William Meikle
Operation Norway
- 1 -
“Well, this is fucking great, isn’t it? What wanker told the brass that we’re pining for the fjords?”
Corporal Wiggins wasn’t taking the S-Squad’s latest assignment well. Captain Banks couldn’t really blame him; they’d all been promised an extended period of leave after the double-whammy of losing men on their last two missions on Loch Ness and in Syria.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Captain. I know you’re due some respite. But this is a matter of national security,” the colonel had said that morning when he called Banks in to his office. The room was too warm despite the chill and damp in the air outside. The colonel had done several tours of duty in far hotter climes and liked to be reminded of the fact now that he was working a desk in the North of Scotland. Two electric heaters, four bars each, ran full time and Banks was hot under his heavy sweater and already starting to sweat. The colonel, in shirtsleeves, looked like a man about to go for a summer stroll.
“We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” Banks’ superior officer continued, “although this might prove to be a diplomatic matter rather than anything more serious. Just after the war, we entered into a joint scientific experiment with Norway in a remote station way up on their northwest coast. It was all very hush-hush and the details have been redacted.”
“So why now?” Banks asked. Normally, he wouldn’t dare to interrupt the colonel in full flow but the heat was making him prickly and uncomfortable and coupled with the thought of telling the squad that their leave was cancelled, he wasn’t in the best of moods. The colonel, on the other hand, merely smiled grimly.
“All we know that the bloody show went tits up in its second year and the place was abandoned overnight, left to the elements and frozen over in the course of a series of bad winters. Anybody that ever worked there is long dead and it’s only come up now because a fishing vessel passing close by at the weekend reported that the site is nearly thawed out — something to do with global warming I’m guessing. We were the dominant partners in the arrangement and the Norwegians have given us first look at the place. So it’s get in there, make sure there’s nothing embarrassing lying about, sanitize the site, and get out with the minimum of fuss. You know the drill. Shouldn’t be a problem for the squad.”
Which was all fine and dandy for the colonel to say from the warmth of his office in Lossiemouth. And his promise of an extended period of leave followed by warmer assignments to come didn’t hold too much water either; Banks remembered all too well similar promises, all too easily broken in the past. The here and now was always what mattered most in the armed forces and the current reality had them bouncing through freezing swell on a dinghy in heavy seas off Norway in early winter. They headed face first into a storm of wind and biting sleet and it was the cause of much grumbling among the men, with Wiggins as usual to the forefront of any complaints.
“I mean, come on, Cap,” he shouted against the wind. “Did we really have to come out in this? We cannae even have a fag. Can’t we wait for it to blow over?”
“It’s Northern Norway in December,” Banks replied. “This isn’t blowing over until at least March.”
Wiggins had a point though. They’d arrived via chopper to a North Sea oil rig and then onto a supply boat that had brought them north up the Norwegian coast. The boat had been warm, dry, and even almost comfortable, three things that couldn’t be applied to their situation now on the last leg of the trip in a dinghy to take them up into the narrows at the head of the fjord and their final destination. As the sleet stung his cheeks and threatened to ice his eyelashes, it was the colonel’s warm office back in Lossiemouth rather than the mission that was uppermost in Captain John Banks’ mind.
The sleet didn’t abate and if anything was blowing even stronger by the time they arrived at the head of the fjord and saw the small clutter of prefabricated huts on the shore by a long rock and wood jetty. The huts were basic, like his great grandmother’s prefab that Banks remembered from childhood. The old woman had moved into social housing in the early fifties in Glasgow when she was widowed and lived there until she died in the eighties. These squat metal boxes with green tin roofs could have come from the same factory. He hoped they weren’t going to be as cold as he remembered from those long-ago visits.
Sergeant Hynd brought them alongside to port to tie up sheltered from the brunt of the weather and they quickly heaved their kit onto the jetty and climbed up, having to lean into the wind.
“Wiggo, take Davies and Wilkins,” Banks said. “Priority is securing a hut that’ll be our base of operations. Get inside one of these and if it’s in decent shape, get a fire going and see if we can get some heat into us. After that, get a brew on and we’ll have a cuppa and a fag. Sarge, secure the dinghy. If we’re lucky, there’ll be fuck all to see here and we’ll be back and heading for the boat before sunset.”
Banks turned his back to the wind to look back along the length of the fjord. He knew the supply boat was still out there in open water beyond the high cliffs but it was hidden from view by the sleet and spray the storm had whipped up. He wasn’t relishing the journey back.
He waited for Hynd to get the dinghy tied up then turned, hefted the kit bags, and followed the rest of the squad quickly along the jetty to the squat, low huts. Wilkins stood at the door of the nearest, beckoning them onward. Inside, Wiggins was already bent at a fireplace, setting a fire from a pile of logs at one side and a sheaf of old magazines that appeared to have been stacked for the purpose.
They were in one of the nine huts arranged in a semicircle around the jetty; this one had obviously been a radio room and makeshift storeroom at one time but it had not been abandoned cleanly. Rusting cans of foodstuffs lay strewn on the floor, some flattened and bashed as if they’d been stomped on, the contents splattered and then frozen on the wooden floorboards. Long wooden boxes that had once contained test tubes, beakers, and various pieces of glass piping had been tossed to the floor, smashed open, and scattered in glittering pieces all across the left-hand side of the room. The radio set, which had taken up the whole rear wall, had been roughly torn from its fixing and lay in bent and crushed pieces of torn metal and exposed wiring. The whole place felt damp, the walls running wet where ice was melting, faster now that the fire was spreading warmth through the room. The spilled food wasn’t going to stay frozen for long.
But we’ll be long gone before it’ll start to stink.
Wiggins saw Banks looking at the carnage.
“That’s not all, Cap,” he said and rose away from where he’d got the fire started to point at the wall above the mantel and to one side of the red brickwork that denoted the rudimentary chimney. The heavy-duty plasterboard had five holes punched in it and Banks had too much experience not to recognize them as bullet holes.
There was no sign of any blood spatter and no bodies.
“Might just have been high-jinks?” Hynd said.
“The colonel said the operation went tits-up fast,” Banks replied. “Let’s wait to see what’s what in the rest of the place before we jump to conclusions.”
Banks had them break out the camp stove and get a pot of coffee going and allowed them a smoke break before attempting a foray to the rest of the huts; he knew they’d all be grateful as him for a chance to get some heat into their bones. While the coffee brewed, he checked the kit bags; he’d ordered full cold weather gear and was relieved to see that they’d have everything they needed at hand should they need to spend any extended time outdoors. Not that he was expecting to; the site appeared to be dead and long abandoned. Sanitize, that’s what the colonel had said. One of the kit bags contained enough C4 to sanitize the whole place off the map.