Zero Hour

THIRTY-SEVEN

Thirty minutes later, with the white sky beginning to darken, the two remaining hovercraft made a cautious approach to the ridge where Kurt and Hayley had crashed. Using an infrared scope, Janko spied the wrecked vehicle at the bottom of the drop. Seconds later, he spotted the snowmobile.

He keyed the transmit switch on his radio. “Unit two, make your way back down the slope and check for survivors. We’re going up top.”

“Roger that,” the other driver replied.

As the two craft broke formation, Janko scanned the surrounding incline for heat sources. Only two signatures registered; the red-hot engine from the snowmobile and a figure lying ten feet away from it.

He pulled off his goggles and brought the hovercraft to a stop. As it settled, he threw open the hatch.

“Stay here,” he said to his gunner. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

With a short-barreled submachine gun at his side, Janko climbed from the hovercraft and edged his way toward the wrecked sled. He found it to be inoperable, engine off, battery drained.

“At least they hit something,” he said to himself.

He moved to the body in the snow and rolled it over. To his surprise, a mop of blond hair spilled out from under the white hood of the parka.

Janko pulled the goggles from the woman’s face. He recognized her. She was the woman he’d left tied up beside the explosives in the lab at the flooded mine.

“So you survived,” he muttered.

The radio crackled. “Janko, this is unit two.”

Janko lifted the portable radio to his mouth. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve made it to the bottom of the ridge. Unit three is demolished. The driver and the gunner are both dead. No way to get it back up. Want us to burn it?”

“No,” Janko said. “We don’t need to draw any more attention to ourselves. The blizzard will dump a foot of snow in the next twelve hours. That will keep it out of sight.”

“And the men?”

“Get them out,” he said. “I want all the bodies off this glacier. Ours and theirs.”

A double click told Janko his subordinate understood and would comply. Janko then switched channels and began a new transmission.

“Thero, this is Janko,” he said. “Do you read?”

“Go ahead,” Thero’s raspy voice replied.

“We’re done out here.”

“Did you get them all?”

“All the snowmobiles have been accounted for,” Janko said. “We lost two hovercraft in the process.”

“Who are they?” Thero asked tersely.

“Australians, I think,” Janko said. “I recognize one of the survivors. A blond woman who was at the station in the outback when the ASIO tried to raid it.”

Silence for a moment, and then: “Is she alive?”

“Affirmative. We have two male captives as well. The rest are dead.”

“Bring them in,” Thero said. “I want to interrogate them. We need to know if they’re alone or not.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Janko said.

He clipped the radio back onto his belt, scooped the woman up, and threw her over his shoulder.

Seconds later, he’d dumped her in the cargo bay of the hovercraft and was back in the cockpit, powering up the engines once again. As the sleek machine rose up off the ground, Janko eased it forward and then turned around only twenty yards from where Kurt lay.

The deep snow he’d become buried in masked Kurt’s infrared signature, while his white camouflage, the failing light, and the continuing blizzard made him all but invisible to the naked eye. As a result, neither Janko nor his gunner saw Kurt as they trundled off into the graying horizon.