Kurt followed Joe’s path along the fuselage and reached his own chariot. He climbed on board and grabbed the throttle. His more awkward ascent meant he had to turn around before he accelerated. He let the motor surge once as he spun around. Then put the power on smoothly.
As the belt dug into the snow, he picked up speed briskly. Instead of going for the tail as Joe had, Kurt used the wing as an off-ramp. Halfway down he turned sharply to the left. He was just going off the edge as the self-destruct timer hit zero.
Three successive explosions erupted behind him. The cockpit first, then the control compartment aft of it, and then a larger, hotter detonation as the weapons bay erupted from within.
A white ball of flame accompanied the blast, blinding everyone who had been caught looking.
The immediate effect of the explosions was the complete dismantling of the plane. The top of the fuselage blew upward and out. Geysers of flame jetted skyward, while jagged sections of aluminum pirouetted as they flew out into the night.
A secondary effect was the shock wave. The blasts were channeled upward for the most part, but shock fronts expand in all directions like a bubble. This one hit Kurt with a powerful off-center shove, which forced the machine onto one rail. Kurt was thrown off the side and went face-first into the snow. The last he saw of the snowmobile, it was careening onward, curving back toward the inferno.
Chapter 45
Joe heard and felt the explosion, but was already half a mile away. He wanted to come about and check on Kurt, but he had more pressing issues. The three Russian snowmobiles were chasing him. They were big and loud, but mostly they were fast. And, he had to admit, well driven.
The Russian drivers worked together, hounding him like a pack of border collies. One led the chase, with the other two keeping formation a little way back. If Joe turned right, the main pursuer tracked him, while the machine on the right turned hard to cut him off. If he turned left, the same thing happened. So far, Joe hadn’t been able to get out of their headlights.
He would have been fine with that except for one other issue. To avoid the snowcat and pair of commandos with Kalashnikovs, he’d made a hard turn to the left as he sped away from the C-17. He hadn’t had much choice, but as a result, he’d ended up heading toward Russia instead of Norway. With the group of hounds keeping him on track he was getting farther and farther from safety, not closer to it.
He needed a smoke screen, or a mine-deploying system, or arearward-firing machine gun. “Where are all the cool James Bond switches when you need them?” he muttered.
Remembering Kurt’s rooster tail as he topped the aircraft, Joe realized he could make a smoke screen of his own, or a snow screen at least.
He whipped the snowmobile into a turn, slowed, and then gunned the engine as it began to sink into the powder. A spray of snow and ice crystals surged into the night air behind him. He turned the other way and repeated the procedure, going back and forth.
After a few practice rounds, he went all out, creating a huge curtain of ice crystals behind him and then turning hard and racing back toward his pursuers. The suspended crystals shimmered as the lights of the snowmobiles converged on it, becoming more opaque as it brightened, the way fog becomes harder to see through when it’s lit up at night.
The first Russian snowmobile burst through the curtain like a train coming the opposite direction on a high-speed track. It passed on Joe’s right, vanishing in a blink.
The second sled passed by wide to the left. But the third appeared almost directly in front of him.
Joe flicked his sled to the left, trying to avoid a head-on collision.
The other driver turned harder, lacking Joe’s finesse and failing to shift his weight. As his runners turned, he caught an edge and the sled tumbled hard, catapulting the driver out into the night.
“One down, two to go.”
He held the throttle wide open and looked back. The remaining sleds had made the turn and were spreading out, widening their formation to prevent Joe from performing the same trick again.
Still, Joe had bought himself some time and space, and he was no longer heading for the Russian coast. Instead he was charging toward the cliff and the drop-off on the other side, where the laketumbled in a series of frozen waterfalls toward the fjord, a thousand feet below.
In the daylight it would have been no problem, but at night he would not see where the lake ended and the thousand-foot drop began until his headlight stopped reflecting off the snow. That would not leave enough time to turn.
Still, he charged toward it like a man possessed. The Russians chased him with no less determination.
He glanced over his shoulder toward the dim, orange glow of the burning plane. It looked to be a long way back.Miles back, Joe thought. But as the only point of light it was impossible to really tell. He squinted, trying to see out beyond the headlights. For another moment he continued to speed into the darkness. Then all at once, he decided against it.
He carved another sharp turn, kicking up a wave of snow as he cut hard to the left. Much of the snow fell quickly, some of it lingered. Other flakes dropped over the edge of the cliff, floating gently down toward the waters of the fjord far below.
Joe would never know what instinct caused his nerve to fail at just the right moment, but he was glad of it. He was now racing along the edge of the cliff, heading toward the Norwegian border.
Looking back, he saw the Russians making the same turn. They closed in once again, this time flanking him to the inside and pinning him against the cliff’s edge.
Joe bent his course inward, but at the same moment the nearest Russian sled pulled even and blocked him. The two machines crashed together and then veered apart.
Joe sped up, cut the throttle, then sped up again, trying to create some space. But the Russian driver was too good. He matched Joe’s pace changes almost instantly. With Joe effectively blocked, the Russian inched closer, far too smart to swerve foolishly toward Joe andrisk overshooting and flying off the cliff himself. No, it seemed this would be a slow, firm shove.
The front cowlings hit and bounced apart. The skids scraped against each other, locked for a second, and then freed themselves.
