt were charged by the Russian authorities with helping watch the coast.
Was it someone from the village who had followed them up from the sea? He had felt another's presence very strongly when they had first arrived there that evening. Had someone grabbed Hansen?
He pulled open the flap in the wire mesh fence, crawled through, then piled snow around the opening. As he started up the hill through the scrub, something else penetrated his beleaguered brain: even across the no-man's-land — out in the open — some trace of blood were still visible. But the wind was blowing, the snow was falling. It had to mean whoever had killed or wounded Hansen had dragged him away within the last few minutes; otherwise the snow would have covered their tracks.
At the crest of the hill, Carter lay flat in the snow and looked over the edge. There wasn't much to see because of the storm. Nevertheless, he pulled his Mac 10 around and worked the stiff slide back and forth a couple of times to loosen the mechanism.
He looked back over his shoulder. Nothing much was visible behind him except for the lights on the guard towers that glowed fuzzily in the night sky. Nothing could be seen of the burning submarine in the pens. Morgan's body was back there in the water. Barber had died there too. Good men, Carter thought, who should never have come ashore here.
Summoning up his last reserves of strength, he got to his feet, stumbled over the crest of the hill and down the other side, starting south down the coast to where they had left Forester's body and the rubber raft.
What had taken four healthy, rested — though wet and cold — men an hour to do, took Carter three. At times he lost his way, forgetting to detour inland, and he would find himself at the edge of a cliff impossible to negotiate, and he would have to retrace his steps.
At first he looked for more traces of blood, but by now the snow had effectively covered all tracks.
Several times on his trek he woke up to find himself lying facedown in the snow, or curled up in a ball behind some outcropping of rock. Each time it became more and more difficult to rouse himself, to push himself to his feet, to force himself to get up.
Once he backtracked for nearly two hundred yards because he convinced himself he had forgotten the carrying case. When he got to where he thought he had left it, there was nothing but a depression in the snow where he had rested awhile. In panic he thought someone was following him and had picked up the carrying case. But then he reached over his shoulder and touched it. He realized that he had been hallucinating. The case had been strapped to his back all the time.
He was beginning to hear sounds again, but in the end he almost passed the jagged rock pile that marked the way they had come up from the beach. He stumbled and fell to his knees. This time he did not know if he would have the strength to get up again, but when he looked up he saw the rocks and suddenly recognized where he was. He had made it. He had made it!
Carter got to his feet and climbed up over the hillock and over the crest so he could see the ocean. The long combers were coming in hard and crashing on the rocks. He could hear that, and he could hear the wind, but everything was at a distance.
He watched the sea for a moment or two. It was going to be difficult getting the raft through that surf, but no more difficult than walking through the storm from the sub pens. He had come this far; there was no way in hell he'd give up now.
He worked his way down to the tall rocks where they had stashed Forester's body and the rubber raft. But they were not there.