by Matthew Dunn
It was worse than he expected. Much, much worse. But he wasn’t going to stop this time.
He dived at the doors, hitting them with his shoulder and forcing them to burst open. Rolling on the barn’s interior floor, he got to his feet and looked around. Korina was there. He ran to her, picked her up, and cradled her in his arms.
Just as he’d done before resting her gently on her bed.
Running as fast as he could, he exited the building, his face screwed up in pain as flames curled around him and smoke wafted into his eyes. He staggered, nearly fell, and placed one foot in front of the other. He thought he might lose consciousness, but he kept moving.
The pain ebbed.
Cold air soothed his face.
More steps forward.
The roar of the inferno grew quieter with each step.
Turning, he looked back at the barn. It was ninety feet away; the fire showed no signs of abating. He moved farther away until he was in the center of the clearing. Carefully, he rested Korina on the ground. His legs buckled, and he fell down until he was kneeling by Korina’s side.
The chest wound was bloody. Razin’s hidden knife had been plunged so deep that there was no doubt it would have killed her instantly. But the rest of her body and face were untainted by what had happened here today. Will placed a trembling hand against her cheek, leaned forward, and kissed each closed eye, then her lips. Gripping her body, he let his head slump until his face was flush against hers. His body began to shake; he began to sob.
Lifting his head and upper body, he looked up and screamed, “Fuck you all!”
Chapter Forty-two
Will programmed the grid reference into the Prado’s sat nav system and called Patrick. “Three Ohio submarines are sailing to the Barents Sea with the intention of covertly entering Russian waters tomorrow. When that happens, there’ll be a nuclear explosion that will make the Russians think the subs have attacked them. You’ve got to get the vessels to turn around.”
“What? Where’s the nuclear device?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect it’s somewhere on Russia’s northern coastline.”
“That’s a very large area. But you’re sure it’s there?”
“No. It could be in Moscow or just about anywhere else in Russia, but everything suggests it’s somewhere in the north. Speak to the admiralty or the president. Just make sure those subs turn around right now.”
F ifty minutes later, his cell phone rang. Patrick.
“It’s a no-go.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not going to turn the subs around.”
“You’ve got to be joking!”
“I spoke to the admiralty. They said they’re not going to withdraw the submarines after months of preparations and millions of dollars spent.”
“Then speak to the president!”
“I did. He sought advice from the admiralty and agreed with them.”
Will couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You told them about the bomb?!”
“Yep. The admirals said that I must be crazy to think that they’d deviate from their plans because of some field officer’s hunch. Actually, their language was a lot stronger than that.”
“Idiots!”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I!”
It was night. Will felt exhausted, and his body was wracked with pain. The sat nav directions were taking him south, around towns, through small villages, forests, over flatlands, undulating countryside, across rivers, craggy hills, and into increasingly rugged terrain, but he barely registered his surroundings. As he drove hundreds of miles across Russia toward the Caucasus Mountains, only one thought was in his mind.
Whether Sentinel is alive or dead, my only hope is that Razin has left some clue as to the location of the bomb.
Night became day.
Today the submarines would reach Russia.
Snow and ice were everywhere, but the sky was blue and clear of clouds. More hours passed. The roads became narrower and uneven. Soon he was driving away from any signs of life; the imposing mountain range was visible in the distance. He continued driving for an hour, until he was within a couple of miles of the mountains’ foothills.
The mountain range extended across the entire length of Russia’s border with Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and was more than six hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide. Right now the mountains looked majestic and stunning, though Will knew that from ancient history to the recent second Chechen war they had been the location of numerous bloody battles and atrocities.
He drove off the road and followed a winding track that headed toward one high mountain. The incline grew steeper as he moved into a ravine; sheer ice-covered mountain walls rose up on either side of him. He reached a wooden gate with a sign indicating that the route beyond was private. The gate had been smashed open, probably by a vehicle.
Will drove forward; the mountain walls on either side of him were now only a foot away from the sides of his vehicle. They cast a dark shadow over the entire route ahead, their faces looming nine hundred feet over the track; above them was the severe incline of a mountain that was at least twelve thousand feet high. He put the car into low gear as the track further steepened. Its tires managed to maintain traction, despite the thick snow beneath them.
He braked suddenly. Two stationary vehicles were ahead of him. One of them was a four-ton military truck, the other a jeep. The smaller vehicle was on its side and was a mangled wreck. The truck was a burned-out shell. Will got out of his car and walked to the decimated vehicles. He looked at the jeep. The driver’s legs were missing; the rest of him had been shredded by bits of metal. Next to him was Captain Zaytsey. The Spetsnaz officer’s face was black and swollen, his blond hair completely singed away, and a large chunk of the jeep’s metal undercarriage was protruding from his gut. Will went to the rear of the truck and looked inside. What he saw was horrific. Ten men, ripped apart.
Shaking his head, he muttered, “You bastard.”
Razin had mined the route ahead, knowing that anyone who came here to get Sentinel either would die trying or would have to just turn around and leave the MI6 officer to his fate.
He was running out of time. The submarines would now be very close to Russia.
