Red Ice

No, it was all wrong. Men like Dravit never thought of retirement. They slipped into it unconsciously or went out in a blaze of glory. I mulled the situation over and over in my mind. If the little Englishman left us to die, was there any point in fighting it? No, that was wrong, too; the cold must be warping my mind. I wanted to live, to survive. Yet if we did live, and Dravit had betrayed us, life would be marred by one very large void.

We made good progress during the next day, too. All indications were that we were very close to the camp. We seemed beyond exhaustion now, but had to keep moving. The ahkio drained away our strength, but we could not afford to abandon it or its contents. With the closing proximity of the camp, I reminded the point men and rear security people to stay alert.

During one water stop, Puckins deftly pulled a rubber ball from Alvarez’s ear, causing Gurung to laugh uproariously. Puckins had been working on the trick since we’d left the kayaks. Gurung had seen it many times before. Still it was a tough stunt to do with shooting mittens on. Chamonix was clapping his hands together to maintain the circulation when Puckins snatched a sponge cube from the Frenchman’s hawklike nose.

“Enough,” Chamonix barked with mock severity as he motioned everyone up off their packs.

“March or die,” he growled in parody of the well-known legion order. He skied off whistling “Je Ne Regrette Rien” in wavering notes, which mimicked Piaf’s mournful rendition. A significantly haunting tune to hear from one of the Premier Regiment Etranger Parachutiste, it generally foreshadowed bloodletting with a vengeance.

By now fatigue and stress had made everyone giddy. It was our fifth day of sub-zero weather.

CHAPTER 22

The railroad line cut through the tree-covered contours like a child’s finger through cake icing. The absence of drifts over the individual rails meant a train had been by recently. I dead-reckoned we were somewhere southwest of the camp. We paralleled the tracks, staying behind the tree line until twilight, then pitched camp. I didn’t want to stumble onto the camp in the dark.

At about noon of the sixth day, we found the camp in a broad open valley ringed by spruce-covered ridges. Caution required that we study the camp’s routine for at least a full day. The size of the garrison necessitated a night attack. Since it was already noon, that meant we should reconnoiter the camp for the rest of the day and attack during the evening of the following day. We burrowed well back into the tree line and in pairs took turns watching the camp through binoculars.

The camp had been erected in the shape of a large isosceles triangle, with its base parallel to the railroad line. On the opposite side of the line lay large pyramids of logs. Between the camp and the logs, the line split into two spurs. A string of half-loaded flatcars, together with a wood-burning locomotive, rested on the outer spur. The sides of the triangle stretched roughly 250 yards on each side and 150 yards at the base. The triangle had been truncated with internal fences into three bandlike sections. An empty parade ground, scarred by half-track treadmarks formed the base section. Four prison barracks, a mess hall, and some other buildings composed the waist section. We had no trouble identifying each of the commandant’s, officers’, and guards’ quarters in the apex section. A magazine; the radio shack; its electrical generator; and a tall, well-maintained antenna were also located in the apex section.

Near dusk, four gangs of prisoners marched out of the taiga toward the camp. “March” was the charitable term; they stumbled in unison before four half-track trucks. As we watched, a woman near the rear of one formation faltered and collapsed. The half-track behind her didn’t swerve an inch. It continued on, leaving a red stamp at even intervals, from the spot where it had crushed her under its treads.