Bear

by Matt Rogers

‘Very,’ he said. ‘This is an important step in repairing the tension between our countries.’

  ‘I’m sure you understand the need for secrecy. We want this to be a pleasant surprise to the rest of the world. A shock announcement of our renewed peace talks, broadcast across the globe. I think it will be a powerful display of camaraderie. We all do. And it can’t come at a better time.’

  Magomed gave a sickeningly fake smile. ‘I’m glad we share the same sentiments. Our governments have much in common. I think we are both focused on the greater good. This is, of course, a very important step in getting over what happened last year.’

  The small man shuddered, as if he wanted to expunge the madness from his memory entirely. Tensions had never been higher. The icebreaker’s maiden voyage would help to heal them.

  An important first step.

  ‘Now,’ the man from the embassy said. ‘I have some official letters our President wanted hand delivered to members of your cabinet for press releases. We want this to go as smoothly as possible. I have faith that you will ensure they make their way to the correct parties for the televised press conference tomorrow. Is the location still planned for the Medved Shipbuilding Plant?’

  ‘Yes. Hand delivered?’

  ‘They are signed personally. The President thought it was an important gesture for the cameras. We want to stress peace as much as possible. The alternative is … not good.’

  ‘Not good at all,’ Magomed said.

  ‘I would like to go over logistics, if we could. Just to double check our governments are on the same page.’

  ‘I’ve got it already,’ Magomed said. ‘The Moschnost icebreaker is complete, and will cast off tomorrow morning at eight a.m. It will lead a convoy of four ships from the United States Navy through the Bering Strait on its maiden voyage as a display of peace between our countries. This gesture will aid in repairing tensions, demonstrating co-operation, and paving the way for a unified future. How does that sound?’

  The small man smiled. ‘Perfect! A pleasant surprise for the world to watch with optimism. Those words were excellent. Will you be facing the cameras tomorrow as the icebreaker casts off?’

  ‘No,’ Magomed said.

  The man furrowed his brow. ‘Why is that? I thought—’

  ‘Well, in reality, I was disgraced from the government months ago. I have nothing to do with them. You and your country are so fucking stupid that you believed anything I fed you. I’m going to make sure the display of peace goes as horrendously as you could possibly imagine. Then what do you think will happen to tensions between our two countries?’

  The small man started to laugh, his voice shaking and his tone wavering.

  An awful attempt to nervously dismiss the rant as a bad joke.

  Magomed removed the Makarov pistol from the holster at his waist and shot the man between the eyes.

  49

  The next morning, as pale grey daylight festered at the edges of the horizon, Will Slater stumbled out of the one-storey building with his eyes glazed over and his heart pounding a million miles an hour.

  He was still concussed. There was no easy fix to that issue.

  But the night’s rest had made him functional.

  If you could call it that.

  His left leg dragged through the muddy gravel as if burdened by ankle weights. He couldn’t seem to get control over the limb. There were other lingering problems too. Namely the shocking migraine, and the needles of white hot pain that shot through his head every time he moved his skull in any direction.

  He needed rest.

  He needed months of rest.

  But the encounter with Magomed had put his health on the sidelines.

  Because he feared the consequences of walking away from this particular incident were monumental.

  The husks of titanic container ships and merchant vessels dotted the sky all around him. This portion of Medved Shipbuilding Plant was a ghost town, wholly deserted. He limped through swathes of no man’s land, the deserted stretches of nothingness between construction projects.

  Then he saw it.

  At the far end of the plant, a colossal industrial zone speared out of the empty land. It was an enormous slab of steel and metalwork, complete with cranes hovering just out of reach of the central point of focus.

  The icebreaker.

  It was as impressive as Slater had imagined. A gigantic, dark blue hull rising up from the construction site, shined to perfection for its maiden voyage. It rested on gargantuan metal supports, waiting to be lowered into a narrow man-made channel leading into the Sea of Japan. On the open ocean, the swells stirred and frothed and lapped at the edge of the channel, beckoning to accept the icebreaker.

  And a few hundred feet away from the ship, activity roared. Hundreds of people. Journalists. Cameras. Men in suits.

  A media frenzy.

  But the no man’s land between the circus and the icebreaker felt shockingly desolate.

  Slater froze at the edge of the vast arena, staring back and forth between the small civilisation of media erected around the administrative buildings, and the towering icebreaker perched on its lonesome on the horizon. The bleakness of the morning drenched everything, weighing him down, reminding him how damaged he was.

  Something happened here last night, he thought.

  But he couldn’t quite put it together. His sixth sense was still there, imperceptible but present, and he noticed the bitter taste of warfare in the air. People had died here last night.

  In the plant.

  Something was seriously awry.

  But the concussion weighed heavy on his brain, clouding his thoughts, delaying his reasoning. He struggled for clarity. Finding none, he dragged his left foot through the gravel and made for the icebreaker.

  Because if he had to choose between two paths, he chose the more dangerous one.

  Every single time.

  Even when his neural pathways disconnected. Even when he couldn’t string a cohesive thought together. Even when the world became nothing but a bleak, soulless husk of its former self.

