Operation: North Sea (S-Squad Book 10)

  OPERATION: NORTH SEA

  S-Squad Book 10

  William Meikle

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2020 by William Meikle

  1

  Corporal Wiggins had a quandary. It had been bothering him all morning, from a rude, too early awakening in barracks in Lossiemouth, through the frantic spell of kitting up and the equally frantic helicopter then SUV trip to Aberdeen airport then the docks. Now they were here on the deck of the oil rig supply vessel, leaving Aberdeen harbour behind them, and it still bothered him.

  It wasn’t anything he could speak to the others about…well, maybe the sarge, if he was listening. Wiggo had always taken it upon himself to be the squad clown, the one on whose shoulders fell the weight of lifting spirits and keeping things moving along at pace when things weren’t going well or a slow watch was dragging its heels.

  The trouble was that the sarge, the usual brunt of Wiggo’s jokes, couldn’t be baited anymore; Hynd had a new woman in his life, it was still in its fledgling stages, and Wiggo refused to do anything that might disturb the newfound peace of mind of a man he’d looked up to since his own early days in the service. The sarge had been to hell and back, not just in the squad, but in his personal life too, suffering the death of his wife just a few years previously. If a new woman was going to help him recover some equilibrium, Wiggo wasn’t going to get in the way.

  The captain, of course, was off limits as far as jokes aimed at him was concerned; Wiggo enjoyed being a corporal, hoped to make sergeant sometime in the future, and knew where his bread was buttered. Captain Banks liked a joke as much as the rest of them, but usually when it wasn’t aimed in his direction.

  That just left Davies and Wilkins, both youngers, relatively speaking, both subordinates of his, and one black and one newly outed as gay. Teasing them felt like kicking puppies.

  So it came down to the fact that Wiggo keeping his big mouth shut was probably for the best all ‘round.

  But it was proving to be a constant struggle. Wiggo had been forced to choose either garrulousness or withdrawal at an early age; he’d grown up in a big family and while the men were at work, the women gathered for tea, biscuits, and chat; mothers, sisters, aunties, cousins, neighbors, and Auntie June Cobbley and all, with a posse of kids milling around underfoot. To avoid losing himself in the melee, Wiggo had chosen performance art, retelling schoolyard jokes, making up daft stories, getting loud, and generally ensuring that everybody always remembered he was there.

  It had become more than a habit; it became a way of life, and had followed him…and got him into more fights than he cared to remember…through schoolyard, street gangs, Borstal, and finally, a new home here in the squad. He’d at long last found where he fit.

  But the old habits, even although no longer required, refused to be permanently broken and eventually the dam burst and he spoke up, breaking a silence that had been ongoing as they all stood on the deck of the vessel for a smoke.

  “So what is it this time, Cap?” he asked. “Must be some big stooshie to get us on the move so fast.”

  “I would tell you,” Captain John Banks replied, “but why spoil the surprise? Finish up the fags, lads, there’s coffee below, and we’ll brief you there.”

  “We?” Wiggo said. “You got somebody hiding in your pocket, Cap? There’s naebody here but us chickens.”

  Wiggo was proved wrong when they went below deck and followed the captain into a small cramped room. Wiggo’s heart sank when he saw who was waiting there for them. The last time he’d seen Alexander Seton had been on the shores of Loch Ness, at the conclusion of the affair with the monster. It had been a clusterfuck of enormous proportions in the course of which Wiggo had lost his best friend in the service. Seeing the small ginger-haired man again brought it all flooding back in an instant and an anger rose up in him that he had to fight hard to keep down.

  “Don’t tell me…more fucking monsters,” he said, and headed for the coffee machine where he could safely keep his back to Seton and win himself a few seconds to control his emotions while the cap introduced Seton to Wilkins and Davies. The two privates had only joined the squad in the aftermath of the debacle so they didn’t know the history and Wiggo saw that Davies in particular appeared puzzled by the corporal’s reaction.

  “Long story, lad,” Wiggo said, surprised to find he could keep his voice low and calm. “I’ll tell you over a pint sometime.”

  The captain called for quiet. Wiggo expected him to begin the briefing and was surprised when the floor was ceded to Seton.

  At least, the wee man had the manners to look apologetic.

  “I’m afraid it’s my fault you’re here,” he began in his soft Highland brogue. “If it turns out to be a wild goose chase, I’ll stand for a good bottle of Scotch for each of you. But if I’m right, it’s a job that this team, and only this team, are suited to investigate.”

  “It’s fucking monsters again. I fucking knew it,” Wiggins said and was silenced by a single glance from the captain before Seton continued.

  “Monster, singular,” he said. “Or at least, I hope so. But that’s getting ahead of myself. So let’s go back to the beginning, or as near to it as I can get.”

  He settled into a sing-song, story-telling style of voice as he continued.

  “I was in Aberdeen at the University Library a few weeks back, doing some research when I first got a clue there was something amiss. I overheard two young students talking about a lost fishing boat; I believe one of them had a relative aboard the boat and was worried for their safety. However, these things happen at sea, so I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later that night in my hotel bar I got chatting to a chap who knew the story.

