by David Gilman
“Max! Thank God! Get me out of here! Hurry. There’s shooting. Someone is attacking.”
Max looked around the area carved from the rock face. There was still a tunnel-boring machine; maybe he could cut through the wall of rock. No, that’d take too long. Max felt as though the whole mountain were on top of his head. Any serious flooding or damage and it would shatter. The tunnels and caves cut into it over the last twenty years would have weakened the inherent structure.
“My mother!” Max demanded.
“I’ll tell you everything, but we have to get away, Max. You see that, don’t you? There is no time.”
Max grabbed Farentino’s wrist and tore free the Rolex.
“What are you doing?”
Max snapped the expensive watch onto his own arm. It was 10:46. Just under one hour to get Sayid’s body out of the mountain and stop Tishenko.
“In five seconds I’m smashing the bolt free from that polar bear’s cage. You won’t be going anywhere, Farentino, you scum. I want to know how my mother died.”
“All right, all right. She was in the jungle. Something went horribly wrong.”
“What went wrong?” Max yelled.
“I don’t know. Please, Max, get me out.”
“Tell me! What happened?”
Farentino’s tone changed. The defeated man’s face looked defiant in its anger. “You want to know the ugly truth? All right! Your father abandoned her. She was sick, she was dying and he ran!”
“Liar!”
Farentino sensed he had the upper hand. He had an emotional hold over Max that no one had ever had before. “She died alone, Max, because your father saved himself!”
“My father wouldn’t do that! Not my dad!”
“He did it and he can’t live with the shame! Why do you think he stuck you away in that boarding school? Why do you see so little of him? Why? Because he knows he killed your mother!”
His words struck Max like an assassin’s knife ripping into his chest.
“Why should I believe you? You’ve betrayed everyone who ever trusted you!”
Farentino lowered his voice. “Because I loved her. I loved your mother with all my heart. But she would not leave your father for me.”
Max didn’t move. He couldn’t. Farentino gently touched his arm and spoke quietly. “Get me out, Max, and I will tell you everything. Please. I promise.”
Max had to break through the crippling numbness that gripped him. Gunfire rattled on one of the levels above. It was close. The smell of gunsmoke and cordite clung to the air, stinging eyes and throat. It snapped Max back. He felt cold, but it wasn’t the temperature. It was his heart.
He turned to the machinery against the wall, pulled a heavy-linked iron drag chain from one of them and passed it through the cage’s bars. Then he jammed a metal rod through the end of the chain to hold it fast.
Feeding out the links, he heaved its weight to the hoist. The handheld control switch dangled in the air. Max pressed the Up button and the platform rose. He stopped it when it reached head height, then snagged the chain beneath the hoist’s structure. He pressed the Up button again and the platform rose slowly, taking the chain’s strain.
“Stand back!” he shouted to Farentino as metal screeched and strained. The chain wrenched the cage apart. He lowered the hoist to head height again. Farentino staggered from his cage, but Max wasn’t interested in helping him. He saw no reason why a trapped polar bear should die down here. He ran to the cage where he had escaped the angry bear, pushed back the bolt and saw the bear rise up from its icy pool.
“Come on! Picnic time! Plenty of bad people to eat out here!”
The sound of his voice had an immediate effect, and the bear began to climb through the ice wall’s hole between the two cages.
Farentino had already climbed onto the hoist’s platform. Max jumped, with the bear fifteen meters behind him. He grabbed the control buttons and lifted them up to the next level.
“I need help with my friend,” Max said to Farentino, dragging him off the platform and into the flowing water.
Gunfire, loud now. Explosions. Grenades. Men crying in pain.
Farentino cringed in fear and offered no resistance as Max bullied him along the passage. Max had sent the platform down to where the bear could clamber up. He had done all he could.
CUT BEARD CLAW
It meant nothing! He grabbed Farentino’s arm and pulled him into the darkened tunnel.
It looked as though Sayid lay sprawled backwards across an ice bench. Everything had melted except for one block at the bottom. The hot water still gushed but had cooled.
