North Cape

"The Russians will be desperate to catch us by now. They will have found the lifesphere ten hours ago at the least. And the life-sphere will tell them that we came from a ship, an American ship at that. What they will want to know at this point is whether or not the Norwegians are involved. But you can damn well bet that they will be searching with everything they have to locate the ship." Folsom stopped for a moment to think.

"I feel sure," he continued, "that even if they think some Americans have gotten ashore to find Teleman here — especially after Mac shot the hell out of them — they are not going to be scared off by the possibility of a pitched battle. In fact, I would even be willing to bet that they are figuring just as we are — that we don't dare get the Norwegians involved at this point. So, if anything, the Russians are going to move faster and harder.*

Folsom stopped to examine the three haggard faces peering at him in the dim light of the stove. Bone-breaking fatigue was on their faces, Teleman's especially. The hike under normal circumstances would have been nothing to these men, but the intense cold, Teleman's deteriorating condition, the wind, deep snow, and exceedingly dry cold all combined to sap strength at a magnified rate. His own legs and feet were screaming with returning circulation and fatigue. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he was able to still his shaking hands, Earlier in the afternoon a thought had occurred to him, a possibility that should have been amply clear to him earlier. He was extremely angry with himself for not having thought of it before. The only excuse he could make was the cold, the cold that sapped every last bit of strength, that required the utmost concentration just to place one foot in front of the other, the cold that required of you that no outside considerations interfere with this concentration because, if they did, you would find yourself slowly freezing to death, prone in the snow, without any awareness of having stopped moving minutes before. He was apprehensive about releas-ing this bombshell. Not only was endurance at the bottommost point for the three men facing him, but so was morale. It would not take much at this point for them to give up and climb into their sleeping bags. If this happened the Russians would certainly find them in a few hours at the most.

"Whether or not the Soviets will travel all night," he said slowly, choosing his words carefully at first… then Folsom realized that he need not he careful, that these were not men to give up so easily after having come so far. If that had been the case they would have done so hours before.… He began again. "I did not think of this until a few hours ago, but the submarine… there will be no need for it to stay in the Porsangerfjord. In fact, it will probably put out to sea to keep pace with the search party." The other three continued to watch him, flickers of apprehension growing in their faces.

"When the search party finds that we left without waiting for them, they will probably inform the submarine, which will then break all speed records moving down the coast to drop off another party, well ahead of us. It will be quite plain to them where we are heading. They can read a map as well as we, and they will know that we sure as hell are not going to head inland to Kistrand. If they do drop another party, then they've got us in a vise."

The other three reacted with varying degrees of anger or disgust, mostly directed at themselves for not having seen this possibility before. Teleman was awake now, the pain and fatigue of his screaming muscles forgotten for the moment.

"Okay, what do we do then?" Gadsen asked.

Folsom rubbed both hands across his face, massaging his weary eyes and wishing to God he had never left the Pentagon. "Well, first we all need sleep. So we take four hours out. That means we stop six hours and everyone but Teleman will stand a two-hour watch. Teleman is out, he needs all the sleep he can get."

He ignored Teleman's angry but feeble protest and continued. "Two hours each on watch will give us four hours of sleep. I'll take the first watch, Mac, you take the second and Julie the last." They nodded in agreement.

"What about tomorrow?" McPherson asked. "If we stop tonight, the Russians are going to be breathing down our necks."

"I agree," Folsom replied. "But I don't see what else we can do, We all need rest too badly to move on any farther tonight. I don't think it will do us any good to turn inland and try and approach the Norwegian base from the south. They will probably be watching for just such a move. I would guess the submarine will drop the second party as close to the base as they dare and work them back toward the first group. So about the only option left us is to make tracks for the base as fast as possible and hope to God that somehow we will miss the second party."

"How about letting the RFK know?"