Kurt nodded toward the screens. “Someone’s been bragging about it.”
Joe’s eyes grew wide at the sight of a man they all thought was dead. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How is he alive?”
“We’ll have to figure that out later,” Kurt said. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here.”
A sudden brightening of the cockpit told him it was too late. A stark white glow reached them through the blanket of snow covering the windows, courtesy of spotlights being aimed their way.
Kurt rushed to the ladder that the copilot had died trying to climb. He went up to the hatch, unlocked it, and pulled it open. A foot of snow dropped in on him, coating him in white. He was fine with that. It would be camouflage.
Climbing another step and poking his head above the snow, he looked around. A hodgepodge of vehicles had come in from the Russian side of the lake. Kurt saw a couple of trucks, a pair of snowcats, and three snowmobiles. They were taking up positions around the plane. Some of them had turned their headlights on, others aimed articulated spotlights at the jet. The pristine snow sparkled with the illumination. The tracks Kurt and Joe had made with the snowmobiles stood out in contrast.
A number of men emerged from the nearest truck, armed with guns and ladders. Additional men were spreading out to various points around the plane in order to prevent any escape.
“What’s the word?”
“Fifteen to one,” Kurt said.
“But there’s two of us.”
“And thirty of them.”
“Math,” Joe said. “Got ya. What do you want to do?”
“I’d like to invite them in, show them Ahab’s video, and explain that we’ve all been tricked, but we don’t have the time.”
He pointed to the self-destruct timer, which was ticking down and closing in on ninety seconds.
Joe took a deep breath and held up one of the charges. “Don’t really need these if the whole plane is going to blow up. We could use them like grenades.”
“Now you’re talking,” Kurt said. “I’ll distract them. You get to your machine.”
“You’ll end up stuck here,” Joe said, not happy with the plan.
“Are you kidding?” Kurt said. “I’m taking the easy route. I’ll stroll off this thing while they’re all chasing you.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “That sounds more like it.”
As Joe left, Kurt twisted the timers on three of his four charges. He set them for ten, twenty, and thirty seconds. He would have preferred five, ten, and fifteen, but the safety protocol would not allow a shorter fuse.
Pressing the start buttons, he waited calmly as thirty pounds of C-4 ticked down to detonation. When enough time had passed, he heaved the charges out one after another.
The first charges crashed into the snow, perhaps ten feet from the point man of the approaching group. He shouted a warning to theothers and ran. The group scattered, dropping their ladders and rushing clumsily through the snow for safety.
It detonated as they cleared the area, blasting a thirty-foot crater in the snow and sending a number of them flying. Unknown to anyone at the time, the blast cracked the ice below in a spiderweb-like pattern.
The second charge went off to a similarly spectacular effect, blasting so much snow into the air that it cleared half the hidden wing, while spearing a fog of sparkling ice crystals across the snowy plain.
By now the startled Russians took cover. Some of them responded by leveling their rifles at the cockpit and firing away.
Kurt slid back down the ladder as bullets tore into the upper half of the cockpit. He dropped to the deck and scrambled aft as the incoming shells tore the small space apart. He was out of the cockpit and into the control bay when the third charge went off, thudding the plane like a nearby thunderclap.
He reached the control bay ladder. Looking up, he saw Joe’s feet disappear through the opening. He raced up after him. A vague clock in his head telling him the bigger bang of the self-destruct system was not far off.
Poking his head out, Kurt saw clouds of ice particles drifting through the air, the Russians trying to regroup, and Joe burrowing through the snow on top of the plane like an Arctic fox. It kept him out of sight until he reached his snow machine.
Pulling himself aboard, Joe twisted the throttle. The electric machine accelerated instantly, and Joe was soon racing along the fuselage and down the side. The Russians saw him, but held their fire. No doubt they had orders not to shoot up the section of the plane holding the laser.
That amnesty ended the moment Joe hit the frozen surface of the lake. But he had already hit top speed by then. He whipped past the tail, cut to the left to avoid a snowcat, and sped off into the dark. A few tracers followed him, but the gunfire stopped as all three of the Russian snowmobiles went after him.
