First Salvo (35 page)

Abruptly, he was out of the snow. Gravel and loose rock now ripped at his body, and he felt the shirt tearing off his back. A new sensation of pain rolled over him. Ryng knew he could not afford the luxury of allowing the pain to overwhelm him. As he skidded to a stop, his arms and legs flailed for any kind of grip that might give him the chance to roll onto his belly.

With a groan of pain, he flopped onto his stomach, searching the slope above for his pursuer, then spotted the man in much the same state as himself. The black uniform stood out through the shower of snow where the Russian had also fallen down the steep pitch. In front of the man, bouncing end over end, was the AK-74. There was no way the man and the gun would get together faster than Ryng could get to them.

Groggy from the fall, Ryng drew himself onto his hands and knees. His shirt and pants were shredded, blood seeped from a myriad cuts and scratches, and the pain from deep bruises made every movement agonizing.
Forget the pain, Bernie
, the voice reminded him.
Better you get to that rifle before the other guy, or you won’t have a prayer in this world
. Somehow he was on his feet and lunging toward the spot where the Russian and his gun were headed.

But there wasn’t going to be a gun for either of them. As he neared the intersection of dirt and snow where the other man would land, the weapon hurtled on past. It would just be the two of them, and Ryng had no doubts whatsoever that it would quickly be just one.

When Ryng was within fifty yards, the Russian finally halted himself. Lying there just as battered as his adversary, Colonel Bulgan forced himself to suck in deep breaths. The pain, especially in the injured wrist, was agonizing. His head and face were torn by snow and gravel and throbbed intensely. The gun, he knew, was out of reach. He just hoped the American had no better chance at it than himself. Rolling onto his one good arm, Bulgan looked around, reorienting himself. Then his eyes fell on Ryng.

The American was stumbling toward him. In Ryng’s mind, it was a charge; he was driving like a fullback. To Bulgan, it seemed almost comic until he remembered who this man was. Then he rolled onto his knees, balancing precariously as his head swam with pain. At twenty-five yards, the Russian stumbled to his feet, his good arm cocked, the other hanging uselessly at his side. He lowered his head and reeled toward the American.

To Ryng, the situation was bizarre. The Russian intended to butt him as they came together. But try as he would, it seemed impossible to avoid the Russian’s crazed charge.

They came together with a thud, Bulgan’s head hitting Ryng’s chest at the same time a fist caught the Russian in the side of the head. They both went down, each rolling away from the other, then back to their feet.

With a roar, seeing the other man’s left hand was useless, Ryng charged again. He swung wildly, catching the other with a grazing blow to the shoulder. Bulgan hissed like a snake, catching Ryng with a wild swing to the forehead.

But it was not really a contest. One man crazed with pain had the advantage over the other with only one good arm. Twice, Ryng caught Bulgan in the jaw, snapping his head back each time.

Bulgan staggered, blood now flowing from his nose and ears as Ryng hit him twice more in the face. Ryng then lunged for the kill. He spun the other around, catching him first in a head lock, then applying the pressure backward to snap the man’s neck. He could feel elbows flailing back at his ribs, but that was a useless effort. The Russian was already too weak, and now his air was cut off. Ryng applied the pressure, but the Black Beret’s torso was thick and tough and he was straining for his life.

As he reached the critical point, Ryng felt the body begin to relax in his arms, and for a reason he would never understand, he relaxed the pressure. But as soon as he relaxed, Bulgan’s elbow stabbed into his stomach and his heel crashed down on Ryng’s instep.
Give him an inch and he’ll kill you!
Ryng thought, plunging back into the death struggle.

With a quick effort, Ryng snapped the man’s neck, and Bulgan’s body went rigid, then slumped in his arms, a permanent dead weight.

The body slid to the ground. Without looking back, Ryng trotted down to where the rifle had landed. Useless! The stock was broken, the barrel bent.

He again searched the horizon. Nothing. Wait—there was something there. Smoke. A black smudge where sea and sky joined. He thought he could make out thick clouds billowing upward, but it was too distant to be sure. More often than not steady black smoke at sea meant a ship was burning. But whose?

