Беар Гриллс - The Hunt [=The Devil's Sanctuary]

The prearranged answer was ‘Three pink elephants.’ When he saw that phrase in the message, Raff would know that it was genuine and from Jaeger, despite it having come from an unrecognised satphone.

Message sent, Jaeger moved a distance from the dead man. Despite the food he’d eaten, he could feel the fatigue washing over him, as the adrenalin drained out of his system. He slumped against a nearby rock, feeling an overwhelming urge to rest; to sleep. He fought it. Get a grip, Jaeger. When in doubt, have a brew.

He broke out the tiny stove that the ration pack contained and lit the solid fuel block, then gathered up some snow and melted it over the flame. Throwing in several sachets of sugar and two tea bags, he left it to come to the boil. Milk added, he settled back on the freezing ground and blew on the mug to cool it. As he drank, the warm fluid provided a jolt of relief and much-needed energy.

Once he was done, he stuffed what remained of the ration pack into the dead man’s daysack, slung it on his shoulders, clipped on his skis, fetched the Dragunov and turned back the way he’d come.

To the east, the sky was brightening, bringing with it a little warmth. It was 0630, and Jaeger had a long ski ahead of him.

He gave a wide berth to the avalanche slope, which in turn led him down towards what he assumed was a frozen lake. He’d avoided it on the way in, with his focus on getting to high ground fast. Now he needed the quickest route back to his team. He decided to chance the lake.

At these kinds of temperatures, the ice should be metres thick and more than capable of holding a man’s weight. Still, he took precautions. He paused at the edge, unstrapping the daysack so that it was slung over one shoulder only. That way, if the ice did give way, he could ditch the pack and not be dragged under by its weight.

He inched onto the ice, reminding himself of the drills if he did go through. He’d practised them repeatedly on exercises in Norway and the Arctic. They’d used chainsaws to cut holes in the ice, purely for the purposes of learning how to survive such a fall.

The drill was to ski in with all your gear on. You then had to remove your skis and bergen and clamber out, all before the freezing water sapped your energy and pulled you under. The technique involved driving your ski poles into the ice beside the hole, and using them as an anchor to haul yourself free.

Counter-intuitively, the first thing you then had to do was find some fresh snow to roll in, which would soak up the excess water. Priority number two was to start a fire to warm yourself and dry out. Without a fire, you’d freeze to death in no time.

Thankfully, Jaeger had to do none of that while crossing the frozen lake. Apart from the odd eerie groan from below, it held firm.

The journey was made easier now in that he was able to follow the hard-packed ski tracks of several figures – those who had until recently been his hunters. At one stage he paused to read an incoming message from Raff confirming that Kammler’s lone surviving gunman had been dealt with.

Jaeger smiled. Raff: bulletproof reliable.

Hopefully Kammler would be none the wiser now there was no one left alive from his hunter force to warn him they had failed. Plus Jaeger’s message suggesting otherwise should have bought them some time, or so he hoped.

He paused at the corpses of those he had shot dead, scavenging food for the others. With that crammed into his daysack, he figured they had enough provisions for whatever lay ahead.

But with a man like Kammler, it was never over until he could gaze upon the dead man’s features.

Professor Pak Won Kangjon wandered into the strongroom where they stored the weapons-grade uranium.

He eyed the wooden crate lying before him on the room’s bare concrete floor. It was fresh in from Moldova, a former Soviet state gone to rack and ruin, or so he’d heard. At least the uranium, being former Soviet stock, should be near one hundred per cent pure.

He felt a thrill of excitement at the thought of dealing with such a potent source of raw power. He signalled to his assistants – fellow North Koreans who were also here on false papers, and likewise at Kammler’s mercy – to break open the crate.

They worked quickly and in silence, levering apart the planking.

Once it was removed, the professor set them to dismantling the lead shield. It was a simple enough affair: six slabs of metal, each covering one face of the HEU cube, joined at the edges by pressure bolts.

When they were done, he picked up a Geiger counter. He approached the small pile of dull silver metal – atrociously expensive; impossibly heavy – and ran the device over it.

Not a sniff of a reading.

Which didn’t mean much. Contrary to popular belief, HEU could be famously un-radioactive, at least before it went fissile. He didn’t understand why they made such a fuss about lead shields. It was only a few curies of radiation, and it was never going to kill. In North Korea they’d been far more relaxed about the whole thing.

He ran his gaze over the pile of bars. They were strapped down with tough plastic straps designed to hold them firmly in place inside the lead sarcophagus. As he eyed the cube of metal ingots, something struck him as being a little odd.

This was supposed to be 100 kilos of HEU – enough for two power-plant-busting INDs, with a few ingots to spare. But it didn’t look like 100 kilos’ worth to his practised eye. It looked to be around twice that amount.

He’d read a report recently stating that hundreds of tonnes of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium was unaccounted for. Maybe they’d got lucky. Maybe the Moldovans had messed up. But surely they weren’t so stupid as to have miscalculated the weight?

Either way, this was a chance to ingratiate himself with Kammler. If he could verify his discovery – that the shipment was twice what they’d paid for – maybe he could redeem himself in his boss’s eyes. Perhaps even earn himself a bonus.

He ordered his assistants to lift the cube of HEU onto a nearby workbench. Before he made any announcement, he would need to be one hundred per cent certain. He couldn’t afford another screw-up.

He feared his next mistake might very well prove a life-ending one.

He took a seat at the bench and examined the block. One of the ingots had shifted about a little in transit, leaving a square hole large enough for him to poke one of his pudgy fingers through. The metal felt cold to the touch; cold and incredibly dense. He could almost sense its raw power.

He pulled a Maglite from his pocket and shone the flashlight through the hole, focusing the beam so that it illuminated the interior. He expected to see HEU all the way through, confirming that there was more here than they had been anticipating.

Suddenly Professor Pak Won Kangjon stopped and stared.

His torch beam had caught upon something yellowish-brown in colour lying at the centre of the cube. It looked to him like a lump of… plasticine. But what was a lump of plasticine doing crammed into the centre of a cube of weapons-grade uranium?

Moments later, he felt his blood run cold. As he moved the beam around, it glinted upon a wire. He dropped the torch and backed away from the bench. Surely to God it couldn’t be…?

Somehow he found his voice. He barked an order, then turned and stumbled from the room. As he hurried ashen-faced down the corridor, his assistants swung closed the heavy steel door that secured the strongroom, and locked and barred it.

The last thing the professor wanted was to be the bearer of bad news, and this surely would be the worst kind imaginable. Kammler, he knew, was not beyond shooting the messenger. But if he didn’t raise the alarm, he feared he was dead in any case.