“Right. We might as well run ourselves out of batteries along with everything else. God, she looks like she’s had a job of it.”
“I know.” His voice was as bleak as the night. “Maybe I’ve finally done it.”
She puzzled over Smith’s words, but she sensed this wasn’t the time to ask about them.
The probing sword of Smith’s lantern beam had started to cold-fade when it found the triangular gap in the ice wall. Hunkering down, he shined the light into it.
This was what he’d been seeking. A heavy slab of sea ice had been driven up onto the beach and lifted on edge by another, following shoulder of the pack, leaving a blue-white triangular cavern, twenty feet deep by six wide and high enough for a tall man to stand stooped in.
“This is it! We’ll fort up here! Major, take Randi to the back of the cave; then come up here and start walling off this entrance with snow and ice blocks. Val, you’re with me.”
Smith used the last of their light sticks to fill the little ice cave with a misty green chemical glow, and he took a moment to set up and light their tiny pellet stove. There wasn’t much fuel left for that, either, but if it couldn’t make their shelter warm, at least it could make it less freezing. As he worked with the stove he issued commands.
“Val, spread a couple of survival blankets on the cave floor; then zip your sleeping bag and mine together.”
“Right. Doing it.”
They eased the comatose Randi onto the combined sleeping bags.
“Okay Val, I’m putting you in with her. While I get Randi undressed, get out of your clothes. Everything has to come off.”
“Understood,” she replied, tugging down the zip of her parka. “But I was hoping to hear that request under decidedly different circumstances.”
As he stripped Randi he used a flashlight to run a lightning-swift white-light examination of her body, checking for the overt ravages of frostbite. Thank God she’d at least had the arctic boots. They’d protected her feet, the point of greatest vulnerability.
Valentina squirmed out of her heavy outer shell garments. Taking a deep, deliberate breath, she whipped her sweater and thermal top off over her head. Her bra and socks followed, as did the forearm sheaths. She positioned her knives within reach near the head of the bed, then pushed ski pants, thermal bottoms, and panties off in one wadded mass. Naked, she stretched out beside Randi, her head pillowed on a pack, the cold a flame against her skin.
“Ready,” she said, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.
Smith supervised the nestling of the two nude ivory bodies together, Valentina shivering and Randi too deathly still.
He packed the thermal pads around the women, then zipped the sleeping bags closed. He spread Smyslov’s opened bag over them, along with their discarded clothing.
Valentina curled herself around the other woman’s unconscious form, cradling Randi’s head against the soft pillow of her breast and shoulder. Randi stirred, whimpered faintly, and tried to nuzzle closer to the source of warmth.
“She’s like ice, Jon,” Valentina murmured. “Will this be enough?”
“I don’t know. A lot depends on how much of this is simple exhaustion and how much is exposure. Hypothermia can be very mean and very tricky.” Smith rested his fingertips against Randi’s throat, taking a carotid pulse. “She’s been preloaded with a massive dose of antibiotics. That’ll help with any pulmonary complications. And she was keeping her hands and face covered. I don’t think she’s been too badly frostbitten.”
Smith shook his head, lightly stroking Randi’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “If her core temperature hasn’t fallen too far, she might be able to bounce back. She’s tough, Val, as tough as they make them. If her temperature has dropped too low…I don’t know. All we can do is keep her warm and wait.”
Valentina half-smiled. “You care a great deal about this lady, don’t you?”
Smith tucked the mouth of the sleeping bag closer around the two women. “I’m responsible for her. Both for her being here and for her being who she is.”
“You’re responsible for all of us, Jon,” Valentina replied, looking up at him. “And may I say that’s a rather comforting thought at the moment.”
Smith grinned back and lightly stroked back her dark hair. “I hope that confidence isn’t misplaced. Try and get some sleep.”
Taking the SR-25 and his medical kit with him, Smith moved up toward the mouth of the cave. En route he paused to fill an aluminum pan with ice fragments, balancing it atop the pellet stove.
Smyslov had finished walling off the entrance, leaving only an air vent at the top. Eliminating the wind chill gave their arctic clothing a chance to cope with the still air temperature, making the little cavern seem warm.
“How’s the arm doing, Major?”
Smyslov shrugged. “It isn’t a problem.”
“I’ll have a look at it anyway. You up on your tetanus shots?”
“I am good.”
With their backs to the opposing sides of the cave, Smith treated Smyslov’s arm. Working around the Russian’s blood-sodden sleeves, he removed the crudely applied field dressing. Cleaning and disinfecting the wound, he dusted it with sulfa powder and applied a fresh water-and-cold-proof bandage.
“You’re lucky,” Smith commented. “It’s a nice, clean penetration.” He lifted an eyebrow at the Russian. “In fact, it looks like it was made by one of Val’s knives.”
Smyslov grimaced. “It was, but with my approval.”
“What did happen up on that ledge while I was hanging at the other end of that safety line?”
Smyslov sketched out the chain of events from the icefall through Smith’s rescue. “Thanks for the assist.” Smith nodded. “It was greatly appreciated. Mind if I ask you a personal question, though?”
“Go ahead, Colonel.”
“Why didn’t you just cut Val’s throat and the safety rope?”
Smyslov was quiet for a moment. “That would have been in line with the standing orders I have received from my government,” he replied finally. “But you have a term in the American military for a situation such as I find myself in: ‘FUBAR.’ I believe it means ‘fucked up beyond all recall.’”
Smith applied a last strip of surgical tape. “It does.”
“Such is my current state,” the Russian continued. “I was placed within your team to prevent an international embarrassment for Russia and a shattering of relations between our nations. The Spetsnaz were inserted onto this island for that purpose as well. But now it is all FUBAR. Even had I chosen to kill you and the professor on the mountain, there would have been no realistic way to prevent this embarrassment and alienation. Things are too out of control now. Too chaotic. Your nation would investigate, and the truth would undoubtedly come out in the end. Probably it has been so from the beginning. This I have come to recognize, and I did not wish to murder my…comrades in an act of futility.”
Again Smyslov gave a bitter smile. “You see? We are not all like the Misha’s political officer.”
Smith rucked Smyslov’s bloodstained parka sleeve down over the fresh dressing. “I’d already come to that conclusion, Major.”
He closed his medical kit and leaned back against the green ice wall of the cave, the SR-25 propped beside him. “I’ve also come to the conclusion that you’re right about the attack on the science station. The numbers don’t add up for it to have been Spetsnaz. I’ve got to assume our third faction is now present on the island, and given the way Randi was handled, that presence is nasty and formidable.”
“I would agree, Colonel.”
“Then, given that your mission to prevent the truth being revealed about the Soviet first strike is indeed FUBAR, would you agree that we again have common cause over our mission, preventing the Misha’s bioweapons from falling into the wrong hands?”