WITH KYM JORDAN

Andy McNab and Kym Jordan’s novels trace the interwoven stories of one platoon’s experience of warfare in the twenty-first century. Packed with the searing danger and high-octane excitement of modern combat, it also explores the impact of its aftershocks upon the soldiers themselves, and upon those who love them.

WAR TORN

Two tours of Iraq have shown Sergeant Dave Henley how modern battles are fought. But nothing could have prepared him for his posting to Afghanistan. This is a war zone like he’s never seen before.

BATTLE LINES

Sergeant Dave Henley returns from Afghanistan to find that home can be an equally searing battlefield. The promise of another posting to Helmand is almost a relief for the soldiers but, for their families, it is another opportunity for their lives to be ripped apart.

COLD BLOOD

Andy McNab

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Andy McNab 2016

Andy McNab has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473508675
ISBNs 9780593073803 (cased)
9780593073810 (tpb)

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1

Longyearbyen

Latitude: 78.2461 North

Longitude: 15.4656 East

The American gripped the armrest between us so fiercely with his gloved hand that I thought he was going to rip it from its moorings. ‘Holy Mother of fuck!’

He breathed rapidly through clenched teeth. His eyelids were clamped shut and, though the cabin was unheated, beads of sweat raced each other down his forehead. The heat supply was on the blink so we’d all kept our coats on. Mine was a thin duvet jacket with a high neck and sleeves. It wouldn’t be all I needed out on the ice, but you didn’t hear me complaining. His padded parka was fresh out of its wrapper and he had no hat under his hood, which told me he was an Arctic virgin. If you didn’t keep head, hands and feet warm, it would fuck you up just as much as the turbulence that was about to make the pilots fuck up our landing.

The wooden houses of Longyearbyen came into view below us, like brightly coloured decorations on a giant Christmas cake. Appearances could be deceptive from the air. This far north, I knew there’d be little more to the airport than a runway surrounded by peaks.

The ice-glazed tarmac leaped up to meet us as a fresh blast of wind buffeted the port wing. The starboard undercarriage of the Scandinavian Airways flight from the mainland slammed down, then bounced away and scrabbled for height.

A shout went up from the Russians a few rows in front of us. They immediately unbuckled so they could turn round and fuck about with their mates seated behind them. They’d been necking their vodka since take-off and were loving the rollercoaster ride. Engines screamed and the nose lifted sharply. We were climbing again. The ever-so-cool Danish flight attendants did their best to get them to buckle up, but their best wasn’t good enough.

Another air pocket dropped the aircraft twenty metres. The American’s hand shifted to my forearm and gripped it like he was about to pull the whole thing off at the elbow. I shifted sideways as the strip disappeared again beneath a wash of cloud. A fresh weather system was coming in fast, swatting the plane about like an invisible King Kong.

The sound system crackled as the captain blabbed on in Norwegian and Russian, but the shriek of the engines blotted out whatever he was saying. I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t do praying, but a voice inside my head demanded more flying and less talking, so the dickhead next to me would calm down and leave me the fuck alone.

‘I guess he’s making another circuit. Third time lucky, eh?’

The American’s head shot round towards me and his eyes snapped open. They were so wide apart they almost didn’t fit on his face. Surrounded by the fur ruff on his hood, they made him look like an owl. A very frightened owl. I might as well have told him, ‘Phone your loved ones. We’re going down.’

The engines were still at full throttle as we made a tight, steeply banked turn.

‘Jeez, I hate this shit. If God had meant us to fly he’d have—’

‘Given us jet packs.’

Then the plane stabilized and his grip relaxed. His mouth cracked into something approaching a grin as the blood supply returned to my fingers. ‘You Brits … The stiff upper lip thing, I envy you that.’ He patted my duvet-covered forearm.

The Owl had that cosy home-cooked apple-pie Midwest accent that would invite you into his home but not really mean it. He leaned closer, enveloping me in coffee breath with a hint of vomit. ‘I hate flying. I hate the cold.’ He nodded towards the front of the cabin as another yell exploded from the vodka-fuelled contingent. ‘But y’know what I hate most? Russians. Having to fly with these people just rubs our noses in it, don’t you think?’

I didn’t, but he took my silence as permission to continue.

‘Those guys, they’re headed to the coal mines. Svalbard is infested with them. The whole place is still owned by Russia. Work there is about ten rungs down from sewage collector, but the fuckers come in every spring, work like dogs, then drink their pay cheques through the winter. That’s if they don’t die in a gas blast or a cave-in.’

