The Armageddon Protocol

THIRTY-THREE

The incredible ice tunnel swallowed Harry Bane and he was sucked down into a new dangerous world he had never imagined before. He thought that between his years in the Pathfinders and MI6 he had seen everything, but as he raced through the tunnel deep inside the glacier he realized he had been wrong. He had never seen anything like it before — it was beautiful, awesome and lethal all at the same time.

He had seen a short film once of people skiing through the Sölden Tunnel in Austria but that was purposely carved into the glacier, reinforced and lit with electric lights, whereas this was an enormous tunnel in the glacier ice, hewn by nature countless millennia ago.

Up ahead, Baupin leaped over a deep crevasse in the tunnel floor and a second later Harry followed him, glancing down to see the deep, black crack twisting down in the ice below him. It looked like it led to Hades itself.

Following Baupin, he prepared to take a sharp right bend deep inside the ancient ice. His skis scratched hard in the ice as he took the corner, going up against the ice wall on his left for a few seconds as the killers raced up behind them.

Without warning, Baupin spun around and fired over Harry’s head at the pursuers, striking one in the chest and killing him instantly. He dropped to the glacier tunnel floor and smashed into ice as hard as concrete. With the second man now dead, that left only one to go, but he was gaining fast, and as relentless as the devil in his pursuit of them.

“What next?” Harry called out, his voice echoing off the cold, blue walls of the glacier tunnel.

“The exit is just ahead of us,” Baupin yelled back. “When we get out there is a small area of woodland. We can try and lose him in the trees.”

Great, Harry thought — skiing at over a hundred miles per hour through an alpine forest, but before he had time to worry about if his skiing skills were enough to handle it, they burst out of the glacier tunnel.

He squinted hard as they raced from the subdued blues of the ice’s interior and out once again into the bright sun and snow of the slopes. The cold air stung his cheeks as he zoomed down the slope, speeding ever closer to the bottom of the valley.

He heard the crack of a gun, and turned to see that the final assassin had opened fire on him once again. Another bullet traced past his head and buried itself in the trunk of a pine tree less than a foot to his right. The impact sent an explosion of snow and wood chips bursting into the air in front of him.

He cursed as the shower of snow and splinters sprayed all over his face, but thankfully was kept out of his eyes by the ski goggles. It wasn’t so long ago that something like getting shot at on a ski slope was part of his daily life, but that was then and this was now. Now he wanted a quieter life. His idea of excitement these days was beating the house and settling down in a leather chair with a glass of whisky and a crackling fire.

Not this. This was exhausting, uncomfortable and worst of all dangerous. The armed man a few hundred yards behind him only had to get lucky once and he’d have a bullet hole in his head. He’d drop off the path like a downed caribou and come to rest in a snowy unmarked grave.

And he didn’t even know if he could trust any of these people. Who was Andrej Liška? Who were Alain Baupin, Niko Weber and Zoey Conway? All of them strangers — even Lucia.

And yet there was something about the thrill of the chase that he couldn’t resist. Something about the way the Spanish woman had looked at him when she’d asked for his help. Helping people in danger was part of his nature, and he knew no matter how many doubts he had, he could never turn his back on someone who needed his help.

Ahead of him, Baupin made another heroic turn in the run, and skiing backwards at high-speed, he raised the SIG into the aim, right at Harry’s head and screamed for him to duck.

Wide-eyed with surprise and still skiing at speed along the narrow forest path, the Englishman brought his ski poles up into his body and crouched down on his haunches, enabling Baupin to get a clear shot of the final assassin.

The gun cracked in the freezing, alpine air and echoed off a thousand pine trunks all dusted with fresh snow, and Baupin turned around without a word and continued down the narrow path.

Harry glanced over his shoulder to see the third assassin silently clutching his throat in terror. Baupin’s shot had been good again, and now the man lost control and skidded off the path before slamming into the trunk of a pine tree at high speed. There was a deep thudding noise and a cracking sound as his ribs shattered and then he spun wildly off into the gloom of the forest.

“Good job,” Harry yelled, but Baupin was too far ahead to hear.

He was getting tired now, and the hard work of skiing at speed was taking its toll. He tried to increase his speed one final time for the final run to the bottom of the valley when he heard a gunshot and saw Baupin spin around like a ragdoll and leave the path at high speed. For a second, Harry thought the Frenchman was going to share the same fate as the final assassin and slam into one of the trees, but instead he tumbled into a small clearing, coming to a stop at the far edge.

There was obviously a fourth man hunting them.

Harry glanced over his shoulder but saw no sign of the sniper. He launched himself off the path between the same two pine trees the Frenchman had gone through and skied down toward him on the narrow slope as fast as he could. He stood up at the last minute and rotated his feet to the right before cutting down into the slope and stopping.

Without saying a word he turned the Frenchman over and saw blood blooming over the right shoulder of his ski jacket. Pulling the jacket open he saw the wound — obviously the sniper had used a round with some pretty chunky mass and a serious muzzle velocity. Luckily, it looked like the bullet had torn through the muscle above the clavicle, narrowly missing his brachial plexus. An inch lower would have meant serious nerve damage and maybe the loss of his arm, but as it was, Harry was confident the wound was not fatal, even though Baupin was still unconscious from the tumble.

Harry began to pull him out of the snow bank and heave him into the forest for cover, but it was too late. Before he had made two yards a bullet slammed into the trunk of a tree a few inches from his head. He ducked down and spun around at the same time, expecting to see nothing but trees, but instead he saw the fourth man skiing gently down the slope toward him. In his hands he was holding a heavy-duty sniper rifle and aiming it directly at Harry’s head.

“Hands up where I can see them.”

Harry stepped away from Baupin and raised his hands in the air. He lowered his head and breathed a sigh of frustration, his breath condensing in the chilled alpine forest almost as thick as smoke. Beside him, Alain Baupin began to come to, groaning and rubbing the wound on his shoulder.

The man pulled up a safe distance from his prisoners and holding the gun with one hand he pulled a phone from his pocket and made a call. “Perec is dead and I have the others.” He put the phone away, pulled up his goggles and took a deep breath to steady himself after the case.

“Steiner…” Harry said.

“You will pay for Perec,” Baupin mumbled, barely coherent.

“I doubt that,” Steiner said. “Now get up. We’re going to meet the boss.”