And before the squad even had time to fully react to this new arrival, howls of fury echoed in the dome behind them, and the slap of large, naked, feet on concrete carried in the still of the night.
“A rock and a fucking hard place, right enough,” Hynd muttered.
The cave lion lay between them and the staircase that Banks had been heading for. They might be able to put it down before the Alma arrived, but seeing the size of it, Banks knew that the chances were only fifty-fifty at best.
“Plan B,” he said softly, keeping his voice to a low monotone that wouldn’t startle the beast. “We make for the Lear Jet. At least that’s defensible if it comes to it.”
He sidled to his left, and the team followed quickly, all staying in a tight unit with Galloway in the middle. The lion watched their every move, but as yet showed no sign of being concerned. That abruptly changed when another howl of rage, closer now, came through from the domed complex. The lion’s head came up, its ears pricked, and it dropped a lump of meat, already forgotten, between its paws as it rose, its attention fully on the doorway as three large adult Alma came through at a run.
Banks moved fast, leading the squad around the wall of the room. The Alma saw him, and roared again. The lion roared back at them, and attacked.
The reception area was suddenly full of noise—roaring and snarling, wails of pain and howls of fury. Teeth bit, claws tore, and everything was a blurred tumble of ginger alma and gray cat in a rolling maul across the floor.
The way to the staircase was clear for now, but Banks made a split second decision against it, and headed for the main door out to the runway. Blood sprayed, sending a hot mist in the air, but the fury of the fight was so intense it was hard to tell which of the animals had taken an injury.
And I’m not going to hang about to check.
He led the team out into the fog.
*
Almost immediately, all sound from the raging battle in reception area was muffled, and within three paces, the noise was almost deadened completely. The fog felt thick, wet against their cheeks, glowing softly green but impenetrable; their lights scarcely illuminated anything beyond arm’s length.
Banks pointed his weapon down to light the ground at his feet and walked quickly in a straight line, only stopping when he hit the edge of the tarmac and the start of the boggy ground. Then he followed the edge of the runway, heading northwest, knowing that they’d reach the Lear Jet before anything else.
The fuselage loomed ahead of him seconds later, but when he reached the doorway, his heart sank. The Alma had got here first. The door was gone, pulled off its hinges and thrown God knows where. Inside the plane was a ruin of torn upholstery, scattered luggage, and smeared shite.
“Sarge, you and Wiggo check the hold,” Banks said. “If our kit bags are still there, fetch them. We’re going to need all the help we can get from here on in.”
Galloway stood at Banks’ shoulder. The scientist looked pale, his eyes sunken in dark shadows, and his pallor was gray and waxy.
“How’s the ankle holding up?” Banks asked.
“It isn’t,” Galloway said. “But I can keep up, for now. I don’t know for how long though.”
I don’t either.
Banks didn’t say it. He’d lost two of his three charges already; he wasn’t about to lose the third, wounded or not.
I’ll carry him if I have to.
Hynd and Wiggins came back into view through the fog, each carrying a kit bag.
“Got everything we could salvage, Cap,” Hynd said. “It’s not much.”
“It’s better than nothing, so I’ll take it.”
He gathered the squad around him.
“We can’t go back into the complex; it’s not secure. And we’re not going anywhere far in this fog. But the angry beasties are fighting each other right now, and we can only hope it stays that way. So my plan’s simple; we head out onto the moor, find a hole, and stay in it until the sun comes up. It’s going to be cold, it’s going to be wet…”
“But still better than a maneuver on Rannoch Moor in January,” McCally added, and Banks nodded.
“Aye. Anything’s better than that. So, you all know the drill. Single file, don’t lose sight of the man in front or the man behind you, and follow me until I say stop. Anything that’s not us comes out of the fog, shoot it. Got it?”
Without waiting for a reply, he walked off the tarmac and onto the boggy tundra.
*
Banks wasn’t entirely sure he’d made the right decision; maybe he should have tried for the stairs while the lion and Alma were fighting, and maybe they might be holed up safe in a larder or cellar by now. But his gut told him that this current plan was the lesser of two evils, and it was his gut that had kept them alive so far on this trip; he had to trust it now.
Within a few paces, they reached a wide gap in the enclosure fencing, where metal poles as thick as Banks’ arm had been torn from the ground and bent at almost right angles before being tossed aside. They went through, deeper into the fog. Banks tried to maintain a compass in his head, looking for reference points that might help him retrace his steps if required, but the fog was thicker here, and there was just his light showing him his boots and the mire below him.
Every footstep in the boggy ground was like wading in thick treacle that threatened to pull off his boots at any second. Galloway with his bad ankle must be in agony already, and Banks knew they weren’t going to make it far. But after several minutes, he smelled a stronger stench than anything else they’d encountered, and his gut feeling told him he’d been brought to the right place when they descended into a hollow, and the smell got stronger still.
“Bloody hell, Cap,” Wiggins said quietly. “It smells like shite here.”
“That’s because it is shite,” Banks replied. “Mammoth shite at a guess, and plenty of it.”
“Then let’s get the flock out of here before I spew,” Wiggins replied.
