Tundra (27 page)

An hour had passed, and Aleksandrov had heard nothing from Nikitin. The Mi-26 had a top speed of just under 300 kph. It was flying with a light load of just eight passengers and no heavy equipment. It would have reached the
Nekropolis
, ninety kilometres away, in less than twenty minutes.

Something, a muffled thump, sounded through the rumble of the Vodnik’s engine. Aleksandrov looked at the driver, who glanced at the dashboard.

‘Not us, sir,’ he said. He meant:
it wasn’t our vehicle
.

Aleksandrov leaned forward in his seat. Was that a flare of light in the distance, over the horizon?

The phone hummed beneath his hand. He snatched it up.

Nikitin’s voice: ‘Sir, we have successfully engaged with eleven lightly armed hostiles at a location two klicks from the former research site
Nekropolis
. Said hostiles were salvaging the wreckage of a Tupolev TU-22M. They have been neutralised. Three captured, the remaining eight killed. No casualties on our part.’

Aleksandrov let out a slow breath between pursed lips. ‘
Excellent
work.’

‘Do you want us to rejoin you, sir?’

‘No. Return to Yakutsk with the prisoners. I’ll notify them to expect you.’

Aleksandrov ended the call. He thumbed the key that would connect him to General Tsarev. Through the windscreen, a twisting ghost-like funnel was rising in the distance, vague against the dark cloud of the sky. Aleksandrov recognised it as a column of smoke.

*

T
hey’d been riding for close to thirty minutes when disaster hit.

The terrain had degenerated into a haphazard collection of hillocks and dips, the unevenness partly obscured by the snow covering so that three or four times Haglund, in front, was forced to change direction sharply. Clement, in her own snowmobile behind him, handled the machine well, thought Purkiss, adapting swiftly to each tilt and swerve.

In the seat behind Purkiss, he sensed Budian shuddering. The temperature seemed to be dropping with every kilometre of progress they made, the jaws of the cold closing mercilessly on them.

Haglund was heading round the left side of a scrub-scattered mound of rocks when his snowmobile jolted. Purkiss saw it judder before stabilising once more. He saw Clement’s attempt to veer leftwards, heard the crack as the sled’s ski connected with rock, watched the vehicle tip sideways as the momentum carried it forwards so that for an instant Clement appeared to be performing some bizarre stunt. The snowmobile ground to a stop, teetered briefly, and righted itself.

Purkiss pulled up and ran over, Haglund halting ahead and swinging his own vehicle round. Clement sat upright in the sled, her arms braced on the sides, and shook her head sharply.

Purkiss crouched beside her. He felt her head, her neck, conscious that the extreme cold precluded his taking off her goggles and balaclava to check more closely for damage. Before he could ask, she muttered, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’

He and Haglund helped her out of the snowmobile. She allowed them to support her under her arms, tested her legs gingerly. ‘Fine,’ she repeated.

Avner and Budian approached, hanging back. ‘Shit,’ said Avner. ‘Look at that.’

The snowmobile’s ski had been wrenched sideways by the rock outcropping so that it protruded at a forty-five degree angle from the vehicle’s undercarriage. The machine was of no more use to them.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clement said flatly.

‘Not your fault.’ Purkiss went back to his own sled, peered at the dashboard. The odometer indicated they’d covered forty-two kilometres since abandoning the Ural. Taking into account the distance they’d come before that, Purkiss estimated a total of one hundred and ten Ks.

Between twenty-five and thirty kilometres left to go. Fifteen or twenty miles.

Avner was pacing, his gloved knuckles pressed against his mouth. ‘Five of us. Four places on the other two sleds. We can’t do it. Don’t you understand? We’re – ’

‘Shut up,’ said Purkiss. To Haglund: ‘Is there any chance of repairing it?’

Haglund was crouched beside the damaged snowmobile, his hands gripping the ski. He shook his head. ‘Even with the proper tools... no.’

The cold seemed to be penetrating Purkiss’s cerebral cortex, slowing his thoughts even as it made his limbs more sluggish. He felt the pull of apathy, the urge simply to sit down and allow the tundra to drag him in, to make him part of it. He watched Haglund rise, stretch his arms and arch his neck, stroll away in frustration.