  “That’s when things started to get interesting. Apparently, there’s been a spate of boats going missing these past two years, and the local consensus is that it’s all been since a new rig went up. Of course fishermen being fishermen, there are as many theories as there are herring and, short of any tangible proof of any kind, the authorities, not keen on upsetting the money men in the oil business, were willing to sweep everything under the carpet as a series of unfortunate, yet coincidental, accidents. I, however, have good reason to think otherwise.”

  He paused, patting at his pockets as if looking for something.

  “Is that it? You’ve got us out here because of a story you heard in a bar? I heard some tales about Sweaty Betty, the bike of Balloch in the mess last night, but I didn’t go jetting off to Loch Lomond in search of her today. Although maybe I should have, eh? Might have been more fun than this shite. Is that really all you’ve got?”

  “Wiggo?” the captain said, making the corporal turn and look at him. “Shut the fuck up for once.”

  Seton hadn’t taken offence, and even smiled. He’d taken a pipe from his pocket and although he hadn’t lit it, was chewing away at the stem with what appeared to be pleasure.

  “Of course that isn’t all,” he said softly. “Give me time, I’ll get ‘round to it at my own pace if you give me time. We’ve got a few hours until we reach our destination, so settle down and I’ll tell you a story.”

  “So it’s fucking Jackanory now, is it?” Wiggo muttered, but kept it to little more than a whisper so as not to draw the captain’s attention again.

  Seton continued after another chew at his pipe stem.

  “You lads who met me before know of my peculiar enthusiasms, of course. This old brain has been filled with curios and nonsense for a great many years, all rattling around in there like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. And all the talk of disappearing boats struck a chord in me, found a piece that fit onto another piece and dredg
ed up some even older research I’d been working on and abandoned many years ago.

  “The chill, grey waters of the North Sea have long been notorious. Boats have been getting lost there for centuries, millennia even. Who knows how many dead lie in the cold depths and what stories they might tell if they could be persuaded? But to return directly to the topic at hand; my particular area of interest, as you know, is in the cryptozoological, and in aquatic beasties in particular.”

  “Tell us the one about Thor and the fishing boat, go on…you know you want to,” Wiggo said.

  “You’re better educated than you pretend to be, Corporal. But that story is also germane…it might even have come from a memory of the same beast.”

  “Don’t bother trying to flatter me,” Wiggo muttered, “you’re not my type.” But again so low and under his breath that this time no one paid him any heed.

  “Another visit to the University Library, then to the private collection in the crypts of St. Giles Cathedral quickly brought back to my memory the story that had been eluding me. It dates back all the way to just after the Norman conquest, and the fortification of Dunnottar Castle down in Stonehaven. Much quarrying was required, and many boats arrived and departed up and down the coast with supplies for the work. Some of them never arrived in port, and a story quickly spread of a sea-serpent. There were no conflicting rumors or theories this time; it was a general consensus, which in itself is somewhat remarkable.

  “I found a contemporary description in St. Giles, and I’d like to read it to you; it’s in cod-Latin, but I’ve translated as best as I am able.”

  He took out a single sheet of paper and read.

  “It was a hideous thing, full half-a-league in length and broader in girth than the hull of our ship. Its head was similar to that of a great horse, with a mouth of teeth each as long as a man and as sharp as any axe. Silver it was, and gold and yellow and green all at once and all a-shimmer in the sun. It came up out of the sea like a leaping salmon and landed squarely on top of us. And it sang, a mournful thing like a dirge, as if in sorrow at the carnage it wrought. Of a crew of thirty, mere twa o’ us survived to tell the tale.”

  Seton folded the paper and put it back in his breast pocket.

  “Is that it?” Wiggo said and laughed. “An auld wifie’s story is all you’ve got? Best get that whisky in now, man; I think you need it more than us.”

  Seton waited until the laughter of the other’s had died down before replying, and when he did, his tone was solemn.

  “No, Corporal, that is not all I’ve got, unfortunately. With regard to that story, I could take you to a wee kirk near Stonehaven where you can still read the gravestones that mark where the men from that boat are interred; several of them even show depictions of the serpent, just as the writer described it. But germane to my story as it is, the history is not why you are here.

  “You’re here because last night, at nine o’clock, something hit one of the oil rigs out to the north and east of us here. A man who happened to be looking the right way at the right time reported seeing, and I quote verbatim as it was said to me on the phone,‘… a bloody enormous fucking snakey thing, green and silver and gold all at once. And do you want to hear the strangest thing? The bloody beastie was singing.’”

  2

  Captain Banks had been watching Seton closely. The wee man seemed sincere enough and didn’t appear to be trying to yank their chains but even despite everything they’d encountered and seen these recent years, Banks was still having trouble believing the tale.

  “So it’s what, exactly? A thousand-year-old beastie that just happens to be back now?”

  Seton shrugged.

  “It appears so. I might conjecture it has something to do with a renewed period of drilling in that particular area, a disturbance that might mirror the quarrying done at Dunnottar all those years ago, but that would only be conjecture.”

  “In that case,” Banks continued, “I’ve got another question or you. I understand the rig managers being concerned about something strange happening at the rig. But why you? How did you get to be the one involved enough to be able to persuade our colonel to send us?

