Cold Blood Read online

  About the Book

  Nick Stone is suffering. The two people he cared for most are gone.

  Thousands of miles away five ex-servicemen, badly wounded in Afghanistan, are preparing for a trek to the North Pole in an attempt to begin to rebuild their shattered bodies and minds. When Stone is summoned as close protection for the trek by an old SAS officer, he accepts unthinkingly, desperate for the chance to escape his own misery.

  They meet at the world’s most northerly airport, where the locals are as hard as nails and the polar bear threat makes it against the law not to carry a gun. But it doesn’t take long for Stone and his team to discover that neither the bears nor the locals are the most dangerous predators in this part of the world.

  It is quickly clear to Stone that the coldest war of all is just beginning …

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  About the Author

  Also by Andy McNab

  Copyright

  COLD BLOOD

  Andy McNab

  1

  Longyearbyen

  Latitude: 78.2461 North

  Longitude: 15.4656 East

  The American gripped the armrest between us so fiercely with his gloved hand that I thought he was going to rip it from its moorings. ‘Holy Mother of fuck!’

  He breathed rapidly through clenched teeth. His eyelids were clamped shut and, though the cabin was unheated, beads of sweat raced each other down his forehead. The heat supply was on the blink so we’d all kept our coats on. Mine was a thin duvet jacket with a high neck and sleeves. It wouldn’t be all I needed out on the ice, but you didn’t hear me complaining. His padded parka was fresh out of its wrapper and he had no hat under his hood, which told me he was an Arctic virgin. If you didn’t keep head, hands and feet warm, it would fuck you up just as much as the turbulence that was about to make the pilots fuck up our landing.

  The wooden houses of Longyearbyen came into view below us, like brightly coloured decorations on a giant Christmas cake. Appearances could be deceptive from the air. This far north, I knew there’d be little more to the airport than a runway surrounded by peaks.

  The ice-glazed tarmac leaped up to meet us as a fresh blast of wind buffeted the port wing. The starboard undercarriage of the Scandinavian Airways flight from the mainland slammed down, then bounced away and scrabbled for height.

  A shout went up from the Russians a few rows in front of us. They immediately unbuckled so they could turn round and fuck about with their mates seated behind them. They’d been necking their vodka since take-off and were loving the rollercoaster ride. Engines screamed and the nose lifted sharply. We were climbing again. The ever-so-cool Danish flight attendants did their best to get them to buckle up, but their best wasn’t good enough.

  Another air pocket dropped the aircraft twenty metres. The American’s hand shifted to my forearm and gripped it like he was about to pull the whole thing off at the elbow. I shifted sideways as the strip disappeared again beneath a wash of cloud. A fresh weather system was coming in fast, swatting the plane about like an invisible King Kong.

  The sound system crackled as the captain blabbed on in Norwegian and Russian, but the shriek of the engines blotted out whatever he was saying. I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t do praying, but a voice inside my head demanded more flying and less talking, so the dickhead next to me would calm down and leave me the fuck alone.

  ‘I guess he’s making another circuit. Third time lucky, eh?’

  The American’s head shot round towards me and his eyes snapped open. They were so wide apart they almost didn’t fit on his face. Surrounded by the fur ruff on his hood, they made him look like an owl. A very frightened owl. I might as well have told him, ‘Phone your loved ones. We’re going down.’

  The engines were still at full throttle as we made a tight, steeply banked turn.

  ‘Jeez, I hate this shit. If God had meant us to fly he’d have—’

  ‘Given us jet packs.’

  Then the plane stabilized and his grip relaxed. His mouth cracked into something approaching a grin as the blood supply returned to my fingers. ‘You Brits … The stiff upper lip thing, I envy you that.’ He patted my duvet-covered forearm.

  The Owl had that cosy home-cooked apple-pie Midwest accent that would invite you into his home but not really mean it. He leaned closer, enveloping me in coffee breath with a hint of vomit. ‘I hate flying. I hate the cold.’ He nodded towards the front of the cabin as another yell exploded from the vodka-fuelled contingent. ‘But y’know what I hate most? Russians. Having to fly with these people just rubs our noses in it, don’t you think?’

  I didn’t, but he took my silence as permission to continue.

  ‘Those guys, they’re headed to the coal mines. Svalbard is infested with them. The whole place is still owned by Russia. Work there is about ten rungs down from sewage collector, but the fuckers come in every spring, work like dogs, then drink their pay cheques through the winter. That’s if they don’t die in a gas blast or a cave-in.’

  He shuddered.

  ‘You been to Barentsburg? No? Then thank your lucky stars. All they got there is one big hole in the ground, the hotel from Hell, with some Ukrainian skank if you get lonely, and an ER for when you try to leave without paying.’

