No Survivors

by Tom Cain

Larsson turned to his right and pointed up into the mountains. “Up there, four nights. We’ll carry everything we need. Now we find out just how fit you really are.”

  45

  The customer-relations executive could barely contain his enthusiasm as they walked toward the aircraft. A fortnight beforehand, Waylon McCabe had asked for some unusual modifications to be made to one of his executive jets, for a charitable project he had in mind. The corporation’s Special Missions Department thought about it for a couple of days, just to see if his requests were technically feasible, but there was only ever going to be one answer. For the past five years, having switched his supplier after the Canadian disaster, McCabe had bought all his jets from their range. They keenly appreciated his business. They had no intention of losing it.

  “I just want to say, on behalf of our whole team, that we think what Mr. McCabe is doing is just great,” said the suit, pausing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the cabin. “Airlifting medical supplies to the starving people of Africa—you know, it’s a privilege to be able to contribute to something like that. It sure is a pity we couldn’t tell Mr. McCabe in person.”

  McCabe had sent his lawyer to take care of the handover.

  “Sadly, he’s a little indisposed at this time, but I’ll pass on your good wishes,” said the lawyer, who didn’t know what his boss planned to use the plane for, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t Africa.

  He glowered at the executive, who didn’t seem to be moving.

  “So, can we take a look at the plane?”

  “Sure, sure, of course, my pleasure. Our chief engineer will show you around.”

  The executive stepped aside, and the engineer led the way up the stairs, bending his neck as he stepped into the cabin. Take out the fancy decorations and the high-tech accessories, and the main body of the plane was nothing but a metal tube with an internal diameter of less than six feet. There wasn’t a lot of room. The men formed a single line, the engineer leading, as they made their ungainly way through the cabin.

  “You gentlemen are all familiar with one of these, right?” asked the engineer rhetorically. “Okay then, up ahead of us, at the rear of the cabin, there’s a closet and a restroom, and aft of that a small baggage hold. The regular bulkhead at the back of that hold offers structural support to the rear of the aircraft. Well, we took that bulkhead out and moved it forward, right up against the side of the restroom. That opened up the whole of the rear section of the fuselage, so’s to make more space for loading up whatever it is you’re going to be dropping. As you can see, we’ve put a hatch, kind of like on a submarine, right there in the bulkhead.”

  He stood by the crude undecorated wall that now blocked off the end of the cabin, with the oval hatch beside him.

  “We didn’t want to compromise the strength of the bulkhead, so we had to make the hatch kinda snug, but there’s just about room to step through into the new, bigger hold we made there.”

  The engineer opened up the hatch. Through it, the empty rear end of the aircraft was dimly visible.

  “It’s pretty tight, so you gents might want to take a look one at a time. You’ll see, in back, on the floor of the new hold, there’s a door. It’s hinged at the front, so that it opens downward, like a ramp, with the open side at the rear. It’s hydraulically operated from the pilot’s cockpit, or you can see a handle, like a pump, right there on the floor next to it. That’s the manual option. We fixed up a rig you can put your load in, so’s it can be dropped when the door is opened. Or there’s just room for one person to be in there, do the job himself. We fixed up a safety line there, so he won’t fall out.”

  “Glad to hear about that,” said the lawyer. “Wouldn’t want a lawsuit from a grieving window.”

  There was a peal of sycophantic laughter from the executive, more of a grunt from the engineer.

  “Hope that’s what you were looking for, anyway,” the engineer concluded. “Mr. McCabe gave specific instructions. I believe we were able to follow them pretty much to the letter.”

  “Yes,” said the lawyer. “I believe you did.”

  Back home in Texas, McCabe now knew that he had a plane capable of dropping a bomb over Jerusalem. Even now, despite everything, when he thought about what he had in mind, McCabe still asked himself if he was really doing the Lord’s will. He wasn’t too sure how you could be certain about a thing like that, but he decided it would soon be clear enough. The doctors had told him the tumors were getting worse. They were begging him to undergo chemotherapy, but McCabe had said no. He knew what those chemicals did and he didn’t see the point in buying a few extra weeks if it meant puking like a dog after every treatment and watching his hair fall out. He’d rather be his real self when he came to face his maker. If he lived to see Armageddon, he’d know that God had been on his side. If he died before then, he’d expect a warm welcome in hell.

  Either way, it was going to be soon.

  46

  Carver was feeling like a normal human being again. He wanted to act like one, too. The night before their four-day trek, he and Larsson skipped the training diet and went into Narvik for a few cold beers, hefty portions of steak and chips, and some flirtatious banter with the waitresses.

  Driving home, Larsson asked, “What if she doesn’t want you back?”

  Carver laughed. “She’d have me back, all right. Not sure about yours, though.”

  “Not her,” said Larsson. “Alix. What if you go to all this trouble, and you find her, and it turns out she didn’t want to be found?”

  Carver frowned. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. But maybe Larsson was right. Maybe Alix had left because she couldn’t stand being around him anymore.

  “Christ, that’s a depressing thought,” he said, his good humor suddenly vanishing. “I don’t want to think about that. Anyway, you’re wrong. She’d want me to come after her. She did last time. Why would it be any different now?”

