For as much as he pantomimed the gunfighting action, the sentry was woefully slow on the draw, allowing Clark to give him a quick hammer-fist to the side of the neck and then pluck the small revolver out of the man’s holster before he could react. Intent on moving toward the sound of the screams, and unwilling to leave an adversary behind him, Clark pressed the little revolver to the wide-eyed man’s belly and pulled the trigger.
He got nothing. Not even a click.
“Shit!” He resorted to using the handgun as a mini — battering ram, driving it barrel-first, again and again, into the man’s teeth, before slamming it into the side of his head.
Clark realized the gun was a replica about the time the man collapsed.
“Some gunslinger,” Clark spat, anchoring the man to the ground with a boot to the head. He dropped the worthless prop and wheeled toward the door — moving toward the sound of bitter screams.
Hala brought the cleaver down with all her might. Ren flailed, grabbing her hand and shoving the blade away as it came down. It hovered a hair above his heaving throat. Tendons knotted in his neck. Zulfira was there, too, helping Hala press the cleaver down, down, down.
Ren screamed, one hand wrapped around Hala’s where she held the cleaver, the other flailing with the little knife, slashing at Zulfira’s back as he struck blow after sickening blow. “Why? Won’t? You? Die?”
Hala could feel her aunt’s strength ebbing. A ghoulish smile crossed Ren’s face. He felt it, too.
Hala’s stomach lurched and she had to fight the urge to vomit. She was too small to finish this, too weak.
A shadow crossed behind her. Her heart sank. More of Fat Suo’s men—
Then a dark boot came down next to her hand, stepping on the spine of the cleaver and driving the blade deep into Ren’s neck.
Hala looked up at the tall man who towered above her. He was white — an American, with thinning silver hair and hard eyes that flashed with cruelty. He softened when he met her gaze and put a hand over his heart.
A friend.
Hala rolled away, gasping. There was nothing she could do about it if he decided to kill her. She ignored him and dragged herself across the floor to her aunt, who lay shuddering in a pool of blood on the floor. The man dropped to his knees beside them. He worked furiously to stop Zulfira’s bleeding, but her wounds were too many and too deep.
Hala pressed her forehead against her aunt’s cheek, whimpering. “Why? Why did you do that?”
The grimace face fell away. Her lashes fluttered. “I told you,” she whispered. “We do what we must.”
“I’m sorry,” the gray-haired man said to Hala after her aunt breathed a final shuddering breath.
Hala looked up at him, wide-eyed, covered in blood and tears. She whispered, “Who are you?”
She’d grown up with a rudimentary grasp of English from working at the Jiefang market, talking to tourists with her father. Few Americans or Europeans even tried to speak Mandarin. Fewer still attempted more than a butchered greeting in Arabic. No tourist at the market had ever tried to talk to her in Uyghur. She was young and smart, with an ear for language. Her father had taught her early on that she could go far by learning English. Classes at the gymnastics school helped refine the basics she’d learned at the market.
“A friend,” the man said, hand to heart again. “Are you hurt?”
Hala put the collar of her shirt in her mouth and stared at him, unable to speak. She tasted blood, but did not care. Her head spun. The room grew smaller.
“Are you hurt?” the man asked again, pantomiming a knife against his own arm. “Cut?”
Hala shook her head, then, without another thought, threw herself into the stranger’s arms. She wanted to cry, but nothing came out.
23
Gray clouds hung low enough to scrape the ice while Dr. Moon sat in the wardroom and ate a breakfast of steel-cut oats and blueberries. She was dressed for traveclass="underline" thick socks, heavy boots, insulated Arctic-weight bibs she kept unzipped while inside the boat. A bright red anorak with a wolverine fur ruff lay draped across the packed duffel in the chair beside her. It was custom-made, a gift from her auntie, a famous Inupiat seamstress in her home village of Point Hope.
Moon looked at her watch. It was already ten in the morning. She was ready to go, but skeptical that anything would happen today. Travel this far north meant a lot of waiting.
Utqiagvik did not see the sun from mid-November until late January, but when the light returned, it came back with a vengeance. Now, nearing the end of March, the sun circled overhead from seven in the morning until after nine p.m., giving Patti Moon and the rest of the scientists aboard the research vessel Sikuliaq abundant light for their experiments — weather permitting. Sun or not, the Arctic was a fickle place, with weather patterns that changed rapidly and with little notice. Lois Deering, the meteorologist on board Sikuliaq, often joked that the high-pressure system was so shallow at these latitudes that good weather could be chased away with a sneeze in the wrong direction.
The morning before had broken bluebird clear. Lois the weather guesser had forecast at least twelve more decent hours — then someone sneezed and blew in a low.
The little icebreaker was in pack ice, young, from the previous winter, but still a good foot thick, so they didn’t have to deal with waves. The wind had howled all night. Temperatures fell well below zero — reminding everyone on board that spring in the Arctic was rarely all sunshine and daffodils.
Kelli Symonds came in, wool beanie pulled low, cheeks flushed pink from a stroll on the weather deck.
Moon saluted her with a spoon heaped full of oats. “Looks chilly out there.”
“To the bone,” Symonds said, sounding, as she always did, like she had salt water instead of blood in her veins. “To the bitter bone.” Moon could not help but imagine the pretty young woman wearing a peacoat, smoking a corncob pipe, and calling everyone “matey.” In truth, Kelli Symonds was simply a competent sailor who, when she was not at sea on Sikuliaq, lived north of Seattle with her retired mother, two Yorkshire terriers, and her husband, whom she’d met while they were both attending the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point.
Symonds threw her wool gloves onto the table and poured herself a cup of coffee from an urn against the bulkhead.
“They’re on their way,” she said, flopping down across from Moon, holding her coffee mug with both hands, letting the steam curl up and warm her face.
“Seriously?” Moon said. “In this?”
“The skipper got a call on the radio five minutes ago. Chopper’s half an hour out.” Symonds took a sip of coffee, peering across her mug with narrow eyes. “I’ve been working in these lofty latitudes for almost ten years, and I’ve never seen a chopper fly out to pluck someone off the ice who wasn’t about to keel over from botulism or some such thing.” She took another sip of coffee, then gave Moon a mock toast with the mug. “You must really rate.” Her eyes shifted quickly from side to side, and then she leaned over the table and whispered, “Are you a secret agent?”
“More likely that I’m in trouble,” Moon said.
“Maybe.” Symonds looked into her coffee, then up to meet Moon’s gaze. “Do you really think there was someone down there, under the ice? A Russian submarine or something?”
“I know what I heard,” Moon said. “And it wasn’t farting fish like Thorson says.”
The part about the noises sounding like Chinese seemed like something Moon should keep to herself.