Operation: Siberia

- 22 -

Banks peered, trying to make out movement or a darker shadow, but there was only the shifting fog. The sniffing came again, followed by a loud whuff; not laughter this time, but obviously disgust. Banks resist the impulse to switch on his light as his grip tightened on his rifle. He remembered the musty odor of the Alma, but couldn’t smell it or taste it in his throat now over the stench of the dung in the hollow. But he knew it was out there, somewhere just beyond the limits of his vision.

And it was hunting.

The snuffle came again, quickly followed by another snort of disgust, then splashing, fading, as the Alma retreated from the smell. Banks let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, and forced his fingers to relax where they gripped the rifle. His gut had been right—again. The smell of the dung had forced the Alma to retreat. Whether it would also work on the cave lion wasn’t something he hoped to find out.

The night drew on. The squad stood guard, but nothing else disturbed the silence for several hours. After a while, Banks had Wiggins go through the kit bag and distribute field rations—the automatic-warming packets of soup were a welcome respite against the damp. He allowed the men a smoke, guessing that the stench of the dung was more than enough to mask their tobacco, then had Wiggins and McCally stand down to get some sleep while he and Hynd maintained the watch.

He cleared his mind, searching for the watchful state he knew of old, where he would be able to achieve some rest while maintaining a state of alertness. It was a condition honed by years spent on duty, many of them much more perilous than this particular foxhole. But his foes then had been human, in the main, and he knew how men’s minds worked, could anticipate them. With these beasts, he was operating blind, both figuratively and literally, although that was starting to change.

He noticed it first when the green tinge faded. Then he heard the first noise for more than an hour, not a snuffle, but a soft trumpeting somewhere off to his left. He looked that way, and noted a thinning of the fog. Looking up, he saw stars twinkle overhead, Orion striding across the sky. Part of him welcomed the lifting of what had felt like an oppressive blanket. But now he felt exposed, more so when he realized their position, although in a hollow, was in a wide expanse of open moorland with no other cover for hundreds of yards around.

But at least nothing’s going to sneak up on us.

The domed complex sat, a darker shadow framed against the skyline. There was no sign of any movement, not any sound of lion or Alma. He looked for the source of the trumpeting, but if the mammoth were close by, he could not see them in the dark. The whole tundra plain seemed quiet and asleep.

The attack came from Hynd’s side ten minutes later.

“We’ve got incoming, Cap,” the sarge said. “Three of the big orange fuckers, at fifty yards and closing. They’ve clocked our position.”

Banks kicked McCally where he slept, almost standing up, against the side of the hollow. The corporal came awake immediately.

“Get Wiggo up then stand with the sarge,” Banks said. “We’ve got trouble.”

Banks stayed at his post while McCally, and then Wiggins, moved quickly to cover the sarge’s position. He knew better than to have all four of them looking one way at the same time; the Alma had already proved themselves to be sneaky. There was no sense in giving them another opportunity to show it.

He heard the sarge shouting. “Fire!” A volley of shots rang out.

“One down,” Wiggins shouted, then they all fired again.

The shots rang and echoed around them, then all went quiet.

“Two down, one buggered off, but I think I winged it,” McCally said.

A wail rose over the tundra, high and wild.

It was answered by a chorus of howls that came from all parts of the compass.

“Fuck me, there’s hundreds of them,” Wiggins said.

As if a silent command ran through them, the Alma attacked, all at once, coming from all sides. They heard them before they saw them, splashing their way through the bogs, hooting and wailing. Banks had once seen a tribe of chimpanzees on a hunt in a television documentary, and this had the same frenzied yet at the same time totally controlled quality to it. Every fiber of him wanted to start firing, but the range was too far; the beasts had already shown an ability to take a shot and keep coming. He’d have to let them get close.

Perhaps too close.

“Steady, lads,” he called out. “When it comes down to it, we’re holding all the cards here; they’re not armed. So take them down, but pick your shots. Short, controlled bursts.”

Then it was all done to muscle memory and control. The Alma came on, charging through the boggy ground, and into view, firstly as darker shadows against the background, then close enough that Banks saw their teeth, too white in the darkness. He waited until the first was within twenty yards, then put it down with two shots to the head.

The rest kept coming. Wiggins had overestimated with his ‘hundreds,’ but there were a dozen and more just in Banks’ field of view, and he guessed the same number again coming from each side. Then all of the squad opened fire at once, the crack of rifles echoing loud across the tundra under the stars. Banks put down two more, one big male who took four rounds to stop, and a female with a pendulous belly who only needed one, through the mouth and out the back of her head in a spray of blood and brains.

He looked quickly for another shot to take, but as quickly as they had appeared, the beasts retreated away into the dark, leaving their dead where they lay. Behind Banks, the rifles of the rest of the squad fell silent.

The first rock came out of the dark seconds later.

He didn’t see it coming. It dropped out of the sky and landed three feet in front of Banks with a muddy thud that sent black ooze splashing over his head and torso.

“Heads down, lads. We’ve got incoming.”

He slid down the wall of the hollow, so that only his head was above ground level, just enough to see any attack, aware that at any moment a rock might fall out of the sky. More stones fell around them, the patter and thud as they hit the wet ground sounding like the beat of a manic drummer.

I was wrong about them not having any weapons. And right about them being sneaky fuckers.

They couldn’t do anything but crouch down in the hollow as the bombardment continued; waiting and hoping a lucky strike wouldn’t crush a head or break a bone. Two rocks, each the size of rugby balls, landed inside their perimeter, one of either side of Galloway’s legs. The scientist scurried out of the bottom of the hole to lie next to Banks.

“Just in case they’re getting their aim in,” he said. Banks looked over at the man, and realized he could see him much more clearly than just minutes earlier.

Far to the east, dawn was coming, lightening the sky.

He wasn’t sure he welcomed the clarity it would bring, as another rock fell with a wet splash, less than a foot from his nose.