Larsen ran past Banks, heading for the main exit. Several of the Norwegian guards were also heading in that direction, while a handful still stood their ground, weapons raised pointing towards the cells, where the pounding was louder now, more insistent.
Up on the flatbed, McCallum howled and with a great roar strained and split the twin chains around his chest, sending the iron skittering and clattering across the floor.
“Marines, we are leaving,” Banks shouted and, making sure the rest of the squad were following, headed for the main entrance.
They were halfway there when the first of the cell doors collapsed inwards and a troll forced its way out into the chamber. This one was similar in size to McCallum but its skin, if the word even applied, was rough moss- and lichen-encrusted rock and it was squat, almost barrel-shaped. It came across the chamber fast on legs as thick as tree trunks. One of the guards made the mistake of trying to get in its path. He managed to let off three rounds but the troll didn’t even register the blows. A fist as big as a basketball caved in the guard’s chest, sending a gout of blood, too red against the white walls and sending the man sprawling thirty yards away to come up in a crumpled heap against one of the computers.
*
Then it was all panic and running. Banks was aware of multiple clanging vibrations running through the facility as cell doors burst open. There was more roaring as the escaped trolls joined their voices with McCallum. The squad fled up the corridor and arrived at the main doorway to find it starting to close against them; they only managed to slip through at the last instant before the huge vault entrance slammed shut with a clang.
Larsen was standing in the corridor by the keypad that operated the door and Banks turned on him again.
“You bastard; you’ve left some of your own men in there. Get this door open again, right now.”
A siren began to wail and the white lights in the corridor turned to pulsing red. Captain Olsen, white-faced and grim, put a hand on Banks’ shoulder.
“It’s too late, Captain,” he said as there was a whoosh, a sound of escaping gas, and all-too-human screams came faintly from the other side of the door. “He’s enacted the wildfire protocol—Halon gas. Nothing’s getting out of there now.”
- 18 -
At first, it seemed the Norwegian captain was right, for a grim quiet fell over the facility, the only sound the wailing of the siren until Olsen stepped forward and cut it off using the keypad. They stood there under the red throbbing light, the adrenaline rush of their flight starting to dwindle.
“It is done,” Larsen said.
As if in answer, the vault door shook in its, frame sending dust falling from the roof. The drums pounded again on the other side and Banks imagined the basketball-sized fists of stone, many of them, battering away in unison.
“That’s not possible,” Larsen whispered.
“Not probable, more likely,” Banks replied. He ignored Larsen and spoke directly to Olsen.
“I hope you have a plan B. This door’s not going to stay shut for long.”
More rubble fell from the roof above them. One of the red lightbulbs blew out with a fizz and burst of smoke, and the huge door moved almost an inch in the frame as the pounding on the far side rose to a frenzy.
The Norwegian officer looked at the door then at Banks.
“We yield them this ground; I don’t think we have a choice. I need to call in some backup but first, we need to evacuate.”
“You heard the man, lads,” Banks said. “Let’s get our kit and get the flock out of here before this goes completely south on us.”
“What about this one?” Wiggins asked, pointing at where Larsen stood, white-faced, staring at the door that was now rattling loosely in its frame as the pounding intensified.
“He’s on his own,” Banks said and turned to lead the squad back up to the garage.
*
The bunker door gave as they were leaving the trailer; they heard the clang, followed immediately by the roar like clashing rocks. Larsen came out of the corridor at a flat run. Judging by the noise coming up from below, the trolls—a throng of them by the sound of it—were not far behind.
Banks had all the squad retrieve their rifles and spare ammo from their kit bags; if Olsen wanted to make an official complaint, he could do so later, but in the meantime, Banks’ men needed the firepower now.
“Outside,” Banks shouted, “double-time. Maybe the daylight will slow them down a bit.”
Wiggins took a last look at the trailer.
“All that pizza and booze. What a bloody waste.”
They ran for the garage exit and were almost there when the first of the trolls appeared in the garage. If it had been McCallum, Banks might have attempted an order but the first one out of the underground facility was the squat, barrel-like one he’d seen down below and it did not look to be in the mood to take commands. It came out of the corridor running at full speed, heading for them.
The squad backed out into the parking space, squinting at the sudden exposure to full daylight. They stood in a line, all four aiming back at the doorway. Olsen and six of his men joined them.
“Backup is on its way,” Olsen said. “I’ve asked for heavy artillery.”
“Looks like we’re going to need it,” Banks replied, then there was no time to talk.
*
Two more trolls joined the squat one in the main entrance to the garage. Olsen didn’t wait for them to advance.
“Rapid fire,” he shouted and the S-Squad joined with the Norwegians in laying down a field of fire. The parking area rang with gunfire. Pieces of the trolls flew, stone chips clattering against the roof and walls inside the garage, but although they were hit by tens of rounds each, none of the three fell.
Banks saw a larger, darker shape loom in the doorway, coming on fast, accelerating. The trolls stepped aside to let it past.
