Текст книги "Ice Hunt"

Автор книги: James Rollins

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Matt could smell the fuel still in the air. They had not run out of juice, that’s for sure. And Brent Cumming always kept his plane’s engine in tiptop shape. A mechanic before becoming a bush pilot, Brent knew his way around the Cessna’s three-hundred-horsepower engine. With two kids and a wife, he depended on that craft for both his livelihood and his lifeline, so Brent maintained his machinery like a finely tuned Rolex.

“When the engine began to sputter, we tried to find a place to land, but by that time we were among these damn mountains. The pilot…he…he tried to radio for help, but even the radio seemed to be malfunctioning.”

Matt understood. There had been storms of solar flares this past week. They messed with all sorts of communication in the northern regions. He glanced back to the wreckage. He could only imagine the terror of those last moments: the panic, the desperation, the disbelief.

The man’s voice cracked slightly. He had to swallow to continue speaking. “We had no choice but to try to land here. And then…and then…”

Matt reached over and patted the man’s shoulder. The rest of the story was plainly evident. “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here. But I should see about that head wound of yours first.”

He crossed over to Mariah and retrieved the first-aid kit. It was really a full med kit. Matt had assembled it himself, utilizing his experience in the Green Berets. Besides the usual gauze rolls, Band-Aids, and aspirin, he had a small pharmacy of antibiotics, antihistamines, antiprotozoals, and antidiarrhetics. The kit also contained suture material, local anesthetic, syringes, splinting material, even a stethoscope. He pulled out a bottle of peroxide and cleaned the man’s wound.

Matt talked as he worked. “So, Craig, what was your business up in Prudhoe?” he asked, studying the other. The fellow certainly didn’t have the look of an oil rigger. Among such hard men, black oil and grease were indelibly tattooed into the creases and folds of their hands. Contrarily, this man’s palms were free of calluses, his nails unbroken and neatly trimmed. Matt supposed he was an engineer or geologist. In fact, the man had a studious look to his countenance, keenly assessing his surroundings, glancing to Matt’s horse, his dogs, the meadow, and the surrounding mountains. The only place he avoided looking was back to the wreckage.

“Prudhoe Bay wasn’t my destination. We were to refuel there, then hop out to a research base on the ice cap. Omega Drift Station, a part of the SCICEX research group.”

“SCICEX?” Matt smeared antibiotic cream on the wound, then covered it with a Teflon-coated gauze sponge, wrapping it in place.

“ ‘Scientific Ice Expeditions,’ ” Craig explained, wincing as Matt secured the wrap. “It’s a five-year collaborative effort between the U.S. Navy and civilian scientists.”

Matt nodded. “I think I remember hearing about that.” The group was using Navy subs to collect data from over a hundred thousand miles of ship track in the Arctic, delving into regions never before visited. Matt’s brow crinkled. “But I thought that ended back in 1999.”

His words drew the man’s full attention, his eyes widening slightly in surprise as he turned to Matt.

“Despite appearances,” Matt explained, “I’m Fish and Game. So I’m generally familiar with many of the larger Arctic research projects.”

Craig studied him with cautious, calculating eyes, then bobbed his head. “Well, you’re right. Officially SCICEX ended, but one station – Omega – had drifted into the ice cap’s Zone of Comparative Inaccessibility.”

No-man’s-land,Matt thought. The ZCI was the most remote part of the polar ice cap, hardest to reach and most isolated.

“For a chance to study such an inaccessible region, funding was extended to this one SCICEX station.”

“So you’re a scientist?” Matt said, fastening up his med kit.

The man laughed, but there was no real humor behind it. “No, not a scientist. I was on assignment from my newspaper. The Seattle Times. I’m a political reporter.”

“A political reporter?”

The man shrugged.

“Why would—” Matt was cut off by the buzzing sound of a plane’s engine. He craned his neck. The lowering sky was thick with heavy clouds. Off to the side, Bane growled deep in his throat as the noise grew in volume.

Craig climbed to his feet. “Another plane. Maybe someone heard the pilot’s distress call.”

From the clouds, a small plane appeared, dropping over the valley but still keeping high. Matt watched it pass. It was another Cessna, only a larger version than Brent’s. It appeared to be a 206 or 207 Skywagon, an eight-seater.

Matt whistled Mariah closer to him, then plucked his binoculars from the saddlebag. Lifting the scopes, he searched a moment for the plane, then focused on it. It appeared brand-new…or freshly painted. Rare for these parts. The terrain was hard on aircraft.