He shuddered.

‘You been to Barentsburg? No? Then thank your lucky stars. All they got there is one big hole in the ground, the hotel from Hell, with some Ukrainian skank if you get lonely, and an ER for when you try to leave without paying.’

He laughed. The Owl was obviously a man who was never ashamed to enjoy his own lame jokes.

‘And the coal is low-grade brown lignite they can’t sell for beans, so it’s starved of investment.’ He leaned close again. ‘They say there’s way more coin to be made there selling blow to the workforce.’

I raised my eyebrows enough to indicate the minimum possible interest. Whenever I was tempted to blank a talker, I remembered a lesson I’d learned the hard way: never discard information freely given – it sometimes came in handy later. Besides, right now any distraction was welcome.

‘You in oil?’

I shook my head.

‘Gas?’

Same again.

‘Me, I’m oil and gas. Not the shitty end of the stick – I do the legals. Contracts, negotiations, that kinda thing.’

He spread a vast paw across his laptop and let out another wheezy laugh. ‘This is my coalface. Out there …’ he waved towards the porthole ‘… is waaay out of my comfort zone.’

When it came to stating the blindingly obvious, this lad was way ahead of the field.

I had to ask. ‘So why you here, then?’

Spitsbergen was the only permanently populated island in the Svalbard archipelago, deep in the Arctic Circle. Longyearbyen, with just over two thousand inhabitants on a good day, was its biggest settlement – which made it the world’s most northern city, if you could call it that. Whatever, it was a fuck of a long way from Kansas.

He nodded at the icefields that reappeared fleetingly through a crack in the wall of cloud. ‘Forty per cent of the world’s untapped oil is sitting under that ice, my friend.’ He licked his very fleshy lips. ‘And that makes for a shitload of very expensive paperwork.’

He gestured in the direction of the partying Russians and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Gives the term “Cold War” a whole new meaning, don’t it?’

‘I guess.’

He was focusing on me now. ‘So what about you, my friend? Weather too warm for you in good old London Town?’

‘Vacation.’

He let out a series of staccato clucks that reminded me of a single-cylinder cement mixer on a building site where I’d once worked. ‘For real?’

I nodded, with more confidence than I felt. I could have said ‘job’, but that didn’t seem real either. Nothing much did right now.

Cauldwell’s call had jolted me out of the flat in Moscow where I’d been trying, and failing, to finish packing up our things. I’d got as far as putting Anna’s clothes into plastic charity sacks before I’d seen Mishka the teddy and crumpled onto Nicholai’s bed. I’d stayed there I don’t know how long, pinned down by the weight of pain and grief. My one-time CO’s voice had been an unexpectedly welcome escape. He didn’t explain how he’d got hold of my number, and I didn’t much care.

‘Stone? I’m calling in a favour.’

I didn’t ask what type of favour he thought he’d ever done me. After leaving the Regiment he’d set up a private security firm, as so many of them did, then sold it and invested in one that made kit for oil rigs, but hit a rock when the bottom dropped out of the crude market. Since then he’d been trying to claw his way back, touting himself around as a consultant, advising on security for companies mad enough to want to drill in war zones. Last I’d heard, he was doing the business for a Scandi energy company called Armancore.

‘I’ve got something for you – if you’re available.’

His tone suggested he knew I was, somehow.

‘There’s ten grand in it.’

I came close to telling him to go fuck himself right there. I wasn’t for sale and I didn’t want his money. I had more than he would ever be able to lay his hands on in a lifetime, not that it mattered.

‘Oh, and … sorry for your loss,’ he added, as an afterthought. That was Cauldwell’s version of a heart-to-heart and mercifully brief.

‘Thanks.’

‘I thought you might welcome a distraction.’

He wasn’t wrong there. A stint in a Nigerian tin mine would have been welcome.

‘My lad’s set on doing some madcap tab to the Pole and I need someone to be there in case he finds it harder than he thought.’

Babysitting and freezing my nuts off. I told myself I wasn’t that desperate. For about thirty seconds. ‘Which one?’

‘North.’

2

I’d first met young Jacobi when he was maybe thirteen. Cauldwell would bring him into the Lines and ask one of us to put the kid through his paces in the gym, get him ready for his army career – whether or not he was on board with the idea. He was a nice enough boy, but I couldn’t see him in uniform, and I wasn’t sure he could either.

Next I heard, Jack had made it through Sandhurst. No idea how. He must have been in his late twenties by now and, from the sound of it, was still in his father’s shadow. It was a position he’d occupied most of his young life.