“Incoming!” Banks shouted, as their long trailer came out of the doorway, doing sixty miles an hour and careering right at them. It was almost flying across the ground, not propelled by any engine, for it didn’t have one.
The sneaky bastards chucked it out the door.
The soldiers, both Norwegians and S-Squad, scattered in the face of the approaching missile. One of Olsen’s men wasn’t fast enough; he seemed transfixed by the sight of the vehicle barreling towards him, sending sparks flying as it fell on one side and kept coming, slower now but still several tons of killing machine. The man tried to flee at the last instant but stumbled over his own feet and fell directly in the trailer’s path. It went over him without a pause, leaving little more than a red streak and a bundle of rags in its wake before coming to a crashing halt in a tangle of wreckage as it hit three parked cars at the edge of the parking area.
Banks had already turned back towards the garage entrance, expecting an attack under the cover of the diversion. Although the doorway was now filled with a dozen trolls—the tall figure of McCallum in the middle, his cleaner rock making him easy to spot among the others—they showed no sign of wanting to venture outside.
“It’s the sunlight. They don’t like it,” Banks shouted then joined Olsen and his team in sending another volley into the gathered things in the doorway.
McCallum let out a roar and at first Banks thought they might, finally, have tempted an attack but the trolls as one stepped back out of the doorway and were quickly lost in the shadows.
Olsen called for a cease-fire.
“Now what?” Hynd asked as quiet fell again.
Wiggins looked towards the wreck of the trailer.
“I’ll tell you what—we’re out of booze and pizza and I’m fucking starving.”
*
Before Banks got a chance to tell the corporal to stow it, the parking area echoed with the screech of tearing metal and the crash and tumble of falling rubble. Thin dust and smoke wafted out of the garage exit. A metal cabinet, double-fronted and the size of two men, came out of a high window, arced through the air,
and landed with a crash just yards from Banks’ feet.
“They’re tearing the place apart,” the doctor, Larsen said, from where he stood, a safe distance away, behind Olsen’s men. “You’ve got to stop them.”
“We’re open to ideas,” Banks said. “They’re your patients after all.”
“Tranquilizer guns, maybe,” Larsen said. “Or we could gas them out.”
“Aye, because that worked so well down in the bunker. I don’t think these wankers worry much about what they’re breathing.”
Olsen stepped over to Banks’ side.
“We’ve got tanks incoming. In the meantime, if we can keep them inside, we can at least contain the damage.”
“That’s a big if,” Banks said, looking up at the sky, where a dark front of heavy clouds was approaching from the north.
- 19 -
The dark front arrived at almost the same time as backup arrived. A score of armed men preceded two tanks that lumbered into the parking area. Banks recognized them—they were originally German, the Leopard 2A4NL model; he guessed the Norwegians, like many other countries, had taken advantage when the Germans sold off old stock during an upgrade. They might indeed be old stock but Banks knew from experience that they packed a punch in their 120mm cannons that could penetrate two feet of steel and as backup to that, they each had twin-mounted 7.62mm machine guns with almost five thousand rounds of ammo.
“Now we’re talking,” Wiggins said as the two tanks lined up at Olsen’s directive to aim at the garage doors.
“Wait,” Larsen shouted. “You’ll bring the whole building down. All my research…”
“You should have thought of that earlier,” Olsen replied, “and saved us all a lot of trouble.”
Before Larsen could make any further protest, Olsen gave the order to fire.
The twin booms of the big guns almost deafened the soldiers. The shells went straight and true into the gaping maw of the garage entrance and a second later, a blast of heat and concussion almost knocked them off their feet. Every window above them blew out at once, glass shattering in a wave all across the parking lot. The garage doorway fell in on itself with a muffled thump and another blast of heat and debris. The main building above the underground garage slumped alarmingly to the north side then decided to stay up.
Olsen waited until the debris started to settle then waved his men forward.
“Wait,” Banks said, striding up to the Norwegian captain’s side. “We dropped a cave on one of these fuckers up in the hills and it crawled out without a scratch on it. You should take this slowly.” He turned to Davies. “Do you have any of yon sedative at hand?”
Davies reached inside his flak jacket and brought out four syringes.
“We’re going to need more,” Banks said to Olsen. The Norwegian captain nodded and went over to Larsen.
“Sedatives,” he said brusquely. “A lot of sedatives. We need them now.”
“Why are you asking me?” the doctor said. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but there.
Olsen got into his face.
“I’m asking you because this is your mess.”
The conversation switched to Norwegian, too fast for Banks to follow, but by the look on Olsen’s face, he knew it wasn’t good news. He had that confirmed when the captain turned away from the doctor and came back towards the waiting soldiers.
“He doesn’t have any,” Olsen said. “What there is of it is still down in the lab. If we want it, we’ll have to go and get it.” He looked Banks in the eye. “You have no obligation to us here, Captain. But I could use all the help I can get.”
Banks smiled.
“That’s okay. We owe you for the beer and pizza anyway. Lead on.”
Banks had Davies distribute the four syringes, one to each member of the squad.
