by Chris Ryan
Zak never finished his sentence. It was cut short by gunshot – a loud retort, echoing across the frozen wasteland. Instinctively, Zak hit the ground, momentarily wondering if he’d been shot. He couldn’t feel anything.
Ricky hit the ground too – maybe it was him who had taken a bullet? But his eyes were open and he was breathing heavily.
Cruz was still on his feet. He was looking around, clearly in a state of great confusion.
Calaca, however, was on his back. Zak could see a pool of blood spreading out around his head. His lower jaw had been shot away. Across the ice, Zak could see the remains of his teeth, uniquely gruesome against his blood-spattered, one-eyed face . . .
And beyond him, half illuminated by the spotlight on the sledge, was a figure. Cruz raised the gun Zak had handed to him in the direction of the newcomer.
Zak’s movements were like lightning. He sprinted across the ice towards Cruz. Two metres away, he dived and tackled him to the ground. The gun went off as they tumbled, but the rounds blasted harmlessly into the air. Cruz himself was struggling violently, his arms flailing, his eyes wild with a sudden, brutal anger.
He still had the gun in his hand. The barrel was pressing against Zak’s cheek.
All of a sudden, Ricky was there. With one good solid swipe, he kicked Cruz’s wrist. The weapon slid, spinning fast, across the ice.
Zak had pinned Cruz down. No one was moving. There was a moment of silence . . .
Zak looked up to see the figure moving slowly towards them out of the darkness. Who was it? Who had just killed Calaca? Who could it be?
Zak’s lungs filled with ice as he recognized the gait. Slow. Awkward. A broken arm hanging limply by his side.
‘Malcolm?’ he whispered.
Malcolm was ten metres away. Zak’s eyes focused in on the weapon in his hand. It was red in colour – as red as the blood that was pooling around Calaca’s body. Zak instantly recognized it as the gun Tyler had accused him of stealing. He suddenly understood that it had been Malcolm – quiet, unobtrusive Malcolm – who had really stolen it.
And that meant he must have had a plan after all. A plan to kill Cruz, as soon as they caught up with him.
‘Malcolm,’ Zak breathed in a low, dangerous voice. ‘Mate, put the gun down.’
‘He killed my cousin,’ said Malcolm. ‘I watched him do it.’
‘We need him alive,’ Zak said. ‘Trust me, Malcolm, you have to put the gun down.’
But Malcolm didn’t. He kept the gun pointing directly at Cruz, and continued to walk forward. His thin face was racked with cold and pain, yet the hate in his eyes burned through it. ‘He killed her,’ Malcolm hissed.
Zak stood up. Cruz rolled over and scrambled quickly to his feet. He staggered several metres, but didn’t turn his back on Malcolm, who was still aiming at him.
Silence.
Nobody moved.
From the corner of his eye, Zak saw Cruz sneer. ‘He’ll never do it,’ he whispered. ‘Look at him. He’s pathetic. Look how weak he—’
The shot from Malcolm’s gun cut him short.
Zak started.
Cruz Martinez clutched his chest.
He stared down at the blood seeping from behind his hands, then back up again at Malcolm, whose own hand was shaking violently.
Then he collapsed.
The huskies started barking and howling. It was a sound of fear and panic. Zak ran to Cruz’s side, his heart pumping violently. He forced Cruz onto his back, and was about to lean over to give him rescue breaths when a fountain of blood overflowed from the young man’s throat. Zak grabbed his face, and turned it so that Cruz was looking at him. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded. ‘Where are Raf and Gabs? WHERE ARE THEY?’
Cruz’s eyes rolled. More blood spewed from his mouth. The huskies were still howling. He wished they would just shut up . . .
‘Don’t die!’ Zak shouted harshly. ‘For God’s sake, don’t die!’
But that was obviously impossible. There was blood everywhere now. It was seeping copiously from Cruz’s chest, and Zak had it all over his hands and clothes. Cruz Martinez made a horrific, terminal gurgling sound as his last-ever breath escaped his lungs.
And then, from behind him, Zak heard Ricky shouting.
