The Valhalla Prophecy_A Novel

  The door!

  She grabbed for the handle with her bound hands – only for Tarnowski to grab her by the hair. ‘Get back here!’

  Wake whistled in relief, surveying the lapping water beneath his vehicle’s nose. ‘Holy shit, that was clo—’

  One side of his skull exploded outwards as a .45 Winchester Magnum bullet blasted through it.

  Eddie brought the smoking Wildey around to target the mercenary in the rear seat as the XC90’s dead driver slumped against the steering wheel. Only one bullet left, but that was all he needed to rescue Nina—

  Ice cracked, a broad chunk beneath the SUV’s front tracks splintering away from the rest of the surface . . . and the 4x4’s front end plunged into the water, the weight of the engine dragging the entire vehicle down into the frigid river.

  Nina and Tarnowski fell against the front seats as the SUV pitched downwards into the icy water – which then surged into the 4x4 through its broken windows.

  The cold was like a punch to her heart. Her thick clothing did nothing to hold back the paralysing chill. In a moment the river had completely swallowed her, the XC90 dropping towards its bed.

  Panic rose – but she fought through it. She had been in a similar situation before. She forced her limbs to move, pushing herself upwards. The back window was broken; she could squeeze through it and swim to the surface—

  The SUV shook, a muffled, booming crunch echoing beneath her. It had hit the bottom of the river. Loose items from the rear bed cascaded past her in slow motion, a surreal hail of guns and grenades and survival gear. Then the world began to tilt as the Volvo lazily toppled on to its roof.

  Bubbles of trapped air from the engine compartment roiled past her, the water darkening as blood from Wake’s gaping head wound swirled through the froth. The inverted 4x4 landed with a muted metallic moan, roof pillars bending under its weight. One of the surviving windows shattered.

  Nina was head down, the rear seat now a barrier. With Tarnowski still beside her, there was only one way she could go. She pulled herself towards the open side window—

  A hand clamped around her ankle.

  The mercenary had realised there was only one easy escape route from the overturned vehicle, and was not going to let his prisoner out first. He dragged her back, driving an elbow into her side as he squirmed past. The blow forced a gulp of air from her mouth, and she unwillingly swallowed cold water, almost choking.

  She fought back, slashing at his face, but in the confined space and with her hands still cuffed, she couldn’t put enough force into the strike. Tarnowski still flinched as her fingernails clawed at his eyes, though – and in retaliation swung his fist at her head.

  Even slowed by the water, the blow still hurt. More air escaped her lungs as she was knocked against the front seats. Panic returned as she felt a growing tightness around her chest – not from the cold, but from lack of oxygen.

  The mercenary pulled himself head first through the window frame. Nina turned to the other door, but while it had buckled, the glass was still somehow in place despite several large cracks. There wasn’t enough room for her to squeeze under the inverted seats ahead or behind, and now Tarnowski was blocking the only exit.

  She was trapped.

  Eddie! her mind cried. The very first time they had met, he had dived into a river to pull her from another sinking car.

  But he wasn’t here to help her now.

  So what would he do—

  She spotted the dark shape of a P90 against the pale roof lining beneath her. Snatching it up, Nina jammed the muzzle against the glass – and pulled the trigger.

  The boom of the gunshot underwater felt as if someone had struck a huge bell right beside her head. The effect on the gun was even more drastic. With its powder charge sealed inside the cartridge, the bullet fired as normal – but instantly hit the water blocking the barrel, the massive overpressure rupturing the firing chamber and tearing the weapon apart.

  But it was enough.

  The bullet only travelled a few feet before water resistance stopped it, but it still shattered the window. Millions of tiny cubes of safety glass sprayed out into the river, glinting in the ghostly blue-green light coming through the ice above.

  Hand stinging from the shockwave, Nina dropped the ruined gun and dragged herself to the new exit. Tarnowski delivered a couple of parting kicks as he squeezed out of the other window and headed for the surface. She struggled not to cry out, desperate to retain what little remaining air she had.

  Heart thumping, chest tightening, she pulled herself through the opening. The cold gnawed at her muscles, every movement stiff and painful. But she kept going, twisting to look up. The hole in the ice rippled above, clean fresh air just twenty feet away. All she had to do was get out of the overturned SUV—

  Something tugged at her coat.

