“I don’t like it, John.”
“It’s bad for the park, right enough, sir, what with the loss of revenue from having to close even above the loss of the animals themselves,” Banks replied. “But as you told me this morning, it’s not in our jurisdiction. They’ll need animal control people out on the hill to round up the escaped beasts and find out what killed the others, not a bunch of squaddies looking for something to shoot at.”
“If it was just the park, I wouldn’t be so worried,” the colonel said, and Banks felt the sinking in his gut again and knew he wouldn’t be getting to that pie and pint any time soon as his superior continued. “That’s what I’ve been on the blower about before you came in. Things have been hinky around that area for a couple of weeks. The local police and the county council have been trying to keep a lid on it, but the farmers are up in arms, rumors are flying, and now with this thing in the park…”
He trailed off. Banks had seen the BBC van and guessed the news was out all over town, or would be imminently. He hesitated to ask the next question, guessing it was only going to lead to trouble, but the silence was dragging on, so he filled it.
“Hinky in what way, sir?”
The colonel told him and he went to tell the squad that the drinking would have to wait. They were going back on the clock.
*
“Missing sheep? Cattle mutilations?” Wiggins said as they were getting kitted up after a very short briefing. “What the fuck is this now, the bloody Scottish X-Files? Why are we always getting the weird shite?”
“Because the colonel knows you love it so much,” Hynd replied.
“And don’t worry, Wiggo,” McCally added. “If any wee green men turn up, we’ll not let them probe you. Not for long anyway; we all know you’d enjoy it too much.”
“Just let them try it. I’ll kick them in the balls, if they’ve got any, and in the arse if they haven’t.”
“And what if they don’t have an arse?” McCally said, laughing.
“Don’t talk shite, man. Everything’s got an arse. Nothing’s quite as big as the one on the sarge’s missus though.”
Wiggins had to dance aside to avoid a slap from Hynd.
“Apart from yours,” McCally said. “Them aliens could see yon from space and they wouldn’t even need a telescope.”
“Aye, maybe, but they’d need a microscope to see your tadger.”
Banks let them have the banter while they got kitted up; they’d be all too serious soon enough. Given the terrain he expected to be walking, he’d ordered bad weather gear and full rucksacks for camping out; they might be on the hills for a while, and even at this time of the year, there was often snow on the high tops. It was best to be prepared for any eventuality.
“Lugging this lot around in a bog isn’t going to be much fun, is it, Cap?” Wiggins said as he threw his rucksack into the back of the SUV five minutes later. Banks waited until the private had stowed his rifle in the mounted gun rack before replying.
“We don’t pay you to have fun, Wiggo,”
“Strictly speaking, you don’t pay me enough to do fuck all apart from have a couple of pints and a few packs of smokes.”
“And that’s a problem?”
“Well, I was promised all-I-could-manage Colombian marching powder and high-class prozzies when I signed up.”
“That’s only for the posh lads from the public schools,” McCally chimed in. “We get Sweaty Betty the Shettleston bike and a wee dab of sherbet, and that’s if we’re lucky.”
“We’ll stop off in Aviemore on the way back,” Banks said, “and see what we can do about getting Wiggo laid. He’s obviously pining for something.”
“Aye,” Wiggins replied. “The sarge’s wife’s arse mainly.”
This time, Wiggins didn’t dance away fast enough, and got a cuff on the ear from Hynd. He was still rubbing at it when he got into the driver’s seat, started up the SUV, and headed out onto the road south.
“Where are we headed, Cap?” Wiggins asked.
Banks sat up front, with an Ordnance Survey (OS) map open in his lap, working out a route that would see them crisscrossing the bogs and hill country. It was rough terrain in the main, but not mountainous, and as long as the weather held up, he knew the squad could handle it easily, even with their packs; they’d all trained in far worse.
