Then they were past the drop, the river coursing away below them as the road lead away from it. Now, instead of a sheer drop King suddenly found the wall of a mountainside rushing by, blocking him in.
Bill savagely thrust his truck at King, slamming him into the cliff. The screeching sound increased as the truck was torn apart by the jagged walls, wrenching gouts of metal from the lorry, shattering the windows of the passenger compartment. King fought hard against Bill but Bill fought harder, keeping King pinned there. He hit a large rock, bucking the vehicle and jolting Bill’s purchase. The mercenary veered away, giving King room to breathe. But not for long. Moments later Bill hurtled back into him, crunching metal, shredding rubber. King felt one of his rear tires blow out. The truck lurched. Sparks spat and screamed and-
From ahead a ramshackle 4x4 raced towards them, lights flashing, horn blaring in panic. King experienced a moment of sheer terror. There was absolutely nothing he could do to avoid a head on collision.
But then the driver of the 4x4 panicked, absurdly spinning his vehicle onto the other side of the road, as though he would fare an impact with the blue and white overland truck better than the bright yellow one.
Bill acted on instinct. He slammed on his brakes and his vehicle slewed across the road, whipping out behind King’s. The blue and white vehicle spun but Bill regained control, whipping into King’s side of the road just as the 4x4 raced past, slamming on his own brakes.
King used the reprieve and pushed forward but his vehicle was damaged. He could feel it slowing, detect the tremors of the dying lorry bucking through its engine. Its burst tire slapped at the road.
Bill powered forward, his truck in slightly better condition. King knew he couldn’t let him get alongside him again and so thrust out into the very centre of the road. When Bill pulled to the left to attempt to get around him, King matched his move, blocking him. He mimicked the manoeuvre to the right, then the left again, zigzagging through the Patagonian Mountains.
Viedma Glacier came into view ahead, a great, slow moving leviathan yawning down upon the lake and the tiny black dot of the Catalina flying boat.
He’d almost made it, but was it in time? He couldn’t even afford to glance at his watch. Then the turning appeared ahead, a side road leading from the main highway down towards the ferry port. At the last possible moment he swung into it, taking the corner far too fast. He mounted the verge, almost toppling the vehicle but by the grace of god it remained upright.
Bill became more determined than ever now, racing up behind him. He slammed straight into King’s behind, shuddering the truck. It spun. He regained control. Bill struck again, wielding the lorry like a sledge hammer, striking again and again. King couldn’t slow down without being totally smashed by his attacker. In fact, he hadn’t had a chance to think the next few moments through to any extent. Instead, he did the only thing he could do. He acted on instinct and ploughed ahead, faster. Faster still. Bill struggled to keep up, bounding over giant pot holes and racing past the boatsheds King had seen earlier.
The Black Cat was still docked on the left side of the rickety old jetty, but King aimed his lorry, now in full runaway mode, the angle of the hill leading down to the lake increasing his speed, straight onto the old pier.
He hit it, Bill hot on his heels. The short jetty vanished in an instant as King raced across it, but, moments before ploughing over the edge of it, he twisted the steering wheel with all his might, ignoring the screaming agony in his arm.
The yellow truck twisted, slewing around so that it covered the last few meters of the pier lengthways on, sliding down its length. It toppled, falling onto its passenger side.
Only meters behind it, Bill didn’t have any time to react. He screamed as his own overland truck ploughed head-on into the broadside of King’s, crunching the two vehicles around each other and propelling them both over the edge and into the freezing water.
35:
Nail Him!
Laguna Viedma,
Argentina
Seconds before the two runaway overland trucks hurtled down the track leading to the pier and plunged into the tranquil waters of Lagos Viedma, Sid had been watching her guard intently. She knew that her life depended on nothing more than a radio call from the man who had identified himself as Bill.
