The Valhalla Prophecy (18 page)

Natalia mumbled something in German. Her voice was slurred, and she was having trouble holding her head up. An aftereffect of the drugs? “What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

“I feel … very tired,” she answered. “And … sick.”

Chase suddenly realized that if she had no memory of being held in the cabin, then she had been kept unconscious the whole time—and had not eaten, maybe for days. Even if one of the IV lines had been feeding her nutrients, her body would be close to exhaustion, and she was now also cold, wet, and hurt. She needed warmth and rest.

She would get that when they reached the rendezvous and were taken out of the jungle, but—he reluctantly had to accept—the Vietnamese and Russians would probably catch up long before then. Simply running would not be enough. He needed another course of action.

Natalia began to say something more, but the words faded away to silence. She went limp. Chase stopped, trying to assess her condition. Her breathing was worryingly
shallow. “Shit,” he whispered, moving behind a tree and looking back. One of the men was heading in his direction. A chill of dismay ran through him as he realized the man would cross his tracks. If he spotted any footprints, he would alert the others and bring them running like hounds.

Although …

He kept watching. Other lights winked in and out of view between the trees—but farther away. Chase felt a surge of hope: The hunters
had
spread out too far. They would be able to pick out their companions’ lights in the distance, but their voices would be lost under the ceaseless hiss of the rain. Even if the approaching man found a footprint, he wouldn’t be able to call to anyone else. The mere fact that they had been communicating by shouts gave away that they didn’t have radios.

A new option presented itself.
Attack
.

Chase’s gaze went back to the torch, judging distance, direction … then he turned and surveyed his surroundings. He needed somewhere safe to leave Natalia. A large rock rose from the ground at an angle, bushes overhanging one side. He pushed the branches aside with his body before carefully laying the young woman down alongside the stone. When he retreated, the bush bent back into shape, covering her.

Not well enough. Her white gown was still discernible through the leaves. He should smear it with mud to break up her shape—

A shout, close by. Out of time. His trail had been found.

He ducked behind a tree and peered into the jungle. Another urgent cry in Vietnamese. The man was less than eighty meters away. He shouted again, waving his flashlight. Chase rapidly checked to each side. Those other hunters that he could pick out by their torches were advancing in a widely spaced ragged line, some of them now level with his position. Unless they looked back and happened to have a clear line of sight on their companion, they would not see or hear his warning.

What would the man do? Leave the trail to run after the others—or follow it?

The latter. The torch beam moved back down to the ground, then began to advance on Chase’s position. Fast. The man was moving at a near-run, certain he had his prey’s scent.

The trail would lead him past Chase’s hiding place. He dropped low, keeping the tree between himself and the approaching light.

The man shouted again, excited triumph clear. Rain-dripping metal gleamed: his gun. The AKS came up, tracking back and forth as he searched for his quarry.

Chase hunched lower. He heard squelching footsteps over the wind and rain. The Vietnamese man was almost upon him.

The hunter jogged past the tree—then slowed, the torch warily sweeping the surrounding vegetation. The boot prints had become muddled, tracks crossing over one another. He hesitated, then started to follow one set.

Toward Chase.

The Englishman kept moving around the tree as the Vietnamese lifted his torch. Its beam followed the trail to the base of the trunk. Chase sensed his sudden wariness, afraid of an ambush.

Gun and torch came around in unison as he turned the light on the undergrowth. Chase tensed as it reached him—

A low moan. Natalia.

The man spun, torch beam locking on to the wet rock—then the figure in white beside it as she lifted her head. He raised the gun—

Chase burst out from behind the tree and dived at him.

The man whirled to shoot, but the Yorkshireman had already lashed out at his gun as they collided. His arm caught the magazine, knocking it out of the receiver and sending it spinning into the darkness. Both men hit the ground, mud splashing around them.

But there was a round already in the rifle’s chamber.
If it fired, it would draw all the other hunters to their position.

The Vietnamese knew this too. Chase was on top, but the other man still held the AK in his right hand. He tried to bring it around to fire into his attacker’s side. Chase felt rather than saw the movement and snapped his left hand across as the man pulled the trigger—

It didn’t move. Chase had thrust his thumb through the trigger guard—behind the trigger itself.

