The Serpent's Curse (31 page)

“I'll climb over,” Paul volunteered. It was relatively easy for him, an ex-soldier, to clamber up and straddle it, but the moment he reached the crest, he fell hard. The topmost stones were rigged to collapse under pressure. Not only that, but the level of the ground on the far side of the wall was at least three feet deeper than the close side. The earth was chewed up, craggy, and rock-strewn for a swath of fifty feet along the inside of the wall. It had been dug up purposely and the ground left open and treacherous. Using the gap Paul had made, they mounted the wall one by one, dropped down with his help, and kept on climbing. Another grueling half hour of stinging snow and wind came and went. Then a narrow light burst through the swirling gray air. It swept across the snowdrifts ahead of them.

“Patrol! Back off into the trees,” Paul barked like a squad commander. He and Roald hustled them all over the rocky ground into a dense cluster of firs. Terence and Marceline looked through their binoculars.

An engine downshifted, and a transport truck camouflaged in white and pale green passed slowly along the road about a mile above them. It had a covered back. Sensors fixed high on the trees on either side of the road blinked in rapid succession as the vehicle crept slowly down the incline. It made a turn and vanished.

“Stay here; we're going forward,” Terence said. He darted ahead with Marceline to another copse of trees, then another. A minute later, they returned.

“Galina's in the transport,” Marceline hissed breathlessly. “I spied her—”

“Galina? Where is she going?” said Wade.

“Maybe to the airstrip,” Paul said. “She'll pass the road not far from us.”

After three long minutes, they heard the vehicle again, grinding through the gears. From the sound of the engine, Darrell knew it would weave around to that point in the road in less than two minutes. He borrowed the binoculars from Terence.

And there she was.

Galina Krause, the model-beautiful woman from the Berlin cemetery and the cave in Guam and everywhere they happened to be. Her face was as white as snow, her hair as black as night, a ghostly apparition in an army truck.

“The pale guy with the sunken chest is there, too,” Darrell said. “They're jammed in the cab with a guy wearing sunglasses.” The transport vanished again among the trees. “Another couple of minutes and we'll see it again.”

Suddenly, his stepfather was moving. “Paul, Terence, we need to stop that truck. If Galina has Sara in there, we have to—”

“Rocks, branches, anything, throw them all into the truck's path,” said Marceline.

“The bigger the better,” said Wade. “Make it look like a landslide or something.”

The eight of them heaved rocks and branches down into the road. Before long, headlights flashed at the final turn, and the engine growled into a low gear.

“Pull back; flatten,” Marceline said, rolling one last rock down. The truck motored toward the curve. The driver noticed the obstacle and jammed on the brakes. The truck slid to a stop, its rear left tire off the road. He leaped out of the cab, went around the front, and swore loud and long in Spanish. Then he pulled out a pistol and observed both sides of the pass.

Ebner stuck his head out of the passenger window. “Why didn't the rockslide set off the sensors?” he barked, but didn't get out of the cab to help.

“I don't know,” Sunglasses replied sharply. “I don't see anyone.”

“Clear the road,” Galina said. “We must go!”

“Yes, Miss Krause.” Holstering his pistol, Sunglasses began heaving the rocks and branches to the roadside.

Darrell rose up to his hands and knees. “If Mom is in the back of the truck, I can check without them seeing me.”

His father turned in the snow and held him back with an iron grip. “Darrell, no way.”

Before anyone could stop him, Wade slid down the ledge in the truck's blind spot. He lifted up the heavy flap that covered the back opening. Instead of just looking in, he hoisted himself up and crawled inside.

Idiot!
thought Darrell.
I should be doing that!

Then Wade poked his head out and shook it, as if to say,
Sara's not here.

“Then get out of there!” Becca hissed. “Unless Galina's going for the relic . . .”

Terence grunted under his breath. “Becca may be right. I'll go with Wade. Stay with the investigators. We'll be back.”

Lily started moving now. “Galina can't be allowed to steal the relic! I'm going.”

“You are not!” Becca said, reaching out for her, but Lily slid to the end of the ledge and crept down with Terence.

Becca nearly choked on her own breath. Neither Darrell nor his father could move or raise their voices. Paul and Marceline had their pistols out, aimed at the driver with the sunglasses. Then it was too late. Lily and Terence climbed into the back of the truck. Sunglasses hopped into the cabin again and started the engine. He shifted it into gear.

