Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

by A P Bateman

  “Hi, do you rent out snowmobiles?” he asked.

  The woman nodded, then replied in faultless English, but with a heavy Norwegian accent, “Yes. I need to see your passport and drivers’ licence and take a five-hundred-euro deposit,” she paused. “We don’t actually take it from the card unless you damage the skidoo.”

  “Great.” King walked cumbersomely over to her, propped the rifle against the counter and set about hunting for his wallet hidden somewhere within the many layers of thermal clothing.

  “Are you from the research team?” she asked, seeming to study him intently.

  King almost replied no but checked himself in time. “Yes. I’m a marine engineer,” he said, finding the statement somewhat bizarre and alien to him.

  “For the submarine?” she asked but didn’t wait for his reply. “How exciting…”

  “Yeah…”

  She put a cross on a triplicate sheet and waited for him to hand her his card. When she took it, she slipped it into the PDQ terminal and tore off the permission slip when it printed out. She handed the copy to King, then placed the pen for him to sign where she had marked the crosses. “I hope you can return those poor sailors to their families,” she said quietly. “Finally put them to rest…”

  “Yeah,” King replied hesitantly. Until the discovery of the vessel, the families had assumed they had still been on patrol, blissfully unaware of their demise. The submarine service was clandestine, with the crew not having contact with the outside world. Their only communication was a fortnightly one-hundred-and-twenty-word message, referred to as a FamGram, to which they could not reply. King felt treacherous somehow, guilt-ridden. The Royal Navy had played the long game, hedging their bets that there was a communication problem with the vessel, or at least hiding behind the fact until they traced their missing submarine. The story had gotten out and people empathised with the families, sympathised with the crew and their terrible fate. The top naval brass had known, of course, but nobody had reported the missing submarine as they continued to find the best way to announce it. And now King was here to blow the vessel to the deepest part of the ocean and shroud the story in mystery forever. He realised he had shown no emotion at her comment, partly because he knew the outcome to be unlikely, but mainly because he felt responsible for the disappearance and the loss of lives onboard. He forced himself to say, “I hope they can finally rest in peace…”

  Chapter Seven

  The hotel foyer was basic but warm and King was shown to an equally basic and warm room. He wasn’t a connoisseur of hotel rooms, settling for just either cool or warm – depending upon the local climate – and a comfy bed. Shower and toilet, naturally and tea and coffee making facilities were something he had come to expect in the Western world. But he had endured hardships in his career and had spent much of his life curled up and shivering at night in a freezing wadi or snatching sleep in the back of a vehicle when he could. If he was lucky, at the end of a mission there would be an airport hotel to revel in its comforts and order a good meal on room service while he awaited his return flight. During his time with the SIS and now with the Security Service, expense accounts didn’t run to luxury suites and Michelin star restaurants.

  King showered and enjoyed some time under the hot spray before towelling off and changing clothes for dinner. As was the way in Scandinavian countries, and in particular the Arctic, clothing was generally informal and outer layers would be required if going outside to nearby bars, so he was certain a pair of chinos and a shirt and sweater would allow him to blend right in.

  King ordered a Borg pilsner beer at the bar and looked around the bar and restaurant. He perched on a barstool at the end of the counter, his back against the wall. To his left, waiting staff ferried out plates of reindeer meatballs, thick peppered reindeer steaks with fries, and slabs of Arctic cod with mashed potatoes and butter sauce. As he glanced at the menu, he could see it was both basic and small, but the food being whisked past him looked hearty and well-prepared. He watched as a pretty, young blonde entered and looked around. Disappointedly, she headed for the bar, then saw King and waved. King was trying to recall her name, got it by the time she reached him.

  “Hello, Madeleine,” he said. “Settling in?”

  She frowned, mentally breaking down the language barrier, then replied, “Yes, the hotel is nice, thank you. How about you?”

  “It’s certainly warmer than outside…” He paused. “But I suppose you’re used to this climate, being from Norway.”

  “Sweden,” she corrected him. “Yes, sometimes we get cold winters, not as cold as here, but thankfully the summers can be warm.”

