Into the Black (24 page)

Because life or death odds gave him an adrenaline edge, Kismet chose to believe the worst.  As the ski trooper drew alongside the sleigh and reached out to pull himself in, Kismet unleashed his
kukri
.

The wounded soldier cartwheeled away, his skis whirling like fan blades.  His crash created an obstacle in the path of his confederates.  The second commando's skis hit the motionless form of the fallen man, ripping his feet from the bindings to send him sailing through the air, over the cliff. The third skier turned hard, angling into the snow piled up along the wall.  Rather than losing control, he skillfully negotiated the sheer wall and actually advanced upward as his skis cut a new path through the accumulated snow.  Without slowing, he angled his skis down and skipped across the nearly vertical surface, directly ahead of the sleigh.  As the horses passed beneath him he pushed out with his legs and launched himself at the sleigh.

Kismet had followed the soldier through his maneuvers, but the last move caught him by surprise.  Unable to throw together a last-second response, he simply ducked his head as the skier slammed into him.

He felt a searing pain along his back as the sharp edge of one ski raked through his thick leather jacket, gouging a bloody trail from his shoulder blade to his waist.  Before he could give voice to his pain, a second blow exploded like fireworks in his skull; the trooper's gun, swinging wildly from its sling, had chanced to clout him in the back of the head.

As he crashed down on top of Kismet, the soldier wrapped an arm around his neck.  His head presented a perfect target for the German's blows.  Flashes like lightning swam before his eyes while the dull hammering left his ears ringing.  In desperation, he drove backward with his elbow.  A grunt signaled that the blow had done some harm and was accompanied by a momentary respite in the assault.

Kismet became aware of two things in that instant.  First, that Irene and her father were struggling to overpower the unwelcome visitor.  This gave him the strength of will to muster his own retaliation, in spite of his indefensible position.  The second observation, which lent urgency to the first, was that no one was driving the sleigh.

A second blow from Kismet's elbow elicited an outcry from the soldier.  As his stranglehold weakened, Kismet changed his aim, driving downward into the man's genitals.  The attack drew a primal response.  Howling, the German's hands flew to protect his bruised groin.  Kismet raised his head, and with a vicious grin, launched a cross-body left to the man's jaw.  The commando rolled over, making a desperate effort to save himself with one hand, but was unable to resist the persuasive power of Kismet's boot in his back.  He flipped over the side railing and tumbled into the snow as the sleigh raced away.

Through a haze of pain, Kismet looked with groping hands for the reins to the sleigh.  Although several seconds had passed with no one to guide them, the horses had maintained reasonable control over the descent.  Holding the reins loosely, he let them have their head and turned to scan the slopes behind for signs of other pursuit.

He quickly found it.  Charging in loose formation down the trail were at least a dozen more skiing commandos.  With their bodies crouched low and their weight forward over the curving tips of their Nordic skis, the soldiers were rapidly gaining on the sleigh.

Ahead, the trail was starting to level out.  The merits of this fact were eclipsed by his realization that the short flat stretch was followed by a hairpin turn that led into a switchback.  He had precious few seconds in which to slow almost to a complete stop, or their momentum would carry them past the turn and headlong into certain disaster.

Irene saw it too.  She slid into the seat beside him and grabbed his arm.  He shook his head and pulled free.  "No time for that!"  Thrusting the reins into her hands, he vaulted over the back of the bench and past Kerns.

With both hands fiercely gripping the backboard, he hurtled out over the snow.  Like a crazed gymnast, he dangled behind the sleigh, thrusting forward with his legs.  His feet hit the snow heels first.  He kept his knees locked and ankles rigid so that the thick boot soles would dig into the icy surface.  For a moment his plan seemed to work.  Then his feet hit an unyielding bump and his legs were driven backward under his torso to flop uselessly behind him.

Seeing his peril, Peter Kerns leaned out over the back end of the sleigh and grasped Kismet's forearms.  At the same time Irene began to haul back on the reins, attempting to convince the horses to arrest their downhill charge, but her efforts were futile.  The horses had too much momentum and not enough room to stop.

