The Squad

by Tom Palmer

  ‘But why didn’t he just kill us?’ Kester asked.

  As he asked Lily the question, the answer came immediately into his mind. He remembered sitting at the captain’s table onboard the ship and Hawk saying how much he loved hunting. That he’d hunt anything. How had he put it? Hunting is a bit like a game. Don’t you think so, Captain? Something like that.

  ‘He’s hunting us,’ Kester said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s hunting us like he would animals. Like he hunts deer and whatever. He said he loves to hunt new creatures all the time. They make it more interesting. The sport. We’re his prey. It’s like a game to him. And he’s all the more excited because we’re human prey.’

  Lily wiped the sweat from her forehead. Kester was right. ‘So we need to get away,’ she said. ‘And as fast as possible. Without leaving tracks.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Kester said.

  They both fell backwards and hit the ground when they heard it. The crack of a bullet hitting the heap of rocks they were leaning on. When the second bullet came, they rolled behind the larger rock. Kester peered briefly over the top, then ducked as another bullet ricocheted off the rock.

  ‘Where’s he firing from?’ Lily asked.

  ‘He’s at the foot of the hill. Five minutes behind us, I’d say. They’re kneeling and firing.’

  ‘That’s not half an hour. He’s only given us ten minutes.’

  Kester looked again and saw that the two figures had stopped firing and were climbing.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Ten minutes are better than nothing. They’re moving again, not shooting. The hill flattens out soon. If we make it up there, we have a chance.’

  So they ran.

  Faster now.

  A burst of speed that took them to the top of the hill and – mercifully – out of the firing line.

  ‘Now what?’ Kester asked.

  The top of the hill was a vast plateau, leading to a gradual slope heading up to a cairn – a two-metre pile of rocks – overlooking the water. A strong wind was whistling across the open spaces. What must have been a rugged landscape with plenty of possible hiding places was now like a blank sheet, apart from the cairn. Every footstep they made could be seen up close. And another person or animal would be visible from kilometres away, black against the pure white.

  ‘We can’t go across here,’ Lily muttered. ‘Once he’s up top, he’ll see us for miles.’

  ‘And we can’t go down,’ Kester urged. ‘He’ll see us if we do that too.’

  They stared out across the vast expanse of white and both spoke at the same time, as they felt a sudden shower of snow rushing in at them from the north.

  ‘We need to hide.’

  They could hear the crunch of both men’s boots clearly as they crouched low. How had the Americans found them already?

  ‘No sign,’ Hawk’s sidekick said.

  ‘That’s because they’re good,’ Hawk replied, eyeing the cairn, with snow packed into its crevices. ‘I love it. Intelligent prey.’

  ‘So what now, sir?’

  ‘We head to the top. We can see everything from the top once this snow calms down. There’s some tough weather coming in. Look, there’s a mountain hut there. They might even be in there. Then we wait.’

  When the footsteps had gone, Lily moved half a dozen stones out of her way and peered across the hill to see if their hunters really were going.

  ‘They’re moving away,’ she said to Kester. ‘We’re covered on this side.’

  Kester moved some stones out of his way and stretched his legs. They’d been hiding in the cairn or a part of it. They’d removed several stones, covered themselves with some of them, and in five minutes the drifting snow had hidden them and the stones they’d moved from view.

  ‘That was a good idea, Kester,’ Lily said with a smile.

  ‘It was.’ Kester grimaced. ‘Let’s head back down.’

  ‘No. Not down,’ Lily said grimly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not down.’

  ‘Why not?’ Kester asked.

  ‘Well, what’s the point in that? If we go, we’ll lose him. He might be hunting us – and that means we should try to escape. But we’re also spying on him. We need to find out what he’s up to. Look, the weather’s closing in. He might think he’s lost us. We’ve got the advantage back.’

  Kester knew that Lily was right. They didn’t have to get as far away as possible from Hawk as they could. They had to get close to him. Really close.

