“We’ve got to go,” Dean said from beside her. He pushed himself up from hiding.
“Wait!” Krysty’s sharp command froze him into place.
A pained look filled the boy’s face.
“We’re going,” Krysty said, “but we’re going to do this just the way Ryan would. If we go rushing in there like chickens with our heads chopped off, you know what’s going to be on the lunch menu.”
Dean nodded.
“Harlan!” Krysty yelled over the thunder of the breaking ice.
“Yeah,” the Inuit chieftain called back.
“Are your people ready?”
“That ship’s going down.”
“It isn’t down yet,” Krysty said.
Abruptly the iceberg stopped quivering, and the frigate stopped its plunge.
“Okay,” Harlan said, his gaze locked to the ship that barely remained above the rim of ice that had been chopped around it. “But if it goes—”
“If it goes, you’re going down with this iceberg,” Krysty reminded him.
“I guess we’re in it as deep as you are.”
“Whether we save Ryan and the others,” Krysty declared, “those lifeboats aboard the frigate are all the hope you have left of getting off this iceberg.”
Harlan nodded, turning and speaking quickly to his little band of warriors. None of them seemed happy about the prospect. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Krysty looked at Doc, Mildred and Albert.
“Lead on,” Mildred said.
“‘Damn the torpedoes—full speed ahead,'” Doc shouted, waving his sword stick toward the foundering frigate.
Krysty pushed up from cover and started for the ship. Her friends followed her, flanked by the Inuit.
RYAN BLASTED the Steyr empty. Having no chance to reload, he cleared leather with the SIG-Sauer and started to fire again. He had put three of the Russians down with the long blaster, but there appeared plenty of them left.
Footsteps rung on metal at his side, slightly behind him. Only his combat senses honed over years of living in the Deathlands and dozens of battles fought while with War Wag One allowed him to sort that new, more threatening sound out from the noise of battle all around him.
He spun, leveling the 9 mm at the end of his arm.
A face, malformed and demonic in intensity, appeared at the top of the stair, followed almost immediately by a rifle barrel.
Ryan fired from less than six feet away. The hollowpoint blasted through the sailor’s head, emptying his brainpan in a scarlet rush. The corpse clung stubbornly to the ladder for a moment, then finally lost the fight against gravity.
Even as he was pulling back into position, Ryan’s eye caught a flicker of movement arcing through the air. He tracked it, bringing up the SIG-Sauer, then recognized it as an implo gren.
“Fireblast!” He threw himself behind the support struts for the antenna overhead and curled into the protection as much as he could.
The implo gren went up in a thunderclap of noise and a white-hot flash of light.
Partially deafened from the concussion, Ryan forced himself to a standing position. He peered over the railing and took a two-handed grip on the 9 mm blaster as a man broke cover. He led the Russian sailor slightly, then squeezed the trigger and put two rounds through the man’s lungs.
The sailor dropped to the deck, then tried to get back to his feet.
Knowing the man was already dead where he was, Ryan moved on, seeking more targets. He fired the blaster dry, then took cover again briefly to change magazines. He tripped the slide release, stripping the top round and feeding it into the breech.
Movement across from him, skylined against the moon hanging against the sable sky, alerted him to the fact that another Russian had climbed to a threatening position. A fully automatic weapon kicked to life, blistering the deck and the railing with sparks.
Ryan rolled left and brought up the SIG-Sauer. Partially covered by the superstructure, he blasted at the gunner. The first four rounds clipped metal all around the sailor before the fifth one bounced from the railing and cut through the man’s crotch.
With a shrill scream, the gunman dropped his weapon, sank to his knees and tried to hold his groin with both hands. Even in the dim moonlight, Ryan saw the dark black blood come spilling through.