  He laughed. The Owl was obviously a man who was never ashamed to enjoy his own lame jokes.

  ‘And the coal is low-grade brown lignite they can’t sell for beans, so it’s starved of investment.’ He leaned close again. ‘They say there’s way more coin to be made
there selling blow to the workforce.’

  I raised my eyebrows enough to indicate the minimum possible interest. Whenever I was tempted to blank a talker, I remembered a lesson I’d learned the hard way: never discard information freely given – it sometimes came in handy later. Besides, right now any distraction was welcome.

  ‘You in oil?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Gas?’

  Same again.

  ‘Me, I’m oil and gas. Not the shitty end of the stick – I do the legals. Contracts, negotiations, that kinda thing.’

  He spread a vast paw across his laptop and let out another wheezy laugh. ‘This is my coalface. Out there …’ he waved towards the porthole ‘… is waaay out of my comfort zone.’

  When it came to stating the blindingly obvious, this lad was way ahead of the field.

  I had to ask. ‘So why you here, then?’

  Spitsbergen was the only permanently populated island in the Svalbard archipelago, deep in the Arctic Circle. Longyearbyen, with just over two thousand inhabitants on a good day, was its biggest settlement – which made it the world’s most northern city, if you could call it that. Whatever, it was a fuck of a long way from Kansas.

  He nodded at the icefields that reappeared fleetingly through a crack in the wall of cloud. ‘Forty per cent of the world’s untapped oil is sitting under that ice, my friend.’ He licked his very fleshy lips. ‘And that makes for a shitload of very expensive paperwork.’

  He gestured in the direction of the partying Russians and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Gives the term “Cold War” a whole new meaning, don’t it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  He was focusing on me now. ‘So what about you, my friend? Weather too warm for you in good old London Town?’

  ‘Vacation.’

  He let out a series of staccato clucks that reminded me of a single-cylinder cement mixer on a building site where I’d once worked. ‘For real?’

  I nodded, with more confidence than I felt. I could have said ‘job’, but that didn’t seem real either. Nothing much did right now.

  Cauldwell’s call had jolted me out of the flat in Moscow where I’d been trying, and failing, to finish packing up our things. I’d got as far as putting Anna’s clothes into plastic charity sacks before I’d seen Mishka the teddy and crumpled onto Nicholai’s bed. I’d stayed there I don’t know how long, pinned down by the weight of pain and grief. My one-time CO’s voice had been an unexpectedly welcome escape. He didn’t explain how he’d got hold of my number, and I didn’t much care.

  ‘Stone? I’m calling in a favour.’

  I didn’t ask what type of favour he thought he’d ever done me. After leaving the Regiment he’d set up a private security firm, as so many of them did, then sold it and invested in one that made kit for oil rigs, but hit a rock when the bottom dropped out of the crude market. Since then he’d been trying to claw his way back, touting himself around as a consultant, advising on security for companies mad enough to want to drill in war zones. Last I’d heard, he was doing the business for a Scandi energy company called Armancore.

  ‘I’ve got something for you – if you’re available.’

  His tone suggested he knew I was, somehow.

  ‘There’s ten grand in it.’

  I came close to telling him to go fuck himself right there. I wasn’t for sale and I didn’t want his money. I had more than he would ever be able to lay his hands on in a lifetime, not that it mattered.

  ‘Oh, and … sorry for your loss,’ he added, as an afterthought. That was Cauldwell’s version of a heart-to-heart and mercifully brief.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I thought you might welcome a distraction.’

  He wasn’t wrong there. A stint in a Nigerian tin mine would have been welcome.

  ‘My lad’s set on doing some madcap tab to the Pole and I need someone to be there in case he finds it harder than he thought.’

  Babysitting and freezing my nuts off. I told myself I wasn’t that desperate. For about thirty seconds. ‘Which one?’

  ‘North.’

  2

  I’d first met young Jacobi when he was maybe thirteen. Cauldwell would bring him into the Lines and ask one of us to put the kid through his paces in the gym, get him ready for his army career – whether or not he was on board with the idea. He was a nice enough boy, but I couldn’t see him in uniform, and I wasn’t sure he could either.

  Next I heard, Jack had made it through Sandhurst. No idea how. He must have been in his late twenties by now and, from the sound of it, was still in his father’s shadow. It was a position he’d occupied most of his young life.

  ‘He’s … he’s not had the best time of it since Helmand. Maybe you know …’

  I did. News travelled. Three weeks into his first tour the boy had lost half a leg to an IED.

  ‘He’s roped in some of the other walking wounded he met at Selly Oak.’ I could feel him shuddering down the phone. ‘A right crew. Basket cases, the lot of them, but he seems to want to make a go of it. I just wish he had the sense to let me help him.’

