It had the effect he’d hoped for, though. The vehicle swerved as the shocked driver jerked the steering wheel, throwing the gunman off target as he fired again. Eddie saw his chance and accelerated, swinging the icerunner back behind the off-roader. If he could get close enough before the mercenaries recovered, he might have a clear shot—
Too slow. The XC90 straightened out, then again pulled towards the right bank. The gunman banged a fist angrily against the 4x4’s side and pushed himself upright.
He took aim at the Yorkshireman.
Tarnowski had ducked and flinched when the back window blew out…
Letting go of Nina.
She saw her chance — and took it, grabbing Treynor’s knife with her zipcuffed hands and yanking it from its sheath. Before either of the mercenaries flanking her could react, she plunged the blade into Treynor’s side.
He screamed, arching his back in convulsive pain and banging his head against the window frame. Tarnowski tried to grab her, but she spun and slashed the bloodied knife across his palm. He jerked away, clutching his wounded hand.
Treynor writhed, trying to pull himself back inside, but found Nina blocking him. She glimpsed the chrome handle of the door release behind him, lunged for it, pulled—
The mercenary’s weight made the door swing outwards — and Nina threw herself against him, barging him into the open. He fell, screaming again as he hit the ice at forty miles per hour and tumbled along behind the Volvo.
‘Fucking bitch!’ snarled Tarnowski. She tried to bring up the knife again, but this time he was prepared for her attack. He grabbed her wrist, then used his greater strength to smash her bound hands painfully against her knees until she lost her grip on the blade. It fell to the floor. He drove a brutal blow with his forearm against her face, knocking her back into her seat. Only the thick quilting of his coat saved her from a broken nose.
‘What the fuck is going on back there?’ Wake cried, but Tarnowski ignored him, instead reaching over the back seat to grab another P90.
Eddie saw the mercenary fall from the 4x4, a bright red bloodstain on his coat. ‘Nice one, love,’ he said to himself — only to realise that while the man was down, he definitely wasn’t out. Despite the hard landing, he had slithered to a far less damaging standstill than he would have done on concrete or earth.
And he had kept hold of his gun.
Treynor managed to stand, shakily raising the P90 as the icerunner bore down on him. He brought the sights to his eye, locking on to the vehicle’s driver—
Eddie jerked his foot off the throttle pedal. The icerunner’s tail end shimmied again with the sudden loss of power, threatening to slide out — and he made the threat a reality as he hauled the wheel hard over and threw the vehicle into a spin.
It skidded around through a hundred and eighty degrees, tearing up chunks of ice as its runners scraped sidelong over the surface and almost flipping over — until Eddie again leaned out to bring it crashing back down on all three skids. The icerunner was now hurtling backwards…
Straight at Treynor.
Eddie stamped on the pedal. The engine shrieked, the propeller roaring to full speed and turning the mercenary into a red spray as the icerunner ploughed into him. All that was left intact were his legs, from the knees down, which managed to stay upright for a couple of seconds as the decelerating vehicle glided over them before slowly toppling amidst a splattered pool of visceral crimson.
‘You’re screwed,’ said Eddie with a grimace. He eased off the throttle and turned the wheel, bringing the icerunner around after the convoy once more.
The two leading SUVs and the remaining icerunner were now lost to sight behind snow-laden trees around a tight bend in the river. Nina’s XC90 had pulled away again during his grisly encounter with Treynor. He accelerated, following it. There were still two mercs to deal with before he could rescue her; one would be occupied with driving, but the other was still a threat. He readied the Wildey. Three bullets left. Not good.
Nor was his situation, he realised, as he saw movement in the 4x4—
‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Tarnowski howled as he let rip with his P90 on full auto through the 4x4’s broken rear window. Nina shrieked and brought up her cuffed arms to protect her face as empty cartridges spat from the gun’s ejection port and bounced around the car’s interior. ‘Come on, you motherfucker! Bring it!’
‘Shit!’ Eddie turned hard as a line of bullet impacts raced along the ice towards him. Shots tore into the bodywork behind his seat. A harsh clunk reverberated through the entire vehicle as the engine block took a hit. He dropped the Wildey on to his lap, forced to grab the wheel with both hands to maintain control.
The gunfire stopped; the mercenary had burned through an entire magazine in mere seconds. But the figure inside the SUV was already reaching for a replacement.
Or for something more deadly…
Tarnowski snapped open the catches on a green metal box and threw back the lid to reveal its contents.
Hand grenades.
He snatched one up and without hesitation yanked out the pin and let the spring-loaded spoon ping free. ‘One, two…’ He tossed the grenade through the broken window. ‘Eat that, you fuck!’
Eddie glimpsed something small and dark bounce along the ice behind the 4x4. He knew instantly what it was, and ducked as he swerved—
The grenade exploded, scattering shrapnel in all directions and ripping a hole through the ice, broken chunks flying into the air amidst a burst of spray. Steel fragments clacked against the icerunner’s bodywork, but did no more than scratch the paint; he was beyond the explosive’s lethal range.
He was not beyond the range of its secondary effects, though. A dark lightning bolt lanced through the ice directly ahead with a series of gunshot snaps, water gushing through the crack as his vehicle’s weight caused the frozen slab under it to tip downwards…
Eddie mashed the throttle, the icerunner surging forward — and riding over the newly formed step with a tooth-rattling bang.
‘Jesus!’ he yelped as he fought to keep control. The impact had damaged the icerunner’s front skid, the steering now worryingly slack. He wrestled it back into line and angled after the Volvo. The 4x4 was coming up to the river’s sharp bend, swinging wide to take the apex at speed. The mercenary rummaged in the cargo area for another grenade. Eddie recovered his Wildey, hesitating as he checked that Nina still had her head down, and fired.
This time, he didn’t even manage to hit the SUV, the rough ride throwing off his aim. A bullet wasted — and only two left.
Tarnowski flicked his arm. Another dark spheroid hit the ice—
The grenade detonated an instant after impact, blasting a second hole in the frozen surface. The results this time were more severe, cracks racing outwards to meet up with the fractures from the first explosion. The ice sheet splintered, no longer a solid expanse but a broken mess of crazy paving.
Eddie saw the danger spreading across his path and tried to change course. The icerunner was slow to respond, and when it finally turned, one of the outriggers lurched upwards again. With a panicked grimace, he leaned out of the cockpit to counterbalance it. The wayward skid slammed back down on to the ice.
A third grenade — and the whole ice sheet shattered and churned in the Volvo’s wake as it rounded the bend, splitting the frozen river from shore to shore.
Eddie was about a hundred metres behind the 4x4. He knew at once that the icerunner would never make it across the broken surface without plunging into the freezing water below. But it wasn’t designed to travel over the rock-strewn riverbank either. He couldn’t continue the pursuit.
Unless—
He remembered the tight bend from the journey upriver. It was practically a hairpin, doubling back on itself on either side of a low ridge.