Every fifteen minutes for an hour now Bill had broken the tense moments with a brief message, checking in with his pilot. Each time, in the moments leading up to the call, the guard had studied his watch intently, glancing occasionally in her direction. Each time, Sid had held her breath, waiting for him to swing the pistol, which had been clenched in his fist the entire time, up to her head. Yet, each time, seconds before she was convinced her guard was going to become her executioner, Bill had called.
But not this time.
“Time’s up,” he announced in a scarily quiet voice. Some analytical part of Sid’s brain decided that the guard would take no pleasure out of killing her. Instead, she thought, it seemed as though he believed he was carrying out his duty. Nothing more. Nothing less.
For some reason, that observation scared her more.
“Wait,” she stammered. Her heart hammered inside her ribcage. “Not yet. Surely it’s not-”
“I have my orders,” he answered, raising his gun to aim at her head. “Fifteen minutes, on the dot. But it’s been your lucky day. I’ve given you an extra forty five seconds just to be sure.”
Sid wanted to say something smart and factious, like ‘how generous’ but she found that her mouth was bone dry and-
She saw the reflection in the window behind her executioner just as his finger squeezed the trigger.
There was an ear-splitting screech of metal and the stench of burning rubber as the yellow lorry’s tyres shredded and it spun on its axis to slide length ways down the pier. Then, seconds later, a second truck, this one blue and white, slammed into it and they both were hurtled off the jetty and into the water.
Sid braced herself just as the enormous wave created by the impact of two giant lorries slammed into the Catalina’s hull, throwing the flying boat up into the air. Her guard, however, had not been ready and he staggered then fell to his knees in front of Sid.
Sid reacted on impulse and lashed out with her bound feet, smashing his lower jaw against his upper with such force that she heard what she supposed were teeth crack. The man let out a howl of pain as he bit the tip of his tongue clean off and a spurt of blood spewed out.
He fell back onto his haunches and Sid lunged out of her seat, slamming into him and knocking him back further. He sprawled across the deck, his gun falling from his fingertips.
But ultimately, her guard was a professional and Sid was not. Pushing his pain to some other part of his mind, the man slammed an elbow into Sid’s ribs and drove the wind out of her. With her limbs still bound, she was unable to prevent a second blow. She rolled off the man and he took the advantage to scramble across the deck, pluck the gun into his fist, turn and-
A blur of motion swept the guard from behind, lifting him up off his feet and somersaulting over the shoulder of the man who had just tackled him.
With the crack of breaking bones, though Sid wasn’t sure which ones, the guard went down and Benjamin King rushed to her side.
“Ben,” she gasped in both relief and shock. “How . . ?”
King, adrenaline still pumping through his body, didn’t have time to describe his terrifying escape from Bill, the chase through the mountains or how he had leaped through the vacant hole that had once housed a door in the driver’s side of the cab just before its own weight had dragged it underwater.
He ignored her question as he hurriedly ripped the duct tape from around her ankles and then her wrists, helping her to her feet.
“Ben!” she warned, pushing him aside. A bullet whistled past and smashed into one of the compartment’s windows. Behind them, their guard hauled himself upright, gun in hand. In response, King pushed Sid towards the back of the
plane just as another bullet slammed into the bulkhead.
He had entered the plane through the hatch at the front of the plane and had planned on leaving that way too. Instead, he fumbled with the controls for the rear hatch. With a hiss of hydraulics, it began to slowly yawn open. King didn’t wait. He pushed Sid up the incline of the opening and then scrambled after her just as the pilot got to his feet and took aim. His bullet hit the bulkhead just as King climbed through and leapt with Sid onto the latticework of wooden beams which held the pier above the water.
“Climb up,” he ordered his girlfriend and they both started climbing as though the beams were the rungs of a ladder, reaching for the safety above.
With a thwunk, a four inch long nail jabbed into one of the beams three feet away. King spun to see Bill scrambling from the freezing water at the far end of the pier, the unwieldy nail gun still in hand.