  And that meant going on.

  ‘OK,’ Kester said. ‘I agree. But first, let’s text Lesh.’

  Less than ten kilometres away, only a few metres below the surface of the fjords around Hammerfest in a state-of-the-art submarine, a man with a headset on was sitting at a computer.

  When his machine began to bleep, he looked at the screen and read what was on there.

  LHA.

  WE ARE PURSUING TARGET 2.

  HAMMERFEST HILLS.

  LK

  The man took his headphones off and smiled. ‘Sir. I have their position,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said a tall, athletic-looking man. ‘Good. Let’s go and find them.’

  Storm

  The wind was driving patchy snow in at high speed over the mountains now, making it hard for Lily and Kester to walk. Their outdoor gear was of the highest quality, but they could still feel the wetness of the snow and the cold on their necks and hands. The cold was seeping in through every gap in their clothing.

  It was freezing. Visibility was poor. Sometimes they could see for kilometres, sometimes metres, the mountains appearing and disappearing in waves of snow.

  The storm was good news for them in other ways. The mountain top was so wild now that the Americans had holed up in the hut, forced to give up the hunt for the two children.

  Approaching the hut, Kester signalled that they should go round the back, so they wouldn’t be seen as they came closer. There was little chance of this, as the small wooden door was closed and the snow was very thick. It was a tiny hut, smaller than a garage that you could drive one car into. From the back it looked more like a pile of stones, huge snowdrifts smoothing its sides.

  Kester moved close to Lily and whispered in her ear, the wind obscuring his words from anyone but her.

  ‘Can we listen in on what they’re saying? Is there any way?’

  Lily looked at the structure of the hut. It was not built like a modern building. It was more like a drystone wall. No mortar, just stones carefully placed to keep out the snow and the cold. She tried to clear her head, to ignore the weather conditions that were making it so hard for her to think. It didn’t take long to work out a solution.

  Lily grabbed Kester’s head and spoke into his ear. ‘I could use a bug and feed it through some of the stones,’ she said. ‘If it got far enough into the wall, we might be able to pick up what they’re saying.’

  Kester smiled. ‘Do it. Do whatever it takes, without giving ourselves away,’ he said. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘A piece of wire and this listening device,’ Lily said. ‘That’s all.’

  After a pause, Kester grinned again. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’

  It took him ten minutes. He had to take his rucksack apart, strip the canvas from it and unpick the stitching, all without gloves, his hands frozen and wet because of the driving snow. But there, after all his efforts, from the structure of the rucksack, was a thirty-centimetre piece of wire.

  ‘Perfect,’ Lily said, emerging from her hood, the wind and snow stinging her face.

  Once she’d attached the pin-sized listening device to Kester’s wire, Lily began to feed it into the wall of the mountain hut. Kester put in an earpiece and listened to the sound of the bug as it hit stones and rubble inside the wall. He also kept an eye on the front of the hut. If this went wrong, then the Americans could be out and on to them in seconds.

  ‘The walls must be a half a metre thick,’ Lily spoke into Ke
ster’s ear as the howling of the wind seemed to be picking up. ‘Can you hear anything yet?’

  Kester shook his head. He’d noticed that Lily’s teeth were chattering. She was very cold. They’d been stationary for more than fifteen minutes now. Kester adjusted his earpiece to get the best sound he could. And there, at last, he heard voices. He signalled to Lily to stop. Her bug was within range. The plan had worked.

  ‘We need to move on. Find those kids.’ It was the second American’s voice.

  ‘It’s too wild out there,’ Hawk replied. ‘We have to sit this out. So do they. They won’t be going anywhere. Anyway, my worry is the device.’

  Kester held his breath. The device? Was Hawk about to talk about the warhead?

  ‘When does it come in?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Hawk answered.

  ‘Is it primed?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And will you let it … you know …’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No. I think you’re using it to set up the Russian. Make everyone think he’s trying to destabilize things.’