  “I don’t know,” Larsson admitted. “I mean, she was definitely still crazy about you the last time I spoke to her.”

  “Right—so why do you think she’d change her mind?”

  “I don’t. I was just asking a question. Hypothetically.”

  “Well, don’t,” said Carver. “I’ll assume she wants me to come get her, until she tells me otherwise. And bollocks to hypothetical.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  Larsson was looking in the rearview mirror. He shook his head in disgust and pulled over to the side of the road. Only then did Carver notice the white Volvo with the flashing lights pulling in behind them and the cop getting out of the driver’s door.

  Larsson wound down his window and started talking to the policeman in Norwegian. Carver couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it didn’t sound good. He knew from his Royal Marines days that Norwegian cops could be tough, unforgiving buggers, a million miles removed from the British image of Scandinavians as laid-back, liberal types.

  Larsson was asked to leave the car and escorted around to its rear, where another brief exchange took place. Then he was made to take a Breathalyzer test. The policeman entered Larsson’s details in a handheld terminal, then finally waved them on their way with an irritated look on his face.

  “What got him so pissed off?” Carver asked.

  “I was under the limit,” Larsson replied. “He couldn’t bust me for drunk driving, so I’ll keep my license. But he got me on a broken rear light; I’ll have to pay a fine.”

  They drove back to Ebba’s farm. And as they did, a computer trawling ceaselessly through the world’s network systems came across a name to which it had been programmed to respond, and flagged the data to which that name was attached. And a few hours later, at the start of the working day, a man walked into his boss’s office and said, “Guess who just turned up in Norway.”

  APRIL

  47

  Arriving with Alix at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, Vermulen found a postcard waiting for him: a picture of a hill village in the S
outh of France with the words Tourrettes-sur-Loup written over it in fancy script.

  On the back there was a message. It read, I told you I’d find somewhere great! You MUST try this place: Bon Repos, Chemin du Dauphin. It needs work. For a good contractor try Kenny Wynter . . . A phone number followed and then a signature, Pavel.

  “Novak again,” said Vermulen with a grin, when Alix asked him about it. “That man, he never stops trying to sell stuff.”

  That had been two days ago. Now Alix was in the hotel steam room, letting the heat and humidity relax her muscles and sweat the toxins from her body.

  There was one other woman in the room. She caught Alix’s eye.

  “Just like home, enjoying a Turkish bath!”

  The words were spoken in Russian.

  Alix smiled. “Except in Moscow we wouldn’t have to wear bathing suits. We could be naked—so much more comfortable.”

  “What do you expect? This is an American hotel.” The woman shook her head in mock sorrow. “Crazy people.”

  “Careful,” said Alix. “My boyfriend is American.”

  “Maybe he is an exception!”

  The woman looked around, confirming that they were still alone. Then she spoke again, not so chatty anymore.

  “So, your boyfriend, what has he been doing?”

  “He had a meeting yesterday, with an Italian, he would not say who. But I know they met in a park, on the Aventine Hill. He said it had a magnificent view of St. Peter’s. Maybe there are cameras nearby that you can check. Also, he had a message from Novak. I do not know the significance, but it concerned a particular house, in France.”

  She passed over the details. The woman did not seem impressed.

  “This is not enough—a meeting, but you do not know who with; a house, but you do not know its significance. Moscow will expect more than this.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.”

  “In any event, I have a message from the deputy director. She regrets to inform you that your friend in Geneva passed away. As a consequence, payments to the clinic have been stopped.”

  Alix gasped. She looked wide-eyed at the other woman before bending over, her head in her hands, the sobs shallow at first, then convulsing her whole body.

  The other woman made no attempt to comfort her.

  “You must understand,” she said eventually, “this makes no difference to your mission. You are to continue as before. That is an order.”

  She got up to go.

  “Enjoy the rest of your bath.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Vermulen when Alix got back to their suite.

  Now there was a good question. Alix was distraught, unable to hide the pain from her eyes. But when she asked herself why, the answer was more complicated than a simple matter of loss.

  Of course, she was devastated by the news of Carver’s death. She thought of the man he had been, their time together, the time they might have had. For months she had clung to the hope that somehow he might recover, maybe not completely, but enough that they could have some kind of future together. Now that hope had been dashed forever, and the constant, dull ache of watching him eke out a half-life in the clinic was replaced by the absolute desolation of grief.

  And yet, though she could barely admit it, even to herself, she felt another emotion: relief. The burden of responsibility Carver’s incapacity had created had weighed on her, and poisoned her feelings for him. Deep down, she resented him for deserting her, disappearing into his madness and leaving her to cope, forcing her to take the job with Vermulen. Then she’d felt guilty for harboring such terrible, unfair thoughts. And that had made her resent him even more.

  Now he was gone, and the weight was lifted. She could remember Carver as the man he had been when they first met. And she could try to rebuild her life, free of the creature he had become. Somewhere on the edge of her consciousness, there was even a sense of excitement, the possibility of being free for something new.

  “Oh, nothing, really,” she said. “I just met someone in the lobby, someone I knew from home. She told me about a friend of ours. He’d not been well for a long time and she just heard . . . he’s died.”

