Icebound

conviction that she belonged to it. She would not have been surprised if a mouth had opened in the wall under her hand, savagely biting it off at the wrist or opening wider still and swallowing her whole.

She tasted blood. She was struggling so hard to repress her burgeoning terror that she had bitten into her lower lip. The salty, coppery taste — and the pain — helped clear her mind and focus her on the real threat to her survival.

In the center of the tunnel, Roger Breskin roared out of the black depths and into the dim light from George Lin's lamp.

Harry had vanished into the abyss below, which suddenly seemed to bore away not merely thousands of feet but to eternity.

Breskin went straight for Brian.

Clearly, Brian had just begun to understand what was happening. He would never be able to move fast enough to escape Breskin, even though he was an experienced diver.

Rita pushed away from the wall and swam in behind the attacker, wishing she had a weapon, hoping that the element of surprise would be all the advantage that she needed.

* * *

s Brian saw Roger Breskin soar like a shark from the lightless depths, he recalled a conversation they'd had earlier in the day, just after they'd rescued George from the ledge on the flank of the iceberg. Brian had been hoisted back to the top of the cliff, shaking, weak with relief:

Incredible.

What are you talking about?

Didn't expect to make it.

You didn't trust me?

It wasn't that. I thought the rope would snap or the cliff crack apart or something.

You're going to die. But this wasn't you place. It wasn't the right time.

Brian had thought that Roger was being uncharacteristically philosophical. Now he realized that it had been a blunt threat, a heartfelt promise of violence.

Maybe Breskin hadn't wanted George to be a witness, or maybe he hadn't struck earlier for other, inexplicable, and insane reasons of his own. This time, he had more than one witness, but he seemed not to care.

Even as that conversation replayed in Brian's memory, he tried to turn from Breskin and kick toward the tunnel wall, but they collided and tumbled away together into the darkness. Breskin's powerful legs encircled Brian, clamping like a crab pincer. Then a hand at his throat. At his face mask. No!

* * *

George Lin thought that Russian divers from the submarine were attacking them.

From the moment the Russians had offered to help, George had known that they had some trick in mind. He'd been trying to figure what it might be, but he hadn't thought of this: a murderous act of treachery deep in the tunnel. Why should they go to so much trouble to kill a group of Western scientists who were already destined to be blown to bits or dumped into a deadly cold sea at midnight? This was senseless, pointless lunacy, but on the other hand, he knew that nothing the communists had ever done made sense, not anywhere in the world, not in Russia or in China or anywhere else, not at any time during their reign of terror. Their ideology was nothing but a mad hunger for unrestrained power, politics as a cult religion divorced from morality and reason, and their bloody rampages and bottomless cruelty could never be analyzed or understood by anyone not of their mad persuasion.

He preferred to swim straight to the top of the tunnel, clamber out of the pool, return to the top of the ice, find a blasting shaft, lie down upon it, and let the midnight explosion tear him to pieces, because that would be a cleaner death than any at the hands of these people. But he couldn't move. His left hand was curled around the communications wire so tightly that the two might have been soldered together. With his right hand, he gripped the halogen lamp so hard that his fingers ached.

He waited to die as his sister had died. As his mother had died. As his grandfather and grandmother had died. The past had surged forward to overwhelm the present.

He'd been a fool to have believed that he'd escaped the horror of his childhood. In the end, no lamb could escape the slaughter.

* * *

The air hose trailed along the side of Harry's head, and the diving mask was attached to the end of it, floating above him. He pulled the mask down and clamped it to his face. It was full of water, and he dared not breathe immediately, even though his lungs felt as though they were on fire. When he peeled up one corner of the rubber rim, the influx of oxygen-helium mixture forced the water out from behind the Plexiglas faceplate, and when all the water had been purged, he pressed that corner down tight again and sucked in a deep breath, another, another, spluttering and choking and gasping with relief. The slightly odd smell and taste of the gas was more delicious than anything that he had ever eaten or drunk before in his entire life.

His chest was sore, his eyes burned, and his headache was so fierce that his skull seemed to be splitting apart. He wanted only to hang where he was, suspended in the tenebrous sea, recuperating from the assault. But he thought of Rita, and he swam up toward the two remaining lights and a turmoil of shadows.

* * *

Brian gripped Breskin's left wrist with both and hands and tried to wrench the big man's steely hand from his face, but he wasn't able to resist. The diving mask was torn loose.

The sea was colder than the freezing point of ordinary water, but it still had not turned to ice because of its salt content. When it gushed across his face, the shock was nearly as painful as having a blazing torch shoved against his skin.

Nevertheless, Brian reacted so calmly that he surprised himself. He squeezed his eyelids shut before the water could flash-freeze the surface tissues of his eyeballs, clenched his teeth, and managed not to breathe either through his mouth or nose.

He couldn't hold out long. A minute. A minute and a half. Then he would breathe involuntarily, spasmodically…

Breskin clamped his legs tighter around Brian's midsection, pushed his rubber-sheathed finger between Brian's compressed lips, and tried to force his mouth open.

* * *

Rita swam in behind and above Roger Breskin, into the sour light from George's hand-held lamp. She glided onto Breskin's back and wrapped her long legs around his waist as he had wrapped hi legs around Brian.

With reflexes sharpened rather than dulled by maniacal frenzy, Breskin let go of Brian and seized Rita by the ankles.

She felt as though she was riding a wild horse. He twisted and bucked, a powerful beast, but she gripped him with her thighs and grabbed for his mask.

Sensing her intent, insane but not stupid, Breskin released her ankles and seized her wrists just as her hands touched the rim of his faceplate. He bent forward, kicked his flippers, did a somersault. Rolling through the water, he tore her hands from his face, and using the dynamics of the sea to achieve a leverage that she couldn't hope to match, he pitched her away from him. She kicked furiously as she went, hoping to connect with the crazy bastard, but none of her kicks landed.

When she oriented herself again, she saw that Pete and Franz had descended on Breskin. Franz struggled to maintain a wristlock while Pete tried to pin at least on of the madman's arms.

Breskin was a trained diver, however, and they were not. They were slow, clumsy, confused by the physics of the gravity-free realm in which they battled, while Breskin writhed as if he were an eel, supple and quick and fearfully strong, at home in deep water. He broke their hold on him, rammed an elbow into Pete's face, ripped Pete's mask over his head, and shoved him into Franz.

Brian was at the wire, fifteen feet below George Lin. Claude was with him. The Frenchman held Pete's lamp in one hand and was using his free hand to steady Brian while the kid got the water out of his mask.

Kicking away from Pete and Franz as they tumbled in disarray, Breskin streaked toward Brian again.

Rita glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye, turned her head, and saw Harry shoot up from the