turned left to Pussi and headed once again over the railway track and toward the target, passing the sad shacks where people were holed up for the winter.
In the twelve hours since leaving the hotel I'd been cruising around, stopping only a couple of times to fill up with gas. Anything to keep the heater going.
On my way out I'd paid the old woman for another two nights, so with any luck there should be no need for her to come and check the room.
Tented stalls were dotted along the roads like miniature service stations, the steam that poured from their vents making them look like refugee-camp field kitchens. When I stopped to buy coffee and pastries, it actually helped to have a swollen mouth with visible bruising, because I could get away with just mumbling and pointing.
The problem came when I tried to eat and drink; my tooth was killing me and these places didn't sell Ibuprofen. My last four aspirins had gone hours ago.
I'd kept Carpenter's weapon on me, and the.38 special was in the glove compartment. Neither of them had spare rounds.
Now, sliding slowly along the single-lane road, my headlights picked up the concrete wall of the target on my left. Nothing appeared to have changed; there were still no lights or movement and the gates were still closed. Parking in the same driveway as before, I turned off the engine and sat for a while in the rapidly cooling car, running through the plan one last time. It didn't take long, because there wasn't really much of a plan.
Forcing myself out into the cold, now wearing the old guy's gloves and bloodstained fur hat, I covered the driver's side of the windshield with newspaper before taking the charges out of the trunk. The tow rope wrapped around them made a handy shoulder strap. Finally I hid the key under the rear right wheel. If I got caught by the Maliskia, then at least they wouldn't have my keys if I managed to escape. What was more, I could tell Tom if I linked up with him, and he would also have a means of escape if I didn't make it to the car.
I wasn't going to kill him. I owed him that much after what he'd done by the fence at the Finns' house. What was more, I didn't want his death on my conscience, as well as Kelly's illness. At first I'd put my change of heart down to the fact that I wasn't thinking of saving Tom's skin as much as my own. He would be the only one who could back up my story to Lynn if this whole thing went completely to rat shit.
And why shouldn't it? Everything else had so far. But then, much as I hated the idea, I had to admit to myself that I'd come to like the chubby-cheeked fucker. He might not be the sort of guy I was used to associating with, and we certainly wouldn't be seeing each other for coffee mornings, but he was all right and he needed a break as much as I did. I'd been toying with the idea since I lay in my cheap hotel room in Helsinki. That was why I'd brought his passport with me, just in case I decided.
It was as cold as ever, but as I walked along the road I tied up my new fur hat earflaps so I could listen. Drawing level with the hangar and its funnel, I still couldn't hear any noise from inside the compound.
I reached the driveway leading to the large steel-plate gates, turned and took a few paces toward them. Then I stopped and listened. Now that I knew it was there, I could just make out the generator churning away in the distance. Apart from that I could hear nothing.
I tested the gates, but they weren't open. I tried the small door set into the larger right-hand one, but again they were still locked. I wasn't expecting it to be that easy, but I'd have felt like a real dickhead if I'd gone to all the trouble of climbing over the wall when all I had to do was stroll in through the front gate.
Lying down in the right-hand tire rut, with the charges behind me, I pressed my eye to the gap beneath. Nothing that side of the gate had changed; there were still two lights on the ground floor and the larger building to the right was just as dark. I wasn't sure if what I was looking at was good or bad; not that it mattered that much, I was still going to get among it and destroy the place, and hopefully find Tom.
Once on my feet again, with the Boy Scout knapsack reshouldered, I started back in the direction of the car, but about seventy or eighty yards past the hangar I stepped left off the road and into the high snow. My aim was to walk out into the fields, turn left and approach the hangar from the rear. I couldn't prevent leaving a trail in the snow, but at least I could try to keep most of it out of sight of the road.
The snow had a thin layer of ice on top and varied in depth from calf to thigh height. As I pressed my foot down on the not-so deep stuff, there was initial resistance, then my weight pushed through it. In the deeper drifts I felt like an icebreaker in the Baltic.
I labored on, my jeans soaking and my legs starting to freeze. At least there wasn't much cloud and my night vision was adjusting to the starlight.
The rear of the hangar loomed in front of me and I climbed inside. The floor was concrete and the steel structure supported what looked like corrugated asbestos. Moving slowly and carefully toward the wall of the compound, after about twenty paces I began to make out the dark shape of the doorway. When I reached the edge of the hangar, I stood still and listened. Not a sound, just the gentle moan of the wind.
Wading across the eight or nine feet of snow between the two buildings, I realized as soon as I reached the door that I was going to be disappointed. The metal was a lot older than the front gates and was flaking with rust. The door itself was solid, with no hinges or locks this side of it. I pushed, but there wasn't a hint of movement.
Turning right, I followed the wall and waded fifteen yards further away from the road. Hopefully I was now facing the gable end of the larger building on the other side of the concrete.
Placing the charges on the snow, I unraveled the rope attached to the plank with the brick at the end. With just two or three feet of slack, I started swinging it around me like a hammer thrower, finally letting go with upward momentum to make the plank clear the wall.
I'd never make the Olympics. The whole lot fell back down in front of me. I was just sorting out the rope for another try when vehicle lights raked the wall of the compound.
I dropped to my knees, ready to bury myself in the snow. Then I realized that on my knees I was buried in it.
The lights got stronger, disappearing for half a second as the vehicle dipped in the road, only to light up the sky before settling down again. As it got closer the inside of the hangar was lit up and moving shadows were cast by the steel supports.
The ponderous chug of a big diesel told me that a tractor was heading in my direction. I felt good about that: if the Maliskia were coming for me, I doubted they'd be riding a John Deere.
The noise got louder and the light even stronger until the tractor burst into view in the gap between the compound wall and the hangar. It looked like some old relic from a Soviet collective, with far more silhouettes in the cab than the thing was designed for. Maybe the local karaoke fanatics were heading down to the Hammer and Sickle for a few pints of vodka.
The lights and noise gradually faded and I got on with my task. It took me two more tries, but I eventually got the plank to sail over the wall, the charge end firmly anchored in my hands. The rope jerked as the plank finished its flight, probably ending up dangling about three or four feet over the target side. Gently, I started pulling it back, waiting for the bit of resistance that would tell me that the point where the rope was wrapped around the plank had connected with the far top edge of the wall. The way this thing worked was that the counterweight of the brick made the top of the plank anchor itself against an angled wall. It's one of the reasons why prisons have a large oval shape made of smooth metal on top of their walls, so that contraptions like this don't have anything to bite into. MI9 had done it again.
Maintaining the tension in the rope, and half expecting the plank to come plummeting back down onto my head at any second, I slowly let it take my whole body weight. The cheap nylon rope stretched and protested but held secure. With my feet against the wall, and using the pitted sections as toeholds and knots I'd placed along the rope, I started to climb.
It didn't take long to reach the top, and I scrambled up and rested along its three-foot width. The large building blocked most of my view of the target beyond; all I could see was the light from the windows, where it hit the snow. The generator now provided a constant rumble in the foreground.
Snow and ice cascaded from the wall as I swiveled round on my stomach, turning to face the way I'd come. With my legs now dangling down the target side, I began to pull the charges carefully up the wall. It wasn't the noise I was worried about, I didn't want to damage them.
When I'd finally got the charges up on top with me, I swiveled round again and lowered them gently down the target side. It was now simply a question of moving the plank to the other edge in order to reverse the climbing process.
