Tundra

by Tim Stevens

  Purkiss touched the back of his head gingerly, felt the swelling already the size of half a squash ball. ‘To sum up, I was looking into the movement records of all of you, trying to work out if there were any suspicious patterns, anything that might link any of you to what’s been going on here. I didn’t find much. But Dr Clement here came in and attacked me from behind, damn near bashing my head in.’ He turned to Clement. ‘Why was that, Patricia?’

  She avoided eye contact with him, her fingers still interlaced behind her head, her face tight and unreadable.

  Purkiss looked at each of the others in turn. ‘She’s the one. God knows why, or how. But Clement is the person who killed Keys, and Wyatt, and, probably, Feliks Nisselovich two months ago. She’s the one who wrecked our link with the outside world. She’s the one trying to steal six nuclear missiles from the crashed plane near the Nekropolis.’

  Their heads switched from Purkiss to Clement as if they were at a tennis match, following the ball as it was smashed over the net.

  Medievsky said, ‘So we go. Make our way to Saburov-Kennedy Station, taking her along, and we deliver her to the authorities there.’

  ‘There’s no need.’ Purkiss spread his hands. ‘Don’t you see? We have the terrorist. She’s the person the FSB are interested in. We wait here, and when the Spetsnaz arrive, we simply hand her over.’

  The wind outside, separated from them by a single layer of wall, hissed through the silence that followed.

  Avner pulled off his cap, raked a hand through his matted curls. ‘That’s bullshit. You said so yourself, man. They’re going to hit this place with all guns blazing. They don’t know how what kind of threat they face, so they’ll shoot first, kill us all, then figure out where each piece fits afterward.’

  ‘I agree with Efraim.’ Budian’s voice, so seldom heard, was startling. Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, her eyes were dull. ‘These are State troops, sent by the FSB. The KGB. They do not care for fairness, or nuance, or human rights. They will assume we are all involved, and they will kill us.’ She looked around for support. ‘We leave, now. No matter how difficult the journey north.’

  ‘Hey.’ Avner’s tone was desperately enthusiastic. ‘How about we head southwest, to Yakutsk? It’s further to go, but there are roads. The highway. It’ll be a hell of a lot easier.’

  ‘And if they send ground troops that way?’ said Purkiss. ‘We’d be ducks in a shooting gallery.’ He turned to Medievsky. ‘It’s your decision, Oleg. You’re in charge. Do we stay here, and hand this woman over, and get a helicopter ride home to warmth and safety? Or do we strike out across a hundred and forty kilometres of frozen hostile terrain, at night, with a platoon of special forces men, trained killers, on our tail?’

  Medievsky’s jaw worked. The seconds passed.

  ‘We vote,’ he said.

  *

  It was done by the raising of hands.

  Budian, Montrose and Avner chose leaving immediately and heading for Saburov-Kennedy Station. For remaining at the station: Haglund and Purkiss. After ten seconds’ thought, Medievsky joined them.

  Three votes for each option. Stalemate.

  ‘Jesus. Now what?’ muttered Avner. He stared at Clement. Medievsky had allowed her to lower her arms, and ordered her to sit down against the wall. She complied sullenly. ‘Dr Patricia, how do you vote?’

  Clement didn’t reply. Didn’t even look in Avner’s direction.

  Medievsky said, ‘An executive decision. We stay. No further discussion.’

  Avner twisted away, muttering. Budian let out a groan of anguish.

  Montrose said, ‘I disagree, Oleg.’

  ‘My decision is final.’

  ‘How about we split up? Those of us who want to leave, leave. The rest of you stay behind.’

  ‘No.’ Medievsky said it before Purkiss could. ‘We have to stay together. Pool our resources. If we fragment, at least half of us will die. You know the rules of Yarkovsky Station, Ryan.’

  Ten more seconds of silence.

  Avner said, ‘So we stand around like a bag of spare dicks, here in the hall, waiting for the invasion? Waiting for god damn Godot?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Medievsky. ‘If we move to the mess, we may not hear them arrive. We therefore remain here. Sit down, if you want to rest.’

  Avner’s head jerked up suddenly. He looked as if he was sniffing the air.

