Ice Claw (46 page)

Cut bears claw
? Max said it over and over in his head. He knew that Sayid had cracked the code, that the piece of paper with the magic square decoded the numbers on the crystal. Sayid had both. And in those last minutes before he died he had believed that Max would find him.

“Well done, mate. You’re a bloody genius. And I’m not leaving you in there. I’m gonna get you home to your mum. I promise,” Max muttered.

Bear’s claw? Where? How? Polar bear? Frozen bear? It defied understanding, but if this was Zabala’s coded message, then it was vital. Max clambered up behind the ice cage that held Sayid, his hand seeking out the fat warm pipe. He turned off the valve; the pressure gauge dropped. Balancing his feet against lower pipe work and his back against the rock face, he swung the ice axe as hard as he could.

Water spurted from the gash, power-washing over the ice. Max had ruptured the pipe carrying geothermal water from deep below the ground. Its heat dissipated on the ice, steam filling the room.

Max heard echoes of gunfire and small rapid explosions. The lights went out. For a few seconds it was pitch-black, and then a dull glow tried to lessen the darkness as an emergency generator kicked into life.

There was an attack going on inside the mountain. Max watched the ice melt away slowly, but it would still take time to release Sayid’s body. Something rumbled above his head. It sounded like automatic doors being closed and then the final thump as they locked. Soft, deceptive gunfire carried down the hoist shaft. That meant the fight had moved farther away. If demolitions were being used and created any major malfunctioning of Tishenko’s equipment everything could blow up inside the mountain anyway—without Tishenko’s lightning surge.

This place could end up as a tomb for both Sayid
and
Max.

Max was dripping wet; steam soaked through his clothing. Sayid’s body had not moved as the hot water continued to gush over the ice block. The water flooded the passageway, spilling down the hoist shaft. Max heard someone crying for help. Farentino.

The hoist still worked, and as it slowed its descent into the caged area, Max jumped clear. Farentino was at the front of his cage shouting, his arms jammed through the bars. Fumes and smoke from damaged machinery were beginning to fill the cavern.

“Max! Thank God! Get me out of here! Hurry. There’s shooting. Someone is attacking.”

Max looked around the area carved from the rock face. There was still a tunnel-boring machine; maybe he could cut
through the wall of rock. No, that’d take too long. Max felt as though the whole mountain were on top of his head. Any serious flooding or damage and it would shatter. The tunnels and caves cut into it over the last twenty years would have weakened the inherent structure.

“My mother!” Max demanded.

“I’ll tell you everything, but we have to get away, Max. You see that, don’t you? There is no time.”

Max grabbed Farentino’s wrist and tore free the Rolex.

“What are you doing?”

Max snapped the expensive watch onto his own arm. It was 10:46. Just under one hour to get Sayid’s body out of the mountain and stop Tishenko.

“In five seconds I’m smashing the bolt free from that polar bear’s cage. You won’t be going anywhere, Farentino, you scum. I want to know how my mother died.”

“All right, all right. She was in the jungle. Something went horribly wrong.”

“What went wrong?” Max yelled.

“I don’t know. Please, Max, get me out.”

“Tell me! What happened?”

Farentino’s tone changed. The defeated man’s face looked defiant in its anger. “You want to know the ugly truth? All right! Your father abandoned her. She was sick, she was dying and he ran!”

“Liar!”

Farentino sensed he had the upper hand. He had an emotional hold over Max that no one had ever had before. “She died alone, Max, because your father saved himself!”

“My father wouldn’t do that! Not my dad!”

“He did it and he can’t live with the shame! Why do you think he stuck you away in that boarding school? Why do you see so little of him?
Why?
Because he knows he killed your mother!”

His words struck Max like an assassin’s knife ripping into his chest.

“Why should I believe you? You’ve betrayed everyone who ever trusted you!”

Farentino lowered his voice. “Because I loved her. I loved your mother with all my heart. But she would not leave your father for me.”

Max didn’t move. He couldn’t. Farentino gently touched his arm and spoke quietly. “Get me out, Max, and I will tell you everything. Please. I promise.”

Max had to break through the crippling numbness that gripped him. Gunfire rattled on one of the levels above. It was close. The smell of gunsmoke and cordite clung to the air, stinging eyes and throat. It snapped Max back. He felt cold, but it wasn’t the temperature. It was his heart.

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.
. 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.
Cut bears claw
.

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.