  ‘That’s true in part,’ Hawk said. ‘I want Russia blamed. And it wouldn’t just be a war between us and the Russians. It’d be the world against the Russians. And, once they were on their knees, who would get access to all their oil?’

  ‘We would, sir.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So when?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon.’

  Hawk paused. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘Just how powerful is this thing?’ the second American asked.

  ‘It’ll kill everyone in Tromsø immediately. Then most people within twenty kilometres will suffer radiation poisoning and die in a year or two.’

  ‘What about the heads of state? The British Prime Minister, for instance.’

  ‘Dead too. And it’ll be no loss. He’s weak. He even said he doesn’t like war.’

  ‘That’s a lot of dead,’ the second American said. ‘Men, women and children.’

  ‘Correct.’ Hawk chuckled. ‘Whales too. Seals. All sorts of creatures. This place will be a radioactive desert for decades. And all caused by me tip-tapping a code into this.’

  ‘What code?’

  ‘My secret code.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is something in my head, not written down.’

  There was a pause, during which Lily and Kester eyed each other in alarm at what they were hearing. Then Frank Hawk spoke again. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re safe. After the soccer game tomorrow, we’ll get away. I’ve got all the equipment we need to survive.’

  As the two Americans spoke, Kester and Lily looked at each other in full understanding. They knew Hawk’s plan. They knew it would be the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed and that it would have knock-on effects for generations. They also knew that they had to put their lives on the line to make sure it didn’t happen.

  The Fall

  ‘Must get back to Tromsø,’ Kester said, barely able to speak now that the wind was so strong, driving sharp pieces of ice into his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said. ‘Hammerfest first. It’s going to be hard.’

  ‘No choice,’ Kester responded. ‘The alternative is too terrible.’

  They stopped listening to the Americans and quickly put the wreckage of Kester’s rucksack into Lily’s. They had to hold on to everything they had, just in case.

  If they’d carried on listening for a little longer, they would have had warning. Warning that the Americans had made the same decision as them. To head back to Tromsø. Their hunters were right on their tail.

  Lily and Kester scrambled down a slope, then picked their way across great fields of rocks. It was heavy-going and very slow. But this was their only option. Although the snow was lighter now, the air around them was so uniformly white that it was impossible to navigate by choosing landmarks, so Kester used the compass he’d retrieved from his rucksack. North-west across the wide open space until they reached the edge of the mountain. Then a steep drop down to the water.

  They walked slowly, much slower than a normal person walking down a normal street. But above them the clouds moved swiftly across the sky. And, as the clouds moved, the snow stopped. They could see rock formations now. A glimpse, through the low cloud, of water below.

  ‘That’s good,’ Kester said, glancing at Lily.

  But Lily didn’t look like she thought anything was good: she was frowning, squinting hard across the fields of snow behind her.

  Kester followed her line of sight and saw them. Two black figures against the perfect white. Less than five hundred metres away. One was pointing. The other was bending down, pulling something from a bag.

  A gun.

  The hunters were after them again.

  ‘Run,’ Kester shouted, heading out across the open fields to their right.

  ‘No,’ Lily shouted back, looking down the steep slope that fell away to their left. ‘We’re easy meat if we go that way. We have to go down.’

  As if to reinforce what she’d said, a bullet slammed into the rocks next to Kester.

  ‘Too steep,’ Kester shouted.

  ‘No choice,’ Lily replied, diving down the slope. Kester had no option but to go straight after her.

  They descended at high speed, skimming the surface of the snow, legs first. At first, they had just been falling, but within seconds the pair were using their legs to steer as they fell, avoiding sticking out bits of rock, trying to keep to the smooth snow, digging in their feet to keep the speed down. It was a bit like sledging without a sledge. Or sledging using your body as the sledge. That was the half-thought that passed through Lily’s mind. The only half-thought she allowed herself.

