“What now?” Sid asked. King could see the desperation in her face and again he felt a terrible pang of guilt for having dragged her into this mess.
He stared longingly at the shore. It wasn’t that far. In fact, he knew he’d be able to swim it. If the water wasn’t cold enough to kill in a matter of minutes and there wasn’t a World War Two era retrofitted warplane hot on his tail, that was.
Cursing angrily, he threw the outboard around and coaxed as much juice as he could into it, gripping the torn line tightly. His hand was slick with fuel and the pungent smell made his nostrils burn and his eyes sting.
He turned and headed away from the far shore and darted past the ice field towards the towering cliff of the glacier’s terminus. He turned parallel to it, shooting with ever diminishing speed in front of it. The throbbing power of the engine faded until finally it spluttered its last breath and they coasted in towards a spit of rock which marked the right-hand-most limit of the terminus.
While the terminus itself was sheer and un-scalable without ice climbing equipment, the spit of land had a shallower incline, strewn with massive boulders which had been deposited like a petulant child’s toys by the glacier. High above, a wooden jetty marked the setting down and picking up point for the daily tourist ferry to the glacier but the tender scraped onto the shingle beach at the foot far below.
“Hurry,” King said, dragging Sid from the boat before it had even ground to a halt. In the lake behind, the Black Cat altered course towards them.
Desperately, they scrambled up the rocks. They were glassy-smooth, polished by the glacier for hundreds of years before global warming caused it to retreat, unveiling what had once been hidden within its serpentine folds.
Exhausted, their panting breath pluming as vapour in the frigid air, they reached level ground, at the same elevation as the jetty, just as Bill opened fire again. Bullets flared and sparked across the rocks as they ducked behind the cover of the boulders, still climbing higher.
Below, the Black Cat swooped in towards the spit of land. From its side hatch, a black-clad figure emerged, a fresh MP-5 submachine gun in hand.
Bill scrambled up the maintenance ladder affixed to the hull and pulled himself onto the top of the plane. Careful of the whirling motors set close to the fuselage, he ran down the length of the vessel’s starboard wing just as the pilot turned from a head on collision with the glacier. The Black Cat spun, the wing coming more or less parallel with the wooden jetty and, without slowing his pace, ignoring the pain of his foot just as he had been trained to do so, Bill ran to the wing’s very tip, leapt over the gap between it and the jetty and rolled onto the wooden construction.
Expertly using the momentum of the roll to propel himself back to his feet, he started up the incline towards his fleeing prey. Behind him, the pitch of the Black Cat’s engines stepped up a notch as the propellers spun faster and the flying boat sped down the length of the lake, hitting take-off speed and taking to the skies.
Then, like a bird of prey swooping in on two petulant mice, it came about and flew back towards the glacier.
“That can’t be good,” Sid said as she noticed the plane take flight.
They stepped cautiously over the threshold between rock and ice, the point where the glacier’s unstoppable force had gouged a channel into the very mountains.
Instantly, King and Sid felt themselves slipping. Glacier trekking without crampons was not recommended, but neither of them had that luxury. Instead, with no agility whatsoever, they slipped and slid across the flat field at the edge of the glacier towards the forest of frozen shapes deeper in.
A burst of gunfire rattled behind them as Bill gave chase. The bullets chewed up the ice at their heels. They both went down, hard, slipping again. Their hands and knees were bloody and bruised already but they had no choice but continue on. Another barrage of fire almost caught up with them seconds before they vanished into the warped and twisted heart of Viedma.
It was like a storm-tossed ocean, flash-frozen by some phenomenal force of primeval nature. Huge waves of frozen ice towered thirty feet above them, frozen solid as if caught split seconds before breaking. The landscape rose and fell in dramatic crests and troughs. Lonesome pillars stood out like Indian totem poles; spiralling twirls twisted as though spun into a frozen flurry by an angelic ballerina; sheer cliffs, narrow chasms and bottomless pits all sparkled crystalline blue, glittering with a hidden menace. It was like being inside a Christmas bauble, a world unto itself, a staggeringly enchanted land of outstanding beauty.
And apparelled danger.
King led Sid in a blind dash down one of the narrowest channels which wove its way deeper and deeper into the heart of the glacier. They ran for about fifty feet, using the close walls to steady themselves. There didn’t seem to be any end in sight, the horizontal chasm seemingly unending and King realised his fatal mistake of bringing them in to it when Bill appeared back at the entrance.
They were sitting ducks. Again.
Bill opened fire.
A break in the wall appeared as if out of nowhere and King threw Sid into it just as Bill’s bullets punched into the channel. King dived in after her and only then realised that the off-shoot of the channel was not level but angled downwards at a substantial angle. With no way of stopping themselves they slid down the slope as if it was an adventure playground. Behind them, secured in crampons, Bill crunched robotically down the channel.
Sid hit the bottom of the slope first. The momentum and the frictionless ice spun her on her bottom and she continued to slide, this time to the side. King followed behind a second later. Above, Bill reached their escape chute, brought his gun up and aimed just as they slid out of sight.
