And does precisely nothing.
Anders brings down the axe in a vicious swing that, if it connected, would have taken Thurston’s arm off. Instead, the blade slices through fabric, grazing Thurston’s flesh on the way through. Thurston steps in close and grabs the handle of the knife sticking out of Anders’s chest. The man screams but before Thurston can stab him, the ice below their feet shatters into a thousand pieces and both men plunge into the dark water.
The water is impossibly, ridiculously cold: a cold so profound and bone-numbingly shocking in intensity that, for a few seconds, Thurston finds it difficult to think.
Anders, gripping Thurston’s arms tightly, wears an expression of grim satisfaction as the two men sink. There’s nothing Thurston can do—no way of getting out of Anders’s death hold…and Anders knows it. He has the muscle to keep Thurston underwater. All he has to do is wait and let this Australian motherfucker sink to the bottom.
From Axel Anders’s point of view, there’s only one problem, and it’s a big one: not only is Cody Thurston a Special Forces–trained free diver, and the most stubborn individual in the northern hemisphere, under all this padding he’s wearing a nine-millimeter-thick wet suit.
The bald fact is that he can wait this out longer than Anders ever can.
Almost thirty seconds elapses before it dawns on Anders that the passive Thurston seems more comfortable than someone should be in his situation. The realization hits the giant like a punch in the face. His eyes widen and Thurston sees the first stream of panicked air bubbles escape the big man’s nostrils. In an instant, instinct takes over. Anders releases Thurston and scrambles wildly toward the surface.
Thurston has other ideas.
He reaches out and grabs hold of Anders’s ankle, preventing him from swimming. He doesn’t need to stop Anders from moving, just from moving quickly.
Now in full-blown panic, Anders thrashes wildly, arms flailing, vital oxygen bubbling from his lungs, his brain unable to compute what is happening. Gradually his movements slow and then, as the last scrap of oxygen leaves his body, Anders’s brain shuts down and his body relaxes as he dies.
Thurston releases him, kicks for the surface, and hits the solid ice lying on top of Lake Carlson like a coffin lid.
Shit.
They must have drifted farther than Thurston had thought. He desperately punches the ice but it’s no use. Fighting his own rising panic, Thurston wastes precious seconds trying to find the hole in the ice, but comes up short. This isn’t like Pakistan when he could stay down nine minutes. In this water, after wrestling with Anders and with eight inches of hot tub plastic jammed in his leg, Thurston’s lucky if he has thirty seconds left.
And then he remembers the knife sticking out of Anders’s chest.
He pushes down hard, the cold sucking feeling from his fingers. He doesn’t have much time left. Tick tock.
With his heart rate slowing to cryogenic levels and his adrenaline screaming off the charts, Thurston finds Anders and the knife. As the last of his breath dribbles from his lungs, Thurston hauls the blade free and powers up toward the surface driving the blade as hard as he can into the underside of the ice.
Chapter 71
If anything, the storm’s getting worse.
Miller retreats farther onto solid ice away from the gaping black mouth that had swallowed Anders and the Australian. The open water slices across the lake and curves around Miller, preventing him from going in a direct line back to the house.
He’s in no real danger—the ice out here is strong enough to take a truck—but it’s going to be a long, cold walk back, especially if the threatened whiteout materializes.
Miller keeps the spot where the two men disappeared in view but so much time has passed he’s sure now both men are dead. Still, he waits longer. There’ve been too many surprises with this Australian fuck.
Eventually, Miller shoulders his weapon and, hunching his shoulders into the teeth of the icy wind, begins the walk back to what’s left of his compound through the thickening white spindrift.
He has taken only two paces when he hears an odd crunching sound coming from behind him.
Miller turns to see a knife splinter upward through the ice.
“What the fuck…?” mutters Miller. He swings his gun back around and squints through the snow.
The arm vanishes and then comes back up again, this time followed by another arm and Thurston’s head. Miller starts moving toward him as Thurston hauls himself up and out onto the thicker ice. Shivering violently, he crawls to safety and staggers to his feet just as Miller closes in.
Chapter 72
“You’re one hard son of a bitch to kill, Crocodile Dundee,” says Miller, pointing the ugly snout of his rifle directly at Thurston’s head. “I’ll give you that. Now drop the knife, chief, and kick it this way.”
Thurston looks at Miller.
“Don’t,” says Miller. “I know you’re thinking about throwing the knife but I have to say you got no—”
Before Miller can react, Thurston throws the knife but it slips from his trembling fingers and skitters harmlessly to Miller’s feet.
Miller laughs. “Fuckin’ awesome! Some primo James fuckin’ Bond shit right there!” He raises the rifle sight to his eye and takes five or six steps forward. “I was planning to get you somewheres quiet and go to work on you for a day or two…y’know, get some ‘closure’ on this giant clusterfuck. But, shit, it’s just getting too goddamn cold so I reckon I’ll just blow your cocksuckin’ Australian brains out right here.”
“Y-you t-t-talk t-too much,” Thurston manages to say.
“Oh, r-r-really?” says Miller, and pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
He pulls again…and nothing.
Both men realize at the same instant what has happened: the plunging temperatures out here on Lake Carlson have frozen the mechanism on Miller’s rifle.