  King smiled. He hadn’t made a mistake, but was simply in the habit of testing the people he met. It was in his nature to spot anomalies in a person’s story. You couldn’t be too careful. “Sorry, my mistake,” he said. “So, you were saying back at Oslo airport that you’re a marine biologist?”

  “Yes. I’m hoping to get work with Aurora, the organisation behind the green energy projects. I’m here for a two-month work placement.”

  “That sucks,” he replied. “An organisation getting labour from the bright, keen and eternally hopeful.”

  She looked unsettled, innocent. “No, it will look great on my CV if I don’t get the job,” she said defensively, but shrugged. “But I live in hope…”

  King nodded. This was why he didn’t get invited to cocktail parties. He usually said what he was thinking and had never learned the art of subtlety. “Sorry,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Here, let me get you a drink.” He nodded to the barman and gestured to her. Madeleine asked for a peach schnapps with ice and the barman walked to the other end of the bar to use the optic.

  “So, you’re a marine engineer?” she asked.

  King tensed. He’d read about what marine engineers did in his hotel room in Oslo and decided it would be better all-round if he skirted the subject. “Yes,” he replied, then added, “Diving is my skillset.” It was always better to use the truth in a cover story, and he had dived at many great locations around the world.

  “Me too!” she said, the revelation meaning she had forgotten their previous conversation at Oslo airport. “Last year, I dived with Great Whites off Mexico in the Pacific, which was fantastic! We even got out of the dive cages, tentatively of course. Perhaps I will be lucky enough to see the elusive Greenland shark while I am here. It isn’t just native to Greenland, but cold Northern waters like these. They live in Norwegian fjords as well, but it’s not yet known if they migrate to Greenland. There is no funding for research in Greenland sharks, not at the moment at least.”

  “Right…” King remarked, his small talk not improving with practice. He didn’t even know Greenland had a species of shark, and if it lived in Norway as well, then the name was probably somewhat redundant. He pushed himself out of his pedantic trait and said, “Well, I hope you get to dive before long.”

  “I have brought my equipment, but I suspect the chances of a dive will be slim. It’s quite a specialist thing in these temperatures, and the former oil rigs that Aurora are using are anchored in deep water. Hey, I could always dive with you!” she said excitedly.

  “Sure…” King paused as she was given her drink, then chinked her glass with his own. “Cheers,” he said.

  “What are we drinking to?”

  “To thirst,” King replied.

  She smiled and took a sip. “Well, that’s that taken care of!” She picked up a menu from the countertop and said, “Wanna get some dinner together?” she asked amiably.

  “Sure.”

  “Great. I don’t like eating in restaurants alone.”

  “Glad I could be of service.”

  She patted his knee and said, “Don’t be silly! You’re good company…”

  King sipped some of his beer while he waited for her to remove her hand. She was an attractive woman, but he could honestly say that if he wasn’t in a relationship with Caroline, then he would still not
have been interested. She had a childlike quality and an enthusiasm in her eyes that would soon change if she got to know him. Caroline had seen tragedy and experienced personal loss, and together they made each other happy. Looking at Madeleine was like appreciating something pristine, something beautiful but wanting to protect it, rather than merely possess it. The feeling made him appreciate that if he wasn’t exactly old, then he was certainly no longer young. He looked up as the young man whom she had been talking with at the airport entered the bar, scoured the residents, then confidently started to make his way over. No three’s a crowd for this guy.

  The man hesitated a moment behind her, then said, “Madeleine?”

  Madeleine turned around, her satin blonde hair sweeping through the air like a shampoo advert. She beamed a smile and greeted him warmly. “Daniel! How wonderful, dinner with two handsome men!”

  King shrugged, part of him pleased with the compliment, but he knew a gooseberry when he saw one, and knew that tonight it would be him. “Lovely as that sounds, I have some calls to make first, so you two go on without me,” he replied, but he nodded at the man and said, “Can I get you a drink first?”

  “Thank you,” the man replied, but King sensed it was as much to do with making himself scarce as offering him a beverage. “A whisky, please. A Scotch.”

  King nodded at the hovering barman, then turned to Daniel. “Russian?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Are you Russian?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, I’m Polish.”