Will decided that there was one other way to get to the mountain lodge, a route that was in all probability every bit as perilous as a road containing high explosives. Opening his Bergen, he turned it upside down and emptied its contents onto the track. He donned the white balaclava, tactical goggles, and gloves, fixed the vertical-framed ice crampons to his boots, placed the MR-445 Varjag pistol and spare ammunition clips in his fleece jacket, and strapped the military knife and scabbard to his waist before putting his hands through the straps of the two mountaineering ice axes and gripping their handles. Head to toe, he was now dressed in white arctic warfare kit.
He looked at the sheer ice wall by his side, stepped up to it, and plunged both axes’ spikes into the ice above his head. Pulling himself off the ground, he simultaneously jabbed the crampons’ toe blades into the ice. The ice held his weight; he was satisfied that he could begin climbing. Straightening his legs, he pulled out one of the axes and dug it higher into the wall, then did the same with the other, pulling himself up and jabbing his crampons back into a new area of ice. He kept repeating the actions until he was three hundred feet above the track.
He looked down. The ravine was in near darkness, though he could see his SUV and the Spetsnaz vehicles. A light wind blew ice particles off the wall’s surface and coated his goggles. Wiping them clear, he looked up, dug his axes higher, and continued his ascent. After five minutes, he had covered another three hundred feet of the ice face. He rested for a few seconds, felt sweat underneath his balaclava and inner garments, and continued climbing. With every swing of his axes and thrust of his crampons, the pain in his body increased.
But he kept moving, ha
uling his big frame up the vertical mountainside a few feet at a time.
He was now 250 yards above the track. His breathing was labored, and his undergarments and balaclava were now soaked with perspiration. Looking beyond the axes to the top of the wall, he could see nothing but sky. He hoped that meant the mountainside was less severe beyond the ice face and the subsequent climb would be easier. That hope spurred him on; his movements became quicker. He neared the top of the ice wall, swung one ax over it and into the hidden ice beyond, did the same with the other, and then pulled his body up over the edge until he was lying flat on the ground. For a moment he felt relief that he had made the near-impossible climb. But as he lifted his head and looked forward, his heart sank.
The land before him was relatively flat for about ninety feet. But beyond it was another ice face. This one was much taller, and halfway it curled inward to produce a massive overhang at the top. As he looked at the terrifying slope, only one thought ran through his mind. This climb was impossible.
He got to his feet, walked fast to the base of the wall, looked up, silently cursed, put the tip of one ax against the ice above his head, hesitated for a moment, and swung it deep into the face. He started climbing, but this time he felt that every swing of his axes and stab of his crampons into the ice was taking him nearer to a place where he would fall and die.
Razin would have known about this terrain; he would have known that the only way to access the mountain lodge from Russia was via the track that he had mined. That was why he had chosen the venue for Sentinel’s imprisonment. And in giving Will the location, he had sent him to his death.
Will climbed for fifteen minutes, briefly stopping twice to get more oxygen into his body. The air was now colder; each breath caused pain in his lungs. He reached nine hundred feet above the ledge below him. This was the place where the wall began to gradually slope inward. He looked up, saw the huge overhang towering above him a further nine hundred feet beyond, looked down, and briefly wondered if he should climb back to the base. But he knew he could not do so. He had outsmarted Razin but had failed to save Korina’s life and the lives of the other tier-1 agents whom he had been sent to defend, and he had failed to prevent the capture, imprisonment, torture, and inevitable execution of Roger, Laith, Vitali, and Markov. While the odds were now impossible, he had to try to get to Sentinel in case the man was still alive, and he had to search his prison for anything that might tell him where the bomb was planted. This was his last chance to do something right, even if he died trying. But this climb was taking too long.
He moved his arms and legs, just focusing on the ice directly in front of him. His body was tilted backward a few inches; the chances of his axes pulling free from the face were now considerable. His progress was slow. After every insertion of the ax spikes and the blades of his crampons, he carefully tested their grip on the mountain face before proceeding. It took him thirty minutes to cover three hundred feet of the ice wall. As the slope had now pushed the angle of his body back a further few inches, it took him an hour to climb the next three hundred feet. The muscles in his arms, back, and legs now felt as if they were tearing themselves off bone. His heart pounded, its noise drumming in his ears. He could taste blood in his mouth and smell it in his nose. He stopped, his breathing shallow and rapid, not daring to take his eyes off the axes. The three-hundred-foot incline above him was going to get worse, and if he made it to the top he would then have to move underneath a near-horizontal overhang for two hundred feet. Gritting his teeth, he continued.
Nausea accompanied his agony. He swallowed hard, desperate not to vomit, choke, and lose his grip on his axes. The wind grew stronger, blowing more ice at him. Despite his exertions, his body was now shivering; the sweat from the earlier climb now made his garments cling cold against his body. He tried to count each swing of his ax, imagining that if he made it to a count of three hundred he would be off this terrible place and alive. But he kept losing count, not able to focus on anything other than getting his arms and legs to move at the right time.