“Have they spotted us?” Craig asked.

The plane tilted on a wing and began a slow circle over the valley. “With the trail of engine smoke, it’d be hard to miss us.”

Still, Matt felt a tingle of unease. He had not spotted a single plane in the past week, and now two in one day. And this plane was too clean, too white. As he watched, the rear cargo door craned open. That was the nice thing about that size of Skywagon. Such planes were used around these parts to shuttle the injured to various outlying hospitals. The rear cargo hatch was perfect for loading and unloading stretchers, or, in worst cases, coffins. But there was another useful and common application for the Skywagon’s large rear hatch.

From the cargo bay, a shape flew free, and a second quickly followed. Sky divers. Matt had a hard time following them with his binoculars. They were plummeting fast. Then chutes ballooned out, slowing them, making them easier to focus upon. Parawing airfoils, Matt recognized, used in precision parachuting for landing in tight places. The pair swung around in tandem, aiming for the meadow.

Matt focused on the divers themselves. Like the plane and chutes, they were outfitted in white, no insignia. Rifles were strapped to their backs, but he was unable to discern make and type.

As he spied on them, cold dread settled in the pit of his stomach. It was not the presence of the guns that trickled ice into Matt’s blood. Instead, it was what was undereach sky diver. Each man was strapped into the seat of a motorcycle. The tires were studded with metal spikes. Snow choppers. They were muscular vehicles, capable of tearing up terrain, chasing anything down in these mountains.

Matt lowered the binoculars. He stared over at the reporter, then cleared his throat. “I hope you’re good at riding a horse.”

2. Cat and Mouse

APRIL 6, 5:36 P.M.

ZCI REGION OF THE POLAR ICE CAP

OMEGA DRIFT STATION

Will I ever be warm again…?

Captain Perry crunched across the ice and snow toward Omega Drift Station. The wind whistled around him, a haunted sound that spoke to the hollowness in his heart. Here, at the end of the world, the wind was a living creature, always blowing, scouring the surface like a starving beast. It was the ultimate predator: merciless, constant, inescapable. As an old Inuit proverb says, “It’s not the cold that kills, it’s the wind.”

Perry marched steadily forward into the teeth of the blustery gale. Behind him, the Polar Sentinelfloated inside a polynya, a large open lake within the ice. The Omega Drift Station was constructed on its shoreline, the site having been chosen for the stability of the nearby polynya, allowing easy ingress and egress of a Navy sub. The polynya owed its permanence to the ring of thick pressure ridges that surrounded the lake, climbing two stories high and delving four times as deep below the surface. These battlements of packed ice held the lake open against the constant crush of the surrounding floes. The research station was built on a relatively level ice plain a quarter mile away, a long hike in the subzero cold.

He marched with a small party of his men, the first of four rotations to be allowed shore leave. The sailors chattered among themselves, but Perry remained hunched in his Navy parka, the edge of his fur-lined hood pulled tightly over his face. He stared off to the northeast, to where the Russian ice base had been discovered two months ago, only thirty miles from here. A shiver trembled through him, but it had nothing to do with the cold.

So many dead…He pictured the Russian bodies, the old inhabitants of the ice base, stacked like cordwood after being chopped or thawed out of their icy tomb. Thirty-two men, twelve women. It had taken them two weeks to clear all the bodies. Some had looked starved to death, while others looked as if they had met more violent ends. They found one body hung in a room, the rope so frozen it shattered with their touch. But that wasn’t the worst…

Perry pushed this thought away.

As he climbed a ridge of ice, made easier by the steps chopped into it, the drift station came into view. It was a small hamlet of red Jamesway huts. The assembly of fifteen red buildings appeared like a bloody rash on the ice. Steam smoked from each hut, misting over the base, giving it a deceptively sultry appearance. The rumble of twenty-four generators seemed to vibrate the mists. The smell of diesel fuel and kerosene hung over the site. A single lone American flag hung from a pole, snapping in the occasional fiercer gusts.

Scattered around the semipermanent settlement, a handful of Ski-Doos and two sealed Sno-Cats stood ready to service the scientists and personnel of the base. There was even an iceboat, a catamaran resting on stainless-steel runners.

