“Wait,” Sid grasped his arm and spun him around, planting a powerful kiss on his lips. It was something of an anti-climax after preparing for almost certain death. “I love you.”
The words, said a hundred times, suddenly took on a deeper meaning. A more real meaning. As though they had never been uttered before. “I love you too.” Then he turned back to the abyss, took another breath, fumbled in his pocket, felt the ring box, went to step out then—
“Sid, will you—”
“Just do it,” she snapped, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
King spun, stepped out and threw his entire weight onto the narrow ledge. His heart practically burst through his chest. Only then did he realise that his eyes had been clamped tightly shut. He opened them one by one and discovered that he was still alive.
He let a relieved breath whistle out through his lips.
That was when the wall of ice to which he clung exploded!
The thunderous bombardment of bullets jack-hammered through the ice as the Black Cat powered overhead, its nose-mounted machine gun spewing out the deadly fire.
In an instant, the ledge upon which King stood crumbled and he felt himself slip. He groped desperately at the wall of ice but that too crumbled under the Black Cat’s onslaught, large chucks blasting out in all directions. One large piece slammed into Sid’s head and she dropped to the ground, her unconscious form sliding towards the precipice.
Then, as the plane pulled up, its engines screaming through the frigid air, King felt his last fingertip-worth of purchase slip and, with a stomach lurching sense of motion, he slid down the chasm—
A four inch-long nail slammed into the back of his right hand, punching through, out the palm and into the ice, pinning him to it. He cried out in sudden agony as his entire body weight snagged to a halt, held in place by the nail. The hole in his hand began to stretch and rivulets of blood coursed down his arm and smeared across the vertical side of the chasm.
“Ben!” Bill called. “Give me the map!”
King struggled to catch his breath. A mixture of shock, pain, anger and abject fear caught in his throat. The last of the exploding ice cascaded down around him, large blocks bouncing painfully from his back and plummeting forever downwards until they were lost into the inky blue gloom far below. The thudding sound of impact echoed up dully several seconds later.
He struggled to look around at Bill. Thankfully he had pulled Sid away from the edge of the crevice and she was slowly stirring back into consciousness. Bill pointed his machine gun directly at her head. “Now!” he ordered.
King struggled to speak. “Okay.” His voice seemed weak and feeble. Pathetic. He tried to support his impaled arm by clamping his left one onto it but it was no use. He became suddenly aware of the burning in his right bicep caused by the nail already embedded there. The nail in his hand, meanwhile, continued to rip slowly but surely through the flesh as his bodyweight pulled down on it. The ice started to give way under his struggling, melting from the heat of his palm, the nail pulling out.
“You think I won’t kill her?” Bill snapped. He pulled the trigger. Bullets erupted from the muzzle of his weapon.
“No!” King screamed. But the bullets slammed into the ice just beside Sid. The tremendous noise shocked Sid back to full wakefulness and she stared in horror at the gunman, then over in King’s direction.
“Okay!” King shouted. “Okay, I’ll give you the map.”
They’d lost, he knew. The nail pulled out further. His hand and arm throbbed. He realised in that moment that this was it. He wasn’t going to live through this. The same obsession that had led his father to whatever fate he had met; the same obsession that had dragged Kha’um to his tropical grave in Venezuela, had also lured him to his death in an icy coffin in Argentina.
Strangely, he realised, he could accept that.
But he wouldn’t accept the same for Sid.
Without even really contemplating what he was doing, King reached into the folds of his jacket and wrenched free the Egyptian dagger. Then, taking aim, he wrenched his hand away from the wall and kicked off it, using his body’s momentum as it dropped to hurl the dagger at his enemy.
It flashed by in a streak of gold. Bill dodged to the side but the blade sliced through his cheek and pummelled the lower half of his ear. He fell back reflexively but the last thing King saw before he dropped below the edge of the crevice was the mercenary recover enough to aim his gun at Sid.
As he plummeted to his death, King heard the resounding crack of a single shot echo down the shaft. He screamed inwardly. Not at his own fate, but at that of the woman he loved. Instead of killing Bill as he’d hoped, he’d enraged him and sentenced Sid to death.
He dropped like a stone at phenomenal speed, the sides of the chasm racing past in a blur of ice-blue, the yawning abyss of hell’s hungry jaws closing in around him—
He snagged to an agonising halt as something caught his outspread arms!
His downward plummet ceased and he swung in the middle of the abyss, a hundred and fifty feet down.
Fearing what he might find, cautiously he looked up into the smug face of Nathan Raine.
“Hey Benny,” he mock-scolded, suspended upside down from a line attached to a hovering airplane. “Quit hanging around. We’ve got a job to do.”
37:
Rules of Engagement
At the exact instant that Benjamin King had wrenched his impaled hand free of the ice wall and hurled the Egyptian dagger at the mercenary leader known only as Bill, the V-22 Osprey had swung across the glacier. Its wing-mounted rotors had tilted vertically to bring it to a halt, hovering above the three human-shaped heat signatures lost within the twisted landscape of Viedma.
Strapped to repelling lines, ready to zip down to rescue King and Sid, Raine had watched in horror as King dropped into a yawning chasm while Bill had raised his MP-5 submachine gun angrily at Sid’s head.
A single shot from Private Murray’s M14 sniper rifle missed Bill’s head and slammed into his chest, hurling him backwards, into the narrow channel of ice. He slid down the incline out of sight.
But Raine ignored all of that, focussed instead on King. With a surreal sense of slow motion, the archaeologist hurled himself into the chasm. Raine, somehow, had predicted the move seconds before he had made it, just as the Osprey had come to hover above the mini-battle ground, and had already thrown himself into thin air.
As King dropped below the edge of the crevice, Raine had been only meters above. He’d reached out to snag the falling man but missed.
Expertly, he clamped his arms tight to his sides and angled his body like a torpedo, streamlined and fast compared to the wild flailing of King’s limbs.
Faster and faster the two men flew down the chasm, one oblivious of the other. Raine reached out again and, quite by accident, clamped his hand around King outstretched right arm. Despite being slick with blood, Raine found a strong purchase and, using his free, gloved hand and wrapping his legs around the repelling line, he’d snagged them both to a halt in the middle of the abyss.
“Hey Benny,” he’d said, feeling a rush of relief wash over him. “Quit hanging around. We’ve got a job to do.”
Minutes later, winched up to the safety of the hovering tilt-rotor, Gibbs helped King inside the hold. Raine clambered in after him and watched as he staggered forward into the arms of Sid. They embraced tightly, both tearful.
After Raine had leapt from the plane to save King, Gibb’s had led his team down onto the ice. Securing Sid, he had taken her back to the safety of the Osprey while O’Rourke led the remaining men in pursuit of the mercenary leader.