Exile Hunter (20 page)

Linder hesitated at
first for fear of the cold, then looked around at the others hastily
shedding their cotton coveralls and scampering toward the tables
where fresh winter-regulation outfits were being issued. One of his
queue partners was a short man of middle age who had apparently lost
plenty of weight while in detention; the folds of skin that had once
been his paunch hung loosely at his waist. Examining his own figure,
Linder found pale, flaccid flesh and atrophied limbs. Two months of
forced idleness had taken a heavy toll on his physique, leaving him
to question how much stamina he could muster for the long march
ahead.

But that thought faded
quickly as he tossed his old clothes into the flames rising from a
blackened oil drum and advanced to receive his new uniform: hooded
winter coveralls in dayglo orange with the letters “CLA” printed
in six-inch black letters front and rear and down each thigh;
polypropylene long underwear; a thick fleece balaclava; oversized
arctic gloves with drawstring lanyard; polyester sock liners; and
thick-soled rubberized boots. Each man was also issued a compact mess
kit with an insulated mug that hung by a clip from the prisoner’s
belt.

Linder dressed quickly,
feeling a sudden euphoria from the added warmth as he donned each
successive article of clothing. When fully dressed, he turned to warm
himself in the heat of one of the oil drums, but was prodded forward
by a jab in the ribs from a guard’s baton to make room for
prisoners behind him. Once outside the makeshift windbreak, Linder
emerged once again into a screaming wind that brought tears to his
eyes and forced the breath back into his lungs.

In the next section of
fenced compound, orderlies counted the men into squads of ten, each
with a randomly assigned leader, and shackled five squads each to a
long cable trailing from the back of a waiting truck. Linder’s
position was toward the rear of his truck’s cable and, as he peered
forward, the image of his fellow prisoners attached in pairs along
the cable reminded him of an extended dogsled team, except that in
their case the sled preceded the dogs. When Linder’s turn came to
be attached, the frigid steel of the handcuff stung Linder’s flesh
and left a span of wrist exposed to the wind no matter how he
adjusted his glove and sleeve to cover it.

In the meantime, two
more C-130s had landed, each carrying a hundred additional prisoners.
While the early arrivals waited for the newcomers to receive their
fresh coveralls, those awaiting assignment to a truck and cable kept
warm by pacing along the perimeter fence of an adjacent holding pen
with dozens of other men in a circular procession, like pilgrims
circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca. Meanwhile, as soon as a truck
cable was fully populated with prisoners, the truck left the fenced
compound to make room for another vehicle.

When the last squad
from the final aircraft hooked up to its waiting truck, a convoy of
some six hundred prisoners plus nearly a hundred guards, orderlies,
and support staff trudged through the snow to where the airport road
met a bypass road skirting the town a couple of hundred meters to the
east. At the intersection stood a crudely made sign that read
“Welcome to the Yukon—Land of Opportunity.”

After slogging behind
the truck at a slow pace for nearly a mile, Linder’s team halted at
a steeply banked river about a hundred fifty meters wide. The only
means of crossing, other than on foot over the ice, was an antiquated
wood-and-cable suspension bridge too narrow for even a light pickup
truck to negotiate. The trucks stopped at the bridgehead, the cables
were unhitched from the trucks and each string of fifty men, still
shackled to the cable to prevent escape or suicide, crossed the
bridge under the threat of gunfire from soldiers fanned out on either
side.

As Linder’s squad
waited to take its turn, a series of murmured messages spread from
the front of the line to the rear. The messages conveyed that this
was the Pelly River, the town’s name was Ross River, and they were
on the North Canol Road, built during World War II to connect oil
fields of the Northwest Territories to Yukon refineries located
hundreds of kilometers to the west. Their destination, according to
the messages, was a logging and mining camp in the McKenzie
Mountains, near the Yukon’s eastern border with the Northwest
Territories. Depending on which camp they would inhabit, their march
might take up to a week.

