Hot Ice

by Gregg Loomis

  The man gave a sharklike smile exposing teeth the color of old ivory. “And I suggest, Commissioner, that you do as Mr. Peters says.”

  The English was near perfect, yet there was an accent. Russian? Eastern European?

  Jason kept his face frozen, unwilling to register surprise the man with the gun knew his name.

  Harvor did not. “How did you … ?” He faced Jason indignantly. “Did you know this man was here?”

  Jason shook his head. “No, but it was a good guess.”

  The intruder extended the hand not holding the gun, motioning for the demanded items. “The phone and whatever else you found. Questions later.”

  There might not be a “later.” Jason had no doubt this man had intended to kill Boris, most likely to protect whatever secrets the camera-enabled phone, the twig, and the scrap of metal might reveal. Why would he spare two strangers who discovered what Boris had hidden? As soon as he had what he wanted, it was probable Jason and Harvor would suffer the same fate.

  Jason swore at himself silently. The Glock was still in his bag in the car. He had hesitated to strap on the holster in front of Maria, listen to her reproachful reminder that this was a mission to get information, nonviolent.

  Harvor was extending the phone. If Jason was going to act, now was the time, gun or not.

  16

  Jason stood by as the police commissioner extended the phone and the two other items. He watched the man with the gun stuff the cell phone, the twig, and the piece of metal into the pocket of his jacket.

  “Who hired you?” Jason asked.

  He didn’t expect an answer. The question was simply a play for time, something he had absorbed long ago from the psychological training to which every Delta Force member was subjected. The more desperate the situation, the greater the need to start a conversation or do anything that served the purpose of delay. The longer disaster could be postponed, the more likely it could be averted.

  The man looked at Jason, surprised. Men like this one rarely revealed their employers if, in fact, they even knew who was really paying them. “You don’t need to know.”

  Jason’s back was against one of the stone walls. He was moving his shoulder back and forth as though scratching an itch he couldn’t quite reach. “Oh, but I do! You know who I am, you know I’m not without means. I’m sure whatever your employers want, I can provide in a much more, er, civil, manner.”

  The man grinned. He had heard pleas like this before and obviously enjoyed them. “They are not interested in your money, Mr. Peters. Or should I say, the money of the company for which you work.”

  Jason was reaching a hand behind his back, trying to scratch a really pesky itch, when Harvor broke in. “Surely you do not mean to kill us? You will certainly be caught and imprisoned.”

  Again, the shark’s smile. “I will take that chance. Now, if …”

  He never finished. Harvor began to tremble, tears in his eyes. “I have done you no harm. I have a wife, a family who will suffer if anything happens to me… .”

  The pudgy policeman was either terrified or an extraordinary actor. Jason really did not care which. What mattered was the gunman’s attention was riveted on the weeping, pleading Harvor, allowing Jason to use his shoulder more freely to work the stone he had felt at his back, a loose bit of rock he hoped to wiggle free.

  Harvor was making what Jason guessed was a final plea for his life and it was clear the man with gun was enjoying it. Some men he had known received an almost sexual pleasure from wielding extreme power over others. The power to take a life was the ultimate form.

  Jason felt the piece of rock come free. He grasped it with his right hand as he fixed his gaze on a point behind the man with the gun as if seeing something of interest there. Far too much the professional to be taken in by such a basic trick, the lunar-faced man ignored the ploy, listening to Harvor’s seemingly terrified babble. Jason guessed he had only seconds before the commissioner was a dead man.

  He worked a smaller piece of stone free with his left hand.

  He was going to get a single chance.

  Better than none at all.

  Moving his left arm slowly from behind him, Jason tossed the smaller rock, a pebble really, onto the stone on which the men stood. It make a plink, hardly audible but enough to make the gunman move. Or more accurately, merely flinch, his gun swinging away from Harvor.

  Better yet, he took his eyes from his prisoners for an instant.

  Jason came over the man’s shoulder with the larger rock, his version of a Major League fastball. But he had no intention of it catching the plate.

  The man with the gun caught the movement with the corner of his eye.

  The gun swiveled toward Jason and went off an instant before the rock knocked it from his hand.

  Jason felt as though he had been bludgeoned in the left shoulder with a club. His back struck the rock hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. He fought knees no longer willing to bear his weight.

  Through vision blurred by shock or tears or both, he saw the weapon spin across the rocky floor. By reflex, he made a dive for it just as his antagonist did the same.

  The other man had the shorter route. He had his fingers closing around the grip of the automatic when Jason, prostrate on the stone, saw a booted foot come out of nowhere and stamp the other man’s hand. In spite of the howl of pain, he could hear the bones snap, shattered between the boot and the unforgiving rock.

  Jason had the gun in his hand now, rolling quickly onto his back to grasp the weapon in both hands. “Hold it right there!”

  The other man either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He was half standing when he sprang, arms outreached.

  Jason could hardly miss. Still, he made himself center the white forward sight before he squeezed the trigger. The sound of the GSh-18 bounced off the rock walls and the weapon jumped in Jason’s hand. He brought it to bear for a second shot.

  He never got it off.