“Save these for McCallum if you can,” he said. “I’d still like to get yon old soldier home, or at least give him some peace. But don’t do anything daft and don’t get dead. This is just another sanitation mission like the other one.”
“Can I blow something to fuck, Cap?” Wiggins asked. “I’ve got enough C4 in the rucksack here to bring the rest of the building down.”
“I’ll let you know if it comes to that,” Banks replied. “In the meantime, we follow Olsen’s lead; we’re on his patch and it’s his call.”
Olsen was already leading his men towards the rubble around what had been the garage entrance. Banks and S-Squad brought up the rear as they scrambled through the wreckage and debris.
*
There were no lights inside what remained of the garage—rubble lay strewn across the floor, making walking a precarious process. The roof had collapsed in three different places, bringing down more debris and a tangle of sparking electrical wiring. In one spot what looked to be most of a library had fallen through the floor, its contents reduced to scrap paper and busted shelving. All of the soldiers, both Norwegian and Scots, switched on the lights on their rifles. They stepped warily, moving deeper inside and found what was left of a troll several paces in.
It was one of the more encrusted ones. The skin was more like hard rock, thickly crusted green with a hairy moss that gave it a shaggy look. Its head was lying at far too great an angle to its barrel chest, and pale, watery fluid lay all around in the rubble under its body, but it still tried to raise itself at their approach only to fall back with a crash on the debris. It moaned piteously then roared in rage before slumping to the floor. Olsen stepped up and put three shots into its left eye. There were no exit wounds but the eye exploded outward in a shower of black, viscous material down Olsen’s torso, then there was only a dead troll at his feet, all life flown from it.
“Top tip,” Wiggins said. “Shoot the fuckers in the eye. Works for me.”
Banks was hoping they would find the rest of the trolls in similar dire straits in the garage but the one Olsen shot was the only one to be seen. Either the remainder had managed to avoid the tank assault, or they were buried under some of the extensive rubble.
Either way, they’ll have to be found.
But it looked like Olsen agreed with Banks that the first priority must be to procure more sedative. The Norwegian captain set six men to checking the rubble in case more fallen trolls were trapped there then led the rest of them quickly across the garage floor, picking their way through the debris, heading for the corridor down to the bunker.
*
The red throbbing panic lights were still pulsating overhead. The walls of the corridor had been bashed and dented in places, and again Banks’ imagination showed him basketball-sized fists, pounding in frustration and rage, rock on rock until one or the other had to give way. The main facility door had been completely torn out of the wall and lay flat on the floor of the corridor—they had to step up eighteen inches onto it to cross over down into the bunker.
Olsen’s first thought was for the men that Larsen had trapped inside the facility. There were six of them but they were long past saving, having been grossly mutilated and torn in the trolls’ frenzy—they could only hope that the Halon gas had killed the men before the atrocities were committed. There were no trolls. The banks of computers, servers, and laboratory equipment had been completely trashed, leaving behind no more than broken circuit boards, torn cabling, and cabinets whose metal casings were bent and battered into unrecognizable pieces. The only trolls present in the facility—a dozen of them—were the ones who had not woken from slumber and were still encased in the rock walls of their cells.
“Too old, or too tired to wake,” Olsen said.
“Or just too dead. We can only hope,” Wiggins replied.
A search for sedative gave them at least one good thing to come out of the carnage. They found an unbroken bottle in the wreckage of a cupboard and a search for syringes was also successful, meaning that by the time they were ready to move out again, every man present carried at least one dose of sedative with him.
“Aye, very nice,” Wiggins said.
“But where the fuck have the big hard buggers got to? It’s not as if they can disguise themselves much.”
They got the answer to that when they returned back up the corridor to the garage area. One of the six men Olsen had left above came over to talk to the captain and led everybody to the north side of the garage. The roof had fallen in completely and it had brought down with it what looked to have been at one time to be a group of students who hadn’t had time—or had been too stupid—to vacate the building when the alarms went off. Now they would never be late for a lecture again; the trolls had found them and they were merely discarded food, their limbs and guts strewn and scattered, white bones showing signs of having been chewed on. Several of Olsen’s men lost their lunches off to one side but the S-Squad had seen it before, up in the hills—the only difference here was that these were new kills.
“You still want to save that big hard bugger, Cap?” Wiggins said softly.
Banks didn’t answer—he wasn’t sure anymore and he was saved from speaking by a yell from a soldier on top of the rubble, who was looking out northwest across the city.
“They went this way.”
- 20 -
The university complex backed onto a two-lane road at the north. Traffic was at a standstill on either side of a coach that had been tossed over onto its side and then pummeled—the bodywork bore the telltale signs of having been pounded by huge fists. The large window at the front of the bus had been torn out forcibly and a body—presumably the driver—lay half-out of the hole. His head was gone and his torso was brutally caved out and hollowed, blood running in a sheet down the buckled front of the bus to pool on the road.
Operation Norway (S-Squad Book 7) Page 9
