Clive Cussler - Fast Ice

“We’re getting a little low on the slope,” Joe said. “Bear right five degrees. And try to keep us in tight to the ridge, there’s a boulder field approaching on the left.”

Kurt eased to the right and rode up the slope, continuing forward and fighting against gravity like a car on a banked racetrack. He slowed a little as a series of volcanic outcroppings appeared in the dim light.

The rocks were covered in piles of snow on one side but stripped bare by the wind on the other. Their reddish brown color was a stark contrast to the achromatic black sky and white ground.

They passed through a gap between two of the larger boulders and the track widened once again. As they reached the other side, a flare shot off into the sky.

It curled upward and then tailed off into the storm, vanishing as it was carried away on the wind. Kurt knew they’d tripped some type of alarm.

He cut the throttle and killed the headlight, but it was already too late. As the machine slid to a halt, the snowfield came alive with the glare of high-intensity halogens. Four lights blinded them from directly ahead, a warm, incandescent hue suggesting older bulbs.

At the same time, a pair of stark white lights shone in from the left, with additional illumination from behind.

Before they could back up or turn, Kurt, Joe, Paul and Gamay were surrounded.

47

Shielding his eyes from the glare, Kurt saw that the vehicle ahead of them was a snowcat, while off to the side and behind was a trio of snowmobiles. He counted four automatic weapons pointed their way, led by a man with a long rifle who stood in front of the snowcat.

The man stepped forward, never once taking his rifle off Kurt. He stopped a few yards out of reach. “You blink and I’ll kill you.”

Kurt was honestly surprised he hadn’t pulled the trigger already. He raised his hands and nodded to Paul and Gamay to do the same.

The door of the snowcat opened. A thinner, sleeker person stepped out. Kurt could tell this was a woman, he saw the blond hair streaming from under her wool cap. She stepped forward and walked right up to Kurt.

“NUMA,” she said, pointing at the logo on the snowmobiles. “I might have guessed.”

Kurt nodded.

“Take off your balaclava,” she ordered.

Slowly, so as not to provoke her, Kurt slid it down.

“Goggles,” she demanded.

Kurt propped them up on his helmet.

“Of course,” she said. “Kurt Austin. It would have to be you.”

“Yvonne Lloyd,” Kurt said.

“However did you guess?”

“We figured out your double life a while ago,” he said. “Or, should I say, your brother’s double life. You might as well lay down your weapons. There are squads of Arctic-trained soldiers no more than a mile behind us.”

She didn’t seem impressed. She turned to the man with the long rifle. He adjusted his stance for a second to look at an electronic tablet strapped to his arm. As he did, Kurt noticed the notches in the wooden stock of his rifle. Each group of four lines was crossed through with a fifth mark, like a prisoner counting off the days on the wall of his jail cell. If the marks were what Kurt assumed them to be, the man claimed at least sixteen victims.

The man looked up from the tablet and shook his head. “He’s lying. They’re alone.”

Yvonne turned back to Kurt. “Lies won’t help you at this point. You’ve snared yourself in my web. You’ll soon be buried here and never heard from again.”

Kurt held her stare. He noticed her words were clear and precise, as were the words of the man with the rifle. His own speech was muffled and dull, the effect of lips too numb to form proper syllables.

He studied their machines, starting with the snowmobiles to his left and then looking over to the snowcat directly ahead. They were coated, as the fluffy white flakes stuck to the metal skin, where they melted slightly and then created a perfect surface for more snow to adhere to. The wipers on the snowcat ran back and forth, clearing a wide enough area to see through, leaving the rest of the windshield caked over.

They’d come from the warm out into the cold. And now they were standing in the swirling snow.

A thought arose in Kurt’s mind. A way he might turn certain death into a chance of survival. He decided to keep them talking. The longer, the better.

“Killing us won’t help you,” Kurt said. “We know about the algae and the pipeline and the tankers you’re using to spread the destruction north. Liang’s ships will be stopped before they cross the equator and the business end of your pipeline will be obliterated by cruise missiles before it can pump anything into the sea.”

She smiled and tilted her head to one side. “You do try so hard,” she said, mocking him. “I’ll give you that. Trust me, Kurt Austin, we have considered these possibilities. We have saboteurs on board each of the tankers. They’ll blow the hulls apart from the inside at the first sign of a hostile boarding. As for the pipeline . . . Well, broken pipes still leak. We don’t care how the algae gets to the sea just as long as it gets there. So, pin your hopes on these moves, if you must. You’ll only be disappointed. By attacking Liang’s ships and smashing the end of our pipeline, you gain nothing but a bit of time. The algae will still fill the ocean. It will spread on the currents, growing, multiplying, as it makes its way to the polar regions. The ice age and the Earth’s destruction will only be delayed, not stopped. And when it does come, it will hit all the more vengefully.”

She smiled again, obviously enjoying the cat and mouse game and the position of power from which she could dictate and dominate. “But then,” she added, “I think you know that already. You wouldn’t be here, throwing your lives away, in a desperate effort to stop me. Just like your naïve little friend Cora.”

Kurt bristled at the mention of Cora’s name, but kept it from showing.

“Four dead troublemakers,” she finished. “Remembered only as notches on the stock of High Point’s gun.”

Kurt squinted against the glare, looking straight at Yvonne and then past her to where one of her men was wiping the snow off the barrel of his weapon. It was time.

With his hands still up, Kurt glanced at Paul and Gamay, then turned back to Yvonne. The snow had begun to coat her hair, an adornment of frost.

“Cora didn’t throw her life away,” Kurt said. “Your friend over there missed. And what’s more, he’s about to miss again.”

Kurt dropped onto the snowmobile, ducking behind the handlebars and twisting the throttle to full as he threw all his weight forward. The powerful electric motor provided instant torque, the tracks dug into the snow and the machine leapt forward as if it had been launched from a spring.

High Point reacted quickly, lowering the barrel of his rifle. As he pulled the trigger, the mechanism jammed. Snow had coated the weapon, melting because it was warm from being inside and then refreezing to solid ice as everything cooled off out in the frigid night air.

High Point moved to clear the weapon, banging his hand against the stock and pulling back the slide. But Kurt clipped him with the snowmobile as he raced by.

High Point was thrown backward. He slammed against the bumper of the snowcat and his body whiplashed around it like a wet rag. The back of his head smashed against the glass, leaving a circular indentation in the windshield, and he dropped face-first in the snow.

Paul and Gamay had known Kurt long enough to learn his patterns and to trust him. His sudden change from surrender to attack was not a surprise and Paul twisted the throttle of their snowmobile no more than a second after Kurt had.

They raced forward, shooting across the same gap and speeding along the trail. A smattering of gunshots followed, but they were late and inaccurate.