“Stay to the same roads as earlier for now. There’s a turn off a mile before the park that’ll take us up a track to a reservoir,” he said when he was satisfied. “We should be able to park there and get up into the hills on a rough hiker’s track.”
*
They drove in silence for a while, with the windows down while they all had a smoke. Banks’ stomach growled; the others had at least managed to fit in a quick lunch while he’d been with the colonel. All Banks had managed was two chocolate bars and a cup of weak, watery coffee from the mess vending machines, and he had a feeling that wasn’t going to be enough to sustain him in the yomp to come. He checked in the glove compartment in front of him, found a packet of chewy toffees left by the last occupants, and ate four for the quick sugar hit before passing them around. Chewing replaced smoking for the next few minutes.
Wiggins, as usual, was the first to speak up. The private had never met a silence he didn’t want to fill. Banks knew that he came from a big, noisy family, where he who talked loudest and fastest got noticed. The habit had followed the lad into first his regiment where he got a reputation as a bit of a loudmouth and now, toned down a tad from the youth he’d been some years before, into the squad. He’d been with them since joining to replace the dead from the Baffin Island affair. He was loyal to a fault to his friends, and a good soldier. That meant Banks was more than happy to cut him some slack, as long as it didn’t descend into insolence.
“Seriously, Cap. What the fuck are we after this time? Any ideas?”
‘Something that eats sheep, cows, deer…and polar bears,” Banks said.
“Well, that narrows it down a bit. Just wait and I’ll check in my Ladybird Book of Big Fucking Monsters.”
“We don’t know it’s a monster,” McCally said from the back. “As we said earlier, it could be an escaped bear, like yon tame Grizzly that was running about on the Hebridean islands years back.”
“I think somebody might have reported a fucking enormous escaped bear,” Banks said dryly, “and whatever it is, it’s got the brass worried. When they get worried, I get worried that the shite is going to get poured downhill.”
“Aye, me too,” Wiggins replied. “And I’m at the bottom of the fucking valley.”
Banks let the men speculate as their ideas got wilder and wilder. They started placing bets, with cigarettes on the line.
“It’s a fucking enormous cat of some kind,” McCally said. “Like yon ‘Beast of Dartmoor’. There’s long been rumors of exotic big cats running loose up here. I bet 20 fags on it.”
“A pussy as big as a house? Now that I’d like to see,” Wiggins replied.
Hynd spoke up quickly, as if he sensed another joke about his wife coming.
“We made a report about yon kerfuffle in Siberia, right? Maybe some mad scientist type has been back over there and fetched back a dire wolf. We all saw that they were hungry big bastards. This is just like that, so I’ll put down three packs of smokes on it being a Russian wolf, or a pack of them.”
“Them tracks weren’t right for a dog though,” Wiggins replied. “So I’ll match your three packs of fags, and put them on the wee green men fucking with us again. Remember, I was inside yon saucer in Antarctica when it nearly had away with me. I ken exactly what they’re capable of.”
“Dinnae talk shite, Wiggo, that was the fucking Nazis that built yon. There’s no such thing as fucking aliens.”
Wiggins lapsed into his infamous bad American accent again.
“Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically own South America.”
*
Banks let them speculate but didn’t offer a bet of his own
. None of it made any sense to him. All he had to go on were the bloody huge tracks they’d seen at the Wildlife Park. They were terrifying enough on their own, given his estimate of the size of the beast that made them. He went back to studying the map, this time looking, not for a route, but for places where a large predator might be able to hide itself. He marked the spots where those places intersected with his planned route.
There were far too many of them.
*
Wiggins drove them off the main road and onto a rutted track, where they bounced around for half a mile before cresting a rise to look over a small reservoir set in a valley between rolling hills. They parked up next to a sluice gate on a gravel area that looked to have been created for the purpose. There was no sign that anyone else had used it recently, not even a rusted Coke can in the verge, or cigarette butts on the gravel.
