No mileage in trying to detour eastward; the forest looped back there, you’d have another high-up snowfield to cross. And you could bet they’d have that under surveillance too. Westward — well, it would take the rest of the day to get round that way. And there’d be another crossing of open ground eventually. Except that piece might be negotiable in the dark. It would have to be, this had to be the answer now: more delay, but if it was the only way to get there — even as much as an extra day…
They’d have picked the site for their forward supply dump — which he now knew must be here — with the advantage of these open areas in mind. There was another which the map showed about seven kilometres north of here, curving protectively around the intervening area of forest. That bit of forest would be it. In there, somewhere, Juffu’s ‘secret, hidden place’ had to be. Protected on three sides, and a route westward through forest all the way to the Norwegian border.
Still nothing to be seen up there. But the tent wouldn’t be there for no purpose.
He started westward, inside the forest but with its edge in sight. Hating the need for this new detour and the waste of time. But there’d be no point trying to save a day and blowing the whole thing. Once they knew they had a visitor: and the guy who’d killed Juffu could be here already, could have been one of that pair he’d seen: they might be watching, waiting for the survivor to show up.
Might…
He’d gone to the edge of the trees for another look across at the other side. So close, and the detour such a waste of valuable time. Then, turning to commit himself to the long trek round, movement caught his eye — off to the left. Reindeer, grazing. The ground fell away at that point — which he hadn’t noticed until this moment — not very steeply but enough for the animal he was looking at to be as it were hull-down, its body in sight but not its legs. There were others not far beyond it of which he could see even less: and beyond them, a pair of antlers showed for a moment and then vanished as the beast put its head down.
Falling ground — dead ground. Only that short stretch of it: a hundred metres beyond it, more deer were grazing in full view. The question was, from that tent, with its higher perspective, might it not be dead ground?
He told himself, Only one way to find out.
*
‘See what’s under that.’
Beale gestured towards a snow-covered hump out in the open, a few metres from the long mound that fronted the entrance to the snow-hole. Simmerton ski’d over to it, his skis barely indenting the new snow already frozen into a hard crust. He got out of his skis then, dumped his back-pack and detached the shovel from it. Bill Howie watched from the trees above and to the left, a position from which he had all the open ground in view and also some depth of vision into surrounding woodland. They’d been out as far as the edge of the trees and seen that the snowfield there was also trackless, that nothing and nobody had been here in recent hours. All the same, Howie’s Jati was cocked and ready. (The front cocking handle, unfolded as now, put the gun ready to fire; folded back, it set it to safe. And there was no selector-switch: first pull on the trigger allowed for single-shot use, fully back gave you the works.) They’d arrived here through the forest, well spread out; Howie had been on the right of the line, had investigated the mound which must have been built as a screening wall, found the tunnel opening and called to Beale, who’d told him to hang on, he’d take first look inside.
Simmerton was shovelling fast, cutting hard snow away from that other heap and tossing it away. Beale stooped, crawled into the tunnel, torch in one hand and Jati in the other, and with a sharp lookout for booby-traps. Howie surveying the surroundings with tense concentration. The fact there were no tracks here didn’t mean they had the whole mountainside to themselves.
Simmerton growled, ‘This is a bloke. Or fucking was.’ Then Tony Beale came out of the tunnel backwards, muttering, ‘Camera… Fucking hell…’ Delving into his back-pack, where he had a 35-mm Olympus. He told Howie, ‘Two guys inside, both greased. Not nice at all. Reckon they must be the Yanks. Not Ollie Lyle, for sure.’
‘Happen this could be, then.’
Simmerton was using the side of the shovel to remove crusted snow from the corpse of a man in reindeer-hide outer clothing, face down, humped in a lot of frozen mess. Beale half-turned, hesitating: then decided to finish one job at a time, and wormed back into the snow-hole. The Yorkshireman’s face was twisted into an expression of distaste as he forced the shovel in below the body; it took a lot of effort, levering upward in several places, to detach it from the blackish ice that had glued it to the ground. He could turn it over now, expose its face.
