Уильям Мейкл - Operation - Norway

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.