Linder had no basis for
disputing the information’s accuracy and was not particularly
curious about the name of the town where they landed or the camp to
which they were headed. For him, the central question, brought home
to him by the length of the trip ahead, was whether it might be
better to perish en route after a day or two of suffering or to die
by inches at hard labor in a strict regime camp from which he had
little or no hope of release or escape.

Before Linder could
give the matter further thought, his team’s cable was unhitched
from the truck and the men were led across the bridge. As he peered
out over the icebound river below, he wondered how far the Pelly
River flowed before emptying into a larger river and from there
eventually into the North Pacific. Might he be able to reach the sea
by following the ice in winter or drifting downstream by small craft
in summer?

This train of thought
led Linder to recall his urge earlier that fall to escape by sea from
Beirut to Cyprus. His intuition had been correct, he realized. He
could have escaped then, at least for a while. His chances had most
certainly been better then than they were now. Linder looked at the
snow and ice all around and thought of his arrival outside Beirut’s
Hotel Cavalier. A short laugh escaped his chest when he remembered
stumbling on the ice cubes dumped at the curb, and stepping over a
heap of discarded ice in a back alley on Phoenicia Street. He should
have paid more attention to omens, he thought. Then he lowered his
head against the gathering wind.

On the far side of the
suspension bridge, other trucks were waiting, most of them of
military issue, some with snowplows, and all equipped with oversized
studded tires or chains and painted in a blue-gray winter camouflage
pattern. Interspersed among the trucks were several mobile field
kitchens and civilian SUVs along with a pair of truck-mounted campers
set aside for officers and senior enlisted men.

Linder counted nearly a
hundred troops and a dozen or more officers assembled for the trip.
Their contingent included twenty or more Alsatian and Belgian
Malinois dogs and their handlers, who rotated between guard duty and
rest periods under blankets in the cargo holds of the trucks. The
guards and dog handlers all wore hooded winter-camouflage coveralls,
Russian-style hats with fold-down earflaps, and special
trigger-finger mittens. While on guard duty, each soldier carried an
assault rifle on a sling with a large-capacity magazine. And each
young soldier appeared as strong and as well fed as the prisoners
were weak, starved and demoralized.

When all the squads had
been hitched up, the vehicles and men formed a long untidy column,
with armed guards placed at the head, tail, and flanks. Amid muffled
shouts and moans, word passed from the front of the column that the
convoy would march all night if necessary to make progress ahead of a
storm approaching from the north.

“Forward, march!”
the guards ordered up and down the line a few minutes later. Then
about half the troops climbed over the tailgates to ride aboard the
trucks while the others flanked the column of prisoners with rifles
slung at the ready. The moment the lead truck blew its horn, the
others sounded off in turn and set off slowly eastward toward the
Yukon’s mountainous border with the Northwest Territories.

Linder shambled forward
with his squad, head bent against the wind, up to his knees in heavy
snow churned up by the men ahead of him. Despite his hood and
balaclava, before long his ears became icy cold, his nose numbed to
the touch, and his eyes streamed with tears from the wind.

The lead truck set off
at a slow walking pace, gradually accelerating until it was a
struggle for many of the prisoners to keep up. Though the column
slowed on occasion when the lead trucks hit deep snow, it sometimes
accelerated without warning, causing weak or inattentive prisoners to
tread on the heels of the men before them or be trodden upon in turn.

Linder cursed his
rotten luck at being placed near the end of the chain. Every slowing
and acceleration at the front of the column was magnified at the
rear, requiring extra effort to keep pace and giving added pain when
the cable tugged remorselessly at his wrist. Within the first hour,
the handcuff rubbed his skin raw and only the numbing cold kept the
pain within limits.

Linder recognized no
one in his squad from among those he had seen aboard the plane. His
partner across the cable was of Asian descent, possibly Korean, and
appeared to be in his mid-twenties. Though he did not speak to Linder
or meet his gaze, his watchful eyes darted about constantly, leaving
the impression of being on alert against attack at any moment. Linder
wondered whether the man might be mentally unbalanced and resolved to
watch him closely for signs of breakdown.

