Fifty yards passed in virtual silence. The ship grew bigger against the terrain. A hundred yards farther on, the ship became the skyline in front of Ryan. The moon sat in the sky behind it, only a quarter full.
When he reached the ship’s shadow straddling the frozen ground less than forty yards from his goal, Ryan felt like he was crawling inside the coldest spot he had ever entered.
Voices reached him, speaking in Russian.
He lay still on the ground, trying not to shiver too much. The voices drifted over his head, then finally drifted away. When he looked up again, he saw Jak crawling up the icy incline to reach the starboard side of the ship.
Ryan crept along, as well. With the cold wind whipping, the Russian guards weren’t as enamored of doing the sentry duty as they might have been at some other time.
He pushed himself up silently, then grabbed the railing in a gloved hand. He eased up and took a look, spotting a guard poking his head around the corner. Going still again, he waited, feeling his body rebel against the seeping cold that ate in from the big fur suit.
When the guard looked away, he hauled himself aboard. Before he could take more than a couple steps, another quake rocked the iceberg. Earsplitting cracks sounded off in the distance, then the iceberg twisted sickeningly again.
Ryan held on to the railing, his feet sliding across the fresh ice that had frozen on the decks. He hung on to the fur-wrapped Steyr grimly, working to keep it from banging against the railing. He didn’t really think it would be heard above the grinding that sounded deep within the ice around the frigate, but didn’t want to take the chance all the same.
Metal screamed below from the abuse it was taking as the ice shifted. One of the lifeboats in its moorings beside Ryan squealed as the chains shifted.
Then the quake was over, although the vibrations continued running the four-hundred-foot length of the frigate.
After stripping out of the bulky fur suit packed with snow and ice, Ryan moved toward the guard he had spotted, staying in close to the superstructure. He slid the panga free and shouldered the Steyr.
The man coughed in front of him, and Ryan saw the puffs of gray breath slip around the corner. The one-eyed warrior slid forward, staying behind the corner.
The man had his back to Ryan, sipping from a cup held in both his hands. Ryan slipped an arm around the man’s face, jamming it tight up against the man’s mouth so he couldn’t scream. Then he yanked the panga’s cruel blade across the Russian’s throat. The cup dropped to the deck, spilling its contents across the ice and causing gray steam to rise.
Blood spurted as carotoid and windpipe were severed. Holding on to the man to keep him from running, Ryan felt the life leave the man.
He waited, making sure no one saw him, then threw the body over the side onto the ice. The sound of it hitting was muffled by the bulky clothes the corpse wore.
Ryan went on, the panga bare in his hands. The second man saw him and had enough time to attempt to raise his pistol, then the one-eyed man was on him. Ryan drove the man back with his weight, clapping a gloved hand over the sailor’s mouth. He stabbed the panga deep into the man’s throat, then angled it up so it went into the Russian’s brain.
Dragging the body, Ryan stashed it under one of the tarps covering the deck-mounted machine guns.
A shadow drifted in front of him, coming from the other side of the ship. Moonlight splintered off of J.B.’s glasses as the Armorer turned to face Ryan.
J.B. held up three fingers, then closed them, signaling that he’d met three Russians along the way and none of them were part of the problem anymore.
Ryan showed him two fingers, then turned a hand up, letting the Armorer know that he hadn’t completely recced the stern section of the frigate yet.
The stern section of the frigate had two levels. The back dropped down eight feet or more, Ryan couldn’t tell exactly because of the shadows, and companionways on either side that led down. A second set of blasters was below the first, also covered by a tarp.
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