Operation: Siberia

- 10 -

The back door of the dome was no longer there; there was only another large hole in the structure, and broken glass, stones, and twisted metal strewn around the area. The third and last of the Russians lay in the courtyard beyond, at the doorway that led into the hill. The door lay open, and looked to have been forced out that way from the inside, huge hinges buckled as if having finally given way under intense pressure. The Russian had got in the way of whatever wanted so badly to escape; he wasn’t just butchered, he was mangled, almost minced in places, torn apart in a frenzy of violence that almost defied belief.

“Aw, wee man,” Wiggins said. “Your vodka was shite, but you didnae deserve this.”

“Nobody deserves this,” Banks replied.

He eyed the dark hole of the doorway. The opening led straight into the hill; there didn’t look to be any light source, and a stench wafted out of the gloom, a thick, almost meaty odor, worse somehow than anything else they’d smelled already.

“Cally, watch the civilians, and get noisy if you need us,” he said. “We’re going in.”

Again, it was Waterston who disagreed.

“We all go,” he said. “You need our insights.”

“I need a drink,” Wiggins replied, but Banks saw the scientists, all three of them, were resolved.

“Okay,” he replied. “But same rules apply; I say run, you run.”

Waterston nodded in reply. Banks switched on the foresight light on his rifle, sprayed the beam ahead of him, and headed into the hill.

The stench got even worse. Banks breathed as lightly as he could through his nose, but even then he felt his guts roil and complain. He remembered how, when he was a lad, their old dog had delighted in rolling in wet cowpats. He’d thought that would be the worst thing he’d ever smell. Now he knew better.

His light washed on roughly hewn walls, old workings, done by hand, showing no sign of having been made by machined tools. This passage had been here long before Volkov’s facility had grown up around it.

What the hell was he keeping here in the dark?

The passageway went down at a slight slope, and continued deep into the hill, ten paces or more before Banks got a sense of a wider, more open space. His light showed him a circular chamber some five yards across, with a domed ceiling six feet overhead and three more passageways heading off left, right, and ahead.

“Want me to check one out, Cap?” Wiggins said at his side.

“Fuck no,” Banks replied in a low voice. “We all go together, wherever it is we’re going. We don’t know how far into the hill these tunnels go, or what’s in them. Whatever butchered everybody in the facility might be in here with us. So keep it close and tight, and watch each other’s backs.”

He chose the passage that was emitting the strongest odor, and headed straight ahead. The path sloped downward again, deeper still into the hill, but did not go far, and the echoing sound made by their footsteps told Banks that they had once again come to an open area. He swung his light beam around.

This new chamber was larger still, some ten yards in diameter at its widest, and nine feet high at the tallest point. Thin, watery light seeped in from a crevice in the rock, but it was still too dim to make out anything without the use of the sight light. It was—or had been—a sleeping chamber of a kind judging by the mounds of straw, two of them, heaped tight and high. Banks swung the light around again, before a shout from Waterston stopped him.

“Wait. Go back. Put some light on the wall to your left.”

Banks did as requested, and his light picked out something on the rock. At first, he thought it was more blood, more evidence of slaughter. But this was different; it was only when he stepped closer that he realized how different. Crude pictograms daubed the wall, above Bank’s head height, representations of animals that were immediately recognizable despite the crudity of the painting—mammoth and deer, wolf and rhinoceros. To one side, higher still, almost eight feet of the floor, was a single red handprint. It took a couple of seconds for Banks to get the scale—it had five fingers, and an opposable thumb, but it was flatter, broader than a human hand… and at least twice the size.

Galloway pushed past Banks and traced a finger on one of the daubings.

“I’ve seen the like of these before too,” he said. “Not gorillas though, but stone-age peoples. The ones I saw in the French hills were twenty thousand years old or more. But these… these were done in the past couple of days at a guess.”

“What the fuck were they keeping in here?” Wiggins asked, but no one had an answer for him.

They searched the rest of the chambers. It didn’t take long. One of the two side passages led to a hole in the floor and the sound of running water somewhere impossibly far below; Banks had seen enough field latrines to recognize one when he smelled it.

The left-hand chamber led to another equally obvious spot—it was a small, domed area, containing only a stone table and the remnants of food—mostly meat, and mostly raw. Although it didn’t smell as earthy as the sleeping area, Banks could only take twenty seconds of it before he backed out, looking for clearer air.

He met Waterston by the buckled steel door. The scientist was pulling something from the hinges: long strands of thick hair.

“So what the fuck is it?” Wiggins said insistently. “Don’t tell me they were keeping fucking huge gorillas. Just don’t tell me.”

“I don’t think they’re gorillas,” Waterston said, and showed everybody the hairs he’d pulled from the torn and twisted metal. They were thicker than human hair, almost wiry. And they were russet colored, almost orange in places.

“So, big fucking ginger gorillas it is then?” Wiggins said. “Or are we talking Orang-Utan here?”

“Gorillas, ginger or otherwise, don’t paint pictures and keep tidy tables,” Galloway said at their back. “And they certainly don’t play flutes. I found this in one of the beds.”

He had a bone in his hands, and they could all see that it had five holes along its length. Galloway put it to his lips, and blew, trilling out a simple tune of two bars. Somewhere out beyond the dome, a mammoth trumpeted in reply then, louder still, something else responded with a roar, a wild cry of longing and pain that echoed around them long after Galloway had dropped the bone from his mouth.

“What kind of shite have you got us into this time, Cap,” Wiggins said as all four of the squad reached for their rifles. They stood in a row in front of the busted steel door, with the scientists at their back, all of them tense, waiting for an attack.

None came.

Banks patted his weapon then slung it back over his shoulder.

“Whatever they are, they’re just animals. We’ve got the firepower to put any big fucker we meet down, if they’re daft enough to come close. Let’s just find a way of getting a message out. I want to be well out of here before it gets dark.”