Eventually, he managed to slide the rifle around until it rested at his side. It was balanced by the strap that remained across his shoulder. Situated like this, he closed in on the target like a fighter pilot trying to save the life of his wingman. With the hovercraft crossing in front of him, Joe tried to flick off the safety, but the bulky gloves he wore made it impossible. He was still fumbling with it as the Russian snowmobile turned hard to the right.
The hovercraft followed, and Joe leaned into the turn, swinging wide, until he was back on target. He put the glove to his mouth, bit down on the fabric of the fingertips, and ripped the glove off. The frigid air chilled his fingers instantly, but with his bare hand he was able to grab the rifle grip, flip the safety off, and fire.
A spread of bullets lanced forth from the barrel to no effect.
The hovercraft turned left, and Joe fired again. This time, he hit the target — something confirmed by bits of fiberglass flying into the air — but still the hovercraft raced forward unaffected.
Ahead of them, the two Russian commandos had come to a narrow gap between a rocky ridge and a high drift of soft snow. They shot toward the gap, a fatal mistake.
The hovercraft’s driver lined them up easily and triggered his own weapon. A direct hit from the flash-draw stunned the men into unconsciousness and stalled the snowmobile’s engine. The fleeing sled turned sideways. Its right-hand ski caught a rut, and the machine tumbled out of control, ejecting the limp commandos in different directions.
Rather than repeat the snowmobile’s mistake, the hovercraft turned right. It raced up the hill, skidded sideways, and pointed its nose back around and down toward Joe.
Joe flipped the selector to full auto and fired at will, tearing up the front end of the hovercraft and shattering its windshield. Despite the damage, the charging machine didn’t stop.
Joe tried to dodge the oncoming craft, but he skidded on the ice. He was either about to get zapped or be decapitated. He dove off the snowmobile, throwing himself to the ground.
The hovercraft raced over the top of him, roaring like a tornado and hammering the snowmobile like a battering ram. The tremendous downward air pressure underneath the hovercraft’s skirt blasted Joe out to the side as if he were a newspaper caught in the swirling air behind a truck on the highway.
As soon as he tumbled to a stop, Joe was up and running. Across from him, the hovercraft began to turn back. It swung around and charged back toward him. Joe could just imagine the thugs inside, drooling as they growled: “Run him down!”
It wouldn’t take long.
As Joe lumbered through the snow, the hovercraft bore down on him at ten times his speed.
The whine of the approaching vehicle rose in Joe’s ears. He threw himself to the ground as the din of automatic gunfire rang out. He looked up just in time to see the hovercraft going off course and trailing smoke. It carried on for a hundred feet before losing power and crashing nose-first into the snow. It burrowed for ten feet before grinding to a halt.
Another snowmobile raced toward Joe and skidded to a stop.
“Get on!” Gregorovich yelled.
Joe normally preferred to drive, but he wasn’t about to argue. He clambered onto the seat, barely grabbing the handholds before Gregorovich gunned the throttle and took off.
A half mile away, Kurt was doing a yeoman’s job avoiding the stun blast of the flash-draw, but he could neither shake nor outrun their pursuer. He noticed only one advantage.
“We have better traction,” he yelled to Hayley.
“What?”
“That thing turns more like a boat or a plane, it skids and slides. But when we’re not on ice, we’re able to turn inside his radius every time.”
“How does that help us?”
“Watch,” he said, cutting hard to the right, racing back in the direction they’d just come.
The hovercraft dutifully followed, swinging wide, turning back on course, and then closing the gap again.
Kurt kept the throttle at full, almost losing control as they skipped across bumpier terrain.
Another miragelike apparition ripped past them to the right.
“That was awfully close,” Hayley said.
They’d come to a narrow section now, almost like a catwalk on a ski slope. The glacier dropped down to the right as a rocky ridge climbed up to the left and around the edge of Big Ben like a mountain road.
Kurt chose the ridge, hugging the wall, as the terrain beside them fell away precipitously. He backed off the throttle just a bit.
“They’re closing in!” Hayley shouted.
As the ridge narrowed, Kurt hit the brake, turned the handlebars, and threw all his weight to the left side of the snowmobile. He leaned hard, like a motorcycle rider in a hairpin turn.
The snowmobile’s skis dug in hard. And Kurt caught sight of the hovercraft, whipping into the turn behind them. Then he saw a flash of light in his mind and felt a falling sensation. It seemed as if everything went dark.
His limp body flew off the snowmobile and slid fifty feet into a thick bank of snow. He came to rest, all but buried and completely unconscious. Hayley tumbled off the snowmobile as well, but a handlebar caught her parka, tearing it open and yanking her to a halt like an arresting wire on an aircraft carrier. She ended up only a few yards from the damaged sled.
Kurt never saw her, nor did he see how effective his plan had truly been.
Just as he’d hoped, the snowmobile’s sharp turn was beyond the hovercraft’s ability to match. It skidded out over the sheer face of the ridge, carried sideways by its speed and momentum. A small cliff would have been no problem, but the eighty-foot drop was too much.
The hovercraft had to stay in close contact with the ground to generate lift, and with that ground suddenly gone, the craft dropped and rolled to the side as it fell.
It hit hard, landing on its side and tumbling in summersaults down the slope. Pieces of fiberglass sailed in all directions. It came to a stop in a heap, and no one climbed out of it.
Farther down the slope, Joe and Gregorovich were in trouble. Another of Thero’s hovercraft had found them. It was driving them toward the towering wall of the glacier.
“He’s going to trap us against the ice,” Joe shouted.
“I can’t get around him,” Gregorovich said.
Joe looked over his shoulder. The hovercraft was hanging back, swerving from side to side. Any move Gregorovich made was easily countered. Joe knew he had to do something. He tried to pull the clip from his rifle, but by now his ungloved hand was completely numb. He pulled the other glove off, yanked the empty clip out, and jammed a new one in.
“This is my stop,” he shouted.
He pushed off Gregorovich and extended his legs, launching himself off the snowmobile, landing and tumbling through the snow for a second time.
Joe bounced and rolled and then slid face-first, cringing as the snow was shoveled through the gap in his collar. In seconds, he was up, shaking the snow from his face and getting his bearings.
Gregorovich was still heading toward the glacier. The hovercraft had ignored Joe and followed.
Joe raised the rifle and locked onto the hovercraft, calculating how much to lead it by. He was about to fire when a second high-pitched whine caught his attention.
He pulled the trigger, but the blur of Thero’s stun gun had already hit him. The flare of blinding light seen only in Joe’s mind encompassed him as it had in the outback and he collapsed in the snow, never knowing if he’d hit anything.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Thirty minutes later, with the white sky beginning to darken, the two remaining hovercraft made a cautious approach to the ridge where Kurt and Hayley had crashed. Using an infrared scope, Janko spied the wrecked vehicle at the bottom of the drop. Seconds later, he spotted the snowmobile.