The Survivor - Page 73

Nadim looked up. Two of the helicopters had swooped low with gunmen leaning out and firing automatic weapons from the open side-panel doors.

“Yes! Yes!” he shouted.

But the rangers were clearly prepared for an aerial assault. An instant later over a dozen ice boulders flew through the air fired from massive catapults on the mountainside. Two of the boulders made contact with the low-flying helicopters; one struck a rear rotor, sending it spinning crazily until it finally struck the ground in a fiery explosion. The other boulder smashed through the second helicopter’s front windshield, instantly pulverizing the cockpit and its occupants. The helicopter fell from the sky as if it had struck a stone wall.

The remaining two helicopters hovered in place for only a few seconds before peeling off and roaring away.

Nadim screamed into his radio. “Get back here. Now!”

The helicopters’ only response was to speed away even faster.

He turned to Bevan. “Find a way to get them back here!”

“I can’t do that, you idiot. They’re only doing what we should be doing. Getting the hell away.”

Nadim smiled with fierce satisfaction and pointed behind Bevan where his men were now firing at the rangers. “You spoke too soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“See for yourself. We’ve got them on the run.”

Bevan turned to see that the rangers were indeed retreating on their skis and snowboards, dodging the squad’s gunfire. “Where are they headed?”

Nadim trained his binoculars on the fleeing rangers. “It looks like there’s a trail on the far side of this plateau. It may lead to another valley. That would answer the question of where our unicorns went.”

“But we’ve lost our cargo containers.”

“We’ll send for more. Once we slaughter these rangers, there will be no one to stop us. But we have to strike now.” Nadim spoke into his radio. “Kill everyone who gets between us and those unicorns. Go!”

Nadim, Bevan, and the surviving half of Nadim’s squad tore through the wind and snow, chasing the rangers down the steep path. They finally emerged below the massive notch between mountains where, as Nadim suspected, there was another snow-covered plateau. Slightly more than halfway across, the rangers were clustered with hundreds of deer.

“Hold your fire,” Nadim said into the radio. “We can’t hurt the animals.”

Bevan shook his head. “Those bastards know that. They’re using the deer as shields.”

Nadim wrinkled his brow. “Maybe.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“No. Those rangers are the shields here. They’re risking their lives to protect them.”

“So what’s their play?”

A lone figure appeared on an icy ledge overlooking the plateau. Nadim trained his binoculars on the man. “That’s Kagan.”

“The so-called super Sherpa?”

“Yes. He was working with Cade. What in the hell is he doing?”

Kagan was smiling at him. He reached into his parka and pulled out a small cylindrical device. He raised it over his head.

Nadim gasped. “I think he has a remote detonator.”

“For what?”

“Oh my God.” He lowered the binoculars, panicked. “Those unicorns aren’t a shield… They’re the bait.”

Kagan pressed the detonator with his thumb, and a series of blasts rocked the mountain above them!