Cold Blood

by Andy McNab

Genres: War & Military; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

Out on the ice, polar nears aren't the only natural born killers.

Nick Stone is suffering. The two people he cared for most are gone.

Thousands of miles away five ex-servicemen, badly wounded in Afghanistan, are preparing for a trek to the North Pole in an attempt to begin to rebuild their shattered bodies and minds. When Stone is summoned as close protection for the trek by an old SAS officer, he accepts unthinkingly, desperate for the chance to escape his own misery.

They meet at the world's most northerly airport, where the locals are as hard as nails and the polar bear threat makes it against the law not to carry a gun. But it doesn't take long for Stone and his team to discover that neither the bears nor the locals are the most dangerous predators in this part of the world.

It is quickly clear to Stone that the coldest war of all is just beginning...

A Random House UK audio production.

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

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.

11

The Spitsbergen Bar and Grill turned out to be a slightly grander version of Rune’s building, in the same flat-pack style – another job lot of Norwegian pine.

As I opened the inner door, a massive shout went up on the far side of the room. A giant TV screen was showing a football match to a group of about forty onlookers. Almost all of them were in the same sort of gear, padded dungarees with zips up the outside of the legs so they could be pulled on and off over boots. I made my way through a fug of sweat, smoke and alcohol so thick I could have sliced it up and had it for dinner with chips.

It was an international set, but more piston than jet. Tough-looking Africans, Asians and Chinese mixed with Scandinavians and, of course, Russians, all in chunky sweaters and fleeces, their heavy-duty work coats on a long row of hooks by the door or thrown over the backs of chairs.

Everyone had a beard. It helped with insulation and, anyway, shaving was a pain in these conditions. There were plenty of signs of cold injuries, hands trussed up in cotton wool, which made lifting a pint a two-fist job. Several had gel pads over their noses and foreheads where they’d caught the wind. They also had the resigned expressions of men who couldn’t stop gathering wherever there was a fast buck to be made from dangerous manual labour without a safety net.

Maybe the Owl had been right: this was the twenty-first-century Klondike – oil prospectors, engineers, labourers who pumped the stuff out from under the permafrost or from the freezing oceans, all there in search of the pot of black gold at the end of the rainbow. In 1840s California it was the shovel-sellers who made the big bucks. Here in Svalbard, I didn’t need the Owl to tell me it was the lawyers.

I skirted the TV audience – no clean faces there – and burrowed further into the crowd. The football sounds gave way to some forgettable Euro-rap, its pulsing beat almost impossible to distinguish from the hubbub.

A sign hanging above the optics boasted ‘The Coolest Bar in the World – Literally!’. In front of it stood a droid in a leather waistcoat, with the drooping build of an off-form sumo wrestler. His solid, bald-headed presence seemed custom-built to deter bad behaviour when tempers frayed, as they always would in a place with too many men, too much alcohol and too little distraction. I hoped it worked, for his sake. He’d kicked the steroids, but looked as if anything more strenuous than lifting a bar-stool might bring on cardiac arrest.

A tall woman with bottle-blonde hair stood behind the bar, prettier than the clientele deserved, and with an attitude that said they could look but not touch. I settled myself on a vacant stool, shoved my day sack down at my feet and ordered a Diet Coke. Men who didn’t drink would have been rarer there than sun-loungers, but she served it without raising an eyebrow. I got a laugh when I asked her to repeat the price, though. No wonder the place was so full of piss-artists: the soft drinks cost way more than the beer.

Jack Cauldwell had changed dramatically since my last sight of him. Partly it was the hair: much thicker and wilder. He was still only in his twenties, but wore the look of someone much older. He wasn’t alone in that – I’d seen it before on any number of once-fresh faces, after a bit of shot and shell, facing a new set of battles back in so-called civilization. His skin had the colour and texture that too much alcohol or weather can beat into it, but it was hard to tell in that light which was to blame.

He was at a corner table with four bodies. One was mixed race, with a mass of dreadlocks tied at the back; his posture told me he was ex-services but hadn’t seen the gym in a while. Another had a shaved scalp and was jiggling a little, not in time to the music, but from nerves or something chemical. The third seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention. Good-looking in an upmarket sort of way, head thrown back, pleased with himself. In fact, he seemed pretty much perfect until he adjusted himself in his chair to get closer to the woman beside him. His right sleeve was empty.

He draped his arm over her shoulders, asserting his right to the only female customer in the place. I didn’t blame him. She had short, jet-black hair and, to add to the semi-Goth look, a nose piercing and a small silver ring in her left eyebrow. Their body language suggested they were an item. She sipped her drink and gazed up at him as he held forth.

