It was a shame. For all its remoteness, he couldn’t deny that the island was a beautiful place. To the west of the compound was an expanse of icy, rock-strewn tundra, beyond which, if he raised himself up and peered across the bunker’s concrete roof, he could make out icebergs, distant islands and the ocean shimmering through fissures in the melting ice floes. To the east, further inland, the relief rose steeply towards the foot of a mountain range, half covered by an immense glacier. He followed the lie of the surrounding peaks as they jostled into the distance. The sight drew a whistle of contentment from him; the wind had blown him a hell of a long way from the grim tower-block estates of suburban Moscow.
He slotted the second of his explosive charges into place and made sure that it was firmly attached. Then he set to work on the wiring. As he began stripping back the plastic coating, something caught his attention. He stopped and listened. There it was again: a distant wailing. He pulled his head up out of the doorway and listened hard.
After a few moments, the noise gave out and he dropped back inside and refocussed on the charge. It was probably just a gull, that or one of the other poor creatures that called the island home—
It started up again, low but definite. The more he listened, the less animal it sounded, until he could no longer ignore it. He strode back out of the bunker and cast an eye towards the lookout post on top of the moraine.
His heart sank. Dolgonosov was nowhere to be seen.
He snatched at his radio. “Dolgonosov? Over.”
Silence.
“Private Dolgonosov. Answer me now, over!”
Silence.
“Junior Sergeant Sharova!”
“Starshyna?”
Koikov chased Sharova’s voice to the rear of the bunker. “Any word from Dolgonosov?”
Sharova shook his head. “Nothing, Starshyna.”
“Me either,” Yudina said.
“Either of you hear that noise?”
They looked blank.
“Just now. There was a noise like screaming, from beyond the ridge.”
“There’s a walrus colony further up the coast,” Yudina said.
Without responding, Koikov took off towards the hovercraft and leapt up behind the controls. Sharova and Yudina exchanged a glance. Then they dropped what they were doing and followed on.
“Junior Sergeant, man the gun turret.”
“Yes, Starshyna.”
Koikov keyed the ignition and within seconds the armoured vehicle was tearing around the moraine and on along the coast. He scanned the horizon. The landscape was as eerily still and calm as ever. There was no movement, nothing to suggest a human presence, until something shifted on the very periphery of his vision. It was faint, barely perceptible through the incessant glare of the midnight sun, but he could make out what appeared to be a thin trail of smoke leaking from behind a rock cluster north of the moraine.
He veered sharply towards it and slammed his foot onto the accelerator. “Hands on!”
A metallic crunch and slide rang out behind him as Sharova readied the mounted gun.
Rounding the side of the rock cluster, Koikov brought the hovercraft to an abrupt halt and cut the engine. He jumped down and shouldered his rifle. Yudina joined him and together they approached the smoke trail.
Koikov’s body went numb. “Jesus Christ!”
Obviously a dud, the standard-issue warning flare had not deployed properly. It dribbled out a thin trail of coloured smoke secure within the user’s hand. But the hand was no longer attached. It was severed a few inches above the wrist, and two splintered prongs of bone protruded from the pulp. The skin had been flayed from the palm and the ends of the fingers, as if somebody had gone at them with a grater, and the surrounding rocks were streaked with blood, still steaming into the cold.
As the men stared on in disbelief, there was a groan from behind a nearby rock.
Dolgonosov’s torso was twisted back against the outcrop. The rest of his arm had been removed at the shoulder and both of his legs had been reduced to shreds of flesh, which trailed like red tentacles from his groin. It was hard to believe that he could still be alive, but as Koikov dropped to his side he could see the young man’s chest staggering faintly up and down.
“Dolgonosov… what in God’s name?”
Dolgonosov’s head turned slowly. His lips and nose were bleeding and his eyes were bulging, grotesque with terror. He looked about ten years old. His mouth quivered as he attempted to force a word out, but all that emerged was a long exhalation that gurgled from the bottom of his throat before his head flopped forward into Koikov’s hands.
Instinctively, Koikov made to check his pulse. But before he could, a screech pierced the silence and a shadow dashed between the outcrops on the facing slope.
“Sharova!”
“Yes, Starshyna!” The hovercraft’s gun erupted into life and fire raked into the side of the opposing slope, sending clouds of residual ice and rock billowing up into the air. Back on his feet, Koikov trained his rifle in the direction of the barrage, and he and Yudina joined in, unloading magazine after magazine at the shadow as it darted up the incline.
Koikov’s heart pounded with adrenaline. Adrenaline, and something else. He could feel his hands shaking as he tried to aim, spraying rounds that he knew would normally have hit their mark, ineffectually across the barren slope.
At last the roar of the mounted machine gun, and the percussive thump and whine of high-calibre rounds on rock, ceased. Koikov looked down; his rifle magazine was empty, had been for some time. But his finger was still cramped back against the trigger, willing it to discharge.
He glanced across at Yudina. The private’s rifle was also poised but silent, quivering below his pale cheek.
Slowly, the two men lowered their weapons and watched in silence as the sediment thrown up by the barrage gradually resettled.
“What the hell was that?” Yudina half-whispered, his voice strained with fear.
Koikov said nothing but reached slowly for a papirosa.
Whatever it was, it was nowhere to be seen.
2 Loch Ness, Scottish Highlands
Callum Ross knelt down and
