Cold Blood Page 11

  The room exploded with blindingly bright light and smoke. Watch Man dropped to the ground, the burning ball of magnesium embedded in his calf.

  I kicked away Stedman, who had fallen on top of me as Watch Man loosed off a succession of rapid-fire shrieks. He convulsed on the floor, burning his fingers as he tried to tear the mini-inferno out of his flesh before it could eat its way inside him.

  ‘Flare! Another flare!’

  Ponytail wasn’t taking any chances. He had overturned the desk and got himself behind it. Now he started to push it forwards, like a battering ram, to get to me.

  ‘Flare! Another flare! Fucking flare!’

  All I got was the bubblewrap thrown at me. I tossed him the pistol. ‘Load the fucker!’

  The desk was scraping its way closer. I leaped over it, and Ponytail, aiming for the paraffin lamp that had just toppled to the ground. I grabbed it, turned back to Ponytail and brought it down on the top of his skull. The glass smashed and my weapon of choice clattered to the floor.

  I kicked into his head as hard and quickly as I could to keep him down. The flare died but Watch Man continued to scream. My nostrils filled with the acrid reek of wet, burning flesh.

  I heard more screams from behind me but they were Stedman’s. He was on his feet and passing me.

  He kicked into Khorek, punching as best he could with one good arm.

  We had done what we needed, gained the initiative.

  ‘Let’s go. Come on!’

  Stedman delivered another two kicks into his target.

  ‘Go! Go!’

  He wasn’t listening. I had to pull at his empty sleeve. ‘Fuck’s sake, come on!’

  ‘Leila …!’

  ‘Nothing we can do here.’

  I pulled him off Khorek and dragged him towards the door. It gave a creak, as if someone was on his way through but hesitating. I turned back to Stedman. ‘The pistol, hit the door! Hit it!’

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ He gestured to the other side of the desk. It was still on the floor, along with the bubblewrap.

  I let go of him and pointed at Ponytail. ‘Keep that fucker down!’

  As Stedman got busy with his boots again, I hurled myself back over the desk, grabbed the cartridge bubblewrap, lasered in on my objective and loaded.

  The door opened enough for Half Bear to squeeze through it. I fired, but he reacted too sharply and jerked back outside. The flare ricocheted off the wall and back into the room. In moments the whole place was ablaze again with light, smoke, screams, and the hiss of burning magnesium. The fiery ball burned its way into the floor and ignited the spilled paraffin. Ponytail tried to douse the flames on his jacket and head. It wasn’t happening.

  Reloading the weapon, I went for the door. Stedman would follow. Who wouldn’t, out of a burning room? I fired into the icy pathway either side of the dilapidated metal sheds, then reloaded with the last cartridge and headed out into the cold and the bubble of bright white light.

  A fresh load of snow had started dumping itself from the sky and my boots crushed through it onto the ice below. I kept the weapon up, in the aim, ready for Half Bear.

  For all I knew, the entire population could come out in a big show of solidarity with Watch Man and we’d be on our way down a mineshaft if we didn’t get a move on. But, with luck, they’d be just like anyone else, knowing what was in their best interests – to keep their distance from anything that sounded like a drama. Either way, I didn’t aim to hang about long enough to find out. We had to get away from the immediate area, and out of the town. As soon as I got us clear of the corrugated-iron sheds, I set off towards the snowmobile.

  Stedman did his best to keep up. Thank fuck it was only an arm he’d lost. We didn’t have all night.

  I reached the steps by the harbour and had to wait. Stedman was wheezing and flagging. I sucked in ice-cold gulps of air that hurt as they hit my lungs. ‘Get a fucking move on!’

  ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up and run.’

  We headed into the square. I checked behind us. People were starting to gather as they came out of the buildings surrounding Lenin.

  It was pointless firing a warning shot. These fuckers had hunting rifles above their fireplaces. Besides, I might need the last cartridge to get us out of any real shit.

  I patted my breast pocket to check the snowmobile keys. They were still there. But the snowmobile wasn’t.

