Once they had landed, the crows fell still. It looked to all the men as though the birds were watching the camp with their gleaming eyes, waiting. Hunter knew the symbolism and wasn’t about to say anything, but Coop spoke up. ‘They used to say that crows gathered before battles, waiting to feed on the dead, as if they knew exactly what was going to happen.’
‘Yeah, but look how many of them there are!’ Ormston said. ‘They must be expecting a right bloody feast!’ He laughed loudly at what he thought was a great joke, but he was the only one and eventually his humour drained away until there was only the soft whisper of the wind across the snow; and the men watching the crows; and the crows watching the men.
The chopper swung in low over the snowy wastes before hovering over the dust-off point. Hunter and the rest jumped the remaining six feet into the heart of the blizzard raised by the whirling blades. They were already under the cover of nearby trees as the deafening drone of the helicopter receded behind them.
Polar fatigues helped them blend in as they moved swiftly and silently along the hedge lines to a deserted farmhouse overlooking the enemy encampment. Hunter made his way quickly to a bedroom that still smelled of its former occupants and found a window that allowed him the best view with the hi-res binoculars. But he only needed his eyes to learn the true meaning of ‘encampment’. The enemy filled an entire valley, lining the floor and the hillsides for a good ten miles, packed so closely that not a single square of white was visible. The scene was unspeakably eerie, for there was none of the back-and-forth movement that Hunter would have expected in a camp; the enemy stood stock-still to a man, resembling a Chinese terracotta army, all facing the direction where the Government troops were preparing for the attack. The chilling scene suggested that the enemy were machines that did not need to move or talk or eat or feel any emotion; they were simply waiting for the moment when they would be unleashed to crush anything in their path.
Clevis slipped in next to Hunter and froze the moment he looked out of the window. ‘Jesus Christ. We don’t stand a chance.’
Hunter used the binoculars to get a better look at the enemy. The ranks comprised many different types, many different species: tall, willowy men stood next to squat, brutish troglodytes; things with a hint of the reptilian next to others that were almost as insubstantial as ghosts. But all of them looked as if they had died and been remade: weapons had been embedded into their bodies, swords emerging from forearms, nests of spears protruding from ribcages, exposed bone visible everywhere. And there was an odd purple mist drifting from their eyes and mouths. Even more disturbingly, some of the enemy were human. They looked very much as though they might once have been the residents of the area, now transformed like all the others.
Hunter could feel Clevis shaking next to him. Without looking, Hunter said, ‘On the positive side, I can only see swords and… pikes? A few axes, spears…’
‘See?’ Ormston brayed. ‘ They don’t stand a chance.’
Hunter pushed past them to carry out a weapons check and prep them for what was to come. They had small arms and SA80s, but their most effective response was the small but devastating plasma explosives they carried in their backpacks. Each one would take out fifty of the enemy at least — a drop in the ocean compared to the thousands that lined the valley, but if the explosives were used effectively they could make their mark.
Coop took out his cross and chain and kissed it before slipping it back into his parka. The rest of them looked to Hunter, still and silent with their thoughts. He checked out of the window one more time, then gave the nod.
Ground zero was hell. Shells rained in from the distant batteries with barely a second between each explosion. Thick black smoke mingled with the strange purple mist, blasting back and forth in huge, billowing clouds. The noise was as deafening as a foundry and the ground vibrated as if a permanent earthquake ripped through the strata. Body parts flew everywhere.
The detailed briefing had told Hunter and his team exactly where the shells would fall. Their safe route was prescribed through thick tree cover, but they were still close enough to the carnage to view the sea of arms, legs and heads spread out across the fields. Earplugs protected them from the worst of the noise, but it still felt as if their heads were full of a swarm of bees; Hunter gave his orders via previously arranged hand signals. Occasionally, they would lose sight of each other in the sweeping smoke, and at those times it felt as though they were already dead, walking through some eerie purgatory towards judgment.
Hunter’s mind had the calm of a pool at twilight. He existed wholly in the moment, seeing, hearing, reacting, but not feeling. In that state, he gave himself up to the shadow-figure that rode the mare of his conscious mind, the true Hunter who had made him so good at being fearless, emotionless, inhuman in battle. The Hunter he hated.
The trees and the snow and the mist reminded him of the hills of Bosnia, the stink of the mass graves heavy in the air as he hunted Serb mercenaries. The thunder of the shells was Baghdad all over again, slipping in and out of the shadows of the sun-baked souk.
How had he ever got into it? He’d wanted to be a zoologist. Animals, that’s what he lived for, endlessly fascinating, nature’s little wonders, from the aphid to the zebra and all points in between. There wasn’t a single wrong turn he could identify; it was the cumulation of a thousand tiny steps, each one insignificant in and of itself but all leading him away from the magic path into the deep, dark forest. To this place, where body parts crunched underfoot.
He led the way through the trees into a culvert under a road, then along the path of a trickling brook to a point where a sword of thick forest plunged deep into the heart of the enemy forces. With skill, they could move through the trees unseen, releasing their explosives into the midst of the opposition.
Their hot breath turned the air white as they gathered in the dense vegetation beneath the shadows of the branches. Hunter checked his watch: nearly time. The fields ran away from the forest down a slope to a road winding along the valley bottom. When the smoke and purple mist cleared in a gust of wind channelled along the cut, Hunter saw the enemy still standing, their ranks now mottled by circular blast marks. He could feel the unspoken questions radiating from the men around him: Why don’t they run? Why don’t they attack? Why are they waiting to die?
Hunter looked at his watch again and then signalled to the others. Quickly donning masks attached to portable oxygen canisters, they dropped low. Though they were beyond the estimated blast area, they still had to be cautious.
The shelling stopped. In the disturbing silence that followed, Hunter’s ears still rang, but he removed his plugs to listen for the drone of the approaching jet. It was a Tornado GR4, one of the few they still had left after Newcastle. When it was overhead, Hunter shielded his eyes.
The fuel/air explosive was detonated fifty feet above the valley. Those immediately beneath the blast were vaporised instantly, others nearby seared by the tremendous heat. Hunter and his team were far enough away that the shock wave didn’t burst their eardrums or rupture their lungs. The oxygen was sucked out of the air in the immediate vicinity of the explosion, which would have been devastating for human troops, but Hunter doubted its effectiveness on this enemy. He was proved right when the thermal winds cleared and he looked up. On the periphery of the blast zone, the enemy still stood, waiting, but there was now a massive hole in the heart of the force where flames raged out of control.
Clevis and Ormston high-fived before restraining themselves, but Bradley, Spencer and Coop were already coolly removing the explosives from their knapsacks. Equipped with what were essentially hi-tech catapults for launching the plasma bombs, they moved like ghosts through the trees. One after the other, they emerged to fire and then retreated back into the forest depths before they were seen.