  The man’s leap carried him onto Jason with a force that sent a shockwave of pain radiating from his wounded shoulder through his entire upper body. Gritting his teeth, Jason tried to wrench the gun free before he realized there was no resistance.

  The weight lifted as Harvor tugged the inert form away.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Peters?”

  The gun still in his hand, Jason struggled to his feet, leaning against a rock wall for support. “I’m alive, thanks to your stomping the bastard’s hand at just the right moment.”

  Harvor was staring. “You’ve been hit!”

  No shit!

  Jason stuffed the automatic into a trouser pocket, using the other hand to grip his wounded shoulder. “I’ll be OK if you can get help here soon.”

  Harvor took one last look at Jason, then at the body of their former assailant. There was a bloody foam on his lips and each shallow breath seemed an effort.

  “Our friend there isn’t going to make it without medical attention pretty quick. Looks like a lung shot. He’ll either suffocate or bleed out.”

  Harvor still wasn’t moving. “You hit his gun hand with that rock.”

  “I sure as hell wasn’t aiming for the strike zone.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind. How quick can you get help?”

  “The radio in the car. I’ll call for a helicopter.”

  “You don’t have a cell phone?”

  Harvor shook his head. “At these latitudes, anything that operates from a satellite is, how do you say it? Unreliable. Besides, it would be very expensive to equip every police officer.”

  From what Jason had seen of this thrifty country, the second explanation outweighed the first, as evidenced by the anonymous call he had received on Boris’s hidden phone. “Whatever. You really need to get help here.”

  He watched the rotund policeman head off in the direction of the Range Rover before making a closer examination of his damaged left shoulder. Hurt like hell and was bleeding like a fountain but didn�
��t look like anything vital had been damaged. Now, if he could find something to slow the loss of blood before he became dizzy… .

  The man was sprawled across the rocky floor of the open chamber. The flannel of the shirt under his jacket would be perfect: soft and absorbent. And its present owner wasn’t going to have much use for it, not with the front soaked in blood.

  Only when Jason reached the shallowly breathing body did he remember. A quick search of the pockets retrieved phone, twig, and scrap of metal.

  “Peters …”

  A whisper.

  Jason looked down at the man he had shot. Pale, eyes sunken back into his head. One hand feebly motioned Jason closer. He put his ear next to the mouth, still bubbling blood.

  “If you’re smart …” There was a spasm of coughing and a spray of blood. “You’ll leave here and forget …”

  Jason was tearing a strip from the shirt. “You’d better worry about yourself. We need …”

  There was a grunt that Jason guessed was meant to be a laugh. “Me? I failed. I’m good as dead. You still … you still have a chance.”

  Jason was holding the man’s head in his hands, trying to make him comfortable. “Who sent you?”

  Blood-smeared teeth showed in the rictus of a smile. “For me to know, you to find out” was only partially audible.

  Jason shook him. “Who?”

  There was no reply.

  Jason looked down into eyes staring into eternity.

  17

  Landspítali Fossvogi Hospital

  One Hour Later

  Jason lay on his back, imprisoned by the rails of the bed. He had only a faint, dreamlike memory of being placed on a stretcher and loaded into a helicopter. Arriving was a total blank. But the bed, the room, the smells, and the IV drip in his arm left no doubt he was, in fact, in a hospital.

  Woozy from the loss of blood, he thought he might even be hallucinating. The sounds of disembodied voices over the speaker system, the smells of disinfectant, the white-clad figures returned him to Walter Reed Hospital on that otherwise flawless late-summer day in 2001. For six frantic hours he had haunted the hallways, praying Laurin would be in the continuous stream of ambulances ferrying the injured from the smoking hole in the side of the Pentagon. In the next several days, a week, he was never quite certain, he had abandoned the normal functions of sleeping and eating, spending every hour at the entrance to the emergency room. The acceptance of reality came painfully, leaving him only the hope for recovery of the body, a chance to see Laurin one final time. Even that dire possibility faded. He was denied the grim satisfaction of a flower-covered casket, the commitment to the earth. His only solace had been the ring he wore on the gold chain around his neck. Memorial-service preparations and enduring the sympathy of friends failed to cure a void that, he was certain, would last forever no matter how hard he tried to fill it with alcohol and self-pity.

  All of that came back to him in the semi-dream of delirium induced by loss of blood and analgesics. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.

  There was a face swimming above him, one vaguely familiar. The kindly and understanding hospital chaplain who had tried in vain to comfort him as the trickle of those who were injured but survived the blast dried up without Laurin? No it was … He struggled to put a name with the face.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Peters?”

  The revelation came as though from on high: Harvor. Harvor the Commissioner of Police. “Loud and clear. Can you get me some water?”

  “The doctors have removed the bullet from your shoulder. You are quite fortunate: a few millimeters over and you could be dead.”

  Jason had never considered being shot particularly fortuitous. “Lucky me.”

  “We have searched for the cell phone and the other items but they were not on the dead man’s body.”

  Jason suddenly became aware that, other than the standard open-backed hospital shift, he was wearing nothing. If Harvor or his minions searched his clothes …

  “I’d really appreciate some water.”

