Уильям Мейкл - Operation - Norway

The bodies — or rather, torsos, for few had any limbs still attached — were dried out, almost mummified in the cold dry air of the glacial valley. Internal organs and guts had been ripped roughly from torsos and draped, as if in some manic impression of artistry, up and through the roof joists above so that the desiccated remnants of them now dangled like obscene party ribbons. The heads had all been brutally separated from the bodies and were stacked like cannonballs in a frozen pyramid in the hut’s center hearth, empty eye sockets staring from gray, dried faces set in screams of horror.

“There’s not enough bits,” Private Davies said, his face almost as gray as one of those frozen stares. It took Banks several seconds to realize the import and then he remembered the gnawed bones they’d found up in the cave.

“What are we into this time, Cap?” Wiggins said. “This is fucking Sawney Bean fucking cannibal territory, isn’t it?”

Banks forced his gaze away from the staring, frozen heads before replying.

“Whatever it was that did it, it’s long dead. We’re just here to clean up its mess. Burn this fucking place to the ground; it’s as much of a funeral as these poor buggers here are going to get.”

They stood at the edge of the settlement and watched the place burn while having a mug of coffee and a smoke; it hadn’t taken much to get the fires going, just their Zippo lighters and a few dried sticks. The huts took to the fire as if eager to be finally gone from this place. Banks thought someone should say some words over the dead but no one else spoke up and he couldn’t bring anything to mind that wouldn’t sound trite and glib. So they watched in silence as plumes of black smoke drifted upward in the still cold air, the eagle weaving in and out of sight high above them screeching a funereal dirge.

Hynd was the first to turn away and so the first to take note of the weather at the north end of the valley above the glacier.

“That doesn’t look like fun, Cap,” he said and Banks turned to see a black wall of clouds gathering and rolling slowly in their direction. He looked from that back to the huts that were now all almost completely burned to the ground.

“Okay, lads,” he said. “I’d call this place well and truly sanitized. Fun time’s over. Back down to the shore, as quick as you like. We might even have time for a dram before we head for the boat.”

As they turned away, there was a rumble from high up the slope. A small avalanche of debris tumbled down from where the cave had been but when Banks had a last look back before following the squad, he saw only a small cloud of dust rising and that quickly settled, leaving the valley still and quiet at their back.

It didn’t take them long to realize it was more than a bit of bad weather at their backs; the wall of clouds was coming on faster now, bringing with it a biting wind that forced them all to raise their hoods. It wasn’t long before sleet and hail drummed against the material around their heads. Banks could only be thankful for the small mercy that the weather was at their backs, for this wasn’t anything they’d be able to easily plough through face on.

The sleet turned to snow while they were still traversing the dips and hollows of the lower glacial valley. It accumulated fast, filling their footmarks almost as soon as they made them. They quickly lost sight of the trail and had to stay close together to avoid losing each other in the growing gloom and blowing snow. Banks realized with dismay that they had several hours of walking still ahead of them.

We’re not going to be able to keep ahead of it.

Banks made a decision when they climbed out of yet another hollow and felt the wind tug hard at his jacket and hood. He looked up to see that they’d reached the high end of the long wooded valley beside the river.

“We need to hole up ‘til this passes,” he shouted. “Head for the trees. Find us somewhere we can hunker down.”

They got lucky and found a rocky crevice not far inside the tree line that was already well overhung with trees. They were able to quickly cover it with snapped off branches and foliage to make a rudimentary shelter with an opening downwind so that they were safe from all but the strongest of gusts. Wiggins got the camp stove running near the open entrance and they hunkered around, taking turns in stirring a pot of field-ration dried soup mixed with snow while they had a smoke.

While the soup was thickening, Banks stood at the entrance and put a call through on the sat phone to the supply boat.

“We’ll be offshore in a couple of hours,” the skipper said.

“We won’t,” Banks replied and laid out their situation to the man on the other end of the line, having to shout to be heard above the wind that had risen to a howl in the past five minutes.

“Well then, you’re not going to like the weather forecast,” the skipper said. “The storm’s coming all the way from the polar region and it’s going to blow hard for most of the rest of the day. Find somewhere you can ride it out.”

“Way ahead of you there. Looks like it’ll be tomorrow before we’ll get back to the shore. Can you wait?”

“I’m not about to leave you there for the rest of the winter,” the skipper said and his laughter came loud and clear down the line. “We’ll find a secluded harbor in the lee of the wind for ourselves for the night and be ready for you sometime in the morning, Captain. Get in touch if anything changes; I’ll have someone monitor this line.”

Banks put the phone away as Wiggins passed him a mug of steaming hot soup.

“Settle in, lads,” he said. “We could be here for a while.”

Snow piled up fast outside their makeshift shelter but they’d made sure they had enough interlaced branches above them to prevent any snow getting down to where they sat huddled around the camp stove. The wind whistled in a wild howl outside and kept conversation to a minimum. It felt like night already; the gloom had deepened so much that the tips of their cigarettes shone like fiery red stars under their canopy.

Banks spent his time mulling over the scene inside the cave and at the settlement below it, trying to square it away with what he’d learned in the journal. The only theory he came up with, impossible as it might seem, was that almost seventy years ago the scientists had succeeded in turning the man McCallum into some kind of monstrous hybrid, part man, part… whatever the things were that they’d seen fused in the rock.

Then they had lost control of him. He’d broken out of the cell, gone on a rampage down by the fjord, then headed for the hills. While the site on the shore was being given up as a lost cause, McCallum, or what he’d now become, had by some unfathomable instinct found his way up to the high settlement where he’d, presumably, killed the villagers in a murderous, cannibalistic rampage.

And then he somehow got merged into the rock in the wall? I’m having trouble believing that part.

Then again, he’d had trouble believing many things on their recent missions. That hadn’t stopped them being real, hadn’t stopped the unbelievable things from killing his men. As he sat in the gloom finishing his smoke, he resolved to be open to any and all possibilities.

They had sanitized the cave and the settlement — they only had the huts on the shore to do and they could go home. But his gut still remembered the feeling of imminent danger he’d felt before they’d blown the cave to buggery and it still hadn’t settled. He fought the premonition down and concentrated on trying to peer out the entrance into the snow.