Bank was first to retrieve his rucksack, and was kitted up and studying the terrain to the northwest while the others got ready for the walk. It didn’t look too bad from here, but he knew from tough experience that the hills around this area often looked nice from a distance, but became real bastards when it came to climbing them.
“Handguns or rifles, Cap?” Hynd asked from behind him.
“Rifles,” Banks replied, and stepped over to take a weapon from the rack. “And plenty of ammo. We might need it if this thing is as big as we think it is. If we come across any hikers or farmers, don’t shoot them; the colonel wouldn’t be happy. And if anybody asks, we’re on a training exercise.”
He turned back to look across the reservoir. The hiker’s track he’d traced with a finger on the map was clearly delineated in the landscape, a gray scar running away from them across the hillside. Banks knew from the contours that there would be dips and hollows, wet spots that they might have to circumnavigate, but the early part of the walk definitely looked even easier than he might have hoped.
It didn’t stop Wiggins complaining though. The muttering began as soon as he strapped on the rucksack and hefted his rifle.
“Bloody hell, Cap,” he said, “I can barely lift this sodding gear nevermind walk with it up a fucking hill.”
“Tired and worn out after a long hard shag are you, Wiggo?”
“Long hard wank more like,” McCally said, and the laughter seemed to buoy them all up as the four of them walked off the small parking spot and onto the rocky track leading northwest.
“Everybody remember where we parked,” Wiggins said.
*
They smoked as they negotiated the track around the edge of the reservoir; Hynd’s high-tar cigarettes did a better job of keeping the midges away than any repellent was able to.
“A trick I learned from my auld granddad when I was 14,” Hynd said. “My grannie gave him hell for starting me smoking, mind. But anything’s preferable to being eaten alive by these wee fuckers.”
Banks was forced to agree, although the smoke was making him light-headed, and he was once more aware of the lack of breakfast.
At least the pack didn’t feel too onerous a burden. The ground at this point of the track made for good walking. A gravel walkway had been laid around the reservoir at some time long past, and although it was overgrown with weed in places and muddy in others, all they had to dodge were a few larger puddles in sunken spots.
Banks kept his gaze on the softer ground to either side, looking for any sign that the big beast they were looking for had passed this way. He saw nothing apart from old, dry, rabbit and sheep droppings and one, stinking, maggot-infested dead jackdaw to indicate the presence of local wildlife.
And when this thing we’re after shites, it’s going to be a bit more noticeable.
Wiggins, as Banks knew he would, kept up a constant litany of complaints at the rear. They were all used to it, and Banks even found it comforting in a way. If Wiggins was complaining, he knew they weren’t currently in trouble, for the private, for all his volubility, always knew when focus was needed and was more than ready to be first into the action.
Hynd had point, and led them off the gravel and away from the reservoir, up the first small hill to the northwest. Banks felt the rucksack tug at his back for the first time, a warning of what was to come. He knew it was going to get tougher, a lot tougher, but pushed the thought away. He might be carrying it for hours yet, and thinking about it now was definitely counter-productive.
Thin drizzle in his face made him look up. The skies had lowered and gone flat gray, typical weather for the time of year, but at least it wasn’t cold and didn’t look like it was going to rain any harder. They’d all tramped in much worse, in much worse places, and at least here they had the bonus that nobody was shooting at them.
*
They walked, climbing gently upward, for two hours in the drizzle. His waterproof camo suit and stout boots kept Banks dry apart from the occasional trickle of water down the back of his neck, and he’d got used to the swing of the rucksack, adjusting his stride into the lope he knew he could sustain for several more hours at this speed.
They stopped for a smoke at the crest of a hill with a view down a long high valley, the slopes on either side purple and pink and orange with heather. The track they were following wound down the slope below them toward a small loch a mile or so away. Apart from the tumbled ruin of a farm cottage at the loch side to the south, and old drystone dykes on the hillside above the ruin delineating were small fields had once been there was no sign civilization had ever touched this place. The cottage lay at the edge of a small copse of old conifer woodland, little more than a couple of acres in area. It was one of the spots that Banks had marked on his map as a site of possible danger.
