David Gilman - Ice Claw

This place could end up as a tomb for both Sayid and Max.

Max was dripping wet; steam soaked through his clothing. Sayid’s body had not moved as the hot water continued to gush over the ice block. The water flooded the passageway, spilling down the hoist shaft. Max heard someone crying for help. Farentino.

The hoist still worked, and as it slowed its descent into the caged area, Max jumped clear. Farentino was at the front of his cage shouting, his arms jammed through the bars. Fumes and smoke from damaged machinery were beginning to fill the cavern.

“Max! Thank God! Get me out of here! Hurry. There’s shooting. Someone is attacking.”

Max looked around the area carved from the rock face. There was still a tunnel-boring machine; maybe he could cut through the wall of rock. No, that’d take too long. Max felt as though the whole mountain were on top of his head. Any serious flooding or damage and it would shatter. The tunnels and caves cut into it over the last twenty years would have weakened the inherent structure.

“My mother!” Max demanded.

“I’ll tell you everything, but we have to get away, Max. You see that, don’t you? There is no time.”

Max grabbed Farentino’s wrist and tore free the Rolex.

“What are you doing?”

Max snapped the expensive watch onto his own arm. It was 10:46. Just under one hour to get Sayid’s body out of the mountain and stop Tishenko.

“In five seconds I’m smashing the bolt free from that polar bear’s cage. You won’t be going anywhere, Farentino, you scum. I want to know how my mother died.”

“All right, all right. She was in the jungle. Something went horribly wrong.”

“What went wrong?” Max yelled.

“I don’t know. Please, Max, get me out.”

“Tell me! What happened?”

Farentino’s tone changed. The defeated man’s face looked defiant in its anger. “You want to know the ugly truth? All right! Your father abandoned her. She was sick, she was dying and he ran!”

“Liar!”

Farentino sensed he had the upper hand. He had an emotional hold over Max that no one had ever had before. “She died alone, Max, because your father saved himself!”

“My father wouldn’t do that! Not my dad!”

“He did it and he can’t live with the shame! Why do you think he stuck you away in that boarding school? Why do you see so little of him? Why? Because he knows he killed your mother!”

His words struck Max like an assassin’s knife ripping into his chest.

“Why should I believe you? You’ve betrayed everyone who ever trusted you!”

Farentino lowered his voice. “Because I loved her. I loved your mother with all my heart. But she would not leave your father for me.”

Max didn’t move. He couldn’t. Farentino gently touched his arm and spoke quietly. “Get me out, Max, and I will tell you everything. Please. I promise.”

Max had to break through the crippling numbness that gripped him. Gunfire rattled on one of the levels above. It was close. The smell of gunsmoke and cordite clung to the air, stinging eyes and throat. It snapped Max back. He felt cold, but it wasn’t the temperature. It was his heart.

He turned to the machinery against the wall, pulled a heavy-linked iron drag chain from one of them and passed it through the cage’s bars. Then he jammed a metal rod through the end of the chain to hold it fast.

Feeding out the links, he heaved its weight to the hoist. The handheld control switch dangled in the air. Max pressed the Up button and the platform rose. He stopped it when it reached head height, then snagged the chain beneath the hoist’s structure. He pressed the Up button again and the platform rose slowly, taking the chain’s strain.

“Stand back!” he shouted to Farentino as metal screeched and strained. The chain wrenched the cage apart. He lowered the hoist to head height again. Farentino staggered from his cage, but Max wasn’t interested in helping him. He saw no reason why a trapped polar bear should die down here. He ran to the cage where he had escaped the angry bear, pushed back the bolt and saw the bear rise up from its icy pool.

“Come on! Picnic time! Plenty of bad people to eat out here!”

The sound of his voice had an immediate effect, and the bear began to climb through the ice wall’s hole between the two cages.

Farentino had already climbed onto the hoist’s platform. Max jumped, with the bear fifteen meters behind him. He grabbed the control buttons and lifted them up to the next level.

“I need help with my friend,” Max said to Farentino, dragging him off the platform and into the flowing water.

Gunfire, loud now. Explosions. Grenades. Men crying in pain.

Farentino cringed in fear and offered no resistance as Max bullied him along the passage. Max had sent the platform down to where the bear could clamber up. He had done all he could.

CUT BEARD CLAW

It meant nothing! He grabbed Farentino’s arm and pulled him into the darkened tunnel.

It looked as though Sayid lay sprawled backwards across an ice bench. Everything had melted except for one block at the bottom. The hot water still gushed but had cooled.

Max cupped Sayid’s face in his hands-there was no neck pulse. He slipped his hand under Sayid’s jacket and shirt; his chest was ice cold and there was no heartbeat.

“He’s dead,” Farentino said matter-of-factly. “We should get out.”

Max gripped Farentino’s arm. Saw the pain register on the man’s face.

“The entrance is too narrow. I can’t carry him on my own. Take his legs.”

An explosion somewhere nearby-the fighting was almost upon them. Farentino grabbed Sayid’s legs as Max took most of his friend’s weight. They shuffled past the hoist and into the open area.

Max laid Sayid’s body down gently.

Two alien-looking creatures dressed in black, with rubber faces and bulging eyes and carrying machine pistols, ran out of the cavern’s gloom. Pencil-thin laser beams from their gunsights cut through the near darkness and settled on Farentino’s chest.

“Don’t shoot!” Farentino cried.

Corentin and Thierry pulled the night-vision goggles from their faces.

“Max!” Corentin said. “Is this the boy?”

“Corentin! How the …?”

“It was Sophie,” Thierry said as he knelt next to Corentin, who was already checking Sayid. Thierry slipped a backpack from his shoulders. “There’s a small army of French and Swiss support troops outside. They’re too late, as usual. We did the business in here.”

“Wolf men! Puppies more like,” Corentin said.

Corentin cut Sayid’s clothes with a wicked-looking combat knife. Thierry took a battlefield medical kit from his backpack. Both men worked silently, no longer determined professional soldiers but field-trained medics. Thierry prepared a hypodermic.

“Epinephrine,” he said to Max’s worried look.

“Save him, Corentin,” Max pleaded.

Corentin placed small spoon-sized paddles from a mobile cardiac resuscitation unit on each side of Sayid’s rib cage. Thierry plunged the needle into Sayid’s heart. There was still no pulse.

“Clear,” Corentin said.

He triggered the unit and Sayid’s body jolted.

“Come on, Sayid! Come on!” Max begged.

“The boy is dead. You waste your time,” Farentino said.

Corentin’s look could rip out your stomach. “This boy’s ice cold. He’s not dead until he’s warm and dead.”

Corentin and Thierry tried the procedure three more times, then Corentin looked at Max and shook his head.

“There’s a casevac chopper outside. We’ll take you boys out of here now. C’mon, this place is secure. And there’s a hell of a storm waiting to explode out there. Choppers won’t fly much longer.”