“Secured? From
“Claim jumpers,” the man replied. “The Russians, the Chinese… another corporation. There could be anybody out there.”
Quinn looked out at the storm. “Trust me. There’s nobody out there.”
As he turned to leave, Klaus stopped him. “Where are you going?”
“Well, seeing as you boys have got the mess hall covered, I’m going to check on the Hagglunds. Now let me go. I have a job to do.”
Klaus released Quinn’s arm and stepped back into the shadows. He watched as the roughneck struggled through the snow until it swallowed him up. Then Klaus opened the stout wooden door to the mess hall.
Sven looked up when he felt the cold blast of air enter with Klaus. His eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be on guard.”
“Just wanted some hot tea,” Klaus replied.
Sven looked at Boris the Russian sitting in the corner, singing to himself in his native language as he boiled water on a camp stove.
“It ain’t ready yet.”
Klaus cursed and shut the door behind him as he went back outside.
“When are you going to get that heater started, Mikkel?”
Mikkel looked over his shoulder at the Swede, then punched the stubborn machine. “It’s coming, it’s coming…”
Back outside, Klaus spied another figure moving through the whiteness. He drew the Eagle and aimed.
“Hold it!”
The shape continued to approach, shimmering in the storm.
“Quinn?”
Still, it came closer.
“Identify yourself!”
The figure paused, and Klaus squinted against the snow for a better look. He blinked, and his fingers tensed on the trigger.
There were two shapes now—dark holes in the storm.
“I said, identify yourself!”
A third appeared, next to the others. Together they silently advanced on him.
If they were friendly, then Klaus figured they would have answered him by now. So he leveled the crosshairs, targeting the featureless shape in the middle, and squeezed the trigger….
CHAPTER 18
The mercenaries reacted as soon as they heard the shot. Before the echo even faded, an MP-5 replaced the screwdriver in Mikkel’s hand. At the samovar, the incessant Russian singing ceased as Boris traded his tin cup for a machine gun.
With the second shot, Sven was on his feet. He threw the iron bolt on the stout wooden door and backed away in case someone shot through it.
“Mikkel,” he hissed, shouldering a Heckler & Koch. “Get on the radio. Now.”
After an eternity of silence, the door blew open with a deafening crash. Fierce wind and billowing snow saturated the room. Sven aimed his weapon at the doorway, but all he could see was a blur of shimmering white powder.
He turned. “Boris! Secure that door.”
The Russians moved to the threshold and peered into the storm. Through the torrential downfall, Sven saw Boris glance his way and shrug.
Mikkel, meanwhile, was speaking into the ICOM transceiver.
“Base camp to
When he received no reply, the Russian cursed and rekeyed the mike.
Snow and wind continued to surge into the mess hall. Finally, Boris struggled against the storm to push the door closed.
Mikkel felt Sven’s grip on his shoulder. “Come on, man… I need you to raise the ship.”
“I’m trying, but the storm—”
Sven felt Mikkel shudder under his grip—then the man was forcibly ripped from his hand.
He whirled to see the Russian hoisted in the air by an invisible force, the transceiver falling from his limp fingers. Still alive, still aware, Mikkel’s face mirrored agony and bewilderment. He knew he was going to die, but he did not understand what was killing him. His eyes locked with Sven’s. His mouth gaped, but only to emit a wet gurgle. Then, dead at last, Mikkel hung from a now-visible spear like a piece of meat dangling on the end of a fork.
At the door, Boris reeled as invisible blades lopped off his right arm, then the left. Finally his throat exploded in a red mist before his sundered limbs plopped to the floor. The fist clutching the MP-5 convulsed once, sending a burst into the far wall.
What Sven first saw as a blur was now framed by cordite smoke—the silhouette of an impossibly large, humanoid creature. The ex-Navy SEAL took a step backwards and aimed the MP-5. But before he could pull the trigger, a blow sent him spinning to the floor.
Nose smashed and gushing blood, Sven fumbled for the gun that had been knocked from his hand. Instead he burned his fingers on the pot of boiling water still simmering on the camp stove. With both hands he hurled it, dousing the specter with scalding water.
The aluminum pot bounced harmlessly away, but the water elicited an angry roar as electric charges silhouetted the humanoid shape. Then, in a shower of rapid blue sparks, the Predator’s cloaking device shorted out for an instant—long enough for Sven to see his own terrified reflection in the mirrored eyes of the creature’s armored face plate.
The shots were loud enough to be heard over the storm. Quinn, returning from inspecting the Hagglunds, threw open the door.
“What’s all the damn noise about—”
Quinn’s mouth stopped. Bloody bodies and hacked-off limbs greeted him, as did something massive, formless and invisible. Wielding twin blades tinged with human blood, the phantom was in the process of ripping great chunks of flesh from a howling man cowering in the corner. As snow billowed into the mess hall, Quinn dimly perceived a blur of motion. The silhouette was altering its shape again.
Suddenly the razor-edged tip of a spear materialized right in front of Quinn’s face. He slammed the door and ducked as the weapon passed through the thick wood and gouged a chunk of muscle from his left arm.
He choked back a cry. Then he turned and ran.
Stumbling through white-out conditions, Quinn heard the mess hall door ripped off its hinges. He traipsed around the corner of the building, pushing through deep drifts. His breath came in hot gasps while splatters of his warm blood left a crimson trail in the snow.
Fearing pursuit, Quinn peered over his shoulder—and blundered into something dangling from the overhanging roof above. He fell backwards, staring up at what was left of Klaus—identifiable only by the name tag on his Polartec overcoat. The dead man was strung up by his ankles, and where his head used to be there were now only long, red-black icicles flowing from a ragged stump.
Through the white haze, beyond Klaus, Quinn saw more shapes—he didn’t need to see their faces to recognize their clothing. It was the rest of his team. Reichel, Klapp, Tinker and the others, strung up by their feet,