There was nothing to do but wait. Sharp bluffs to the south kept him from setting out toward the original meeting place. It seemed to him that the Harriers might have radioed his position back to their carrier when they took out the helo. If some intelligent soul put two and two together, they might figure where Ryng had come over the peak and where he’d come down to the shore. If they knew enough about him to allow the Harriers to take a moment off from their mission, someone must have the word out that he was worth rescuing. No telling how they’ll do it; they could turn up any time. And if he wasn’t available, no one was going to wait for him. With that, he moved off downhill at a good pace, aware now of the pain which seemed to take over every muscle and every joint in his body.

At the base, there was a narrow beach below a shallow rocky escarpment. Ryng saw the path down to the beach, but he chose to remain above it, giving himself a better vantage point for anything that might turn up.

Now inactivity brought on a chill. The air was cold, though probably not as cold as it had been for the past ten hours. But up until now he’d been in motion, or maybe his adrenaline had been pumping so hard that he was unaware of the temperature.

It couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees out, if that. More than likely, it was probably a nice day for this far north. Moreover, to have no rain this time of year, not even the normal cloud cover, had been to his advantage, allowing him to survive this far. He had no intention of giving in now.

Considering that no one knew exactly where he was, or even if he was alive, he looked for a way to protect himself. He had nothing to eat, his clothes were in shreds, his body raw and bruised, and any change in the weather would kill him within twenty-four hours.

Ryng set about searching for material to build a shelter, but that was fruitless. Because of the land’s proximity to the North Pole, there were no trees. The ground cover of the tundra did not cling to the hillsides, and mosses and lichens were the only plant life. Only polar bears and reindeer ranged the islands, and the arctic terns and puffins nested according to their environment. Man was not meant to live here. The land was cold, gray, and barren.

Wandering the edge of the cliff, Ryng soon satisfied himself that there was no driftwood below of particular value. After all, there were no wooded islands in that part of the world and nothing afloat other than fishing boats. Accepting the fact, he determined the next best plan was to find some shelter from the wind. He located a rocky enclosure by the cliffside, providing a full view of the horizon. All that was left was to wait, conserve what little energy remained, and hope. There was no going back over the top.

He was not surprised when he awoke somewhat later.

He knew he had only dozed, but there was no telling for how long. There was little change in the position of the sun at this latitude, whether he had slept an hour or five hours. He felt cramped and moved to stretch his muscles. Pain washed over him as he made the initial effort. He seemed to have bruises on top of bruises. Where scabs had formed over scratches and cuts, they cracked open and blood seeped onto his skin. His head throbbed.

For a moment his eyes would not focus. The tender skin at the corners cried out when he rubbed at them with raw fists. The smoke on the horizon came into focus first. It was thick and black and it stretched across the sky to the north, gradually thinning as the winds dispersed it. Whatever it was, Ryng assumed there was big trouble, for fires at sea that lasted this long were probably out of control. Was it a ship in distress? Was that what was supposed to have rescued him?

His eyes crisscrossed the ocean. To his right—to the northwest—he saw what seemed to be a spit of land. Remembering the island that had been offshore when they landed, he assumed he was now to the south of that, probably closer to the entrance of the harbor than he’d expected. Dividing the ocean into sections, he returned his gaze to each one three times, rechecking to make sure he hadn’t missed a thing.

There! His eyes flicked back to a spot on the surface. He blinked. Nothing. Wait! There
was
something along with a flash of white! There were whitecaps with the steady breeze, but this one speck remained on the surface, moving. Ryng cupped his hands to his eyes, squinting as if they were binoculars. He focused on that spot and now the ethereal became solid. There was no doubt in his mind. He’d seen periscopes before. Now the speck rose higher, circling the compass, he assumed, checking both the surface and the air. Then more apparatus appeared, radar and electronic gear probably, probing the airwaves for any foreign electronic signals that might mean disclosure.