I tried to picture this crew striding across the ice – and failed. If first impressions were anything to go by, Cauldwell was right: they looked like a bunch of no-hopers. No wonder the sponsors had fled. And no wonder he wanted someone able-bodied in the mix.

Yet they must have had something going for them or they wouldn’t have got that far. I had nothing going for me except the need to get away from myself.

12

I planned to sit back and watch for a bit, get the measure of Jack and his mates as they made swift work of their beers, but he soon caught my eye. At first he gave me a hostile what-you-looking-at? glare. When I raised my glass he frowned, working hard to ID me, until the time-and-place part of his brain kicked in and threw him the answer.

He got up and wove through the crowd towards me, one hand on his left thigh. For a one-legged man he was doing all right. As he drew closer, though, I could see that his once shiny blue eyes were now clouded and tired. Age, experience and long-term pain had conspired to make him a lot more like his dad. Just as well he hadn’t got anywhere near a shaving mirror in the last couple of days.

‘Hey, Jack …’ I added my name so as not to embarrass him if that part of his memory had taken a knock too.

‘I remember you, Stone. Why wouldn’t I?’ The same clipped tone as his old man. If he realized it was hostile, he didn’t bother dialling it down. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Just getting away for a bit.’

Technically true. But that wasn’t how Jack saw it. His eyes narrowed, full of suspicion. ‘Well, this is away, all right. About as away as you can get.’

He shook my hand and some of the Sandhurst pedigree showed through his weariness.

‘What’re you drinking, Jack?’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Sure?’

‘OK, a pint. Thanks.’

I aimed him at the nearest stool and gave the barmaid a wave. She smiled at him as if they were old friends. He seemed not to notice. Maybe the loss of his sponsors – which I wasn’t meant to know about – had sucked up all his mental and emotional energy. A straight guy in those parts would have to be seriously distracted not to spend a moment or two checking out any female, let alone an attractive one.

‘How long you been up here?’

He shrugged. ‘Couple of weeks. You?’

The blonde set his pint in front of him and tried the smile again. She could have had the pick of the entire room. I wondered what he had that the rest of us didn’t.

‘Arrived this afternoon. Had some fun and games with the landing.’

He took a sip of beer.

I decided to take the plunge. ‘I heard about your walk.’

He stiffened. ‘From my old man?’

No way round that. ‘Yeah.’

‘You keep in touch, then?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You know what the Regiment’s like.’ I wasn’t going to say ‘a family’. That was bollocks, and he’d know it. ‘So how’s it going?’

Jack blew out a lungful of air between pursed lips. ‘A few ups and downs.’

I admired his gift for understatement. ‘Like what?’

‘Well, let’s see. Ten days ago the fucking sponsors pulled out.’

‘Ah.’ For the moment I’d pretend this was news to me.

‘The old man was probably delighted. He thinks I can’t find my own cock with the light on.’

I let it go. I’d already established that we had one thing in common: not being able to shake off his father. Now I caught a glimpse of what was driving him: the years of being a disappointment, of having his boyhood dreams rubbished, of giving in and dancing to the old man’s tune until he’d had half a leg blown off.

‘Are you in touch?’

He snorted. ‘We don’t talk. I realized some things after …’ He paused. ‘You get to spend a lot of time thinking when you’re on your back in a hospital bed. Too fucking much.’ He necked half his drink. ‘I promised myself that when I got mobile again I was going to put some clear blue water between my father and me. Switch off the comms, pull up the drawbridge. Go my own way. He didn’t like it, of course. He can’t stop trying to plan my whole fucking life.’

He took another huge swig. ‘Me getting blown up hasn’t changed much …’ His laugh was more of a bark – dry and full of self-loathing.

‘He must have taken it badly.’

Wrong move.

‘Oh, fuck, yeah. He “took it badly” all right. He was even angrier and more disappointed than he had been about all my other failures. It was like he thought I’d jumped up and down on that fucking IED just to spite him – to punish him for pushing me into the army in the first place.’

I must have looked sceptical because he went up a gear.

‘It was all about him. Always. He didn’t care aboutme. Everything was about how it reflected on him.’

His voice was cold, measured, but his eyes blazed with the anger simmering beneath. Not so much no love lost between them as no love there to lose. Suddenly the emptiness in his face solidified into bitterness and self-pity.