Kerns' timely assistance roused Kismet for a second try.  Swinging his legs forward, he once more attempted to slow their descent.  The friction of his heels in the snow, coupled with the leveling of the trail and, in some part, Irene's efforts to control the team, accomplished the impossible.  The horses came to a complete stop a few lengths from the hairpin curve. 

Kismet let go and dropped back into the snow.  Icy shavings had filled his trouser legs up to his knees, but there was no time to shake the cold powder away from his clothes.

The skiers were visible but still a ways off, but in the time it took Irene to maneuver the horses around to face the next leg of the descent, they halved the intervening distance.

"Go!" Kismet urged as he scrambled aboard.  He made no effort to take the reins; her control of the draft horses was far superior to her performance behind the wheel of the garbage truck in New York.  As they began descending once more, he retrieved his
kukri
from the splinters of broken skis and poles and slid it into its leather scabbard.

His assumption that his foes would have to slow down before making the hard turn was only partially correct.  Several of the more confident among their number elected to cut out the switchback altogether by turning prematurely and charging down the vertical face of the cliff.

"They're crazy.“ whispered Kismet.  “And they're about the best damn skiers I've ever seen.  We've got to try something else, and fast."

Irene took his final word literally.  With a shout, she urged the team into a full run.  Their path took them directly under the skiers and just past them before they could complete their descent.  Nevertheless, as soon as they touched down on the slope, the commandos were in close pursuit.  Less than a hundred yards separated the sleigh from a pack of four soldiers.  The rest of the group had already rounded the hairpin curve and was not far behind.

The trail they followed soon opened up into a broad powder valley.  The passage of the tracked vehicles had carved a pathway through the soft accumulation, allowing them to proceed without slowing, and soon they were once more following a gradual decline.  They were no longer on the trail that they had originally followed up from the foothills.  Instead, they were now on the path Grimes' snow
-
cats had blazed, a route that would bring them east along the southern flank of the range.

"We can't keep running like this," he announced.  "Eventually we're going to get chased over a cliff, or worse."

"So what have you got in mind?"

"Change the rules," he replied, understanding even as he said it, what that would mean.  "Go on the offensive."

"How?" wheezed the Kerns.  "We haven't any guns.  And as good as you are with it, I don't think that knife of yours is any match for an automatic rifle."

"You might be surprised," he muttered, then in a more commanding voice added:  "Get down this mountain any way you can.  Then go to Anatoly's house.  I'll catch up to you as soon as I can."

"What?"  Irene gaped at him and let her hold on the reins momentarily go slack.  The concern in her eyes hit him like physical blow.  "Nick, you can't leave me."

Her tone said more than her words.  Without even realizing it, she had fallen for him, and the thought that he might vanish forever from her life was too horrible to contemplate.  This unspoken revelation filled him with apprehension.  He didn't want to leave her behind, didn't want to face the prospect of death or capture alone.  More than anything, he wanted her to get away safely.  But there was the Fleece....

The Golden Fleece.  That was what it was really all about.  Men and women would continue to fall in and out of love for the rest of eternity.  Once in a millennium such a love might actually shape the course of history, but more often than not, even the greatest lovers faded into obscurity.  Not so with power.  Power, used or abused, left a mark for generations.  Just as it was impossible for mankind to unremember the atomic bomb, so too the Fleece and whatever diabolical machination Grimes and his allies had planned for it, would surely haunt the planet for the rest of its existence. He alone was in a position to prevent that—to stand between that relic of uncertain power and the forces of evil.  Nothing else really mattered.

Peter Kerns knew where it was, of that Kismet was certain.  He could not allow Grimes to recapture the old man or his daughter. 

"If I don't make it back by midnight tonight, I want you both to head two miles north of the city.  Wait on the shore for an hour.  Lyse—a friend of mine—will rendezvous there and get you back home. As for you, sir, I want you to promise to tell my friend the truth."

Kerns looked back at him with a stupefied expression, but Kismet wasn't buying.  "I mean it.  Grimes must not be allowed to get it.  I think you know that."

The old engineer tried to maintain his poker face, but finally relented, sagging as if the acknowledgment left him drained.  Irene was not so quick to accept his decision.  "Nick, stop talking like this.  We've got to stick together."