  Cauldwell’s attitude didn’t help, except to remind me of what a twat he could be. In his world there were only two sorts of men, winners and losers. Seeing as the vast majority of us were somewhere in between, it made him pretty unpopular, but he’d never given a shit about that.

  ‘So I need someone sensible in there, to make sure the wheels don’t come off. You in?’

  Normally I would have demanded a lot more information: Jack and the team’s mobility level, how much training they’d had for the venture, his – and their – mental condition, who were the guides. But normal was no longer part of my life.

  ‘I’ll think about it. Give me a call tomorrow.’

  ‘I haven’t got time. It’s yes or no. Now.’

  That was Cauldwell all over. No pissing about. No grey, just black or white. I heard myself say yes.

  Four minutes later I got a text saying a ticket to Longyearbyen via Oslo was waiting for me at the check-in counter, Terminal D, Sheremetyevo airport. Five minutes after that another appeared, asking for my account details for the transfer of five thousand GBP as an advance on ten and a booking at the Radisson.

  That had been thirty-six hours ago.

  ‘So how in God’s name d’ya take a vacation in the Arctic?’ The Owl was staring at me in dismay.

  ‘It’s more of an … expedition. Walking to the Pole.’

  ‘On your lonesome?’ His eyes rolled.

  I shook my head.

  ‘So how d’you get there? You got people who know the way?’

  ‘We just head north, I guess.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock!’ He slapped his forehead. ‘How many on the team? I mean, how many of you heading up there?’

  I didn’t know how many ‘basket cases’ Jack was bringing with him, but I didn’t feel like summoning the energy to explain. ‘A few. Not sure yet.’

  ‘Jeez, I hear it’s over a hundred thousand bucks apiece, start to finish. You guys own a bank?’

  ‘We have a sponsor.’

  A giant in a faded parka and an equally well-worn Glacier Pilots baseball cap suddenly took up all my new best mate’s attention and saved me having to give a more detailed answer. He picked his way down the aisle and jutted his chin at us as he drew level. ‘Sam. It’s OK, we’ll be down soon.’ It was more of a growl than a few words of comfort.

  ‘Hey, Munnelly, I’m good. This Brit here’s making the journey a pleasure. Getta loada him, will ya?’ The Owl jabbed a thumb in my direction. ‘He’s only takin’ a hike to the North Pole!’

  Munnelly’s mouth was hidden beneath a hedge of black beard but it didn’t take a genius to spot that he didn’t share his buddy’s interest in strangers, or their madcap adventures. He commanded the space around him with the stillness and intensity of a man who was used to getting his own way. He totally ignored the flight attendant who came up behind him and tried to usher hi
m politely back to his seat.

  His dead eyes swivelled in my direction, like howitzer muzzles, beneath his rock-shaped brow. His weathered complexion was a Native American’s grizzly-bear brown.

  The Owl grabbed my forearm again. ‘Munnelly here’s the real deal. Cut him and he bleeds oil.’

  The grizzly still didn’t move a muscle. I had a stab at being impressed, but didn’t put too much effort into it. I undid my belt. ‘You two want to sit together for the ride in? We can swap.’

  Munnelly raised his hand. ‘I’m with people.’ He tilted his vast head in the direction he’d come from, then leaned down and whispered something in the Owl’s ear.

  My forearm was pushed to one side. ‘Sure. You betcha.’

  Munnelly gave me a faraway stare and retraced his steps, a very happy flight attendant in tow.

  The Owl waited until Munnelly was back in his seat. ‘Heck of a guy. Part Inuit.’ He swallowed. ‘They say he can smell the black gold under the ice cap. And he knows the ocean floor like the back of his hand. Don’t hardly need sonar or any of that shit.’

  The grey fog outside the window gave way to a blanket of white cotton wool lit briefly by a low sun, until we vanished into the next tower of cloud. The plane creaked and groaned as it tumbled into another air pocket. Several overhead lockers slammed open and the Owl clawed at my forearm again. His face whitened. I fished around for a sick bag as we were treated to a fresh burst of babble over the intercom.

  He took a gulp of air. ‘They might try to give us the bad news in English.’

  ‘He’s just telling us to go back to our seats.’

  ‘Really? How d’you know Norwegian?’

  ‘I don’t. He’s talking Russian.’

  ‘Wow – like, you know it because you learned some, like you live there or something?’

  I reached across with my free hand and unclamped his. ‘Now, slow right down.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Breathe. Slowly. Holding your breath pushes up your anxiety levels. And if you breathe too fast, like you’re doing now, you suck in too much oxygen. You’ll hyperventilate and feel faint. Then you’ll think you’re having a heart attack.’

  He looked at me in surprise and let out a longer breath, like a small industrial bellows. ‘You some kind of lifesaver?’