Path of the Tiger

we should have just brought a few wagons loaded up with dynamite with us, and simply blown this place and the foul thing inside it to hell. It would have been a lot less risky than what we’re about to attempt.’
‘We have everything we need to make this mission a success,’ Higgins said coolly. ‘This site and the being inside—’
‘The hellspawn inside it,’ Vasilevsky growled.
‘Indeed, yes,’ Higgins muttered, one eyebrow subtly raised as he continued, ‘will provide us with answers to questions our forebears have been asking for centuries, for millennia. We cannot simply destroy such potential. And even with a few wagons of dynamite, I’m not sure if we even could. There are things we do not yet understand about the nature of this place, of the creature within … You heard what Dr Khan was saying earlier, my good sir. The readings on his instruments were unworldly. To attempt something as, as crudely forceful as blowing this place up may set in motion a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. Even if we had the requisite explosives at hand, I would not permit it.’
‘You have your opinion on the matter, I have mine,’ Vasilevsky grunted gruffly, unmoved by his compatriot’s words.
The officers allowed their conversation to trail off into a combative silence, the tension drawn ever tauter by the intensifying suspense of the wait for the scout’s return. He eventually did, and assured the officers that it was safe to proceed.
‘Well then,’ Higgins said as he stood up, ‘let’s see what lies in the valley beyond, shall we?’
Vasilevsky, as thorny as ever, scowled and barked an order to the troops, who all stood up in perfectly synchronised unison, and then began to advance. Every step Higgins took up the slope magnified his sense of excited anticipation, and it took no small effort of will to stop himself from running ahead, with the top of the slope so tantalisingly close.
He reached it soon enough though, and in the small valley beyond his gaze fell upon the object of his desire, the locus of his every ounce of toil and labour and research over the past few decades … and it was not quite what he expected. The valley itself was strange enough, looking like something that was almost man-made rather than a natural geological formation; from atop the rise on which the men were standing, the land fell sharply away in a near-vertical drop, flattening out after twenty-five or thirty metres into an enormous concave depression. The top of the ridge – the lip of this odd, bowl-shaped valley – extended in a sweeping curve to either side of the men, disappearing into the wall of trees.
‘Looks like a giant bloody cannonball dropped from the heavens and landed right here,’ one of the soldiers muttered as the men surveyed the landscape before them.
In addition to the oddness of the terrain, the trees in the valley were also far from normal. They were of the same few species that populated the rest of the taiga, but the sheer size of the valley trees was beyond incredible; the freakishly enormous spruces, firs and pines in here positively dwarfed their brethren, making them look like mere saplings in comparison. Indeed, even the gargantuan redwoods and sequoias of California, which Higgins had seen with his own eyes, looked like adolescent specimens compared to these titans.
‘No wonder it’s seemed for the past few hours like night has fallen in the middle of the day,’ he whispered, half to himself, as he stared in wonder at the enormous trees that blotted out the sky.
‘I thought it might have been an eclipse,’ said Vasilevsky, who had overheard him. ‘And I was half right, eh Englishman? But it’s not the moon blocking the sun, we can now see…’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ Higgins murmured in response. ‘These trees must be what, one hundred and fifty metres tall? Taller, perchance? There may be some in this valley that exceed two hundred metres! By Jove, they’re positively, utterly enormous! And the girth of those trunks … they have to be at least ten metres in diameter, maybe more!’
‘We’ll be filthy rich from the lumber when we cut them all down,’ Vasilevsky murmured. ‘Even if it takes years to drag them to a river deep enough to float them away.’
‘Quite, my good sir, quite!’ Higgins responded with gleeful enthusiasm. ‘But before we begin laying out business plans and calculating costs and expenses, we do have the matter of the being that is somewhere in the middle of all of this to take care of.’
The muscles of Vasilevsky’s jutting jaw tightened, and a guttural growl of hatred and loathing – tempered with fierce determination – rumbled in his throat.
‘Let us waste no more time then,’ he gnarled. ‘Into the valley, men! We begin our assault!’
The men picked a path down the near-vertical descent, clambering down via a series of rocks that were jutting out of the moss-covered walls. The soldiers, all strong and agile, got down easily enough, but they had to assist the two scientists, who were not quite as nimble as the younger men. The interpreter, whose services were not needed for the time being, was told to wait at the top. Finally, when everyone else had climbed down, the last soldier forced the robed prisoner to descend. Despite the heavy chains on her wrists and ankles, she managed to hop with catlike grace from rock to rock, getting to the bottom far faster than the soldier who came down after her. When the prisoner had completed her descent, Higgins strolled over to her. Beneath his thick moustache he wore a smile, but he had about him the look of a coiled viper, poised to strike.
‘It’s almost time for you play your part in this mission,’ he said to her in Arabic, a language in which he was fluent. ‘Remember what will happen to you if you don’t cooperate … and what my masters will do to your imprisoned friends when word reaches my