by Andy Lucas
After a while, Hammond drifted off as well, as the plane voraciously devoured the miles separating the United Kingdom and South America.
Also safely stored aboard was all the equipment the men were going to need, rapidly gathered by Ramsay a few hours earlier, from one of the closest emergency safe houses to Stapleford Abbotts. Weapons, food and clothing were not an issue.
The main element to their survival; luck, was something beyond Ramsay’s control.
7
The harbour was calm, untroubled by the strong winds whipping up the sea in angry white breakers beyond the huge stone barrier. As it had done for over eighty years, the thick strip of neatly-fitted concrete blocks shrugged off the disturbance with distain.
A narrow, shingle beach curved around the land side of the cove, rapidly rising up a steep slope for a few hundred metres before rising vertically in the form of a one hundred metre, sheer cliff face.
It was the middle of the night and the few jetties and rickety, wooden warehouses lay in total darkness with no hint of torchlight from the absent security guards. Abandoned when the Scorpion affair blew up in ARC’s face, all overt activity had ceased. The road that curled away, up towards the top of the cliff, lay empty and forlorn.
To the two men watching from out at sea, the eerie silence could not yet be experienced. Their only concern was coping with the heavy swells that smashed into their small rubber Zodiac, regularly dousing them both with icy sheets of foaming seawater.
Not wanting to be burdened with bulky survival suits, even though Pace’s last one had saved his life several times, the McEntire men accepted the fact that they were going to spend the night wet and cold. Dressed in black combat fatigues, the only concession to the sea was that all of their equipment and weaponry sat safely tucked up inside a large plastic sack which Hammond gripped tightly with one hand, while hanging on to one of the boat's rubber handles for dear life with his other.
Both men were hunkered down as flat in the bottom of the Zodiac as possible. Bracing himself with spread legs, Pace was trying his best to sweep the complex with a special pair of waterproof night-vision binoculars, with some success despite the constantly shifting boat.
‘It looks deserted,’ he mentioned. ‘Nothing is moving on the shore.’
‘We know the site is still operational,’ countered Hammond. ‘The local military is protecting the land perimeter and all entrance roads. Satellites have confirmed it.’
‘So,’ reasoned Pace, ‘we should be seeing some lights, somewhere.’ He paused as a particularly vicious wave overbalanced him and the binoculars slipped painfully down from his eyes onto the bridge of his nose. Replacing them, he studied the buildings intently once more. ‘But there’s nothing.’
‘Then whatever’s going on here is clearly not taking place in the buildings we can see, or maybe they've had their windows blacked out like London’s homes during the Blitz. We know there will be an underground complex here, just like the base in Antarctica; somewhere for the submarine to land covertly too. A hidden cove, or cave along the shoreline. Maybe all the action is going on there?’
Pace nodded in agreement with his friend. The reason the nefarious activities of the British government had remained secret for a century lay in the cleverly positioned sites they had chosen. Somewhere nearby, he believed, there would be a hidden base that had been used to develop both Project Scorpion and Dark Tide.
‘No point waiting around here then,’ Pace decided. ‘Let’s get ashore and find whatever it is that’s waiting for us.’
‘Good,’ agreed Hammond, his bald head shining in the moonlight. ‘The sooner we find anything that might lead us to Josephine Roche, the sooner I can be tucked up in bed with a hot chocolate.’
Pace chuckled, despite their situation. The image of Hammond opting for a safe, warm drink was so alien as to be laughable. In reality, the seasoned adventurer next to him typically spent his free time in the arms of a beautiful woman; champagne glasses fizzing icily in their hands.
‘Okay, come on.’ Suddenly serious, a natural calm settled over them both. They had been in enough tight spots together to trust each other implicitly. Eyes sharply focused, senses alert for danger, they dug their hands into the cold water and paddled towards the shore.
Quickly caught in the swells, helped by a fairly robust current, the little rubber boat crunched onto the shingle beach barely two minutes later, with Pace expertly raising its outboard motor before the propellers bit into the gravel.