Perhaps they should hide, Purkiss thought. Perhaps they should conceal the snowmobiles and find somewhere to lie low, wait for their pursuers to pass. And then what? Leaving aside that they would like die of hypothermia if they remained immobile for any length of time, what would they do even if they did evade the troops? They’d still be stranded, a score of miles from human habitation and with no means of reaching it. He supposed one of them could go ahead alone to seek help –

The thought froze in his mind as he registered the shape hurtling towards Haglund from the copse of sparse, snow-laden pine trees to his left. At first Purkiss fancied it was a boulder, rolling impossibly smoothly across the uneven ground. Then he felt the dreadful whisper of madness, because what was descending upon Haglund was a monster, and there
were
no such things as monsters, and it meant Purkiss was hallucinating and was therefore starting the final slide towards death as he succumbed to the cold.

He yelled
‘Gunnar,’
and the sound and feel of his voice jolted him back to full awareness.

Haglund turned in the direction of Purkiss’s voice and, before he could complete the movement, saw the bear, twenty feet away and closing with impossible speed.

The bellow punched through the freezing air even as Purkiss scrambled for the nearest snowmobile, his own, and grabbed the rifle Budian had left propped in the rear seat and swung it across

A woman screamed. Budian, or Clement, Purkiss couldn’t tell which.

The bear was an indistinct blur of snarling muscle and fur, perhaps eight hundred pounds in weight, churning the snow around it into a storm of white as it barrelled into Haglund and swiped and he stumbled backwards with a yell.

Purkiss fired.

The crack of the Ruger segued into a terrible, primal howl. The animal’s head jerked back, its profile limned against a distant snow bank. Beneath it Haglund, on his side, scrabbled at the ground, trying to haul himself away.

The bear raised a paw, swiped again.

Purkiss fired again but this time his shot went wild, singing off past the bear’s back. It reared above Haglund, its massive jaws poised to descend.

Purkiss charged, a berserker’s roar exploding from his chest, because he needed to draw its attention
right now
or its maw would snap closed on Haglund, and as he covered the distance, six feet, twelve, he saw the snout swing towards him and the animal start to turn and lower its head and he slowed to give himself time to aim and his foot slipped and he was down, prone, the black shape thundering towards him on the periphery of his vision and frantically he dragged himself into a sitting position and raised the gun once more –
two more rounds
, the analytic part of his mind told him – and the bear was suddenly impossibly vast, skyscraper huge, its bellow of pain and fury an assault on his ears.

Purkiss fired into the glint of its eye.

He rolled, the animal skidding and crashing forwards on the place he’d been squatting. It gave a muffled yelp, jerked, and flopped on to its side.

Purkiss staggered to his feet, the Ruger shaking in his hands. While his primitive organism churned with the visceral processes of terror and exhilaration and shock, his forebrain synthesised and sorted data:
a brown bear, possibly female, with young nearby
. 

A keening moan grabbed at Purkiss’s attention. Haglund lay twenty paces away to the right, clutching at his leg.

Purkiss turned towards him.

Avner’s voice, behind Purkiss, yelled,
‘Hey. What are you –’
and Purkiss felt a clench of rage in his belly.
He’s going to tell me I shouldn’t have shot the bear... Just one word from him...

The shots came, one-two, a double tap, their character different from a rifle’s.

Dazed, Purkiss swung back.

Clement, closest to him, was huddled on her knees on the ground, gazing about. Her features were obscured by the balaclava and goggles but her bewilderment was obvious.

Beyond, the engine of one of the snowmobiles fired up and the vehicle took off.

On the snow, supine, lay a body. Small and slight. A man’s.

Avner.

And thoughts and memories and realisations crammed into Purkiss’s consciousness, vying for space.

Budian.
It made sense.

There’d been two of them. Montrose and Budian. It was why Montrose had chosen her as his supposed hostage after he’d killed Medievsky. They intended to escape together.

Both rifles had been missing from the entrance hall when Purkiss had gone back in. He should have recognised the significance. Why would Montrose take
both
rifles?

She hadn’t come to Montrose’s assistance when Purkiss had overpowered and trussed him, because she’d calculated that her chances of getting away were now greater under Purkiss’s protection.