From the top of the ridge, Perry stared out toward the horizon. He saw the worn trail snaking across the ice, heading from Omega out to the old Russian base. Ever since the discovery, the personnel here had been shuttling back and forth across the ice cap, using whatever vehicles were on hand. Currently a quarter of the drift station’s manpower had shifted over to the buried Russian base and was encamped inside the inverted mountain of ice.

Perry stared another long moment. The path to the Russian base was easy to see. This area of the ice cap was covered with a layer of scalloped snow, what was called sastrugi,little curled waves of frozen snow formed by winds and erosion. “Like the top of a lemon meringue,” his XO had commented. But the path made by the Sno-Cats and Ski-Doos had ground the lemon meringue sastrugiflat, leaving a worn track through the crisp waves.

Perry understood the interest of the men and women here. They were scientists with an avid curiosity. But none of them had been the first to enter the base as he had been, crossing the thirty miles overland from Omega to the defunct station. None knew what he and a small group of his men had found in the heart of the station. He had immediately ordered his men silent and stationed a complement of armed guards to keep that one section of the base off-limits to the Omega personnel. Only one member of the drift station knew of Perry’s find: Dr. Amanda Reynolds. She had been with Perry when he had entered the base. For the first time, the strong and independent woman had been shaken to her core.

Whatever had shown up on the DeepEye sonar – the flicker of movement seen on the recording – was never discovered. Maybe it had been just a sonar ghost, a mirage created by the sub’s own motion, or maybe it was some scavenger that had vacated the station, like a polar bear. Though this last was unlikely, not unless the beast had found an entrance that they had yet to discover. Two months ago, they had been forced to use thermite charges to melt a way down into the buried station. Since then, extra heat charges and C4 explosives had been used to open an artificial polynya nearby for the Polar Sentinelto service the newly reoccupied base.

As Perry climbed down the ice ridge, he wished they had simply sunk the entire Russian station. No good would come of it. He was certain of that. But he had orders to follow. He shivered as the winds kicked up.

A shout drew his attention back to the assembly of Jamesway huts. A figure dressed in a blue parka waved an arm in their direction, encouraging them forward. Perry crossed down the ridge toward the figure. The man hurried forward to meet him, hunched against the cold.

“Captain.” The figure was Erik Gustof, the Canadian meteorologist. He was a strapping fellow of Norwegian descent, characterized by whitish-blond hair and tall build, though at the moment, all that could be discerned were the man’s two eyes, goggled against the snow’s glare, and a frosted white mustache. “There’s a satellite call holding for you.”

“Who—?”

“Admiral Reynolds.” The man glanced to the skies. “You’d best be quick. There’s a big storm headed our way, and that last bevy of solar flares is still wreaking havoc with the systems.”

Perry nodded and turned to his junior officer. “Dismiss the men. They’re on their own until twenty hundred. Then the next team gets their turn ashore.”

This was met with general whoops from the men. They scattered in various directions, some to the station’s mess hall, others to the recreation hut, and others still to the living quarters for more personal dalliances. Captain Perry followed Erik to an assembly of three joined huts, the main base of operations.

“Dr. Reynolds sent me out to hurry you along,” Erik explained. “She’s speaking with her father right now. We don’t know how long communication will hold.”

They reached the door to the operations hut, kicked off snow and ice from their boots, then ducked through the doorway. The heat of the interior was painful after the frigid cold. Perry shook off his gloves, then unzipped his parka and threw back his hood. He rubbed the tip of his nose to make sure it was still there.

“Nippy out, eh?” Erik said, remaining in his parka.

“It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity,” he grumbled sarcastically. Perry hung up his parka among the many others already there. He still wore his blue jumpsuit with his name stenciled on a pocket. He folded his cap and tucked it into his belt.

Erik stepped back to the door. “You know the way to the NAVSAT station. I’m going to check on some instruments outside before the storm hits tonight.”

“Thanks.”

Erik grinned and yanked the door open. Even in such a short time, the wind had kicked up outside. A gust whipped inside and struck Perry like a slap to the face. Erik hurried out, shoving the door shut.

Perry shivered a moment, rubbing his hands. Who the hell would volunteer to stay in this godforsaken land for two years?

He crossed the anteroom and went through another set of doors into the main operations room. It held all the various offices of the administration, along with several labs. The main purpose of the research in this building was to measure the seasonal rate of growth and erosion of the ice pack, measuring the heat budget of the Arctic. But other labs in other huts varied greatly, from a full mining operation that sampled cores of the ocean floor to a hydrolab that studied the health of the phyto-and zooplankton under the ice. The research was continuous, running around the clock as the station drifted along, floating with the polar current and traveling almost two miles every day.

