The mercenaries reacted as soon as they heard the shot. Before the echo even faded, an MP-5 replaced the screwdriver in Mikkel’s hand. At the samovar, the incessant Russian singing ceased as Boris traded his tin cup for a machine gun.
With the second shot, Sven was on his feet. He threw the iron bolt on the stout wooden door and backed away in case someone shot through it.
“Mikkel,” he hissed, shouldering a Heckler & Koch. “Get on the radio. Now.”
After an eternity of silence, the door blew open with a deafening crash. Fierce wind and billowing snow saturated the room. Sven aimed his weapon at the doorway, but all he could see was a blur of shimmering white powder.
He turned. “Boris! Secure that door.”
The Russians moved to the threshold and peered into the storm. Through the torrential downfall, Sven saw Boris glance his way and shrug. Nothing.
Mikkel, meanwhile, was speaking into the ICOM transceiver.
“Base camp to Piper Maru… We have a situation. Repeat. Base camp to Piper Maru…”
When he received no reply, the Russian cursed and rekeyed the mike.
Snow and wind continued to surge into the mess hall. Finally, Boris struggled against the storm to push the door closed.
Mikkel felt Sven’s grip on his shoulder. “Come on, man… I need you to raise the ship.”
“I’m trying, but the storm—”
Sven felt Mikkel shudder under his grip—then the man was forcibly ripped from his hand.
He whirled to see the Russian hoisted in the air by an invisible force, the transceiver falling from his limp fingers. Still alive, still aware, Mikkel’s face mirrored agony and bewilderment. He knew he was going to die, but he did not understand what was killing him. His eyes locked with Sven’s. His mouth gaped, but only to emit a wet gurgle. Then, dead at last, Mikkel hung from a now-visible spear like a piece of meat dangling on the end of a fork.
At the door, Boris reeled as invisible blades lopped off his right arm, then the left. Finally his throat exploded in a red mist before his sundered limbs plopped to the floor. The fist clutching the MP-5 convulsed once, sending a burst into the far wall.
What Sven first saw as a blur was now framed by cordite smoke—the silhouette of an impossibly large, humanoid creature. The ex-Navy SEAL took a step backwards and aimed the MP-5. But before he could pull the trigger, a blow sent him spinning to the floor.
Nose smashed and gushing blood, Sven fumbled for the gun that had been knocked from his hand. Instead he burned his fingers on the pot of boiling water still simmering on the camp stove. With both hands he hurled it, dousing the specter with scalding water.
The aluminum pot bounced harmlessly away, but the water elicited an angry roar as electric charges silhouetted the humanoid shape. Then, in a shower of rapid blue sparks, the Predator’s cloaking device shorted out for an instant—long enough for Sven to see his own terrified reflection in the mirrored eyes of the creature’s armored face plate.
The shots were loud enough to be heard over the storm. Quinn, returning from inspecting the Hagglunds, threw open the door.
“What’s all the damn noise about—”
Quinn’s mouth stopped. Bloody bodies and hacked-off limbs greeted him, as did something massive, formless and invisible. Wielding twin blades tinged with human blood, the phantom was in the process of ripping great chunks of flesh from a howling man cowering in the corner. As snow billowed into the mess hall, Quinn dimly perceived a blur of motion. The silhouette was altering its shape again.
Suddenly the razor-edged tip of a spear materialized right in front of Quinn’s face. He slammed the door and ducked as the weapon passed through the thick wood and gouged a chunk of muscle from his left arm.
He choked back a cry. Then he turned and ran.
Stumbling through white-out conditions, Quinn heard the mess hall door ripped off its hinges. He traipsed around the corner of the building, pushing through deep drifts. His breath came in hot gasps while splatters of his warm blood left a crimson trail in the snow.
Fearing pursuit, Quinn peered over his shoulder—and blundered into something dangling from the overhanging roof above. He fell backwards, staring up at what was left of Klaus—identifiable only by the name tag on his Polartec overcoat. The dead man was strung up by his ankles, and where his head used to be there were now only long, red-black icicles flowing from a ragged stump.
Through the white haze, beyond Klaus, Quinn saw more shapes—he didn’t need to see their faces to recognize their clothing. It was the rest of his team. Reichel, Klapp, Tinker and the others, strung up by their feet, swaying in the wind.
Gagging, Quinn looked away and spied something gleaming in the snow—Klaus’s Desert Eagle handgun.
No sooner did Quinn’s fingers close on the handle than he sensed something at his back. Instinctively, Quinn flopped over in the snow and squeezed off a shot. The revolver bucked in his hand, and over the raging tempest he heard a satisfying roar of pain and rage. Eerily, Quinn saw the bullet punch a green hole into the invisible shape trudging out of the storm. At his feet, steaming, phosphorescent-green gore stained the ice.