He’d turned away. Shaking his head. ‘Tone…’
‘Yeah.’ Beale came from the snow-hole. Praying this was not Ollie Lyle, but scared it most likely would be. Muttering, ‘Not a snow-hole, it’s a fucking mortuary. One with his head blown off, other geezer shot in the head too but a rifle did it.’ He’d taken photographs. Slinging the camera over his shoulder as he scrunched over on his Lundhags boots and stopped beside Simmerton, staring down at the body. Breath pluming like smoke in deep-frozen air, Simmerton asking, ‘Him, is it?’
‘Nothing like.’ Readying the camera. Then he stooped, got the dead Russian’s face in focus in close-up, snapped it. ‘Nothing like.’ He added, ‘Shotgun again, though, could’ve been the same one.’
‘So what now?’
He’d been thinking about it, and it hadn’t taken many seconds to see there was only one answer. Out. Back to the border, and report in, over the Clansman. Two stops en route: one very shortly, back in the trees there, for a quick hot drink and snack. Then another stop up on the mountain’s shoulder. He’d had a look round from that height on the way here, and over a huge area of snow-covered wilderness seen nothing moving, but he’d stop there again and look harder. Then the last bit of the yomp back would be in darkness, probably. But there was nothing you could do here: there were no tracks, no message had been left in the snow—hole — he’d searched, and drawn blank — there was nothing to give any lead at all.
14
He was scared the reindeer might stampede. If they did and there was a goon up there in the tent to see it happen, he’d wonder what had scared them. Then take a closer look. They weren’t going to stand still, that was for sure, but they might be induced to shift naturally, just move along…
All but one were moving, almost as soon as he began his ski-crawl. He paused to give that one time to get the message; but the stupid animal still grazed. He crawled on a few metres, stopped again and tried a few low-toned obscenities.
Deaf as well as blind.
He was satisfied that from the tent this was dead ground. It wouldn’t be if he stood up, and out in the middle where the ground rose to a central ridge he’d have to really hug the snow.
The reindeer flung its head up, sprang away. Snow flying from its scrabbling hooves as it galloped clumsily after some others, who also then began moving faster — trotting with their heads raised, obviously with the wind up. He crawled on, because there wasn’t anything else he could do. Beginning to think he shouldn’t have started. Nose down to the trampled snow, imagining the Soviet lookout in that tent with his binos up, alerted.
Reindeer droppings. Ugh…
Left ski, right ski: laboured, stealthy crawling, a technique acquired years ago in AW training. Telling himself it was probably over-optimistic to hope to reach the target — target area, say — tonight, when there wasn’t so much daylight left. It would obviously be best to check the place out in daylight — having first located it, of course — so as to work out some plan of action that would include withdrawal afterwards. How well guarded and/or patrolled the place might be, only reconnaissance would reveal. Connecting with that, another thought about Juffu’s alleged Spetsnaz leader: if he hadn’t heard anything from the team who’d been trying to block the southern approaches to Kautokeino — and he wouldn’t have, not unless there’d been survivors or a survivor, mo
re than those three — then maybe he wouldn’t know that Sophie had got past them?
Supposition: based on the fact that having killed Juffu, that guy knew there was one he hadn’t killed, and would be very keen to put that right.
Halfway over. Or maybe not quite halfway. There was a slight up-gradient, so the central ridge must still be ahead. He stopped, lay flat, looking to his right. Until now he hadn’t dared to, having no option anyway but to continue crawling. But he couldn’t see the tent, still couldn’t see it when he got up again, to crawl on. Creep on… Feeling as if he’d been at it for hours; and the trees on the far side didn’t seem to be any closer. Reassuring himself — Saving most of a day. Get there tonight, lie up, recce by daylight tomorrow, hit it at dusk… Promises, promises. Hit it how, with what? And get where tonight?