  ‘Whoah,’ he murmured.

  ‘What?’ Medievsky’s grip tensed on the rifle.

  Avner closed his eyes, his head still raised. ‘Choppers,’ he half whispered.

  Purkiss strained to listen. He heard nothing but the pitiless wind, gathering slow, gradual force beyond the walls.

  He watched the expressions on the faces of the others. Even Montrose shook his head.

  ‘No,’ Purkiss said. ‘They’re not here yet.’

  *

  Later, much later, when the night and the fatigue were crowding in and threatening to drag him into the ground, Purkiss had time to reflect on how he’d misjudged the situation. How he’d blown it, and allowed a blameless man to be killed.

  They’d been sitting and squatting and pacing in the entrance corridor for fifteen minutes. Nobody spoke. Few of them made eye contact, and then only fleetingly.

  Like Purkiss, Medievsky and Haglund remained standing. They held their Rugers at a slant, across their chests with the barrels just below their left shoulders. Their attention seemed to drawn towards the external environment, the black void beyond the door and the walls.

  Purkiss saw the first signs in Avner’s face. The twitching around the mouth, the jumping of a wedge of muscle in the right cheek. The flickering of the eyes.

  Instinct told Purkiss that timekeeping was about to become important. He glanced at his watch.

  He couldn’t be certain, but he thought approximately one hour had passed since his call to the FSB man in Moscow had been terminated. Assuming the troops had been scrambled and dispatched from Yakutsk ten minutes later, they could arrive in the next forty minutes.

  Avner’s yell stabbed through the quiet, amplified by the broadness of the corridor. It sent a jolt through the rest of them, triggering a ripple of movement wherever they sat or stood or paced.

  ‘God damn it.’ He was on his feet, stumbling slightly, and he stared at them, his eyes wild. ‘Look at us. Listen to us. Sitting here like a bunch of turkeys the week before Thanksgiving, kidding ourselves that those guys approaching with shotguns will leave us alone as long as we offer up one of our number as a sacrifice.’ He strode to Medievsky, shouted into his face. ‘We’re going to die. Oleg? You understand me? Die. In the next hour. Maybe sooner. The last thing we’re going to hear is the sound of our brains hitting the wall. The last thought we’re going to have is, shit, why didn’t we get out when we had the chance? Why did we listen to this asshole?’ He jabbed a finger repeatedly at Purkiss.

  Medievsky backed off a couple of steps. ‘Sit down, Efraim.’

  Avner pressed in, following Medievsky so that he kept well inside the taboo region of his personal space. ‘No. I will not sit down. In fact, I won’t sit down until I’m aboard a flight out of this nightmare of a country.’ He advanced until his chest bumped against the rifle slung across Medievsky’s. ‘I’m out of here. Gone. And if any of you -’ he swept his arm, index finger extended, in two arcs on either side of him - ‘if any of you have the smallest clue about what kind of shit is about to go down here, you’ll come with me.’

  His words fell into silence. All eyes were on him.

  All except Purkiss’s. He faced Avner, but he looked at the person he knew was the killer.

  Medievsky took another half step backwards, freeing up a foot of space between himself and Avner. Purkiss used Medievsky’s movement as cover, and edged to his right.

  The killer’s head turned a fraction in Purkiss’s direction.

  Purkiss said, ‘Efraim.’

  Without looking at him, Medievsky held up a hand. He was in charge.
Purkiss wasn’t to try and take command of the situation, wasn’t to intrude.

  Avner said, looking at each of them in turn: ‘Nobody? Gunnar? Oleksandra? Ryan? You’re all just going to stay here?’

  The killer glanced at Purkiss. Eye contact, for the briefest moment.

  Purkiss tensed, feeling the first prickle of what would become the adrenaline surge.

  He looked at Avner, watched the younger man’s mouth curve in disgust.

  ‘The hell with you all, then.’

  Avner turned away from Medievsky as if to stalk away. With surprising speed he spun back and grabbed the rifle and tried to jerk it free, the pull of the strap across Medievsky’s back hauling him into a stoop.

  ‘Give me the gun, Oleg,’ Avner shouted. ‘At least give me a chance. I’ll be on my own out there. I need a gun.’

