Footsteps came toward Ryan, sending him into hiding behind the steps after waving a warning to J.B. He remained still, hoping the shadows beneath the companionway would be enough to hide him.
The Russian sailor’s eyes had to have been bad, or he was one of the really inbred ones. He looked short and skinny, almost like a mutie because his face was a set of mismatched angles. He started up the companionway without a second thought.
Ryan fell in behind him, wrapping a big hand around his throat to squeeze off any chance of the sailor crying out. Then slipped the panga between the man’s third and fourth ribs, driving the long blade into the heart beneath.
The man gave a series of convulsive jerks, flailing back at Ryan with both hands. It took him less than a minute to fight through what remained of his life.
Ryan wiped off the blade, then left the corpse lying out of sight beneath the steps. He continued on, matching his stride with J.B.’s. He found a final man at the very back of the stern, pressed up against the railing and looking out against the stark whiteness of the iceberg that was carrying them all to their doom.
He ate slowly and methodically from a small cup of what smelled to Ryan like soup broth with a fish-and-potato base. He leaned against the storage wall of the abovedecks room, taking shelter from the wind.
Ryan moved in behind him.
The sailor had to have sensed something, because Ryan knew there was nothing for the man to have heard. The guy turned dropping one hand to the blaster holstered on his hip.
Ryan buttstroked him with the Steyr, the stock making a dull crunch against the Russian’s head. He moaned weakly as he fell, letting Ryan know he wasn’t dead.
The one-eyed man knelt, slipping the blaster away from the man and pressing the panga against his naked throat. “Talk quietly or you die.”
The man remained still. The moonlight played over his waxy features, showing the knots of bone swelling up from his forehead, and the unevenness of his face, one cheek higher than the other. His nose had an extra hole in it, just to the side of the right that made a whistling noise as he breathed hard.
“Do you understand English?” Ryan demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Da,” the man replied. “Do you know what an electronics lab is?” “Da,” the man said. “Where is it?” Ryan asked. The mismatched hazel eyes blinked in perplexion. “Da?”
“The electronics lab,” Ryan repeated.
“I found it,” J.B. said from beside Ryan. “Guy I questioned on the other side said it was amidships. Door on the port side will take you into it.”
“Get there,” Ryan ordered. “See if you can repair that circuit board.” The Armorer nodded and slipped away.
“Da?” the Russian said. Only a low level of intelligence flickered in his gaze. His voice rose in a wail at the end before Ryan slashed his throat.
A harsh question ripped from a man farther up on the superstructure.
Ryan took shelter against the wall beside him an instant before a bullet ricocheted off the deck in a haze of yellow sparks. He unfurled the Steyr from the fur covering and brought it to his shoulder in one smooth movement. Autofire raked the deck, searching for him, coming closer.
Then he had the Russian sailor in his sights. His finger curled over the trigger and pulled. The Steyr bounced against his shoulder. The heavy 7.62 mm bullet struck its target, driving the man back and off the superstructure by the radar dish and sent a corpse crashing to the deck.
Ryan ran forward, climbing up the companionway at a dead run. His foot nearly slipped out from under him on an ice patch as he pushed himself to the upper deck. He passed the first ladder built into the superstructure, then took the ladder attached to the wall to the right at the side of the lifeboat he’d spotted earlier. He scrambled up the ladder as Russian sailors bolted from inside the ship.
He climbed up another ladder to his left, heading for a higher deck near one of the radar dishes. It wasn’t the forward vantage point on the main section of the superstructure where the antennae were clustered, but it gave him a view over much of the stern decks. Jak would have to control as much of the forward decks as he could.