Kurt pulled the radio from under his armpit, where he’d kept it to help the batteries remain warm. He checked it, heard some static in the earbud that had made a home in his right ear, and determined that the device was functioning perfectly. He resisted the temptation to break the silence, instead slipping the radio into a zippered pocket, which would keep it handy but secure.
Outside the noise of the other helicopter faded as it continued on. This allowed a new sound to make its presence known: a slow churning, a deeper thrum. It came through the ice. Transmitted by the water beneath it.
A veil of light grew outside the cave. The world was no longer black, but turning a dim gray and brightening more with every passing moment. The ice cave swayed and rocked as waves surged beneath the floor. The blocks slid, some of them tumbled. A thunderous crashing sound shook everything to the core.
Kurt dove out through the opening as the ice cave collapsed. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees as the footing buckled and shuddered. A monstrous cracking sound, like great trees snapping in half, echoed from behind him. It was followed by echoing booms as if massive boulders had been dropped from some great height into empty dump trucks.
Kurt ran from the sound, sprinting the best he could on stiff legs.
The ice field around him grew brighter with every moment. It was soon blindingly white, lit up by powerful spotlights converging on his position.
Glancing back, he saw a vision of enormity and destruction. The towering red bow of the Chinese ship was surging up onto the ice, crushing the thick slabs into hundreds of smaller blocks, and spitting them out to the sides as it plowed toward him.
The mammoth proportions of the ship made it impossible to see the bridge or the sides or the length, as if all that existed was that enormous bow, chewing through the ice toward a tiny, fleeing human.
Kurt continued to sprint, thankful for the spikes in his shoes that gave him traction. He cut to the right to get out of the ship’s path, but was blocked by a jagged crack that appeared like the San Andreas Fault as the two sections of ice broke apart.
Kurt might have tried to leap over it, but fountains of dark water surged up between the gap and across the ice. He was forced back in front of the ship, which was rapidly gaining ground.
Knowing he couldn’t stay ahead of the ship for long, he raced to the left, taking a forty-five-degree angle across the path and hurdling a low-pressure ridge like an Olympic champion.
It was all for naught. The moment he passed the ship’s centerline, a trail of glowing red lines cut the night in front of him, tracer fire from a pair of Chinese heavy machine guns.
The fireworks display was impressive. The line of bullets jackhammering the ice ahead and to the left would have cut him to shreds. He pulled back instinctively. Kurt found himself trapped.
Behind him the ship rose up on a thick section of ice and then plunged downward as the weight of the ship overcame the bonds of the frozen water.
The downward thrust sent a powerful wave surging forward. It lifted the terrain beneath Kurt’s feet, tilting it sharply, and propelling Kurt through the air as if he’d been thrown from a trampoline. Kurt’s arms windmilled as he flew. He hit the ice hard, sliding across it and then springing to his feet almost instantly.
The propulsion from the launch actually helped him put some distance between himself and the ship, but it would change nothing in the long term.
To the right was a flooding canyon that he couldn’t leap, to the left was a death trap of heavy gunfire that would leave his body riddled with bullets, while the path forward wouldn’t keep him safe for long.
As his legs started to ache, Kurt wondered what on earth he was going to do.
Joe flew with lights out at an altitude of fifty feet. High enough to avoid the jumbled heaps of the upward-thrust ice, but low enough to keep him off the Chinese ship’s radar. He was closing in on the search area when he spotted the Chinese ship running with full lights on and grinding its way into the ice. Moments later he saw strings of tracer fire lighting up the night.
“Well, that makes things easier,” he joked to himself.
All the way over here, he’d been wondering how he’d find Kurt inthe dark without being noticed by the Chinese. That was no longer a concern. He knew exactly where Kurt was, even though he couldn’t see him. And he doubted that anyone on the Chinese bridge was paying attention to anything other than the man they were trying to run down.
He pushed the helicopter to its limits, aimed for the stern of the icebreaker, and pressed the radio transmit switch. “Inbound fast. I’ll come up from where you least expect it. Look for me in the blinding light. Remember, it’s always best to be POSH when you fly Zavala airways.”
Joe hoped Kurt had a bud in his ear because there was no way he was going to have time to pull out the walkie-talkie and listen to the speaker.
Sweeping in behind the Chinese ship, Joe had to reduce speed. He couldn’t stop on a dime or pick Kurt up while moving a hundred miles an hour.
He pulled to the right, passing the icebreaker on its starboard flank. He was below the beltline of the ship, well below the elevated bridge. By the time he passed the forward anchor, he was only moving at thirty knots, still more than three times the speed of the ship and the man sprinting in front of it.
Surging out ahead of the vessel, Joe saw Kurt running to the right just as he’d hoped. He pivoted the helicopter’s nose to the left, tilting the craft and slowing further as he flew sideways toward Kurt. From above, the maneuver would resemble a car hitting the brakes and skidding sideways to a stop.
Nearing Kurt, Joe dropped toward the surface, leveling off for no more than a second or two. The skids actually scraped the ice as Kurt leapt in through the open side door, grabbing at a cargo net and pulling himself up.
As Kurt clambered inside, Joe banked to the right, swinging thenose around and pivoting away from the oncoming hulk of the red ship. At full throttle with its nose slightly down, the helicopter thundered out of the ship’s path.
From there, it raced off into the darkness, leaving the huge ship to chew on nothing but empty ice.
Joe glanced back to see spotlights swinging uselessly through the air in a desperate attempt to reacquire them. Tracers came up looking like tiny fountains of lava shot from hoses that had broken loose. They swung around as uselessly as the spotlights, punching the night in futile bursts.