It wasn’t easy to keep down as low as he knew he must. When you tried to hurry it, there was a tendency to rise up — risking a bullet, or bullets plural, maybe the 5.45-mm variety, little ones with little hollows in their noses … He’d stopped again: with snow-scooter tracks right under his eyes. Nothing very surprising in this — there were reindeer here, so there’d be herdsmen at times, and they’d use scooters presumably because there were several Lapp settlements within about twenty-five kilometres — for fuel supplies and maybe homes to commute from. But it stimulated hope. Juffu’s informant being a mountain Sami, reindeer herdsman, one of a siida supposedly wintering their animals in the immediate vicinity of the ‘secret, hidden place’. Juffu’s voice like a distant echo in his Finnish—accented German: Nobody is speaking of these things, they’re frightened. But to me this one did… It wasn’t exactly confirmation that this was the right place, but it seemed the furnishings were right, it fitted the background as sketched by the old Lapp. There had to be a siida close by, Sami herdsmen who were in the know — because having eyes and ears they’d hardly not be — but who’d have been coerced into silence.
Entering the wood, at long last!
Half a minute later he was right inside it, on his feet, easing strained, cramped muscles. Ski-crawling used muscles you didn’t need in any other activity. That was how it felt… His watch wasn’t accurate, he’d had no way of resetting it after it had stopped not long ago, so at first light this morning he’d set it to 0945, which wouldn’t be all that far out, he thought. On that basis he now had about two hours of daylight left. So he’d saved several hours and a lot of wear and tear, he was in what might turn out to be the right area and he had that much time in which to reconnoitre.
Map… The ‘graphic’ was looking distinctly dog-eared now.
Northeast. That was where logic pointed. When he got to the river that ran through the bottom of the valley he’d know he was getting warm — figuratively speaking. So now — downhill through this forest, bearing left, to avoid rising ground that should appear on his right. He put the map away, and his skis on. The snow’s surface was a crust, recent falls cemented, and he gave a thought to the idea of continuing on foot — for the sake of caution, the possibility of the alleged Spetsnaz ‘leader’ being here ahead of him, maybe with patrols out hunting. On the other hand safety might lie in speed, getting there before he was expected. And they might imagine they had security sewn up, with their lookout posts as well as tame Lapps around to serve as insulation.
Skis were noisy on the hard snow, in the forest’s pervading silence. Animal tracks were visible all over the place. He was looking all ways at once — picking a route between the trees and simultaneously watching for movement and tracks other than the animals’, forewarnings of the presence of patrols. The last thing he wanted now was any confrontation: one shot, one shout, he’d never get to any target.
Or away from it.
On his right — sure enough, now, rising ground. A small hill, in fact, shown on the map by a couple of contour rings and a central dot, no height indicated. A stream came down it — steep, narrow, rock-strewn, heaped with ice; in spring and summer it would be less stream than a series of waterfalls. Crossing it near the foot of the hill he guessed that from where it vanished into the forest it would wind down to join the river that was somewhere down to his left. And his river couldn’t be far ahead now.
By April, this quiet forest would be thunderous with the rushing torrents. The thought reminded him of Sophie, of their talk about a fishing holiday on the Teno. Tana — whatever. They‘d hardly known each other, he thought, when they‘d made that somewhat tentative arrangement.
There.
Stemming. Then side-slipping, stopping ten metres this side of it. The trees crowded to the river’s banks, but the frozen river itself looked open, dangerous. He took his skis off and went forward cautiously, having learnt how they tended to keep watch on open spaces.
Tracks. He’d stopped breathing: could hardly believe he was seeing this…
Tank tracks!
Correction. Controlling excitement, forcing the brain to work calmly: not tanks, but BMPs. BMPs being a range of Soviet tracked vehicles, infantry combat vehicles — armed, amphibious, varying forms of the same basic. These would be load-carriers, or adapted for freight.
