William Dietrich - Ice Reich

"What is it?"

"The American! He's following us up the rope!" Another shot.

"What! Impossible! Cut the line, cut the line!"

"No, wait! I think I can hit him…"

Another bullet slammed inches above the pilot's head. Owen planted his boots on a ledge and hugged the cliff face, trying to melt into it. More shots, wilder this time in the dark. Then a headlamp beam was dancing as it tried to find him.

"There he is!"

Hart froze in the illumination.

"I've got him…"

The rope went slack.

"No!"

Hart clutched the cliff.

"Jesussss…!" The cry above dissolved into a scream and the headlamp beam began revolving. One of the Germans had cut the line while the shooter was still hanging on it. The rope slithered down past Hart, its end slapping him in the face, and the gunman hurtled by at the same time, his body cleaving the air, his wild screams echoing and reechoing as his light tumbled down into the pit. There was a sickening thud, far below, and the lamp went out.

"God in heaven! What happened?"

"It was Oscar! He went back down the rope, you fucking idiot!"

A moment of silence. Then, "Where's Hart?"

"How the hell do I know?"

"If you'd just shot him at the bottom like I told you- "

"Shut up. I'm going back down to look for him."

"No! There's no rope!" A pause. "He can't follow us."

"Maybe. Come here." The voices grew quieter. Were they climbing again?

Hart was trembling, afraid his fear would shiver him right off the cliff. There was nothing to do for it but struggle upward. He risked his light, tensing for a gunshot, and then, when no bullet came, picked out handholds he'd used before. Amazing what the brain remembered! So he climbed like a man possessed, his gaze fixed on the tunnel hole at the ceiling. His lamp was growing faint, his muscles trembling, his mind screaming at itself not to think about the hundreds of feet of yawning blackness below. And then at last he was at the tunnel too, jamming his exhausted arms and kicking his way upward, his breath coming in gasps, sweat stinging his eyes. He switched off his lamp to disguise his success and crawled hard up the lava tunnel. Time. Time! Soon they'd be setting the last charges. As he crawled upward, sometimes banging painfully into unyielding rock, he tried to listen for sounds of the Germans ahead. Silence. Were they simply out-running him?

Suddenly light blazed and he was squinting into the glare of a headlamp. Hans was filling the tunnel ahead with his giant's body, his head uphill, grinning at Hart over the cocked readiness of his upraised knees. "Now we fight one last time, yes?" the German greeted. Then he lashed out with his boots.

Hart reared back, the leather missing his nose by the width of a sole. The pilot skidded downward into safer shadows, braced, and yelled. "Too slow, you Nazi gorilla!"

"Come here, Hart! Fight like a man, you coward!"

Owen reviewed his mental map of where they were. Switching on his lamp for an instant he spied a side tunnel. He turned the light off and writhed into it.

"You kick like a girl, Hans! You fight like your mother!"

Cursing, the German fired. A pistol bullet whined off the rocks. Then more shots, an angry fusillade more to vent anger than hit anything. He heard the click of a fresh clip being slipped into the gun. "Hart!" The pilot was silent. Hans worked down the tunnel after him. Owen waited.

"Hart?"

There was silence.

"Hart, where are you?"

Cautious now, his gun out, the German slid past the side tunnel, dropping toward the junction of tube and chimney.

"Hart? Did I get you, yellow man?"

The pilot pushed off into the main tube and dropped toward the German. Hans twisted with a curse, trying to bring his gun around in the restricting tube, but before he could get his arm free Owen struck with his own boot, catching the storm trooper on the nose. The man howled and slipped toward the abyss, his vision blurred by his own blood. The gun skittered out from under him.

"Boots hurt, don't they?" the American growled.

Hans had jammed himself into the tube at the lip of the chimney, his legs kicking in empty air as he arrested his fall. "You bastard!" he roared. "I'm going to choke the life out of you! I'm going to squeeze until you beg!"

"Fuck you, Hans." Owen braced himself uphill from the German and pulled on a loose rock, yanking it free and shoving it downward as hard as he could. The exertion cost him his own grip and he slid after the small boulder as it banged down toward the storm trooper. Hans instinctively put out his arms to protect his face, a fatal error. He lost his grip on the tunnel.

"Shit!"

There was a thud as the boulder hit, a howl of outrage, and a rattle of loosened rocks. Then Hans's light disappeared. He was gone.

Hart thrust out his own arms and legs to brake himself at the edge of the chimney and skidded to a stop, listening in horrified fascination to the long, trailing scream. Then it stopped abruptly, the sound dying in its own echoes.

Two down, one to go. Panting, the pilot began climbing again, yanking away the route-marking ribbons he'd left on their initial descent.

When he neared the surface he switched off his light and crept ahead cautiously. Had the remaining Nazi simply set the charges and fled? Hart almost hoped so. He was too exhausted for a fight. He debated, sweating.

Then he risked a shout. "Rudolf!" The yell echoed through the cave.

"Hart?" The voice was wary.

Owen tightened his voice as if he was in pain. "It's Hans. Hart hurt me, but I got him! Help!"

"Hans?"

"Help me, dammit! I can't climb out! I lost my light!"

There was an uneasy silence. Then a scraping as the German began to slowly descend. "I'm coming!" He added a cautious warning. "I have a gun!"

"For God's sake don't shoot!" Hart slipped down into a side tunnel he'd explored earlier. "Help me! I'm bleeding!"

"Try to climb up, Hans! We have to hurry! The timers are set!"

"Please! It hurts!"

"Fuck." The German scrabbled lower. His light began to glow on the tube walls.

Hart retreated into the side tunnel. "In here!"

There was a splash of light. Bristle-Head followed, swearing. "It's too tight! What are you doing in here?"

"I'm lost!" Hart groaned. "Hurry!"

Then he dropped quickly and silently to the main tube and began to double back toward the surface.

"Hans! Where are you? Hans?"

Quickly now, very quickly.

"Christ! The markers are all gone! Hans?" Silence. "Where the hell are you?"

Time. How much time?

Realization dawned. "Hart! Hart, you son of a bitch!" Bristle-Head began to climb back. "A dead end! Where are the damn markers? Hart, you sneaking bastard…"

Owen switched his lamp on to hurry. Bristle-Head must have seen its receding glow because another shot rang out far below him, its energy consumed by ricochet.

"Hart…!"

The pilot staggered into the small, sandy-floored room at the cave mouth. His battery was nearly exhausted, its light duller than a candle. In the feeble gleam and the pale light from the nearby entrance he saw explosives wired as before. Behind and below he could hear the German swearing furiously as he tried to find his way up the cave. The pilot looked at the timers. Eleven minutes. Too long. Taking a breath, he shoved the minute hand on the dial to one, praying he hadn't disrupted its mechanism. "Time's up, Rudolf," he whispered.

He hurtled forward on hands and knees toward the low slit of the cave opening, clawing for its brightness. His head popped out into the shock of Antarctic cold and he rolled out onto the shelf and over its lip to the snow below, landing with a thud and digging in with fingers and toes to arrest his slide. Then he pressed his face into the slush and waited.