  The UAZ minibus was, though, ticking over and ready to roll. I started towards it, preparing myself to grip the driver and drag him out onto the ice, get Stedman into the fucking thing, and move. It didn’t matter where to. It would only be used for shuttling people around the town to the mine complex and down to the docks. Anywhere beyond that, it would be fucked. But so what? We needed to get the fuck away from this mob, and Stedman wasn’t up to it.

  ‘The van, come on!’

  The group behind us shouted and started to close in. On our left, another three had emerged from what looked like a garage. A group of bodies appeared on the hotel steps and headed for the UAZ.

  ‘Oh, fuck …’ Stedman sank onto his knees.

  ‘Get up!’

  The group on the steps was much the largest, but they weren’t showing any interest in us. Several had laptop cases and were bidding each other loud farewells. A delegation of some sort? I didn’t give a fuck who they were: the flare-gun would soon move them out of our way.

  And then, in their midst, a familiar face turned my way.

  34

  It was the Owl.

  Standing alongside him was Munnelly. Both men stared at me, the crowd in the mid-distance, and Stedman lagging behind me by three or four metres. He was clearly in shit-state.

  The bodies had got to about three hundred metres away and showed no signs of stopping. I made out the odd angry shout. It must have been obvious to the two Americans that something was wrong.

  Munnelly took it all in, then glanced at me quizzically.

  The Owl had a smile on his face that was straight out of the fast-food guide to customer care.

  I beamed back at him. ‘Mate – am I glad to see you. I remember you mentioning this place. We had some time to kill and … Anyway, our vehicle got stolen so we went looking for it. Just wait a minute. Don’t go away.’

  I turned and ran back to Stedman, grabbed hold of him as if I was offering much-needed help. ‘Shut the fuck up and get in the van.’

  He coughed. ‘Nick, I’m sorry, my lung, it’s fucked. I’m fucked.’

  I ignored him. ‘Get to the van, and get in.’

  All that other shit was for another day.

  I half dragged him to the door and let him make his own way aboard. Then I ran back to the steps. Munnelly kept his eyes on the mob but the Owl came down to meet me. ‘Shit, you had your vehicle stolen?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I checked behind me. Stedman was inside the van. ‘We tried finding it. I don’t know what we did or said, but we must have pissed somebody off.’

  He was still wearing his greeter’s grin but Munnelly had had enough. He moved down a couple of steps until we were eyeball to eyeball. ‘What do you want? Why is he already in the vehicle?’

  I kept it simple, this time. ‘We have no transport. We need your help. All we want is a ride back.’

  Munnelly turned on his heel. As he walked past me, he managed to barge into my shoulder, just to make a point, then made a beeline for the front seat. The Owl followed briskly, and so did I.

  The driver was now flapping big-time. He didn’t want to piss off his mates outside. So Munnelly made the decision for him. ‘Get this motherfucker moving!’ He poked the guy in the shoulder to emphasize each word.

  The driver did exactly as he was told. He cranked it into gear and we started to trundle down the hill.

  The Owl took Stedman’s hand and shook. ‘I’m Sam. You are?’

  ‘Stedman.’

  The smile stayed fixed as we moved down the road. The mini-mob stayed where they were, watchin
g.

  ‘Stedman? Cool name.’

  35

  Thirty minutes later, I watched the cluster of grey shapes that made up Barentsburg drop away beneath us, then get swallowed by a thick shelf of cloud. I turned away from the bubble window on the side of the Chinook’s fuselage.

  Stedman was slumped next to me on the nylon-webbing seat that ran the length of the hold. Bathed in the gentle red glow of the aircraft’s night lighting, he stared sightlessly at the alloy decking beneath our feet.

  At least his breathing was getting back to normal. He’d been hit by secondary missile fragments in Afghan, the shit that’s scattered by a high-explosive detonation. Metal, wood, rock, you name it. Anything in the close area of the blast fragmentizes and sprays out as far as it can at high velocity, like thousands of miniature bullets. Some had entered his chest cavity and a lung. It was a fucker, but his injuries appeared to have one good side effect: after a period of strong exertion, he wasn’t his normal gobby self. Since we’d come aboard, he’d been doing what I told him to do, which was to shut up.