It took him another hour to reach the overhang. His body was now leaning back at an angle of forty-five degrees. He looked down. Eighteen hundred feet below him was the ledge, out of sight, and a further nine hundred feet beyond that was the base of the ravine. He stayed still and looked up. Directly above his head the mountain face curved sharply. He looked at the overhang, wondering if he would fall to his death in the next few minutes. He moved.
After two swings of his axes, he was on the overhang, his back now directly facing the huge drop below. He kept his body bunched close, using smaller reaches of his axes and crampons and digging them in at an angle within the surface. As he moved, inch by inch, three thoughts were in his mind: Is the ice strong enough? Am I strong enough? Have the subs reached Russian waters yet?
He managed to get across thirty feet of the two-hundred-foot overhang before pausing. He let his heavy body hang there, deadweight between the small toe blades of the crampons and the thin spikes of his axes. Carefully withdrawing the point of one of the axes, he swung it hard into the ice, pulled on it to test its grip, and moved onward. Thirty minutes later, he had moved another thirty feet along the overhang. One hour after that, he had reached the center of the slope. More than anything, he worried about his hands. The ax straps were around them but were not enough to stop his body from falling if his agonized fingers involuntarily released their grip. He tried to wrap his digits tighter around the shafts of his ice picks, tried to flex them to get blood moving through them when his crampons were in place, but nothing stopped the pain. He thought that he was now dying.
He decided that he had always known that he was going to die a violent death but that it was better to do so through inability to conquer a terrifying ancient mountain rather than by being outmatched by another man. That thought spurred him on. He looked down again. The whole world seemed to be beneath him. It looked so beautiful, so perfect. It looked like a place that had once tolerated his existence, but not anymore.
He slammed a foot against the ice, drove an ax into it, jabbed his other foot into the overhang, gasped for air, and moved his outstretched arm to swing the other ax into position. It all seemed futile now. But he still kept doing this for another sixty feet.
His frozen hands started to slow down and fail. Death, he decided, was now close by. He looked at the overhang inches above his face, stretched his head and neck back to look at the sky, and saw the sun, blue air, thin streaks of cloud, and the endless mountains beyond.
He jabbed the point of an ax farther along the surface, spat blood, watched it fall far below him, felt the skin on his face become taut, swung his other ax, and looked at the end of the overhang. It was now only a few feet away.
He heard a noise. It was barely audible at first, but it seemed to be coming from the sky. He winced as he looked in its direction. He saw a small dot. It grew larger. The noise became louder. His hands and feet were vibrating. The mountain shook. The dot got bigger and bigger. It seemed to be moving very fast. His limbs were now badly shaking. He breathed fast, urgently looking between the thing from the sky and the tools he had fixed in the mountain. The thing grew larger, a thunderous scream accompanying it. Will braced himself, ready to drop to his death.
He narrowed his eyes.
The thing came closer.
Then it banked up, only a few hundred yards away from him, moving back toward the sky. A MiG fighter jet.
It would have been impossible for the pilot to have seen him, and no doubt he was just practicing maneuvers over the range, but as the jet pointed at the sky the mountain shook more vigorously. Will tore his eyes away from the sight and looked desperately at the overhang. But it was too late. One of his axes and both of his crampons shook free from the surface. He fell down and swung like a pendulum, hanging from the one remaining ax spike in the ice. Gasping for air, he stared at the spike, knowing it would pull out at any moment. He tried to thrust his boots at the surface as he swung clos
e to it, but he did not get near enough. His body stopped swinging. Pulling up a few inches with his arm, he swung his other ax toward the ice but missed, his grip on it loosening as his arm moved quickly through the air, the ax very nearly falling away from his hand, saved only by the strap around his wrist. He pulled up with his arm again; the effort was monumental, the pain immense, but he kept pulling, knowing that he had to get much closer to the ice this time, even though his arm felt as though it were going to explode. He kept moving until his arm was at a right angle, readied his other ax, focused his eyes on the spot he wanted to strike, swung his ax, and jammed his spike deep into the surface. Wasting no time, he moved his legs back, then swung them together toward the overhang. His crampons dug into the ice. He moved forward, reaching the edge of the overhang. Blindly, he swung one ax over its edge and felt it dig into something. He did the same with the other.
He heard the jet again. Its noise was growing louder.
Removing one crampon and bringing his knee under his chest, he slammed his boot into the ice.
The roar of the jet was getting nearer. The mountain began to shake.
He moved the other crampon and stabbed it into the surface.
His whole body was vibrating.
He pulled with his arms while thrusting forward with his legs, easing his body around the lip of the overhang.
Large chunks of ice near him cracked and fell away.
With all of his strength, he pulled, finally getting his chest onto an area of flatland on the other side of the overhang. He kept pulling as one of his feet fell away, then the other, until his whole body was off the overhang and lying on the ground above it. He had made the impossible climb.
But maybe it was all in vain.
Crawling forward, he looked around. More of the mountain was above him, but he could see that he would not have to climb any farther. He was on a plateau two hundred feet long. To the left of the mountain was a chasm, beyond it another plateau that had a track leading to it and a lodge in its center. He had found Sentinel’s prison.