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“Hello boys,” the voice called from above. “You might want to get a move on, I don’t think this is going to hold much longer.”
“Zara, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Maddock felt a surge of emotion that was part joy, part relief, and part vindication, so glad she’d proven him right. The boat moved again, slipping deeper. It wouldn’t hold for long. The others started up the ladder as water started rushing in through the bulkhead. It came fast, rushing in with a torrent of churning whitecaps as it swelled to fill every inch of the depressurized hull. It pulled at his legs as he climbed, the last man up the ladder. He felt the wash of ice cold water against his legs. He gave a final glance back down into the darkness. Nate Shaw was gone. Those few seconds had made a difference. He would do everything he could to make sure the man’s family knew that. It wasn’t much, but it was all that he could do. He didn’t want them receiving a form letter saying he died a hero and nothing else. He would sit with them face-to-face and explain how Nate had saved his life. He owed the man that.
The submarine lurched again.
Someone shouted from above him.
If he didn’t get off the conning tower he’d be dragged under with the dead man and no amount of good intentions would make a damned bit of difference.
The submarine gave out another groan.
Maddock climbed faster, hand over hand, rising toward the light.
Water rushed in below him, washing over the bodies of the dead Russians as it surged up the stairwell.
Hands reached down for Maddock as voices cried out for him to hurry.
He scrambled up the last couple of steps and stumbled as he reached the razor-wire shards of ice frosted onto the metal. Bones grabbed his hood and hauled him to his feet as he struggled to get any purchase on the floor beneath him.
The others were already on the ice and running toward the safety of the shore.
Behind them another six feet of the Echo II slipped beneath the ice.
“Move!” Bones urged. Maddock saw in an instant why. It had been a double-trap; not only had the submarine been trapped in the ice, the ice had been trapped in place by the bulk of the submarine. Without it, the integrity of the ice sheet had begun to fail. Massive fissures spread across the surface, black lines promising a bleak death if they were caught out in the middle of the sheet once it broke free. The air was filled with the cracks of the ice slowly tearing itself apart. It wouldn’t hold for long. It couldn’t.
He looked at Bones. The big man nodded.
“Butch and Sundance?” Bones asked.
“Didn’t they both die?” Maddock wasn’t sure it was the best example.
Bones grabbed his hand and together the pair of them took a running jump from the conning tower, arms and legs flailing as they kicked out for the solid ice that looked an impossibly long way down.
They landed hard, the ice beneath them shrieking as their weight drove it down, and started to slide remorselessly toward the water. Maddock scrambled to his feet, Bones beside him, grinning, and they ran for their lives as the sub went down.
Arms and legs pumping furiously, chin down, ice cold air burning his lungs, he struggled for breath, every sinew on fire as he ran on a surface that shifted constantly beneath him. He didn’t look back, didn’t look down, he focused on the safety of the distant land mass.
With a shriek that rent his soul, a great sheet of ice sheared away beneath his feet.
Maddock lost his balance as it tipped and shifted, but caught it again before he was bucked, but that didn’t stop a gulf opening up between him and the main ice sheet still anchored to the shore. There was no way he could jump it, not weighed down by the Arctic gear he wore. He didn’t have time to think or weigh up his options; he had to act on instinct as the ground he stood on started to drift away from the shore. Somehow, Bones was on the other side of the gulf. He’d only been a step or two ahead of Maddock when the ice had torn apart, now he was getting further away all the time.
The others were calling to him, urging him to jump but their voices were just a cacophony of noise. He steadied himself for a moment, making sure that he had his balance. He would have one chance to get this right.
If he got it wrong he may as well have stayed on the submarine.
He took a step back, and another and another until the ice started to tilt backward, his weight on the wrong side of its pivot-point. He started to run, the sudden shift of his weight pushing the ice back down as his boots skidded on it. He threw his arms forward, jumping, legs kicking out in a desperate attempt to get a few more inches out of the leap. His boots came down hard on the ice, and it began to break away beneath the impact of his landing. He kept running until someone grabbed hold of him, pulling him onto a safer surface.
Dane slumped to the ground, breathing hard.
He couldn’t quite believe they’d gotten out of there alive.
“That was interesting,” he said, as the submarine tilted almost upright, the weight of the water inside dragging it down. No one would come to recover the bodies of the dead; that metal coffin would serve them for eternity.
“Did they get the egg?” Leopov asked.
Maddock answered with a question of his own: “You want to tell me why you deserted the camp?”
“You know why.”
“Humor me,” Maddock said.
“My orders are to stay close to you. I overheard you planning to light out. I was ready to go as soon as you left. Besides, there was something you needed to know.”
“And what’s that?”
“The Russian. He wasn’t making sense even when he was talking, but he said something that I thought you should hear. He claimed to be a descendant of Rasputin.”
“The Mad Monk?” said Professor.
“Whether he is or he isn’t doesn’t really make any difference,” she said. “He kept talking about one of the lost Fabergé eggs. He said that his ancestor had designed it to take revenge on the people who were betraying him. There was something inside it that would bring about the fall of the people who had betrayed his country. I wasn’t sure if he meant the people who betrayed Russia back in the days before the revolution, or now.”
“Now?”
“Now meaning President Gorbachev,” she said.
“Gorbachev?” Maddock cocked his head. “He’s on the brink of ending the Cold War. How’s that a betrayal?”
“Not everyone wants it to end,” Professor observed. “There are plenty of people who want things to remain the way they’ve always been. That revolution was hard fought and bloody. Any kind of change now is weakness in their eyes. A betrayal of the sacrifice of their people.”
“And our mad Russian thinks he can use the egg to bring down Gorbachev?” Maddock shook his head. He couldn’t quite add up these two and twos without making five. How could a man out here, cut off from society, think he could change the world by bringing down one of the two most powerful men in it?
“I think he’s planning on assassinating him,” she said. “Using the egg somehow to fulfill Rasputin’s destiny.”
“Give him a gift with the means of his death inside it? Do you think that something that was made a century ago could still work?”
“Maybe,” said Professor.
“Maybe he intends to put something else inside it? Ricin maybe? Sarin?” Leopov said. “We have intelligence that suggests biological weapons are being tested in secret here on this island.”
“Now you tell us,” said Bones.
“I know I can’t be the only one thinking it, so I’ll say it: what’s it got to do with us?” asked Willis. “We’re talking about Russians killing Russians. I ain’t gonna cry over it, put it that way. Let them kill each other if that’s what they want. Better that than kill the rest of the world.”
“Think about it. They blame the West, and what happens?” Professor said. “This won’t just get rid of a leadership they are unhappy with, it’ll set peace back decades and unite Russia behind whoever promises revenge on America.”
“Meaning whoever promises to push that big red button,” said Bones.
“Meaning we have got to stop them,” Maddock reasoned. “Because no one else knows there’s even a threat.”
“Exactly,” Professor agreed. “At worst, we stop a few more people getting killed. At best we stop another World War.”
“And at the very least it will make sure that Lewis and Shaw didn’t die for nothing,” Bones finished.
Willis couldn’t argue with that. He nodded.
“We’ll never catch up with them,” Leopov pointed out. “They’re long gone.”
“So we work out where they’ll be heading and go there. Best guess?”
“There’s the old Gulag. That’s where they seem to have been conducting experiments.”
“I’ve seen it on the map,” said Professor. “There’s no way we can get there before them. They’re on Ski-Doos, we’re on foot.”
“There’s nothing to say that we have to get there before them,” said Maddock. “After all, we have one advantage over them.”
“And what’s that?” asked Bones.
“They think we’re dead.”