ICE DREAMS - CHAPTER D

I will be posting one chapter per week of my latest book, ICE DREAMS. Please note that the numerical chapters are autobiographical. The alphabetical chapters are pure fiction.

It was the beginning of July. When it isn’t foggy, Alaska is as beautiful in this month as it gets all year. The tundra was green. Tiny flowers gave the effect of the tundra being dusted by a shower of multicolored flakes.

Elmendorf AFB had sent out to Shemya some well-used band instruments. The Captain was encouraging men who had been in band in high school to join together as a group to play on the Fourth of July. Those who had volunteered were being excused from work duties to practice. They came together pretty well as a musical ensemble.

I had been back from Anchorage for nearly a month. There were a half dozen Christian men, including MSG Donavan, who met together in one of the barracks one midweek evening each week for Bible study. Evenings changed depending on our work schedules.  The discussions were wide-ranging and we sometimes kept going for two or three hours. After I returned from Anchorage, there was a civilian contract worker in the group, John Hamrick from Williston, North Dakota. He knew the Bible and said that he was born-again. The group accepted him.

Somehow, he didn’t seem right to me. I began to notice that if anyone mentioned work, he tried to keep the conversation on that topic. He pretended to know what we did inside our secret work environment. I didn’t like it. I would always change the subject, and I could tell that he wasn’t happy when I did.

The only other instances that I knew of when military men and civilian contractors associated were when a GI wanted to buy some hard liquor. There were only two possibilities, a Filipino or a civilian contractor. The Japanese could buy liquor, but they wouldn’t sell it to GIs.

On the third of July, some guys walking along the beach made a shocking discovery. Lying on the beach in front of what had been the cave entrance were the bodies of a man and a woman. Their hands were tied behind their backs. They had both been shot in the forehead. Lying beside each of them were the rifles taken from the two airmen who had guarded the knapsack bombs. Some person or persons came up behind the guards and hit them in the head, knocking them out. When they became conscious, their hands were tied behind their back and their rifles and ammunition were missing. .

The corpses were those of Ilya and Gretchen. Someone, or more than one person, who was on the Island, or came onto the Island, had executed Ilya and Gretchen. It meant that Ilya and Gretchen had been living on the Island for the past couple months, or they had been brought back to the Island to be executed. Either possibility meant danger for all of us.

I spoke to MSG Donavan, “I don’t think it is wise for us to invite that civilian, John Hamrick, into our group. He doesn’t have any kind of security clearance, and he is much too interested in our work.”

“He’s a Christian. He studies the Bible. He says that he has been born again. What more do you want?”

“There are many Christians in Russia, even Baptist Christians. Stalin was a seminary student before he became a political activist. His Christian faith does not mean his loyalty is to the United States. He can be a Christian and still be loyal to the USSR. Even if he is an American citizen, he may still be a Communist sympathizer. You just don’t know.

“More than that. If Ilya and Gretchen have been living on this Island the last two months, where would be the most likely place they were staying? In the civilian residences area. If they were staying on the Island and were executed by someone living on the Island, the most likely conclusion is that there is a Russian spy living on this Island and that he is one of the civilian contractors.”

“You may have a point.”

Captain Goetz sent a report of the discovery of the two dead civilians who were formerly “cave dwellers,” to Elmendorf AFB. The office for security did not take long in seeing the similarity in their execution and the subduing of the airmen guarding the knapsack bombs and that the rifles taken from the guards were found with the bodies. They evidently came to the same conclusion I had reached concerning the civilian contract workers.

An electric fence was constructed on two sides of the civilian workers’ compound. This enclosed both their residence area and the buildings they were constructing. The fence was guarded twenty-four hours a day. If any civilian left the area, to pick up their mail or receive a shipment that came in by plane, they were escorted at all times by an armed guard. The civilians were no longer allowed to go to the cocktail lounge in the airport terminal. There was to be no fraternization of military personnel and civilian contractors.