“Nope, get settled, we’re staying put. I’ve seen it in Africa; they use elephant shite, smeared on the houses to keep predators away. And it works.”
“Aye,” Wiggins said. “The lad next door to me in Glasgow used to use dog’s shite to keep his mother-in-law away. That worked too. But I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now.”
“Tough,” Banks said. “Just think yourself lucky I don’t order you to roll in it—although it might come to that yet.”
The hollow was little more than an eight-feet-wide, four-feet-deep cavity in the tundra. The bottom was damp, but not any more than the rest of the moorland. Large clumps of darker material, accumulated dung of the mammoth herd, lined the bottom, and some of the walls.
“Cozy,” Hynd said laconically.
“We’ve slept in worse places though,” McCally added.
“And with smellier women too,” Wiggins replied. “Remember Brenda in Belfast?”
“Stow it, lads,” Banks said quietly. “We’re supposed to be hiding, remember?”
Galloway had already sat down in the bottom of the hollow ignoring the cold damp that must already be seeping through his clothes in order to check on the bandages at his ankle. The scientist looked up at Banks and smiled wanly.
“I’ll live—I hope. But I won’t be walking any farther for a while.”
“With any luck, you won’t have to,” Banks replied. “Now, quiet lads, and lights out. Take a sector each, and don’t shoot unless you really need to. Get settled as much as you can. We’ve got a long wait ‘til morning.”
*
By Banks’ reckoning, the quadrant he’d chosen to stand watch over was the one that faced directly back to the complex, but he saw nothing but fog, still glowing faintly green where the aurora seeped through from above. There was a slight breeze wafting the fog to and fro, sending it swirling at times, but there was no sound now, and nothing to see. If he turned to his left or right, he could just about make out the darker shadows of the other men, Wiggins and Hynd, but when
facing forward, it felt like he was lost, alone, in the green glow.
The lack of anything to concentrate on, anything to look at or listen to, meant that it was a struggle to maintain focus. His mind kept slipping away to earlier events of the night, of poor Waterston being squeezed to death, of the mayhem in the cave mouth, of the flight in the dark through the domes, and the bloody battle between lion and Alma. He wondered whether one side had prevailed over the other, and hoped that both sides had taken enough damage to keep them quiet, until morning at least.
That hope was dashed when he heard a distinct, and loud, sniff coming out of the fog, only feet in front of him.
- 22 -
Banks peered, trying to make out movement or a darker shadow, but there was only the shifting fog. The sniffing came again, followed by a loud whuff; not laughter this time, but obviously disgust. Banks resist the impulse to switch on his light as his grip tightened on his rifle. He remembered the musty odor of the Alma, but couldn’t smell it or taste it in his throat now over the stench of the dung in the hollow. But he knew it was out there, somewhere just beyond the limits of his vision.
And it was hunting.
The snuffle came again, quickly followed by another snort of disgust, then splashing, fading, as the Alma retreated from the smell. Banks let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, and forced his fingers to relax where they gripped the rifle. His gut had been right—again. The smell of the dung had forced the Alma to retreat. Whether it would also work on the cave lion wasn’t something he hoped to find out.
The night drew on. The squad stood guard, but nothing else disturbed the silence for several hours. After a while, Banks had Wiggins go through the kit bag and distribute field rations—the automatic-warming packets of soup were a welcome respite against the damp. He allowed the men a smoke, guessing that the stench of the dung was more than enough to mask their tobacco, then had Wiggins and McCally stand down to get some sleep while he and Hynd maintained the watch.
He cleared his mind, searching for the watchful state he knew of old, where he would be able to achieve some rest while maintaining a state of alertness. It was a condition honed by years spent on duty, many of them much more perilous than this particular foxhole. But his foes then had been human, in the main, and he knew how men’s minds worked, could anticipate them. With these beasts, he was operating blind, both figuratively and literally, although that was starting to change.
He noticed it first when the green tinge faded. Then he heard the first noise for more than an hour, not a snuffle, but a soft trumpeting somewhere off to his left. He looked that way, and noted a thinning of the fog. Looking up, he saw stars twinkle overhead, Orion striding across the sky. Part of him welcomed the lifting of what had felt like an oppressive blanket. But now he felt exposed, more so when he realized their position, although in a hollow, was in a wide expanse of open moorland with no other cover for hundreds of yards around.
But at least nothing’s going to sneak up on us.
The domed complex sat, a darker shadow framed against the skyline. There was no sign of any movement, not any sound of lion or Alma. He looked for the source of the trumpeting, but if the mammoth were close by, he could not see them in the dark. The whole tundra plain seemed quiet and asleep.
The attack came from Hynd’s side ten minutes later.
*
“We’ve got incoming, Cap,” the sarge said. “Three of the big orange fuckers, at fifty yards and closing. They’ve clocked our position.”
Banks kicked McCally where he slept, almost standing up, against the side of the hollow. The corporal came awake immediately.
“Get Wiggo up then stand with the sarge,” Banks said. “We’ve got trouble.”