Thurston starts running at Miller as the American throws his rifle to one side and bends to pick up the knife. Miller comes up with it in his right hand and backs off warily as Thurston approaches, the two men moving in slow circles around one another. The spindrift has now developed into the threatened whiteout and Miller and Thurston are the only moving elements in an icy universe. The lake shore vanishes as north, west, south, and east become indistinguishable.
“Star T-Trek,” says Thurston.
“What?” says Miller.
“Star Trek. There’s al-w-ways a-a scene where K-Kirk battles some fuckugly a-alien, y’know? I’m Kirk, b-by th-the way.”
Miller charges, the knife slashing viciously through the air but this isn’t Miller’s game. Thurston dances out of his way and smashes an elbow hard into the side of Miller’s head as he passes. The American grunts but keeps slashing with the blade. An image of Mercy chained to the radiator flashes into Thurston’s mind and he feels a fresh wave of anger surge through his frozen body. He steps in and breaks Miller’s right arm with a pile-driving heel stamp. Miller screams and drops the knife as Thurston whips around with a second kick that pops the American’s kneecap.
Miller drops to the ice, his right arm hanging at a sickening angle. Thurston hits him hard in the ribs before driving a short jab into Miller’s face, which puts him on his back. Thurston takes the knife and stands above the beaten man, breathing heavily.
Miller groans and tries to stand but can’t. The effort puts pressure on his broken limbs and he screams again. He pukes and lies back on the ice looking up at Thurston through teeth ringed with blood.
“You broke my fuckin’ arm, man,” Miller spits. “Why’d you break my fuckin’ arm?”
“L-Lasqa,” says Thurston.
“What? What the fuck is Lasqa?”
“A place in Afghanistan, M-Miller. Had a lot of little k-kids there, kids not much younger than the g-girls you got up in that N-Nazi sewer of yours. Let’s call the arm p-payback for Lasqa, and the knee for all the shit you d-did to the girls.”
&nb
sp; Thurston steps closer and stands on Miller’s nuts. As Miller writhes, Thurston bends close. “That’s for Sofi,” he hisses. Thurston steps away and in a quick twisting motion breaks Miller’s left arm. Miller howls.
“And th-that’s for Barb Connors, you piece of shit.”
Thurston stands over Miller and waits for him to stop sobbing.
“What now, smartass?” Miller coughs. “You can kill me but sure as shit you’ll freeze to death before you make it back to the fuckin’ house, genius. So go ahead, fuckin’ do it.”
Thurston shakes his head. “You g-got it all back to front, M-Miller. I’m not g-going to kill you.”
Miller looks puzzled and Thurston smiles.
“I’m going to rob you.”
Chapter 73
“Motherfucker! Motherfucker!”
Miller’s agonized screams are muffled by the relentless wind and snow. The blood and snot around his nose begins to freeze solid. His black hair is quickly being covered with a frosting of ice crystals.
Thurston adjusts the zip on the parka he’d taken from Miller and settles Miller’s goggles across his eyes.
“This is some grade-A gear you got, Miller,” says Thurston. He waggles the fingers of the gloves and looks down at the snow boots. “Toasty.”
Miller, shivering helplessly on the ice, is naked except for a pair of boxer shorts.
“I’m only leaving those shitstained drawers on you because I don’t want to see your shriveled little pecker, Miller,” says Thurston. “That’s the kind of shit you can’t unsee.”
From somewhere out in the whiteness, sirens wail. Thurston bends, his face close to Miller, and drops his voice.
“I guess even out here an explosion that big will have attracted attention. Or maybe one of your loyal little Nazi soldiers blabbed. Or, and this is the option I’m going for, maybe it’s my old buddy, Nicky Terraverdi at the FBI, coming to make sure your little pet, Riggs, didn’t sweep all this under the carpet? Either way, you are done, Miller. You shouldn’t have killed Sofi or Barb.”
Miller’s mouth opens but no sound emerges.
Thurston holds his eyes on Miller’s. The sirens are closer now. Miller’s heart tolls like a funeral bell as snow settles on his skin. He listens to the sound of his own last breath, his life dissolving into nothing under the cold flat stare of the Australian.
Thurston waits until he is sure Miller is dead and then, using the rifle as a lever, stands with some difficulty. He’ll have to get the splinter in his leg removed when he reaches civilization. There’s a medic in Burlington who Thurston can trust. It’ll be the last time Cody Thurston calls in an old favor because Cody Thurston will be left out on Lake Carlson, along with Michael Flanagan, both as dead as Nate Miller.
But there’ll be other names, and other towns. The world’s a big place with plenty of dark corners and an adaptable guy like him can always find work. There’ll be somewhere.
Limping, the Australian walks away from the closing sirens toward the welcoming spindrift whipped up by the ice storm. In ten yards, he’s nothing more than a gray silhouette, a ghost.
And then, in ten more, he is gone.
About the Authors
James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.
Loren D. Estleman is the award-winning author of many books and hundreds of short stories and articles. He lives in Michigan.
Sam Hawken is the author of the Camaro Espinoza series, as well as the critically acclaimed Borderland Trilogy. He lives outside Baltimore with his wife and son.
Ed Chatterton is an award-winning British-Australian writer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and designer. His series of books featuring Detective Frank Keane are in development as a TV series called The Art of Killing.
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