Quinn lurched to his feet and tried to run. He didn’t even take two steps before something swatted him back down to the ground. Pitching headlong, Quinn grabbed for something to stop his fall. His fingers closed on a ribbon of tattered red canvas—what remained of the apple tent that had been erected over the pit. Since he’d been here last, something had shredded the tent to pieces.
Hearing the ice crunch behind him, Quinn rolled onto his back and aimed the handgun, which was just as quickly slapped out of his grip by a spectral hand. Quinn tried to crawl away when an invisible foot slammed down on his lower leg, snapping the bone in two with a crack so loud it could be heard over the roar of the wind.
The invisible foot lashed out again, the fresh blow cracking Quinn’s ribs and sending him spinning into the pit and down the two-thousand-foot shaft.
The cloaked Predator hopped onto the tripod mounted above the pit and peered into the abyss. With powerful legs braced against the storm, its ghostly outline flickered and changed with the intensity of the wind and pelting snow. The creature could hear Quinn’s muffled screams as he bounced off the icy walls, despite the howling storm.
A steady stream of green ooze still bubbled up from the now-visible cavity in the creature’s chest. But if the Predator felt pain, it did not show it. Throwing its massive head back and its thick-muscled arms wide, the hunter from the depths of space bellowed out an unearthly battle cry that reverberated throughout the whaling station.
A few moments later, four shimmering wraiths melted out of the snowstorm to join their leader at the mouth of the abyss. As fingers of energy crawled across their formless shapes, the creatures uncloaked.
Ignoring the hole in its armored chest plate—a hole that still oozed gore—the leader activated his wrist computer. With a high-pitched hum, a holographic image appeared among them, glowing faintly, and the Predators huddled close to examine the map of the pyramid complex far below.
In the center of that three-dimensional grid, inside the heart of the large, central pyramid, an electronic pulse throbbed. Grunting with satisfaction, the Predators cloaked again and vanished from sight.
Inside the pit, Quinn opened his eyes, surprised to be alive. His relief ended when he realized he was still plunging down the icy shaft, gaining speed with each passing second.
Desperately, he felt for any kind of purchase. His fingers slid along the ice, then nicked the wires running from the generator to the lights at the bases. Quinn quickly yanked them back, for he was falling too fast to stop himself that way. He would have to find a way to slow his fall a bit more before he grabbed the cable again.
Reaching for his belt, Quinn drew his ice axe and swung it. As the tip bit into the frozen wall, white shards sprayed Quinn’s face, blinding him. He still did not slow down.
Captain Leighton heard a sudden crack above him, like the sound of a tremendous bough breaking off an oak tree. Instinctively tucking in his head, Leighton raised a dented bullhorn.
“Take cover on deck!”
His voice boomed, loud enough to be heard over wind that whistled through the masts. Crewmen scattered as hundreds of pounds of gray-white ice dashed itself to pieces on the steel deck—ice that had accumulated on the ship’s superstructure, only to break free when it had become too heavy to stick.
Men dropped behind lifeboats and down stairwells as great chunks of frozen snow bounced across the deck. One piece the size of a football took out the bow light. Another shattered the glass covering a porthole.
“Clear it all away, double-time!” Leighton commanded. “More snow is on the way.”
On catwalks along the superstructure, crewmen chipped away at crystal-encased safety rails and knocked down massive icicles from stairways, cranes and cables. Suddenly a frigid blast cut across the deck, catching a seaman and nearly carrying him over the side.
“Mind your safety tether,” a deck officer bellowed. Without the benefit of a bullhorn, his cry was snatched away by the tempest.
Swathed in a fur-lined parka, with ice crusting his eyelashes and oil staining his faded white parka, the ship’s radar specialist appeared at Captain Leighton’s side.
“I’ve checked the upper decks,” he yelled. “The radar antennae are fouled and can’t be cleared until the storm is over. My instruments seem to be working, but I wouldn’t try to power up the radar anytime soon—the dome is frozen solid and you might damage the dish mechanism.”
“So what’s the good news?”
The man offered Leighton a half-smile. “The Giants won in extra innings.”
Leighton called to his deck officer. “Another fifteen minutes of work, then clear the decks of all personnel. It’s too dangerous for the crew to be out here.”
With that, Captain Leighton headed for the bridge, where his executive officer and a crewman from the radio hut were waiting for him.
“Sir, communications has just received a message fragment from Quinn’s team. I think they’re in some kind of trouble.”
Leighton’s shoulders sagged under the weight of yet more disturbing news. “How’s the storm progressing?”
“We’re caught in the windfly, and the wind speeds are still picking up,” Gordon said as he gazed through the frosted windows. “We’re going to have a hard time weathering this storm ourselves, Captain. Whatever’s happening on the ice, Weyland and his team are on their own for five or six hours—at least.”