They traversed frozen lakes – by far the easiest terrain – but a series of steep hills made for tough riding and snow drifts, frozen solid into shapes resembling breaking waves became impassable. King was forced to ride parallel for up to a mile to get around these natural barriers. Each time, the GPS pointed them northwards, a simple correction of the steering was all it took. King likened the experience more to sailing than driving.
The trees had thinned considerably, but ahead of them, in their place, great mountains jutted out of the ground like shark’s teeth. There were no foothills, like arriving in the Rockies or the Alps and gradually climbing to a point where the mountains started to noticeably rise to their summit. These simply appeared, adorning the landscape with breath-taking magnificence. King slowed the snowmobile and checked the GPS. He could see his path, between two impressive peaks, the fjord cutting between them, the Arctic ocean several miles beyond.
“Can we stop?” Natalia asked. “I feel sick.”
King brought the machine to a standstill and used the opportunity to make fists and squeeze some life back into his hands. He winced, his bandaged knuckles aching from where he had pounded the ice. “It’s the motion,” he said. “I can see where we’re going and make the decisions. Your brain has to play constant catch-up.”
“I guess…” she said.
King rubbed his face. His cheeks had been numb and were now burning. He took off his gloves and held his hands to his cheeks, warming them and adding to the burning sensation. His eyes were watering, the tears frozen to his eyelids. He picked at them, like mini stalagmites. Natalia had released her grip on him and was rubbing her face as well. King turned and looked at her. Her eyes were red and sore. Neither of them had goggles. With the hotel abandoned and now lying in ruins, there had been little equipment to find, and time had been critical.
“Don’t rub them too hard,” said King. “They look sore and you’ll damage them if you’re not careful…”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. The explosion knocked them both off the snowmobile, snow and ice hitting them like shrapnel. King’s ears were ringing, and he was experiencing everything in slow motion. He could see that Natalia was feeling the same. Only King had been here before, he knew what had done this to them, and he knew the importance to keep moving. This time, he saw the flare of the rocket, the trail of smoke and the rocket getting ever-closer. He was about to shout for Natalia to take cover, but even under such duress he knew the absurdity of it. They were in the open and had little hope of evading it.
The second rocket landed further away, but not by much. King had time to press his face into the ground and hunker down, his shoulders muffling his ears. The impact was felt in his chest and through his stomach. The same feeling of diarrhoea in his bowels, as if every part of him had been shaken loose. He scrambled over to Natalia, who had not seen the second rocket and had been blown several metres across the ice. She was in shock, but apart from a peppering of lacerations on her cheeks from the ice, she was unscathed. He pulled her over, pushed her to her feet as he got unsteadily to his own. The snowmobile was lying on its side and King caught hold of the handlebar and stepped onto the footplate. He leaned back with all his weight and the machine righted itself. King swung himself on, started the engine and felt Natalia catch hold of him. He swung left, then tracked right. He corrected the steering and straightened up, an explosion detonating twenty-metres away. He felt shrapnel tear through his snowsuit, a searing pain in his lower leg. Natalia screamed, but held on tightly. She started to sob. King grit his teeth, a burning, yet wet sensation on his leg. He wriggled his toes and tensed his calf muscle. It was all working, but excruciatingly painful. He chanced a look and saw scorched tatters of material and the tails of fleshettes poking out, like miniature arrows the size of sowing needles. Natalia was saying something, but King had shut her out. He was working on getting between the mountains to the fjord beyond. He checked the tiny mirror on the right handlebar and could see a snowmobile behind them, its rider dressed in an all-in-one white snowsuit. The same as the hunter force. A survivor.
King knew the man could not use a rocket launcher while pursuing them, so he relaxed into the task at hand. But not for long. He knew he was heavy, topping the scales at fourteen stone, and he estimated Natalia to be around ten stone. Which gave the machine a power deficit over their pursuer. He checked his mirror again. Was he closer? He doubted it just yet, putting the distance at three-hundred metres, which would tie in with the effective range of an RPG. King was still calculating whether he would reach the fjord before the rider closed in close enough to stop and take an easy shot, when he hit a lump of snow and was thrown airborne onto a ribbon of wonderfully new and well-maintained tarmac road. The machine landed heavily and sparked underneath, but he managed to hold on and correct it before smashing through the snowdrift and back onto the flat compacted snow.
He checked the mirror again, saw that the man had crossed the road without incident, and he gradually let out a little of the throttle. The machine slowed and the image in his mirror grew rapidly. King tore at his gloves with his mouth, and then gripped the heated handlebars. He