He nodded to various familiar faces behind desks or bent over computer screens. He crossed through a set of airlock-type doors that led into one of the adjoining huts.

This hut was extra insulated and had two backup generators. It was Omega’s lifeline to the outside world. It contained all their radio and communication equipment: shortwave for maintaining contact with teams on the ice, VLF and ULF for communication with the subs assigned here, and NAVSAT, the military satellite communication system. The hut was empty, except for the lone figure of Amanda Reynolds.

Perry crossed to her. She glanced up from where she leaned over a TTY, a text telephone unit. The portable keyboard device allowed her to communicate over the satellite. She could speak into the microphone and answers would come out on the LCD screen.

Amanda nodded to him, but spoke to her father, Admiral Reynolds. “I know, Dad. I know you didn’t want me out here in the first place. But—”

She was cut off and leaned closer to read the TTY. Her face reddened; obviously an argument had been under way. And it was an old argument from the looks of it. Her father hadn’t wanted Amanda to take this assignment in the first place, worried about her, about her disability. Amanda had defied him, coming anyway, asserting her independence.

But Perry wondered how much of her fight was not so much to convince her father as herself. He had never met a woman so fiercely determined to prove herself in all things, in all ways.

And it was taking its toll.

Perry studied the worn look in her eyes, the bruised shadows beneath them. She appeared to have aged a decade over the past two months. Secrets did that to you.

She continued, speaking into the phone, heat entering her voice. “We’ll discuss this later. Captain Perry is here.”

As she read her father’s response, she held her breath, biting her lower lip. “Fine!” she finally snapped, and ripped off the headset. She shoved it at him. “Here.”

He took the headset, noting the tremble in her fingers. Fury, frustration, or both? He palmed the microphone to keep his next words private with her. “Is he still keeping the information under lock and key?”

Amanda snorted and stood. “And electronic padlock and voiceprint recognition and retinal scan identification. Fort Knox couldn’t be more secure.”

Perry smiled at her. “He’s doing his best. The bureaucratic machinery under him grinds slowly. With such sensitive matters, diplomatic channels have to be handled with delicacy.”

“But I don’t know why. This goes back to World War Two. After so long, the world has a right to know.”

“It’s waited for fifty years. It can wait another month or so. With the already strained relations between the U.S. and Russia, the way has to be greased before letting the information out.”

Amanda sighed, stared into his eyes, then shook her head. “You sound just like my father.”

Perry leaned in. “In that case, this would be very Freudian.” He kissed her.

She smiled under his lips and mumbled, “You kiss like him, too.”

He choked a laugh, pulling back.

She pointed to the headset. “You’d best not keep the admiral waiting.”

He slipped the headset in place and pulled up the microphone. “Captain Perry here.”

“Captain, I trust you’re taking good care of my daughter.” His voice cut in and out a bit.

“Yes, sir…very good care.” One hand reached over and squeezed Amanda’s hand. Their affection for each other was no secret, but it had grown deeper over the past two months, slipping past fondness to something more meaningful. For propriety’s sake, they restricted any outward displays to private moments. Not even the admiral, Amanda’s father, knew of the escalation of their affections.

“Captain, I’ll keep this brief,” the admiral continued. “The Russian ambassador was contacted yesterday and given a copy of your report.”

“But I thought we weren’t going to contact them until—”

Now it was Perry’s turn to be cut off. “We had no choice,” the admiral interrupted. “Word had somehow reached Moscow about the rediscovery of the old ice station.”

“Yes, sir. But what does this mean for those of us out here?”

There was a long pause. Perry was momentarily unsure if the solar storm had cut off communication – then the admiral spoke again, “Greg…”

The informal use of his first name instantly drew him to full alert.

“Greg, I need you to be aware of something else. While I may be out here on the West Coast, I’ve been in this business long enough to know when the hive back in D.C. is buzzing. Something is going on over there. Midnight meetings between the NSA and the CIA over the matter. The secretary of the Navy has been recalled from a junket in the Middle East. The entire cabinet was recalled early from their Easter break.”

“What’s it all about?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. Something broke high in command, higher than my station. Word has yet to reach me…if it ever will. Some political shit storm is brewing over this. D.C. is locking up hatches and battening down. I’ve never seen its like before.”