‘Christ knows he talked enough about the Regiment, like you were his fucking family. Well, it may surprise you to hear that he’s never been any sort of fucking father figure to me.’

I let him run on until he’d burned off some of the excess resentment and I could shift the focus back to the expedition – not easy, bearing in mind that it wasn’t going to happen without the old man.

If I had any chance of making this work I needed to get Jack to trust me. I certainly wasn’t going to contradict him. In the circumstances, I figured the less I said the better.

‘So if you’re here with some kind of olive branch from the old bastard, you know where you can stick it.’

I thought he was going to fuck off, right there and then. But he stayed where he was.

‘You got kids?’

He’d opened a door, whether or not he meant to, and I walked through it.

13

‘I’m sure you’ve got a million reasons to hate your father. And you know what? I don’t blame you. Parents fuck you up. Mine did. Then my stepdad did too.’

I thought I’d buried all that shit long ago. I was wrong. Just thinking about it, I felt the ache sweep through me like a toxin. At least physical wounds healed … I mentally gripped myself. I wasn’t about to turn this into a joint therapy session, with me talking about my loss and him talking about his. I just needed to seize the chance to establish some common ground while it was there. ‘Look, I never got to find out what sort of dad I might be, but I do know that every parent makes mistakes. Not just yours.’

‘Mistakes? That’s the fucking understatement of the century.’

‘But he’s not evil. He wants to do right by you. He’s got some new sponsors lined up and—’

‘I knew it. You—’

‘Listen, he asked me to make you an offer. He knows you won’t take it from him. And it’s not just about cash. Some good may come out of this at the same time. Fuck who’s doing the giving, or why. It’s a way for you and your mates to crack on.’

He wasn’t remotely interested in what that good work might be. He wasn’t even listening. ‘So you are his messenger boy.’

‘If you like. But if you throw all this back in his face, it’d be a great big shame. It’s a means to the Pole. To your goal. You going to chuck everything away simply because he’s the middleman? Don’t pass up this opportunity. Just fucking grab it, Jack. Life is short. Trust me on this.’

He raised his glass again, fighting to control himself. He was getting so angry that if he’d been a cartoon he’d have had fizzy lines coming out of his head.

‘Look, Jack, I’m not here to sort out your family problems. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t care if you go to the Pole or freeze to death in the fucking car park.’

‘All right, all right.’ He held up his free hand. ‘But to be very, very clear, I do not want any help, any money, any anything from him. Done.’

I shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll tell him.’

‘Thanks, Nick.’ His beer hand started to shake. The rim of his glass missed his mouth and collided with his cheek. It wasn’t just his old man that had sparked him up. ‘I’m … I’m s-sorry … for kicking off at you, but …’

‘Mate, no problem.’ I downed half my Coke to give us both a break. ‘So what happened with your sponsors? Why did they drop out?’

For the first time since he’d come over to see me, he couldn’t look me in the eye.

‘Why don’t you go the public route, do some kind of charity thing – you know, save the planet? Get sponsorship from a bank or one of the corporates. Get your faces in the papers, raising awareness, cash, that sort of thing.’

‘No.’

I got the message. It wasn’t happening.

‘We all decided we’re doing this for us, Nick, on our own terms. We’re not performing monkeys. No hedge fund is going to be able to throw their petty cash our way so they can make themselves look good. Fuck corporate-responsibility funds. No pictures, no publicity, just us, and what we keep in here.’ He tapped the side of his head, then the left side of his chest. ‘And here.’ He glanced across at his team. ‘Whatever, you and I both know this bunch are never going be the stars of anyone’s corporate PR video.’

So they’d all fallen for the world’s biggest lie. For thousands of years the head-shed had fed their troops on a diet of righteousness, courage, rising to the challenge, all that bollocks that we were all so keen to believe. But once in the fight, we soon discovered that we didn’t rise like the legendary warriors of the past: we sank into a dark, lonely place where we’d do almost anything just to stay alive. Like all the poor fuckers that came before them, those lads thought they were worthless because of that big fat lie. The big fat lie that would live longer than they did. A fuck of a lot longer. It would still be spreading its poison in a thousand years’ time. The next generation in the fight would look at Jack and his mates and see the heroes they’d been told to be. And the next. And the next. How could any of them measure up?

That was what warrior bullshit did. It made good people think they were worthless. I knew: I’d fallen for it long ago. I also knew I didn’t want this lot to keep making that mistake. I wanted them to discover that they were no different from anyone else who’d been in the fight.

14

‘Fuck the old man, I don’t need his help. I’ve got it in hand. We’re going to get there.’

