Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

polar bear was making its descent. He hastily slipped the bullet directly into the chamber and pushed the bolt forward, then he inserted the magazine. It was a backward load, but got the bullet where it was meant to be sooner. The Browning had a thumb safety behind the bolt, and he flicked it into the fire position. The bear was fifty metres from him when it hesitated, raised its head, and sniffed the air again. King watched the massive beast stare right at him, then lift his head and look past him. He was about to shoulder the rifle, when he glanced behind him and saw what the bear had been looking at. Less than a hundred metres behind him, two bears – one smaller than the other – were making their way towards him. The smaller bear, which King took to be a female, stopped walking while the large male continued, and King realised that he was in the centre of a triangle. He turned back to the bear on the slope, except it wasn’t. In the time it had taken to spot the other two bears, it had traversed the gradient and was now standing thirty metres from him. King aimed at the beast’s chest, then lowered his aim and fired between the animal’s legs. The .30-06 sounded thunderous in the still, night air. Stones and sand sprayed into the bear’s neck and face and it turned and bolted sideways a few paces, before looking back at King and raising itself to a full ten-feet tall as it half-roared, half-snorted. King worked the bolt and turned to face the other two bears. The female had closed the gap somewhat unnervingly, and King suddenly realised that it would possibly take more time than he had to get the box of ammunition out of his jacket and reload the magazine if the three animals charged at him. He was in it now, but he knew what standoffs could be like, and if he took another shot without killing one of the animals, then he was setting himself up for defeat. King visualised the box of bullets in his pocket. He would need to ditch his gloves, dig out the box, open it with already cold fingers and fish out another round. He decided he would be best off tipping the contents onto the ground and scooping up several of the bullets at once. He would need to eject the magazine with the push button. Would his hands be too cold already? Possibly. He’d have to take the chance. The snowmobile would act as cover between him and the bears, but not for long. He would have to be quick on the reloading.
King heard the other two bears join in on the aural display of prowess. Not a full roar, but the same snorting, moaning half-roar of the somewhat irked beast at the base of the slope. The humming seemed to grow loader and for a moment his heart sunk as he imagined more bears behind him. He turned and the noise grew louder, then reached a crescendo of pitch, but King now knew why and ducked his head instinctively as the shadow filled the sky.
The gatling guns opened fire and tracer rounds cut the ground just feet from the two polar bears. The Hercules C130 gunship banked hard to port, its wing precariously close to the jutting terrain below, then as it straightened and levelled, one of the gunners sent the burst of 7.62mm from its rear mini-gun close enough to the other bear for the tracer fire to light up its face in the darkness. King watched the three bears bounding off in all directions. The great aircraft was banking again and climbing, still way under the thousand feet hard deck it had been flying in on to keep below radar. King heard the engine pitch grow low and saw the airplane slow considerably in the sky. It must have been near to its stalling speed when the ramp lowered and one of the RAF “loadies” heaved out the crate and the parachute was instantly activated on its short tug line. It opened fully only fleetingly, then the crate hit the ground and the parachute billowed like a triumphant flag in the northerly wind.
King checked for bears again, but he doubted there would be one within a mile after the two bursts of machine gun fire. He looked back at the Hercules, but it had already settled to a height of five-hundred feet and was heading back out to sea. After a hundred miles or so it would climb back up to a cruising altitude of twenty-thousand feet and head back to RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland.
King wasted no time in righting the snowmobile back onto its skis. It was an effort, as he still felt the effects of the crash. He had landed heavily, but had assessed that nothing was broken, he was merely winded and bruised and he suspected he would feel it more acutely in the morning. He found the reset and started the machine, making slow and tentative progress on the rock and tundra, reflecting how bizarre it was that the ice and snow should randomly thaw. Although he soon got his answer as he passed several reindeer carcasses which had been mauled and torn apart by bears. There was little left but bone and hide and he imagined that the herd of reindeer had found the grass underneath the snow and ice and had dug and stamped at it as they had grazed. No wonder there were so many polar bears in the area.
The crate had snagged against two boulders and the parachute was wafting at the end of its lines like a kite. King gathered up the parachute and unclipped it from the webbing strapping on the crate. He used the Leatherman to cut the webbing, his hands already struggling with the cold, and after he had used