Hot Ice (11 page)

He had heard Boris correctly.

But what had he meant?

Jason was pointing. “We need to take a look at those rocks.”

Harvor reached into a pocket and produced a sheet of paper. “I can’t be sure in this light, but it looks like from the map the investigating officer found your friend there.”

Both men were silent as they climbed the steep slope. Once at the top, they were surrounded by the formation itself.

“We cannot see without the light,” Harvor observed, stating the obvious. “The rocks will block the natural light until the sun is higher in the sky.”

An event Jason was unsure took place in these latitudes.

“OK, let’s take a look.”

The policeman played the flashlight’s beam across rocks so black Jason guessed the blood from Boris’s wound would be invisible.

“Can you tell from the diagram exactly where in this stone jumble he was found?”

Before Harvor could answer, something twinkled in the light to Jason’s left. “Play the light over there.”

The flashlight’s beam revealed a space between two of the huge rocks, a narrow passage. Just beyond, something sparkled. Jason sucked in his stomach and squeezed through.

From behind him, Harvor protested, “I don’t think I can get through there.”

The portly policeman was right. “Go around that pillar to your right.”

As Harvor came puffing up, his light picked up something shiny.

Jason squatted but did not pick it up. “Looks like a bullet casing. I’d guess nine millimeter.”

Harvor leaned over. “You have experience in such things?”

Jason was turning it over with a ballpoint pen, careful not to touch it. Inside what amounted to a roofless room of stone, the ejected shell could not have gone far. The shot must have been fired within a few feet of here.

He stood, extending he brass shell on the tip of the pen for the policeman’s inspection. “Your investigating officer must have missed it.”

“Or it wasn’t here when he was,” the cop offered defensively.

How many Icelanders own handguns, Jason thought, let alone went about firing them indiscriminately?

But he said, “You might want to keep that in case there are partial prints on it.”

Harvor looked at him suspiciously, his expression now visible in the increasing light. “You did not answer my question, Mr. Peters: You have experience in such things?”

“I watch
Law & Order
.”

Harvor was clearly making a decision as to whether to let the matter rest as Jason slowly turned around, his eyes searching the stone chamber. Wordlessly, he took the flashlight from the policeman’s hand, shining it across the face of the rock that surrounded them.

There was a noise Jason could not believe he was hearing. It sounded like, but could not be … a cell phone’s beep. Following the persistent chirps, Jason came to a crevice that gave back the light from his flash. In one step, Jason was reaching into it. His groping fingers touched something cold, metal that had absorbed the ambient temperature of the brief night.

His hand closed around it and he drew it out. A cell phone.

He flipped it open. “Yes?”

The reply was both distinctly British and, equally certain, irritated. “See here, Karloff! We are not paying you to ignore our calls. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”

“I’m sorry,” Jason mumbled, trying to imitate Boris’s voice. “I’ve been busy. I—”

The tone went from annoyed to wary. “You’re not Karloff. Where is he?”

“Er, indisposed at the moment. With whom am I speaking?”

There was a moment of silence before the phone went dead. The tiny screen displayed a number Jason recognized as being somewhere in the British Isles. He committed it to a memory long ago trained to recall names, words, and numbers.

“Who was that?” Harvor demanded.

“Someone who clearly didn’t want to speak with me.”

“He gave no name?”

“That is correct.”

Harvor reached for the phone. “We can determine the source of the call.”

Reluctantly, Jason handed it over as he stuck his other hand back into the fissure. This time he touched another, much smaller, piece of metal and what his fingers told him was a piece of string. No, a twig.

Harvor extended the hand not holding the phone. “Those, too, Mr. Peters.”

“And I will take both those and the cell phone,” said a voice.

Harvor and Jason turned to see a man holding a gun. His face could have been the surface of the moon it was so pocked with scars. Acne? Jason thought he recognized the black matte polymer of a Russian made GSh-18, the original, if brief, replacement for the Makarov as the standard Soviet military sidearm. The fact the man had his finger curled around the square trigger guard instead of the trigger itself reminded him the weapon had a Glock-like safety that was automatically released when the trigger was squeezed.

The stranger was no amateur.

“Unless you are a police officer, you have no permit for that weapon,” Harvor said with a huff. “You can be sent to prison for even possessing such a thing.”

Jason didn’t take his eyes from the stranger. “I don’t think he’s overly worried about the possibility. I’d suggest you do as he asks.”

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.

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.”