The Valhalla Prophecy (51 page)

They knew he was there.

Nina realized something unexpected had happened behind her when the narrow-eyed, bearded mercenary Wake, driving the SUV, did a double-take after glancing in the rearview mirror—and his sudden swerve to get a better look confirmed it. “The fuck are you doing?” demanded Treynor.

“Wilson just fell out of the fucking icerunner!” Wake replied, staring through the side window. Both guards and their prisoner followed his gaze.

Even at a distance, Nina instantly recognized the man clambering into the icerunner’s front seat. “Oh, I hope you guys made wills,” she said, heart leaping in elation. Eddie was alive!

“It’s that limey!” said Tarnowski. “How the fuck did he get out of there?”

Treynor fumbled a walkie-talkie from a coat pocket. “Hoyt, come in! Boss!”

A pause, then: “What is it?” came Hoyt’s distorted voice.

“We’ve got a problem! That British guy—he’s alive, he just killed Wilson and took his buggy!”

There was a brief silence; then Lock spoke. “Everyone listen. I don’t care what it takes, but I want that bastard dead!”

It didn’t take Eddie long to figure out the basics of controlling the icerunner. A pedal controlled the pusher propeller’s throttle, and the steering wheel turned the single runner at the vehicle’s nose.

Actually
driving
it was considerably harder. There were no brakes; the only apparent way to slow down was to lift his foot completely off the pedal to drop the engine to idle, and hope the icerunner glided to a standstill
before it hit anything. Steering was also tricky—even with the outriggers providing extra stability, it still felt as if he were balancing on a knife-edge. Anything more than a gentle turn made the vehicle threaten to tip over. “Great, I’m driving a fucking Reliant Robin,” he muttered as he gingerly increased power.

He looked ahead. What would Hoyt’s men do now they knew he was on their tail?

The answer immediately became clear. The last Volvo had returned to its original course, following its companions—but the pair of snowmobiles flanking the SUVs broke away, kicking up sparkling rooster tails of ice as they made tight, skidding turns to come around at him. Their riders readied their P90s as they accelerated.

It was a joust—with automatic weapons instead of lances.

Eddie drew the Wildey, all too aware that he had just seven bullets against a hundred. His only advantage, however slight, was that he could hold the oversized pistol in his right hand while driving, whereas the riders would have to switch their guns to their off-hands in order to control the throttles on their handlebars.

He increased speed and took aim at the lead snowmobile. They were closing fast—the window to take an accurate shot would be brief. The mercenaries would set their weapons to full auto so they could spray-and-pray, relying on sheer firepower to hit their target. But with only limited ammo, he would have to be accurate.

The snowmobiles rushed toward him. Both riders had indeed switched their guns to their left hands, angling so they could shoot at him from that side. Eddie altered course—and felt the runner on the inside of his turn briefly rise off the ice. If he cut across the mercenaries’ paths hard enough to force them to pass on the other side, making their shots harder, he risked losing control, or even flipping the icerunner over entirely.

Instead he straightened out—aiming directly at them.

The leading merc’s gun blazed—

Eddie hunched down as bullets whipped past. Most went wide, but one hit the raised engine cover with a
crack of fiberglass, and another punched through the icerunner’s nose cone, searing between his legs to clang against the aluminum frame beneath his seat.

He flinched, then recovered, aimed …

The Wildey boomed like a cannon.

Firing one-handed from a moving vehicle on a rough surface, he didn’t hit the mercenary—but still scored an impact on his ride. The Magnum round shattered the snowmobile’s headlight and flicked broken shards up into the rider’s face. The man jerked in shock, instinctively pulling back from the debris, and swerving into the icerunner’s path.

Collision course—

Eddie yanked hard on the steering wheel in a desperate attempt to avert a crash. One of the outriggers came fully off the surface, the icerunner teetering on just two skids as it slithered across the frozen river. He gripped the wheel and raised himself higher, leaning over the cockpit’s side to act as a counterweight.

The mercenary panicked and yanked at his handlebars. The snowmobile slewed around, caught in an uncontrollable skid—

He opened his mouth to scream—but the sound never emerged, as the sharply pointed runner on the raised outrigger punched straight through his chest, snatching him backward off the snowmobile. The extra weight brought the icerunner crashing back down. The body ground over the rough ice like an anchor, hurling the vehicle into a spin.

The world around Eddie became a blur of white snow and dark trees—and a shape racing right at him, the second snowmobile—

He fired on pure instinct, the Wildey kicking again in his hand. There was a Doppler-shifted rasp as the vehicle flashed past him—then a crunch of impact, followed a fraction of a second later by an explosion.