‘He’s … he’s not had the best time of it since Helmand. Maybe you know …’

I did. News travelled. Three weeks into his first tour the boy had lost half a leg to an IED.

‘He’s roped in some of the other walking wounded he met at Selly Oak.’ I could feel him shuddering down the phone. ‘A right crew. Basket cases, the lot of them, but he seems to want to make a go of it. I just wish he had the sense to let me help him.’

Cauldwell’s attitude didn’t help, except to remind me of what a twat he could be. In his world there were only two sorts of men, winners and losers. Seeing as the vast majority of us were somewhere in between, it made him pretty unpopular, but he’d never given a shit about that.

‘So I need someone sensible in there, to make sure the wheels don’t come off. You in?’

Normally I would have demanded a lot more information: Jack and the team’s mobility level, how much training they’d had for the venture, his – and their – mental condition, who were the guides. But normal was no longer part of my life.

‘I’ll think about it. Give me a call tomorrow.’

‘I haven’t got time. It’s yes or no. Now.’

That was Cauldwell all over. No pissing about. No grey, just black or white. I heard myself say yes.

Four minutes later I got a text saying a ticket to Longyearbyen via Oslo was waiting for me at the check-in counter, Terminal D, Sheremetyevo airport. Five minutes after that another appeared, asking for my account details for the transfer of five thousand GBP as an advance on ten and a booking at the Radisson.

That had been thirty-six hours ago.

‘So how in God’s name d’ya take a vacation in the Arctic?’ The Owl was staring at me in dismay.

‘It’s more of an … expedition. Walking to the Pole.’

‘On your lonesome?’ His eyes rolled.

I shook my head.

‘So how d’you get there? You got people who know the way?’

‘We just head north, I guess.’

‘No shit, Sherlock!’ He slapped his forehead. ‘How many on the team? I mean, how many of you heading up there?’

I didn’t know how many ‘basket cases’ Jack was bringing with him, but I didn’t feel like summoning the energy to explain. ‘A few. Not sure yet.’

‘Jeez, I hear it’s over a hundred thousand bucks apiece, start to finish. You guys own a bank?’

‘We have a sponsor.’

A giant in a faded parka and an equally well-worn Glacier Pilots baseball cap suddenly took up all my new best mate’s attention and saved me having to give a more detailed answer. He picked his way down the aisle and jutted his chin at us as he drew level. ‘Sam. It’s OK, we’ll be down soon.’ It was more of a growl than a few words of comfort.

‘Hey, Munnelly, I’m good. This Brit here’s making the journey a pleasure. Getta loada him, will ya?’ The Owl jabbed a thumb in my direction. ‘He’s only takin’ a hike to the North Pole!’

Munnelly’s mouth was hidden beneath a hedge of black beard but it didn’t take a genius to spot that he didn’t share his buddy’s interest in strangers, or their madcap adventures. He commanded the space around him with the stillness and intensity of a man who was used to getting his own way. He totally ignored the flight attendant who came up behind him and tried to usher him politely back to his seat.

His dead eyes swivelled in my direction, like howitzer muzzles, beneath his rock-shaped brow. His weathered complexion was a Native American’s grizzly-bear brown.

The Owl grabbed my forearm again. ‘Munnelly here’s the real deal. Cut him and he bleeds oil.’

The grizzly still didn’t move a muscle. I had a stab at being impressed, but didn’t put too much effort into it. I undid my belt. ‘You two want to sit together for the ride in? We can swap.’

Munnelly raised his hand. ‘I’m with people.’ He tilted his vast head in the direction he’d come from, then leaned down and whispered something in the Owl’s ear.

My forearm was pushed to one side. ‘Sure. You betcha.’

Munnelly gave me a faraway stare and retraced his steps, a very happy flight attendant in tow.

The Owl waited until Munnelly was back in his seat. ‘Heck of a guy. Part Inuit.’ He swallowed. ‘They say he can smell the black gold under the ice cap. And he knows the ocean floor like the back of his hand. Don’t hardly need sonar or any of that shit.’

The grey fog outside the window gave way to a blanket of white cotton wool lit briefly by a low sun, until we vanished into the next tower of cloud. The plane creaked and groaned as it tumbled into another air pocket. Several overhead lockers slammed open and the Owl clawed at my forearm again. His face whitened. I fished around for a sick bag as we were treated to a fresh burst of babble over the intercom.

He took a gulp of air. ‘They might try to give us the bad news in English.’

‘He’s just telling us to go back to our seats.’

‘Really? How d’you know Norwegian?’