‘NO! ZAK! LOOK OUT! ’
Still kneeling at Cruz’s side, Zak spun round. His eyes fell immediately on Calaca. He had been lying in a pool of blood perhaps seven or eight metres away. And he was still there. The blood was still there. But there was movement. Calaca was not dead yet. He had lifted his head slightly. With his jaw blasted away and his one-eyed face blood-spattered, he looked like a corpse risen from the dead.
He was weakly lifting his right hand – the hand that carried the MP5 . . .
Aiming it at Malcolm . . .
Ricky was sprinting towards him . . .
Zak hurled himself across the ice towards the dying man . . .
But too late.
The MP5 thundered noisily. A flurry of bullets rained hard into Malcolm’s abdomen. His whole body shook with the impact. He seemed to fly backwards, blood spurting from his thin body as he sailed through the air. He hit the ground with a horrific thump, just as Calaca’s gun arm went as limp as the rest of his body.
Everything was a blur. Zak kicked the MP5 out of Calaca’s dead hand as he sprinted towards Malcolm, shouting his friend’s name, praying that he hadn’t just seen what he knew he had.
Of all of them, Malcolm had been the least suited to this mission. And in Zak’s eyes, that meant he least deserved to die.
But he had died. A single glance at his corpse told Zak that. The bullets had ripped a seam up his abdomen. Blood was flowing, and his eyes, still open, had rolled up into his head.
Hot fury surged through Zak’s body. He felt like screaming out to the unfeeling sky. It all seemed so unreal. Like a horrible dream. He felt himself going through the motions of checking Malcolm’s pulse. There was nothing.
He crouched in the snow, head in his hands. It was as if the world had stopped. He was burning up. He realized he was pounding his fist on the ice, and when he finally looked up again, he saw the frozen scenery through a veil of tears. He jumped to his feet, and ran back to where Cruz was lying. He bent down and grabbed the front of his clothes, pulling his heavy, limp body off the ice. Cruz’s head lolled grotesquely. ‘It didn’t have to be like this!’ Zak shouted. ‘You didn’t have to be like this! We could have been friends!’
But Cruz’s dead body didn’t answer. Zak let it fall heavily to the ground, before running back to Malcolm, throwing only a cursory, hate-filled glance at Calaca as he went.
Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Malcolm wasn’t dead. Maybe it felt like a dream because it was a dream. He knelt down by his friend again. Felt his pulse once more.
Nothing.
He drew a deep breath, then put one hand on Malcolm’s friend’s thin, bony shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, buddy,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so, so sorry. You shouldn’t have been here in the first place. This wasn’t for you.’
He looked over at Cruz’s body. Then he turned to Ricky, who was wild-eyed, clearly shocked, but also obviously just as full of fury and helplessness as Zak himself.
Zak stood up and strode purposefully towards the huskies, whose howling and barking was now off the scale.
‘Nobody else dies,’ he shouted fiercely at his one remaining companion. ‘Get in the sledge. We’re going to the military base. And nobody else dies!’
26
THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE TRACK
Ricky was numb with shock. He could scarcely take in what he’d just seen. It felt wrong, leaving Malcolm there on the ice. Surely they should do something for him. He’s dead, the voice in Ricky’s head snapped. You can’t do anything about it.
– But shouldn’t we take his body? Bury him?
– Go ahead. Drag your heels – if you want to end up the same way as him . . .
It was that thought which stunned him into action. Zak was be
nding over Calaca’s body and unfastening his MP5. ‘Get the other weapons!’ he shouted at Ricky. Ricky quickly gathered up Tyler’s two handguns – the old one he’d given them and the red one Malcolm had stolen. By this time, Zak was already sprinting to the sledge, clutching the sub-machine gun.
Ricky gave Malcolm’s body one last look. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. And the voice in his head was right. Time was running out. He raced after Zak. By the time he had hurled himself into the sledge, Zak already had the reins in his hands. He shook them sharply. The huskies were still very agitated, but this seemed to calm them down a little.
‘We’ll be back for him,’ Zak said through gritted teeth.
‘That’s what we told him back on the island.’
‘We’ll be back for him,’ Zak repeated aggressively.
Ricky didn’t push it. ‘What do we do?’ he asked breathlessly.
Zak suddenly hushed him. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.