He had a couple of goes at getting his glass back on the bar top. It didn’t improve his mood.

‘Does he really think I’m going to give up, get a fucking blanket out of the car, wait for him to come along and save the day? Fuck him.’

Another man joined the group at the table. A few years older than the others, he moved carefully, deliberately, as if his vision was letting him down. When he turned, I saw that his face was shiny down one side. It had the all too familiar snail-trail pattern and drooping eyelid of someone who’d got too close to an inferno.

Not far behind him came a feisty-looking red-headed woman in a white roll-neck sweater. Her hair was a riot of thick curls, the kind that made their owner look like some kind of Celtic warrior. She told the others to make room for the new arrival, and they did.

‘Why did they pull out, Jack?’

‘Healthandfuckingsafety. Jobsworths who came up with a list of “issues and considerations”. That’s the whole point of the walk – to overcome the issues, to give two fingers to the considerations.

‘They bundled us along to the Institute of Naval Medicine to get tested, all that shit, to cover their arses. We did all right – well, most of us did, except on the fucking stupid psych stuff.’ He pointed at the one with the dreadlocks. ‘Rio’s still on meds. He’s got nothing happening in one arm, and other … stuff he’s dealing with.’

From where I was standing, they looked like they all were.

‘But he’s positive, you know? Optimistic. He saw the Taliban skin one of his mates alive, for fuck’s sake. He does have some issues, but he knew when to play the race card, and they waved him through – grudgingly. They didn’t have much choice.’

He pointed at the one with the shaved head. ‘Gabriel’s lost his leg below the knee, and has a bit of a short fuse. But then, he does come from Glasgow. They said he was “temperamentally unsuited to functioning in a team”.’

I couldn’t help smiling. I’d been there, got the T-shirt. And not just the one. A big drawer full of them.

‘Will over there,’ he pointed to the new arrival with the snail-trail face, ‘they didn’t have a problem with him. His Puma was on VHR night duty, and taken down by the Taliban. They dragged him out of the burning cockpit and held him for a few weeks. But he knows how to win over those smartarse types because he sounds like they do.’

I nearly said, So do you. Instead, ‘But you’re OK, right? They didn’t have a problem with you?’

‘No, but it’s all of us or none. That’s what being a team means. Stupid fuckwits didn’t get that.’

‘And the other two lovebirds?’

‘That’s Leila. She’s not part of it. Stedman picked her up in Ukraine or somewhere – I think she’s just along for the ride. Who knows what he gets up to?’

Who indeed? I glanced across to see Stedman lifting his good arm from Leila’s shoulders so he could give some extra muscle to the punchline of a joke he was telling. But he didn’t take it away for long. Fuck knew why. There was nowhere else for her to go.

I scanned Stedman’s audience. They seemed pretty cheerful for a bunch of people who’d just had the financial rug pulled out from under their feet. Only Will’s partner, the red-headed woman, wasn’t laughing.

I nodded in her direction. ‘What’s her role in all this?’

‘Jules? She’s Will’s wife and doesn’t have one on the ice. She’ll wait here for Will. She’s a doctor – used to be with Médecins Sans Frontières, in Afghanistan and Syria. She knows all there is to know about stumps and prosthetics. You name it, she’s chopped it off. Or stuck it back on.’

‘Handy.’

‘Yeah. Or maybe not.’

I waited.

‘Well, I’ve a feeling it was down to her that they failed Stedman. He had a bit of a habit.’ Jack pressed a finger to one nostril and sniffed, in case I wasn’t fully on receive.

‘Had?’

‘All right, has.’ He bit his upper lip. ‘He’s not too discreet about it, and I reckon she let them know. I thought I might have to drop him in order to hang onto the sponsors. Then the fuckers pulled the plug anyway.’

‘That’s tough.’

‘She’s here because she invited herself, keeping an eye on Will, giving us the benefit of her wisdom, medical and otherwise. Whether we want it or not.’

He let out a long sigh. Saying it all out loud had probably made the situation feel worse, not better. ‘And now we’re in danger of losing our window.’

15

Now he’d given me chapter and verse on how fucked up everything was, the light came back into his eyes. Either he was a total fantasist, or there was still a chance the trip was greenlit.

‘You heard of Barneo? It’s the start line. The Russians build an airstrip on the eighty-ninth degree. Literally. It’s only there for April because the ice thins out and melts. Miss that window and we really are fucked. The floe has already snapped once. Global warming …’

His brow creased. ‘We’ve got to face facts. If we don’t make . . .