"Sounds like a plan to me," the sheriff replied. "Just remember, I'm tagging along. Somebody's been fucking with my town, and I don't like it one bit."
We'd only just finished the smokes when there was a new sound about the wind, the familiar chug and roar of approaching choppers.
"Showtime," the cap said. "We play this nice and slow. We empty the other truck first while we cover them then Davies and Wilko can cover us while we get the second load out and away. If anything shows up, Wiggo here will get to play with the big red button again and if that doesn't work we blow any fucker away that tries to mess with us. The choppers will be locked and loaded too. We'll have enough weapons to keep the road plowed for us."
It started well enough. Two big transport choppers landed, each with two guys loaded to the gunnels with firepower in the doorways. The first truck drove over and Wilko and Davies got it emptied out pronto into the first chopper before driving it back to our position. We waited until that first chopper lifted away then the sheriff took our truck out as close as we dared to get to the rotors, the cap and I slipped out, we got the back cabin door open...and the pack chose that moment to launch an attack.
They came from three different locations at once, at least a dozen of them, both from the front and the rear of the fire truck and most surprisingly from under the rotors from the far side of the chopper as if the prospect of decapitation didn't faze them in the slightest. The guys in the chopper doorway were too surprised to even react but the sheriff was first to get her rifle raised, with the cap and I just behind her. I got off two rounds that damned near took the head off a big gray then went for the red panic button.
And it worked wonders yet again. One of the wolves reared up in shock, almost onto its back legs. That only served to take it high enough for the rotors to do their work. White snow went red, the now mostly headless body fell to the ground and a fine mist of blood hung in the air while the remainder of the pack slunk away. I'd shot my bolt though; the radio set went warm in my hand and began to smoke then smoulder. I dropped it to my feet and checked our perimeter. There was no sign of any fresh attack, and four dead wolves lay around us, steaming in the cold air and staining the snow with their blood and guts. I looked up to the doorway to see Jennings there, his gaze fixed on the dead beasts. His rifle was still slung over his shoulder; he hadn't made any attempt to fire it.
I didn't have time to bawl him out. The next few minutes were a frantic rush to get the townspeople into the chopper. Watkins, hobbling badly, tried to get aboard with them but the captain pulled him back.
"Not you. We'll need you at the station," he shouted to be heard above the rotors
Even then Watkins tried to pull away but the cap had him in a tight grip.
I turned to where Jennings stood beside Davies and Wilko.
"What about you, lad? You want to fuck off hame to your mammy?"
At least I got a response from him this time, even if it was only a slow shake of the head; he still couldn't take his gaze from the dead wolf under the rotors.
I gave him another ten seconds, then gave the sheriff the sign to reverse the truck away from the chopper. A minute later it rose away from us leaving the squad members, Watkins, and the sheriff herself alone in a suddenly quiet supermarket car park.
I took the time to bend over the dead wolves and dig the wee black boxes out of their spines. I wiped them off and tossed them to Davies.
"There you go, laddie, another science project for you when you get the time. Let's see if we can do the same trick more than once."
We backed the fire trucks away from the still-steaming bodies of the wolves and gathered in a huddle in the back cabin of one of them for a confab. I lit a smoke and let the cap lay out the plan. It was a simple enough one that even Jennings in his shocked state seemed able to follow.
The cap addressed the sheriff first.
"How's the track to the station? Will these trucks get us there?"
She nodded.
"Easily I should think; even if there's a few drifts these things are built to just roll through it. And they're built like tanks, as you've seen. A wolf attack, even a bigger sucker than the ones we've seen so far, should just bounce off them.
"Good. We'll take them both," he said. He turned to me.
"Wiggo, you go up front with the sheriff here and Watkins. I'll bring the other one up behind with Wilko and Davies. We'll pick up the rest of our kit from the SUV then be on our way."
"And Jennings?" I asked softly.
The cap looked grim. Jennings himself didn't seem to be paying much attention.
"He can go in the back cabin."
We set off as soon as we'd finished our smokes.
-9-
The track was easy enough to follow. The sheriff drove the truck as if it came easy to her, the wind had dropped completely and the snow falling now was more of the big, soft flakes stuff. Watkins, however, wasn't taking the journey well. He sat in the middle up front; I'd taken the door seat in case the man tried to make a hasty exit but he had withdrawn almost as much as Jennings and when he took a smoke from me his hands trembled although it was quite warm there in the cab with the heating on.
"This is the worst bloody daft idea in the history of daft ideas," he said. "You know that, right?"
"Daft it might be," I replied, "but orders are orders. We do what we're telt."
"Your man Jennings didn't get the memo?"
"It's his first time out with us. He's used to facing down kids with petrol bombs at riots, doing drive-rounds in occupied territories, that kind of routine. Meeting a monster in real life can be a wee bit of a shock. Some can't handle it."
"But you can?"
"I telt you earlier; we were in Siberia. And not just there. We're fucking monster magnets. Buy me a beer when this is all over and I'll tell you some stories that'll turn your hair white."
It was the sheriff who answered me.
