“Uh — what about not making a mess?”
Words swirled in Beck’s head and they were the first ones that popped out — arguing technicalities with the guy who wanted to kill him. But anything to delay what was going to happen.
“I don’t intend to make one.” The man spoke English with a Swedish accent. “Out.”
Jonas and Beck looked at each other, but they knew they had no choice. Slowly, one after the other, they climbed out, Beck first.
He immediately knew roughly where they were — it could only be somewhere on the side of Storkittel.
There was rock on one side and a drop of about thirty metres on the other. After that, there was what looked in the moonlight like a smooth field of snow, sloping down to the land more than a kilometre below them.
Except that Beck knew it wasn’t smooth snow. He had been brought up here as part of his orientation tour at the start of his internship, and anyway he would have recognised the ripples and ridges that fell away down the slope, as if the whole mountain had started flowing and then suddenly frozen solid. It was the Storkittel glacier — millions of tons of frozen water flowing down the side of the mountain at a metre per day.
The van had pulled over in a passing space on a gravel track that looped around the side of the mountain. Up and down the track, Beck could see patches of snow on the ground. Far below, the land seemed to glow beneath a thin layer of mist, stripped of every colour except shades of silver, lit by a full moon and a million stars like frozen diamonds in the black velvet sky.
Beck and Jonas stood side by side, both starting to shiver uncontrollably as the cold and fear bit in, despite hugging their rugs to their bodies. There were very thin patches of ice on the rocky ground and Beck stumbled as one of his feet slipped. The man was taking no chances and still stood a safe distance away as he waggled his torch.
“Stand over there.”
He was pointing at the edge of the drop.
Beck’s heart pounded. He could only think of one reason the man wanted them over there. He would shoot them and their bodies would tumble down to the glacier. They would be swallowed by the ice and no one would ever know where they had gone — until the glacier spat them out at the bottom, in maybe a hundred years or so. Meanwhile, who would come looking? Sure, they would be missed at the lodge first thing in the morning but who would think to look for them up here?
You have gotta stop this, Beck, think fast, think smart, a voice inside him resolved. No way were their bodies ending up down there.
It was a strange feeling to be looking at the place where you were meant to die. It was only about three metres away but, feeling like he already had a lump of lead in his guts, Beck knew that if they got that far then it was all over. He had to prevent that — and still not get shot.
(And he still had no idea why? And what had Jonas meant by saying he had got Beck into this?)
Jonas obviously hadn’t twigged what Beck had. Whatever he thought about whose fault this was, Jonas just didn’t live in a world where grown men abducted and shot teenage boys. Despite all the evidence, his brain was swiftly putting two and two together. He took a reluctant, hesitant step, and like Beck, his foot slipped briefly. He quickly regained his balance.
“You too!” the man snapped at Beck. “Move!”
And Beck knew he didn’t have much choice. He could just as easily be shot where he was standing. He had no time to plan or think ahead. To obey the voice, to keep him and Jonas alive, everything just had to be done on the fly. He could see a vague way ahead, if he could just make it work…
He moved, and deliberately stumbled as though he had slipped again.
“Woah!”
He shouted theatrically and fell into Jonas’s arms, and for a moment the two of them teetered on the point of going down. Beck just had time to mutter it into Jonas’s ear: “Fall over.” He pushed Jonas away, all in the same movement.
“You should be more careful, Beck,” Jonas said loudly. “Woah!”
He threw his arms in the air and seemed to do a little jig before toppling to the ground.
And in that one moment, while the man was looking at him, and the gun was pointing at him too, Beck charged. He flung his rug at the man, and simultaneously hurled himself forward and to one side. The man couldn’t see him with the rug in the way, and if he fired in that direction he would miss, hitting only fabric.
Beck slammed into him and went straight and fast for the man’s gun hand.