Description: One The advance camp was an assortment of canvas prefabs erected a few hundred yards from the river. After hours, you could hear the fast-flowing water chuckling and gurgling like a gleeful baby. It wasn''t a bad place to be, if you didn''t mind being nowhere. The closest town, which wasn''t much more than an oblast station, was three hours drive east, six if the day was warm and the track turned to mud. The camp sat against a screen of grey conifers that hid the mossy, misty depths of the forest. A patch of ground was being cleared to make a landing strip, but it was slow work. Technically, it was early summer, but this far north summer had only managed to give the region the limpest of embraces. The nights were still long, and the brief days were watery and cool, with hazy white skies that turned the broad tracts of forest and the hills beyond into brooding watercolour studies. Walking up from the latrines to the north end of the camp, Dima tamped a filterless cigarette against the side of its packet. He wasn''t going to smoke it, but the habit kept his hands busy. The commanding officer had restricted smoking privileges inside the camp, and it was prohibited on open forest patrols. To Dima, this was another symptom of the pro- gressive Westernisation of Russian culture. He''d read about it in one of his sister''s glossy magazines. Smoking was banned in the West; you couldn''t even light up in bars. Drinking was frowned on, too. Men were transforming into what they called "metrosexual" creatures, all tanned and toned and depilated, with a sudden interest in childcare and macrobiotics. It made him laugh. When signs of this creeping decay showed up in the Russian Army, then it was time to man the barricades. He played with the fat cigarette. The old habit would die hard in him and he was proud of it. In the eyes of the West, he would be seen as a dinosaur, a throwback, a primitive beast from the distant past, out- evolved and threatened with extinction. The reason he didn''t light it actually had nothing to do with the CO''s orders. Cigarettes were a scarce commodity at the advance camp, and there was no local store or bar to buy them from. A man guarded his supply, and rationed it carefully. There was no way of telling how long the deployment was going to last. Routine manoeuvres, that''s what they had all been told - an un- scheduled training exercise in the deep woods of the Krasnoyarsk Krai, six weeks minimum, maybe more. Dima had hoped that the spring might see his unit off on a more recreational deployment, perhaps on the Baltic. Instead they got months in the damp and drizzle of Siberia. Still, the prefabs were heated, the food was good and plentiful, and the regimen none too arduous. He quite liked the woods. He liked the peace, the stillness, the endless nature of the forest. Sometimes, on patrol, he could lose himself. It felt as if the trees stretched away from him in all directions, including time. He liked the way the stillness could be broken by sudden, bright bird song: clear notes, rasps, the band-saw buzzing of woodpeckers. There were other sounds too, from deep in the woods, grunts and squeals made by animals he had not yet identified. A human cry broke the air. Someone in the camp had shouted. Dima turned and caught sight of a 4x4 coming down the loop track through the trees. Its top was down, and its headlamps were switched on to combat the overcast gloom, even though it was late morning. Dima stuffed the cigarette back into the packet and jogged over to the side of the track, the folded skeleton stock of his AK-74 bumping against his shoulder. He raised his hand in a friendly challenge. The approaching 4x4 dropped a gear and began to slow down. There were four men aboard: an army regular at the wheel and three troopers in black BDUs and field caps. The trio wore no insignia or unit marks, and no expressions on their faces. Their Bergens and cased weapons were piled in the back of the vehicle behind them. Dima felt a pinch of anxiety. Aye, aye, what''s this now? These men aren''t regulars. He knew exactly what they looked like. Voiska Spetsialnoye Nasranie, that''s what they damned well looked like. Troops of Special Purpose. What were they doing here? Suddenly the deployment didn''t feel so much like a routine training exercise. Top brass pulled that kind of stunt all the time. A man got deployed, and then found out it was the real deal. The 4x4 halted beside him. "Morning," he said, waiting for them to identify themselves so he could allow them to pass. "I''ve got to get these boys to the CO," the driver said. "That shouldn''t be a problem," Dima responded easily. The man in the passenger seat fixed him with a caustic gaze. The guy had deep scars running straight down from the corners of his mouth that reminded Dima of the chin-joints of wooden ventriloquist dummies. "You know who we are?" he asked Dima belligerently. His accent was strong, maybe Rostov or the Urals. "Yeah, I think so," Dima