Banks kept a close eye at all times on the fallen troll but it showed no sign of movement, no sign of life at all apart from a thin, wheezing breathing you could only spot if you got right up close; that wasn’t particularly advisable as its breath stank. Banks wondered if it was dying, if they had not indeed inadvertently killed it with the dose of sedatives but didn’t feel any particular urge to try to test the theory.
Let sleeping trolls lie.
They all had a simple breakfast from their field rations then stood around the pyre while having a smoke and coffee. Then there was nothing more to do but stoke the flames and wait.
Wiggins looked back at the prone troll.
“That’s no kind of fate at all for an old soldier,” he said softly.
“I thought you were all for blowing it to hell and back with C4?” Hynd replied.
“Aye, but that was before I saw it react to the cap’s orders. It’s a soldier, right enough…or at least it used to be. Do me a favor, lads, don’t let any daft bugger experiment on me.”
“The only reason anybody would want to is to find out how so much bullshit could be concentrated in one man,” Hynd replied.
“Aye, that and how that same one man manages to shag your wife so much without you noticing.”
That earned Wiggins a cuff around the ear but the exchange had lifted the mood and Banks felt something relax inside him that he hadn’t realized was tight. They weren’t home and clear yet, but he’d got the team down alive off the hills and they’d trapped and caught the beast that had threatened them. He was finally started to feel better about the mission.
“So, what do we know about trolls?” Davies asked.
“Not a lot,” Banks admitted. “And that’s all from fairy stories, Billy Goat Gruff and things lurking under old bridges.”
“Do you think there’s more of them?” Hynd asked. “We saw yon older ones embedded in the rock; did our blast free them? Are they roaming about out here too?”
Banks’ good feelings evaporated as quickly as they had come.
“I hadn’t thought about that; I thought they were too old, too cold…too dead.”
“Aye,” Wiggins said, looking back at the prone troll, “and I thought this was fucking impossible. Are you a monster magnet like us, Davies? Well then, welcome to the S-Squad.”
They all stood guard for the rest of the night, watching the cliff path, expecting at any moment for a fresh attack to hit them. But all stayed quiet.
When dawn rose, it showed the supply vessel lying offshore at the mouth of the fjord.
*
Banks took the dinghy back down the fjord with Davies looking after Wilkins in the back. It was a careful job, maneuvering the cot down off the jetty to lay it across the rear seats. It took all four of them to keep the wounded private in a horizontal position. The lad started to come ‘round just as they were getting ready to depart.
“Are we there yet?” he said with a thin smile. “I need a pish.”
“Aye, well, you should have thought of that before we left,” Wiggins said with a laugh. “Just go where you’re lying. It’ll keep you warm on the trip.”
Banks left Hynd and Wiggins on the jetty with the prone troll and instructions not to do anything daft then headed at full speed for the supply vessel.
The skipper looked over the gunwales as they came alongside and took in the situation immediately. He motioned Banks to steer ‘round to the rear of the boat, where the supply vessel’s crew was able to quickly winch the dinghy aboard onto the roll-on, roll-off deck.
The boat’s medic was immediately on hand and the crew moved quickly to carefully lift Wilkins up and out, whisking him away across the deck to the living quarters.
“Davies,” Banks said, “you go with the lad and see he’s looked after. Be back here in ten.”
He turned to the skipper.
“I’ve got a story for you and a favor to ask. A bloody big, bloody heavy favor.”
*
“There’s no such thing as trolls,” the skipper kept saying but Banks saw the doubt dancing in the man’s eyes. He showed the man the journal, pointing out pertinent passages, and taking out the nub of flesh he’d shot off the thing the night before; it had all gone hard as stone now but it was also, clearly, something that had come from a living being.
The skipper still wasn’t convinced. In the end, it took a trip back to the quayside in the dinghy with the man to persuade him that Banks’ story wasn’t some elaborate joke at his expense.
The skipper took one look at the prone troll on the ground, got close enough to look in its face, then had to quickly stand away from the stench of its breath. He muttered to himself.
“It’s a fucking troll.”
“Aye,” Banks replied. “And it’s also a British soldier that needs our help. Will you help me?”
The skipper looked at the troll again then back to Banks before he nodded grimly and they headed back to the boat. Over several mugs of coffee laced with vodka, they made calls both to the Norwegian authorities and the colonel back in Lossiemouth.
As Banks had anticipated, “I sent you over there to sanitize, not to capture a fucking troll,” was the gist of the colonel’s remarks but like Banks, he was a soldier first and foremost and finally agreed that all that could be done for McCallum should be done.
“Maybe the eggheads can do something, maybe they can’t. But it’s the Norwegians’ call—you’re on their patch.”
Then it was the skipper’s turn and his call for help in the matter met with what Banks imagined would be a flurry of activity at the other end, followed by orders and directions.
The skipper finally turned away from the phone to Banks after almost an hour.
“I finally persuaded them that we are on the level. We are to make for Tromsø,” he said. “The university there will be expecting our delivery, although it was only your colonel that persuaded them that they were not being pranked. And I have the colonel on the line for you again.”
