Operation: Yukon

- 1 -

So there I was, newly promoted Sergeant Wiggins but with no time to celebrate. We’d only been back at base a day when the Canadian distress call had us in transit faster than shite off a shovel. I had a plane to catch, a squad to get kitted out, a best man’s speech to write and, to cap it all, I found that my newly appointed corporal was a right tosser.

Let’s deal with the tosser first. The colonel passed him on to the cap who passed him on to me. I didn’t know anything about him beyond that he’d come up from Edinburgh that morning and that he’d done a recent tour of duty somewhere in the Middle East. It didn’t take me long to learn most of what I needed to know though. It wasn’t love at first sight. He had one of those supercilious grins that set my teeth on edge straight away, his handshake was too warm, too soft, and his first words to me in the locker room were, “Are those two privates going to give me any trouble? I’ve never worked with a darkie and a poof before.”

It took him a wee while to catch his breath after I’d smacked him against the wall a couple of times but at least I’d managed to wipe the smile from his face. He tried to say something but I had him by the throat and only a thin whistle came out, although his eyes told me he wasn’t particularly happy.

“Listen, lad,” I said. “This is my first day as full sergeant and you’re new here, so I’ll cut you some slack, just this once. Both of those privates have saved my life several times and I’ll put my arse on the line for them any day of the week. Davies is black because he was born that way, Wilko is gay for the same reason. But you’re a big-mouthed shite because nobody’s ever taught you any better. So this is me teaching you now. Disrespect those lads and you’re disrespecting the squad. I don’t stand for that. See this grip on your throat here? It could just as easily be your balls. This is your one and only warning. You hear me?”

He only nodded so I got in his face again although I released my grip on him just a tad.

“What did you say, Corporal Jennings? I didn’t hear you.”

“I hear you, Sergeant,” he replied. At least he had the balls to look me in the eye this time.

“Good lad,” I replied and patted his cheek none too softly. “The first round’s on you when we get back, and I’ll be having a double.”

I left him to it and headed for the stores where Wilko and Davies were waiting. Jennings followed me, keeping his distance behind which was just fine by me. I made sure everyone was kitted up—winter gear was what the cap had said, then we went through to the mess for some breakfast and a briefing. The cap kept it short, we all ate enough to fuel a small army, then it was down to Glasgow by chopper to catch our connecting flight to Canada.

Jennings at least had the sense to keep his mouth shut for most of the journey. He had a face on him like a skelped arse all the way though and he hardly spoke a word on the long, long flight out of Glasgow to Edmonton.

When I wasn’t trying to get some kip, I spent most of the flight playing three card brag with the lads. Neither Wilko or Davies mentioned the new corporal but neither paid him any attention either, which told me that they’d already had a run in with him and had already made up their minds as to his character.

As for Jennings, he was still quiet by the time we transferred to the shorter haul flight up into the Yukon. After that a chopper took us north over increasingly bleak landscapes and came down in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. The captain took me aside as we disembarked at what passed for an airstrip in these parts. There were no buildings apart from a small cabin that had a black SUV parked beside it with the keys in the ignition. There was no one around. Snow was already swirling around us in a stiff wind and the cap had to shout to be heard.

“Yon new lad’s a bit quiet,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“He’ll speak when he’s got something useful to contribute,” I replied, and there must have been something in my voice for I got the cap’s trademark raised eyebrow in answer, but he didn’t push me on it.

Jennings slowly started coming out of his shell in the hired SUV on the way north, asking questions he’d have known the answer to if he’d paid attention to the cap’s briefing back at base.

“So where are we going again?”

I was using up all my concentration trying to keep the SUV on the road in what was quickly turning into a blizzard and besides, the cap had more patience with daft questions than I, so I let him do the talking.

“Some kind of research station, that’s what the colonel said. A joint UK / Canadian team that’s got themselves into a spot of bother.”

“What kind of bother would that be?”

“Our kind of bother,” the captain replied. “Has to be, or they wouldn’t have sent for us.”

“What, big beasties and spooks? Look, I know this squad’s reputation, but surely you’re having me on?”

This time when the captain spoke it was quiet but with some force.

“Listen, lad, you’ve read the reports, you’ve had the briefings, you know the score. But if you don’t believe, you’re going to get yourself dead fast and maybe take some of us with you. So get with the program or get the fuck out of this car right now. This is no place for a fucking idiot.”

Jennings had enough sense to shut the fuck up again but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to stay quiet for too long; his kind never did.

As for me, I had a bugger of a headache from trying to peer into the snow to spot the tall snow-poles on the roadside. The SUV was plowing through the fine stuff on the road easy enough for now but there was no sign that anyone but us had been on this road for quite some time.

“How far are we going, Cap?” I asked.

“Another forty miles,” he said.

That gave me at least another hour of this shit, maybe an hour and a half. I yielded to the inevitable and lit up a cigarette, cracking my driver’s side window open just enough to let smoke out and not too much snow in.

We didn’t see any traffic in either direction for the next hour. The snow was getting deeper and wetter now, making it more difficult for the SUV to make headway and I was down to thirty m.p.h and slowing. I only stayed on the road due to the presence of the tall brightly marked poles that were proving to be a godsend. Even then I nearly had us in the deep stuff when Jennings shouted out behind me, almost in my ear.

