His adversary smashed his free hand down on the Englishman’s head. Another harsh blow to the base of his neck dropped him to one knee. Eddie was still gripping his attacker’s right wrist, but could feel him twisting the gun round at him—
He punched the gunman’s stomach again. From his awkward position it didn’t cause any real damage, provoking only a gasp and a flinch - but that was all he needed.
His hand slid up from the man’s wrist to the MP5K’s butt, finding his opponent’s forefinger . . . and squeezing as he yanked the weapon downwards.
The gun blazed on full auto. Its remaining bullets slammed into the ground between the two men, fire meeting ice - and lead meeting leather as the last bullet tore through the gunman’s boot and blasted off his big toe. He screamed, hopping as blood spurted from the neat nine millimetre hole.
Eddie wrested away the empty gun - and viciously smashed it into the wounded man’s face. Nose crushed, the gunman fell on his back. Eddie dived on him, pushing the gun down hard against his neck. The man struggled, spitting blood and thrashing at Eddie’s face . . . then there was a wet crunch deep inside his throat. With a final gurgling breath, he fell still.
The other snowmobile’s passenger was also breathing his last, flailing blindly in the pool of burning fuel before slumping, flames roiling over his body.
The force of the explosion had knocked Nina to the floor. Wincing at the unexpected wave of heat, she staggered upright. A swathe of the ice channel was now a lake of fire; the Twin Otter’s main fuel tanks were in its belly, and had ripped open when the fuselage broke in half, spewing out the volatile liquid. ‘Guess we don’t have to worry about freezing to death,’ she told Probst - before realising the danger was not over.
The second snowmobile was still coming. And she had dropped the flare gun when she fell.
Defenceless.
Eddie found a spare magazine on the dead man’s belt. He slapped it into place and pulled back the MP5K’s charging handle with a clack, then ran round the broken fuselage to see the remaining snowmobile’s red tail light passing the burning wreckage of the wing.
The rider was well out of the sub-machine gun’s effective range. He had to get down the hill fast to save Nina - but how?
The auroral glow shimmered over an intact piece of the plane on the ground. That was one way . . .
Nina dragged Probst into the cockpit. The bulkhead wouldn’t give them much protection, but it was better than nothing.
The snowmobile skidded to a stop. Nina cautiously looked round the doorway, seeing a shadowy figure climb off the idling machine. He had a gun in his right hand . . . then switched it to his left to take something from a pocket.
A grenade.
‘Oh, shit,’ Nina whispered. She backed into the cockpit, but there was no solid door that could be closed, just a flimsy sliding partition. No protection. She could flee through the broken window, but that would mean abandoning Probst to his death - and even if she did, there was nowhere to run, nothing but bleak ice for a hundred miles in every direction.
The man hooked a finger round the pin, pulled it out—
And whirled at a noise from behind.
Eddie hurtled down the slope, riding the de Havilland’s cabin hatch like a sledge and howling like a banshee. The startled man fumbled with his gun and the grenade, trying to switch the two weapons between his hands without releasing the latter’s springloaded spoon and arming the fuse. He brought up his MP5K—
So did Eddie. The compact weapon spat flame. Bullets twanged off the wreckage behind his target, but one shot hit, a puff of blood bursting from the man’s thigh. He screamed, instinctively dropping what he was holding to clap both hands to the wound as he fell . . .
On his own grenade.
Eddie dived off the hatch, covering his head with his arms. ‘
The explosion this time was considerably more muffled. Pieces of the luckless gunman splattered down around the steaming crater in the ice.
Eddie stood and circled the starburst of red to the broken fuselage. ‘Nina! You all right?’ She appeared in the doorway, face alight with relief, and embraced him. He kissed her, then saw Probst in the cockpit. ‘Are you okay?’ The German nodded. ‘What about the other guy?’
‘He’s dead,’ Probst said flatly.
‘Dammit . . .’ He noticed that some of the lights on the instrument panel were still active - including the radio. ‘Is that jammer still running?’
Probst listened to the electronic warbling. ‘Yes. This radio won’t have enough power to break through it, not on the emergency battery.’
‘Then we’ll have to shut it off.’ He regarded the glow on the horizon, then his gaze moved to the puttering snowmobile. ‘Think I’ll meet our new neighbours,’ he said, checking his gun’s remaining ammo.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Nina said.
‘No, you stay here with him.’
‘Eddie, I am coming with you,’ she said defiantly, taking more items from the survival kit - a pair of foil blankets, a small roll of duct tape and a compact oil heater. She started to tape one of the blankets over the broken cockpit window. ‘I think there’ll be more people than just Pramesh and Vanita in that place. You’ll need all the backup you can get.’ The makeshift windbreak in place, she helped Probst into the pilot’s seat and draped the other blanket over him, then propped the heater on the control yoke. ‘Walther, as soon as we take out the jammer, you send an SOS.’
‘How much time will you need?’ he asked. A glass tube set in the little heater’s side revealed the oil level; considering the small size of the tank, it was unlikely to last long.
‘If we haven’t done it in an hour, we probably won’t be doing it at all.’ Pulling the partition across the doorway as she exited, she faced Eddie. ‘Okay, let’s go.’
‘Seriously. You’re not coming,’ he said as she pushed past him and headed for the snowmobile.
‘Oh, I seriously am.’
‘You don’t have a gun.’
Nina picked up the exploded snowmobiler’s MP5K. ‘I do now.’ She trudged through the snow to the waiting vehicle and straddled it. ‘Whose turn is it to drive?’
33
They rode up the icy hill, Eddie at the controls. In the aurora’s ever-shifting light, it was easy to follow the trails of the two snowmobiles.
Not that there was any doubt about where to go. The glow grew brighter as they neared the hill crest. ‘So, do you have a plan?’ Nina said.
‘Let’s see what we’re dealing with, first.’ They reached the summit . . . and radar station DYE-A came into view.
Internet photos had not truly prepared them for the sight. The main structure, the ‘composite building’, was huge, an enormous black block over a hundred and twenty feet high - and that was without the radome elevated on the building’s central core atop it. The dome itself was lit from within; when Eddie had glimpsed it from the plane it had been a vivid blue, but now other colours pulsed inside, an amped-up electronic version of the aurora overhead. Communications masts festooned with dishes sprouted beside it.
Brilliant spotlights illuminated the surrounding ground, revealing that the composite building stood within a crater-like depression in the ice. The black walls absorbed what little heat came from the sun at this latitude, raising the air temperature around them just enough to slow the accumulation of snow. The main block was supported by eight massive legs - hydraulic jacks, able to lift the station higher if the drifts became too deep.