‘I don’t. He’s talking Russian.’

‘Wow – like, you know it because you learned some, like you live there or something?’

I reached across with my free hand and unclamped his. ‘Now, slow right down.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Breathe. Slowly. Holding your breath pushes up your anxiety levels. And if you breathe too fast, like you’re doing now, you suck in too much oxygen. You’ll hyperventilate and feel faint. Then you’ll think you’re having a heart attack.’

He looked at me in surprise and let out a longer breath, like a small industrial bellows. ‘You some kind of lifesaver?’

Up until a few weeks ago, I’d have thought that was really funny.

3

The pilot made another approach. The wind had slackened, the cloud cleared and suddenly I was looking at the primary-coloured houses close up. The visibility was pin-sharp. That was the thing about the Arctic. One minute you could see no more than a few inches, even when the sun was out, the next you could see for miles.

I’d never been a big fan of fucking about on ice. I hadn’t even liked watching Torvill and Dean on TV when the rest of the world couldn’t get enough of them. It was just easier to start off hot and try to cool down, instead of the other way round.

When I became a squaddie, NATO was shit scared of the Russians pulling a fast one and invading Europe from the top while we were busy looking east. Every couple of years we were issued with Arctic warfare kit – extra-thick socks, a woolly hat and a pair of mittens – and sent off to Porsangmoen, a Norwegian training area. We would spend two months each year freezing our bollocks off in the Arctic Circle in temperatures of –45° centigrade when the wind picked up. Some of the lads loved playing snow soldiers, but the idea of sliding along with a twenty-five-kilo Bergen and a fifty-kilo sledge never did it for me – especially when I was trying to steer clear of big white bears that could smell us from miles away and thought we were meals on skis.

Immersion training was what I hated most. We all had to ski through a hole in the ice into the water below. The cold took your breath away, and even with quick-release buckles, it was unbelievably hard to get your Bergen off your back with fingers that were so fucking cold they no longer did what you told them to.

Once the thing was off – and hopefully floating – we had to drag ourselves out before we froze to death. There were always safety guys nearby in case someone was in the water for too long, but it wasn’t just the cold that could kill – the shock could literally take your breath away so you asphyxiated instead.

Even when you’d scraped yourself back onto the ice, that wasn’t the end of it. We had to stand at attention, shout our name, rank and regimental number, then yell an even louder Sir! to confirm our minds were still in gear. Afterwards we were pushed into a steaming hot shelter, stripped, shoved into sleeping bags and given hot drinks before we got very dead.

That wasn’t my idea of happy camping, and neither was being an appetizer at the polar bears’ picnic. But as with pretty much everything in my life, when it was done I’d told myself it really hadn’t been that bad – then tugged on the mittens and the extra-thick socks twenty-four months later and started honking about the Arctic all over again.

And playing soldiers on ice taught me one thing I was never going to forget: in the Arctic Circle, mistakes were only made once.

4

The wheels finally dropped onto the ice-coated tarmac with little more than a squeak and the aircraft taxied towards the low-level, rectangular and quite new-looking terminal.

The Owl looked as though he’d just been sprung from Death Row. As soon as we started taxiing he was out of his seat and reaching for the overhead locker, budget-airline style. The Russians all had the same idea and the aisle filled with padded coats and vodka fumes. The flight attendants threw their hands into the air and let everyone get on with it.

The Owl wrestled out an oversized bag and let it fall onto the seat beside me. The colour had returned to his cheeks for the first time since the aircraft had started bouncing around in the sky.

A low sun glinted off the runway. I knew it could really mess up your vision, even if there was some cloud cover. I put on my Julbo CAT 4 gigs and watched a ragged queue of big men with bloodshot eyes and broken veins stumble down the steps into the place they’d call home for the next six months.

I reached inside my day sack and pulled out the thick Rab Expedition duvet jacket I’d picked up in Oslo. My arms stood out from my sides like the new kid in the starched uniform once I’d put it on over my inner layer of padding.

The flight attendants had their jackets on, fur hoods pulled up, and were getting impatient. Fair one: they wanted to get us drunken noisy shits off their aircraft. I had my thermals in place and could pull on the padded trousers later.

They cracked a series of identical smiles as I passed through the door: we both knew what was about to hit me. A second later, I was being shoved into a deep freeze at the same time as having my face sandpapered by someone bent on revenge. I coughed with the shock of it, and as I breathed in it felt as if a claw made of ice-coated iron was reaching down my throat and into my lungs. I coughed again and bent forward.