And now, with Haglund compromised, possibly already dead, and the crisis with the ruined third snowmobile, she’d decided it was time to show her hand and take her chances on her own.

All of this registered in Purkiss’s mind in the space of a few seconds. He watched the snowmobile gather speed.

He lifted the Ruger again.

It had a four-round rotary magazine. He’d fired three shots at the bear.

Purkiss sighted through the rifle’s scope. She was hunched in the seat, the side of her head just visible.

He squeezed the trigger.

The image in the scope changed abruptly.

Purkiss lowered the rifle. In the distance, the snowmobile veered, skidded sideways, stopped. The slumped figure was almost invisible in the front seat, and wasn’t moving.

Laying the rifle down – it needed reloading anyway, and he had other priorities – Purkiss begun to run towards Haglund.

*

T
hey used Avner’s clothing to bind the wounds, Clement tearing the garments into suitable strips, Purkiss applying the bandages. Haglund lay on his back, his breath hissing through clenched, bared teeth, his eyes tight shut in agony. Beneath him the bloodied ground appeared black in contrast to the snow.

The bear’s claws had opened parallel trenches in his left outer thigh, and had taken a chunk of flesh from the upper arm on the same side. Despite the copious blood, there was no indication that an artery had been severed. The wounds were ragged, shreds of skin and muscle difficult to distinguish from the fibres of his ripped clothes. It was irrelevant. There was no time and there were no facilities to clean the wounds properly.

When he’d secured the dressings, Purkiss said, ‘Can you sit up?’

Clement helped him to heave Haglund upright. His hissing increased, but he managed to reach a sitting position. He braced his hands, preparing to stand, but Purkiss said, ‘Take it easy. Stay like that for a minute.’

Purkiss trotted fifty yards away to where the snowmobile had come to a halt. He drew the Walther from his pocket as he moved.

It wasn’t necessary. Budian had taken the shot directly in the head. Purkiss was glad she was wearing her balaclava, which appeared unnaturally concave. He dragged her body out of the sled and dumped it on the ground. On the seat was a handgun, the one she’d used to kill Avner. A .22 Beretta Bobcat. Purkiss pocketed it.

He examined the snowmobile swiftly. It appeared undamaged. To make sure, he climbed on and rode it back to Clement and Haglund.

Haglund was trying again to get to his feet. He succeeded, with a grunt of pain, before staggering and sinking to his backside once more.

‘
Damn
it.’

‘We’re in a better position now,’ said Purkiss. ‘Three of us, and two working sleds.’

Clement shook her head. ‘Oleksandra. I never –’

‘Neither did I,’ said Purkiss. ‘But I should have.’

He checked his watch. They’d lost almost half an hour.

‘We need to move,’ he said.

I
t took Captain Aleksandrov fifteen minutes to satisfy himself that it was a ruse.

The GAZ Vodnik had aimed towards the tower of smoke in the distance and they’d found the blackened wreck of the Ural partway down the ravine. Aleksandrov, suspecting an ambush, sent two of his men down the ravine’s wall with grappling equipment, while he and the remaining man kept watch from the Vodnik. He used the time to call General Tsarev and update him.

When the men emerged from the ravine and shook their heads –
no human remains inside the truck
– Aleksandrov called the General again.

‘They’ll have taken the snowmobiles, sir. The advantage they gain with regard to speed will be offset to some extent by the terrain ahead.’

Tsarev said, ‘Two clarifications of your orders. The fugitives are to be prevented from reaching Saburov-Kennedy Station at all costs.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And they are to be terminated. All of them, without hesitation, even if they attempt to surrender. The bodies are to be brought back with you.’

‘Understood.’

*

T
he rocks and copses of vegetation took on a new, threatening aspect, every one of them a bear or an armed man. Purkiss wove among them, the urge to increase the snowmobile’s speed held in check by his knowledge that they couldn’t afford another accident. Nonetheless, he knew they were covering ground more slowly than before, knew Haglund was the more skilled rider.

Haglund was wedged into the rear seat behind Purkiss. His breathing was rapid, worryingly so. Purkiss couldn’t estimate how much blood the man had lost from his wounds, but he knew the effects would be multiplied in the prevailing temperature.