"I'm still on for that. But why not start early? We've got an hour or so of a drive ahead of us at a guess. Tell us a story to pass the time? Your captain told me about Siberia, but he was a bit short on detail. What was it really like?"
"A full on fucking clusterfuck is what it was…"
It took a while in the telling, dire wolves, cave lions, woolly mammoths, big fucking thunderbirds and the rest. When I got to the bit about the bone flute and the hairy ape-things we'd been told were Alma, Watkins sucked at his teeth. I paused to see if he had something to add but he just waved for me to continue. He had me wondering again though, wondering about what, apart from giant fuck-off wolves, might be waiting for us ahead.
The sheriff took her eyes off the road just long enough to turn to me when I reached the end and finished off the tale with the rescue on the airfield.
"You're not pulling my chain, are you? All of that really happened?"
"Every word of it, cross my heart and hope to be an Englishman."
Watkins was deep in thought when I handed him a fresh smoke.
"I'd heard it had gone bad," he said, almost to himself. "I didn't know how bad though."
"And here we are with a whole new clusterfuck," I said. "You'd think we'd learn a lesson or two somewhere along the line."
"You're too old to be that naive," the sheriff said, and I could only agree with her.
The trail to the research station wended always upward, through thin woodland as the sky lightened and dawn came. There was no sign there had been any other traffic; we drove through maybe a foot of virgin snow, sometimes up to two feet in drifts. The truck made easy work of it although the going was slow. We rounded a corner after another climb and got a clear view of a group of buildings perched on a rocky outcrop amid woodland on the side of another hill, a mile ahead at a guess.
"Home sweet home," Watkins muttered, and sucked hard on his cigarette through clenched teeth.
I noticed smoke rising from the site as we got closer, wispy stuff that was getting dispersed quickly in the breeze but it was a si
gn that all was not well up ahead. The main security gate lay open off its hinges and there was blood splashed across the outer wall of the squat cube that served as the gatehouse. There were still no tracks in the snow except those we left as we drew up into a forecourt in front of the main building. There were four vehicles in the parking bays on the edge already but none that would be of any use to us; three were burnt-out SUVs and the fourth was a Skidoo, or rather had been at one time; it was now just a tangled mass of plastic and chains and metal.
We saw the source of the smoke up close now; the roof of the building was partially collapsed and charred and the smoke came from the north end where the walls had caved in on themselves leaving only a ruin of burned timber and ashes. A cluster of smaller buildings beyond that showed more signs of burning although at least these ones had intact roofs.
We pulled up tight to the main doorway to allow the cap to bring the other truck up behind us. I turned to Watkins.
"Stay here and keep the door locked. If any of the big hairy bastards turn up, hit the horn hard. We'll come running."
He didn't disagree. The cap likewise left Jennings locked in the cab in the rear of the second truck.
"Your corporal's sleeping this shift out," he said sardonically when I asked and I didn't enquire any more than that; the sheriff made a more than adequate substitute and at least I knew she'd watch my back.
I led Davies and Wilko into the building with the cap and the sheriff bringing up the rear.
There was no sign of a firefight, just a fire. The lights were out but enough dim light made its way in through the windows to show us that devastation had been wrought in the building. There was blood, plenty of it, but no bodies, at least not here in the rooms close to the main doorway. The first I looked in was an office of some kind; filing cabinets, desk and swivel chairs, a laptop lying broken on the floor, the big window at the front smashed inwards judging by the glass on the carpet and a fresh dusting of snow, white among the red. At the rear of the office a door opened into a server-room for the place's computers but the fire had reached it and it was now no more than a mass of melted plastic and cabling. I backed out fast away from the too familiar smells of panic and death.
On the other side of the corridor, an open door showed that a second office had suffered the same fate. I considered calling out, to alert possible survivors of a rescue, but the place felt too dead, too quiet to me. I was already pretty sure we weren't going to find anyone alive and I saw by the set of the cap's face that he'd come to the same conclusion. The farther we went inside, the more certain I was.
The back end of this building was the main source of the fire; what had been a small mess area was completely burned out and fallen in; something had burned under there although whether it had been man or wolf it was too far gone to tell without a closer look than I was going to give it. On the other side of the main corridor was the billet, three rows of twin beds, all empty but with enough blood splashed around to show it hadn't always been that way. The wolves killed messily, but it appeared they tidied up after themselves, hauling their meals away for the feasting. It didn't take more than a couple of minutes for us to make sure there was no one here to save.
The cap turned to Davies.
"You and Wilko get Watkins in here; get him to look through the offices, see if there's anything worth salvaging. We'll head out back and check the outbuildings and meet back here in ten. If we're not back, come look for us."
The sheriff, cap and I walked around the collapsed debris of the mess and out the back to the rear. I guessed this was where the science happened; four squat cabins, all with the now tell-tale busted in doors and broken windows; the wolf pack hadn't done anything by halves. Three of the four buildings were much the same as the scenes in the main building; plenty of blood and mayhem but still no bodies, only here there were smashed phials and retorts, bloodied equipment and overturned tables and several more laptops in various states of brokenness. The fourth building overlooked a large penned area with an electric fence that had been toppled over in several places where, I guessed again, the pack had made their bid for freedom. I saw more buildings up the slope inside the pen that were probably kennels but for now my attention was on the fourth, unsearched, building. The door was still intact in this one, as were the windows, as if it had been deliberately left alone. If there were survivors, this was the only place left where we'd find them.