‘Will ya look at that?’ The Owl’s yell was almost lost in the driving wind. ‘Last time I was here, back in the fall, ours was the only plane.’

Parked up on the apron were a couple more Antonovs, several private jets and an Airbus A330 freighter in blue livery that called itself ‘Skyship’.

‘Why the build-up?’

‘Everybody wants a piece of what’s down there.’ He pointed at the ground. ‘Like I said, it’s the black-gold rush.’

Munnelly cruised up alongside and steered the Owl away towards a frosted black Chevy Suburban waiting on the apron. No formalities for those guys. Even in this security-conscious age there were always some with enough muscle and money to cut their way through the red tape.

‘Nice meetin’ you,’ the Owl called over his shoulder. ‘And watch your back out there. Ain’t no trees, but it’s a jungle.’

5

Cauldwell was waiting under the Arrivals sign, greyer and a little more lined than he had been the last time I’d seen him, but he still carried himself like a Rupert, all six-five of him towering over the throng. He was very much a Queen-and-country man. I saw it as a crutch, something to lean on, a bit like religion, because something else was missing. Any soldier at the bottom of the food chain would be very wary of Cauldwell’s type of commitment, and I was no different.

He gave me a stiff handshake. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘How could I resist?’

‘How was the flight?’

‘Interesting.’

I realized I didn’t know how to address him. I’d never called him ‘sir’, and wasn’t about to start now, but couldn’t imagine us on first-name terms either. In the Regiment he’d been called various things, but none to his face.

Outside a sign said: ‘Oslo 2046, London 3403, Tokyo 6830’. It was exactly the kind of place I needed: a long way from everywhere.

He started to lead the way to a Merc G-Wagen, then pulled up. ‘That all you’re carrying? Where’s your kit?’

I shrugged.

He carried on walking. ‘Stupid question. Well, you’ll be able to sort that out here. They’ve got everything you’ll need. Been this far north before?’ He didn’t give me time to answer. ‘Because up on the ice it’s at least ten degrees colder.’

He put on his sun-gigs and fired up the engine, then slammed the shift into Drive and moved off. I checked the temperature display on the dash: –14°C.

He’d gone all quiet, like he was concentrating hard on the road, except it was almost empty. At least the signs were keeping me entertained. The wildlife warning triangle didn’t have a silhouette of a deer. It had one of a bear.

After greeting us briefly on the tarmac the sun had vanished again almost immediately, leaving nothing more than a ghostly glow on what might have been the horizon. In a couple of weeks it would be spring, or ‘light winter’, as they called it, then summer – when the temperature reached a sweltering six degrees – and the sun wouldn’t set again until late August. The months of no light followed by months of no darkness were said to drive you mad. And the lack of decent broadband.

The moisture in the atmosphere was freezing into fairy dust. The coloured houses came into view again, and I could now see the stilts holding them all a metre or so proud of the ground.

Cauldwell followed my gaze. ‘The permafrost is up to forty metres thick – the soil’s frozen all year round. The top layer melts in the summer, so the stilts keep these places from sinking into the sludge.’

Behind them, the forbidding Arctic terrain surrounded the town, looming over it in a way that, if you were the nervous type, you might find unsettling.

We passed a couple on foot, rifles slung casually over their shoulders.

‘It’s the only place I know where you get into trouble for not carrying. The bears get quite bold when they’re hungry, and when they see something edible they don’t hang about. There are more of them here than there are people.’

Cauldwell moved to the centre of the road to avoid the pedestrians. ‘Fuck knows why anyone wants to stay here. It’s the constant daylight.’

‘I don’t mind the idea of eternal dusk.’ It suited my current state of mind.

He looked at me as if I’d completely lost it. ‘Well, wait until you try getting to sleep. You’ll remember why people keep prisoners awake under interrogation. It’s bloody torture all right.’

If he was trying to sell this trip to me he was making a pig’s breakfast of it. Except for that last thing. I hadn’t wanted to go to sleep much lately.

‘So where’s Jack now?’

There was a pause before he replied. ‘You’ll catch up with him in due course.’ He chewed his bottom lip. ‘Something you need to know from the start. We’ve not been on the best of terms, him and me. The usual father–son stuff. You know how it is. It’s nothing, really, but children can be a major fucking …’

I gave him a look that said all I needed it to.

‘Sorry, forget I said that. Bit distracted.’ He gave me a side-long glance, then, seeing I hadn’t broken down in floods of tears, decided to press on. ‘I haven’t seen the lad for the best part of a year … This tab, I was all for it. After lying around moping, he finally seemed to be pulling his finger out. It’s just what he needs – something to focus on, a challenge.’

