Clive Cussler - Fast Ice

“Yvonne and the others are dead,” Kurt shouted. “You don’t have to die with them.”

The man started laughing. “I was willing to sacrifice myself the moment I got involved. You think I’m going to change my mind now? Trust me, you’re going to be the one who dies here. Not me.”

Kurt dropped to the floor, peeked around the corner and fired back. Sparks flew from the steel frame of the large piston, but it kept churning. The man stepped behind it, firing blindly around the corner without looking.

Pulling back once more, Kurt considered the dilemma. There was little chance of getting into the room without getting cut down by the shotgun, but, like Paul and Gamay had realized earlier, a stalemate was a win for the other side.

He shrugged off the backpack and pulled out the charges. He wanted to save them for destroying the pumps yet was willing to bet that one, in just the right place, could do the job.

He took out a charge, set it to sequence 1 and armed it. Pressing his back against the wall, he readied himself to throw it. “Sorry, old man,” he said to himself. “I need you out of the way.”

With a swing of his arm, Kurt hurled the twelve-pounder around the corner. It flew in the general direction of the cave’s lone defender.

A pair of shotgun blasts rang out in quick succession, but Kurt was safely back behind the wall. He dropped to one knee and pressed the detonator button.

Nothing happened.

He reset it, double-checked that the selector was turned to sequence 1 and pressed it again.

Still nothing.

“What the . . .”

Kurt risked a glance around the corner and instantly saw the problem. The explosive charge lay on the ground in pieces. The guy had literally shot it out of the air like a clay pigeon.

“Crafty old codger,” he said.

Kurt reached into the pack for the last of the explosives. This one he’d detonate midair, rushing in behind it and using the explosion for cover like a flashbang grenade.

Before he could arm the charge, the machine beside him cranked to life.

“Now it’s my turn,” the man shouted from the cavern beyond.

Spinning around on its tracks, the van-sized machine surged toward Kurt, attempting to crush him against the wall.

Kurt dove out of the way and rolled to the side, but it surged toward him again.

Backing down the tunnel, Kurt leveled the MP5 and opened fire. Bullets hit and ricocheted off its bulbous nose. Dents appeared, along with several punctures, yet the machine kept coming. A second burst was similarly ineffective.

Without warning, the nose began to spin. Superheated jets of water blasted out around the rim, scouring the walls and instantly filling the tunnel with steam. In seconds, the visibility dropped to mere feet. Still, Kurt could hear the machine grinding forward.

He had no choice but to retreat as the monster emerged from the fog. He fired again and again and all he managed to do was punch a few more holes in the high-pressure dome. As a result, new blasts of steam shot forward, nearly scalding him.

Kurt ducked and backed up farther. He had no desire to set off the last of the explosives, especially not in a tunnel with a thousand tons of ice hanging over his head, but could see no way around the machine and no way to stop it.

Backing up to the vertical shaft, Kurt armed the last charge and slid it down the icy hall. It went right down the middle. “So glad I watched all that curling during the last Olympics.”

Ducking around the corner of the shaft for cover, Kurt pressed the detonator switch.

This time, the bomb went off.

The blast traveled upward, through the heart of the relentless machine. Deflected by the ceiling, the pressure wave surged along the hall in both directions. It swept into the vertical shaft, slamming Kurt against the wall in the process.

When the echo receded, Kurt looked around. He saw nothing but fog.

“You okay down there?” Joe shouted.

Kurt’s ears were ringing from the gunfire and the explosion. He could barely make out what Joe was saying.

“Never better,” he shouted back.

Stepping back into the tunnel, he found the visibility was no more than two or three feet. He moved forward, listening to the sounds of water dripping and steam hissing but not the squeaking of the tank-like tracks under the machine or the grinding of its rotary nose. A thin layer of boiling water trickled down the center of the hall.

Easing forward, Kurt came upon the shattered aggressor. The tracks had been blown off to either side and much of the machinery bent and mangled. Water was leaking from its tanks while steam vented upward into the ceiling above.

Kurt moved toward the less damaged side, easing past the wreckage, careful not to get scalded. He reached the far end and stopped.

The explosion had literally brought the house down. An impassable jumble of ice filled the tunnel beyond. It had buried the back half of the machine and was blocking all access to the cave. More ominously, small chunks of ice were still shifting and falling while jets of steam sprayed upward from cracks in the machine’s boiler. Even now Kurt could see that the steam was cutting into the weakened ceiling.

As Kurt stood there, contemplating how long it might take to dig through to the other side, the sound of cracking slithered through the hallway above him. Looking up, he saw a section of the reinforced ice shift and fall.

“Time to go,” he said to himself.

He slipped past the wreck and ran for the escape shaft. Reaching it, he jumped onto the platform and flipped the control lever to the rise position.

The platform lurched upward, but the pace felt painfully slow to Kurt. He held on as the cavern shook and the platform swayed.

A new explosion of steam surged upward as more of the tunnel below collapsed. Unfortunately, the imploding tunnel and shifting ice were destabilizing the vertical shaft. Cracks snaked up the side while sheets of curved ice broke loose and fell toward him.

A small chunk hit one of the cables and started the platform rocking. A larger piece dropped from the wall fifty feet above and could have crushed him. Kurt dodged it, but it slammed into the platform, tilting the platform precariously to one side.

Higher up, Joe and Gamay released the counterweights. The platform rose quickly, banging to a stop as it reached the top.

As Kurt leapt off it, the ground beneath their feet shook and a large section of the shaft gave way.

Kurt glanced back down into the well, the bottom third was plugged with ice and debris. There would be no getting through that. Nor was it safe to stay any longer.

“We should probably get out of here,” Gamay said.

The three of them ran for the exit, moving out into the frigid night and stopping only when they’d cleared the exploded doorway.

“What happened down there?” Paul asked. “Did you blow the turbine?”

Joe and Gamay looked at Kurt.

Kurt looked off into the distance. The plumes of steam were still blasting from the exhaust pipes without any sign of the pressure waning.

He looked back at the others and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

54

FIMBUL BAY, AT THE EDGE OF THE HOLTZMAN GLACIER

Ryland Lloyd sat in a compartment that was a combination of luxurious and spartan appointments. An expensive Persian rug covered the floor. A crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling. Sleek furniture, bolted in place, occupied each corner of the suite.

The walls, on the other hand, were gunmetal in color, cold and dim, made even duller by a layer of frost clinging to the surface. Pipes ran along the ceiling while insulated electrical lines, held in place with heavy-duty fasteners, snaked along the walls.