On the fourth of July, we had a parade down through the barracks’ road and on to the chow hall. Fourth of July was chosen as the day for the monthly luau. The Filipino mess crew really outdid themselves. The ice sculpture was of the Statue of Liberty. In her torch, they had a sparkler. The music was all patriotic. Kate Smith singing “God Bless America,” the Air Force Band playing John Philip Sousa marches and of course “Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder.”

The noise of several hundred men talking and the sound of the music nearly drowned out the noise of a scuffle outside. We did hear the sound of gunshots. We tried to get outside to see what was going on. A guard at the door called for the First Sergeant and Captain Goetz. No one else was allowed to leave the chow hall.

Later, we found out that a civilian had made his way out of the civilian compound by wading out into the ocean, then coming back on the ocean side of the runway. The runway was about fifteen feet above the level of the beach and hid him from view. The runway was almost as high as the chow hall roof. He had a knapsack bomb which he intended to throw onto the roof of the chow hall. It was later determined that he was the one who had assembled the other ten knapsack bombs. In his residence were found bomb-making materials.

With the arrest of John Hamrick and his departure to Anchorage for trial, we breathed a sigh of relief, but it was premature.

One night in early August, we received a mysterious message from Elmendorf. We were to send ten men with loaded weapons and hand grenades to the rocky beach at the end of the runway. There we would find a Zodiac type boat. While the rest of the men covered him, one man was to slash the boat, or put a white phosphorous grenade on it, or do anything else to make it unusable.

Another group of heavily armed men were to search the civilian contractors’ area house-by-house looking for any men who did not belong there. Still another group was to fan out over the Island looking for men who did not belong on the Island. A surveillance satellite had located a Russian ship anchored in the lee of Attu Island where it could not be seen from Shemya. Tonight, a Zodiac type boat with six men in it had left the ship and went to Shemya where it landed at the end of the runway. The men climbed out, unloaded the boat and took off running. We destroyed the boat, but we did not find the men.

Now Shemya Island was in grave danger. All the civilian workers were rounded up and flown back to Anchorage. There each one was fingerprinted and compared with hiring records of the companies. They didn’t want any of the men who had landed in the boat to escape by blending in with the workers. Obviously, they were depending on one of the workers to host them while they proceeded to commit acts of sabotage.

There was a vast expanse of tundra on Shemya. There were also many abandoned buildings. During the War, there were many foxholes and bunkers dug into the tundra. The tundra vegetation had long since covered them over. They would make excellent hiding places. Dogs were brought in from Anchorage to go across the tundra searching for the smell of humans. After three days, six men were found in an abandoned hangar. They surrendered peacefully. After some forceful interrogation, one of them broke down and led to the place where they had hidden their bombs.

The civilian workers returned. The Russian ship moved out of U.S. territory into international waters. It still remained in the vicinity of Shemya.

There was a MARS station on Shemya where any of the men who possessed an amateur radio license could operate within the limits of his license. Some of the men had licenses which only allowed them to use Morse code, not voice. The majority of amateur radio operators in Russia use only Morse code because transmitters for code are fairly simple and cheap to build.

There was one Russian amateur station which contacted them frequently which had an exceptionally strong signal. It was determined that it was located on the Russian ship lurking in international water off Shemya. One of the “hams” suggested to an officer that the same radio might be contacting someone on the Island on frequencies not available to “hams.” The officer recognized this as an excellent suggestion. He sent it up the chain of command.

For several days, investigators searched radio wave bands assigned to the Russian police, the Russian Army and Navy. A strong signal was discovered communicating with an equally strong signal which could have been coming from some place on Shemya. The messages were encrypted.

A team with direction finding equipment was sent out from Elmendorf AFB. The very first night they were able to locate a contract worker transmitting from inside one of the buildings under construction.

They were also able to pinpoint the location of the ship. They found what frequency the ship was using to send messages back to its base and the time they were broadcasting.  The next night one of the huge radars, which fried birds flying past, focused its antenna on the ship. As soon as the ship began its transmission the radar was turned on.

“I’ll guarantee you its transmitter as well as anything electronic on that ship is fried!”

The morning after that, the Russian ship headed back toward Kamchatka and friendlier waters.