Banks stayed at his post while McCally, and then Wiggins, moved quickly to cover the sarge’s position. He knew better than to have all four of them looking one way at the same time; the Alma had already proved themselves to be sneaky. There was no sense in giving them another opportunity to show it.
He heard the sarge shouting. “Fire!” A volley of shots rang out.
“One down,” Wiggins shouted, then they all fired again.
The shots rang and echoed around them, then all went quiet.
“Two down, one buggered off, but I think I winged it,” McCally said.
A wail rose over the tundra, high and wild.
It was answered by a chorus of howls that came from all parts of the compass.
“Fuck me, there’s hundreds of them,” Wiggins said.
*
As if a silent command ran through them, the Alma attacked, all at once, coming from all sides. They heard them before they saw them, splashing their way through the bogs, hooting and wailing. Banks had once seen a tribe of chimpanzees on a hunt in a television documentary, and this had the same frenzied yet at the same time totally controlled quality to it. Every fiber of him wanted to start firing, but the range was too far; the beasts had already shown an ability to take a shot and keep coming. He’d have to let them get close.
Perhaps too close.
“Steady, lads,” he called out. “When it comes down to it, we’re holding all the cards here; they’re not armed. So take them down, but pick your shots. Short, controlled bursts.”
Then it was all done to muscle memory and control. The Alma came on, charging through the boggy ground, and into view, firstly as darker shadows against the background, then close enough that Banks saw their teeth, too white in the darkness. He waited until the first was within twenty yards, then put it down with two shots to the head.
The rest kept coming. Wiggins had overestimated with his ‘hundreds,’ but there were a dozen and more just in Banks’ field of view, and he guessed the same number again coming from each side. Then all of the squad opened fire at once, the crack of rifles echoing loud across the tundra under the stars. Banks put down two more, one big male who took four rounds to stop, and a female with a pendulous belly who only needed one, through the mouth and out the back of her head in a spray of blood and brains.
He looked quickly for another shot to take, but as quickly as they had appeared, the beasts retreated away into the dark, leaving their dead where they lay. Behind Banks, the rifles of the rest of the squad fell silent.
The first rock came out of the dark seconds later.
*
He didn’t see it coming. It dropped out of the sky and landed three feet in front of Banks with a muddy thud that sent black ooze splashing over his head and torso.
“Heads down, lads. We’ve got incoming.”
He slid down the wall of the hollow, so that only his head was above ground level, just enough to see any attack, aware that at any moment a rock might fall out of the sky. More stones fell around them, the patter and thud as they hit the wet ground sounding like the beat of a manic drummer.
I was wrong about them not having any weapons. And right about them being sneaky fuckers.
They couldn’t do anything but crouch down in the hollow as the bombardment continued; waiting and hoping a lucky strike wouldn’t crush a head or break a bone. Two rocks, each the size of rugby balls, landed inside their perimeter, one of either side of Galloway’s legs. The scientist scurried out of the bottom of the hole to lie next to Banks.
“Just in case they’re getting their aim in,” he said. Banks looked over at the man, and realized he could see him much more clearly than just minutes earlier.
Far to the east, dawn was coming, lightening the sky.
He wasn’t sure he welcomed the clarity it would bring, as another rock fell with a wet splash, less than a foot from his nose.
- 23 -
“We can’t just sit here, Cap,” Wiggins said. “We’re sitting ducks.”
“I’m open to suggestions, lad,” Banks said. “I’m not doing the fucking hokey-cokey in and out of the building again. And yon big cat is still out there somewhere too.”
Another rock hit inside the hollow, close to McCally’s feet.
“Take a lookout, lads,” Banks said. “We’ve got no cover, and it’s a fucking bog in every direction. At least here we can cower down.”
“Cowering’s never really been our style,” Hynd said. “I’m with the lads on this one, John. I’d rather my number came up on the move than lying in a hole full of hairy elephant shite.”
Banks turned to Galloway, and saw that the scientist was lost in thought.
“Well, everybody else has had their say. What about you? Any bright ideas?”
Galloway wasn’t looking at him, but had turned his gaze to the west. Banks looked that way, and saw the mammoth herd, still gathered together in their tight circle.
The scientist smiled thinly.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Like what?”
He nodded toward the mammoth herd just as another rock splashed down hard right on the rim of their hollow. Somewhere out on the tundra, an Alma hooted and whuffed, its loud laughter ringing across the open ground.
“We get the mammoths to shield us,” the scientist said.
Wiggins laughed.
“I can see that. Please mister hairy ginger elephant, can we join your gang? And by the way, your shite smells lovely. Aye, I can see that working.”
Galloway was still looking over the bog towards the mammoths.
“I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve heard of it in Africa; people being given shelter in an elephant herd.”
“Aye,” Banks replied. “But these aren’t elephants. And they haven’t seen many people. How do we know they’ll be friendly?”
Another rock, the largest one yet, landed in the middle of the hollow, embedding itself almost completely in the wet ground.
“I think we should try,” Galloway said. “Can we afford not to?”
Banks saw the man’s point, as another rock splashed down close by. It looked like the beasts were finding their range, and any second now, somebody was likely to take a serious injury.
Operation Siberia Page 11