  His surroundings pulsed with unnatural vigour, making his vision swim.

  His chest felt tight, constricted by a shortness of breath. Suddenly he locked onto that sensation, and it sent him on a downward spiral into a pit of anxiety. A concussion could amplify emotions, skewer discipline, and ruin the confidence that Slater had spent a lifetime building up. Now he could only focus on his heart rate, which only served to amplify the sensation. By the time he made it a hundred feet through the murky pre-dawn light, it seemed as if his heart was about to explode in his chest. It pounded and thrummed and beat hard against his chest wall, swollen to what seemed like bursting point.

  What the fuck, he thought.

  A full scale panic attack.

  He was in no condition to sneak aboard an icebreaker which, as far as he could tell, had been secretly overrun by Magomed and his forces at some point in the early hours of the morning.

  How the hell had they done it?

  It didn’t matter.

  Slater couldn’t concentrate on that for more than a couple of seconds. Each time, the terror in his heart roared back to the surface, drowning out the background noise. Sweating in the freezing cold, he crossed to the nearest building, a one-storey administrative complex skewered into the dark gravel, a concrete beacon amidst the barren industrial zone.

  He pressed his back to the concrete wall and slid to the ground, out of sight of any curious passersby.

  There was no-one.

  The workers had been shepherded away from the plant, no doubt to make room for the media frenzy currently unfolding.

  But why?

  The maiden voyage for the largest nuclear-powered icebreaker in the world was certainly attention-grabbing, but this was something else. There was another level to the media circus, and this had seized it. Even in his inhibited state, Slater had only needed one look at the army of journalists and official-looking representatives
to understand there was something else at play here. A surprise announcement, perhaps.

  Hence Magomed’s secrecy the previous night.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t concentrate. His heart beat faster and faster, and the more he focused on it the worse it became. But he couldn’t focus on anything else. He started hyperventilating, which made the headache compound, his temples throbbing and pulsating and sending nauseating agony through his body.

  ‘You’re a mess,’ he told himself. ‘You’re a fucking mess.’

  How?

  How did this continue to happen?

  His body and brain wouldn’t hold together much longer if he continued at this pace. He’d taken advantage of a private stem cell clinic to nurse himself back to full health after Yemen, but he couldn’t rely on controversial methods forever. Sooner or later he would succumb to it.

  Better a fast death than a slow, agonising one.

  So he got to his feet. He pointed himself in the direction of the icebreaker and put one foot in front of the other. It was suicide. Utter insanity. He had the scraps of a plan in the back of his mind, but he wouldn’t survive anywhere near long enough to pull it off.

  He was the scapegoat.

  The sacrifice.

  And maybe that’s all he was ever supposed to be.

  Under a swirling, roiling sky full of grey storm clouds, he hobbled between buildings, heading for the icebreaker and the army of rented mercenaries that lay within.

  50

  In truth, he was never going to succeed.

  He’d heard whispers of Magomed’s manpower.

  Bogdan and Pasha had hinted at it. Slater wondered where they were now. If they were safe. If they’d made it home free. He hoped like all hell they were away from this madness. He hoped they’d stayed true to their word and left it to him.

  Because he was so used to the torment that it was worth bearing the burden for everyone else.

  He was stumbling blind into an irreparable situation. He had no knowledge of the forces he was up against. He was unfamiliar with the layout of the icebreaker itself. He wasn’t even sure how to smuggle himself aboard. He had a gun, and a combat knife tucked into a holster at his waist, but lacked the mental fortitude or the spatial awareness to use either of them effectively. The concussion had ruined his co-ordination and fine motor skills with equal measure.

  He was a shell of his former self.

  And he wasn’t even certain his former self could have triumphed over this particular threat.

  So it was with a reserved acceptance of his fate that he stumbled and lurched into the giant industrial zone, moving quietly between larger warehouses and smaller administrative complexes. He didn’t run into anyone, and he figured he wouldn’t be able to justify his presence if he did.

  He passed underneath a towering crane, and for a moment he stared up into the abyss, noticing the dark grey sky through a maze of steel beams.

  He paused there, contemplating whether this was the right move.

  Yes.

  It had to be.

  Because last night, everything had changed.

  He continued forward. There should be at least a handful of the plant’s security milling around, but even in his debilitated state Slater could piece together what had happened. Magomed evidently controlled most of the soldiers of fortune assigned to protect the icebreaker over the course of its construction. When they’d stormed aboard the ship at some point the previous night, the mass confusion and bureaucratic log jams would have been too much to deal with.

  And if there was anything the Russian government needed to go swimmingly, it was the maiden voyage.

  Because of the media frenzy.

  Because of the unknown reason for all the attention.

  But they couldn’t pull the plug, not this late. Sure, the majority of the shipbuilding plant’s workers had mysteriously disappeared, but there was a vast difference between being unable to locate them and knowing they were in the process of something devastating, something unimaginably wrong.

  So they’d dismissed it as a communication error and pushed ahead with the voyage.

  Unaware that everyone was aboard.