Max cupped Sayid’s face in his hands-there was no neck pulse. He slipped his hand under Sayid’s jacket and shirt; his chest was ice cold and there was no heartbeat.
“He’s dead,” Farentino said matter-of-factly. “We should get out.”
Max gripped Farentino’s arm. Saw the pain register on the man’s face.
“The entrance is too narrow. I can’t carry him on my own. Take his legs.”
An explosion somewhere nearby-the fighting was almost upon them. Farentino grabbed Sayid’s legs as Max took most of his friend’s weight. They shuffled past the hoist and into the open area.
Max laid Sayid’s body down gently.
Two alien-looking creatures dressed in black, with rubber faces and bulging eyes and carrying machine pistols, ran out of the cavern’s gloom. Pencil-thin laser beams from their gunsights cut through the near darkness and settled on Farentino’s chest.
“Don’t shoot!” Farentino cried.
Corentin and Thierry pulled the night-vision goggles from their faces.
“Max!” Corentin said. “Is this the boy?”
“Corentin! How the …?”
“It was Sophie,” Thierry said as he knelt next to Corentin, who was already checking Sayid. Thierry slipped a backpack from his shoulders. “There’s a small army of French and Swiss support troops outside. They’re too late, as usual. We did the business in here.”
“Wolf men! Puppies more like,” Corentin said.
Corentin cut Sayid’s clothes with a wicked-looking combat knife. Thierry took a battlefield medical kit from his backpack. Both men worked silently, no longer determined professional soldiers but field-trained medics. Thierry prepared a hypodermic.
“Epinephrine,” he said to Max’s worried look.
“Save him, Corentin,” Max pleaded.
Corentin placed small spoon-sized paddles from a mobile cardiac resuscitation unit on each side of Sayid’s rib cage. Thierry plunged the needle into Sayid’s heart. There was still no pulse.
“Clear,” Corentin said.
He triggered the unit and Sayid’s body jolted.
“Come on, Sayid! Come on!” Max begged.
“The boy is dead. You waste your time,” Farentino said.
Corentin’s look could rip out your stomach. “This boy’s ice cold. He’s not dead until he’s warm and dead.”
Corentin and Thierry tried the procedure three more times, then Corentin looked at Max and shook his head.
“There’s a casevac chopper outside. We’ll take you boys out of here now. C’mon, this place is secure. And there’s a hell of a storm waiting to explode out there. Choppers won’t fly much longer.”
Max gazed down at the lifeless body of his best friend. Where were the tears and the throat-closing sobs? Why didn’t he feel anything except this animal desire to pursue his prey?
“Kid, you’re exhausted. Let’s go,” Thierry said as Corentin lifted Sayid into his arms.
Max looked at the watch: 10:59.
“I can’t. Tishenko’s going to blow this place sky high in less than forty minutes. He’s in a tower a couple of kilometers down the valley. There’s an underground rail system-”
Thierry interrupted him. “That tunnel was booby-trapped. It’s caved in. The pipe’s still there but there’s no way out. Best maybe we forget the crazy man, eh?”
“No one’
s going down that valley, Max. It is too much to ask. The lightning is everywhere,” Corentin said quietly.
Max shook his head. “Get him to hospital, please, Corentin.”
Sayid’s limp arm flopped. Max tucked it back and stroked his friend’s face. Now he felt tears in his eyes. But there was a shadow part of Max Gordon that pulled him away. He turned his back and ran as fast as he could for Tishenko’s private lift.
He pressed the button. It wasn’t an express lift any longer, but there must have been an emergency capacitor that held an energy store specifically for it, because seconds later he stepped into the room where Tishenko had bragged of his plans for immortality. The wall panels were open, the crystal hummed and glowed-power was still surging into it. That meant that underground pipeline Max had traveled along was the vein of energy-the particle accelerator that would reach the speed of light in … He checked Farentino’s watch-11:15. Nineteen minutes to go. Cut bears claw.