He let out a long, despairing sigh that probably said more about what he thought of his son than any words could.

‘But he … he’s been hell bent on going his own bloody way on it. Kept me pretty much in the dark, despite my offers to help. Anyway, there is one detail that I didn’t have time to explain to you.’

He took a breath, ready to give me the bad news. Stuff that there was never time to explain was always bad news.

‘His sponsorship’s gone tits up. Cold feet – if you’ll pardon the pun – about the condition of some of his fellow travellers.’

He misread my silence for lack of interest. It wasn’t that. Either the trip was off or it was on. Either I had a couple of days to distract myself or I had a whole lot more.

‘It’s all right, Stone, you’re being handsomely rewarded.’

That was the last thing I was thinking of. I was reminding myself of what a fucking awful judge of character Cauldwell was.

He was interrupted by the sat nav, telling him to turn left. He swung the wheel. ‘Anyway, I’ve pulled a few strings and put something together to help save the expedition so he can get it back on the rails.’

His face brightened. ‘Quite a coup, frankly. Proper Arctic expertise, proper backup and kit. No arsing about. But he has to get going. It’s now or never.’

‘Why the hurry?’

‘Well, they can’t just sit around here freezing their arses off.’

That didn’t sound like the real reason. ‘But Jack’s pleased, right?’

‘He doesn’t know yet. That’s where you come in. You’re going to give him the good news. He won’t accept anything from me.’

I was starting to get pissed off. He’d lied to get me there. Then I took a breath too. Fuck it, so what? ‘How’s that going to work? What happens if he tells me to piss off?’

‘Then he’s fucked. He can’t go without backup, decent kit, or the funding for the round trip. He needs cash for the flights – and do you have any idea how much fuel costs up there? There’s the transport cost, the distance, the difficulty of transferring barrels of aviation fuel from one transport to another, the quality of the fuel. It has to be perfect because it powers everything up there, not just the aircraft.

‘Getting aviation fuel this far is expensive enough. Further north it can be anything up to six hundred dollars a litre. That’s expensive flying to get where they need to go, and it’ll cost even more if they have problems and need airlifting out. They simply do not have that kind of money.

‘I’m handing him all he needs on a plate. It’s his last hope. Without it, the whole thing’s off.’

He hit the brakes too hard and the wagon started to slide. He cursed, released them, and the tyres bit again.

‘And all I ask from him in return is that you go with him.’

‘He doesn’t know about that either?’

‘Look, I moved Heaven and Earth to make the going easy over the years. He’d never have got into Sandhurst if I hadn’t pulled a few strings. He’s never been what you’d call leadership material, and based on his all-too-brief time in the field, I can’t exactly vouch for his judgement. So I need a grown-up watching he doesn’t put his remaining foot in it.’ He gave a half-hearted laugh.

‘You mean getting blown up counts against him?’

He glared at me. ‘For God’s sake, you’re starting to sound like his mother. What I mean is, he and his crew of— Well, they’ve all had a few bits knocked off them. But the deal is they have to get there. I’ve put a lot of effort into making this happen and I don’t want it fucked up because one of them can’t manage to put up a tent.’

Great. Hired for a job, by someone who didn’t believe in it, to babysit someone who probably wouldn’t want me anywhere near him. For money I didn’t need. I guessed it was a bit better than spending my life working in a job I didn’t like to buy things I didn’t need and impress people I didn’t give a fuck about.

Or maybe not.

I should have opted for the Nigerian tin mine.

6

Cauldwell gave me a big shit-eating grin, willing me to believe that some of the old can-do conviction was coming through, but I heard more than a hint of desperation in his voice, as if he had more riding on this than he was letting on. ‘You’ll convince him it’s the right thing, Stone. I know you will.’

Either he had an absurd amount of confidence in my abilities or he really was even more desperate than he sounded. ‘How do you think Jack will take it?’

‘If he’s got any sense he should bloody welcome this option with open arms. Without the sort of expertise and resources I’m bringing to the table, the whole thing’s dead in the water so he should be over the moon. All the more so because it’s coming from you.’ He nodded enthusiastically, willing me to agree. ‘You’ll be the bearer of very good news. It should go down well. Extremely well.’

Or like a cup of cold sick, I couldn’t help thinking. Something about the way Cauldwell was selling this suggested there was more than a mountain to be climbed before anyone set foot on the Arctic ice. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least for now. After all, Jack was his son. He should know how his mind worked. And the fact that the sponsorship had gone south should make it a no-brainer for him.