He waited, pausing between each breath until he realized the ache in his lungs was self-induced. Whose submarine was it? Would he be able to identify it from that distance? Then taking his hands from his eyes, he realized it wasn’t that far away—a mile, maybe a bit more. Whoever the crazy son of a bitch was, he was taking that boat into shallow water—a very dangerous move if war was still imminent.

Then the periscope was followed by the sail of the submarine. There was little wash around it; the sub was almost dead in the water. As the hull came into view, he knew it wasn’t American.

U.S. subs carried their sail well forward. It wasn’t Russian either—their sails were generally more sleek, closer to the hull on the nuclear boats, and by the shape of the hull, he knew this was nuclear.
What the hell
, he thought.
The only others operating around here must be British
. He rose from his position, slowly, painfully, realizing full well that no one was going to see him there.

He watched people come out of the sail onto the tiny deck. They fumbled with something for a few moments, then he saw that they were handling a rubber boat of some kind. In a few moments, it slid over the side. A man climbed in it, fumbling near one end. Soon the rubber craft pulled away from the mother boat, moving quickly enough to be propelled by some kind of motor. As mysteriously as it had come, the submarine sank below the surface with a slurry of bubbles and froth.

Now is the time
, Ryng decided after watching the boat bob over the rough offshore chop. There was no reason such an occurrence could take place in this nowhere land unless someone was taking the trouble to find out if he was still alive. Maybe the Harriers had reported that the Soviet helo was firing at something other than puffins, and in that location, an intelligence type would have to put two and two together and figure that someone on the SEAL team that went into Longyearbyen might have escaped. There could be no conceivable reason to think otherwise.

He descended the cliffside, the path curving back and forth until he was on the narrow strip of beach. The wind blew in off the arctic water, lifting the foam off each crashing wave, depositing the icy droplets on his bare skin. He shivered, occasionally at first, then in spasms as the boat grew in size. He wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing his hands up and down his body. But it offered little warmth at this stage. He could no longer feel his hands.

As the boat drew closer, he thought about his episode with the Black Beret hours earlier. Was he delivering himself into the hands of the enemy? He wasn’t sure. But that wasn’t any Soviet submarine that he’d ever seen before. In the end, there was no telling who was at war with whom… who was an enemy and who was a friend. But whoever was about to land on the beach probably wanted to find him. Ryng had no choice but to believe that.

He was welded to the spot as he watched the little boat approach the beach. The operator, he saw, wore a black wetsuit; only his face remained uncovered. At about fifty feet from the water’s edge, he lifted the motor and picked up a paddle to finish the trip to shore.

What the man in the boat saw as he stepped into the surf to pull his boat the last few yards was an apparition of a military man. The man’s uniform was in tatters. His skin was covered with ugly colored bruises, and there seemed not a square inch where blood wasn’t either oozing or dried. The face was swollen, one eye half closed. Seemingly fixed to the spot, Ryng stared back unblinkingly, his hands rhythmically moving up and down his arms in what seemed an effort to keep warm.

“Commander Ryng?” the man inquired as he pulled the rubber boat out of the surf.

Ryng nodded, the rest of his body still planted in place, only his eyes moving over the man and then to his boat.

“Lieutenant Commander Hargraves, Number One, from Her Majesty’s submarine
Churchill
,
sir. We thought you might be waiting for a ride.”

Again, Ryng nodded. This time he blinked his eyes, then rubbed them with his hands. “Her Majesty’s submarine?”

“Right you are, sir. And our captain wants to extend his gratitude for the whole of the U.K. when you come aboard. Ah—shall we go, sir?” he asked, pointing at the rubber boat. “War waits for no man,” he added.

“Are we at war?”

“Not officially, sir, at least it hasn’t been declared—though we’re told the Russians have moved into the Fulda Gap. But, as Admiral Harrow said, the war in Europe will start on D-Day. The war out here starts whenever one or the other wants it to, and our’s started yesterday.”

“And…” Ryng’s eyes turned to the black smoke on the horizon.

“
Illustrious
, sir. Our group was the only one in the area when the Russians moved their submarine flotilla out of Murmansk. So it was us sent out to pick off what we could in case your mission was unsuccessful.”