Still, nothing stirred. No alarm blared nor searchlight flashed. The beach remained deserted.
Rolling off the Zodiac like experienced marines, they lay flat for a moment before crabbing up the beach, ignoring the pain of the tiny stones that dug into their flesh. Pace pulled the light boat behind him, leaving Hammond to drag their plastic bag of vital equipment. They moved slowly although each man half expected to hear a shout in the darkness at any moment. Breathing controlled, muscles moving fluidly, they made it up to softer sand a few metres higher up before the ground began to rise steeply towards the imposing rock face.
Leaving the Zodiac where it was, now well above the grip of the water, they rose cautiously into a low crouch before heading up the rise at a cracking pace, reaching the base of the cliff within a few panted breaths. Shielded from view by the rock, only a direct observer out to sea had any chance of spotting them.
Gathering themselves, Hammond lost no time in opening the bag and dishing out the contents while Pace kept a wary eye out for any sign that their arrival had been discovered.
Each of them slipped on a black Kevlar vest, over their wet clothes, before strapping on a gun belt. Hammond had opted for a standard Sig Sauer P226 pistol but Pace was happier that the Velcro flap on his own holster hid his trusty First World War Webley .455 revolver.
They added a couple of flashlights to their belts alongside a sheath in which nestled a lethal commando knife. These sleek, matt-black painted, vicious knives had been adapted to house a small, luminous compass in their hilts. They would be very useful if things went badly and close quarter fighting ensued but, more than that, Pace and Hammond both knew they would be heading underground at some point and a luminous compass would definitely prevent them from getting hopelessly lost.
A portable GPS unit, designed to be worn like a wrist watch completed their orienteering equipment. Finally, they each popped a couple of emergency flares into special loops in their belts before grabbing up their main weapons.
Once again, each man carried something different, with Hammond lifting a rather battered AK-47 from the bag while Pace could not keep a smile from creeping onto his lips as he felt the reassuring familiarity of the old WWII Sten gun fill his hands.
Borrowed from a strange, ex-gun runner who they had stumbled across in the middle of the Amazon Basin months earlier, it had saved his life too many times already for him to count. As a lover of historic weaponry, Pace was also highly proficient with the rather primitive submachine gun.
‘You do love that thing,’ commented Hammond good-naturedly. ‘It’s older than you.’
Pace grinned widely. ‘Correction. It’s much older than that and my pistol is even older. Anyway,’ he added, ‘that thing you’re carrying has seen better days too.’
It was Hammond’s turn to smile. Nodding, he said, ‘I know, but these things were designed to be nearly indestructible. When things heat up in a few minutes, she won’t let me down.’
‘Neither will this.’ Pace jerked the Sten in Hammond’s direction. ‘Don’t forget, some of the best gun smiths in the McEntire Corporation have adapted its guts to ensure any nasty jams won’t happen to me.’
‘Sod’s law it will stop working just when you need it. But don’t worry,’ Hammond added, ‘because me and my old Kalashnikov will be right here to save the day.’
8
Shilan’s controllers would be aware, by now, that something had gone wrong. She had managed to keep to a strict schedule of six-hourly cov
ert messages ever since she had first flown out to Namibia, to meet Josephine Roche, what seemed like an eon ago.
That wouldn’t help her much, she knew. As an experienced operative of Gesunde Welt; roughly translated into English as A Healthy World, she would have to try and extricate herself from her situation without outside help. Sure, satellites and communication taps would already be running hot, and the few people in her own government who were permitted to know anything about Gesunde Welt’s darker side would have been informed.
A huge, well-respected company, Gesunde Welt had been supplying emergency medical personnel and aid to troubled, war-torn areas for over fifty years. Behind the humanitarian legitimacy, however, its covert operations protected Germany’s national security interests in exactly the same way that the McEntire Corporation protected Great Britain’s. In fact, the two agencies; highly secretive, unaccountable and unknown to their own national security services, very often shared information and even worked together to defeat looming threats.