  Unaware that they were ready to take control of the ship.

  And then what?

  Slater didn’t know. He couldn’t see a purpose for seizing control of an icebreaker out in the Sea of Japan. What purpose would that serve? There was nothing resembling weaponry aboard. The fact that it was nuclear-powered meant nothing. If that was Magomed’s intention, he would have been better off constructing a nuclear bomb himself, assembling a team of rogue scientists in some third-world hell hole to build the devastating weapon in secrecy.

  No, this was public.

  And it was very deliberately public.

  Magomed wanted a spectacle.

  And, given what Slater suspected was a previous career in politics, he had the experience and the knowledge to pull it off.

  Hence the complete lack of security around the ship in preparation for its launch.

  He imagined the crew were aboard. Perhaps they didn’t suspect a thing. In the brief time Slater had met Magomed, he’d sensed unbridled superiority in the man. Maybe the old man was at the apex of a staggering deception.

  Maybe he had everyone dangled from strings.

  That was about all the deductive reasoning Slater’s brain could compute. The strands of information faded away, his thoughts dissipating, replaced by the reality of what lay in front of him. His mind clouded, and he continued forward.

  There was the icebreaker.

  It rose out of the supports in front of him, impossibly enormous. Slater stared up at the hull, and a tight ball of nausea twisted his gut into a knot. The slab of steel, coupled with the grim conditions and the overall aura of helplessness, made him sick to his stomach.

  But there was nowhere to go but forward.

  He implemented what little training he could remember and ghosted across the final portion of the dead shipbuilding plant, keeping to the shadows, searching for non-existent enemies. He might as well have been walking through a graveyard. There was no-one in sight, but the atmosphere was tinged with death. It wasn’t something an ordinary civilian could recognise, but Slater knew.

  There were dead men hidden nearby.

  But he couldn’t help the dead.

  He spotted movement. Straight ahead. In the lee of the icebreaker’s dark blue hull, near the bow of the giant front end, a lone mercenary hunched over against the elements, talking rapidly into a black satellite phone. One hand gripped a rope ladder ascending to a shell door skewered into the side of the hull. He was gesticulating as he spoke, probably screaming commands into the phone, but Slater couldn’t hear a thing over the howling wind.

  Even if it was dead silent, he might not have heard a thing.

  His senses were drastically compromised.

  The mercenary seemed blissfully unaware of his surroundings. He stood facing the icebreaker’s hull, encapsulated by the phone call, probably dealing with the aftermath of the entire security team breaking away from their predetermined positions. Magomed would have used his leverage, causing diplomatic chaos, and upper management would be scrambling to work out why no-one was at their posts or following their shifts. The mercenary yelled back into the satellite phone, defending himself against a mountain of accusations.

  It was a test if Slater had ever seen one.

  He could have shot the mercenary in the back of a skull without a second thought. The guy was big and strong, packing the all-weather clothing with enough muscle to fill the uniform out, creating a menacing aura. Slater put him at six foot two and well north of two hundred pounds. Probably ex-military. He had that air about him. Confident, disciplined, hard. He carried himself well. Shoulders back. Chin up. He seemed ready to attack anything at a moment’s notice. To a common civilian, this man would epitomise the pinnacle of physicality. He looked like he could destroy anyone in a fight.

  Thankfully
, Slater had been dealing with ex-military types his entire career. They were usually the first to turn to acquiring blood money. They had certain talents, and a physicality that was imposing to anyone who hadn’t seen combat, and that usually meant they could get their way if they turned off their conscience. Which was far more appealing than working odd jobs with their limited resumes.

  So he knew what to do.

  The only question was whether he could do it.

  And he needed to know.

  Because if he climbed aboard, facing at least thirty identical soldiers of fortune, it would prove disastrous if he didn’t have the physical capacity to engage in a fight. He would get beaten down, and he would die.

  You need to find out.

  So, despite the combat knife in his left hand and the Makarov in his broken right hand, he strode across the final stretch of concrete and walked right up to the mercenary. The guy didn’t turn around, still hunched over the phone, still entirely unaware of his surroundings. And why should he be? For months he’d been isolated in the Medved Shipbuilding Plant without a threat in sight. The hard work was over. The ship had been seized. All that was left to do was climb aboard.

  Or not.

  Slater bent his right arm, recognising the uselessness of punching with his swollen hand, and twisted his body into an elbow. The point of his bone whistled through the air, but the wind drowned out the noise. The guy didn’t even see it coming.

  Bang.

  Slater’s elbow struck the man’s skull, and his entire arm rattled in its socket. The impact speared its way up through his shoulder, his chest, and finally his head. His own skull rattled, and he winced as the headache amplified, warping his sense of reality as he grappled with the pain.

  But he stayed on his feet.

  And the mercenary didn’t.

  Knocked out cold by the elbow, he pitched and toppled and sprawled across the concrete, the satellite phone falling free from his hands. It clattered to the dock and spun on its axis.

  Slater picked it up, ended the call the mercenary had been on, and dialled a new number.

  Someone answered.