  Medievsky prised the gun free, swinging it up and away from Avner’s grasp.

  ‘For God’s sake, Efraim, control yourself –’ he began.

  The killer moved.

  Purkiss had been prepared for it, but, as he understood with wrenching shame later, during the terrible journey that followed, he’d got the direction of the attack completely wrong. He had assumed the killer would make the first move on him, would see Purkiss as the primary target to be neutralised.

  If the killer had followed the expected course, Purkiss would have been ready. He’d have countered with a double defence-and-attack, keeping low and twisting the gun hand away with his left hand around the wrist while putting the force of a right fist launched using a pivot from the hip into the killer’s throat, causing possible death but certain incapacitation.

  Assumptions were often made on the basis of arrogance. Purkiss’s arrogance had been in considering himself more likely a target than the two men who posed the more obvious threat. The two men carrying firearms.

  A second after Medievsky pulled the Ruger out of Avner’s grip so that its barrel pointed above and behind him, Montrose drew a handgun from inside his coat pocket and shot Medievsky in the face.

  *

  Ten seconds later, reality returned, in the sense that the stimuli feeding into Purkiss’s cortex began to knit together into a coherent whole.

  Before that, he was aware of individual sensations, detached from each other and stratified neatly in his consciousness.

  The first sensation was the noise. It was the most undifferentiated of the three, the colossal blast of the handgun merging with the wet organic sound of the bullet ripping through skin and bone and brain before the orchestra of screaming rose to dominate.

  Second was the smell. It was simpler than the other two stimuli, consisting overwhelmingly of the sharp sting of propellant from the handgun fired six feet from Purkiss’s face.

  And there were visual data, the most vivid of all. The lurid colours of the carnage wreaked upon Medievsky’s head as the shot blew it apart and his body rocked sideways and crashed to the floor. The primal postures of the people around him: Clement diving to her left from her seated position against the wall, her arms flung out, Haglund stretching his mouth and his eyes impossibly wide while he hunched and brought his rifle up, Avner holding both palms up towards Medievsky to fend off the violation being done to him while his grimacing face twitched aside.

  And the unnaturally fluid blur of Montrose’s limbs, his firing of the handgun segueing into his lunge towards Budian and his engulfing her in his arms before he swung her across his torso, his gun jammed against the side of her head.

  Ten seconds, and Montrose was ten feet away from the group, down the corridor, Budian positioned expertly so that her small body provided maximum cover in front of his taller frame. Her glasses had slipped comically. Behind them her eyes were clenched as she struggled to breathe past the arm clamped across her throat.

  Haglund aimed down the Ruger, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent.

  Montrose said, ‘Drop the gun.’

  From behind Haglund, Purkiss watched the engineer’s back tense beneath his snowsuit.

  Montrose fired a second time and Purkiss saw Budian’s hair lift on one side. Until he heard the ricochet whine off the ceiling, he thought Montrose had put the bullet through her head. But her legs scrabbled against the floor, her scream muffled as Montrose shifted his arm so that it was over her mouth.

  ‘Final warning,’ said Montrose.

  Haglund lowered the Ruger, crouched, laid it on the floor. Stepped away from it.

  Montrose said, ‘Outside. Out that door. All of you.’

  Twenty-six

  Haglund was the last to leave. He pulled the door shut and leaned against it.

  They huddled close, not touching but behaving as if there was a collective understanding that they needed to maintain contact with each other, that to be separated was to die quickly.

  Purkiss had moved first, grabbing an orange snowsuit off the hook and stepping into it without prompting. Haglund had kept his on after arriving in the entrance hall. He grabbed two suits off the rack and threw them at Avner and Clement. Purkiss pulled on a balaclava, fitted goggles over his eyes. The others, half sluggish, half scrambling, followed suit.

  Down the corridor, Montrose’s face was three-quarters hidden behind Budian’s head. He watched them.

  As Purkiss opened the door, Montrose called, ‘Stay out. If you come back inside, I’ll be here. I’ll shoot her. And you.’

  They stood in the pool of yellow from the arc lights over the entrance. The snowfall had largely stopped apart from a scatter of slanting flakes. The wind scoured the walls of the building like a vampiric presence, clamouring and wheedling for entry.

