He turned to the machinery against the wall, pulled a heavy-linked iron drag chain from one of them and passed it through the cage’s bars. Then he jammed a metal rod through the end of the chain to hold it fast.
Feeding out the links, he heaved its weight to the hoist. The handheld control switch dangled in the air. Max pressed the Up button and the platform rose. He stopped it when it reached head height, then snagged the chain beneath the hoist’s structure. He pressed the Up button again and the platform rose slowly, taking the chain’s strain.
“Stand back!” he shouted to Farentino as metal screeched and strained. The chain wrenched the cage apart. He lowered the hoist to head height again. Farentino staggered from his cage, but Max wasn’t interested in helping him. He saw no reason why a trapped polar bear should die down here. He ran to the cage where he had escaped the angry bear, pushed back the bolt and saw the bear rise up from its icy pool.
“Come on! Picnic time! Plenty of bad people to eat out here!”
The sound of his voice had an immediate effect, and the bear began to climb through the ice wall’s hole between the two cages.
Farentino had already climbed onto the hoist’s platform. Max jumped, with the bear fifteen meters behind him. He grabbed the control buttons and lifted them up to the next level.
“I need help with my friend,” Max said to Farentino, dragging him off the platform and into the flowing water.
Gunfire, loud now. Explosions. Grenades. Men crying in pain.
Farentino cringed in fear and offered no resistance as Max bullied him along the passage. Max had sent the platform down to where the bear could clamber up. He had done all he could.
CUT BEARD CLAW
It meant nothing! He grabbed Farentino’s arm and pulled him into the darkened tunnel.
It looked as though Sayid lay sprawled backwards across an ice bench. Everything had melted except for one block at the bottom. The hot water still gushed but had cooled.
Max cupped Sayid’s face in his hands-there was no neck pulse. He slipped his hand under Sayid’s jacket and shirt; his chest was ice cold and there was no heartbeat.
“He’s dead,” Farentino said matter-of-factly. “We should get out.”
Max gripped Farentino’s arm. Saw the pain register on the man’s face.
“The entrance is too narrow. I can’t carry him on my own. Take his legs.”
An explosion somewhere nearby-the fighting was almost upon them. Farentino grabbed Sayid’s legs as Max took most of his friend’s weight. They shuffled past the hoist and into the open area.
Max laid Sayid’s body down gently.
Two alien-looking creatures dressed in black, with rubber faces and bulging eyes and carrying machine pistols, ran out of the cavern’s gloom. Pencil-thin laser beams from their gunsights cut through the near darkness and settled on Farentino’s chest.
“Don’t shoot!” Farentino cried.
Corentin and Thierry pulled the night-vision goggles from their faces.
“Max!” Corentin said. “Is this the boy?”
“Corentin! How the …?”
“It was Sophie,” Thierry said as he knelt next to Corentin, who was already checking Sayid. Thierry slipped a backpack from his shoulders. “There’s a small army of French and Swiss support troops outside. They’re too late, as usual. We did the business in here.”
“Wolf men! Puppies more like,” Corentin said.
Corentin cut Sayid’s clothes with a wicked-looking combat knife. Thierry took a battlefield medical kit from his backpack. Both men worked silently, no longer determined professional soldiers but field-trained medics. Thierry prepared a hypodermic.
“Epinephrine,” he said to Max’s worried look.
“Save him, Corentin,” Max pleaded.
Corentin placed small spoon-sized paddles from a mobile cardiac resuscitation unit on each side of Sayid’s rib cage. Thierry plunged the needle into Sayid’s heart. There was still no pulse.
“Clear,” Corentin said.
He triggered the unit and Sayid’s body jolted.
“Come on, Sayid! Come on!” Max begged.
“The boy is dead. You waste your time,” Farentino said.
Corentin’s look could rip out your stomach. “This boy’s ice cold. He’s not dead until he’s warm and dead.”
Corentin and Thierry tried the procedure three more times, then Corentin looked at Max and shook his head.
“There’s a casevac chopper outside. We’ll take you boys out of here now. C’mon, this place is secure. And there’s a hell of a storm waiting to explode out there. Choppers won’t fly much longer.”
Max gazed down at the lifeless body of his best friend. Where were the tears and the throat-closing sobs? Why didn’t he feel anything except this animal desire to pursue his prey?
“Kid, you’re exhausted. Let’s go,” Thierry said as Corentin lifted Sayid into his arms.
Max looked at the watch: 10:59.
“I can’t. Tishenko’s going to blow this place sky high in less than forty minutes. He’s in a tower a couple of kilometers down the valley. There’s an underground rail system-”
Thierry interrupted him. “That tunnel was booby-trapped. It’s caved in. The pipe’s still there but there’s no way out. Best maybe we forget the crazy man, eh?”
“No one’s going down that valley, Max. It is too much to ask. The lightning is everywhere,” Corentin said quietly.
Max shook his head. “Get him to hospital, please, Corentin.”
Sayid’s limp arm flopped. Max tucked it back and stroked his friend’s face. Now he felt tears in his eyes. But there was a shadow part of Max Gordon that pulled him away. He turned his back and ran as fast as he could for Tishenko’s private lift.
He pressed the button. It wasn’t an express lift any longer, but there must have been an emergency capacitor that held an energy store specifically for it, because seconds later he stepped into the room where Tishenko had bragged of his plans for immortality. The wall panels were open, the crystal hummed and glowed- power was still surging into it. That meant that underground pipeline Max had traveled along was the vein of energy-the particle accelerator that would reach the speed of light in … He checked Farentino’s watch-11:15. Nineteen minutes to go.
Sixty meters of living accommodation ran along the rock face. Two huge doors waited at the end. Max hauled one open and was blown off his feet as the storm surged in. This was Tishenko’s viewing platform, which was now battered by cloud and rain. Max rolled clear as the storm forced its way in and vandalized Tishenko’s quarters. Then he saw the wolf mask draped on a bronze bust of Tishenko. Max snatched it from the cold metal. Its fur soft, its cutout eyes creepy. The hunter’s mask. Max slipped it over his face. It felt as though he were inside the wild animal’s skin. A mirror reflected the creature that stared back at him. A shudder. Muscle rippled. His heart raced. A deep-seated urge to attack swept through him. Then he remembered-there was another platform, from which Tishenko had launched the paraglider. And that was Max’s only chance.
The lift dropped rapidly.
11:20.
Lightning struck the side of the mountain, shattering huge flakes of rock. It clawed, just like Tishenko’s logo. Max stepped into a cave big enough to house a small aircraft. But instead it housed at least a dozen paragliders hanging from the ceiling. It was a drying room for the canopies. They hovered like vampire bats, shivering in the drafts that forced their way through the doors from the storm outside.
The clouds swirled above his head. Violent lightning tongued through darkness, ghostly images exposing the inside of cloud formations. Max needed a headwind. He pulled open the access doors. It was like being inside a tornado. At this height the air was calmer, the wind pushing against him. But it was the perfect vantage point. Max could see exactly where the two towers stood, an incredible display of lightning crackling between them. Tishenko was drawing nature to him and turning it into dark power.
