Operation: Yukon

- 6 -

The wind was against us. As soon as she opened the door, we got hit in the face by biting snow and a gale that wanted to strip skin off our cheeks. I pulled my jacket hood tight around my ears, got the goggles down and leaned into the storm.

We stepped out into darkness. There was a small single light above the door but it barely penetrated into the night. I turned in time to see the cap and Davies close the door at our backs then we were alone with the elements and whatever beasties were prowling in them.

I switched on the sight light on my rifle; it proved to be good for lighting up the ground at my feet and not much else. If the beasties were watching us at this point there was no way we were going to see them coming. I felt vulnerable and exposed, neither of which were much fun.

The sheriff appeared to be feeling the same way. She moved quickly away from under the doorway light, hugging the wall and going right towards the corner that would, hopefully, give us a view of our targets. She moved easily and carefully, like a soldier in fact. I was almost certain she’d been military at some point in the past, she had that feel radiating from her. I hoped to get a chance to ask her later, but for now all our concentration was on reaching the corner without anything taking note of us.

It was a long thirty seconds, expecting an attack out of the whiteout at any second. But none came. The sheriff stopped us by putting up a hand inches in front of my face so I couldn’t fail to see it. She leaned forward and peered round the corner, then raised her hand again, three fingers… three targets. Without speaking she indicated that she’d take the middle, I was to take the right and Wilko the left. I was now in no doubt; she’d definitely been military… and used to being in charge.

We stepped out into the open in unison as if we’d trained together for it.

The wind came from my back now and it swirled around the side of the station such that it created a clear view all along that length of wall. Wolves felt like too small a word for the three things we saw digging at the ground some twenty feet ahead of us; they were bigger than most horses, shaggy around the shoulders and silver gray at the flanks with long bushy tails and snouts full of far too many teeth. If the sheriff was impressed by their sheer animal magnetism, she gave no sign. She raised her weapon and Wilko and I followed suit.

I don’t know what gave her pause; I didn’t have her down as the sentimental sort, but she hesitated when I expected her to shoot and she surprised me by shouting out, as if addressing a stray dog.

“Hey, you, get away from there.”

The wolves turned as one to stare at us. I had a sudden glimpse of rage-filled red eyes, then the nearer of the beasts leapt, from a standing start into the jump that had it coming right at us.

Luckily for me young Wilko was on the ball. He put three rounds into its head. It barely slowed the thing’s momentum, but at least it was dead when it reached us and I was able to step sharply aside and let it fall into a heap at my feet. When I looked along the wall again it was to notice that the other two had taken the chance to slink off into the storm; there was nothing for me to shoot at.

Wilko kicked at the dead beast with the toe of his boot.

“Hey, Sarge, cop a look at this shite.”

He aimed his gun-light down to the mess that was all that remained of its head. Just behind that, where the neck met the shoulders, something blinked red. Wilko used his barrel to move the mane of hair aside and revealed an elaborate metal collar. Two LED lights blinked from a small black box that appeared to be attached… fused… to the dead beast’s spine.

“Fetch that along with us, Wilko,” I said. “Dig it out if you have to. The cap will want to see it.”

I covered him while he bent to the task, watching the front. Sheriff Sue had our backs, rifle raised. I had questions for her but they’d have to wait. The wind leeched the heat out of me; I felt it bite at my legs and I was starting to lose feeling in my feet.

“How’s it going, Wilko?” I shouted. “If we stay out here much longer my balls are going to drop off.”

“Mine already have,” Sheriff Sue shouted, just as Wilko stood with a bloody collar dripping red onto the snow.

“Got it, Sarge.”

Two minutes later we were back inside the station and my feet started to complain as heat replaced cold.

I lit a much needed smoke and accepted a coffee from the cap. He had the good grace to let me make inroads in both before expecting me to report. Not that there was much to say in any case; all I had to do was show him the blood-crusted collar, the twin LEDs still blinking.

He turned it over in his hands, made about as much sense of it as I had, then strode over to Watkins.

“So what the fuck is this then?” he said, dropping the still-dripping collar in the man’s lap. Watkins looked down at it but didn’t move to touch it.

