About a week into the rangers' mission the weather finally broke, and Marvin Atqittuq decided it was time to shoot Russians. He and Sgt. Dean Lushman, a former Canadian infantryman who had become an instructor with the ranger program, hauled out a sheaf of brownish paper targets, stapled them to sticks, and planted half a dozen in the snow outside our camp. Each bore the printed image of a charging soldier, his mouth open in a yell, his rifle mounted with a bayonet. Lushman called them his "Commie squad."
The targets had been developed for NATO forces during the Cold War. Standing shoulder to shoulder at the foot of a small hill, they were the tallest objects around for miles, so obvious against the snow it didn't seem possible to miss.