A cold finger of dread ran up Perry’s spine. “I don’t understand. Why?”

Again his words stuttered in the electronic chop. “I’m not sure. But I wanted to give you heads-up about the escalation down here.”

Perry frowned. It all sounded like the usual politics to him. He would note the admiral’s concern, but what else could he do?

“Captain, there’s one other thing. A strange tidbit that has trickled down to me; actually it was passed by an aide to the undersecretary. It’s a single word that seems to be the center of the shit storm.”

“What’s the word?”

“Grendel.”

Perry’s breath went out of him.

“Perhaps a code name, a name of a ship, I don’t know,” the admiral continued. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Perry closed his eyes. Grendel…The discovery had only been made today. The steel plaque had been covered in ice and hoarfrost and was easy to miss. It was near the main surface entrance into the buried ice station.

“Greg?”

His mind continued to spin. How did Washington know…?Omega’s translator and the Sentinel’s own linguistic expert had argued over the plaque’s translation, especially the last word, until finally coming to the same conclusion.

It was the name of the buried base: Ice Station Grendel.

“Captain Perry, are you still there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does the word mean something?”

“Yes, sir, I believe it does.” His voice remained tight. Besides the word being etched on the plaque, Perry had seen the same Cyrillic lettering in one other place, on one of the station’s doors…a door before which he himself had posted armed guards.

Until today, he had not known the meaning of the Cyrillic letters stenciled upon that monstrous door.

Now he did.

But he hadn’t been the first.

6:26 P.M.

BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA

Matt led the way up the steep slope, guiding Mariah by the reins. Craig rode on top, hunched down, clinging to the saddle horn. Matt dared not ride double, at least not yet, not until they were headed downhill or at least on flat land. He feared taxing the horse too soon.

Ahead, his four dogs ranged toward the top of the valley. They all had to get out of these steep peaks. Only Bane seemed to sense his master’s fear, sticking close, ears perked.

Matt glanced behind. The sky divers had surely landed by now, but there was no growl of motorcycle engines. No sign of a chase, but the dense forest of spruce and aspen obscured his view.

Already a twilight gloom had settled over the valley, the sun disappearing both into the surrounding peaks and the stacks of dark clouds overhead. Being April, the days had begun to lengthen from the continual dark of winter toward the midnight sun of summer.

Squinting, Matt watched over his shoulder. But there was no telling what was going on. He frowned. Maybe he had been wrong…maybe he had grown too paranoid out here in these empty woods.

Craig must have noticed his concerned expression. “Could it have been a rescue party? Are we running for no good reason?”

Matt opened his mouth to speak – then an explosion took his words away. Both men stared downhill. From the gloom below, a fiery ball rolled skyward. The blast echoed away.

“The plane…” Craig mumbled.

“They destroyed it.” Matt’s eyes grew wide. He pictured Brent Cumming’s body razed.

“Why?”

Matt squinted, thinking. He could come up with only one reason. “They’re covering their tracks. If the plane had been sabotaged, they’d need to destroy the evidence – and that includes any witnesses.” Matt pictured the clear trail of hoof, boot, and paw prints heading away from the crash site. He’d had no time to mask their path.

From below a new noise cut through the forest like a band saw. A motorcycle engine roared to life, growling fiercely then settling to a low rumble. A second soon joined the chorus.

Bane echoed the motors, rumbling deep in his chest.

Matt stared at the weak glow of the fading sun. The clouds were lowering still. They’d get more than a sifting of snow overnight. A fact he was sure their pursuers knew, too, which meant the saboteurs would attempt to run them down before the sun set.

“What can we do?” Craig asked.

As answer, Matt tugged Mariah’s lead and headed for the top of the rise. He had to find a way to delay them…at least long enough until the skies opened.

“Is there somewhere we can hide?” Craig’s voice trembled. He hunched farther over the saddle as Mariah clambered up a tumble of talus rock.

Matt dismissed Craig’s question for now. Foremost in his mind was simply to survive until nightfall. They were at a distinct disadvantage. One horse, two men. Their pursuers each had a snow chopper. Not good odds. Already the rumble of the cycles throttled up as the chase began.

Matt tugged Mariah up to the ridgeline. At the top, a sudden wind gusted from the southwest, frigid with the promise of ice and sleet. Without hesitating, he headed down the slope, toward where he had set up his camp. There was no refuge to be found there, so he weighed other options. He knew of some caves, but they were too far, and there was no certain safety to be found in them. Another plan was needed.

