Devil's Gate

62

KURT AND KATARINA continued toward the aft end of the Onyx. Kurt kept one arm around her waist and held her close beside him because she was weakening and barely able to keep up with his pace.

The tunnel itself was filling up with a dense white fog and a cold that chilled them to the bone. With the high voltage off-line, the liquid nitrogen was beginning to warm and expand. It would boil off as soon as it got above negative 321 degrees. Kurt guessed a system like that would have relief valves that might vent the gas into the tunnel.

They pushed forward, feeling their way through the frigid cloud. At times, visibility in the tunnel was no more than three feet. They moved slowly, looking for the aft-most hatch.

Finally, Kurt’s hand fell on a curved seam. He recognized the recessed handle and the shape of an access hatch.

“Our way out of here,” he said, reaching up and turning the wheel that sealed the hatch shut.

After pulling it open, he helped Katarina onto the ladder. She began to crawl up the rungs. Kurt was ready to join her when a familiar voice cut through the dense mist like a knife.

“Kurt Austin.”

Katarina stopped on the ladder.

“Go,” Kurt whispered. “And don’t wait for me.”

She pushed off, moving upward, and Kurt held still.

“Do you realize you’re quite possibly the most aggravating man alive,” Andras said, still hidden in the vapors.

Certain the killer was setting up to spray the tunnel with automatic weapons fire, Kurt dropped flat to the deck and pointed the barrel of his nine millimeter into the white blanket of mist.

Andras wasted no time sending a volley of gunfire into the passageway. The shots rang like thunder on a warm drizzly night. The shells thudded against the steel bulkheads and ricocheted like a flight of deadly wasps.

As Kurt hoped, the bullets all passed above him, but he let out a groan and spoke as if he were in agony. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” he grunted. “You’ve lost.”

He waited for a reply but none came.

Kurt could hear the catwalk creaking underneath him. He surmised that Andras was taking a new position and zeroing in on the sound of Kurt’s voice. Kurt needed to get him talking so he could do the same thing, since it didn’t take a wizard to predict that Andras was not standing in the middle of the tunnel but was either lying on the deck like Kurt or pressed up against the bulkhead on one side or the other.

Breathing heavily for effect, Kurt spoke again. “If I was you… I’d be… getting out… of here.”

He was counting on Andras having enough of an ego to feel he had mortally wounded his prey. But, so far, the man had made no mistakes.

“Give me your weapon,” Andras said, his voice coming from the shroud of gas like an unseen evil ghost.

Austin lay there with the cold seeping in his skin. His face was so numb, he could hardly feel anything. He held the Beretta in hands nearly frozen, his elbows placed on the deck.

“Let the girl go,” he said, cupping a hand to one ear like a radar directional finder and waiting for a response.

“Of course,” Andras said, his words echoing in the tunnel. “Everyone goes free. I’ll send them all off with roses, and mints on their pillows. Now, slide over your weapon!”

“I’ll… try,” Kurt muttered brokenly.

Kurt inched to his left, thumped his pistol onto the metal walkway as if he had dropped it and scraped it along the deck, to make it seem as if it were sliding over metal before stopping.

With that, Kurt rolled quickly to the other side of the tunnel. A burst of three shots rang out, pinging off the deck where he’d just been.

“Sorry, Mr. Austin,” Andras said as if he were bored. “I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw this ship.”

And then several more bursts shook the tunnel. The muzzle flash lit the fog like lightning in a cloud. The glare was too diffused to give Andras’s position away, but Kurt spotted something else. He couldn’t see the bullets themselves fly, but he noticed they created tiny shock waves in the thick, frigid mist.

He fired back, unleashing an eight-shot salvo that blasted through the fog. When he finished, the slide of his gun locked in the open position. His clip was empty.

The silence that followed was haunting. Kurt stared into the fog, wondering, hoping, he’d made a killing shot.

Andras had not fallen or Kurt would have heard it. Nor had he fired back.

Beginning to worry, Kurt checked what remained of his ammo. Only one bullet remained in another clip that he hadn’t emptied.

He pulled back the receiver, slid the round into the breach, and thumbed the slide release. The weapon locked, his last shot in the chamber.

Finally, he heard movement through the icy shroud. It came like a drunk shuffling along a sidewalk. A vague, ghostly form slowly appeared: Andras, limping, dragging his leg.

He held an assault rifle, the stock pushed into one armpit, the muzzle pointed at an awkward angle toward the deck and Kurt Austin. Blood seeped from his mouth, indicating a shot to one lung. His face was stained crimson as blood flowed from a deep crease on the top of his scalp. For a second Kurt thought he would fall, but he didn’t.

The eyes, Kurt noticed, burned with an intensity beyond all madness. It was the picture of a man shocked at finding out he was vulnerable to any other man. He pulled himself to a stop six feet from where Kurt lay. He stared at Kurt through his bloody mask, appearing amazed that, after all his fire, Kurt had survived without a scratch.

Kurt had his own dilemma. With one 9mm shell left, he wasn’t sure he could finish Andras off, not without a head shot. And as soon as he fired, Andras would open up with his rifle, shredding Kurt at such close range.

It had become a standoff.

Kurt eased off the deck and stood. They were only yards apart, aiming their weapons at each other. Kurt’s right hand held the Beretta, his left had found a knife in his pocket. The same knife he and Andras had traded back and forth three times already. He couldn’t open it, but he still could use it.

He flipped the knife at Andras, who caught it deftly and smiled as he stared at it.

“Out of ammunition, Mr. Austin? Pity you didn’t open the knife before you threw it.” Now confident, Andras moved slowly. He raised the assault rifle in preparation to fire.

Kurt beat him to the draw, took an instant to aim, and fired at the liquid nitrogen pipe just above Andras. The liquid burst out under high pressure, dousing Andras heavily on the right side of his body, washing over his arm and the assault rifle he held.

The rifle fell and broke open as it struck the deck. Andras stumbled and hit the tunnel’s wall. He watched uncomprehending as his arm, hand, and fingers shattered into a thousand fragments like a crystal vase crashing from a top shelf to the floor. A scream of agony froze in his throat.

In seconds the nitrogen began filling the tunnel. It blanketed Andras, his body already frozen like a block of ice. It swept down the hall toward Kurt as he raced to the hatch and pulled himself up the ladder.

The frigid mist followed him like a wave in the surf, but Kurt climbed as fast as his hands and feet could take him and made it out through the top of the passage.

He slammed the upper hatch shut. Feeling it lock into place, he lay on his back and relaxed for the first time in more hours than he could calculate.

After one minute, and one minute only, he rose to his feet and searched for Katarina. He found her sitting by a stairwell as if she was waiting for a miracle.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She turned and looked at him, her face lighting up like a cloud under the sun. “Oh, Kurt,” she said. “How many times did I think you were dead?”

“Luckily, it’s Andras who is dead.”

Her smile widened in a mixture of doubt and joy. “Are you sure?”

Kurt nodded. “I watched him fall to pieces with my own eyes.”