  I knew he was flapping about Leila, but there was nothing we could do about that until we got back to Longyearbyen. I could have got hold of Jack or another member of the team via their hotel, and asked them to help her, but to me it boiled down to a simple numbers game. Three bodies – Stedman, Leila, and me – were already in the shit. Shoving into it another five, who had nothing to do with this drama, made no sense whatsoever. They would have no idea what might be waiting for them at the Radisson.

  It was tough shit for her, but if you tried to fuck about with other people’s money and power, then tough shit happened. Stedman would have to learn to live with it. If Leila had made it through whatever they’d done to her, I reckoned she’d already be on a flight, and looking to trade Stedman in for a more reliable model.

  My main concern was what exactly we had left back there in Barentsburg, and would it be following us? I had to assume it would. Watch Man, with his anger-management issues, wounded leg and wounded pride, would need to show us who was boss. And Khorek, plus whatever and whoever he represented, would be just as pissed off. The rest of the team were connected to this shit by pure association; the only option open to me, Stedman and the rest of them was very simple. We all had to make as much distance as we could from Svalbard, and fast.

  There might still be a chance that the team could go north if Jack would climb down from his high horse, take Cauldwell’s offer and let Rune on board with his guides. But Stedman and I would have to totally detach ourselves from the team.

  It would make Jules happy if Stedman was gone, and to make sure he didn’t want to stick with me to avoid whatever might be coming our way, I could convince him he could still complete an ice walk, but in Antarctica, on his own.

  Stedman came out of his trance. The timing was so perfect I wondered if he’d been reading my thoughts. ‘I’ve been a twat. I know I have, OK? But we have to get to Leila. She needs help.’

  ‘Wait out and shut up. We’ll sort her out as soon as we get there. There’s nothing we can do right now. But, remember, you’ve got to stand by for bad news. It might be too late. Just keep a grip of yourself. We still have a job to do when we land.’

  Stedman didn’t acknowledge, just resumed his deck-staring pose.

  Munnelly was sitting forward, just behind the pilots, talking shit into a headset. Across the deck from us on the opposite length of seating was the Owl, both hands firmly gripping the seat’s aluminum tubing, preparing himself for an instant crash.

  I had to shout over the roar of the rotors. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  He gave me a knowing shrug and turned up his fast-food grin to full sizzle.

  I wasn’t too sure if he had bought the stolen-snowmobile story. It was hard to tell behind that smile. Munnelly hadn’t believed a word, but who gave a fuck? We were out of the immediate danger area and that was all that mattered for now.

  The Owl shook his head pityingly, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying over the noise. I unbuckled and crossed the deck to sit next to him.

  ‘I said, Russians. Whaddaya expect? Consider it a favour returned.’

  I wanted to friend up even more with him because he might come in handy if things got out of control in Longyearbyen.

  ‘You strike any deals back there?’

  He sighed, as if the idea was ridiculous. ‘Just a fishing expedition mostly. See what they got.’ He leaned closer. ‘Plus, the Russian Mafia are in there, using it as a front for God knows what. Fact.’

  I tried to seem convincingly surprised. ‘What?’

  ‘Anyway, Putin’s never going to give up his toehold in a NATO country just like that. Why would he?’ He smirked and leaned even closer. ‘Besides, we got other fish to fry.’ He changed his tune. ‘Your North Pole buddy OK there? Looks kinda green.’

  ‘He’s fine, just not good in helicopters. Much better on ice.’

  The Owl gave one of his trademark smiles that didn’t really tell me if he’d got the joke or not. ‘Say, how did he …?’ He made a chopping movement against his arm.

  ‘Left it in a wood-chipper.’

  The Owl’s eyes bulged. There was a second while he computed it. ‘For real?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yup, but he bullshits about it. Says it was bitten off by a shark.’

  The Owl roared with laughter and I liked to think Munnelly would have joined in if he could have heard it over the din. ‘Ah, Nick, you Brits crack me up.’

