He clutched the pin in his hand then climbed up so that he was pressed against the underside of the pier. He kept one of the thicker support beams between himself and the Black Cat’s pilot and then he waited. Sid was hovering near to the tender but he ignored her and instead concentrated on one thing only.
Bill’s footsteps.
Methodically moving from one side of the pier to the other in a search pattern, Bill was quickly approaching King’s position.
The wood creaked above his head. Slithers of dust cascaded through the gap in the jetty’s floor boards through which King peered.
And then the sole of Bill’s boot fell upon the gap, blocking out the light.
King struck.
He thrust the long pin up through the gap in the boards and jabbed it through the sole of the mercenary’s boot, driving it home through his foot so that the sharp tip punched through the top in a spurt of blood.
Bill howled in agony, sprawling over, his foot nailed from beneath. The scream caught the pilot’s attention also and King used the distraction to yell incoherently at Sid. Thankfully she got the message and, even as he swung through the underside of the pier as fast as he could, Sid jumped into the tender and pulled the ignition cord through the small outboard motor on the back of the vessel.
It didn’t take the first time, nor the second, but on the third attempt it sputtered into life with a pathetic mewling noise just as King jumped on board, tugging the mooring line from the pier. He took the controls and, as the pilot realised what he was doing and fired wildly in their direction, he guided the tender out away from shore and into the lake proper.
“Yes!” Sid exclaimed excitedly, planting a fierce kiss on King’s lips. But King’s focus was less than amorous. For, even as the tender’s poorly maintained, low speed engine chugged through the water, he heard a far louder and mightier throb of much bigger engines rumbling to life.
He glanced behind him just in time to see the Black Cat’s propellers spin into a whir of motion and the massive flying boat push away from the jetty and plough through the water directly towards them.
36:
On Ice!
The tender’s outboard shrieked in protest as King gunned the engine, sluicing through the water. Behind them, the PBY Catalina Flying Boat picked up speed as it pushed away from the jetty and powered after them.
King turned the boat into an arc, heading towards the shore closest to the mountain highway but all of a sudden the water before him exploded in froth and spray as the Black Cat’s guns were loosed upon them. Cursing, King pulled back around, the boat tipping haphazardly.
“Stay with them!” Bill barked angrily into his headset to the Black Cat’s pilot.
The agony coursing through his leg from the torn hole in his foot threatened to spill over into anger but he resisted the urge to simply gun down King and his girlfriend as he sat at the gun controls in the nose of the plane. King had the map and if the boat sank and he went with it, it would take far too long mount a diving expedition to retrieve it.
Instead, he tried to drive King away from any possible escape route. If he made it to the highway he might be lucky and flag down a passing car, or else hijack one in his desperation. But, there was one place close were he could mow down the archaeologist without fear of losing the map. A place of no escape.
“He’s herding us towards the glacier,” Sid realised.
Hunched in the front of the boat, bitterly cold spray spat over the bow and the wind bit into her exposed face and hands. The roar of the outboard was almost drowned out by the roar of the wind as the tender bounced along the surface of the lake.
Once again, King tried to swerve towards the shore but was confronted by a barrage of machinegun bullets. They were far enough away to cause no harm, but close enough to send the fear of god into the boat’s inhabitants.
King spun the boat hard about and powered away from the pursuing behemoth. The Black Cat also sluiced through the water, the larger vessel needing a much wider turning angle. Its starboard wing dug down, the float steadying the vessel and helping it to pivot. Another burst of gunfire erupted from its nose.
“What do we do?” Sid asked worriedly.
“Hold on,” King warned and shot towards the monstrous terminus of the Viedma Glacier. Even from a distance it loomed with an omnipotent menace but it wasn’t so much the terminus itself which King headed for, but the dozens of small icebergs which floated away from it. Bunched fairly close together they would provide the perfect obstacle-course in which to evade their pursuers.
Bill evidently realised this also and let loose with another volley of machinegun fire, but it was too late. King slipped the tender into the field of icebergs.
He spun to the left around one, weaved to the right around another. With a thunderous crack, the wrenching of tearing ice, another ice berg cleaved away from the terminus and splashed into the lake. The displacement sent a large ripple reverberating out, pushing the floating bergs. One heaved up on the wave and loomed above the tiny boat. King tried to steer away from it but was too late. The free floating island of ice struck. Metal ground against the solid surface as the berg settled again in the wake of the wave. But the damage was done. The tender was half out of the water, caught on the edge of the berg.
Behind them, like an orca coming in for the kill, the Black Cat manoeuvred slowly around the ice field. Menacingly, it turned towards them.
“Damn! Come on, push us free,” King barked at Sid and they both leaned over the side and pushed against the ice berg, their exposed hands raw against the frozen surface. The boat slithered forward, whatever had caught them snapping free and then it slipped back into the water just as the tip of the ice berg blew apart under a hailstorm of bullets. Chunks of solid ice rained down like a hailstorm from god, pounding the boat. King and Sid shielded their heads against the onslaught and were lucky enough to avoid the full brunt of a killer ice cube.
The propellers chewed up the water again and shot them forwards. King aimed towards the shore but the edge of the small ice field came into sight. Once out of it, they would have no cover. They’d be sitting ducks.
As it was, King didn’t even have the time to make the mad dash across the open water. With a cough and a splutter, the outboard jerked in his hands. He looked in time to see a spurt of fuel shooting out of a torn line and suddenly remembered how whatever had snagged the boat on the berg had broken free.
In a desperate move, he grasped the torn fuel line. Luckily it hadn’t ripped in half but had only torn a hole in it. Nevertheless, even gripping it as tightly as he could didn’t prevent the loss of pressure. The boat slowed.
“What now?” Sid asked. King could see the desperation in her face and again he felt a terrible pang of guilt for having dragged her into this mess.
He stared longingly at the shore. It wasn’t that far. In fact, he knew he’d be able to swim it. If the water wasn’t cold enough to kill in a matter of minutes and there wasn’t a World War Two era retrofitted warplane hot on his tail, that was.
Cursing angrily, he threw the outboard around and coaxed as much juice as he could into it, gripping the torn line tightly. His hand was slick with fuel and the pungent smell made his nostrils burn and his eyes sting.
He turned and headed away from the far shore and darted past the ice field towards the towering cliff of the glacier’s terminus. He turned parallel to it, shooting with ever diminishing speed in front of it. The throbbing power of the engine faded until finally it spluttered its last breath and they coasted in towards a spit of rock which marked the right-hand-most limit of the terminus.