The dead mercenary was wrenched loose from the runner. Eddie released the throttle pedal and held on to the wheel as the tail end shimmied violently, still leaning out of the cockpit to balance the whirling icerunner.
The outrigger skipped over the ice, kicking back into the air once, twice … then finally landing and staying down. Now pointing backward, the vehicle ground to a stop.

Dizzied, Eddie slumped back into the seat. The impaled mercenary was crumpled on the ice about fifty yards away, corkscrewing tracks marking the icerunner’s path. Farther away was a mangled heap of burning wreckage. The two snowmobiles had collided and blown up. The second rider had been thrown clear—but not to safety. He too was on fire, smoke billowing from his motionless body.

Eddie waited for the spinning sensation to subside, then looked downriver. The convoy was retreating into the distance.

Taking Nina with it.

Jaw set in determination, he put his foot back on the throttle and brought the icerunner around in pursuit.

Nina looked through the Volvo’s rear window. Even with three armed and hostile men holding her prisoner, she couldn’t help but crow as the icerunner swung back on course after them, leaving the pillar of black smoke from the smashed snowmobiles in its wake. “Ooh, that looked painful. Do you guys get medical? Is there some sort of Blue Cross scheme for goons? I always wanted to know.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Treynor snarled. “He’s catching up! Can’t this thing go any faster?”

“Not unless you want to risk shedding a track,” Wake shot back. The icerunner was quickly gaining on the four-by-four; swapping wheels for tracks had traded speed for off-road ability.

“Goddammit!” The mercenary thought for a moment, then shoved his handgun into a pocket. “Watch her,” he told Tarnowski, reaching into the back of the cabin to collect a P90. He released the safety, then lowered his window. A freezing wind rushed in.

“What’re you gonna do?” Wake asked.

“What do you think? Take that motherfucker out! Head over to the right so I can get a clean shot.” Treynor turned around awkwardly in the tight confines, kneeling
on the seat to lean out of the open window. “Don’t even fucking think of trying anything,” he warned Nina. “You try to nudge me when I shoot, you’ll get the next bullet.”

“I don’t think your bosses would like that,” she replied.

Tarnowski sneered. “I honestly don’t think they give a fuck. We got other ways to get your blond friend to do as she’s told besides threatening to shoot you. Just stay still, now.” He gripped her bound wrists for emphasis.

Nina glared at him, then looked away. The icerunner was rapidly closing. Eddie had outfought the two men on the snowmobiles, but the four-by-four was a much more stable firing platform, and Treynor was using both hands to aim …

Her heart jumped as she saw that the mercenary had another weapon. There was a knife in a sheath on his belt—and by turning around, he had put it almost within her reach.

But as long as Tarnowski was holding her wrists, there was no way she could take it.

She looked back at the icerunner. It was now close enough for her to make out the figure in its cockpit. Treynor had seen him too. “Come to Papa,” said the mercenary, taking aim.

Eddie readied the Wildey again. Even had he not kept count of his shots, he would have been able to tell by the slight shift in its weight and balance that it was no longer fully loaded. Five bullets left, that was all.

And he wasn’t even sure if he dared use them on the rapidly approaching four-by-four. The Wildey’s rounds were powerful enough not just to penetrate the sheet steel bodywork of a car, but to punch all the way through to the other side. If he landed a shot on the SUV, the bullet might also hit Nina.

The man leaning out of the rear window had no such concerns. He fired a three-round burst. They fell short,
kicking up little fountains of ice ahead of the icerunner. It was beyond the P90’s effective range.

But it would not be for long.

Eddie moved closer to the right-hand bank, trying to slot in behind the four-by-four so the gunman would lose line of sight, but the Volvo’s driver did the same. The ice became rougher as he neared the shore, vibrations through the runners hammering at the base of his spine. No option but to move back toward the center—if he hit a protruding rock, it could rip off a skid.

A burst of bullets tore past. The mercenary was refining his aim as his target drew nearer. If the Englishman didn’t do something, he would be a sitting duck.

Eddie caught sight of the figures inside the vehicle once more. One was noticeably smaller than the others: Nina—and he realized she was looking at him. He brought up his gun hand, but rather than shoot, he gestured with the Wildey, pointing it downward …

Tarnowski turned to watch the approaching icerunner, though he still kept his hold on Nina’s arm. “Ha!” he said as he saw their pursuer wave his hand. “He daren’t shoot at us—not while we’ve got his woman.”