I approached the door gingerly. I felt rather than saw the cap and the sheriff stiffen and fix their concentration at my back. I turned the handle and pushed gently. The door swung open smoothly without a creak and I stepped inside as soon as I was sure nobody was in there ready to shoot at me.
I was in a mostly empty room save for two trestle-tables and a couple of chairs. There were bits and pieces of stuff on the tables, but that wasn't what got my concentration. Three sides of the room were the same basic cabin walls I expected, but it was the fourth that got my adrenaline going. Where there should be wood there was metal, a lot of it, and a large vault door that would have been more at home in a bank than out here in the wilds of the Yukon. I was glad it was shut for I wasn't sure I wanted to know what was on the other side.
The cap and the sheriff came in behind me.
"What are we into now, Cap?" I said.
The captain took one look at the door, then at the stuff on the tables. He sucked at his teeth and swore under his breath. He lifted something off the table and showed it to me.
"Look familiar?"
It was a primitive bone flute; the last time I'd seen anything like it was back in Siberia, and it hadn't belonged to a wolf.
"We need Watkins up here, right now," the cap said.
As if in reply, the sound of a truck horn pierced the air, insistent and frantic.
-10-
Gunfire joined the sound of the horn before we reached the cabin door. We headed at a run for the forecourt and arrived just as Wilko and Davies put down a big gray wolf that had been sitting on the hood of the truck trying to get in at Watkins. There were plenty for all of us; the pack had made its way back from town; all of them by the look of things, and they were all focussed on the young privates as they stood at the doorway of the main building. Watkins sat up high in the cab of the first truck, his face pale, his eyes wide. I had enough time to notice that Jennings was nowhere to be seen, then we were in the middle of a frenzied battle and there was little time for thought.
They attacked as a single unit, pushed forward by a howling roar that came from somewhere outside the perimeter; if the big one Watkins had mentioned was around, it wasn't joining the fight, but we had more than enough to occupy us as it was. The air filled with the sound of gunfire; I hadn't put my plugs in and the roar turned to a deafening ringing as if huge bells were going off in my head. I kept aiming, kept pulling the trigger.
Five of us firing volley-fire laid down a wall of death that the wolves ran into as if unaware of the consequences of doing so. They fell before us, but as each one tumbled away the one behind managed to get closer to us and we were forced to retreat, slow step by slow step, even after putting half a dozen of them down. They were close enough for me to smell their fetid breath as they roared flecks of bloody spittle in our faces. A gray shadow came over the mound of bodies having leapt like a show horse over the top. I put two rounds in its belly but its momentum kept it coming and its weight took both young Davies and the cap down to the ground and momentarily out of the fight. That reduction in our firepower gave the pack an opening. There was maybe a dozen of them left, and they surged forward, a wall of howling rage, their bloodlust in full flow.
I had to throw myself backward. Jaws closed on my left foot and I was, not for the first time, thankful for the stout boots. I kicked out with my right even as I was turning to aim. My right boot caught the wolf's snout, it raised its head and snarled and I put three rounds between its eyes, feeling hot bits of bone and brain and blood spatter all across my upper body and face.
> "Stay down," the cap shouted somewhere behind me, his call coming faintly above the ringing. I didn't know if it was directed at me but I stayed down anyway, rolling onto my belly, feeling cold seep into me even as I aimed and fired, aimed and fired while more shots whistled over my head.
The mound of bodies steamed, we kept firing, the wolves kept dying, then, as if distantly in a wind, I heard the howling turn to a bark and as quickly as they had come the pack melted away. I counted six of them as they left; the rest lay dead in a pile at the front of the building.
The cap wasted no time.
"I saw some gas canisters out back earlier," he said to me, having to shout for me to hear him. "Fetch them round. The brass said 'sanitise'. It's time we got started. Let's burn these fuckers."
Wilko came with me and by the time we returned, each lugging two ten-litre cans of gas, the cap and the sheriff had moved the dead wolves to the far end of the forecourt away from the buildings. Watkins stood with Davies while the private watched for any fresh attack. They'd got our kit out of the trucks and it was piled on the ground at Jennings' feet; the corporal was still not with us, lost in a thousand-mile stare that wasn't seeing much of anything. He had his rifle slung over his shoulder but it was going to be as much use to us as a wet match in the Glasgow rain.
We burned the wolves, everything going up in a conflagration that even despite the cold had us standing back as far as the fire trucks to avoid it. The remaining wolves kept away although we heard them as soon as the smoke plume went up from their dead brethren, the same high, choral wail echoing across the hillside.
"Is that it?" Watkins asked expectantly. He was already inching towards the closest fire truck door. The cap blocked his path.
"Nope. That's far from 'it'," he said. "We're going to play a wee game of show and tell. I'm going to show you something, you're going to tell me everything you know."
Operation: Yukon Page 5