A black Chevy Suburban swept past, empty now, heading back towards the airport, lights blazing, owning the road.

‘Fucking Americans.’

‘I met a couple on the way up. That was probably their wagon.’

Cauldwell let out one of his trademark sighs. ‘They think they can waltz in here like it’s D-Day all over again, behaving as if they own the place, winding everybody up. Frankly, I think it’s only a matter of time before the Russians bite back.’ He turned a corner without indicating, so a knackered two-door Toyota was now skidding along the ice, horn blaring, its driver fighting to keep moving in a straight line.

Cauldwell thought about what he had just said. ‘Well, they are already. This is the third year they’ve conducted Arctic exercises. The Chechen Airborne jumped onto the ice last week. They flew directly from Murmansk. Not just troops, but heavy drop. Full support, very impressive.’

It was. Airborne was not just about getting boots on the ground. It was about having the kit and heavy-support weapons to keep the force there, if needed. The Brits could no longer do it, and until recently only the USA had had that capability. Now the Russians wanted everyone to know that was no longer the case and, to rub it in, their Murmansk military base was within spitting distance of Norway’s northern border.

After the Russian Army had kicked Georgia’s arse in 2008, its generals had told Putin it was completely due to Russian numerical superiority, not the quality of their troops or weapons. Because the invasion had given his country a sense of pride and dignity, Putin had had no problem with putting plenty of its new-found oil and gas wealth into rebuilding the military, moving from a largely conscript army to a professional one with world-beating kit.

‘I know Norway are impressed, but in a bad way. They’re flapping big-time about Russian power in the region, what with the Russians upgrading their airstrips to take heavy military, and making claims on old territories left, right and centre. I bet Norway’s very happy it’s in NATO. There’s even a Norwegian TV show about Russia invading Norway.’

‘Really?’ Cauldwell never liked being told stuff he didn’t know. And I doubted he’d even heard of Netflix. ‘Hmm. Interesting.’

‘The reality’s more complicated than that, but the same idea. Russia in charge.’

‘So you know about what’s happening up here?’

‘A little. The Moscow news covers a fair amount, and there are religious services on TV praying for the return of the Federation’s power. The footage of the two flags being planted on the seabed under the Pole is still an audience-pleaser. It’s a big deal for them. Putin keeps pumping out the message that the Pole belongs to them and the West is trying to fuck them over by taking all the oil and gas away.’

Cauldwell knew all about that. ‘It’s the new Great Game.’ He was clearly pleased to be back in the lecturer’s chair. ‘That’s what’s being played up here, Nick. They aren’t messing about and are getting very aggressive about “owning” the Arctic. They want what’s under the ice, and global warming is going to make it easier to get it.’

‘Is that why you’re in bed with Armancore?’

He frowned. He hadn’t expected me to have heard of it. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘OK, just making conversation. Who gives a fuck?’

‘Well, I’d stay focused on the job in hand, if I were you.’

I tried very hard not to punch him. ‘So how is Jack, physically?’

‘Oh, he gets around all right, if that’s what you mean. We got him a bloody first-rate leg, practically as good as his old one. Better, possibly. State-of-the-art. None of that NHS rubbish. It cost more than – well, an arm and a leg.’ He snorted yet again. Maybe he felt safer in the world of the really crap joke.

‘And how’s his head?’

His grimace told me I’d just crossed a line. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? They make far too much of that sort of thing these days.’

Hardly an answer. I stared at him, waiting for more.

‘He took his time to get well, that’s for sure. But this project seems to have given him something to aim for at last.’

It was hard to avoid the conclusion that he didn’t really know his son. ‘What about his mates? Specifically.’

‘A motley crew. But you know how men bond and get intense when they’re thrown together.’ Cauldwell threw his eyes skywards in exaggerated despair. ‘One’s a domestic health hazard, banned from seeing his family after he beat up their mother. Another’s still on industrial quantities of painkillers – can’t come off them. Then there’s an older chap, nearer your age, I gather, and quite sensible, who crashed his Puma. Should have known better than to get tangled up with this lot. The only one who didn’t get through the medical was Adam Stedman.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘The waster who first put the whole stupid idea into Jack’s head, back in rehab. He was the only one with two good legs, but he was trouble.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Doesn’t matter now. He got dropped, thank Christ.’

