Infestation

- 16 -

Svetlanova listened while Mac talked and McCally tried to get some warmth into his hands and feet. They all smoked Mac’s cigarettes and the Glaswegian was getting maudlin.

“I want you to go and say goodbye to my auld maw, McCally. She likes you. Hell, she likes you more than she likes me I think. But she’s my maw and she should ken I was thinking of her, at the end.”

“The end? Don’t talk pish, man,” McCally replied. “You can tell her yourself when we get back.”

Mac lowered his hood and showed McCally his neck.

“You all didn’t think I’d noticed, did you. But I can feel it, like ice in my veins. It’s fucking freezing. It’s creeping up towards my ear now. When it gets to my brain, I’m guessing that’s it for me.”

McCally tried for a laugh.

“Away and shite, man,” he said. “You’ve managed without any brains for fucking years, you’ll survive a while longer yet.”

He never got a reply, for the door slammed open and Hynd came back in. He looked even colder and wetter than McCally had earlier, something Svetlanova wouldn’t have thought possible.

“We’re on the first anchor chain, the one on the starboard side. You’re up, McCally,” he said through lips that almost looked frozen.

“Do you want my jacket?” Mac said and started to take is parka off, only to reveal a smear of green inside the sleeve, which was damp all the way up to the elbow.

“You’re okay, big man,” McCally said. “I’ll pass this time. Maybe next go-round, eh?”

McCally left and Hynd closed the door behind him then staggered, almost fell. Svetlanova didn’t stop to think. She unzipped the man’s jacket, shucked it off him to the floor, and grabbed him into a full embrace, one in which Hynd was wracked with shaking shivers. She didn’t let go until the shaking stopped.

Mac laughed from where he sat on the floor.

“Hell, if I knew it was that simple, I’d have stepped outside and get cold and wet myself.”

Hynd extricated himself from Svetlanova’s embrace and acknowledged her with little more than a nod before crouching to Mac’s side.

“You got a fag, Mac? I’m gasping.”

“You gave up five years ago.”

“I figured now’s as good a time as any to fall off the wagon. I won’t tell my missus if you don’t.”

Mac lit cigarettes for all three of them.

“How’s it going outside, Sarge?”

Hynd took a deep drag of his smoke before replying; hardly any came back out. If Svetlanova had tried it, she knew she’d be coughing for a week.

“We’ve got the drilling rig uncoupled but we’re still sitting in the same place, tight up against it. The buggering anchor chains are a bastard to cut through. We’re about halfway through the first of the two.”

Svetlanova spoke first.

“The drilling rig is free standing in this storm? I thought for sure it would blow over if the cables were removed.”

“Aye, we did too, lass,” Hynd replied, taking another prodigious draw of smoke into his lungs. “But it’s still there.”

“Do we have enough juice to get the job done?” Mac asked.

Hynd didn’t reply at first, then spoke softly.

“Maybe aye, maybe no,” he said. “It’ll be close.”

Mac laughed.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and go first.”

His bandages were soaked green again but he refused to let Svetlanova clean the wound this time.

“I heard you afore, lass, when you were talking to the cap. You shouldn’t be touching the green shite. Leave it be. Most of it is inside me anyway, so leave it there where it is.” He looked up at Hynd. “Just do me a favor, Sarge? Put me down before it gets too bad? I don’t want to see myself melting into a wee puddle of green puke and pish. Promise me?”

Hynd took Mac’s good hand.

“I’ll see you right, lad. Don’t worry about it. But hang on as long as you can. I think the wind’s dropped a wee bit and the sleet has slackened. We might be out of this weather in time for the chopper to get to us yet. Just don’t give up on me.”

They gripped hands tightly and both had tears in their eyes when Hynd stood.

“It’s bloody freezing out there,” he said. “And here you are in here, sitting on your arse, smoking fags and getting attended to by a beautiful Russian spy. You lucky bastard.”

“I am not a spy,” Svetlanova said, then realized she was being made fun of.

“Let a dying man have one last wish,” Mac said. “I always wanted to be James Bond.”

“You don’t have the tadger for it, man,” Hynd said. “I’ve seen you in the showers.”

“Hey, it’s bloody cold. If you had any tackle in your trousers, you’d have noticed.”

Svetlanova was still laughing when the door slammed open again and Banks returned.

“One chain down, one to go,” he said as he came in and Hynd, barely warmed since his last stint, went back out into the storm.