Operation Norway

- 7 -

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.

Nobody dies on this trip.

The storm showed no sign of abating and the gloom deepened further, almost as dark as night under their canopy. The cold crept through their heavy snow gear and even with hoods up and goggles on, ice cracked at their lips. Banks kept them moving, rotating them around the tiny camp stove; he knew Wiggins had several spare fuel canisters in his pack but whether they would be enough to get them through a night wasn’t clear.

It’s going to have to be. There’s no way we can go out in this.

They were lost, a tiny dark bubble inside a sea of swirling howling white. Wind gusts tugged at their roof but the weight of new snow on top was holding it down for now. If that weight got too heavy, they would be in danger of it collapsing in on them — just one more thing to worry about as the storm continued to rage.

Time seemed to pass infinitely slowly; several times, Banks checked his watch only to find mere minutes had crawled by. They smoked too many cigarettes and drank so much coffee that after a while they were forced to take turns venturing to the open end of the shelter to take some bladder relief. Banks heard Wiggins shout something about the dangers of getting ‘your knob frosty’ but that was about the extent of any conversation as the hours crept along.

Finally around ten o’clock at night, the wind dropped several notches and although snow continued to fall, it wasn’t coming down with so much force and the howling abated enough that they were able to talk. Sergeant Hynd joined Banks at the entrance for a smoke and a coffee as they looked out at the weather.

“Good enough for a walk?” Hynd asked.

Banks shook his head.

“Not yet. I think it best to wait out the night if we can. We’ll be able to make good time once the sun is up.”

“More coffee and Wiggo’s farts it is then,” Hynd replied. “But you’ve been awfy quiet, Cap. What’s on your mind?”

Banks shared his theory of earlier, as to the nature of the thing they’d found in the cave.

“You think yon was a man, a soldier — one of us? And the scientists did that to him?”

“I think so. I don’t have another explanation that fits what we’ve seen, do you?”

“You mean they went and got themselves a fucking cave troll?”

Banks smiled, felt fresh ice crack at his lips that he melted away with coffee before replying.

“It certainly seems that way.”

“I can see why they wanted it hushed up; we can hardly get all high and mighty about the Nazis experimenting on folk when we were doing the same ourselves just a few years later. What were they trying to achieve?”

“Beats me. Some kind of super-soldier if I’m reading the clues in the journal right — something that would have put us out of business and have us retiring early to our pipes and slippers.”

Hynd laughed and waved a hand out at the weather.

“Right now that doesn’t seem like a bad idea, Cap.”

Wiggins made up another pot of the dried soup — Banks noticed that he had to replace the fuel canister in the stove. The corporal saw him looking.

“Three cans left, Cap,” he said. “Should see us through ‘til breakfast then that’ll be that.”

Banks had Davies and Wilkins check the canopy for any dry wood that they might use for a fire but he already knew, having checked earlier, that all the branches and foliage were too damp to burn; his order was more to keep them moving about than anything else.

Now that the wind had dropped more of the heat from the stove was being trapped inside their shelter and for the first time since taking refuge he started to feel, if not comfortable, at least not in danger of freezing solid.

He was on the point of relaxing when the attack came out of the night.