  The drop was over a kilometre. A high, steep hill descended in under a minute. Dangerous and deadly. Painful. Physical. Thrilling. Almost like skydiving, but without the sky.

  Soon they found themselves closing in on the bottom of the hill and the freezing water below. And freezing water might have been OK. But this freezing water was full of sharp rocks that they could quite easily break a leg on – or worse.

  Kester forced his legs deep into the snow in a bid to stop, then looked across at Lily. She was doing the same. And it started to work. They were slowing down. They both dug their legs in even deeper.

  The events of the next few seconds passed so quickly, neither Lily nor Kester could do anything about it. As they slowed at the foot of the mountain, just before the water, feeling they were safe at last, they shared a grim smile. Until, that is, they saw two things that surprised them.

  First, a shape in the water like a whale, a tower emerging from it. They both knew immediately it was a submarine.

  Second, three large men waiting at the foot of the hill by the water.

  Lily and Kester could do nothing but carry on sliding slowly downhill towards the men, however much they dug their heels in. The men grabbed them without a word, put hands over their mouths and dragged them beneath some overhanging rocks. That’s when things became even more alarming.

  The men took off the children’s storm jackets, wrapped the jackets round two medium-sized tree trunks and flung the jacketed trunks into the water below. Lily and Kester watched in horror as the floating jackets were riddled with bullets, cracks of gunfire chasing the bullets down the slope. Hawk and his sidekick fired at least ten bullets into each of the logs, from their hilltop position a kilometre higher up. Only when the firing stopped did Kester and Lily look up from the overhang to see their new captors.

  Two of the men were strangers.

  The other was Jim Sells.

  Jim Sells. Their coach and ex-commander from their last mission. A former England footballer. A former spy for the UK, now an operative for Russia. The man who had betrayed them just months ago.

  Jim

  ‘You!’ Lily hissed when the firing had stopped.

  ‘Hello, Lily. Hello, Kester.’ Jim
Sells’s voice sounded calm and kind. Just like it used to. And nothing like it should do on this most dangerous of occasions. ‘It looks like your friends think you’re dead and drowned,’ he added.

  The two men with him moved into position at the end of the overhang, checking to see what the Americans at the top of the hill were doing. ‘They’re long gone, sir,’ one said in Russian.

  Lily watched them and – understanding what they said – she launched herself at Jim, cracking the side of his head hard with her fist. Then his shoulder and chest. She finished with a punch to his mouth. Jim did nothing to stop her. He took the blows. He didn’t even turn away.

  Kester stood and watched. He’d never seen Lily so violent. But he understood that she needed to do what she was doing, even though she’d also know that it would have little impact on a man like Jim. He remembered how, at first, Jim had been a hero to them. An ex-footballer. An experienced spy. He’d run their mission in Poland – and, then, at the last minute, had betrayed them, siding with a group of Russians who were trying to murder the entire England team.

  When Lily had stopped hitting him, Jim spoke again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a traitor,’ Lily spat.

  ‘I am,’ Jim nodded. ‘I am a traitor. To the UK. And I’m sorry you had to be dragged into all that. I never expected a group of children to get in our way. That’s why I sent you away from Krakow. To the lake. That’s why I tried to get the helicopter to leave you there, so you’d not be in danger in the city. But you survived. And you stopped us. Through your own skill.’

  ‘Survived? But we didn’t, did we?’ Lily said. ‘Lesh didn’t survive. Do you know about Lesh?’

  ‘I know he can’t walk,’ Jim said. ‘And I’m deeply sorry about that.’

  Lily wanted to use every swear word she’d ever heard and hurl them at Jim. She racked her brains to find something she could say to hurt him. He was the one of the few adults she had trusted – even cared about – since the death of her parents. And he had utterly betrayed her. But now, as her anger dissipated, she was thinking, aware that they were at the foot of this snowy mountain, next to what she assumed was a Russian submarine.