They trudged about another kilometer, almost to the point of giving up, when suddenly Pedersen, who had assumed the lead at that stage, pointed ahead with joy. “Look!” You could barely hear his shout above the shrieking gales.
It was a hut. A hunting cabin. Almost entirely encased in a blanket of fresh snow. The winds blew so fiercely and visibility was so limited, they didn’t come upon it as much as bump directly into it.
“Thank the trolls!” Jens thrust his poles in the air triumphantly.
“Fuck the trolls, thank whatever beautiful sonovabitch who happens to own this place,” Hans Storhaug said. He loosened the icy doorframe with an ax, pushed it open with his shoulder, and the seven of them tumbled inside.
At first they just collapsed on the floor, their packs still on. Elated, exhausted, breathing in heaves and gasps. There was no way they would have survived more than another couple of hours in a storm of such ferocity.
“Look. Over there by the stove,” Jens said, peeling himself off the floor. “Is it a mirage or am I dreaming?” To their luck, there was even a bundle of birchwood for a fire.
“You’re not dreaming,” Pedersen exclaimed, extricating himself from his pack, going over and checking for kindling.
The most important thing now, other than getting a fire going and drying out, was to figure out where they were and chart a course to Lake Maure, where they were supposed to meet up with Grouse.
But there was little more they could do once the fire was going than open some food and get ready for sleep. They’d been up for almost twenty-four hours.
“Yank,” Ronneberg said.
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Take the owner’s bed. You’ve earned it tonight.”
“Me?” Gutterson questioned.
“And remember, we only give the owner’s bed to true hill men,” Pedersen explained.
“Aye,” the others chimed in.
“Thank you.” The soldier looked around, unsure but pleased.
“Just don’t get too comfy. You’re up in an hour, lad, and then the bed’s mine,” Ronneberg said. “I’ll take the first watch.” He settled into a chair, holding back his smile.
“Yes, enjoy your beauty sleep, Yank,” Birger Stromsheim chuckled.
They rolled out their sleeping bags and bedded in.
“Feels good to be home, right, boys?” Ronneberg said.
“Aye,” one or two muttered. “It does.”
And then it was quiet.
Outside, the winds grew to a howling high pitch and the snow fell in waves. The shaking wooden walls made it feel like the hut was about to be lifted right off the ground and blown away. In his sleeping bag, closing his eyes for a few hours before it was his turn to watch, Nordstrum prayed that when they awoke this hellish nightmare would have moved on.
26
But the storm didn’t move on.
Instead, it grew even stronger. They woke in early afternoon to winds even more formidable and howling than the night before.
At least three feet of snow had fallen. The drifts against the house piled up closer to five. Every hour, more continued to fall. They had a mission to fulfill and their countrymen to rescue, who were in dire conditions themselves. Ronneberg and Nordstrum tried venturing out to see if continuing was possible, but they could barely get ten feet before the gales pushed them back.
“What do you think, Kurt?” Ronneberg put his face close to Nordstrum’s and shouted above the wind.
Nordstrum replied, “I think this storm will kill us before the Germans ever get off a shot.”
“I’ve never seen one as strong as this,” Ronneberg said, struggling even to stand upright.
There was no choice but to go back inside. Their only prospect was to wait out the storm and hope it would blow itself out.
Wherever they were, the Grouse team was enduring the same conditions.
The first order of business was to determine precisely where they were. They went about examining the hut for any clues. In the back of a drawer Gutterson found a map, and on it, there were a couple of hand-drawn circles and a greased thumbprint, unfortunately not in the area of Bjornesfjord, where they assumed they’d been dropped, but near Skrykken, some thirty kilometers away.
Thirty kilometers back the way they’d come yesterday.
“That would be bad,” Nordstrum said, poring over the map. “You can see there’s no easy route to Lake Maure from Skrykken, if in fact that’s where we are. Or any shelters I know of. And, unless we want to turn two lost days into four, the mountains we’ll have to cross to get there are some of the highest elevations on the vidda. Over a thousand meters. It’ll eat into the rest of our provisions.”
“Then we’d better damn well be certain,” Ronneberg said. “There has to be something here. Turn the place upside down if you have to.”
Pedersen and Storhaug went through the kitchen. Only old cookware and a few tools. Stromsheim and Gutterson searched the living area. The only books were folk tales and hunting catalogs. Nordstrum and Jens went through the owner’s bedroom. They found nothing, not even in the bedside table drawers. Only a Bible and a book on local animals of the wild.
There was always a respect for the owner’s privacy when you used their lodging, especially in a place that had saved their lives, but Jens said, “The hell with it,” and jimmied open the locked closet. Again, they found nothing at first, but in the pocket of one of the owner’s oilskin jackets, he came on something. It was a notebook titled “Fishing Log Book for Skrykkenvann.”
Ronneberg let out a deflated sigh as Nordstrum dropped it on the kitchen table for all to see.
Skrykken, it was.
They realized what a mess that was. Whenever the storm finally broke, not only did they have to retrace the hours they had trekked yesterday, but they had a good thirty kilometers more to get to the hut where they hoped the Grouse team would be waiting for them.
This would have seemed a good time to use the radio equipment their SOE planners had elected not to send along with them—as they thought it was heavy and would slow them down, and they’d be meeting up with Grouse upon arrival anyway. Though in this mess there was no way they would have been able to find a signal.
Outside, it sounded like the roof was being ripped off the hut.
Dejectedly, Ronneberg said, “Tomorrow we’ll try again. Let’s make a fire. This has to blow over.”
But the next day the storm continued with the same fury. And the day after as well. By day four, their food supply was dwindling. They’d only brought enough with them to get to Grouse and complete their mission, which they’d thought would be a matter of days. The rest, for their journey to Sweden, was buried back at the drop site.
With no other choice, they decided that a party had to go back to replenish their supplies. Nordstrum and Jens volunteered to make the trek. For Nordstrum, sitting around and doing nothing was making him stir crazy anyway. They set out at 9 A.M. The snow was coming down so heavy it was barely possible to even see your hand in front of your face. By 1 P.M., exhausted and famished, they finally made it back to where they thought they’d landed. At least that’s what their compasses read. But four feet of snow had made everything appear different.