Ricky fell quiet. ‘What?’ he said after a few seconds. And then . . . ‘Oh . . .’
There was a tinny, buzzing sound. It came from above them. Ricky looked up. He was half blinded by the swirling snow, but could just make out a pale red dot glowing in the sky.
What was it Cruz had said? My Russian friends have a small drone above us with a thermal imaging camera.
Almost on instinct, Ricky raised the red gun. Zak, next to him, did the same with his MP5.
‘On three,’ Zak said. ‘One . . . two . . . three . . .’
They fired in unison – a burst from the MP5, a single round from the handgun. Their aim was good. A split second later, a hunk of metal dropped from the sky and shattered on the ice.
Zak examined the MP5. ‘Out of ammo,’ he hissed, and he tossed the gun onto the ice, where it clattered noisily. He turned to Ricky, his face a picture of fierce concentration. ‘What did they say?’ he muttered.
‘Who? When?’
‘On the last video. Raf and Gabs. What did they say?’
Ricky clicked his fingers, desperately trying to recall the footage they’d watched in Anchorage airport. ‘Remember the first thing I ever taught you – that your first duty is to stay alive,’ he recited.
But Zak shook his head. ‘That wasn’t the first thing he ever taught me.’ He was frowning hard, as though he was desperately trying to remember something. ‘It was my first night on St Peter’s Crag,’ he muttered, more to himself than to Ricky. ‘I was in a really bad mood. Raf took me out onto the island. He showed me how to . . .’ Zak looked up again. ‘How to navigate by the stars.’
Ricky followed his gaze. He could barely see ten metres ahead of him, let alone see the stars.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think anyone’s seen the stars in these parts for months—’
‘Shhhh . . .’ Zak interrupted him. His face was screwed up even harder. ‘Polaris,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘He taught me how to find Polaris – the North Star.’ He clicked his fingers suddenly. ‘I think Raf was trying to tell us that we need to get to the north of the island.’
‘Are you sure?’
Zak thought for a moment. Then he said, quite confidently: ‘I’m sure. Where’s the GPS?’
Ricky held it up. The screen showed them as a little blue dot, halfway between the land masses of Little and Big Diomede. They were almost directly due east of Big Diomede, which meant they had to circle it in an anticlockwise direction.
Suddenly, from a westerly direction, they heard shouting, and the barking of dogs. It was very distant, as if it was being carried towards them on the wind. ‘We need to move,’ Ricky whispered. ‘You know how to’ – he pointed at the huskies and their reins – ‘do this?’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Zak said. He shook the huskies’ leash hard. Ricky felt himself slam back in the seat of the sledge as they immediately surged forward. The air was suddenly filled with the hissing sound of the sled’s blades over the ice. The wind bit harder into Ricky’s face as they hurtled into the darkness. He looked over his shoulder only once, and just saw the three dead bodies receding into the distance.
They travelled in breathless silence. Even the huskies were quiet, now that they were running again. Ricky clutched the GPS unit in his frozen hands. Occasionally he looked wildly around. His skin was prickling – he had the uneasy sensation that they were being watched, or chased – but he saw nothing other than the frozen darkness. After ten nervous minutes, he nudged Zak and pointed in a north-westerly direction – the GPS was telling him that they needed to change course if they wanted to reach the north of the island.
Twenty minutes passed. Ricky felt his body temperature lowering. He sensed Zak shivering too. He checked the GPS. There was no way of telling from their dark, monotonous surroundings where they were, but the screen told Ricky they were now almost directly due north of Big Diomede. From this position, he could see what looked like a track marked on the map of the island. It headed south from the northern edge, and seemed to be the only way onto the island from this northern coast.
‘Stop!’ he shouted at Zak. Zak pulled the reins sharply and the huskies, their breath steaming, quickly obeyed the order to halt.
‘What is it?’ Zak said.
Ricky showed him the map on the GPS screen. ‘I can’t see any other way of getting onto the island from this direction,’ he said.
Zak narrowed his eyes, then nodded his head. ‘We’ll get within a hundred metres,’ he said, ‘then we’ll leave the huskies. They stayed put when Cruz got off them – I think they’re trained to wait. If we can get Raf and Gabs back to them, maybe . . .’ His voice trailed off. Ricky didn’t feel the need to observe that it was a long shot. But he didn’t have any better plan.