"No.  That's just it.  We've got to split up.  I have to slow those soldiers down, or misdirect them somehow."  He saw emotion welling up in her eyes, but willfully ignored it.  Instead, he rose and crawled out onto the back of the left-hand horse.

It took him less than a minute to loose the steed from the yoke that held it in thrall.  Although it continued to trot apace with the other animal, it no longer contributed its power to pulling the sleigh.

Kismet quickly realized how awkward it would be to ride the creature.  Its back was virtually twice as broad as any horse he had ever ridden; his legs were spread painfully apart as he straddled its bare torso.  He was confident with most horses and had ridden camels and even an elephant, but rarely faster than a brisk walk.  There was simply no way to ride the draft horse in the conventional manner.  He was unable to exert any pressure with his inner thighs, so instead he leaned forward against its neck, gripped either side of its bridle with his hands and shouted into its ear: "Giddyap!"

Instantly, the great steed pulled away from its shackled cousin.  Kismet ran the horse out ahead of the sleigh, and then tugged its bridle to swing it around.  As the sleigh drew close, his gaze met Irene's. 

"Nick."

He could see it in her eyes; the declaration that she had not quite been able put into words.   "Don't say it.  You'll only make this harder."

She shook her head, blinking back the tears.  "Just be careful."

He knew those weren't the words that were poised on her lips, but was grateful that she had held back.  With a nod, he coaxed his mount back up the trail, letting the thump of hoof-beats refocus his attention.  After a few moments, he looked back, but the sleigh had already diminished to a dark speck in the snowfield.  When he returned his gaze forward, half a score of white-clothed skiers had appeared directly ahead of him, and suddenly there was no more time for emotional turmoil.

Grimacing, he urged his mount onward, racing toward the pack like a runaway boulder down a mountainside. Hugging the horse's neck with one arm, he drew the Gurkha knife and raised it in the air over his head.  A moment later, he was plowing through the midst of the loose formation.  The knife slashed down repeatedly, causing confusion and not a few superficial wounds.  Half of the group, in their haste to get out of the way, went down, crashing into each other or veering off course into the mire of the powder valley.  The few left standing after his passage snowplowed to a halt and turned to face him.

Kismet also came about for another pass.  One skier raised a pole to block the downward stroke of the blade, only to have it shorn clean in two.  A kick from Kismet sent him flailing.  A soldier on Kismet's left stood his ground, raising his rifle, but before he could fix his sight picture, Kismet twisted his body in order to launch a vicious slashing attack.  The knife quivered in his grip as it struck flesh and smashed through the man's collarbone and stuck there.

He urged his mount ahead with another shouted vocalization. The horse charged ahead and the soldier was dragged along, in shock and unable to resist.  Kismet kept his hold on the hilt of the
kukri
, twisting it until the blade slipped free and the wounded man fell away.

Behind him, the commandos hastened to close ranks and get back on their skis.  It was time, Kismet decided, to lure the hunters away from his friends.  The trail ahead was marked by the very obvious passage of the sleigh—deep parallel lines cut by the steel rails and enormous craters stomped by the massive hooves of the draft horses.  Kismet sheathed the knife and urged the horse forward, all too aware that his back was now a target.

He followed the path of the sleigh for several hundred yards, passing the point where he had separated from Irene and her father.  He stayed on that course a while longer, occasionally looking back to check on the pursuit and was dismayed to see that more troops had arrived to supplement the ranks of the fallen.

Riding full out across the flats, the horse was superior in speed to the skiers.  Kismet held back however, at all times keeping himself in view of the German troopers.  He didn't want them splitting up to follow the sleigh; beyond that, he wasn't really sure what he hoped to accomplish.

The treetops alongside him exploded in a spray of noise and ice.  The skiers were shooting after him in a wasteful and futile attempt to slow him down.  Because they were in a flat snowfield, the soldiers could not advance and fire at the same time, giving him a chance to widen the gap if he successfully dodged their fusillade.  Kismet urged the horse forward, angling right and ducking behind a snowdrift that was twice as high as the horse's head.