“Fuck me, did you see that?”

I decided not to stop as the captain turned. I saw in my mirror that our new corporal was staring out the driver’s side window in the rear. His face had gone ashen and his eyes were wide.

“What, lad, what did you see?”

Jennings shook his head.

“I’m not sure, sir; it was big, and moving fast, parallel to us, as if tracking us, just off road in the trees there.”

I chanced a look to my left, but saw only the trees some ten feet away on the other side of a ditch that was almost filled with fresh snow. As far as I could tell there was no sign of footprints. But the cap wasn’t taking anything for granted.

“Probably a moose; this area’s hoaching with them so they say. But shout out if you see it again,” he said.

“Aye. But maybe no’ quite so loud next time,” I added before returning to concentrate on the driving. Now I had two things to worry about: the snow and something that might be in it. Alongside that I was forced to slow even further, barely making twenty miles an hour, wipers going like the clappers, driving through a snowglobe shaken by an angry toddler.

“There’s a town ahead five miles before the research station,” the cap said. “Can we make that?”

I thought even that might be pushing our luck but we didn’t come all this way to sit in an SUV with our thumbs up our arses. I plowed on as darkness fell around us, just to make things more interesting for me. I switched the headlights on full. Thankfully the snow-poles were fitted with reflectors that showed up almost golden marking our way but even then I was only seeing maybe twenty or thirty yards ahead at any given moment.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Mayston it was full dark, the SUV was making five miles per hour at best and I knew this was the end of the line, for tonight at least. But that was the least of our worries. We’d been told the job was at the research station, but through the horizontally blowing snow, we saw that the town was in trouble.

The first indication was the burned out, still smoking shell of what used to be a gas station. The second, on the other side of what passed for a central square in the small town, was the local supermarket; the lights were on but the big glass frontage windows were mostly lying in shards on the sidewalk. Two, very dead people lay amid the broken glass, their blood looking black in the harsh lights where it lay on the snow.

I took it very slowly almost in the middle of the road but there was no chance of us getting in the way of any traffic; we were the only thing moving.

“Pull over, Wiggo,” the cap said. “We’re not going to get much farther in this shite anyway so we may as well see what the story is here. There might be folks needing our help by the looks of it.”

I pulled over into the supermarket parking lot beside a pickup that sat with its door open and the engine still running. When I cut our engine, we heard the pickup’s radio over the sound of the wind, some soft-rock thing I didn’t recognise.

“All ashore who’s going ashore,” I said and pushed the button to open the rear of the SUV. The cap got out and kitted up first then watched our backs as we followed suit. Luckily we’d brought the right gear for the weather; our rifles, of course, along with thick parkas with fur-lined hoods, gloves and goggles being the order of the day. Our packs weren’t overly heavy on this trip; we weren’t carrying much in the way of food apart from the absolutely necessary stove, kettle and cups to brew up coffee and we had none of the camping gear. I’d used that fact to load up with extra ammo and I knew the privates had followed suit. We left some of the kit behind; even more ammo in the main, the body bags I always hoped we’d never need and some spare clothing, then the cap ordered a sweep of the area.

Looking at the carnage that had been wrought inside the supermarket I was thinking I’d made the right decision in bringing more ammo. The place looked like a tornado had swept through it, a bloody red one that had left spatter along the aisles, up the walls, even across the lights on the ceiling, lending everything a hellish pink glow. Cans, bottles, fruit and veg all lay strewn on the floor. The meat counter looked like a bomb had hit it, leaving only scraps and bone behind. The wind wasn’t doing much to dispel the stench of pish, shite, blood and death. Besides the two bodies on the sidewalk there were six more inside; four looked like shop workers, and two auld codgers who had got in the way of what looked to be a meat grinder, a faulty one that had thrown bits of flesh around like a chimp throwing shite. I’ve seen some heavy shit in my time but this bloody riot was close to turning my stomach. The cap didn’t help matters by bending down to one of the auld folks and asking me to join him for a closer look.

“What does this look like to you, Sarge?”

It looked like an unholy mess. The poor auld woman had been opened from groin to sternum. Most of her guts were on the outside, those that remained. Her ribs had been cracked open with some degree of force and it looked like she was missing a lung, her heart, and possibly her liver although she had been so badly torn up it was hard to tell.

“This is Grizzly country, isn’t it? Bear attack do you think?” I said.

“Possibly. And more than one of whatever they are, given the state of the place. What worries me though is the fact that they’re just lying here. Where’s the townsfolk? Where’s the law enforcement?”

Our new corporal was looking a bit green about the gills.

“If you’re going to spew, lad, do it outside. There might not be any cops here now, but this is still a crime scene.”

Jennings took a look at the body, dry-heaved and made for the fresh air. I motioned for Wilko to watch his back and turned back to the captain to ask for instructions. I didn’t get any, for just then the unmistakable sound of gunfire echoed from somewhere outside. At first I thought Jennings had walked into trouble, then I realised it was coming from farther away.

When we got to the sidewalk, Jennings was pointing into the blizzard off to his left.

“That way, Sarge,” he said. “I saw muzzle flashes.”

“Move out, double time,” the captain said.

We headed off into the snow at a run.