Shilan had expected some kind of double-cross but it was a necessary risk to take to get close to Josephine Roche. The McEntire Corporation had closed in on her remarkably fast and traced the sunken K-19 submarine with admirable speed. They were welcome to the gold; after all it did belong to the Crown. What they could not be allowed to get their hands on were any records of German involvement. They had already found the U-Boat in the Antarctic base but the crew had been found dead and there was no hint of any paperwork coming to light. Shilan knew something might have turned up since they had flown out of the Namibian facility but she would have to wait until she regained her freedom before she would be able to check.
At that moment, even surviving the next twelve hours looked unlikely.
To reinforce Shilan’s fears, the sound of footsteps echoing off a tiled floor indicated that one of her captors was approaching from the other side of the locked door.
She knew it would be Prior and she was correct. The sound of heavy bolts being drawn back rang out in the gloomy room, lit only by a single, naked bulb that was tied to the water-stained concrete ceiling by a festoon of old cobwebs.
She had already been locked up for a couple of days by then and visitors had been confined to a couple of hard-eyed guards, who each regarded her with healthy suspicion. Perhaps they saw behind her mask of beauty and medical prowess; sensing the true menace she posed?
Consequently, whenever they opened the door to slide a tray of food inside, it was slammed immediately shut, giving her no time to even engage them in conversation. They would not even empty the large plastic bucket that served as her rudimentary toilet facilities, so the air reeked with the stink of human waste.
The room, which was now her prison cell, had once been a storeroom. Solid concrete walls entombed her, sporting just a small, single window looking out over the vast valley below. Hardly a means of escape, she sighed, unless you were a sparrow or squirrel. Effective enough for ventilating a storeroom, maybe, but the metre long window was barely half that in width, glassless and fitted with a rusty metal grill. It offered her no exit route.
As the door was pulled open, it threw a lance shaft of yellow light across the floor. Shilan had already decided upon a plan. She knew that her only chance to escape lay with lulling Prior into a false sense of security, which would allow her to strike. As it was clear that he wanted her in the bedroom, this was where she would have to start. She would need to play on this weakness. Immediately feigning a slouch to her shoulders, as if defeated, the imprisoned agent set the wheels into motion.
‘Ah, Doctor,’ began Prior brightly, stepping smartly inside her cell, followed by the two guards. ‘How are you feeling this morning? Rested, I hope?’ Each guard wore a holstered sidearm but the heavy wooden truncheon they each held purposefully told her they would cave her skull in if she dared try anything.
‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ she slipped an anguished cry into her voice with the skill of a Broadway veteran. ‘I don’t know why I’m locked up.’ She added a snivel for good measure. ‘Please, Professor. Let me go.’
Her performance might not have passed an audition before a seasoned Hollywood casting director but it was more than good enough for Prior. Already having struggled to leave her alone for two days, to stew in her own juices, the sight of her immediate collapse massaged his ego enough to cloud his higher perception.
‘Oh, my dear doctor, that is impossible. I’m afraid you will never be leaving this place. Not alive, anyway. No, you have been given to me by Ms Roche as a gift; a scientific gift. I will make sure that your sacrifice is a noble one. Mankind will certainly benefit from the discoveries that your death will bring. I have a range of pathogens that civilised society forbids testing, even on mice. Together, we will conduct a number of unique, human experiments.’
Shilan’s inner eye weighed up the situation coldly. Although she forced her real eyes to weep, and her lower lip to tremble, she realised there was no hope of overpowering all three of them at that moment. The guards were far too alert and Prior needed to feel a few more moments of power before he might be fooled.
‘Whatever you’re thinking of doing, please don’t,’ she wailed. ‘Please, I beg you.’ Stepping towards Prior, she dropped to her knees in front of him. The guards had been about to intervene but visibly relaxed as she clasped her hands together and begged the aloof scientist for her life. They even spared a second to shoot each other a knowing sneer. This one would soon be dead.
