Chapter Eight - The Colonel's Very Bad Day

Herr Oberst arrives at Tordvastnet, and receives very bad news.

The Colonel stood motionless as Tracey Gibson recounted the previous day’s events. There was no possible way that Wolfgang could have prevented the disaster, he knew that. Still, he was furious, but he could not lose his composure, nor could he take it out on his staff. It would take too much time to track down and train replacements.

“Altogether, we have lost twenty-seven lives, sir.” Tracey watched his face for a response. He gave none. “They were mostly local diggers and a few hired hands, but still lives. Unfortunately our key excavation team did not survive either. We found Wolfgang and Olivia a few miles away from the site. They had attempted to flee across the lake on a snowmobile, but whatever it was, it was faster.” Her voice wavered as she recalled her lost friends, scattered across the ice in a mess of blood and entrails. Her blood ran cold at the memory.

“Take me to the site.”

“Sir, it’s not secure.” Tracey objected sharply. The Colonel assumed that her heritage had given her some degree of self importance that had misled her to think that she somehow had the authority to override his command. The truth was that she was simply too afraid to go back there.

“Miss Gibson, did you see me disembark alone?”

Tracey realised she had made a mistake. “No, sir. I did not.” Her hands dropped limply to her sides. “I did not mean to ...” 

He raised a finger to his lips as he stepped nearer and she fell silent. “Miss Gibson. Take solace in the fact that I did not bring with me any replacements.” Tracey’s blood ran cold as she took heed of his warning. She and her crew were expendable and only worth keeping around because he did not have time to recruit replacements. Another more startling revelation came to her as he she glanced up into his eyes. “Yes.” He answered her unspoken question, and turned away from her.  “Now, take me to the site.”

A hundred metres away in the landing zone, a platoon of soldiers was disembarking a massive 
Mi-26 Heavy Transport helicopter, followed by civil hands offloading equipment. Tracey noted that one piece of equipment was the Halifax-01A-Compact, a heavy duty ice-cutting laser. She had seen its big brother only once before, when it was used to cut through glacier ice in Greenland. It was rumoured to be able to cut cleanly through ice up to a kilometre thick, or rock up to 300 metres in less than an hour. The Compact was not nearly as powerful, but was powerful enough to penetrate ice up to 100 meters thick. Other equipment she saw was foreign to her. There were at least three dozen medical containment tubes, and some other hi-tech stuff the likes of which she had never seen before.

There was a rumble and a C-14 Ice Rover rolled up to them. It had arrived a little after the first Mi-26. The large vehicle ran on a quartet of tracks much like tank tracks, and consisted of a drivers cab and a passengers cab big enough to house a family SUV. At the rear of the vehicle a steel step ladder descended and a door opened above it. Briefly a soldier appeared in the doorway dressed in snow camo, then disappeared inside. The Colonel reached up and took hold of the ladder, then hopped up onto the lowermost rung. He began to climb steadily until he reached the top and stepped inside. Tracey turned to see that nobody else was in a hurry to follow him. D****t. She reached up and grabbed a rung to follow the Colonel. 

The cab was warm. The Colonel sat in a single butterfly chair on the far left of the cab, while the remaining seats were simple padded benches. Tracey selected a seat she felt was the furthest from him, and sat down. She sat in stilted silence as the remaining passengers boarded. She didn’t dare meet his gaze again and chose rather to cast her gaze out the window. Her window looked out across the frozen lake, and in the distance she could make out the feint shape of the mountainside near the opposite shore. The last passenger, a short Russian man called Vladimir pulled the door closed with a dull thud, turned the latch and sat down. Tracey watched him shift in his seat until he was comfortable. 

The cab lurched, groaned and settled. The driver had started the vehicle in gear. A moment later it lurched again, but much less harshly and settled into a steady groan and shudder. The groan was deep and soon turned into a low grumble as the machine began to move. The mechanical behemoth trundled along in a long, shuddering line until it reached the edge of the lake. The cab tilted to the right as the vehicle turned left and proceeded to trace the shoreline of the lake. Behind them Tracey watched as a smaller vehicle moved onto the surface of the lake, carrying with it the Compact. Why were they going that way?

“You seem uncomfortable Miss Gibson.” Vladimir called across the cabin. He smiled a friendly smile. She bit.

“What gave it away?” she said through a dry smile. Her attempt at humour would have seemed sarcastic to anyone else, but Vladimir smiled back at her. She had met him some months before when they had arrived together at the base camp. He had come as a technical advisor from Moscow. At the time she had regarded him as a token rusky, sent along by the company to let Russia think the financiers gave a damn about their contribution to anything. But she had since learned by experience that he was so much more. He was small in stature but his intellect was larger than life.

“Coffee?” he said, holding out a flask. 

The soldier on board looked alarmed, and moved to take it from him. Clearly Vladimir had not cleared it with captain itchy pants. The Colonel cleared his throat and the soldier stood down.

Tracey took the flask and thanked Vladimir. She twisted the cup off the base of the flask and flicked open the pressure seal at the top. Her eyes flicked up to see Vladimir smiling, then back at her cup as she filled it with hot coffee. She then pressed the pressure cap closed with her thumb and slid the cylinder between her thighs and sat back in her seat. Over the rim of her cup she watched as the other passengers in the cab rocked side to side and stared blankly out the windows.

“Where did they go?” she asked, looking directly at the Colonel.

“Preparations.” He answered flatly.

“For what?” 

“You will see soon enough.”

Before she could press the matter, the satellite telephone rang and Captain Itchy-Pants answered it.

“Blake.” He said. So that was his name. Blake who, or who Blake? Someone spoke on the other end of the line, and his expression changed. As he listened, his eyes flickered toward the Colonel, and then to the floor. “Understood. I will tell him.” He cut the call and sighed.

“What is it, Captain?” The Colonel said, straightening up in his seat.

“Sir, Herryn is dead.” The soldier said quietly.

The Colonel’s face flushed with anger, and his eyes shifted to a deep purple. Tracey gasped and backed into her seat, as the others did the same. A single tear welled in the Colonel’s eye, but did not fall. He closed his eyes and took in a long, deep breath. His colour returned and he opened his eyes again. “How?” 

“They do not know exactly, but it seems he was killed in a suburban house. His head was crushed like an egg.” The soldier looked up at the Colonel. “They say the girl was not there, and there appears to be some manner of altercation.” The Captain swallowed hard and continued, “Could she have done this? Does she know?”

“That, Captain, is none of your concern.” His eyes flicked to Tracey and back to the Captain, “We will proceed as planned. I will deal with the girl when the time comes.” 

“Yes, Sir.”

Tracey sat rigid in her chair as it suddenly became painfully clear that this was not going to end well for her. This was not just some rich guy throwing his weight around, but, it was something much worse. What scared her the most was that she had no idea just what the hell was going on.

Tracey drained the last drop of coffee from the cup and screwed it back to the bottom of the flask, then handed the flask back to Vladimir. She nodded her thanks and he smiled in return. He slipped the flask back into the small backpack he always carried with him. Tracey returned her gaze to the cold, unfeeling landscape.