  I sensed that nothing else was going to be said of any value on the bonding front. The Owl was gripping either side of his seat even harder.

  ‘Listen, I’d better go back to my mate. Keep him company before he pukes up everywhere.’ I grabbed a couple of sick bags and crossed to Stedman. I shoved a bag at his face. ‘Take it.’

  He did as he was told, but gave me a sideways look. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Forget it. If I’d stopped to think about it I’d probably have left you behind.’

  He wasn’t sure I was joking, and neither was I. But the long face was starting to irritate me even more.

  He turned to the bubble window, and disappeared into his own world of agony and defeat. I’d met survivors like him who’d become reckless – their near-death experience gave them delusions of immortality. And that, along with the memory of his dead mates, probably made him all the more determined to go for it and fuck the consequences – crashing into things, hoping his WTF bravado would somehow see him through.

  I couldn’t help having some sympathy for him. At least he was trying to make something happen. But that didn’t mean I felt I could rely on him. He might not even learn the blindingly obvious lessons from what we’d just been through.

  I sat back and caught Munnelly studying us. He wanted us out of his Chinook, and never to see us again.

  It was only when we’d debussed that I wondered how the Owl knew my name.

  36

  Longyearbyen

  Latitude: 78.2232 North

  Longitude: 15.6267 East

  We stood to the side of an old warehouse three buildings down from the Radisson, in the lee of a long line of industrial-sized wheelie-bins. Even though I had Sven’s padded outer gear on and there was total cloud cover, the wind bit into me. It didn’t help that I was totally fucked and in need of sleep.

  Cauldwell’s mobile bounced me to voicemail so I closed down.

  I passed the sat phone to Stedman and got my gloved hands under my armpits, which I knew would help a little, and started to stamp my feet on the ice, which I knew never did.

  He made yet another call, this time to the lobby. I’d binned his mobile as soon as we landed. Had Leila given Watch Man or Khorek his number? Did they know how to locate it? It didn’t matter now – but the downside was that he didn’t know any of the team’s numbers. Why should he? That was the SIM card’s job.

  ‘No, I won’t leave a message. I’ll call her mobile.’

  I shook my head, and
not just because of the chill. He’d already left five messages for Leila. He had to expect the worst, and we now had two reasons to get out of town, the island, the whole archipelago, as soon as. She was clearly connected to Stedman, and Stedman was connected to the rest of the team. And, whether I liked it or not, to me.

  He cancelled the call and was about to hit redial. I unfolded my arms so I could rip the thing away from him and power down. Batteries died very quickly in this kind of weather.

  ‘Bin the calls, mate. If she hasn’t answered yet, it isn’t happening. You, me – we’ll be getting out of here on the first flight. It doesn’t matter where it’s going, we need to be on it. You then go your own way, but for fuck’s sake keep your head down. No gobbing off. If she’s dead, you’ll be found sooner or later, but you deny everything and say you saw the body and just panicked, OK?’

  He nodded, but I didn’t care what he said if the police eventually caught up with him. I would be long gone. I just needed him to have something in his head that sounded plausible so it would be easy for me to get him off Spitsbergen as quickly and as easily as possible. It killed two birds with one stone: it not only gave me some time to get detached from this shit, but also he would have no way of involving the rest of the team.

  I was staying with him until we’d got to the airport and got tickets to make sure he didn’t have the chance to do any more damage than he had already. I certainly didn’t want him getting wobbly and going to the police – or, even worse, trying to solve a situation that he had no information about and very little capability of sorting out even if he did.

  ‘But what if she’s still alive, Nick? What if they still have her? She could still be in the room—’

  ‘What can you do? Burst in and use your one-armed superpowers to save her from the nasty men?’

  I understood his concern, of course, but I was starting to get impatient. If Leila was alive, great. If she wasn’t, we weren’t about to magic her back.

  ‘Get a grip. Last time you had to get a move on, you couldn’t even run up the stairs. You tried to make contact and you got nothing. So now you need – we need – to get the fuck away from here. We need distance before we try for a taxi to the airport. We then wait for the fucking thing to open.’