Banks took the call, expecting the mission to be over and to be ordered home, so he was surprised to get an assignment.
“Take the squad and go with McCallum—you’re on babysitting duty. We’ll get Wilkins home from Tromsø—there’ll be someone waiting at the harbor to take him to a plane. The rest of you are to go to the university—just to make sure an old soldier gets the care he is due and isn’t treated like some kind of freak.”
*
They had to wait for high tide to allow the supply boat to get up the fjord into the small harbor at the base and then everybody had to work fast. They wrapped the troll in stout chains; it took eight of them to turn the thing over to get the chains underneath then attached a hook to the boat’s crane, which creaked and squealed with the effort, threatening to collapse under the strain. In the end, they had used the largest winch on the boat to drag McCallum across the quay then onto the roll-on deck with a great screech as of stone on metal. Banks saw two of the vessel’s crew cross themselves at the sight of the troll and another gave a flick of the fingers, an old protection against evil he’d only seen once before in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands.
But finally, after more screeching and leaving more than a few deep scratch marks on the deck, they had the troll’s body aboard and could close up the gangway. And they had proof it wasn’t all that near death, for while moving it onto the boat it stirred, straining against the chains. Its eyes opened, deep black pits under its heavy brows, and Banks might have been wrong but he thought that he saw anger there and confusion.
“Put him under again, Davies,” he said to the private and watched as the drug was administered, the rage went out of its eyes, and it settled back into its previous slumbering state.
Banks went back ashore, just long enough to help Hynd and Wiggins place the last of their C4 strategically around the camp. The squad all returned to the supply vessel and Banks waited until the vessel had left the quay and was well out into the fjord.
&n
bsp; “Fire in the hole,” he said and pressed the remote trigger.
A series of flashes burst among the huts, followed quickly by a booming roar that echoed for long seconds around the cliffs. When the smoke cleared, all that was left of the base was piles of dust and smoking rubble.
- 14 -
It took most of the day to reach their destination and the squad spent much of it either catching up on sleep, eating mounds of stodgy food in the ship’s small mess, or visiting with Wilkins. The lad was sitting up in bed, proclaiming himself more than happy with the high-grade painkillers on offer.
“We got the leg set, Cap,” Davies said. “He’ll have some pain once the happy juice wears off but a few months rest and he’ll be right as rain.”
Banks spent most of his waking time up on the bridge with the boat’s skipper, sharing his dark cheroots, drinking strong black coffee, and mostly fighting off the offer of vodka to wash the smoke down.
They spoke of trolls.
“I heard your man Wiggins has been making fun, comparing our passenger to something from American comic books. Many of my crew are not laughing. You should let him know that trolls are a serious matter in these parts.”
“That’s just Wiggo’s way,” Banks said. “He’s not serious about much of anything except cigarettes, booze, and lassies, and I’m not sure how seriously he takes women.”
“All the same, some of the crew are from fishing stock born and bred along this coastline. You know what such folk are like—their stories go back far into the mists of time and men who live by the sea are all too aware that most of the legends told on winter nights have at least some basis in reality. They tell me that the fjord has long had a dark reputation, going back many centuries. They even call it the Troll coast and say it has long been shunned. I asked around the crew about the camp you just blew up. It too was known of and it was seen as a great mistake, bringing fear that something might be woken that has long been asleep. People were happy when it was abandoned and less happy when they heard you were making investigations in the ruins.”
“They won’t like having yon thing laid out on the deck then?”
The skipper smiled thinly.
“I had to promise extended shore leave in the Tromsø bars; otherwise, I’d have a mutiny on my hands.”
They were cruising as fast as they could manage through an archipelago of wooded, snow-capped islands on a glass-flat sea under azure skies, all trace of the night’s storm long gone and once again, Banks felt the knots of tension in him ease and unravel.
It felt like the job was, for all intents and purposes, over.
*
The only incident of note on the journey came when the sun was at its highest. A shout of alarm echoed from the roll-on deck. It was Wiggins, who was currently assigned guard.
“Cap, get your arse down here. The big bugger’s not happy.”
Banks arrived at the same time as Hynd and Davies, with the skipper and his crew standing well back behind them. The troll moaned piteously and writhed on the deck as if in agony. As Banks got closer, he saw that the thick skin, which looked more like crocodile than human, was dry and flaking, and the fissures between the thickest ridges were weeping a watery fluid. The troll tried to raise its arms to cover its face but was prevented from doing so by the heavy binding chains. Banks saw its gaze look up towards the sun and it moaned again then, a wail that spoke of pain and fear. The chains creaked and strained under the pressure of its struggles. They were holding.
But for how long?
“I don’t ken what his problem is,” Wiggins said. “He’s on a cruise, kicking back and getting a tan. All he needs now is to get laid and have a few drinks. He’s got it cozier than us.”
