The Sleeping Army Awakes

Part 71 The wolves have eyes

Count Mikula sat on his haunches at the bluff and regarded his handiwork critically using his Dudat. For once in his life he was less than impressed with the results.

"Gott verdammt. Vhy haff only fiffe of the charges goingk off?" He asked himself. He wondered if Basil had survived the wolves and set out to sabotage him. No Basil was a coward, it took someone brave to go up to an explosive and remove the fuse or pull the cable out even if they knew  what they were doing, which the count was sure that Basil didn't.

It was disappointing that only the base of the rock wall had been punctured, forming nothing much but a tunnel, albeit a tunnel gushing rather a lot of water. The upper strata was holding solid. But even considering his chagrin, the effect had never-the-less been dramatic. The whole valley had flooded and there was still water pouring out of the reservoir and there was no sign that the torrents would abate at any time soon.

On viewing the video stream Ruthers had sent Count Mikula a rather terse, cryptic message that he was to sit tight until Ruthers contacted him again. No-one had bothered to tell Count Mikula that the old family retainer had expired and so now he was left stranded. He had been "sitting tight" for what seemed likehours . Annoyingly enough for him, he had no idea what he was waiting for. Ruthers had always played his cards close to his chest, but this time he hadn't even hinted at a reason.

The Count had speculated whether Ruthers wanted him to do any further blasting, considering that he had only blown a hole at the bottom of the rock face. Perhaps he wanted the upper part removed as well, but Mikula had only brought enough explosive for the job in hand. Any excess explosive was always a liability. 

If Ruthers required further blasting then it might even double Count Mikula's fee, but then he would have to find some more explosive and it didn't actually grow on trees. It sometimes damaged trees or bits of un-burned Semtex landed on a tree there but never actually grew there. If there was any further blasting to be done that day it was already too later to order another drop. Now that he had blown the reservoir he couldn't even steal any from the building site. It was probably floating out to sea by now.

It wasn't only the sitting tight that was getting on the count's nerves; he was getting increasingly frustrated over Ruthers' lack of communication.

"Gott verdammt dich. Vhy are you not answeringk mich!" He shouted at his Dudat, as the stupid device played a particularly bad rendition of Green-sleeves that seemed to be played on a miniature set of bagpipes by some sort of rodent for the fourteenth time, with nobody answering his call.

Irritating as it was staying put, Count Mikula was reluctant to move too far. He knew that if he deliberately disobeyed any direct orders then there would be unpleasant consequences. Ruthers could quickly despatch an assassin to teach him a lesson or worse still Mikula wouldn't get paid. The Count peered into his bag, he still had some food and a plastic bottle of water, but it had started to rain again, as if there wasn't enough water slopping around already.

Even though Count Mikula had tried to contact Ruthers fourteen times he hadn't so much as received a text message in reply. This wasn't entirely surprising considering how cold and still the old man's body had become, coupled with the fact that he had keeled over onto his Dudat muffling the alert sound, but the Count had no way of knowing this.

While he waited for further instructions, the Count sat on an outcrop of rock, munched on a chicken and salad bread roll and fiddled with the contents of his large canvas bag.

"Gott verdammt Wolken," Mikula cursed the clouds and glanced around for some shelter close by.

If Mikula hadn't hidden the parachutes where they could be washed down the hillside, then one of them would have provided at least some respite from the rain. There was nowhere obvious to run to, but he thought that the sooner he finished his snack and started to find somewhere; then the sooner he would be dry.

There were still Vdrones, flying overhead like vultures circling a kill, at least half of them were relaying information to Sir Gilbert, and so Sir Gilbert certainly had a better view of things than Count Mikula could possibly have from where he was standing.The lack of communication, made it very unlikely that Count Mikula was sitting tight for his enlightened observations or wisdom. Count Mikula had finally reasoned that Ruthers had just forgotten about him for some reason. It was unlike Ruthers to forget anything, despite his age, but then no-one is perfect.

The other Vdrones were probably Sir Percy's assessing the damage wrought on the scene. They did not seem to be actively looking for the saboteur yet, but Mikula knew that this situation could change any minute, so he would do well to find some cover. If it had been up to Mikula he would have looked for vengeance first and assessed the damage later.

So because Mikula hadn't received any reinforcing instructions to keep staying where he was, it seemed pointless to stay there, exposed and vulnerable. So still in two minds as to whether he was doing the right thing, he collected his large bag of food, fuses, wire and Dudat together, he had been forced to ditch the expensive drills because he couldn't carry everything and would have needed Basil to transport them.

"Gott Straff Basil!" Count Mikula cursed, meaning 'God punish Basil'.

He threw the last crust of the roll away so that he could get moving. Someone else could pick up the static drones.

As he began to walk away, the count had a nagging suspicion that he was not alone. He had been in no real hurry at first, because although he would have liked to been dry, it wasn't raining that hard yet and the cape that he wore was relatively water resistant. The drones flying over head still seemed uninterested in watching him, and he reasoned quite rightly that they were still aloft assessing the damage that he had done and searching for survivors.

Soon the skies were empty again, apart from some rather irritated blackbirds who had recently lost their habitat. All the drones had landed now and Sir Percy's ones were being refuelled or recharged. Count Mikula knew that at least some of them would resume their duties later on, so now was the best time to get moving. 

The hairs still stood out on the back of the count's neck so he knew that he was being observed but if it wasn't the drones monitoring him, then Mikula assumed that he was being watched by some-one or more likely some thing more locally based. He was on Naval land so the logical conclusion was that it had to be the Navy. But if it was, then why hadn't they sent out guards to intercept him? Were they cowards?

When Ruthers had confidently told him that the Naval base was deserted, Count Mikula's gut feeling had been a suspicion that there still might be some covert force hidden in the mine that Ruthers didn't know about. Count Mikula knew that there were secret bases all over Europe and a lot of them still had ageing nuclear weapons contained in silos.

The count trusted his instincts in these matters because his paranoia had saved his life so many times. He drew his ancient Luger pistol and scanned the area. He tried it, the trigger had jammed, probably, he conjectured because of all the moisture in the air. He cursed, from experience the thing took hours to disassemble and clean properly; a more modern weapon would have taken minutes.

The count did a full three hundred and sixty degrees scan around him, but he saw nothing that could account for the feeling of being observed. Nevertheless, the evidence of his eyes was only one factor in the equation, and he knew that sometimes the eyes lied, he was correct in his assumption, because several pairs of angry lupine eyes were scrutinising his every movement, waiting for the right time to make their moves.