Prior regarded her, unable to stop a huge grin of satisfaction spreading upon his wizened, gaunt features. He had won, and so easily. She was, he decided, a rather pathetic creature after all but she was still beautiful and he would have her before she died, just by way of a final insult.
‘Guards,’ he ordered, not responding to her pleas. ‘Empty her bucket and throw some water over her. She stinks and I don’t want any bodily dirt to taint my experiment results. Is that understood?’ Both guards nodded, in unison.
‘I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning, Doctor Shilan,’ Prior said gleefully, staring into her puffy, tear-filled eyes. ‘I will make sure the needles are sharp, don’t worry.’
Then he was gone and the two guards set about their task. After the cess bucket was removed and replaced with a clean one, they both stood just out of arm’s reach and emptied buckets of icy water all over her. Shilan was tempted to attack them several times but the risks were simply too great. Whilst competent at hand to hand combat, it was not her greatest strength. If she tackled the guards now, she could lose any chance of misleading Prior, and escaping.
So she endured the frigid water and the humiliation. After a dozen buckets, the guards left her on her own again, to start a shivering battle against hypothermia. As their mocking laughter faded away beyond the bolted door, she dug deeply inside herself for the strength she would need to survive long enough to follow through with her plan.
In an adjacent building, happy to be back amongst the test tubes and laboratory equipment he loved so dearly, Prior settled himself into a familiar leather chair and flicked on the computer. An impressive, fifty-inch monitor sprang to life, displaying a screen filled with equations and calculations. To most people, it would have been completely incomprehensible but to Prior it was all rudimentary stuff. A few minutes of scanning the numbers was all he needed before nodding to himself, satisfied, and clicking open a different file.
He perused the information, which was scant at best, and pondered on the road ahead. He had spent far too much of his time in recent months working on the Scorpion and Dark Tide samples for ARC. Now that the situation had blown up in Josephine Roche’s face, and she was off to lie low for a while longer, he finally had some time for his other passion.
With ARC’s blessing, and funding, he figured he had about three months before Josephine was back on her feet and demanding all of his scientific expertise for her own ends again.
The story he loved was a familiar one, repeated many time
s in various guises in the early days of exploration. Brave adventurers who mysteriously vanished in the wilds or returned with terrifying tales of voracious monsters and demons.
This tale, however, was one that had intrigued Prior for decades and had ultimately planted the seeds for his current plans. Two ex-soldiers had been attempting to trap the legendary Himalayan Yeti. Lightly equipped but both experienced in the arts of war and exploration, they had allegedly found the beast or, more accurately, it had found them. One man had been dragged to his death while the other had only survived a short time, having been savaged by the beast. Making it to a local village, he had died and been buried by the villagers.
The most interesting element of the story, for Prior, was the mention of the Yeti being reported several times near to a particular village before the incident, which had involved the strange disappearance of several yak herders. It was assumed that they too had fallen victim to the creature. In itself, this put more meat on the bones of the narrative but the key to the puzzle lay in a small strapline, in the text of a London newspaper at the time, which had picked up the story and run sensational headlines for a couple of weeks.
One of the locals had disclosed that the beasts did truly exist and that the people had relied upon special agents, trained in a secret mountain temple, to protect them in the past. Without the Blood Gurkhas, many more lives would be lost.
Blood Gurkhas had meant nothing to him the first time he'd stumbled across the old report, a few years earlier. Even research and the power of the modern internet had turned up very little as there was no written record of their existence anywhere.
All Prior had ever managed to glean was that these Blood Gurkhas were part of mythical order of monks, who were specially trained to track down the Yeti, sometimes offering their own lives in brutal battles with the creatures, in order to keep the local people from harm. The order had been created, according to legend, nearly a thousand years before the two British men had lost their lives but there was no exact timeline, nor any details about the temple which had supposedly trained these mythical warriors. Active for centuries, at some point the need for these warrior monks seemed to have evaporated, as had they.