  For one horrified moment she thought it was Wake, back from the dead. But it was part of the bent door frame snagging on her clothing. She tried to pull free but no longer had any strength, breathlessness and cold finally overpowering her.

  A horrible pressure rose inside her chest, her body desperate to expel the foul air in her lungs. All she could do was writhe in an attempt to tear loose, but even that was hopeless, her muscles so enfeebled in her oxygen-deprived state they could only flinch pathetically. Blood roared in her ears, blackness oozing closer as she looked up at the light for the last time . . .

  Someone plunged into the water and surged downwards. The dark shape swelled in her vision, taking on form as it drew nearer – revealing a face.

  Eddie!

  He reached down to rip her coat free. Wrapping one arm around her body, he pushed with both legs against the SUV to pull her clear, then kicked to haul her back to the surface.

  They broke through it together. Nina coughed out river water before drawing in several whooping gasps of air. Eddie supported her, shoving bobbing ice chunks aside. ‘Are you okay? Nina, are you all right?’ he panted.

  ‘I’m – oh God! I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she rasped, coughing again. ‘Oh, Jesus!’

  He reached the edge of the ragged channel. ‘Come on, climb out,’ he said, taking hold of the ice with his left hand and using his right to help lift her up in the water.

  Nina gratefully slapped one sodden arm down on the surface and weakly dragged herself out, her husband pushing her from below. ‘Thank you, Eddie. Thank you. Oh God, I really thought I was going to die—’

  ‘The day ain’t over yet!’

  Tarnowski had pulled himself from the river on the other side of the channel. Sopping wet, he fumbled inside his coat and pulled out a pistol, tilting it to drain the water out of the barrel before pointing it at the couple. ‘You fuckers,’ he said, breath hissing through his gritted teeth. ‘You goddamn near killed me! Well, right now I don’t give a fuck if the boss wants you alive – this is where you—’

  A geyser burst up in front of Eddie with a muffled bang – and a hole exploded in Tarnowski’s chest, blood and shredded flesh spraying out as he tumbled backwards. The mercenary’s gun thunked off the ice and splashed into the water.

  Eddie lifted the Wildey into the open air. The big gun’s slide was locked back after firing its last bullet, the thick steel of its barrel and frame protecting it from the overpressure that had destroyed Nina’s P90. ‘If you’re goin’ to shoot, shoot,’ he said, in a strained attempt at a Mexican accent. ‘Don’ talk.’

  ‘Movie quote?’ asked the shivering Nina.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Thought so.’ She clutched his sleeve, helping him climb on to the ice. ‘Oh God, I’m so cold!’ Her teeth were chattering so much she could barely get the words out. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Get to shore,’ he rasped. ‘Curl up tight, try to keep warm. Keep your clothes on.’

  ‘Not often you want me to do that,’ she said, managing a little smile.

  He laughed, which turned into a cough. ‘Always a first time. But even if they’re soaked, they’l
l still give you some insulation. I’ll see if I can start a fire—’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll have time,’ she interrupted, fear returning. The forest had fallen silent, but now a shrill buzz grew louder with every moment.

  The second icerunner. It emerged from another bend a few hundred yards downriver, propeller wash blasting up a swirling cloud in its wake.

  ‘Shit,’ gasped Eddie. He reached to eject the Wildey’s empty magazine, only to remember that he didn’t have a replacement. And Tarnowski’s gun was at the bottom of the river. ‘Shit!’

  The icerunner roared towards them. The man in the back seat leaned out of the cockpit, gun raised and ready. Eddie and Nina stood and staggered for the shore, but with the cold slowing them, they knew they would not reach the trees before the mercenaries got into weapons range.

  The piercing roar rose to a scream—

  The noise was coming from more than one engine.

  They realised it simultaneously, exchanging a wordless look before diving sideways – as a snowmobile leapt over the top of the ridge and crashed down on the riverbank, kicking up a huge eruption of snow.

  Kagan was driving, swerving to avoid both the couple and the dark rent in the ice. He skidded to a stop on the frozen river, unslinging a P90 and unleashing the entire contents of its magazine at the icerunner.

