Red Ice

“I played along for a while to get a little thinking space. There was something wrong with Lutjens, more than just a pile of bad debts. He didn’t seem to have been issued a full emotional register. I’ve seen people like him before. They see other people as just objects to be used. Anyway, he was a nasty customer but not really very sharp, if you know what I mean. So I managed to steer him into relatively harmless dead ends—except for Captain Dravit’s booby trap—he did all that on his own. Trouble was, Lutjens was getting thinking space, too, and next thing I know, he plunked a threat to get me yanked out of the Nav’ on top of it all. Mentions Commander Ackert, too. What was I going to do? First no wife, then no job, and nine kids under fourteen? Sulfur and salvation, there just wasn’t any way out I could see in the short run.”

His head sagged. Wisps of steamy vapor seeped from his torn stomach.

“God forgive me, I helped them, I did. Why, I even thought of the psych… psychological angle. It was my idea to help your girlfriend stow away on the sub. A woman can really work on your mind, I know. Really get you dizzy when you’re about to set in motion something really wild, like this project, even if they never say a word. She didn’t, did she? She was something, Mister Frazer. The regulator screw-up would have given you an excuse to back out.

“Aw, damnation, I’m nearly a deacon and it’s just beyond me to do things the wrong way for long. Lord’s truth. Dep, my old woman, she’ll understand and forgive me, I hope. I just bided my time and trusted in Grandpaw and Uncle Ho.”

He read the question in my expression.

“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? What I mean is, I pulled back in the face of a superior force—guerrilla style and waited for an opportunity. You know, playing it the way Uncle Ho—or really General Giap, I guess—told his troops to play it against our conventional ground-pounders. It was a strange feeling having to fight those fellows, Mr. Ackert and the others, that way. I waited and then on the submarine I saw my chance.

“You know my grandpaw was an old gimlet-eyed circuit preacher. Well, he used to say as a good Christian he couldn’t pass judgment on a fellow mortal, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put that mortal in a position where the scales of right couldn’t make their own decision. I unhooked Lutjens’s safety line—but no mortal’s hand swept him overboard.”

It was an unusual way to justify a killing in self-defense and in the defense of others. Puckins was an unusual man, a man of hard courage and convictions.

“Well I’m glad Lutjens and his friends failed. Bullheaded officers like you, Mister Frazier, are just a nuisance to try to stop. I was glad when we landed on the ice, that meant there was nothing else they or I could do.”

So there it was, all laid out neatly.

“The whole thing’s kind of funny.” He laughed, and then choked weakly.

“How’s about wrapping me with a little belt of that leftover C-4, and unscrewing the detonator from one of these grenades? I might as well take a Russki or two with me.

Wickersham brought over the plastic explosive. With his massive hands he worked it around Puckins as tenderly as a mother would with an ailing child. He handed Puckins the grenade works. When it was over, the chief threw back his head and sighed.

“I’m sorry….”

“Cut it out. If you wanted to screw us over you would have! You didn’t.”

He grinned halfheartedly.

“Chief, here take this,” Wickersham said. It was an old coin with a square hole in the center. “It’s for luck.”

Then Wickersham walked away. He began picking up paratroopers’ rifles mechanically. One by one he smashed them into useless chunks of wood and steel against a large tree. His eyes were moist.

As were mine.

An hour or so later we heard an explosion behind us, up the valley. Whether he had taken a Russki or two, or whether he had just passed out and taken pressure off the grenade spoon, I would never know.

Chamonix placed his hand on my shoulder. “In a way, our betrayals have something in common. We men of causes and violence exist in their eyes to be used, expended, or betrayed. Oh, their glorious manipulations through things or people! The only ones we can trust are one another. Now they want to use and destroy that small bit of solace, too.”

Puckins didn’t owe me a thing. Ackert was another matter.

The fresh snow drove down in large, awkward flakes, as if churned in some giant glass paperweight. The visibility was fifteen feet, which, given the speed of our withdrawal, meant we were skiing blind. With the snow and direction of the wind, it was understandable why Gurung didn’t notice the dark forms ahead of us. The forms congealed into a herd of reindeer, the cattle of Siberia. Nearby an Evenki drover and his son loomed out of the swirling snow. Unfortunately they saw us at the same moment we saw them.