  Purkiss said, shouting over the wind and the barrier imposed by his balaclava: ‘He’ll find a way to get to the hangar. We need to secure it.’

  Haglund leaned in close. ‘The rest of the guns are inside. In the west wing. We have no access.’

  ‘Then we gain access.’ Clement’s yell was startling to Purkiss. ‘Get in through a window.’

  Avner grabbed Purkiss’s shoulder, pressing so close Purkiss could see his eyes through the goggles. ‘What are you talking about? The hangar’s over there, for Christ’s sake. We take the Ural and get the fuck out of here. Leave him for the soldiers to take care of.’

  Clement shoved him with a hand placed in the middle of his chest, not hard but enough to send him staggering back a step. Even muffled, and over the keening of the wind, her voice was cutting. ‘He has Oleksandra Budian hostage. If we leave, she’ll die. So shut up.’

  Purkiss drew them together, his arms across Clement’s and Avner’s backs. ‘This is what we do. Gunnar, can you lock the doors of the hangar?’

  ‘Of course,’ Haglund shouted back. ‘There’s a dead bolt.’

  ‘Okay. Go and do it. Patricia, Efraim, you go with him.’ He felt Avner tense in protest, drove his fingers into the younger man’s shoulder to shut him up. ‘Stay in the hangar, inside the side door. Keep quiet. Arm yourselves with whatever’s on hand, wrenches, crowbars, whatever. If the door opens, hit him. He might push Budian through first, but that’s a risk you’ll have to take. Just act decisively and immediately. Understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Haglund. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going back in.’

  ‘He’ll be waiting,’ said Clement. ‘He’ll shoot you as soon as you set foot inside.’

  ‘No, he won’t.’ Purkiss had to raise his voice even more to be heard over the wind. The cold was making articulation difficult. ‘He won’t hang around to see if we return. He’ll take Budian and get out some other way. Head for the hangar. That’s where he’ll be expecting to find us, so you’ll have to be on your guard. I need to get to him before he reaches you.’

  ‘How will you -’

  Purkiss cut across Haglund. ‘I have an idea.’

  He clapped Clement and Avner on the back, shouted ‘Go,’ and as soon as the three of them started moving away, advanced to the door.

  *

  Clemen
t might, of course, be right. Montrose could be standing in the same spot as before. In which case, Purkiss would barely have time to register his presence before the rifle blew him away. But he didn’t think it likely. Montrose would be expecting them to come back at some point, but probably not so soon, barely two minutes after he’d ordered them out.

  Purkiss’s instructions to the other three had been for the sake of appearances. He didn’t expect them to be able to take down Montrose with mechanics’ tools. Montrose was a professional, and he’d drop them all before they could get even close. But Purkiss needed them out of the way, to carry out unimpeded the plan he’d been formulating.

  He stepped inside and pulled the door closed and for a heartstopping moment imagined movement down the corridor to his right; but it was just that, imagination. Montrose and Budian were gone. Medievsky lay sprawled against the wall, the pool of gore around his head no longer spreading. Haglund’s rifle was gone.

  Purkiss pulled off his goggles and balaclava. Quickly he knelt and searched the pockets of the body’s snowsuit. He found the Walther, the one he’d taken from Wyatt and that Medievsky had subsequently taken off him. He hadn’t been certain Medievsky had kept it. Purkiss ejected the magazine. Four bullets remained.

  Gun in hand, he loped down the passage, acutely aware of his footfalls and stepping as lightly as he could. He reached the third door on the left. On the evening of his arrival at the station, Medievsky had tapped it as he led Purkiss past. Fuse boxes, he’d said.

  Inside the room he examined the panels, which covered most of one wall. There were separate boxes for the east and west wings, as well as for each outbuilding and the perimeter lights. The master switch drew his attention.

  He could shut off the lights within the complex while keeping the hangar illuminated. That way he’d avoid plunging Haglund and Clement and Avner into darkness, and possible panic. On the other hand, Montrose might already be on his way out of the main building, in which case the hangar would be a beacon of light on which he’d focus.