Zak flicked the reins again. As the huskies moved off, he pulled the left-hand rein and they swerved in that direction. Two minutes later, at a word from Ricky, he yanked them to a halt again. Both boys jumped off the sledge. The huskies’ breath steamed heavily in the cold air, and they pawed nervously at the ice. But they didn’t move. At least, not yet.
‘How long do you reckon they’ll stay?’ Ricky asked.
‘I don’t know. Probably not that long when it’s so cold. We haven’t got much time. I don’t think we can risk the torch. Cup your hand over the GPS screen so it doesn’t glow . . .’
They struck out in a southerly direction, following the blinking blue dot on the GPS unit, their faces screwed up against the bitter elements. Ricky’s legs were weak with exhaustion, his mind spinning with the horror of what had happened in the last hour. But he kept surging forward, jaw clenched, teeth gritted, until finally he saw the island emerging ahead of them from the darkness.
There were lights along the coastline. Five. Maybe six. Hard to tell, since they were moving around. ‘Men with torches?’ Ricky suggested as they took a moment to watch them.
Zak nodded. ‘The coastline’s guarded,’ he said tensely. And then, almost to himself: ‘Why did Raf tell us to come this way?’
Ricky almost pointed out that Raf had told them nothing of the sort. He’d merely given them a rather obscure message. But Zak had already started marching forward, and Ricky wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand being out here on the ice. He followed.
They were no more than thirty metres from the shoreline when Zak stopped again. They crouched down and recce’d the scene in front of them.
The path they’d seen on the map was more of a valley between two small, rocky hills. ‘I think the men with torches are patrolling that valley,’ Ricky said. ‘What do you think?’
Zak had a slightly faraway look in his eyes. ‘That means you have to stay on the right side of the track . . .’ he muttered.
‘Eh?’
‘It’s what Raf said, remember? Stay on the right side of the track. We thought he was just delirious, but I think he was trying to tell us something else. I think he was telling us something about the terrain we
’re about to hit.’
‘But how would he know?’
‘He speaks Russian. He probably overheard someone talking about it. We need to approach in single file,’ he said. ‘We’re less obvious that way, and if anyone starts firing on us, we’re not so spread out as a target. And we need to be very quiet. It’s hard to predict how sound will travel in this wind.’
Ricky swallowed hard. The idea of being fired on by five Russian soldiers was not one he relished. He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he was pleased when Zak took the lead . . .
They kept five metres apart, and within thirty seconds they’d hit the island. The nearest of the torches was about thirty metres away. Its operator seemed to be concentrating his beam up and down the valley, but it wasn’t strong enough to light them up just yet. The terrain was rocky and the rocks were sharp, ice-covered and slippery. Ricky and Zak crawled over them very carefully, Ricky wincing as a shard of rock almost pierced his skin. They could hear people shouting to each other in the distance, but it sounded like Russian and Ricky couldn’t understand them.
They moved forward five slow metres, struggling painfully over the treacherous rocks.
Ten.
‘We can’t go on,’ Ricky breathed. ‘We’ll crawl right into those guards.’
But Zak didn’t seem to be listening. He didn’t even seem to be watching the guards. He was looking off to the right-hand side of the track, his eyes searching . . . ‘Look!’ he hissed suddenly.
He pointed to their right. Ricky blinked. At first he couldn’t see anything. Then he realized what Zak was pointing at. Leading away from the ravine, at a thirty-degree bearing, was a tiny track, so narrow you’d have missed it if you weren’t looking for it. There was no sign of men with torches along that rough path.
Stay on the right side of the track.
Could that have been what Raf had meant?
– You don’t have much choice, said the voice in Ricky’s head. If you keep going in the other direction, they’ll catch you, no question.
It looked like Zak had already come to the same conclusion. He had started to scramble away from the main ravine, up along the new path. Ricky crawled after him – to stand up straight would make them too visible to the men with torches. They moved slowly. Ricky’s limbs were almost totally numb now with the cold and he had to force them into action.