  Vermulen had been sitting at a writing desk. Now he got to his feet and held out his arms. His eyes conveyed profound understanding, as though a question had been answered, a problem solved.

  She went to him at last, and it wasn’t because she was doing her job, but because he was a living, breathing man and she needed the shelter of his arms. She laid her head on his chest and he stroked her hair as she cried. He lifted her head and dried the tears from her cheeks. They kissed, tentatively at first and then with rising intensity until, without another word, he took her arm and led her into the bedroom.

  48

  Three days out, one more to go. It was early evening, still a while to go before sunset, and they were traversing a southeastern slope, taking shelter from the wind that had been blowing in from the sea, away to the north and west. The mountains were no more than five or six thousand feet high, but topped by razor-sharp shark’s tooth peaks that made them seem much more imposing. Carver and Larsson were back on equal terms now as they tacked from side to side up the slope, using kick turns to change the angle of their ascent. They weren’t talking much. With the amount of effort they were expending every day, breath was too precious to waste on conversation.

  There was a long, exposed ridge up ahead, a spine of rock a few yards wide, which jutted from the main body of the mountain, dropping away almost sheer on either side before it fanned out again into a less precipitous slope that fell, like one side of a pyramid, to the valley floor a thousand feet below. The two men planned to cross the ridge, then ski back down to lower, sheltered ground, where they could pitch their two-man tunnel tent, brew up some water on their gas stove, and mix it with their dried rations. Carver was looking forward to beef curry and rice for supper, a classic piece of dehydrated cuisine from the Royal Marines cookbook—a taste of the old days.

  The higher they climbed, the less cover there was around them. They began to feel the wind picking up, snatching at their clothes, pushing against their backpacks, beating the hoods of their parkas against their ears. For the past hour or so, the slope that rose ahead of them and to the left had filled most of their field of vision. Carver had become aware of a gradual darkening of the heavens as the blue sky gave way to thickening gray clouds. But now, as they approached the ridge, the view opened up and they could look out toward the Atlantic.

  A few strides up ahead, Larsson was jabbing his arm back and forth, pointing at the horizon, and calling out a single word, “Storm!”

  Carver didn’t need telling. Away to the northwest a solid wall of charcoal-colored clouds was bearing down upon them and blocking out the waning sunlight like a giant blackout curtain drawing closed.

  The wind was picking up speed with every minute that passed, and flurries of snow were whipping through the air, blowing almost horizontally into their faces. As the temperature dropped, windchill would become an ever-greater threat. Exposed skin could suffer frostbite within minutes.

  Carver looked past Larsson at the ridge, then glanced back toward the onrushing weather. There was no way they could make it across the ridge before the storm hit them. If they got caught out there, with no shelter on any side, they would be blown off the mountainside like seeds from a dandelion. Even if they survived the wind, they would have to cope with a whiteout. The windblown snow and diffused, cloudy light would remove all definition from their surroundings, leaving them lost and disoriented. On flat ground a whiteout was dangerous enough. On a narrow ridge, with deadly drops on either side, it meant certain death.

  Carver pointed up ahead, then gave a single, decisive shake of the head and drew a finger across his throat. Larsson nodded in response and pointed back toward the main bulk of the mountain. “Make camp—now!” he shouted, barely able to make himself heard over the battering clamor of the wind.

  They t
urned around and skied back a dozen strides to a short, flat shelf in the lee of the mountainside that gave some meager protection from the elements. They took their skis off and jabbed them vertically into the snow along with their ski poles, then slung their packs down next to them. Both men had snow shovels strapped to the outside of their backpacks. They freed them and wordlessly began digging a rectangular hole, shaped like a section of a shallow trench, fighting the wind and snow that seemed as determined to cancel out every effort they made.

  When the hole was about knee-deep, Carver stepped over to Larsson’s pack and untied the nylon bag that contained their tent. If they could just erect it inside the trench, then shovel snow back over the flaps along either side, that should provide enough shelter to enable them to ride out the storm.

  Working quickly, methodically, Carver sorted out the pegs, guy-ropes, and poles: far better to spend a minute doing that now than waste five panicking if anything went missing. He and Larsson drove the pegs into the snow, ready to take the cords. The tent was brand-new, designed for easy assembly. Under normal circumstances it just took a few minutes to erect, but the storm had other ideas. The gale was rising to a murderous intensity, the snow thickening. Carver and Larsson were both strong, fit men. They knew what they were doing. Their equipment was top of the line. They threw every ounce of their strength and energy into the task of securing the ultralightweight material. Yet the two men could no more resist the might of the elements than King Canute could hold back the oncoming tide.

  The blizzard now reached a new crescendo, whipping the bright-red nylon tent into the air like a kite, its flight visible for no more than a second or two before it disappeared into the all-enveloping whiteness.

  Carver watched it disappear. He allowed himself a quick, sharp spasm of frustration, then turned his mind to the problem of survival. Visibility was getting worse by the second. Already he could barely see the outlines of the packs and skis just a few feet away, and Larsson was little more than a shadow, half hidden by the driving snow.