The hunter squeezed it again, harder. Metal dug into Chase’s thumb like a guillotine blade, nerves and tendons crunching. He gasped in pain but kept his grip on the gun.

The Vietnamese snarled as he struggled against Chase’s weight—then jerked his left hand free and smacked his heavy flashlight against the side of the Englishman’s head. Chase cried out. The light swung again—

Chase moved—not sideways to avoid the blow, but
down
, delivering a punishing headbutt. The man shrieked as his nose broke, cartilage cracking like damp wood.

The crushing pain on Chase’s thumb suddenly eased. He yanked at the gun, wresting it from the Vietnamese’s grip and tossing it out of reach. The other man was still paralyzed by pain, bloodied face scrunched up in the spill of light from the torch, but Chase knew he only had moments before he recovered his senses.

He rolled off his attacker and grabbed him by the throat, hauling him over to clamp his arm around his neck. The Vietnamese realized what was happening and struggled, kicking furiously and slamming his elbows into the Englishman’s body, but Chase grimaced, withstanding the pain of the blows, and tightened his hold. The hunter’s fury turned to panic as he choked, but there was nothing he could do. His attacks grew weaker, then stopped. His body convulsed before going limp.

Chase eased his grip, taking several seconds to recover his breath and let the adrenaline rush subside,
then brought up his aching hand to check the man’s pulse. It was slow, but steady. He pushed the unconscious form away and painfully rose to his knees.

Natalia had also risen. She stared at him in horror. “You—you killed him!”

“No, he’s still alive,” Chase rasped, “but we’ve got to get away from here before his friends realize he’s missing and come looking for him.” He picked up the Kalashnikov, the rifle feeling unbalanced without its magazine. A rapid check of the ground around him revealed no trace of the curved metal clip, and he had no idea where it had landed. “Bollocks!”

He helped Natalia up. She gasped when she put weight on her foot, so he hoisted her over one shoulder in a fireman’s lift and, the AK in his right hand, moved off into the jungle, angling away from the other probing lights.

It wasn’t long before he heard shouts from behind. The Vietnamese man had regained consciousness and was yelling for help. By now, the gap in the search line had been noticed, and some of the other hunters had turned to investigate. All Chase could do was keep going, trying to camouflage his tracks as much as possible.

He pushed on for five more minutes, ten. A look back. The pursuing lights had finally been lost in the storm. But could he risk trying to find a hiding place?

A feeble moan from over his shoulder forced an answer. Exhausted from the drugs and whatever experiments the Russians had been carrying out on her, drenched and cold in only her thin surgical gown, Natalia had reached the limit of her endurance. If he didn’t find shelter for her soon, there was a definite danger that if she passed out again, she might never wake up. He clambered over more roots, eyes straining to pick out details in the darkness.

A shadowy shape on the ground resolved itself into that of a fallen tree as he approached. One end was higher than the other, propped up by a hunk of half-buried stone. A black void told him that the log was
hollow. He went to the open end, using the rifle to probe its interior—partly to check if it was large enough to fit Natalia, and also to make sure it was not home to any venomous snakes. It seemed just big enough to accommodate her, and nothing hissed at him.

He bent forward, carefully letting the young German slide off his shoulder and taking her weight with his arms. “Natalia, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to put you into a hiding place. I’ll be right here with you.” He lifted her again, this time trying to maneuver her bare legs into the open end of the log. It felt like trying to push wet spaghetti through a keyhole, but after a couple of attempts he finally got both limp limbs into the gap and eased her inside. When she was fully swallowed by the log, he shrugged off his backpack, then removed his rain cape and draped it over her as best he could.

There was a low hollow beneath the trunk’s raised end. Another quick check for snakes, then Chase squeezed down into it, keeping the gun with its single bullet at the ready as he stared into the jungle back the way they had come. No lights, no movement but the sway of trees and bushes in the wind and the constant falling rain.

He kept watch for as long as he could, but tiredness inevitably caught up. Despite his best efforts, sleep eventually swallowed him as completely as the night.