Unable to stop or control their movements, both Sid and King screamed in a mix of fear, adrenaline and an odd addition of excitement until the incline levelled gradually and they were able to haul themselves to their feet.
Again, King grabbed Sid’s hand and they raced into a twisted array of grotesque natural ice sculptures, the tallest about fifteen feet high. Some looked almost like the petrified bodies of ancient humans though King knew that was merely his imagination running away with him. Nevertheless, he led Sid through them, ducking and diving, weaving and gliding up, over, under and around the alien landscape.
On the far side of the ‘forest’ several paths opened up to them. They headed right, hoping to veer back closer towards the terminus. Though neither King nor Sid had a plan of escape, they both knew that fleeing too far into the snaking glacier would mean certain death.
“I’ve lost them!” Bill barked into his radio.
“I’m on it,” his pilot replied. In response, he heard the whine of the Black Cat’s engines above as it swept in towards the glacier from over the lake. With its infrared radar, spotting the heat signatures of two exhausted humans on a slab of solid ice would be easy.
Bill kept watch on the G.P.S. transceiver in his hand as the Black Cat’s sensor fed it directions. Two blurs of deep red against a background of blue appeared but Bill didn’t head immediately in that direction. Instead he paused and watched as the Black Cat came in for the kill.
Another narrow chasm suddenly opened out into a deadly booby trap wrought by the forces of nature.
To the one side the sheer wall of ice continued for another eight feet, but to the left a gaping expanse of nothingness dropped for as far as the eye could see. The enormous hole shone with an eerie blue light, as though the fires of hell far beneath the earth were reflecting through the ice. There was no bottom to the abyss that King could see. It stretched as though into the abyss of eternity.
They halted at the threshold and glanced back the way they had come. But Bill would be out there, they both knew.
“What do we do?” Sid asked, though they both knew the answer. King glanced at the narrow ledge which ringed the abyss. It was barely two feet wide.
“We go around,” he replied, though with less confi
dence in his voice than he would have liked. “I’ll go first. To make sure the ledge will take my weight.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Sid asked.
King frowned at her. “I’d have thought the alternative was fairly obvious,” he mumbled. He looked down at the abyss again. His heart raced. Though, in all honesty it had been racing for quite some time now.
Taking a deep breath, he summoned up all the courage he felt- which wasn’t a lot, he realised- then stepped-
“Wait,” Sid grasped his arm and spun him around, planting a powerful kiss on his lips. It was something of an anti-climax after preparing for almost certain death. “I love you.”
The words, said a hundred times, suddenly took on a deeper meaning. A more real meaning. As though they had never been uttered before. “I love you too.” Then he turned back to the abyss, took another breath, fumbled in his pocket, felt the ring box, went to step out then-
“Sid, will you-”
“Just do it,” she snapped, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
King spun, stepped out and threw his entire weight onto the narrow ledge. His heart practically burst through his chest. Only then did he realise that his eyes had been clamped tightly shut. He opened them one by one and discovered that he was still alive.
He let a relieved breath whistle out through his lips.
That was when the wall of ice to which he clung exploded!
The thunderous bombardment of bullets jack-hammered through the ice as the Black Cat powered overhead, its nose-mounted machine gun spewing out the deadly fire.
In an instant, the ledge upon which King stood crumbled and he felt himself slip. He groped desperately at the wall of ice but that too crumbled under the Black Cat’s onslaught, large chucks blasting out in all directions. One large piece slammed into Sid’s head and she dropped to the ground, her unconscious form sliding towards the precipice.
Then, as the plane pulled up, its engines screaming through the frigid air, King felt his last fingertip-worth of purchase slip and, with a stomach lurching sense of motion, he slid down the chasm-
A four inch-long nail slammed into the back of his right hand, punching through, out the palm and into the ice, pinning him to it. He cried out in sudden agony as his entire body weight snagged to a halt, held in place by the nail. The hole in his hand began to stretch and rivulets of blood coursed down his arm and smeared across the vertical side of the chasm.
“Ben!” Bill called. “Give me the map!”
King struggled to catch his breath. A mixture of shock, pain, anger and abject fear caught in his throat. The last of the exploding ice cascaded down around him, large blocks bouncing painfully from his back and plummeting forever downwards until they were lost into the inky blue gloom far below. The thudding sound of impact echoed up dully several seconds later.
He struggled to look around at Bill. Thankfully he had pulled Sid away from the edge of the crevice and she was slowly stirring back into consciousness. Bill pointed his machine gun directly at her head. “Now!” he ordered.
King struggled to speak. “Okay.” His voice seemed weak and feeble. Pathetic. He tried to support his impaled arm by clamping his left one onto it but it was no use. He became suddenly aware of the burning in his right bicep caused by the nail already embedded there. The nail in his hand, meanwhile, continued to rip slowly but surely through the flesh as his bodyweight pulled down on it. The ice started to give way under his struggling, melting from the heat of his palm, the nail pulling out.
“You think I won’t kill her?” Bill snapped. He pulled the trigger. Bullets erupted from the muzzle of his weapon.
“No!” King screamed. But the bullets slammed into the ice just beside Sid. The tremendous noise shocked Sid back to full wakefulness and she stared in horror at the gunman, then over in King’s direction.