replied, trying to keep it light. "Then do us a favour," the man said, and he made a little gesture with his hand that suggested he was brushing Dima out of his way, like a scatter of cake crumbs. Dima heard a sharp whistle. He looked over his shoulder. Several men had emerged from the camp''s prefabs, and one of them was Zvegin, the CO''s adjutant. Zvegin waved impatiently. He forked his fingers into his mouth and blew another shrill whistle. Dima took a breath. "On you go then," he said. The driver thumped the gears and squirmed the 4x4 away down the rutted, wet track as if he was on a tight clock. Dima watched them go. What was this all about? Spetsnaz. Bloody Spetsnaz. There was going to be trouble, he could feel it in his gut.He wandered away from the track and into the trees, turning things over in his head. The firs were solemn and grey, and seemed sympathetic. They didn''t mind if he took five and smoked a cigarette. So he lit up. His feet were damp. The forest floor was covered in needle litter and little browned scraps of pine cone that looked like spent ammunition. Rocks were caked with lichen as pale as verdigris. Birds piped and chattered in the vaults of the wood. There were black spruce and fir, and enduring larch, and the occasional broadleaf. Daylight, as muffled and white as snow, sank through the canopy overhead. He inhaled. God damn the West and its emasculating trends. Few things could match a drag on a filterless cigarette, and fewer still could compete with that experience in the great outdoors. Fresh air seemed to magnify the flavour. As he continued to smoke, Dima gradually realised that the wood had become very quiet. The birds had stopped calling. He couldn''t even hear the occasional crack and pistol shot of the stirring trees. He felt un- accountably guilty about the cigarette in his hand, as if the stink of it had forced nature into disapproving silence. The smell of the smoke was certainly pungent. It carried in the cold, damp air. Dima hoped to hell the CO couldn''t smell it down in the camp. He pinched the ash off the half-smoked cigarette and put the offend- ing butt in his top pocket. Then he turned. It was simply standing behind him. It was just there, as tall and as solid and as motionless as the trees. He wondered - in the very little space of time left for wondering - how something so entirely huge could have approached without him hearing anything. It was such a shock to turn and find it standing there that he forgot to be terrified. Then Dima began to remember very quickly. He reached for his AK, fumbling with the strap like a raw recruit. The creature snapped forward to take him. It moved with a speed that something so big had no business being capable of. Its jaws opened. He saw teeth, and a gape a metre wide. Two It was going to be bad. Central London, a weekday lunchtime, fine weather, crowded streets; the factors did not add up well. Whenever the ADD - the anomaly detector - painted a contact anywhere near a population centre, the team moved with particular urgency. Today, the contact point was slap bang in the middle of the biggest population centre around. "Let''s hope it''s something small and fluffy," James Lester said, sitting in the back of the sleek black SUV as it attempted to edge through the dense traffic. "Something from a quieter moment in history. Something cute. Perhaps something furry with big eyes. Or something pretty and bird-like. I don''t know, something -" "Vegetarian?" Jenny suggested. Lester turned to look at her. "Vegetarian would be good," he agreed. "Vegetarian would be excellent." Jenny Lewis returned her attention to the laptop that was open on her knees. "Cover story?" Lester asked. "Just the basic shape for the press release," she replied, "so we can rush it out as soon as the incident''s been contained." Lester pulled out his mobile and tried a number. Then he made a face. "Cutter''s not picking up. Why doesn''t that surprise me? Far be it from him to keep us in the loop.""He''s probably got his hands full," Jenny offered, still typing. Lester leaned forward, and raised his voice. "Can we get through this?" he asked the driver. "Can we try? We''re not even on Charing Cross Road." "It''s a bit stuck, sir," the driver replied. Lester made a slightly pained expression and sat back. Jenny looked up. "If it doesn''t start moving soon, I''m going to get out and walk," she said. Lester didn''t look too enamoured of that idea. "It''s Oxford Street," she continued. "The contact was right on Oxford Street. That''s got to be less than 300 yards from here. I -" "Bloody hell," the driver exclaimed emphatically. Suddenly, there were people all around them, a rushing tide of people pushing and threading through the stationary traffic. They were moving fast, in panic, in fear. There was a commotion of agitated voices, shout- ing and yelling. Lester''s vehicle rocked as the flow of bodies bumped and shoved past it. Hundreds of p

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