As the world began to fade, he reached forward and dug his fingers into the surface of the ancient stone. Then, with all that remained of his strength, he heaved himself on into the dark.
Chapter 1 Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…
1 Harmsworth Island, Russian Arctic
Present day
Starshyna Alexander Koikov ground the gear-shift lever into neutral and brought the forklift juddering to a halt. It was mid-morning and just below freezing. In the new silence he wasted no time lighting a papirosa and taking a long drag. As the tar-heavy smoke tripped from his nostrils, he traced a finger across his scar. The rest of his jaw was covered in coarse, week-old stubble, but nothing had ever sprouted from the distinctive hook of scar tissue gouged into his cheek, not a single bristle, and now the cold was causing it to ache.
It was two months since his detachment had been posted to the Albanov icebreaker. As far as Koikov was concerned, being a member of Department V could be the best job in the world. Could be. His squad’s last rotation had been to Chechnya, where he had spent three months dispatching prominent Chechen rebels, and almost having his balls blown off by a sniper in the process; the proudest day of his life was when he had been promoted from sergeant to starshyna at the end of that tour. But this new detail, working security on some pampered gas tycoon’s boat in the high Arctic, it was a sentence not a sortie. It was dull as shit.
He pushed the collar on his jacket up around his chin and tugged at his knit cap, stretching it down over the tops of his ears. And what about his men? Like him, they were no ordinary soldiers. They had all endured the same selection programme, the brutal interrogation exercises, the endless forced marches and night-time parachute jumps. And they had all seen their share of action since. From long experience Koikov knew that charging men like his with tycoon babysitting was a gamble. Hardened, well-trained and well-disciplined they may have been. But they were also human. Humans got bored. Bored humans got sloppy, elite or not.
He watched as Junior Sergeant Sharova and Private Dolgonosov emerged from behind one of the half dozen barrack blocks dispersed around the incomplete runway at the heart of the old military compound. The only other things still standing were a couple of rusting, partially collapsed hangars, an old crane and the three conjoined concrete bunkers peering up out of the bedrock right in front of him. Trails of steam gushed from the men’s shoulders as they rolled another enormous metal drum towards the forklift. Moments later they were joined by Private Yudina, whose bear-like stature made a toy of his rifle as he slung it around onto his back and pitched in.
Koikov had half-hoped that the sub-team’s deployment onto the island itself might have boosted their morale a little. At least served as a distraction. But the expressions on the faces of the three men only reconfirmed what he already knew: clearing up a bunch of old petrochem containers in sub-zero temperatures was a million miles short of stimulating.
He restarted the forklift’s engine and lowered the carriage so that they could heave the recumbent drum up onto the forks. With the clamp secured over the top of it, he then killed the engine once more and jumped out of the cabin. He slapped a palm against the side of the drum. “How many more are there?”
“Fifty or sixty,” Sharova replied. “Plus a bunch of smaller canisters. Mostly full.”
“Can we be finished today?”
Before Sharova could respond, Dolgonosov let out a loud, indignant snort and slumped back against the side of the forklift cabin. “What the fuck are we doing here, Starshyna?”
Koikov looked hard into the young man’s eyes. He was already a formidable soldier, but he was also as hot-headed and restless as Koikov had been at age twenty-one. Ordinarily he would have stung Dolgonosov for the attitude, but on this occasion he was voicing the question on all of their lips. “We’re doing what we’ve been instructed,” Koikov replied. “Any day now and the science club will be all over the place, poking their noses here and their dicks there.”
Dolgonosov shrugged. “So what?”
“So they’re coming to check out the environment. How do you think it’ll look if they turn up to find the place already littered with chemical drums?”
“But this is a job for a civilian contractor.”
“Look, Dolgonosov, I don’t like this any better than you, but Major Rabinovich gets what Major Rabinovich wants. You have an issue with that, feel free to take it up with him. Otherwise, you’re next on watch.” Koikov pointed to a steep-sided moraine to the north-west of the compound, where Yudina had spent the last two hours scouting for polar bears. “Get up on top of that ridge. You know the drill, half-hour comms.”
“And keep your eyes peeled,” Yudina added, his deep voice echoing around the compound. “The last thing any of us needs is to be shit out of a bear.”
Dolgonosov spat on the floor, careful to direct the globule away from Koikov’s boots. “Bear watch,” he grumbled, slinging his hazchem gloves at Yudina. Then he shouldered his rifle and stomped off towards the moraine.
Koikov’s orders had been to pack the drums into the bunker and detonate them, burying what the official brief had termed evidence of AEPM ‘Anomalous Environmental Policy Mismanagement’. He shook his head at the conceit. There had been no environmental policy to mismanage, that much was obvious, and the only anomaly was that whoever built the place hadn’t fucked the environment up
