Operation Norway (S-Squad Book 7) Read online

  OPERATION NORWAY

  William Meikle

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by William Meikle

  - 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 w
as 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.

  “So what was this place then, Cap?” Wiggins asked as he handed Banks a mug of coffee.

  “Some kind of scientific research station I was told,” Banks replied. “Our lads and the Norwegians had a joint operation sometime in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s.”

  “Researching what?”

  “I didn’t ask,” he replied.

  Wiggins grinned.

  “Smart move, Cap. So why are we here?”

  “To see if they left anything incriminating behind and to blow the place to buggery.”

  “Oh, I do like a big bang.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” Hynd said at the corporal’s back.

  “You shouldn’t believe everything your wife tells you, Sarge,”

  - 2 -

  Banks only allowed them ten minutes respite then he had the squad gear up ready for moving out. Each man wore stout boots, a white heavy-duty hooded jacket, and white, fleece-lined waterproof trousers over their standard gear. They all had polarizing snow goggles and each had a handgun holstered at their hip. He eschewed any heavier weaponry for now—there didn’t appear to be any immediate danger and he didn’t intend to be more than fifty yards from the kit bags at any time; everything they had to see appeared to be in the line of huts around the jetty.

  “This is a reccy and clean-up mission,” he said. “I’m not expecting any action this time out but the sarge and Wiggo especially know that this squad has a bad habit of stepping in unexpected shite so keep your eyes peeled and shout if you see—or even smell—anything hinky, anything out of place. If you find any records or any kind of documentation, fetch it to me. Wiggo, you and Davies are with me, we’ll take the other four huts on this side of the jetty. Sarge, you and Wilkins go to the other side. Meet back here in twenty. If there are no problems, then we rig the place to blow, Wiggo gets his big bang, and we get the flock out of here.”

  He opened the door into sleet that threatened to turn to snow and a wind that had ramped up to little short of a gale. He turned back for one last command.

  “Nobody wanders off alone, everybody watches out for the man next to him. You know the drill,” he said and pushed his way into the wind heading for the next building. Wiggins and Davies followed. When he reached the next hut door, he turned to look back. The sarge and Wilkins were on the other side of the jetty, mere blurred figures in a shaken snow dome.

  The door opened when he turned the handle and he led the other two inside. There was no lighting and the gathering gloom outside made the interior even darker but he saw clearly enough that this hut had once been a dormitory of sorts. Four bunk beds lined the walls and the bedding was neatly folded up at the base of each bed, frozen solid in place. There were eight tall metal lockers but apart from frozen nightclothes, there was nothing else of note inside them. A small cold stove heater and two dry oil lamps were the only other items in the room. Banks had a last look around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything then headed out into the storm again to the next hut in the row along the shore.

  This one was as empty and cold as the first. It had been a rec room rigged up as a makeshift mess with a cooking stove, a small bar area stocked with whisky and vodka in a pair of optics on the wall, and a table tennis table in the middle of the room. But this room too looked like it had survived untouched since the day the base was abandoned, the only indication of the passage of time being the layer of frost that covered everything.

  Wiggins nodded towards the bar area.

  “Anybody fancy a dram? It’s my shout.”

  Banks laughed.

  “I’ll tell you what, Wiggo, find me something interesting to take back to the colonel and we’ll all have one before we go.”

  He hadn’t expected the corporal to actually find anything and their third hut proved to be a double-doored storeroom for a dinghy, its rubber long since perished, its outboard motor little more than rusted metal. But as if the thought of booze had worked some magic, the last hut in the row, with the best view overlooking the fjord, had them hitting the jackpot. It had obviously been an administrator’s office containing a heavy mahogany desk, a leather chair that might have been very comfortable at one time, and three tall metal filing cabinets.

  The cabinets proved to be full of little more than gray mush, having suffered an influx of ice that had subsequently melted, rotting down the paperwork in the process but the treasure proved to be something that had survived snug and dry in one of the desk drawers. And as chance would have it, it was Wiggins who found it.

  “Looks like we’ll be having that dram after all, Cap,” the corporal said with a smile and handed Banks a stout leather-bound book. It opened with a crisp rasp of frost but the interior was dry and the print clear; it was a handwritten journal in a neat, readable hand, started in 1949 and with the last entry in January 1951. His gaze fell on a page near the end.