Cauldwell moved on to how they had all met at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court, Surrey, but it was mostly more negative stuff so I let it slide by me. His voice trailed away once he realized I’d zoned out. I saw a couple of men, pissed out of their heads, staggering along, propping each other up. When they saw us they tried to thumb a lift but one lost his balance and they collapsed in a heap.

‘So, anyway, Stone, I’m hoping that one way or another Jack and I can get back on better terms.’

Right. So this was set to be the reunion from Hell. On ice.

‘I’m relying on you, Stone, to be an emissary. Don’t let me down.’ He pulled into a petrol station but came to a halt some way from the pumps, took out his phone and sent a text.

‘What happens now?’

Before he could answer, a small Toyota SUV cruised past and pulled up just ahead of us.

‘Time to meet one of your fellow travellers. Part of the deal I put together.’

The Toyota took off and we followed.

‘Where are we going?’

Cauldwell was now concentrating on the vehicle in front as it bounced over the ice. ‘I don’t know. I’ll explain all later. Let’s just get there.’

7

‘So – who is your deal with, exactly?’

‘Oh, they’ve got an interest in the ice. They’re always up there, fiddling around, checking it out …’ He knew I was expecting more. ‘Environmental types.’

‘Change of heart for you?’

‘Not entirely. They survey the ice, monitoring the melt rate. It’s all very high tech – most of it goes straight over my head.’ He wafted his hands as if he was trying to dismiss the subject. It wasn’t like Cauldwell to own up to ignorance. He used to be the one who always knew better.

‘Why on foot?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, something to do with reading the ice.’

More hand waving. They were barely on the wheel.

‘What matters is their expertise. The Arctic’s a killer. The icepack can open up and dump you in freezing water. It can pile up and stop you in your tracks. And then there’s handling the temperatures. With the sort of expertise I’m laying on, you won’t have to worry about that side of things.’

He lapsed into silence. This was Cauldwell all over. He never had much time for detail in the military, just wanted the job done.

I couldn’t tell if this was his way of trying to make amends for being a less than perfect father, press-ganging Jack into the army only to have his leg blown off. One thing was certain: with all the negativity coming off him, I wasn’t surprised Jack had been giving him a wide berth.

The Toyota turned up a narrow road bordered on each side by faded red or blue wooden buildings. Cauldwell let the wheels spin and the vehicle fishtailed wildly. ‘Fucking ice rink.’ He got it back into shape, and as we gained a bit of height I looked back over the drab, neat town, with the looming mountains crowded round it. Apart from the houses, everything was either grey or brown, standard municipal and grim, reminiscent of any number of barracks or similar shitholes I’d been in over the years. I almost felt at home.

‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger – meeting up in garage forecourts?’

He brushed it off. ‘There’s all sorts round here, and the people I’ve done the deal with aren’t too popular with some of the other traffic through here right now. There’s plenty of interest in what’s going on up there, so they keep a low profile. This is a small town.’

‘Interest … As in oil and gas?’ The Owl’s terrified face flashed up briefly on the screen inside my head.

Cauldwell’s hands were flapping again. ‘All kinds of things.’

‘But if they’re trying to protect the ice, aren’t they the good guys?’

‘Ah, well, that depends on your point of view.’

His answers were all dismissive. But I wasn’t ready to be dismissed, and he knew it. His impatience was starting to show through again.

‘Look, this isn’t one of those missions that needs three-hundred-and-sixty-degree knowledge. It’s just a tab across the ice, OK?’

The building was as nondescript as you could get, a grey wooden box with a steep, gabled roof. As the Toyota approached, a roller-door opened. The vehicle turned in and came to a stop beside a couple of snowmobiles and the world’s supply of expedition gear. Tents, sleeping bags, stoves, airbeds, shovels, all box-fresh. Cauldwell pulled in next to it and the door closed behind us. A knitted yellow yeti hat, accompanied by a matching hipster beard, jumped out of the Toyota and waved.

Cauldwell got out and strode up to their owner, hand extended, but the guy ignored it and locked him in a hug, which Cauldwell tried and failed to evade.

As soon as he could breathe again, Cauldwell introduced us. ‘This is Nick Stone, the man who’ll be joining you. Nick, meet Rune Vargen.’

8

Close up, Cauldwell’s new best friend looked like something that had fallen off the troll shelf at Toys R Us. He turned to me with the same grin but didn’t do the hug. He just pumped my hand as he greeted me with an accent straight out of a yogurt commercial. ‘We are so happy to be your partners on this courageous venture. Your country must be so proud of what you are planning to do.’

He glanced down at my legs.

‘Stone’s here for backup.’

‘Ah … of course.’

great