  The mercenary in the rear seat fired back, but the Russian’s bullets found their target first. The pilot jerked back in his seat as rounds ripped bloodily into his chest. One of the outriggers left the surface as the vehicle veered sharply off course – then the icerunner flipped over, the propeller stabbing into the ice and sending it tumbling towards the trees. It smashed into a towering conifer and exploded, blazing debris scattering in all directions.

  ‘That saves you starting a fire, I guess,’ Nina said to Eddie.

  Her husband gave her a strained grin, then helped her to her feet. They reached the shore as Kagan brought the snowmobile back to them. ‘You caught up quick.’ The Russian’s vehicle still had some of the team’s equipment on its rear rack; he dug through it to pull out two survival blankets. Nina gratefully accepted the silver thermal wrapping.

  ‘I set off as soon as I got out of the hole,’ Kagan replied. ‘I do not like waiting. And,’ he added with a dismissive shake of the head, ‘Berkeley was whining like a child! I did not know how much longer I could put up with him.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Nina asked.

  The answer came with the sound of another approaching vehicle on the ridge. A second snowmobile appeared, this one moving at a decidedly more cautious pace. Berkeley hesitantly guided it through the trees and down to the shore. ‘You’re alive!’ he said, somewhat disbelievingly, as he saw Nina and Eddie.

  ‘Yeah, glad you’re okay too,’ said Nina sarcastically.

  The other archaeologist stopped and, with considerable relief, dismounted. He took in the wreckage of Eddie’s icerunner and the burning remains of the other. ‘Business as usual, I see. Where did you get that gun?’ He eyed Kagan’s weapon.

  ‘I found it on the ice a kilometre or so back, by some crashed snowmobiles,’ said the Russian. He gave Eddie a look of veiled amusement. ‘I cannot imagine how that happened.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s funny what people leave lying about,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Where’s Dr Skilfinger?’ Berkeley asked.

  Kagan turned sharply to Eddie. ‘You did not get her?’

  ‘One fucking thing at a time,’ said the Englishman as he huddled inside his blanket. ‘No, I didn’t get her. They must be a couple of miles ahead of us by now.’

  The Russian restarted his snowmobile. ‘We have to catch them! They will make her give up the location of the second eitr pit!’

  ‘How many bullets’ve you got left in that thing?’ Eddie asked wearily, nodding at Kagan’s weapon. ‘I’m guessing the square root of fuck-all. And they’ve still got two trucks full of pissed-off guys with guns. Besides,’ he added, hugging the blanket more tightly around himself, ‘if I got back on a snowmobile, the wind chill’d fucking kill me. Me and Nina need to dry off and warm up before we can do anything else.’

  ‘But we know where they’re going,’ Nina reminded Kagan. ‘Tova said that the second site is in Helluland – Baffin Island. We can go there too.’

  ‘But we do not know exactly where,’ he protested. ‘Baffin Island is big – it is bigger than Britain! And they have photographs of all the runes from Valhalla, while we have nothing!’

  ‘Ah . . . I wouldn’t quite say that,’ said Berkeley, raising a forefinger in smug contradiction. He unzipped his coat, taking out the broken tablet computer and the sun compasses. ‘We still have these.’ He smirked. ‘You see? I do have my uses. We can recover the data from its memory and finish the translation, and then we’ll have exactly as much information as they do.’

  Kagan scowled. ‘That will mean nothing if we are behind them.’

  Nina huddled against Eddie, as much for comfort as warmth, and gazed down the river after the long-departed convoy. ‘Then we’d better get started.’

  30

  Canada

  Nina was cold again, a frigid wind biting at her face, but at least now she could warm up simply by going back inside the ship.

  All that was stopping her was the question she knew she had to ask her husband . . . and the answer she was afraid to hear.

  The RV Akademik Rozhkov was a 3,000-ton Russian oceanographic survey vessel, which to the surprise – and suspicion – of its crew had been abruptly ordered to divert from its task in the North Atlantic and sent into the Davis Strait between the two great frozen wastes of Greenland and Baffin Island. It had received new passengers by helicopter: Nina, Eddie, Kagan and Berkeley, as well as a small contingent of men who, while dressed in civilian clothes, were clearly members of some military unit, all being of similar age, build, haircut and taciturn disposition.