  Jan 11th 1951

  The bars are holding for now but his strength is growing daily. He cannot, will not, be controlled and I have had to post more guards, for even under the heaviest sedatives we have at hand he continually tests the limits of his imprisonment. The top brass in London have been informed of the success of the experiment but for my own part I worry. If this is a success, I do not wish to see failure.

  It did not tell him anything apart from the fact that it appeared that the commander of this base had a premonition of sorts of disaster to come. He closed the journal and stowed it away inside his jacket for later perusal.

  What the hell happened here?

  *

  Wiggins stopped expectantly at the door of the rec room and Banks knew he was hoping that the promise of a dram would be made good but before Banks could give the okay, Sergeant Hynd came through in the headset radio.

  “Best get over this way, Cap,” Hynd said. “There’s some things you need to see. Last hut at the far edge of the harbor.”

  The weather had turned even worse, with thick squalls of wind-whipped snow almost blinding them. The snow goggles only helped in as much as it protected their eyes. They had to navigate by staying close to the walls of each hut as they passed it and it took five minutes of hard pushing against the wind before they reached the last of the huts on the shoreline. Hynd and Wilkins stood just inside the doorway but they weren’t getting much protection from the elements for the whole back wall of the hut had collapsed.

  Hynd spoke first.

  “The other huts are empty—some kind of laboratories but all smashed up now. This is what you need to see though.”

  The sergeant stood aside to let Banks into the hut.

  The room had at one time been the most sturdy of any of the huts in the group, not prefabricated like the others but being built mainly in red brick with double thickness walls. It had one simple purpose, reminding Banks of the old Westerns he’d watched as a lad and the town jail, a square box with an inner wall of iron bars enclosing a basic cell. Whatever had been imprisoned here, it had not been contained.

  Something had torn the place apart and Banks didn’t think it had been the weather, for the iron bars that lay strewn on the ice were bent and mangled and the back wall looked to have been pushed outward rather than blown inward.

  “There’s more,” Hynd said, almost shouting now to be heard above the wind. The sergeant led Banks over to the tumbled back wall and pointed at the ground. At first, Banks was unsure what he was meant to be looking at then details began to become clear amid the rubble. The remains of at least two men lay amid the bricks, remains being the appropriate word for the limbs looked to have been roughly removed from the bodies and the torsos had been brutally torn open, rib cages splayed wide like skeletal wings. It had obviously happened many years since for there was little meat left on the bones, little clothing left but tattered rags, and what blood had been spilled was frozen sol
id in a black, ink-like stain on the icy ground.

  A check showed there were enough body parts for two men but only one head, with most of the skin stripped from the face, eyes long since gone leaving an ice-blackened skull smiling up at Banks in a thin-lipped rictus grin.

  A rough track led away from the rear of the huts, away from the water and rising steeply up the wall of the fjord. The path was partially snow covered and there were no fresh tracks in it. Whatever had happened here, it certainly wasn’t recent.

  But it is a mystery. And the colonel doesn’t like mysteries.

  He had the squad do a quick survey of the whole area looking for clues but there was only the cold ground and the scattered remains of the dead, and they weren’t talking.

  - 3 -

  He gave the order to head back for the hut where they’d got the fire going; the weather had become a fully fledged storm. The sky had gone so dark he had to check his watch to make sure he hadn’t misjudged the time and that night wasn’t in fact falling early. He let the squad go first and brought up the rear, being almost blown back along the shore now that the swirling wind was mostly at his back. He got inside the hut and had to push to close the door against the force of the breeze outside. He shook snow off himself like a wet dog.

  Wiggins was already at the fire, stoking it up with fresh logs, and Davies was at the camp stove getting more coffee brewed. Banks retrieved the sat phone from his inside pocket and put a call through to the skipper of the supply vessel offshore.

  “The weather has closed in. Any idea how long this storm will last?”

  “The rest of the day and most of the night, Captain. I’m afraid you’re stuck there for the duration. It’s not safe to try to take the dinghy out in these waters in this.”