Sixty meters of living accommodation ran along the rock face. Two huge doors waited at the end. Max hauled one open and was blown off his feet as the storm surged in. This was Tishenko’s viewing platform, which was now battered by cloud and rain. Max rolled clear as the storm forced its way in and vandalized Tishenko’s quarters. Then he saw the wolf mask draped on a bronze bust of Tishenko. Max snatched it from the cold metal. Its fur soft, its cutout eyes creepy. The hunter’s mask. Max slipped it over his face. It felt as though he were inside the wild animal’s skin. A mirror reflected the creature that stared back at him. A shudder. Muscle rippled. His heart raced. A deep-seated urge to attack swept through him. Then he remembered-there was another platform, from which Tishenko had launched the paraglider. And that was Max’s only chance.
The lift dropped rapidly.
11:20.
Lightning struck the side of the mountain, shattering huge flakes of rock. It clawed, just like Tishenko’s logo. Max stepped into a cave big enough to house a small aircraft. But instead it housed at least a dozen paragliders hanging from the ceiling. It was a drying room for the canopies. They hovered like vampire bats, shivering in the drafts that forced their way through the doors from the storm outside.
The clouds swirled above his head. Violent lightning tongued through darkness, ghostly images exposing the inside of cloud formations. Max needed a headwind. He pulled open the access doors. It was like being inside a tornado. At this height the air was calmer, the wind pushing against him. But it was the perfect vantage point. Max could see exactly where the two towers stood, an incredible display of lightning crackling between them. Tishenko was drawing nature to him and turning it into dark power.
11:22. Cut bears claw.
Strapped tightly into the harness, Max threw the fabric he held bundled in his arms into the storm. Like a dog seizing a rat, the wind snarled and snatched it, tossing him into the air. Max plunged into a surreal world. Snow and ice below, turbulent black clouds above. Lightning cut across the valley, showing him exactly where to go. He tugged on the paraglider’s risers, spilling air from the canopy. The web of lines connecting him to the wing above his head sizzled with tension. A compass and airspeed indicator were stitched into the harness.
The air bit his skin; pellets of hail stung his hands. He fought the gale to stay on course for the towers. As each lightning flash crashed across the landscape Max saw movement below. Wolves. They shadowed him, perhaps believing it was their master beneath the black wing. And if he fell? They would soon realize that the figure wearing the mask was not Fedir Tishenko. It didn’t matter. He felt as if he was running ahead of the pack. Leading them.
Max pulled down on the risers, collapsing air out of the canopy. The drop was dramatic. Too much. He corrected, shifted his weight, threw a hand up to protect himself as lightning slashed across the veiled rain. This was the wildest ride of his life.
The two towers were in a compound. They looked like watchtowers in a prisoner-of-war camp, but they were only two hundred meters apart. And there were no huts other than a brick-built structure, half underground, that looked like a generator room. It squatted at the perimeter fence. A raised hump of ground went from the base of each tower into this building.
Max was tossed across the sky. A gust had swept around the side of the mountain. This was the wind shear he knew Tishenko had avoided. Now it forced Max to fight for his life. He pulled this way and that, cascaded down the side of the far reaches of the mountain, turned into a confused wind and spilled even more air. He was going down. Fast. And aiming straight for the compound.
Fire strangled the towers. But then Max realized that what he saw were cables carrying the lightning strikes down into the ground, along those humps in the ground and into the building.
A figure stood in the wire-mesh control box at the top of one tower. Lightning laced itself around the cage, trying to reach him, like a frustrated monster. But as long as Tishenko stayed in the zero field he was safe. One finger outside that safety zone and he would die like an insect flying into a bug zapper. He manipulated the two control levers that guided the ten-meter parabola-like a big satellite television dish. It caught lightning and threw it into the preset dish on the other tower. Sometimes the lightning divided itself and struck both parabolas at the same time, creating an even more powerful electrical charge.
Tishenko neither saw nor heard Max’s approach, but he turned and gazed into the night, his sixth sense as strong as ever. A black-winged creature with the face of a wolf swept out of the sky. Max Gordon had survived and still attacked. So, the boy wore the mask of a wolf man? Then he must be prepared to die as one.
