"We're leaking!" one of the men cried, watching water stream into the motor launch from a bullet hole.
"No matter," Drexler said. "We'll have their boat."
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It occurred to Greta that perhaps she was trapped in a dream. The chase had the hallucinatory, slow-motion quality of an unending nightmare. The world was a monochrome of black and white. The ice under her feet cracked and sighed as they painfully trotted across its powdery coverlet of snow. Her head was dizzy from the constant gasping of brittle air. For mere minutes, it seemed, they'd been free. Then Jürgen had materialized again as if he read every thought in her head, knew every plan she laid. She longed to wake up— to have it be over with.
The Germans were following them like a pack of wolves, five in all. Owen said he thought he'd counted six at first, so perhaps he'd hit one. Not that it mattered. How could they fight so many?
"Owen, I can't go on much longer."
She was panting, her pack as heavy as the Cross. They'd be run down in minutes.
He nodded. "Me neither. We have to leave the packs and lose the soldiers, then circle back. Maybe I can slow them down first."
They stopped at a fissure where the pressure of the shifting ice had heaved several blocks into the air. The barrier briefly shielded them from view.
"We'll put the packs here," Hart said. "Take the cylinder with the antidote and go ahead, aiming for that trapped iceberg. I'm going to give them something to think about." He threw down his pack and untangled the machine gun. "Are you all right?"
She nodded, tense. "Try not to be late."
There was an eruption of shots behind Greta and she could hear shouts and screams from the pursuing Germans. The soldiers let loose with a fusillade of their own, the bullets kicking up a small blizzard at the top of the ice blocks. Then Owen was away and running low after her, faster now without his pack and gun.
"I got one of the bastards and the others went flat," he reported. "The gun is empty and so is my stock of ideas."
"We still have a chance," she said hopefully. "They should have the disease. If we can just keep away long enough it should begin to slow them down."
"I hope that bacteria hurries. They look pretty damn healthy to me."
The iceberg was a gnarled hill of ice that had drifted in the sea until ensnared in the flat pack ice. The vise that held it was made of two large islands of ice separated by a dark lead of water that stretched hundreds of yards in either direction. The iceberg was the only bridge across this channel. Hart hesitated, glancing back. The Germans had paused to fall on the couple's packs like ravenous dogs, looking for the drug. Not finding it, they were loping after them again more warily, their guns ready. They didn't know Hart had hidden his empty submachine gun in the snow.
"Owen, come on! Why are we stopping?"
He glanced ahead. "Icebergs can sometimes be unstable. They slowly melt and as they change shape their center of gravity shifts and they roll. Sometimes the weight of a person or a seal or even a penguin can make the final difference. If we climb onto it and go into the water we're dead."
She looked impatient. "If we wait here we're dead."
"I know, I know. You go first then, to minimize the weight. I think if I stand here they'll hesitate in case I have a gun. Then I'll follow."
Now it was she who hesitated.
"Go. Quickly!"
Greta leaped a thin crevice of seawater and began scrambling across the iceberg, trying to ignore its ominous rock. As Owen had expected, the pursuing Germans slowed cautiously when they saw him standing there. One fired a tentative burst but the distance was still too great: the bullets went wide. Hart looked the other way. Greta had disappeared over the crest of the berg.
He leaped and the iceberg heaved unsteadily beneath him. Hart followed in Greta's tracks, praying their bridge would stay stable. More bullets whipped around him as he scrambled over the crest. Then he was sliding down the other side toward a gap of dark water and jumped again. The flatter ice cracked as he landed on it but didn't give way.
Greta seized his hand. "Hurry!"
On they went, the world a white miasma. They had no sense of direction except to get away.
"Hart! Oweeennnn Hart!"
They looked back. It was Drexler, standing on the crest of the iceberg and hoisting a machine gun. "Your lives in return for the drug, Hart! It isn't too late to make a bargain!"
They stopped to confer. "If we agree," said Greta, "they might survive to take the microbe back to Germany."
"And kill us anyway." Hart raised his arm.
Drexler lifted his binoculars, focusing. A middle finger came into view. Bastard!
The Nazi charged down the iceberg after them then, his men swarming over the crest just behind. The Germans came down in a tight group, neared the edge…
The iceberg rolled.
The movement was as spectacular as it was sudden. The hill of ice upended like a sinking ship, the end nearest Owen and Greta dipping into the water. The storm troopers screamed as they tumbled, desperately trying to claw away from the gulping water. Drexler leaped, his legs churning, his arms outspread. He landed flat on the stable pack ice, the air going out of him with a whoosh. The iceberg continued to roll behind him and the three remaining storm troopers slid into the sea, thousands of tons of ice flipping to drive them deep. Their scream was chopped off as abruptly as the fall of an ax.
"Jesus," Hart whispered. "I'd heard of it, but never seen it."
The overturned iceberg was pitching uneasily now, seeking a new equilibrium. Seawater poured off its flanks in a hundred small waterfalls.
Drexler slowly got to his hands and knees.
Then one of his soldiers surfaced like a cork, thrashing. "Save me!" The sound exploded from his lungs but was thin and frail across the broad expanse of sea ice. Jürgen looked dully back over his shoulder. The man's hand was clutching at the air.
"He has no chance," Hart said. "The water's too cold."
The soldier had flailed his way to the edge of the pack ice and frantically hauled himself up on it, flopping like a fish. He was pleading, saying something to Drexler that they couldn't hear. The Nazi didn't respond at first. But as the soldier began to crawl pitifully toward Jürgen the SS colonel finally got to his feet. The soldier was slowing. A rime of ice was forming on his clothes.
Drexler regarded the man solemnly and then walked over to point his submachine gun. The storm trooper lifted his head. There was a short burst and the soaked soldier jerked and lay still.
Then the SS colonel looked at the two fugitives a hundred yards away across the ice. Grimly, he began trotting after them again.
The U-boat sounded like a tuberculosis ward. Men were hacking and sneezing, sweat beginning to dot their flushed faces. Schmidt felt ill as well but for his own protection from angry sailors he stayed near Freiwald in the control room, clutching the periscope. At least the submarine was beginning to move again. They'd find Drexler's motor launch, learn where Hart had gone, hunt down the antibiotic… He looked around the enclosing chamber bleakly. Time. Time.
He noticed a calendar near the helm. Almost Christmas. Rocket assembly should have begun by now. Laboratory space was being readied in the mines of the Ruhr. Warheads were being test-fired with anthrax. They were so close. So close! How he longed to squeeze the life out of that traitorous bitch.
"How late in the disease can we take the antidote and live, Doctor?" Freiwald asked.
He shrugged. "Who knows?"
"You'd better damn well know!"
Schmidt sighed. "The rabbits lived. A seaman on the first voyage drank some after infection and lived. Hart, damn his soul, lived. So. We have to hope."