“King!” he bellowed down the length, his voice echoing against the underside of the rickety jetty. “Give me the map!”
“Quickly,” King told Sid, ignoring Bill. They were still three feet below the level of the jetty and he suddenly realised that Bill had the advantage. At the end of the pier, rising out of the water, was an actual ladder and realising his warning had fallen on death ears, Bill quickly ascended it.
Even as he reached above him to heave himself up onto the top of the pier, King realised it was too late. Bill was already running down it. He fired again. Closer, the accuracy of the nail gun was far improved and another four-inch long projectile splintered the wood in front of him.
King yelped, grabbing Sid and pulling her back under the safety of the pier.
“Is he shooting nails at us?” she asked as he led her into the maze of struts and beams which zigzagged this way and that at haphazard angles, some embedded with long rusty nails and sharp splinters which they had to be careful to avoid impaling themselves on.
“Better than bullets,” he replied.
A bullet slapped into the post right behind his head.
“Faster,” he urged and together they hopped, jumped and skidded through the latticework of the pier’s frame towards the opposite side. The Black Cat’s pilot stood in the plane’s open entrance firing and King could hear Bill’s footsteps above.
They were trapped.
Then he saw it.
Tethered to the jetty, a small motor boat, a tender for the vacant ferry, he guessed, bobbed on the swell the sunken trucks had created.
He grabbed Sid’s shoulder and pointed. She nodded. “When I give the word,” he told her, “get in it and start its engine.” Sid nodded but paused, waiting for him. Another bullet ricocheted through the supports. “Go,” he hissed.
Sid started towards the tender, leaving King in the middle of the pier. His body trembled with adrenaline and fear. His heart was pounding and his breath came rapidly. He wondered if this was how Nathan Raine felt in situations like this, whether or not his cool demeanour was merely a front.
He saw one of the rusty pins sticking out of the wooden beam in front of him. He clutched it and tugged. It came away from the wood easily and King studied it. This was no four-inch nail. Instead, it was nearly a foot long and despite the rust, its tip was still sharp.
He clutched the pin in his hand then climbed up so that he was pressed against the underside of the pier. He kept one of the thicker support beams between himself and the Black Cat’s pilot and then he waited. Sid was hovering near to the tender but he ignored her and instead concentrated on one thing only.
Bill’s footsteps.
Methodically moving from one side of the pier to the other in a search pattern, Bill was quickly approaching King’s position.
The wood creaked above his head. Slithers of dust cascaded through the gap in the jetty’s floor boards through which King peered.
And then the sole of Bill’s boot fell upon the gap, blocking out the light.
King struck.
He thrust the long pin up through the gap in the boards and jabbed it through the sole of the mercenary’s boot, driving it home through his foot so that the sharp tip punched through the top in a spurt of blood.
Bill howled in agony, sprawling over, his foot nailed from beneath. The scream caught the pilot’s attention also and King used the distraction to yell incoherently at Sid. Thankfully she got the message and, even as he swung through the underside of the pier as fast as he could, Sid jumped into the tender and pulled the ignition cord through the small outboard motor on the back of the vessel.
It didn’t take the first time, nor the second, but on the third attempt it sputtered into life with a pathetic mewling noise just as King jumped on board, tugging the mooring line from the pier. He took the controls and, as the pilot realised what he was doing and fired wildly in their direction, he guided the tender out away from shore and into the lake proper.
“Yes!” Sid exclaimed excitedly, planting a fierce kiss on King’s lips. But King’s focus was less than amorous. For, even as the tender’s poorly maintained, low speed engine chugged through the water, he heard a far louder and mightier throb of much bigger engines rumbling to life.
He glanced behind him just in time to see the Black Cat’s propellers spin into a whir of motion and the massive flying boat push away from the jetty and plough through the water directly towards them.
36:
On Ice!