Max knew he was coming in too fast. If he tried to turn now he’d be dragged into that cheese grater of a fence. He let go of everything, covered his head with his arms and tucked his legs back into the paraglider’s seat. When all else fails-panic! a voice shouted scornfully in his head.
With no tension on the control lines, the canopy fluffed with air, rose two meters and then stalled. Max dropped less than the height of his dorm table at Dartmoor High.
Unbuckling the harness, he ran into the devil’s furnace. Lightning exploded, tortured wind screamed through the tower’s wire-mesh cage, and in the far distance a rolling ball of fire tumbled down the valley’s sky, parting the clouds like a meteor scars the night sky.
Over the storm’s deafening smash he heard a man scream. Tishenko. Cursing Max Gordon.
11:30.
The inner core of the second tower was a lift. He pressed the button. No doors-an open platform sped him upwards. Max was inside what felt like the biggest exploding firework in the world. A flash blinded him. Black, melting blobs swam in front of his eyes. Tishenko had swept the dish down and thrown a bolt of lightning at Max’s tower. And again. The power slammed the cage where Max now stood. Two gamelike control levers sat on a console panel. Whatever Tishenko had preset was immediately unlocked by Max’s pressing the manual control button. Max heard the hum of power as he tweaked the handles. The dish on his tower responded immediately. There was no time lag between command and response.
As Max swung the dish into the sky he saw the fireball move ever closer. Beyond this valley Lake Geneva sat trapped between two mountain ranges. An anvil blow along this telluric line would shatter the valley’s floor, like tapping an egg against the rim of a frying pan.
11:32.
Two minutes left!
Tishenko struck Max’s tower again with another bolt of lightning. It shook, and for a moment Max felt that it would shudder itself into a crumpled heap. His dish caught a bolt of lightning and threw it against Tishenko’s tower. If it was a game Tishenko wanted, Max was up for it.
The natural phenomenon tearing across the sky now looked like a fiery meteor crashing to earth, but it was the spear tip of a mighty lightning strike. Catastrophe was about to strike, and a scientist-monk had predicted this very disaster. The chain-mail fist of fire was going to pulverize the inside of a mountain in less than …
11:33. Cut bears cla
w.
Tishenko had killed Sayid! Max’s anger burned as brightly as the storm, his concentration blocking out the shattering noise. Tishenko and Max traded blows. Lightning bolts clashed like medieval swords in personal combat across the two-hundred-meter battlefield between the towers.
Tishenko slashed Max’s tower again, an enormous strike that lit the whole area. Max reeled. Tishenko saw the boy stumble, the impact slamming him to the cage floor.
The flash of light held the valley in its glare. Max stared at the looming black monster of a mountain. It rose up into the heavens, forcing aside the clouds, its peak like a bear’s head, its jagged ridges grasping the valley floor-clawlike. Cut bears claw.
Max’s mind did not reason, his thoughts did not question.
11:34.
The cosmic lightning struck.
Max twisted the controls. The fiery bolt seared from the dish and severed the bony ridge of mountain that looked, in that instant, like a bear’s claws.
Every moment of Fedir Tishenko’s existence encapsulated itself in a microsecond. He was the fire god who would destroy and create life. Touched by the power from the sky when a child, he could not be harmed again. So he was baffled at the searing pain that shafted through his chest and thrust him against the cage’s mesh wall. The eye of the storm recognized its long-lost son, reached out with a cruel stiletto lightning strike and took him home.
Time moved in slow motion for Max. His tower was collapsing; the mountainside exploded and Sharkface stood in the firelit snow, next to a motocross bike, his arm still extended, having loosed the arrow from Tishenko’s hunting bow. The shaft had pierced Tishenko’s chest and then thrust its steel tip through the cage wall, offering itself, and its victim, to the lightning.
Max’s tower collapsed slowly, crumpling as wearily as an armor-clad knight beaten into submission. He clung to the control box, heard tearing metal as the structure flattened the perimeter fence and then the tower’s death rattle: its steel groaning in final surrender.
The earth trembled, wind snared the clouds and within one hour the crystal-clear night settled a frost across the land and Max’s crumpled body.