Red Ice

As the gangs approached the railroad gate, they began to stumble for lead position. Intuitively I knew that the first gang through the gate ate first, and the last gang through ate last… what was left. Like scarecrows trying to fly, they seemed to gain speed by flapping the black rags that covered them. Many dropped out of formation, lacking the energy to continue the race. One man from one gang was the first to reach the gate, barely cutting off a second gang. Two gray-coated VOKhk guards beat back the second gang, swinging their rifles like clubs. At the inner gate, one at a time, the prisoners were searched by two more VOKhk guards. Then they were allowed to enter the section that contained the prison barracks and mess hall. My breath kept fogging up the binoculars. After dark, I switched to the Starlight sniper scope. The scope didn’t work at first so I had to rush back to our bivouac to warm up the batteries while Alvarez covered for me with the binoculars. Using the scope, I studied the three sentry towers at the corners of the camp and recorded significant movement within the camp. Each relieving pair did the same. I noted there were lights on the perimeter but the towers stayed dark.

Reveille for the camp came about two hours before dawn. Men lined up at the mess hall and at another building, which must have been the sick bay. Apparently if a zek claimed to be sick, he lost his chance to eat. Then the men lined up at the inner gate and were frisked as they entered the parade ground. Any extra clothing was confiscated and the zek had to strip it off right there in the fifteen-below open air. When concealed food was discovered, it was ground beneath a guard’s boot.

“Look at that.” Wickersham, who shared my watch, pointed to the gate. Something shiny glittered in the snow near a prisoner held by two guards. A sergeant with three yellow stripes across his sky blue shoulder boards was lashing the zek across the face with a quirt.

“Must have tried to smuggle a knife out with him,” Wickersham offered as he watched the scene intently.

The VOKhk sergeant was built like a beer barrel. He had to look up at the prisoner—until after the savage, methodical working-over, the prisoner sagged to the ground. Another guard, a major, walked over to the squat sergeant. At first I thought he was going to put a stop to it, but he just put his hands on his hips and watched. When the prisoner passed out, the major had two other prisoners carry the unconscious zek to a building within the triangular apex section of the camp. It was probably the punishment block or “cooler.”

Wickersham watched the beer-barrel sergeant strut away. “Fellow sure likes his work. I think he’s got it in for that work gang now.”

Then, as if to prove his words, six of the guards hustled back to the guardroom and came out with crowbars. They walked to one barracks and pried out the window frames. The effect on the gang was visible. They slumped dejectedly. No windows on a barracks in sub-zero weather was a virtual death sentence.

Wickersham shook his head. He pointed to the punishment block. “That may be the cooler”—he swung his quivering mitten toward the windowless barracks—“but it’ll be no cooler than that one.”

It was a play on words, but no joke.

I sketched the camp with a ski pole in the snow. “That’s the camp generator. That, we think, is the camp magazine. That building is the guardroom and guards’ quarters. Does everyone understand what he has to do?”

Each man nodded as I caught his eye. Matsuma had a distant look. I guessed he was meditating his way through some samurai purification ritual on his feet.

“Matsuma, let’s keep a clear head through this. Your responsibilities to the living of this group take precedence over revenge for the dead.”

“I will do duty to all.” He bowed his head slightly.

I studied the camp through the Starlight scope, carefully avoiding the perimeter lights, whose brightness could burn out the scope’s delicate sensors. The whole valley seemed agonizingly still. Occasionally the moon poked through the clouds, but its effect was fleeting. Once or twice a door slammed in the officers’ quarters or the guardroom. The valley was so quiet that each door slam seemed only yards away.

Puckins and Gurung crawled down to the barbed-wire fence. They advanced, sliding their skis under them, with their hands in the toe straps and their rifles around their necks. Puckins cut the lower five strands between two posts on the apex section’s perimeter. He left the top electrified strands alone. Puckins’s cut breached an opening about four feet wide and three and one half feet high. He then cut through the second perimeter fence. He bowed with a flourish, gestured Gurung through, and then handed him the wire cutters.