Court launched out of the snowy bushes, lowered his left shoulder, and slammed into Whitlock’s midsection at speed. The gun flipped through the air and both men went down the embankment, rolling and sliding and banging off trees as they picked up speed.
Court fell out of control, but he did his best to hold his broken arm as he went down. Russ tumbled wildly, banging his wounded hip against the hard earth and unyielding tree branches on the hill.
Both men rolled out of control, taking brush and snow and pieces of stone with them in an avalanche. Russ reached out and grabbed a bare bush growing out of the embankment to arrest his fall, but the bush only ripped out of the frozen ground and tumbled on with him.
Court and Russ spun through the air and then, almost simultaneously, they hit the frozen pond. Their bodies slid out onto the ice ten, fifteen, twenty-five feet, the momentum of the downhill roll meeting the lack of friction on the ice and propelling them out a third of the way to the opposite end of the pond. They finally stopped sliding. Court was facedown and Russ was on his side, but when Russ tried to push himself up to look for the Glock, he was rewarded with a loud echoing crack. The combined force of the men’s bodies caused the icy surface of the pond to give way, and the two wounded Americans disappeared below the surface.
As he did each and every year, the prime minister of Israel finished his moment at the graveside of Piet De Schepper with a knelt prayer. He rose to his feet, brushed snow from the lower part of his coat, and put his hand on a neo-Gothic column next to the burial site.
“Until next year, my friend.”
He turned and began heading back up the pathway to the exit of the cemetery. As he walked he remarked to the principal agent on his close protection detail, “I can’t say I am too crazy about all the damn snow, but I do so love the tranquillity here.”
“Yes sir,” the security agent said. “It’s certainly peaceful, isn’t it?”
Court Gentry clawed at the eyes of the man on top of him at the bottom of the icy pond.
Under the ice they fought, their bodies spinning and their legs kicking through thick mud and trash. Neither man knew if the other had a weapon, so both fought and scrambled to keep one another’s hands under control. This was harder for Gentry, whose right arm was all but useless.
The water was so dank and dirty, and the ice covering the surface was so thick, that visibility at the bottom was virtually zero. The men clutched one another, arms and legs wrapping around their torsos, using their elbows and foreheads as weapons when hand and leg movement was restricted.
The cold was one continuous, mind-numbing assault to their central nervous systems that penetrated both men’s brains like they were being electrocuted.
Court broke free of Russ for an instant and pushed off the mud, trying to get above the waterline to fill his lungs. This part of the pond was only seven feet deep, so it was not far to travel, but instead of surfacing into the air, he only slammed his head against a ceiling of thick ice covering the pond.
Russ grabbed him by the waist and pulled him deeper again.
Court’s extremities were quickly going numb as his blood retreated to keep his core warm. His fine motor skills were depleting quickly with the lack of feeling and mobility, and his gross motor skills were dulling, as well.
But Russ was in the same predicament. He’d gone from trying to choke Court’s throat with his hands to just putting him in a headlock, hoping to drown him before he drowned himself.
The two assassins had been under the water, fighting for their lives and expending precious oxygen, for nearly a minute now. The burning in the lungs of both men became too much, and they both tried to leave the battle to find air. Together they found the opening in the ice, pushed heavy broken chunks out of the way with their heads and arms, and filled their lungs with wheezing inhalations.
As Court sucked in frozen air he punched out at Whitlock with his left hand, hitting him square in the jaw. Russ felt no pain thanks to the near-complete numbness, but the punch spun his head around.
Now Court climbed on Russ’s back and pushed him back under the water, but before Russ went below the surface, he caught a quick glimpse of the Glock pistol lying on its side on the ice in the center of the frozen pond.
Russ reached up and pulled Court under the water with him; he heard the man scream in agony as he did this, and he twisted the wounded appendage to exact maximum pain. He got above him in the water and began kicking, first at his injured right arm, and then at every portion of his body, pushing Gentry deeper by stomping on him. He took advantage of his superior position even more by using his boots to step on Gentry’s head and using his hands to boost himself out of the frigid water.
Russ climbed up on the ice, splashing water in all directions, then fell on his side next to the hole. His body convulsed with the cold, but he fought it, jacking his head left and right, looking for the pistol he’d seen a moment earlier.
There it was — twenty-five feet away, near the center of the pond.
He flattened his body to distribute his weight evenly, and he crept for it as fast as he could. As he moved he looked back at the jagged hole and realized Gentry had not yet surfaced. He’d been down for a long time, and Russ hoped he’d stay down.
But Russ knew Court was a fighter, so he concentrated on making his way across the slick surface to the gun.
Firing the Glock would ruin any slim chance Russ retained to get a shot off at Kalb, but his only sentient thought was on survival.
As Whitlock crawled forward, slower now because the ice below his body was thinning and he did not want to crash back into the water, he realized that, even if he didn’t have to shoot Gentry, his core temperature was far too low for him to have any chance at steadying the rifle for a long-range shot. His hit on Kalb was ruined, and he screamed in anger.
Another look behind him confirmed that Gentry was still submerged. Either he’d been unable to find the broken section of ice and was drowning while desperately feeling around above him, or else his body had gotten caught up in the weeds and trash and mud at the bottom of the pond.
Either way, Court Gentry was a dead man.
Russ was less than ten feet away from the Glock now. The ice was at its thinnest point here in the middle of the pond, but it had not cracked due to his slow and careful movement and the wide and evenly distributed pressure of his body.
His hip hurt, even through the numbing effect of the ice water and frigid air, and his body was racked with exhaustion as well as the obvious onset of hypothermia. He reached a hand out to pull himself farther, and saw his fingers were blue gray and quivering.
One more look behind. He saw the trail he had created moving from the hole, a trail of blood and water left behind by his waterlogged clothing and bloody face and hip.
The big broken slabs of ice had resettled over the hole nearer to the bank, and it looked as if the hole was already refreezing, sealing the Gray Man below the surface.
Russ doubted he would need the pistol now, but he kept moving for it, knowing the gun would come in handy when he broke into the house up the hill to get warm.
Just then, directly below the surface of the pond and directly below his face as he crept along the surface, Russ saw a hand appear, pressed flat against the ice.
Court was trying to break out.
“Jesus Christ, Court! Just fucking die!”
The hand drifted down and away, then disappeared in the darkness of the dirty water.
Russ pushed on, moving closer still to the pistol, five feet away from his fingertips, and he rose slowly to his knees to reach for it.