“Seriously, Cap. What the fuck are we after this time? Any ideas?”
‘Something that eats sheep, cows, deer… and polar bears,” Banks said.
“Well, that narrows it down a bit. Just wait and I’ll check in my Ladybird Book of Big Fucking Monsters.”
“We don’t know it’s a monster,” McCally said from the back. “As we said earlier, it could be an escaped bear, like yon tame Grizzly that was running about on the Hebridean islands years back.”
“I think somebody might have reported a fucking enormous escaped bear,” Banks said dryly, “and whatever it is, it’s got the brass worried. When they get worried, I get worried that the shite is going to get poured downhill.”
“Aye, me too,” Wiggins replied. “And I’m at the bottom of the fucking valley.”
Banks let the men speculate as their ideas got wilder and wilder. They started placing bets, with cigarettes on the line.
“It’s a fucking enormous cat of some kind,” McCally said. “Like yon ‘Beast of Dartmoor’. There’s long been rumors of exotic big cats running loose up here. I bet 20 fags on it.”
“A pussy as big as a house? Now that I’d like to see,” Wiggins replied.
Hynd spoke up quickly, as if he sensed another joke about his wife coming.
“We made a report about yon kerfuffle in Siberia, right? Maybe some mad scientist type has been back over there and fetched back a dire wolf. We all saw that they were hungry big bastards. This is just like that, so I’ll put down three packs of smokes on it being a Russian wolf, or a pack of them.”
“Them tracks weren’t right for a dog though,” Wiggins replied. “So I’ll match your three packs of fags, and put them on the wee green men fucking with us again. Remember, I was inside yon saucer in Antarctica when it nearly had away with me. I ken exactly what they’re capable of.”
“Dinnae talk shite, Wiggo, that was the fucking Nazis that built yon. There’s no such thing as fucking aliens.”
Wiggins lapsed into his infamous bad American accent again.
“Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically own South America.”
Banks let them speculate but didn’t offer a bet of his own. None of it made any sense to him. All he had to go on were the bloody huge tracks they’d seen at the Wildlife Park. They were terrifying enough on their own, given his estimate of the size of the beast that made them. He went back to studying the map, this time looking, not for a route, but for places where a large predator might be able to hide itself. He marked the spots where those places intersected with his planned route.
There were far too many of them.
Wiggins drove them off the main road and onto a rutted track, where they bounced around for half a mile before cresting a rise to look over a small reservoir set in a valley between rolling hills. They parked up next to a sluice gate on a gravel area that looked to have been created for the purpose. There was no sign that anyone else had used it recently, not even a rusted Coke can in the verge, or cigarette butts on the gravel.
Bank was first to retrieve his rucksack, and was kitted up and studying the terrain to the northwest while the others got ready for the walk. It didn’t look too bad from here, but he knew from tough experience that the hills around this area often looked nice from a distance, but became real bastards when it came to climbing them.
“Handguns or rifles, Cap?” Hynd asked from behind him.
“Rifles,” Banks replied, and stepped over to take a weapon from the rack. “And plenty of ammo. We might need it if this thing is as big as we think it is. If we come across any hikers or farmers, don’t shoot them; the colonel wouldn’t be happy. And if anybody asks, we’re on a training exercise.”
He turned back to look across the reservoir. The hiker’s track he’d traced with a finger on the map was clearly delineated in the landscape, a gray scar running away from them across the hillside. Banks knew from the contours that there would be dips and hollows, wet spots that they might have to circumnavigate, but the early part of the walk definitely looked even easier than he might have hoped.
It didn’t stop Wiggins complaining though. The muttering began as soon as he strapped on the rucksack and hefted his rifle.
“Bloody hell, Cap,” he said, “I can barely lift this sodding gear nevermind walk with it up a fucking hill.”
“Tired and worn out after a long hard shag are you, Wiggo?”
“Long hard wank more like,” McCally said, and the laughter seemed to buoy them all up as the four of them walked off the small parking spot and onto the rocky track leading northwest.
“Everybody remember where we parked,” Wiggins said.
They smoked as they negotiated the track around the edge of the reservoir; Hynd’s high-tar cigarettes did a better job of keeping the midges away than any repellent was able to.
“A trick I learned from my auld granddad when I was 14,” Hynd said. “My grannie gave him hell for starting me smoking, mind. But anything’s preferable to being eaten alive by these wee fuckers.”
Banks was forced to agree, although the smoke was making him light-headed, and he was once more aware of the lack of breakfast.
At least the pack didn’t feel too onerous a burden. The ground at this point of the track made for good walking. A gravel walkway had been laid around the reservoir at some time long past, and although it was overgrown with weed in places and muddy in others, all they had to dodge were a few larger puddles in sunken spots.
Banks kept his gaze on the softer ground to either side, looking for any sign that the big beast they were looking for had passed this way. He saw nothing apart from old, dry, rabbit and sheep droppings and one, stinking, maggot-infested dead jackdaw to indicate the presence of local wildlife.
And when this thing we’re after shites, it’s going to be a bit more noticeable.
Wiggins, as Banks knew he would, kept up a constant litany of complaints at the rear. They were all used to it, and Banks even found it comforting in a way. If Wiggins was complaining, he knew they weren’t currently in trouble, for the private, for all his volubility, always knew when focus was needed and was more than ready to be first into the action.
Hynd had point, and led them off the gravel and away from the reservoir, up the first small hill to the northwest. Banks felt the rucksack tug at his back for the first time, a warning of what was to come. He knew it was going to get tougher, a lot tougher, but pushed the thought away. He might be carrying it for hours yet, and thinking about it now was definitely counter-productive.
Thin drizzle in his face made him look up. The skies had lowered and gone flat gray, typical weather for the time of year, but at least it wasn’t cold and didn’t look like it was going to rain any harder. They’d all tramped in much worse, in much worse places, and at least here they had the bonus that nobody was shooting at them.
They walked, climbing gently upward, for two hours in the drizzle. His waterproof camo suit and stout boots kept Banks dry apart from the occasional trickle of water down the back of his neck, and he’d got used to the swing of the rucksack, adjusting his stride into the lope he knew he could sustain for several more hours at this speed.
They stopped for a smoke at the crest of a hill with a view down a long high valley, the slopes on either side purple and pink and orange with heather. The track they were following wound down the slope below them toward a small loch a mile or so away. Apart from the tumbled ruin of a farm cottage at the loch side to the south, and old drystone dykes on the hillside above the ruin delineating were small fields had once been there was no sign civilization had ever touched this place. The cottage lay at the edge of a small copse of old conifer woodland, little more than a couple of acres in area. It was one of the spots that Banks had marked on his map as a site of possible danger.