Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Djordji, meanwhile, kept speeding along, either oblivious to what was going on behind him or convinced that following Gabriel’s last instruction, to catch up with the other horses, was the best way he could be helpful.

Gabriel slammed his heel into the Cossack’s kneecap. The Cossack grunted but would not let go. Glancing to the side, Gabriel saw they were approaching a wide, rocky stream. He called out to Djordji.

“Drive into the water!”

Djordji swung the steering wheel and seconds later they plunged headlong into the icy stream. Gabriel’s face stayed barely above the surface, but the rider beneath him was completely submerged. Tough bastard that he was, he still managed to hang on, but Gabriel felt the grip around his waist loosen. Gabriel pulled his legs up and gave the man a savage kick. This finally dislodged him, and, freed of the excess weight, Gabriel was able to haul himself back up into the jeep. Behind him, he saw the rider rise to his knees, cursing, in the middle of the stream. The jeep squelched through the mud and climbed the opposite bank, leaving the Cossack in the distance.

“Is not good,” Djordji said when Gabriel climbed, dripping, into the front seat.

Gabriel figured his driver could have been talking about any number of things. “What’s not good?”

“They cross to Transdniestria,” Djordji said, pointing to the remaining riders galloping ahead of them. As Gabriel watched, the white stallion and one of the other horses jumped across what appeared to be a deep, rocky ravine. “Jeep cannot go that way. We have to go around.”

But Gabriel knew they couldn’t go around—by the time they made it, all signs of the horses and riders would be gone.

“We’re not going around,” Gabriel said. “Speed up.”

Djordji looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but kept his foot on the gas. They were just yards from the edge of the ravine.

Gabriel reached down into the footwell, groped around till he found his Colt, and reholstered it. “Get me next to one of those horses,” he said, standing up again. He climbed onto the seat.

A third rider reached the ravine and leapt across. There were only two left. As Djordji poured on what additional speed remained in the jeep’s overtaxed engine, they overtook the last horse. The rider looked to his side. He seemed surprised to see Gabriel there, standing beside him. Gabriel cocked a smile at him, and the man smiled back. “Dobry vecher, gospodin,” Gabriel said, and swung a wide right into the rider’s face, knocking him backward off his horse. Gabriel looked ahead. There were only seconds left before they hit the ravine. Gabriel leapt astride the now empty saddle and swept the reins up in his hands.

Djordji slammed on the brakes, bringing the jeep to a halt in a massive cloud of dust, just inches from the lip of the ravine. Gabriel gripped the black mare’s steaming flanks with his legs and pulled back on the reins, urging the animal to make the jump.

The horse let out a snort of protest against her new, unfamiliar rider but launched herself across the ravine after her fellows. There was a tense moment of shifting pebbles and slipping hooves as they landed on the far side and the horse fought to maintain her balance. Gabriel leaned forward and spurred his anxious mount ahead. She regained her footing and took off after the other riders.

As the horse galloped across the moonlit steppe, their destination came into view. An ancient ruin of a large circular fortress, grim, brooding half-hidden by the low broken hills around it. This was no tourist attraction, no spectacular gothic castle out of a travel brochure. It was an ugly, forgotten place, nothing left but cold, unfriendly walls designed not for aesthetics but function, the function being to keep enemies out. But the defenses had been breached centuries ago, and enemies or not, the Cossacks were riding in.

As they approached the fortress, a heavy, rusted portcullis slowly cranked open, allowing the riders to pass beneath and into the dull yellow glow emanating from the interior. As the portcullis began to close, Gabriel urged his mount to top speed.

He wasn’t going to be able to make it on horse back, he saw—the metal gate was dropping too quickly, and already there was no room. Yanking the reins sharply to the right, Gabriel dropped off the horse to his left, diving to the ground and rolling beneath the portcullis’ descending spikes. As the ancient gate slammed closed, Gabriel could feel one leg of his pants catch and tear. He struggled to stand and pull his pant leg free from the spike that had pinned it to the ground. There was a loud rip as he freed himself, but the sound was drowned out by a louder ratcheting sound, a sound of metal sliding against metal that made his heart sink when he heard it. He spun to face the interior of the fortress and found himself staring into the business ends of over a dozen AK-47s.

Chapter 3

Gabriel could see the white horse standing by the open doorway of a low stone building on the opposite side of the courtyard. Steep stone steps were visible through the doorway, leading sharply down into the darkness beyond, but Fiona and the rider who had grabbed her—the man with the tall fur hat—were nowhere in sight.

However there was no time to contemplate where Fiona might have been taken, because Gabriel was distracted by the infinitely more pressing issue of the hostile, rifle-wielding soldiers currently drawing down on him.

One of their number, a handsome, dark-haired older man with the insignia of a commanding officer, stepped forward and ordered Gabriel, in Russian, to surrender his gun. One of the younger soldiers helpfully clarified the command by tapping Gabriel’s shoulder holster with the barrel of his Kalashnikov and then jamming the muzzle into the soft spot under Gabriel’s ear.

Gabriel raised his hands and slowly removed the Colt from its holster. His eyes desperately scanned his surroundings for any hope of escape. There were stacks of stenciled wooden crates, several parked military vehicles and a pair of noisy, foul-smelling generators powering the strings of weak yellow lightbulbs that illuminated the scene. The remaining riders had dismounted at the far end of the courtyard and were seeing to their horses with only the vaguest interest in Gabriel’s predicament. A group of grim-faced African men in suits were standing to his left, conversing quietly in French and giving him occasional stony glares while one of their number counted the crates, jotting figures on a clipboard. The surrounding walls were over twenty feet high. There was no visible way out.

Gabriel held his pistol out at arm’s length and tossed it to the ground. It slid across the mossy paving stones and came to rest against the commanding officer’s spit-shined shoe. The soldier pressing his rifle against Ga-briel’s neck backed off with a smug look. The smugness rapidly transformed to curiosity, then astonishment as the sound of an approaching vehicle became a deafening crash. Djordji’s jeep rammed the rusty portcullis, knocking it loose from its ancient moorings and driving into the courtyard with the gate drunkenly balanced across the hood, steam billowing from the damaged engine.

Gabriel leapt aside, narrowly avoiding being flattened as the jeep scattered men before it like bowling pins. He dove for his Colt, rolling away with the gun in hand and ending up behind a stack of wooden crates. Gabriel ducked down and listened to the multilingual chaos, trying to discern Djordji’s fate while his fingers moved on autopilot, emptying the Colt’s spent brass and reloading. He’d only had time to slide two fresh slugs into the cylinder when a wiry young soldier dropped down on him from the stack of crates above, slamming a fist into the back of his neck and causing the remaining bullets in Gabriel’s palm to drop and scatter.