It was two in the afternoon when Mikhail once again picked up Arnie’s ski tracks. Damn. Arnie was still ahead of him. Grimly determined, he pushed on next to Arnie’s trace. The tracks were clean, no sign of drifting snow in them, no sign of melt and refreezing. He couldn’t be more than half an hour ahead of him.
The tracks once again disappeared into a frozen bog. He kept to his plan, although he was a little less sure about it. Koski was beating him by taking risks. He’d have to beat Koski by more than matching his speed or start taking risks himself. The former he wasn’t sure he could do, the latter he didn’t want to do. He could still hear Ivanov’s startled shout just before he went under the ice.
Mikhail left Arnie’s tracks to stick to the bog’s edge.
An hour later, the temperature was dropping rapidly. Sunset would be around four. That left only an hour of daylight and maybe another hour of twilight. The bog was in a swale that headed north-south. On the southern end, the ground rose, ending the bog, but the landscape continued in a long shallow valley, flanked by gentle ridges.
Mikhail swung into the valley with a fury. Darkness would stop him, but he knew he’d have to be at least even with Koski before it did, or the race might be lost. Five minutes into the shallow valley, it occurred to him that there were no ski tracks. He began casting his eyes, sweeping the ground before him as best he could. From one gentle rise on the left to another on the right, the snow had not been disturbed. Koski must have been making faster time taking the risk of skiing on the bog. So, why no tracks coming out of it into this shallow valley? It was inconceivable that Koski would not take advantage of the terrain and ski between the hills. Mikhail stopped. Maybe Koski just hit a patch of trees or brush and was truly behind him? Then he thought maybe Koski’s gamble had failed, or he wasn’t aware that he was gambling. Then the thought struck him—maybe he’d fallen through thin ice.
Mikhail spun on his skis to look behind him. He listened. Wind. The beautiful silence of a vast forest blanketed with snow. No sounds of struggle or cries for help. He spun around and headed off. After about five kick and glides, he stopped again. If Arnie had fallen through the ice, he’d be wet through and dead within the hour. If he turned back to find out if Arnie was in trouble, he’d throw away the clear lead indicated by there being no tracks. But, if he kept heading south, he might be leaving a fellow soldier to die.
Arnie had felt elated to be making such good time, but the elation vanished when he felt his left ski suddenly sink through the snow, encountering—no resistance. He was flooded with fear as he felt his left ski pass through thin ice and into water. As his ski and foot continued down into the water, Arnie desperately flung himself to the right to spread his weight as much as possible. His instincts were good but not good enough. His left ski and leg were caught in a hole now edged with thin and breaking ice. Arnie’s body, hitting the thicker ice around the hole, caused cracks to radiate from the hole, further weakening the ice beneath his body, which had been twisted sideways because of the stuck ski. His heavy pack, normally centered and balanced, now became an off-balance anchor, making it impossible to turn onto his stomach so that he could spread his arms and legs to distribute his weight. His weight instead was concentrated over a smaller area, causing the radiating cracks to continue to lengthen and widen. All of this happened in about two seconds.
Now, water was pushing up through the widening cracks, spreading through the thin layer of covering snow. Foundering, trying to get the ski loose, Arnie twisted out of the pack, which had already taken on water. As water oozed up around him, the hole widened beneath him as he sank. He managed to loosen the bindings and free himself from the skis. Holding on to both ski poles with one hand, he flung the skis back on his own trail, knowing it more likely to be safe in that direction since he’d not fallen through until this point. He looped an arm through one of the pack’s shoulder straps and then stabbed both ski poles into the ice between him and the skis. Kicking furiously and pulling at the same time, he managed to get free of the hole. He lay there, breathing hard, soaking wet.
If he stood, he would concentrate all his weight into a small area and go through the now-moving ice. He rolled over on his belly, his only alternative. This submerged the front of his parka and clothes beneath it. Dragging his pack from his elbow pit, he low crawled toward the skis, stabbing his poles in front of him, making sure every ounce of him was spread as wide as possible.
He reached his skis. The ice seemed firmer. Still panting, he thanked God.