The column marched
without a stop for what seemed like three or four hours before it
halted in a rocky defile. There the prisoners were permitted to sit
or squat in the snow, while orderlies poured them scalding sweet
coffee from mobile field kitchens that rolled up and down the column.
The sensation of taking that first sip of steaming coffee and feeling
its warmth spread through his body was pure bliss. But the euphoria
it didn’t last. By the time he downed the last gulp from his
insulated mug, it was already cold.

During the half-hour
rest stop, most prisoners in Linder’s squad sat beside the cable to
which they were bound and silently cursed the snow and the steady
north wind. At last, the lead truck blew its horn and moved forward,
taking up the slack in the cable and forcing the men to their feet.
Now, Linder felt grateful not to be at the head of the column, where
the prisoners had to struggle through the ankle-deep snow left by the
partially raised snowplows and trample it down for those behind them.
After settling into a steady pace, Linder closed his eyes and obeyed
the relentless tug of the cable. He had only a vague notion of where
he was and where he was going.

During the initial
three-hour march, not once had Linder spotted the lights of a distant
settlement. Judging from the disused ferry dock under the footbridge
at Pelly River and the lack of an ice-road on the river, he guessed
that no year-round settlements existed east of the Pelly other than
those of the Corrective Labor Administration.

He recalled from news
accounts some five years earlier, when the U.S. had annexed portions
of southern Canada following CWII, that most of the hydrocarbon- and
mineral-rich areas in that country’s western provinces had been
placed under martial law, and that many of the local inhabitants had
been forcibly relocated to other provinces. From that time on,
civilian residence and travel permits for northern Alberta and
British Columbia were issued only to those who worked in strategic
industries like oil and gas extraction and who passed a background
check.

Northern settlements
that depended primarily on tourism, hunting, or fishing became ghost
towns overnight while forced labor camps sprang up to support
state-owned logging, mining, and oil-drilling enterprises. If there
were any oil-drilling or mining in this part of the Yukon, Linder
figured that all of its employees would require a government
clearance, which meant that an escaped prisoner would be a fool to
expect any help from them.

After the coffee break,
the column trudged forward for what Linder estimated were another two
or three hours, before pulling off the road for supper. The mobile
field kitchens went to work at once, brewing hot water for coffee and
freeze-dried entrees for the guards. But there was to be no hot meal
for the prisoners that night. Instead, orderlies paced up and down
the column dispensing coffee and two foil-wrapped ration bars per
prisoner, to be eaten with one’s free hand while the other hand
remained fixed to the cable. Linder ate both ration bars before his
coffee arrived, then sipped the scalding liquid quickly before the
subzero wind robbed it of its life-giving warmth. In little less than
an hour, the trucks lurched forward once again and the cables dragged
the men back to their feet.

But by this time,
Linder could see that many of the weaker men were unable to keep
pace. Until now, when a man stumbled or collapsed, his neighbors had
heaved and strained to keep him on his feet until the next rest
break. But after the meal break, many who collapsed en route begged
to be unshackled and left behind to find release in death. If a
fallen prisoner failed to revive, one of his neighbors called the
nearest flanking guard, who would descend upon the unfortunate
wretch, cursing and kicking and tugging at his wrists to bring him
back to his senses. If he recovered, the appalling struggle went on.

When blows failed, the
guards passed word up the column and waited for the procession to
stop before unshackling the fallen one, stripping him of his clothing
and boots and burying him under a heap of snow, dead or alive. This
happened on the average of once or twice during each hour spent on
the march.

After another three
hours, the column stopped in a clearing among low spruce-covered
hills just off the road. The trucks parked in a semicircle around the
edge of the clearing, after which orderlies unshackled the prisoners’
wrists from the cables. Meanwhile, troops took up positions along the
road and around the perimeter of the clearing, with additional
sentries posted in the woods. The officer-in-charge passed word that
the prisoners would receive coffee and then would then have six hours
to sleep before breakfast, after which the journey would begin anew.