“Okay!” King shouted. “Okay, I’ll give you the map.”
They’d lost, he knew. The nail pulled out further. His hand and arm throbbed. He realised in that moment that this was it. He wasn’t going to live through this. The same obsession that had led his father to whatever fate he had met; the same obsession that had dragged Kha’um to his tropical grave in Venezuela, had also lured him to his death in an icy coffin in Argentina.
Strangely, he realised, he could accept that.
But he wouldn’t accept the same for Sid.
Without even really contemplating what he was doing, King reached into the folds of his jacket and wrenched free the Egyptian dagger. Then, taking aim, he wrenched his hand away from the wall and kicked off it, using his body’s momentum as it dropped to hurl the dagger at his enemy.
It flashed by in a streak of gold. Bill dodged to the side but the blade sliced through his cheek and pummelled the lower half of his ear. He fell back reflexively but the last thing King saw before he dropped below the edge of the crevice was the mercenary recover enough to aim his gun at Sid.
As he plummeted to his death, King heard the resounding crack of a single shot echo down the shaft. He screamed inwardly. Not at his own fate, but at that of the woman he loved. Instead of killing Bill as he’d hoped, he’d enraged him and sentenced Sid to death.
He dropped like a stone at phenomenal speed, the sides of the chasm racing past in a blur of ice-blue, the yawning abyss of hell’s hungry jaws closing in around him-
He snagged to an agonising halt as something caught his outspread arms!
His downward plummet ceased and he swung in the middle of the abyss, a hundred and fifty feet down.
Fearing what he might find, cautiously he looked up into the smug face of Nathan Raine.
“Hey Benny,” he mock-scolded, suspended upside down from a line attached to a hovering airplane. “Quit hanging around. We’ve got a job to do.”
37:
Rules of Engagement
Viedma Glacier,
Argentina
At the exact instant that Benjamin King had wrenched his impaled hand free of the ice wall and hurled the Egyptian dagger at the mercenary leader known only as Bill, the V-22 Osprey had swung across the glacier. Its wing-mounted rotors had tilted vertically to bring it to a halt, hovering above the three human-shaped heat signatures lost within the twisted landscape of Viedma.
Strapped to repelling lines, ready to zip down to rescue King and Sid, Raine had watched in horror as King dropped into a yawning chasm while Bill had raised his MP-5 submachine gun angrily at Sid’s head.
A single shot from Private Murray’s M14 sniper rifle missed Bill’s head and slammed into his chest, hurling him backwards, into the narrow channel of ice. He slid down the incline out of sight.
But Raine ignored all of that, focussed instead on King. With a surreal sense of slow motion, the archaeologist hurled himself into the chasm. Raine, somehow, had predicted the move seconds before he had made it, just as the Osprey had come to hover above the mini-battle ground, and had already thrown himself into thin air.
As King dropped below the edge of the crevice, Raine had been only meters above. He’d reached out to snag the falling man but missed.
Expertly, he clamped his arms tight to his sides and angled his body like a torpedo, streamlined and fast compared to the wild flailing of King’s limbs.
Faster and faster the two men flew down the chasm, one oblivious of the other. Raine reached out again and, quite by accident, clamped his hand around King outstretched right arm. Despite being slick with blood, Raine found a strong purchase and, using his free, gloved hand and wrapping his legs around the repelling line, he’d snagged them both to a halt in the middle of the abyss.
“Hey Benny,” he’d said, feeling a rush of relief wash over him. “Quit hanging around. We’ve got a job to do.”
Minutes later, winched up to the safety of the hovering tilt-rotor, Gibbs helped King inside the hold. Raine clambered in after him and watched as he staggered forward into the arms of Sid. They embraced tightly, both tearful.
“I thought you were dead,” King and Sid said to one another before kissing. But King pulled away from the kiss.
“Before anything else happens,” he said hurriedly, pulling something desperately from his pocket as though his life depended on it. He flipped open the ring box that had travelled with him through Venezuela, New York, Jamaica and Argentina. In all those places he had been shot at, kidnapped, almost blown up, attacked by crocodiles and anacondas, leapt from waterfalls and plummeted into bottomless pits, yet only now did he find the courage to utter four simple words.
“Will you marry me?”
Sid’s face lit up and, despite the tenseness of the situation and the usual harshness of Gibbs, the coldness of Nadia and the coolness of Raine, all three spectators broke into wide grins as she replied: “Of course I will!” They kissed again, hungrily and passionately.
Raine felt a tremendous swell of joy for his two friends. He tried to shrug off the memories of his own lost love and found his eyes drifting towards Nadia. Whether she had meant to or not, her eyes had also drifted towards him. An almost guilty expression crossed her face, self-recrimination at being caught, but instead of flicking her eyes away, her full lips curved into slight smile.
“Alright people, this isn’t the love boat,” Gibbs snapped, all business again, his broad Texan accent tearing the warmth of the moment apart. “Those maniacs are still out there and they’re still after the mask. We need to find it. Your doe-eyed canoodling can wait til later. O’Rourke, report,” he snapped into his radio.
Moon Mask Page 37
