Special Dynamic by N/A

Author:N/A
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2015-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

9

South, he’d decided, was the best bet. Then hole up. He hadn’t told the others yet. But it was a reasonable guess that the Spetsnazi would concentrate on barring the way back into Norway and to the nearer Finnish settlements — in which, guessing at the way they’d have set this thing up, they’d very likely have agents in residence, anyway. Small Finnish settlements in this area were therefore places to steer clear of. By now, he reckoned, they’d have a good idea that there were no corpses in the pass: they might also have found a couple near that cabin. And when they found those, it really would hit the fan.

Sutherland murmured, ‘You’re doing me proud, Ollie.’ He was obviously in pain. Ollie crouching, making a ski-stretcher. He promised, ‘When we stop for the night I’ll strap that leg up for you. Meanwhile I’m afraid you won’t find it’s exactly first-class travel.’

He hadn’t any morphine in the field-dressing pack he’d put together at the apotek shop in Karasjok. Stenberg had some painkiller tablets of US origin though, and Carl had taken some. For now, the only other thing you could do was move on as fast as possible.

When the stretcher was as sound as it ever would be, Stenberg helped him lift the patient into place and strap him there. In AW training, making emergency ski-stretchers for evacuating casualties had been routine, but you’d had a canvas kit which he did not have here, so this was improvisation, very rough-and-ready. The runners were Sutherland’s skis, with the poles and some straight branches lashed across them for a basic framework, and brushwood on that, topped with a sleeping-mat. He’d used string to bind all the joints, and now a minimal length of nylon tow-rope to hold Carl in place on top of the contraption.

‘Still going to make Angeli, are we?’

‘Afraid not.’ He explained, ‘They’ll be expecting us to go that way, Carl. Or back into Norway. If we could have got through quickly we’d have had a good chance of making it, but — well, apart from anything else — I should think they’ll be deploying more guys from the pass by this time.’

Also, rapid movement or fast reaction had become less easy.

‘So where now?’

‘That way.’ A movement of the head, southward. ‘As far as we can travel in roughly two hours — because we’ll have to stop in time to dig-in, and we’ll need some daylight in hand for that.’

‘But — going south?’

‘That’s it, Sophie.’ He snapped his skis’ bindings shut. ‘To get clear of this area and in a direction I hope they won’t think we would have taken. Just as it doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, right? Then tomorrow west and northwest, through the nature reserves and into Norway, towards Kautokeino.’

She was frowning. ‘That is a long way, you realise how far?’

She hadn’t asked him who’d be making the trip. It obviously hadn’t occurred to her yet that Sutherland wouldn’t be able to, so that some division of forces was going to be unavoidable.

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