  “I said, it doesn’t matter…” King replied coldly. “But your accent sounds more Russian than Polish to me.”

  “Well, I know where I’m from.” Daniel shrugged, took the whisky from the barman and looked directly at Madeleine as he toasted. “Cheers…” he said, raising his glass.

  “Na Zdorovie!” King replied, holding up his glass and exhausting his knowledge of the Polish language. Then he realised that he’d mistakingly used Russian and Daniel hadn’t corrected him. He should have said, Na Zdrowie. A subtle difference, but it was all in the pronunciation. Perhaps Daniel was being polite, but for some reason he doubted it. He didn’t seem the type somehow. King turned to Madeleine and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know the Swedish phrase for cheers…” Again testing, as he knew it to be skol or skål.

  Madeleine raised her schnapps. “We say cheers, too.” She smiled and took a sip, the ice clinking against the glass.

  King nodded and sunk half his beer. Most of the world said cheers, so he was no further ahead. He regarded Daniel for a moment, then turned his eyes to Madeleine. The two of them were closer in age. He put Daniel at thirty, but his eyes seemed older somehow. A maturity borne from professionalism. “What do you do, Daniel?” he asked.

  Daniel took a moment to turn his eyes away from Madeleine, then looked back at King apparently with a degree of disinterest. King couldn’t blame him. The last thing he would have wanted at that age was a cold individual a decade older being the third wheel. But it didn’t make him like the younger man much more. “I’m a programmer and data analyst. I specialise in radar and sonar emissions and laser imaging.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “It pays well. I get my fun elsewhere,” he replied flippantly. “And what line of work are you in?”

  “I’m a diver.”

  “At the coal face as it were,” he smirked. “Bolting, drilling and laying equipment where people like me or my subordinates tell you to.”

  “Just a cog in the machine,” King replied neutrally. He wasn’t going to take offence at his cover story being looked down on. He had to focus on what was real. “Are you here to work on Aurora’s hydroelectric project?”

  “I am,” he said smugly. “And to assist with raising the submarine, you British had so carelessly misplaced. Until now, that is. I was called in to survey the area in detail. Early reports are that it’s on the edge of a precipice.” He paused. “I’m sorry, you’ve bought me a drink and we are making small talk, but I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I didn’t throw it. But it’s Alex.”

  Daniel stared at him for a moment, then said, “Nice to meet you…” He paused. “And are you working for Aurora?”

  “Not directly. I’m just here to liaise on raising the sub.”

  “Liaise?”

  King nodded. “Make sure Aurora don’t get in the way. It’s good of them to provide the rigs as a base for the project, but we don’t want their interference to affect the process.”

  “It’s in a UNESCO environmental zone. I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  “I don’t make policy.” King paused. “But Britain needs a non-military presence of private contractors here to champion its affairs.”

  “Clearly.” He paused. “About the policy aspect, that is. You don’t look like a man who makes important decisions.”

  “You’d be surprised. I’ve made a few life-or-death ones in my time…” King finished his beer and stood up. He noticed Daniel tense, then visibly relax as King stepped back a pace and put some distance between them as he picked up his jacket. “You two find a table together. I must make a few calls. I guess I’ll see you both on the ship, tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll be there,” Madeleine said breezily.

  Daniel smirked. “Looking forward to it…”

  “Well, until then,” King smiled and walked out of the bar towards the foyer. He imagined that punching Daniel square in the face would have been most satisfying. There was an arrogance about the man that King did not like, or maybe it was just the man’s competitiveness over Madeleine. Or it could have been his intention like King to spot foreign agents and elicit a response. King paused and checked his phone, glancing back at the two of them at the bar. Daniel’s body language had changed, and he appeared to be more relaxed. King was sure he was pleased to be the only male on the scene, but Madeleine just looked sad. Could she have been interested in him? There was more than a decade and a half between them, so he doubted it really. He caught Daniel watching him and replaced his phone to his pocket as he headed back through the foyer and up to his room, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling and a shiver running down his spine.