He pointed the copse out to the squad.
“We’ll need to be careful down there, and focussed. Yon’s plenty of woodland for a big beastie to hide in. So heads on tight, and quiet as we go. Let’s see if there’s anything to flush out. If we’re lucky, we’ll find it in the first place we look.”
“Aye,” Wiggins said and smiled, “because that’s always worked so well for us in the past.”
But they were all quiet when they finished their smokes and headed into the valley.
Banks kept a close eye on the sky as they went down the narrow track; the clouds had got lower and darker, and the constant drizzle was now threatening to turn to real rain. Even that didn’t bother him unduly; he’d climbed Snowdon in a full-on blizzard in his training—anything after that was a piece of piss in comparison. But he was aware that time was creeping on. This late in the year, it wouldn’t be too long before the gloom of dusk descended, and despite the fact they’d brought their tents, he didn’t relish being out on the hill and exposed in the dark.
“We’ll check out the copse, make sure nothing’s going to creep up on us, then hunker down in what’s left of the cottage. A fire, a cup of coffee, some grub, and a fag sounds good to me about now.”
“No argument from me, Cap,” Hynd said, and he led them deeper down the valley.
*
He’d been right in his assessment; the drizzle turned to steady rain as they reached the valley floor, and nobody complained when the sarge upped the pace, heading at double time for the copse of conifers. They stopped at the edge of the trees, getting some shelter from the overhanging branches, although water was already dripping steadily from the pine needles. Banks put up his hood, the patter of droplets sounding like a manic drummer on the top of his head.
“Wiggo, you’re with me. Sarge and Cally, you head ‘round the far side, double time. Make a quick sweep through and we’ll meet in the middle, see if there’s anything to flush out. Don’t shoot us, we’re the ones with two legs, but if anything bigger makes a move, put it down fast and ask questions later, even if it just turns out to be a deer. Move out.”
He waited until the other two men were out of sight ‘round the corner of the copse, counted slowly to 20, then led Wiggins under the canopy of trees, following an old deer track that hadn’t been used in recent memory.
Wiggins had finally fallen quiet, and Banks saw the same tension in the younger man that he felt in himself. No matter how many times you walked into a possible shooting match, it never got all that easier, and the sudden dryness in his mouth reminded him clearly of past fights, both victories and defeats. A red squirrel scampered quickly up a tree trunk a few yards ahead of them and he felt his finger twitch at the trigger, having to force himself to calm as they went in deeper.
They were soon sheltered from the worst of the rain, but the gloom lay deep under the canopy; dusk was approaching fast. Everything under the branches was damp and dark, wet lichens hung just at the right height to slap in their faces, and the ground felt springy, almost boggy, under a bed of dead, brown needles. Another red squirrel looked down at them from a high branch then scurried away, sending a small shower of needles in its wake, but apart from that, nothing else moved until they saw Hynd and McCally appear out of the murk ahead of them.
“All clear, Cap,” Hynd said. “There’s nowt here but us and some squirrels.”
Banks sighed, not sure if it was in relief or disappointment.
“Looks like we’re spending the night out here then, lads,” he said. “Let’s see what shelter we can get in the cottage.”
*
The cottage was a simple, three-roomed affair, or at least it had been at one time. Now it was little more than four sandstone walls, none of them in particularly good shape, with even less sturdy red brick partitions in the interior. Both inside and outside were thick with dark green moss and lichen and the floor, paved with heavy stone slabs, was covered in timber and broken slate that had fallen from what remained of the roof. The kitchen and main living area were in the most ruin, with the roof having completely fallen in during some distant winter storm. But what had been a bedroom still had three of its walls, and most of the roof overhead.
Operation Loch Ness Page 2