  Seton tapped the side of his nose and smiled.

  “I ken a man who kens a man. One of the benefits of a great age spent mixing with people who mix in the corridors of power. Besides, you got the job done at Loch Ness… I knew immediately this was something you should be involved in.”

  “Don’t do us any more favors, would you not?” Wiggo said bitterly. The corporal stood and left before Seton could reply, and Banks let him go; Wiggo wasn’t the only one who’d mourned for the loss of their previous corporal on the shores of Loch Ness.

  Banks turned his attention to Seton.

  “So you’ve got us here. What do you expect us to do? Short of hiring a sub and roaming the seas, I don’t see that there’s much we can do.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to go searching, Captain,” Seton replied. “I think it’ll come to us. They’ve already started drilling again as of about an hour ago. If my hunch is right, whatever’s down there will be coming up again for another look.”

  It appeared Seton had said all there was to say. Banks addressed the squad.

  “Looks like it’s another monster hunt, lads,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to offer beyond what the man here said; we’ll get to the rig and see what’s what. We’ll have to plan this one as it comes. We’ve got a couple of hours sailing before that, so take a breather or get your heads down. Report back here at fourteen hundred hours; we should be getting close by then.”

  Banks waited until the men had dispersed then followed Seton as they went back up on deck. Wiggo was just finishing a smoke; he flipped the still glowing butt overboard and walked away, head down, without acknowledging either Banks or Seton.

  Banks took a cigarette from Seton when the older man offered.

  “He blames me for the Loch Ness thing, doesn’t he?” Seton said.

  “No, that’s not it. He blames himself, the same way I do. Losing a man is tough. Losing a friend is tougher. Then, just when you think you might have put it behind you, a face from the past pops up and the memories…and emotions…come back as if they’ve never been gone.”

  Seton nodded.

  “I know that for myself from bitter experience. But I meant what I said back there—the things we saw at Loch Ness might be useful in figuring out what is going on here.”

  Banks remembered the house on the lochside, the nightmare descent into the bowels of the earth and the magical practices they’d uncovered.

  “There’s no mumbo-jumbo involved, is there? A big beastie I can handle but all that pseudo-mystical bollocks can go fuck itself.”

  Seton shrugged again.

  “With cryptozoological beasts such as this one, there is always an almost mythical element; what we carry in our heads and hearts becomes reflected in the physical environment and is made real in many cases.”

  Banks laughed.

  “See, pseudo-mystical bollocks. I knew it.”

  Seton had the good grace to laugh in return.

  “I cannot promise you a one hundred percent physically real beastie,” he said. “But I can promise to keep out of your way until we are sure one way or the other. Please don’t discount my expertise just because it doesn’t fit your personal mental construct, Captain. It might get us both killed.”

  Even as Seton spoke, Banks was remembering times when reality had seemed malleable—in the Amazon with snakes who might be people or people who might be snakes, in Antarctica with a flying saucer that thrummed with a power sufficient to revive the dead, and, of course, on Loch Ness, where the same wee man that stood before him now had shown himself capable of using a magic ritual to soothe a savage beast.

  “I’ll return a promise to you then,” Banks said. “You watch our backs, and I promise to watch yours.”

  They stood smoking in silence for a while looking out over the North Sea, each lost
in thought. It was a chill, grey day despite it being only August, the promise of autumnal winds and swell to come already evident across the face of the water. Banks’ recent adventures in the heat of the Congo seemed farther than a world away and he pulled his jacket tight around his chest as a fresh breeze threatened to cut him in two.

  “Discretion is the better part of valor in this weather,” he said, more to himself than to Seton, but the older man seemed to agree, and they went back together to the coffee room. All of the other members of the squad were already there around the small table playing three card brag for cigarettes. As usual, Sergeant Hynd was winning, and Banks knew better than to get involved when the sarge was on a streak; it had taken him years of bitter experience to gain that solitary bit of wisdom. He could only hope the other lads didn’t take that long to gain it for themselves; there might not be enough cigarettes in the world.

  Over the next few hours, he was proved right—the sarge accumulated smokes on his side of the table while emptying the others out; young Wilkins got wiped out first, then Davies. Wiggo held on pluckily but in the end, the sarge was able to squirrel away all four packs that had been on the table. The game had been of some use though, for Wiggo seemed to be back to his old self.

  “Hey, wee man,” he said, addressing Seton. “Any chance of an advance on that whisky? I’m gasping here.”

  Seton surprised them by reaching into his inside pocket and bringing out a hip flask.

  “I never leave home without it,” he said, smiling. “Slainte.”

  He passed the flask to Wiggins who took a long gulp then passed it on. Both privates turned it down, but first the sarge and then Banks took slugs of their own. He knew as soon as it touched his lips it was the best quality stuff, going down smooth like warm honey and immediately bringing a glow to his belly that quickly spread out; the water of life indeed. Banks had a look at the flask before handing it back. It looked old, burnished silver at a guess, and carved with an intricate depiction of a serpent eating its own tail. He raised an eyebrow as he passed it back to Seton. The smaller man smiled again.