“Can you ride on your own?” Matt asked Craig.

A weak nod answered him, but fear shone in the man’s eyes.

Matt reached and slid his rifle from behind the saddle, then shoved a box of rifle cartridges into a pocket.

“What are you planning?” Craig asked.

“There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just going to use you as bait.” He then bent down to his dog. “Bane.”

The dog’s ears perked up, his eyes on Matt.

Matt pointed his arm down the ridge. “Bane…to camp!” he ordered sharply.

The dog spun back around and started down. The other dogs followed. Matt slapped Mariah’s rump, starting her down after them. Matt trotted beside them for a few paces. “Keep after the dogs. They’ll get you to my camp. Take cover as well as you can. There’s also an ax by the woodpile. Just in case.”

Craig’s face blanched, but he nodded, earning Matt’s respect.

Matt slid to a stop, watching a moment as horse, rider, and dogs trotted down the wooded and bouldered slope. They were soon gone, vanished into the thick woods.

Turning, he climbed back up the trail until he was twenty yards from the ridgeline. He then leaped from the muddied trail of hoofprints to a granite outcropping, then leapfrogged to another stone. He wanted no evidence of his side trail. Once well off the churned track, Matt settled under the limbs of a spruce, tucking into the shadows, shielding himself behind the trunk. He had a clear view to the ridgeline. If the pursuers followed their same path, they would be momentarily silhouetted against the sky as they crossed the ridge and began their descent into the next valley.

Crouching to one knee, Matt wrapped his rifle’s sling around his wrist, positioned the walnut stock against his shoulder, and took aim down the barrel. He was confident he could take out one of the riders at such close range, but could he take out both of them?

From over the ridgeline, the grumbling of the two engines grew closer and closer, a pair of maddened animals on the trail of prey.

Kneeling now, blood pounding in his ears, Matt recalled another time, a decade ago, another life, being holed up in a mortar-blasted building in Somalia. Gunfire all around. The world reduced to green shadows and lines by his nightvision goggles. It hadn’t been the firefights that unnerved most men. It was the waiting.

Drawing a slow breath through his lips, Matt forced himself to relax, to say loose and ready. Tension could throw off one’s aim better than poor marksmanship. He let his breath out, centering himself. This was not Somalia. These were his woods. The crisp scent of the crushed spruce needles under his knee helped sharpen him, reminding him where he was. He knew these mountains better than anyone.

Across the ridge, the noise of the motorcycles ratcheted up, filling the world with their growls and sputters. Matt made out the sound of branches breaking under the studded tires. Close…He moved his finger from the trigger guard to the trigger and leaned closer to the rifle, his cheek against the wooden stock.

The wait grew to a timeless moment. Despite the cold, a bead of sweat rolled down his right temple. He had to force himself not to squint one eye. Always shoot with both eyes open. His father had drilled that into him when deer hunting back in Alabama, reinforced later by his boot camp sergeant. Matt breathed shallowly through his nose, concentrating.

Come on…

As if hearing him, a cycle shot over the ridgeline at full throttle, catching Matt by surprise. Rather than riding cautiously to the top of the rise, the rider had gunned his cycle and flew high across the ridge, his tires lifting free of the ground.

Matt shifted his hip, following its course. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle blasted, answered immediately by the ping of a slug on metal.

The airborne cycle fishtailed. He had struck the rear tire guard. Rider and cycle struck the ground askew, bounced once, then cartwheeled into a tumble. The rider leaped free, rolling down the slope and into dense bushes.

“Damn it,” Matt mumbled. He kept his gaze fixed on the ridgeline. He had no idea if the first rider was unharmed, injured, or dead, but he dared not take his attention from the ridgeline. There was still the second cycle. Matt levered the spent cartridge out the side of the rifle and snapped the next one home, wishing for his old M-16 automatic from his Green Beret days.

He covered the top of the rise.

His hearing, after the rifle blast and tumbling crash of the first cycle, was confused. The grumble of the second cycle echoed all around. Movement to the left caught his eye. He swung his rifle in time to see the second cycle shoot over the ridge a short distance down from the other.

He aimed, more desperately than with any true marksmanship, and fired. This time there was not even the ping of slug on metal. The cycle landed smoothly, the rider tucked hard between the handles of his bike, then both disappeared behind an outcropping.