Eddie gazed out across the long frozen lake. “So, somewhere under that … there’s a Viking village?”

“That’s what we think,” Nina replied. “That’s what we
hope
, anyway.”

Tova, standing beside them on the shore, had a concerned, apologetic expression. “Oh, I really hope I am right, Nina. You have organized this so fast! People, equipment, machines, all of this in just two days. It is a lot of money. And if I am wrong about the location …”

“If
we’re
wrong,” the American corrected, giving her a reassuring smile. “If we don’t find it, I’ll take the hit—you don’t need to worry about anything. This is what the IHA does. When we need to move, we’ve got the resources.”

“Yes, so I see. I have to admit I am a little jealous!” Tova waved an arm at the vehicles lined up along the lake’s edge. “But you have brought all this, though we do not know if the runestone is even here.”

“If it
is
here,” Nina pointed out, “we’ll need to secure it as quickly as possible. The people who stole the other stone and murdered the security guard—and tried to kidnap you—are obviously desperate to get hold of it.”

“If they’re the same people,” Eddie said quietly.

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just that if the first lot stole the runestone because they want to find Valhalla, maybe the Russians went after Tova because she was the next best thing to having the actual stone.” He shrugged. “Just a thought. I’m probably wrong.”

It was not an idea that had occurred to Nina. “God, I hope you are. If there are two sets of bad guys after the stones, we don’t want to be caught in the middle if they start shooting it out!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He gave her a sardonic smile. “So, we’ve got diving gear, we’ve got pumps, lights, drills, flotation bags, winches … everything we need to get a ton of stone up from the bottom. All we’ve got to do is find the bugger.”

Nina turned at the sound of more approaching vehicles. “Well, hopefully this is the man to do it.”

A long-wheelbase pickup truck was carefully making its way to the shoreline. Mounted in its rear bed was a crane, the arm rotated to rest over the cab. When it was turned the other way, it would extend several feet beyond the tailgate. Another, smaller pickup followed, a blocky object secured in the cargo area beneath a tarpaulin. Both trucks lined up alongside the parked four-by-fours.

Nina, Eddie, and Tova went to greet the driver of the second vehicle as he emerged. “Strewth and g’day, cobber!” said Eddie.

Matt Trulli shivered, wrapping his coat tightly around himself. Its down quilting made him look even chubbier than he already was. “Was that meant to be Australian, mate? Sounded more like Welsh.”

“I keep telling him he’s terrible at accents,” said Nina playfully. “He won’t listen.” Eddie sniffed.

“Yeah, well, one of these days I won’t listen to you when you ring up and say, ‘Matt, there’s something underwater that we need. Can you bring one of your subs to the arse-end of the world to get it?’ Especially when the place you want me to come to could freeze the balls off a brass monkey!” Matt belatedly registered an unfamiliar
face in the group. “Oops, sorry for the language,” he told Tova.

“That is … okay,” she replied, her politely bewildered tone suggesting that she hadn’t understood him enough to be offended.

“Tova, this is Matt Trulli,” said Nina. “He works for the Oceanic Survey Organization at the UN, but he helps the IHA out from time to time. Matt, this is Tova Skilfinger, a historian and expert in Viking culture.”

Matt’s face lit up. “Vikings, eh? Now, there’s an interesting bit of history! Amazing shipbuilders and navigators for their time.”

“Trust you to find that the most fascinating thing about them,” chided Nina. “And
all
history’s interesting.”

That prompted mocking snorts from both men, which in turn roused looks of professional disapproval from the two PhDs. “Just taking the piss, love,” Eddie reassured his wife.

Matt shook Tova’s hand, then regarded the lake. “So, it took me two days, but I’ve rounded up the gear you asked me for. What are we actually trying to find?”

“A Viking runestone,” Nina told him. She led them to one of the parked off-roaders, taking a photograph from a case inside. “It’s probably going to look a lot like this.”

The Australian examined the picture of the Valhalla Runestone inside Tova’s lab. “Fairly hefty. That’s why you brought all those IBUs, then?” He glanced at the bright orange cargo of another truck.