  The escapees from Valhalla had eventually made it back to Blixtholm to call for the helicopter to return and pick them up, learning while they were there that Lock and his team had done exactly the same thing. So they knew they were not far behind Tova’s kidnappers. The difference was that Lock could travel to Baffin Island directly using Xeniteq’s resources, while Kagan had flat-out refused to allow Nina to do the same via the IHA, for fear that a leak would alert the Americans to their progress. Instead, they had been forced to arrange to use Russian resources via the Kremlin, slowing proceedings considerably.

  But now they were on their way, and getting closer. Berkeley’s translation, rapidly completed once the picture of the runes was recovered from the damaged tablet, had allowed them to track the route the Vikings had taken from Valhalla downriver to the coast, and then around southern Scandinavia to a jumping-off point in western Norway. From there, the ancient mariners had travelled in legs to the Shetland Islands, the Faroes and Iceland, and then on to Greenland. The final steps of the journey were now the critical part: exactly where had the Vikings made landfall on Helluland to reach the eitr pit?

  The sky was completely overcast, darkening the day still further as the hidden sun descended. Beneath the clouds, the Baffin coastline was visible off to the west, a line of almost unbroken white rising above the leaden horizon. Nina gazed at it, then drew a deep breath before heading inside. She also had questions to ask of Berkeley, and was as concerned about their answers as she was about whatever Eddie might tell her. Her fear of the latter was that it could change the way she looked at her husband, perhaps for ever. The former could get her killed.

  Her, and many others.

  She made her way down to one of the survey vessel’s labs, which had been assigned to the team. The four Russian soldiers were in a group in one corner, playing cards and swapping what she suspected were obscene jokes. Kagan sat close to Berkeley, watching with bored impatience as the archaeologist repeatedly read through his notes and checked the translation on a laptop. Eddie, meanwhile, sat slightly apart from the others, looking up as she entered
and nodding in greeting, but not saying anything. He too knew that the question was coming, but was equally reluctant to face it.

  Berkeley saved them from it, for now. ‘You look cold,’ he said.

  Nina rubbed at her cheeks, which had gone numb even from the brief exposure to the chill. ‘Well, it is sub-zero outside. Fahrenheit and Celsius.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’ He turned the laptop towards her as she sat down beside him. ‘If the translation is correct, then based on the directions it gives, we’ll be making landfall above the Arctic Circle.’

  ‘You’ve pinpointed where we’re going?’

  He looked faintly uncomfortable. ‘Well . . . pinpointed is a little too precise. I used the sun compass to work out the latitudes the Vikings would have been aiming for, but it’s only accurate to one or two degrees, which could give us anything up to two hundred miles of coastline to choose from. And I can’t even be entirely sure that I’m reading it correctly, as the Norsemen never left clear instructions. I mean, there are still plenty of historians who would dispute that it’s even a navigational instrument at all.’

  ‘Let us hope you are right and they are wrong,’ said Kagan, unimpressed.

  ‘Well, I usually am right,’ Berkeley replied airily.

  Nina gave him a stern look. ‘Except when it comes to picking sides.’

  ‘All right, all right!’ he protested. ‘So, yes, I’ve made some . . . less than ideal choices. But I did my time for that business in Egypt, and I’m helping you fix things now, aren’t I?’

  ‘Some results would be nice first. What have you got?’

  He glowered, but turned back to the laptop. One side of the screen showed the image of the runes in Valhalla; the other, the computer-generated translation of the text, below which was a more refined version edited by Berkeley himself. He pointed out a section. ‘This part here told the Vikings, once they’d rounded the southern tip of Greenland and turned north along its western coast, to travel to two islands at a latitude that I think works out at around sixty-eight degrees north. They then sail due west across the Davis Strait to a large island.’ He frowned slightly. ‘The runes are phrased rather oddly, but as far as I can tell I haven’t made any mistakes in translation. They say something like “You will see three mountains that you will recognise”, but I haven’t been able to find any indication of why they would recognise them.’