Laguna Viedma,
Argentina
The tender’s outboard shrieked in protest as King gunned the engine, sluicing through the water. Behind them, the PBY Catalina Flying Boat picked up speed as it pushed away from the jetty and powered after them.
King turned the boat into an arc, heading towards the shore closest to the mountain highway but all of a sudden the water before him exploded in froth and spray as the Black Cat’s guns were loosed upon them. Cursing, King pulled back around, the boat tipping haphazardly.
“Stay with them!” Bill barked angrily into his headset to the Black Cat’s pilot.
The agony coursing through his leg from the torn hole in his foot threatened to spill over into anger but he resisted the urge to simply gun down King and his girlfriend as he sat at the gun controls in the nose of the plane. King had the map and if the boat sank and he went with it, it would take far too long mount a diving expedition to retrieve it.
Instead, he tried to drive King away from any possible escape route. If he made it to the highway he might be lucky and flag down a passing car, or else hijack one in his desperation. But, there was one place close were he could mow down the archaeologist without fear of losing the map. A place of no escape.
“He’s herding us towards the glacier,” Sid realised.
Hunched in the front of the boat, bitterly cold spray spat over the bow and the wind bit into her exposed face and hands. The roar of the outboard was almost drowned out by the roar of the wind as the tender bounced along the surface of the lake.
Once again, King tried to swerve towards the shore but was confronted by a barrage of machinegun bullets. They were far enough away to cause no harm, but close enough to send the fear of god into the boat’s inhabitants.
King spun the boat hard about and powered away from the pursuing behemoth. The Black Cat also sluiced through the water, the larger vessel needing a much wider turning angle. Its starboard wing dug down, the float steadying the vessel and helping it to pivot. Another burst of gunfire erupted from its nose.
“What do we do?” Sid asked worriedly.
“Hold on,” King warned and shot towards the monstrous terminus of the Viedma Glacier. Even from a distance it loomed with an omnipotent menace but it wasn’t so much the terminus itself which King headed for, but the dozens of small icebergs which floated away from it. Bunched fairly close together they would provide the perfect obstacle-course in which to evade their pursuers.
Bill evidently realised this also and let loose with another volley of machinegun fire, but it was too late. King sl
ipped the tender into the field of icebergs.
He spun to the left around one, weaved to the right around another. With a thunderous crack, the wrenching of tearing ice, another ice berg cleaved away from the terminus and splashed into the lake. The displacement sent a large ripple reverberating out, pushing the floating bergs. One heaved up on the wave and loomed above the tiny boat. King tried to steer away from it but was too late. The free floating island of ice struck. Metal ground against the solid surface as the berg settled again in the wake of the wave. But the damage was done. The tender was half out of the water, caught on the edge of the berg.
Behind them, like an orca coming in for the kill, the Black Cat manoeuvred slowly around the ice field. Menacingly, it turned towards them.
“Damn! Come on, push us free,” King barked at Sid and they both leaned over the side and pushed against the ice berg, their exposed hands raw against the frozen surface. The boat slithered forward, whatever had caught them snapping free and then it slipped back into the water just as the tip of the ice berg blew apart under a hailstorm of bullets. Chunks of solid ice rained down like a hailstorm from god, pounding the boat. King and Sid shielded their heads against the onslaught and were lucky enough to avoid the full brunt of a killer ice cube.
The propellers chewed up the water again and shot them forwards. King aimed towards the shore but the edge of the small ice field came into sight. Once out of it, they would have no cover. They’d be sitting ducks.
As it was, King didn’t even have the time to make the mad dash across the open water. With a cough and a splutter, the outboard jerked in his hands. He looked in time to see a spurt of fuel shooting out of a torn line and suddenly remembered how whatever had snagged the boat on the berg had broken free.
In a desperate move, he grasped the torn fuel line. Luckily it hadn’t ripped in half but had only torn a hole in it. Nevertheless, even gripping it as tightly as he could didn’t prevent the loss of pressure. The boat slowed.
Moon Mask Page 36