  Harvor reached for a table beside the bed and poured water from a carafe into a paper cup. The sound made Jason run his tongue across dry, cracked lips.

  Harvor held the cup in his hand. “Perhaps you have some idea where these things might be?”

  Jason’s eyes were fixed on the cup. “Have you searched that rock formation?”

  “Thoroughly.”

  Jason struggled against the drugs to prop himself up on his elbows. The effort made his head spin and he feared he would black out. “The water …”

  “Oh, yes, the water.”

  The police commissioner proffered the paper cup. Jason emptied it in two swallows. He had never enjoyed anything more, even the single-malt scotch he favored, but it was like pouring water on desert sand: it seemed to evaporate in his throat.

  He handed the cup back. “Another, please.”

  Harvor set it down on the bedside table. “I’m not sure how much liquid the doctors want you to have, Mr. Peters. I’ll have to check. But first, we need to talk about the missing phone, that piece of string or whatever it might be, and the scrap of metal. Then there is also the matter of the pistol you were carrying in your bag when you arrived here in Iceland in addition to the one you took from the man who died. Normally, the penalties for possession of such a weapon are quite severe, but in view of the fact you saved my life, I have simply confiscated yours to be returned when you depart Iceland.”

  Jason tried not to look at his clothes hanging in an open closet by the door. Why the police had not searched the pockets was a mystery, as was the reason he desperately wanted to keep the missing objects himself, to make them give up whatever answers they might hold, rather than turn them over to the police.

  He could also see the small overnight bag he had brought on the plane to Iceland. With any luck at all, once they had found the Glock, they hadn’t rummaged through the bag’s contents. The knife, his specially designed blade, should still be in there. He might be without the Glock, but he was not weaponless.

  Harvor was about to say something when a uniformed officer, face flushed with excitement, burst into the room. “Commissioner?”

  Harvor replied in a language Jason did not understand, the tone implying annoyance at being interrupted. Jason did catch the name Karloff.

  Ignoring the wave of vertigo, Jason sat up. “Something has happened to Karloff?”

  Harvor gave him a curt glare. “Something indeed, Mr. Peters. Something that is police business.”

  The commissioner followed the uniformed officer out of the room.

  In seconds, Jason had the IV out of his arm and was trying, despite a wave of dizziness, to step into his pants. In less than a minute, he was fully dressed. He was gratified to find his pockets still contained the objects Harvor wanted. He bent over to tie his shoes and nearly passed out. The laces would have to remain loose for the moment.

  Using the corridor wall for support, he stumbled his way toward the elevator. From the room numbers on the doors, he knew Room 430 would be one floor up. After what seemed eons, the elevator doors hissed open and Jason lurched inside and pushed “4.”

  The doors parted, revealing a scene that could have come from an old Keystone Kops silent film: Police uniforms dashed about without apparent purpose. People in white lab coats shouted orders no one seemed to obey. The impression was of a fire drill where no one knew the location of the exits.

  Jason grabbed the lapel of one of the white coats. “What happened?”

  The woman looked at him as though he might have been the only person in Reykjavík who did not know. “Happened? Happened? The patient in 430 …”

  Jason didn’t wait for a full explanation. Filled with dread, he shoved his way toward the room, ignoring a swimming head and legs that felt more like spaghetti than bones. At the door of the room, he slid past a protesting uniform and stopped.

  What he saw brought burning bile to his throat. For an instant,
he thought whatever he had eaten in the last twelve hours would find its way to the floor. Then he remembered he hadn’t eaten at all. Three of the room’s walls were decorated with an abstract pattern of red splatter now turning a rusty brown. Even the ceiling had spots of blood. Boris was face-up, his upper torso dangling from the bed’s blood-soaked sheets toward the floor like some malignant growth. Beneath his chin, a red-encrusted slash grinned obscenely, its crimson lips still dripping blood.

  Judging from the mess, he had continued to struggle even after his throat had been cut.

  “Mr. Peters!” Harvor was at Jason’s side. “You should be in bed, under observation, where you can be cared for.”

  “Like Boris there?”

  “Boris?”

  “The man with the slit throat. Last I saw of him, he had a police officer outside his door.”

  “The officer assigned seems to be missing,” Harvor replied stiffly.

  I’m sure he is.

  “You must return to your room!”

  And wind up sliced and diced?

  Obediently, Jason turned and left. He took the elevator down to his assigned room, where he made sure his shoes were tied, took the sweater from its hanger, and walked out of the hospital without notice. A cab took him to the airport, where the Gulfstream and crew waited.

  He entered the small general-aviation passenger area and took out his BlackBerry to call Maria. At first he feared a possible lack of network coverage as Harvor had mentioned, but she answered on the second ring.

  “I’m at the airport,” Jason informed her. “I think I got all the information about Boris I’m going to.”

  There was a pause. Then, “Can you stay over another couple of days? Pier and I are just getting started on planning the expedition.”

  From “Dr. Sevensen” to “Pier” in less than twenty-four hours? Not a good sign.

  “Something’s come up. I need to leave.”

  “You need to go somewhere else or you need to get out of Iceland?”