  Chapter Eight

  King changed into his travelling clothes of jeans and several layers of T-shirts and sweatshirts and his leather bomber jacket with a wool lining, then made sure he did not forget to put on the pair of thermal socks. He covered up with the trouser bib set and threaded the ski jacket over his bomber jacket. He put spare gloves in his pockets along with two small plastic bottles of water and the chocolate from the minibar, then loaded the Browning rifle, but kept the bolt drawn back as he shouldered it on the strap. King tucked his gloves under his armpit and left them there as he put on his beanie and headed back downstairs.

  Outside the digital thermometer in front of the hotel indicated that it was -25ºc, the darkness shearing off another ten degrees or so from when he had landed and making it feel like another twenty. He walked across to the front of the convenience store and put the key in the ignition of a large Yamaha snowmobile. It was a 1049cc model and looked reasonably new in terms of aggressive design and wear and tear. King checked the gear selector was in neutral like he had been shown and used the electric ignition to start it seamlessly into life. He sat astride, buttoned up his jacket and took the rifle off his shoulder, drove the bolt forward and locked it down. He set the safety and slung the rifle over his head and shoulder to secure it firmly in place. He donned his gloves, his hands already burning from the cold. When he slipped the machine into gear it crept forwards ever so slightly, and when he touched the thumb throttle the snowmobile lunged forwards. The fastest accelerating vehicle he’d ever driven or ridden had been a snowmobile in Lapland, and he already knew this was on another level. He gripped the tank firmly with his knees and eased the machine forwards, then when he straightened the handlebars, he gave it plenty o
f throttle and took off down the street like a scalded cat. He couldn’t help beaming the daftest smile he’d had in years, and the adrenaline surged through him, his heart pounding and his breathing becoming erratic. There was no gearing, simply a forward gear and a reverse like a boat’s outboard engine and the noise sounded like a chainsaw at maximum revs. It felt two or three times as powerful as the fastest quadbike or wetbike he had experienced, and although he hadn’t ridden many all-out sports motorbikes, he knew this was up there with them, or perhaps faster accelerating even still and he had to stop himself grinning like an idiot as he revelled in the rush the speed gave him. The belt-driven ‘blades’ underneath simply gripped harder the faster he went. A huge rooster tail of snow trailed behind him and the featureless terrain in the darkness made it difficult to navigate, but soon he was well outside the town limits and following the compass heading he had memorised earlier.

  The instruments on the handlebars were shrouded in a sealed unit with a Perspex screen and indicated his speed in kilometres, fuel level, temperature – both ambient and engine temperature – all displayed digitally, as well as in the form of a coloured dial for the engine, compass, and oil level. He had not opted for the GPS option, as he did not want any evidence of his journey, especially of his destination, recorded. He had a GPS on his own phone and had started to use Google Maps in his room to plot his course, but it was a pointless exercise as the terrain was merely white and featureless. Instead, he had the coordinates and compass heading of both where he was aiming for, and of course, the town of Longyearbyen upon his return. All he had to do now was head North-West and follow the frozen shoreline for an hour. Which was easier said than done, because the cold was finding the stitching in his clothing, and what little exposed skin on his face remained, was burning with the cold. He had taken a pair of goggles with the snowmobile, and they were steaming up terribly, and that steam was now freezing – his own little snowstorm going on in his goggles. King released the throttle and the snowmobile stopped so suddenly that he almost went over the handlebars without any additional braking. He kept the engine running as he looked all around him to check for polar bears. Everything was monochrome, but despite the darkness and the sliver of moon in a cloudy night sky, there was enough ambient light to see for several hundred metres in every direction. He wondered how much better than his own a polar bear’s vision would be in the darkness. He imagined they would have excellent night vision if they lived for three months of the year in complete darkness. He removed the goggles and wiped them out with his gloved fingers. The ice was already thick, and stubborn to remove. He got off the machine and stretched his legs, still cautious. And then he saw movement to his right. A lumbering mass of white. He only saw it because it had broken one of the rules of the six S’s in camouflage and concealment. Shine, shadow, silhouette, sound, shape, and smell. This bear had broken the rule of silhouette, but King guessed it didn’t know the rules and hadn’t trained with the SAS, and that when an animal was hungry it needed to break cover at some point. It had the advantage of darkness and that would likely be enough of an advantage for it over a seal or a reindeer at night.