“Behavioural modification,” he said. “I told you, Masterton was trying to teach them.”

“What, fetch, roll over, play fucking dead, that kind of thing?” I asked.

Watkins looked at me. There was no smile on his face.

“Hunting techniques, group cooperation and efficient means of catching prey, that kind of thing. The plan was to breed an army, not a petting zoo,” he said. He nodded to the collar. “They all had these…even the big male.”

“Big male?” the cap asked. “There’s a bigger one of these fuckers?”

“Of course there fucking is, Cap. There’s always a bigger one. We’re the S-Squad…that’s how this shite works, isn’t it?” I said, and this time Watkins did laugh.

“Just pray you never meet him; he’s a mean big bastard that one.”

I patted my rifle.

“I’ll see if he can play fetch with a few rounds from this.”

Watkins wasn’t smiling when he replied.

“You’re going to need a bigger gun.”

I caught up with Sheriff Sue when she finished another round of the townspeople. There had been no noise save that of the storm from outside since we returned and a stoical calm had descended on the folks gathered in the station.

“I’ve told them there’s a rescue coming,” she said. “That hope should keep panic at bay, for a while at least.”

“Speaking of panic,” I said, keeping my voice low so that her people wouldn’t hear me, “What was that about out there? You got yon beast’s attention right enough, but it nearly had me for supper. Why didn’t you shoot?”

“You ever had a dog, Sergeant?”

I nodded.

“Then you know why,” she said. It seemed she was more sentimental than I’d thought, and I wasn’t going to get any more of an answer for Jennings arrived just then with a face like thunder.

“I need a word with you,” he said. “And I need it right now.”

It had been coming for a while, we both knew that, but even as I took him aside to the farthest corner from the rest of the squad, I still didn’t know what I was going to say to him. I needn’t have worried overmuch about that, for he had plenty to say for himself first.

“I’m a good soldier,” he said. “You’d ken that if you bothered to read my sheet instead of strutting around with a pole up your arse. I’m your new corporal, like it or lump it, and I can’t have you showing me up in front of the privates. I won’t have it.”

“‘I won’t have it, Sergeant,’ is what you meant to say, isn’t it?” I said, leaning in close so that we were almost nose to nose. “If you want to be this squad’s corporal you need to fucking start acting like it. You can begin by stopping whining. I’m not here to wipe your arse and blow your nose for you. Away hame to your mammie if that’s what you’re after. Step up or step out.”

To his credit he didn’t back off, not at first.

“I just want some respect around here,” he said.

“Then fucking earn it. That’s how it works in this squad.”

“How am I to do that when you take the wee poof instead of me?”

I had his bollocks in my grip before he knew what was going on. He had his back to the room, so nobody saw; I didn’t want to humiliate him, just teach him a lesson. I squeezed, hard.

“You forget too quickly,” I said. “I’ve told you already about that mouth of yours. Respect works two ways. You don’t have mine and you’ve got a fuck of a long way to go if we’re to get there. Now fuck off out of my sight unless you want to be a eunuch.”

Thankfully he had enough smarts to fuck off when told for my blood was up and I can’t always trust myself in times like that. The cap caught my eye from across the room and raised an eyebrow. I showed him an okay sign and headed back over to the coffee machine for another smoke.

It was going to be a long night.

I found both privates, Wilko and Davies, working on the blooded collar. The red LEDs had stopped blinking, mainly because the wee black box was now in bits on the table the lads worked on.

“So what does it do?” I asked.

Wilko replied.

“Far as we can tell it works by radio. A broadcast sends a message that causes a wee electrical shock to run out and into the spine of the beasties.”

“Electro-shock therapy?”

“Exactly. Pain or reward depending on response I’d guess. Pretty simple stuff. I’d have expected something more high-tech.”

Davies laughed.

“Remember, this is British government boffins we’re talking about. Bodge-jobs-r-us.”

“So this broadcast? Where’s it coming from?”

“The research station, far as I can tell,” Wilko replied.

“Could we bypass it, tap in and send our own commands to the beasties? Tell them to fuck off?”

I only meant it half-seriously, but Wilko took me at my word.

“Davies and I will see what we can do, Sarge,” he replied.