“No wonder my dad loves you,” Kate said.
“Everything I learned about mass destruction, I learned from him. Just get ready to move. In fact, start now.”
“Those things are so old, what if it doesn’t explode?”
“Then we’ll take our chances in a shoot-out. You’re in charge of the machine gun. Go!”
Nick gave Kate a few seconds to move to the other end of the room. He pulled the cord, jumped off the crate, and followed, grabbing two more grenades on his way past the open crate, one in each hand. Never know when we could use these, he thought. When he got to the stairs, he saw that Kate had picked up the submachine gun and was waiting for him. They both went up the stairs, waiting for the grenade to explode.
“Nothing is happening,” Kate said.
“You were right, maybe they’re—”
He was cut off by the blast.
* * *
Quentin looked at Jake as he came closer, while Egger, standing in the doorway with Franz, consulted his watch and told them they had thirty more seconds.
Jake was about to charge Franz when he thought he heard a faint scraping sound. He glanced at Quentin, then over at Egger and Franz. They all heard the faint but unmistakable murmur of a human voice.
“Sounds like your children have been found,” Egger said. “In German, we call the game Versteck spiel. You call it hide-and-seek, I believe. Your time is almost up, anyway.”
He took a few steps toward them, just as the explosion ripped through the room and the floorboards he’d been standing on were blown to pieces.
* * *
To Nick’s and Kate’s ears, it was louder than a gunshot but not quite as loud as the end of the world. Through their feet they felt the impact against the wooden floor on the other side of the building. They looked at each other, hoping that the bad guys were hurting and the good guys were getting away, but before they could do anything else, the kitchen door was kicked open and another submachine-gun-toting man burst into the room. He needed a moment to orient himself, coming from the light outside into the relative darkness.
It had been years since Kate last handled a submachine gun like the MP7, but she instinctively swung it into firing position. There was no need for it as Nick had already redirected the man’s stumbling momentum, guiding away the barrel of the gun with one hand, grabbing the back of the man’s parka with the other. He led the man into the gaping mouth of the trapdoor, threw him down the stairs, and slammed the trapdoor shut.
* * *
In the library, Jake, Quentin, and Egger all went down to the floor, covering their heads. When they looked up, there was nothing left of the doorway but a great hole in the floor. The body of Franz was lying on the rough stones ten feet below them.
Quentin grabbed the map pieces, Egger went for the gun in his jacket, and Jake went for Egger. One hard shove backward and Egger fell through the great hole in the floor, landing hard on Franz. Quentin took a piece of a broken chair and smashed open the one window in the room.
Both men climbed out and made their way through knee deep snowdrifts, around to the other side of the monastery.
“Over here!” Kate called.
Jake had never been happier to hear his daughter’s voice. She was standing next to one of the two snowcats with Nick.
“Crazy bastards rode those up,” Jake said, “along the ridge.”
“Sounds like the best way down,” Quentin said, looking back at the building. “We need to move.”
“Hold on,” Nick said. “No need to take both snowcats down the mountain.” He took out one of the hand grenades he had brought up from the basement.
“Now I understand the hole in the floor!” Jake said. “But be careful! They can’t be stable after all these years.”
Jake climbed up the front tread of one of the snowcats, opened up the door, and got in behind the wheel. It took him a few seconds to figure out the controls, then he pressed down the clutch and turned the key. The machine roared to life.
The cab itself was basically a big box, with plenty of room for Kate and Quentin to get in. Nick stood by outside, waiting for the last moment. When the snowcat was ready to go, he opened the door to the other vehicle, pulled the cord on the grenade, and threw it inside. He hustled back and jumped in beside Jake, who was already engaging the clutch. Jake hit the gas, the snowcat’s treads whined on the ice for a second before finding purchase, and they were off. Two seconds later, Egger and Franz came out of the building.
“What is that goon made of?” Kate asked. “He’s unkillable!”
“Think so? Just watch.”
Jake had to keep his eyes on the old tracks in the snow as he drove away from the building, but everyone else was watching the two men get into the other snowcat. Egger was behind the wheel, while Franz had to squeeze himself in through the other door.
“Come on,” Nick said. “Blow!”
The other snowcat roared to life. Franz was still trying to get his huge body inside the cab.
“Blow already!”
With Franz finally in, even before he could close the door, Egger put the vehicle in gear and it jumped forward.
“Damn!” Nick said. “Why didn’t it blow up?”
“You pull that cord, it’s like dragging a seventy-five-year-old match to light the fuse,” Jake said, still focused on keeping the treads within the old tracks. “I’m surprised that first one worked at all.”
“I got one left,” Nick said. “Maybe this one’s still good.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Jake said.
Jake grimaced as they left the relatively flat ground on which the monastery had been built. The other snowcat was barely a hundred yards behind them, but the ridge suddenly got perilously thin, so thin that the treads on the snowcat could barely straddle it. When he slipped off the line for just one second, they all felt the impact of rock and ice against the undercarriage.
“I can’t go any faster!” Jake said. The gunfire erupted from behind them, strafing the back of the vehicle with bullets from Franz’s submachine gun.
“Everybody down!” Kate said, as the back window was shattered by the next round of fire.
They were moving east, away from the Matterhorn, toward a smaller peak called Furgghorn. Jake kept fighting to keep the snowcat on its narrow line, feeling the vehicle threatening to tip over whenever he veered even a few inches in either direction. The wind kicked up, rocking the cab and making his job even harder. The back of the cab was hit by another round of bullets from the submachine gun.
Kate picked up the submachine gun she’d brought with her, pointed it out the back of the vehicle, and returned fire. But it was like shooting while riding a bucking bronco.
“Everybody hold on!” Jake said. He knew he couldn’t keep following the old tracks, not while being shot at from behind. He had to get off this ridge. When he threw the wheel to the left, the vehicle dove, heading straight down at a precipitous angle and already starting to slide.
Jake kept the nose pointed forward, steering into the slide. He knew if the snowcat went sideways it would go into a roll and probably turn a few hundred times before finally reaching the bottom several minutes later.