The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [174]
The second snowmobile was still coming. And she had dropped the flare gun when she fell.
Defenceless.
Eddie found a spare magazine on the dead man’s belt. He slapped it into place and pulled back the MP5K’s charging handle with a clack, then ran round the broken fuselage to see the remaining snowmobile’s red tail light passing the burning wreckage of the wing.
The rider was well out of the sub-machine gun’s effective range. He had to get down the hill fast to save Nina - but how?
The auroral glow shimmered over an intact piece of the plane on the ground. That was one way . . .
Nina dragged Probst into the cockpit. The bulkhead wouldn’t give them much protection, but it was better than nothing.
The snowmobile skidded to a stop. Nina cautiously looked round the doorway, seeing a shadowy figure climb off the idling machine. He had a gun in his right hand . . . then switched it to his left to take something from a pocket.
A grenade.
‘Oh, shit,’ Nina whispered. She backed into the cockpit, but there was no solid door that could be closed, just a flimsy sliding partition. No protection. She could flee through the broken window, but that would mean abandoning Probst to his death - and even if she did, there was nowhere to run, nothing but bleak ice for a hundred miles in every direction.
The man hooked a finger round the pin, pulled it out—
And whirled at a noise from behind.
Eddie hurtled down the slope, riding the de Havilland’s cabin hatch like a sledge and howling like a banshee. The startled man fumbled with his gun and the grenade, trying to switch the two weapons between his hands without releasing the latter’s springloaded spoon and arming the fuse. He brought up his MP5K—
So did Eddie. The compact weapon spat flame. Bullets twanged off the wreckage behind his target, but one shot hit, a puff of blood bursting from the man’s thigh. He screamed, instinctively dropping what he was holding to clap both hands to the wound as he fell . . .
On his own grenade.
Eddie dived off the hatch, covering his head with his arms. ‘Grenade!’ he yelled—
The explosion this time was considerably more muffled. Pieces of the luckless gunman splattered down around the steaming crater in the ice.
Eddie stood and circled the starburst of red to the broken fuselage. ‘Nina! You all right?’ She appeared in the doorway, face alight with relief, and embraced him. He kissed her, then saw Probst in the cockpit. ‘Are you okay?’ The German nodded. ‘What about the other guy?’
‘He’s dead,’ Probst said flatly.
‘Dammit . . .’ He noticed that some of the lights on the instrument panel were still active - including the radio. ‘Is that jammer still running?’
Probst listened to the electronic warbling. ‘Yes. This radio won’t have enough power to break through it, not on the emergency battery.’
‘Then we’ll have to shut it off.’ He regarded the glow on the horizon, then his gaze moved to the puttering snowmobile. ‘Think I’ll meet our new neighbours,’ he said, checking his gun’s remaining ammo.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Nina said.
‘No, you stay here with him.’
‘Eddie, I am coming with you,’ she said defiantly, taking more items from the survival kit - a pair of foil blankets, a small roll of duct tape and a compact oil heater. She started to tape one of the blankets over the broken cockpit window. ‘I think there’ll be more people than just Pramesh and Vanita in that place. You’ll need all the backup you can get.’ The makeshift windbreak in place, she helped Probst into the pilot’s seat and draped the other blanket over him, then propped the heater on the control yoke. ‘Walther, as soon as we take out the jammer, you send an SOS.’
‘How much time will you need?’ he asked. A glass tube set in the little heater’s side revealed the oil level; considering the small size of the tank, it was unlikely to last long.
‘If we haven’t done it in an hour, we probably won’t be doing it at all.’ Pulling the partition across the doorway as she