“It’s the sun,” Banks said. “He’s afraid of the sun; more than that, he’s being hurt. Sarge, get the skipper to find something to cover him up—a big tarpaulin maybe? Davies, see if another shot of sedative will calm him.”
Both orders were followed within the next few minutes and they did the trick; as soon as the beast was covered by two sheets of thick tarpaulin and another dose of sedative kicked in, it fell quiet and silent again and stayed that way for the rest of the trip.
The sun was going down behind a chain of islands in the west as the skipper brought the supply vessel into Tromsø harbor.
*
Tromsø proved to be a picturesque city of wooden, almost medieval in aspect, buildings, gaudily painted in primary colors and in the red of the sunset appearing to glow warm and golden. Old church towers shone in the last rays of the sun even while the harbor itself succumbed to darker shadows. That suited Banks just fine as they were able to strip off the covering of tarpaulin and get a dockside crane hooked onto the troll’s chains without any problems and without the beast stirring from its slumber.
There was an ambulance waiting for Wilkins as soon as they docked.
“I’ll have a round of beers in waiting for you when you all get home,” the private said as they lifted him aboard.
“Make it two,” Wiggins said. “I’ve got a feeling we’ll need them.”
Overhead, the dockside crane squealed and creaked as the troll was lifted slowly and carefully off the deck. As Wilkins’ ambulance departed, the quayside was left empty save for a large flatbed truck, a score of heavily armed men and an officious, thin, little weasel of a man who Banks took against immediately.
The little man barely looked up from where he was ticking off items on a list as he spoke.
“My name is Doctor Larsen,” he said in heavily accented English, “and I am in charge here now. You may all take your leave as soon as the cargo is unloaded.”
Banks walked off the vessel and over to the man and stood up close; he had four inches of height and more than that in breadth on the small man and he made sure it was noticed.
“We are not going anywhere except to accompany your ‘cargo’ which, I would remind you, is a British soldier. My orders are to ensure his well-being.”
“Your British orders mean nothing here,” the man began but Banks had seen his eyes, seen the doubt growing, so he kept pushing.
“I think you will find that they do,” he said. “Shall you make the phone call or shall I? I’m sure our respective governments would love to hear from you.”
The small man reddened and looked flustered. He seemed to be about to argue then looked in Banks’ eyes and quickly away.
“Very well then, but you will not be armed and you will have a watching brief only. I have been told that the study of this find is my responsibility and my responsibility only.”
“And again, I remind you that your ‘find’ is a British officer. Any harm comes to him and your responsibility will be to answer to me. Best you take it seriously.”
The obvious leader of the armed men on the quay came over to defuse the situation and looked Banks in the eye.
“Captain Banks?” he said in a clipped precise English. “Captain Olsen. He’s right about the weaponry—I can’t sanction you running around with assault rifles in the city. You and your men may, however, keep your handguns as long as they are holstered.”
Banks nodded; he hadn’t expected to be allowed the rifles anyway.
“Where are we headed?” he said, addressing the captain rather than the other man.
“The university. We have a trailer ready for you and your men and passes will be provided for the laboratory areas. I assure you all due care will be taken with your man.”
Banks saw a different message in the small doctor’s eyes but now wasn’t the time to push it any further.
The squad fetched their kit, and Banks thanked the skipper for all his help—and his vodka. As soon as the beast was loaded onto the flatbed—once again covered in tarpaulin to hide it from prying eyes—they piled into a succession of SUVs and followed it in a winding trail through the city.
- 15 -
“So what’s with the wee crabbit guy?” Wiggins asked. Banks was in the back of the first of
three SUVs with Wiggins alongside him and Captain Olsen and his driver up front. Hynd and Davies were in the vehicle just behind them.
“What is crabbit?” Olsen asked. “That is not a word I have come across before.”
“It’s Scottish,” Wiggins said, “and it means many things in different circumstances but it looks like all of them fit yon doctor.”
Banks laughed and addressed Olsen.
“How about dour, unsmiling, bad-tempered, an itchy pole up his arse…any of them ring a bell?”
Olsen laughed.
“All of them and all when applied to our doctor. I am afraid he is not a very good advertisement for our city but he is regarded as the expert in this particular field, having studied under Professor Jensen in his youth.”
“Jensen from the original experiment?”
“Yes, the very same. He lived here in the city and died an old man sometime in the 1980s.”
“I thought no one got out of the base alive,” Banks said.
“I do not know the story,” Olsen replied.
But Larsen might, Banks thought. There were holes in the story as told in the journal he’d read. Perhaps Larsen would be able to fill in the blanks.
*
The first sight of the university surprised him, for after seeing the city center on the way through, he’d been expecting an imposing old World European-style edifice. Instead, they drove around the outside of a tall, modern structure. Yes, there was plenty of polished wood in evidence in its construction, but the main thing on show was a high, wide, and handsome expanse of glass frontage, glowing red in the very last of the sun. They followed the flatbed down into a cavernous underground garage and while the bed of the truck was being unhitched from the front cab, Olsen showed them to a long, plush trailer.
Operation Norway (S-Squad Book 7) Page 7