Then came a deeper, longer-lasting fear. Alone. Hypothermia next. Then death. He went through the mountaineer’s checklist. Get out of the wind; that meant find shelter. Get dry; that meant get out of his wet clothes, but the change of clothes in his pack were probably soaked. Get warm; that would be nearly impossible. The nearest wood for a fire was a tree line several hundred yards across the bog from him. To gather wood and build a fire would take time, time he didn’t have. He couldn’t shake the image of the man in Jack London’s To Build a Fire, fumbling to strike a match with frozen hands—and failing.
He began pulling off his wet clothes. The numbing, bone-chilling cold flailed his bare skin. He wrung his clothes as dry as he could and was shivering as his body tried to generate heat from his muscles. His toes were now going numb as his body struggled to keep what heat remained near his vital organs.
His hands and feet, not just his fingers and toes were rapidly going numb. His fear grew as he realized that his hands would soon be useless, that he was already dying from hypothermia.
He fumbled with his damp long johns. His trousers didn’t want to go over his feet. Then his feet didn’t want to go into his socks and boots. His hands now nearly useless, he managed to get his skis on.
Arnie headed for the nearest line of trees where he could get out of the wind. He felt like he was trembling violently but in a slow-motion film. Nothing worked. His legs felt like logs with dead weights tied to their bottoms. Try as he might, one ski seemed to go somewhere he didn’t want it to. He floundered toward the trees. He’d lost all feeling in his feet. He panicked, afraid his toes would be lost. Then he caught the panic. That would get him dead for sure. He lost track of where the tree line was. Yes, over there. But it seemed so far. He wasn’t so cold anymore … There was a really great burger stand there in the trees by the beach. Maybe he’d rest a bit … Yes, rest. It made sense to sink on his knees into the snow. He felt his mother tucking him into bed.
Skirting along the same tree line at the edge of the bog, Mikhail saw Arnie just as he went down on his knees. He saw the now-exposed water of a bog eye toward the center of the bog and the ragged trail Arnie had formed trying for the shore. Knowing that the ice must be supporting Arnie where he lay, Mikhail shed his pack and rushed across the bog, hoping that if there were other bog eyes, his speed and momentum would carry him across. He didn’t think about the race—winning or losing or the risk to his own life. He didn’t think at all. It was the warrior’s instinctual response to save a fellow warrior. It had been this way ever since men have hunted in packs.
When he reached him, Arnie was smiling, lost in a dream.
He immediately checked Arnie’s clothes, grunting with satisfaction that at least Arnie had enough sense to have wrung them out. Still, ice was forming on Arnie’s parka and trousers. He got Arnie’s skis off and squatted down, balancing as best he could on his own skis, and threw Arnie over his back in a fireman’s carry. Leaving Arnie’s pack and skis where they lay, he retraced his steps, knowing full well that now, because his weight was doubled, what was proven safe before was no longer proven.
It was just after four o’clock and the sun had set. He had about an hour before total darkness set in.
He dumped Arnie and retrieved his own pack, which took only a minute. Unrolling his sleeping bag, unzipping it to form a single blanket, he threw it over Arnie. He pulled out his snow shovel and began digging, fueled with adrenaline. When he’d made a shallow hole just big enough for him and Arnie to lie in, he laid pine boughs on the bottom. He opened his parka and hugging Arnie close wrapped them both in the sleeping bag and rolled into the shallow hole, out of the wind. He began vigorously rubbing Arnie’s limbs and core to generate heat from friction.
Arnie moaned beneath him.
“Arnie. Wake up,” Mikhail shouted in Finnish. He slapped Arnie’s face, barely seeing it in the diminishing twilight.
Arnie grunted. Mikhail shook him. “Wake up. Goddamn it, wake up.” He could see Arnie looking at him with wonder. He slapped him across both cheeks again.
“Wake up, you dumb fucking American.” Now he saw Arnie get mad. He slapped him again. “Wake up!”
Arnie shook his head. His eyes came clear.
“Mikhail,” he said with a dreamy smile. “Vaseline cotton balls.”
“What?” Arnie was hallucinating.
“Mikhail,” Arnie repeated more slowly, as if confirming something. “Fire. Vaseline.” Then he came completely awake. “Mikhail, goddamn it, Mikhail.”
“You’re so articulate,” Mikhail said.
“Yeah, no Russian eloquence,” Arnie mumbled. Then he lifted his head and grinned. “But I was ahead when I went through the ice.”