Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Gabriel swore, twisting and bringing the hand holding the pistol up toward his attacker, but the Russian grabbed Gabriel’s hand and pressed his thumb against the still open cylinder to keep it from snapping shut. Gabriel managed to wrench his hand free from the Russian’s grip, but not before the struggle caused the two bullets to slip from the chamber and roll away under one of the crates. He let the young Russian have it in the temple with the butt of the empty gun. The Russian dropped as if suddenly boneless. Stepping over his crumpled form, Gabriel angrily holstered the empty Colt and peered around the stack of crates.

The courtyard was full of soldiers, running and shouting. The jeep was upside down and on fire, but Djordji wasn’t in it. In fact, he was nowhere in sight. Several men were battling the smoky blaze with foam extinguishers while others, under the supervision of the grim Africans, formed lines to swiftly move crates of ammo and other dangerous explosives away from the fire. It was then that Gabriel realized what was going on here. Clearly he had stumbled into the middle of some kind of arms deal. But what did this have to do with Fiona and the kindjal ?

Gabriel eyed the open door and the stone steps down which Fiona and her captor had disappeared. He thought he had a clear shot and was about to make a run for it when one of the Africans came around the far corner of the stack of crates. His eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed to a slit as he pulled out an HK .45, drawing a bead on Gabriel’s chest.

Gabriel raised his palms till they framed his face. In heavily accented French, the African told Gabriel to prepare for death. Gabriel responded in the same tongue. “You might want to do a little preparation yourself,” he said.

“I? For what?” The man sneered. “I have the gun in my hand, and you have nothing.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, “but my friend there, behind you, has a shovel.”

The man got the beginning of a contemptuous laugh out before the shovel in Djordji’s hands slammed into the back of his head with a loud crack. The man staggered and crumpled, clutching at the crates as he fell. One toppled onto him, breaking open when it struck the ground. A pair of smooth, spherical hand grenades spilled out.

Gabriel snatched one up. “Nobody move!” he shouted. He stepped out into view with his finger through the pin loop. “Drop your weapons.”

There was a moment of shocked silence and then a ripple of outraged Russian murmurs.

“You wouldn’t dare,” replied the dark-haired officer who’d first confronted Gabriel.

“Of course I would,” Gabriel replied in Russian. “Grenade or gun, I’m just as dead, but this way I get to take some of you with me.” The logic seemed to sink in, and the officer took a step back. Gabriel motioned for Djordji to join him as he moved sideways toward the open door.

Every pair of eyes in the courtyard was focused on Gabriel as weapons were lowered but not dropped. The look on the officer’s face was one of barely suppressed rage. Gabriel closed the last few feet between him and the door.

“Go,” he said to Djordji, gesturing for the Gypsy to start down the stone steps.

While the older man descended, Gabriel stood in the open doorway, his finger on the pin of the hand grenade. Once he could no longer hear Djordji’s steps, Gabriel called to the officer. “Here. Catch.” He made as if to throw the grenade at the man, who ducked away in fear—but at the last instant, Gabriel spun and slung the grenade sidelong toward the nearest stack of munitions.

The hot fist of the ensuing explosion shoved Gabriel backward into the stairway. Gabriel pulled the heavy wooden door closed, sliding a massive iron bar into place to seal it. He could hear the firecracker sound of explosions and gunshots, then a barrage of angry Russian as the soldiers beat their fists and gun butts against the door. Gabriel raced downward, following the path Djordji had taken—and Fiona before him—into the bowels of the ancient fortress.

He met up with Djordji halfway down. The Gypsy was leaning against the stone wall, the shovel still gripped in one fist. Djordji put the index finger of his other hand to his lips and gestured with his head below them, where the stone steps vanished into darkness. There were voices below, one male and one female, both furious.

“Where?” the man’s voice thundered in heavily accented English. “You tell, now!”

“I don’t know where it is,” Fiona shouted back, unconvincingly. “I swear I don’t.”

Gabriel took the lead and walked silently, cautiously, down the steps. As they crept around a turn, the darkness was replaced by a dim flickering light, the startlingly red glow a shade Gabriel remembered seeing only once before, in a Croatian monastery; when he’d asked what accounted for the unusual color of the flame, they’d explained it was the admixture of the tallow with a portion of ground-up human bone. The calcium, they explained. Calcium burns brick red.

Gabriel still couldn’t see anything before him—there was another curve in the steps ahead—but he could make out a distinct and repetitive sound, a kind of sharp, resonant thwack , followed swiftly each time by a high-pitched feminine gasp.

He hastened ahead to the curve, Djordji just steps behind. When they came around it, the candlelit scene was revealed. Fiona stood in the center of a large, lowceilinged room, bound to one of several thick wooden pillars with her hands above her head. Her dress was torn nearly to her waist and her shapely legs were scratched and bruised, but she held her small, defiant chin high, eyes blazing. The pillar to which she had been tied was bristling with throwing knives, their wicked points buried in the ancient wood all around her bound and squirming form. The rider in the fur hat stood before her, now revealed as a tall, brutish man with long gray hair, a sharp forked beard and an expression of avid hunger that might have been lust or greed or religious zeal, or perhaps a combination of all three. The man held several knives in one large hand like a deadly bouquet, the same sort of knives that currently surrounded Fiona’s tense, quivering body. He transferred one to his empty hand, then smiled and licked his lips.

“I told you…” Fiona began to say.

The man in the fur hat raised his elbow to the ceiling and then brought his arm swiftly downward, letting the knife fly. It sank deep into the wood a bare millimeter from Fiona’s temple. She yelped as she tried to twist away and found her head trapped, a thick lock of her hair pinned to the wood by the blade.

Gabriel’s hand reflexively drew the now empty Colt. He looked to Djordji and motioned for the Gypsy to hand him the shovel. Should he charge the man with the shovel? Try to bluff with the gun? He needed to act fast, because the next strike of a blade could be fatal. Behind him, Djordji silently crossed himself. The man in the fur hat switched another knife to his empty hand. Gabriel looked from the shovel to the gun and back again.

“Ah, hell,” he muttered, then raised the Colt so its barrel was aimed directly at the knife thrower’s forehead. He called out: “Put the knives down and let her go.”

With stunning speed, the man spun and let the blade fly in Gabriel’s direction. Gabriel’s reflexes were barely quick enough for him to bring the head of the shovel up into the knife’s path. The blade rang loudly against the metal of the shovel, then ricocheted off, burying itself to the hilt in the dirt between two slabs of stone at the foot of the stairs.

Gabriel charged down the remaining steps as the man readied for another throw. Gabriel felt level ground beneath his feet and saw a second knife spinning toward him, end over end. He swung the shovel, deflecting it. He saw Djordji duck as the knife passed by him. The Gypsy flattened himself against the nearest wall, then darted away into the safety of the shadows.