If you followed these tracks now, wouldn’t they lead to the dump?
It seemed like such a gift. So easy. But where the hell else might they lead?
Three and a half metres wide: that was BMP width, all right. They‘d churned the river’s ice from as far to the right as his view extended, and at about thirty metres’ distance to his left they climbed out of the river, flattening the bank on its far side. There’d be nowhere for them to go, except to the dump. And — some time — on to the frontier, and over it…
So — OK, leave skis here, continue on foot. Come back for them maybe if it turns out there’s far to go. He dumped his bergen too, hiding it with the skis and poles in undergrowth.
Crossing the ice — conscious of the need to get over quickly, back into cover, but also feeling incredibly mobile and unhampered without the bergen’s weight — and climbing the bank… He had the MKS slung over his right shoulder, that hand on the gun and its selector to automatic. In the trees now, he started cautiously on a line parallel to the churned track. More roadway than track: and it was solid confirmation, if any were needed now, of the accuracy of old Juffu’s information.
About a hundred metres beyond the river he stopped, crouching in cover and looking into a cleared space about the size of half a tennis court. Parking area, unloading area? Empty at the moment… Creeping closer, he saw it was floored with the sort of metal trackway used sometimes for emergency aircraft runways. He thought, I’m here… The suddenness of arrival was bewildering. But the approach road was the same; he hadn’t been close enough to see it, until now. They’d have track-laying vehicles for that job, laying the stuff section by section, mile by mile. Combat Engineers’ department, in the Soviet Army organisation. And there was no surprise that there was no transport here at this moment: they’d unload by night, start back in darkness…
Exactly as the old guy had said, in fact.
So what are we waiting for?
The dump had to be on the other side of that open space. There was certainly nothing this side of it.
Except a Russian walking along the roadway…
He’d ducked lower. He could only see the man’s fur hat. Hearing from a distance a snowscooter’s high snarl — unsilenced, ear-splitting, somewhere outside the forest but shattering its deep silence. The Russian was now crossing the parking area. Submachine gun on his back, fur hat with earflaps down, black boots showing below a heavy topcoat — that was as much as he’d noted before he ducked down again. But a voice called now — Russian…
Up a bit, slowly. Spotting this second guy appearing out of the trampled, snowy forest floor. Facing the first one, therefore facing this way. Consequently one didn’t exactly jog around.
Voices continued, but there could be a third one in the conversation now, he thought. Head up again very slowly, centimetre at a time. Two of them with
their backs this way, both the backs with guns slung on them, this pair in conversation with a third at whom they were looking down.
Up higher…
The one facing this way now was where the second one had come from — at a lower level, in a hole of some kind. This would be it, he guessed. Tunnel or some such entrance to whatever… He was coming up steps now, this guy: Ollie lowering himself equivalently… Then all three were walking — slowly, from right to left — in a close group, along the far side of the vehicle park. The one who’d risen from the earth wasn’t visibly armed. The drone of their voices faded as they turned away — to their right, heading away into obscuring trees.
Where they‘d gone was the far side of some kind of dugout, he thought. There was nothing to be seen — from here — so it had to be under the ground, and they’d changed direction as if turning a corner. Further details might now be ascertained — since they’d departed, and while there still was some daylight in which to attempt a little reconnaissance. Crawling. Crabbing along slowly, cautiously. The broken ground was easier, being all trampled, than terrain he’d had to cross recently, snowfields where he’d been wishing to God he’d brought a Royal Marine issue white cotton smock, which he could surely have proff’d during that brief stop at Elvegardsmoen. But he hadn’t dreamt he might have any need for such a thing…
Now, he had to pass around the side of the clearing and get up close to the tunnel or — well, steps, whatever that guy had come up from. And as he was going to have to move around here later in the dark, he had not only to see what was what but also to memorise distances, bearings, landmarks.
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