Becca and Roald squirmed away from the rim of the ledge and into the trees with Paul and Marceline, while Darrell gaped, wide-eyed, at the receding truck.

His stepfather urged him back and back and back into the trees, but all Darrell could do was watch the headlights fade and then vanish around the next turn.

W
ade hoped his brain wasn't completely wrecked, that it was
merely
the brutal cold, his tumbling in the jet landing, several smacks to the head, his near drowning in the Venice canal, and the specter of a horrifying deadline that had combined to make him think sneaking into Galina's truck was even a thing.

When Lily crawled into the truck hissing, “Are you insane?” he kind of had to admit he was. But then so was she, so he had company.

“Did you think this would help?” she whispered.

“I guess I did.”

Then Terence appeared, and Wade didn't know what to believe.

“Your father and stepbrother are rather freaking out back there,” Terence said. “I don't know who was holding who back.”

“What about Becca? What did she think?”

Lily's mouth fell open. “Are you serious?” She was going to swat him, when the truck bounced suddenly into and out of a pothole, nearly throwing Wade on top of her. He managed to roll off next to a long, narrow case that must have been filled with rocks, because it was as heavy as stone.

“That is a weapon,” Terence whispered. “A big one.” He unzipped the case. Inside was what looked like a rifle with a huge barrel and canisters alongside. “Ooh, a flamethrower. I burned down a ski lodge with one of these.”

Lily choked. “You what?”

“Oh yes. That was chapter seventeen of
The Mozart Inferno
. Hold on, I think I might be able to tweak the fuel line a little bit. . . .” He leaned over the flamethrower and began to pick at the controls with his fingers.

Meanwhile, the truck driver—Sunglasses—seemed to aim for every single bump in the road as if it were his job and he wanted a promotion.

Finally Lily said, “Shh,” although neither Wade nor Terence had said anything. “We're slowing down. Listen, I hear engines. Do you hear engines? Shh.”

The truck dipped into a half dozen more potholes, then slid to a stop on flat, snowy pavement. The engine turned over for a half minute before giving up in a last cloud of purple smoke, which blossomed into the rear compartment.

Footsteps crunched noisily over the snow away from the truck. No one came around back. Drawing his handgun, Terence peeked out the flap; flakes flew in. “Airfield.”

It was a long, straight strip of flat land cleared out of the forest and paved. The engine noise Lily had heard came from two snowplows finishing their work a mile down at the far end. The snowfall and wind had lessened, and they could see a small jet, gray and steely and looking as powerful as it was sleek. It was idling about a hundred feet away, its nose pointing down the strip. Two rough-looking men with hoses sprayed deicing fluid on its wings, while its cargo door hung open, touching the tarmac.

Lily glanced at the black case. “Let's get out of here before anyone comes for the flamethrower.”

“Good idea,” whispered Terence, zipping up the case again. “Keep your heads down.” He glanced out the back and eased his way to the ground. Lily went next. Wade last. They hurried to the nearest cover, a supply hut at the edge of the airstrip. They crouched behind it.

Galina was busy bullying somebody on her phone as she and Ebner climbed a short ladder into the jet. Sure enough, after checking out the cargo bay, Sunglasses returned to the truck. He removed the long case from the rear compartment, then hitched it onto his shoulder as if it were a violin case. He carried it to the jet and slid it into the cargo hold. Then he stomped over to the hut they were hiding behind. There must have been a phone inside, because Wade heard a chime. Sunglasses spoke a series of quick words. Something, something, Vorkuta. He hung up.

Lily shared a look with Wade and Terence.
Vorkuta,
she mouthed.
The relic!

The moment Sunglasses ascended to the jet's cabin and the cargo door began lifting, Lily stood up. “We need to get on that jet.”

“No,” said Terence gently, holding her back. “My jet. We know where she's going, and I'm sure I can get it off the ground. If we can make it back to their truck and drive it to where we landed, we'll only be a few minutes behind her. We have to be careful, though. Those guys with the snowplows are still out there. Come on.”

It sounded good.
If
they could get Terence's jet off the ground.

Seventeen minutes after slipping cleanly away from the airstrip, Lily was staring through the cockpit window of Terence's NetJet into a world of white as he tried to get the engines going. The snow was heavy once more. The flakes fell large and wet.

“Won't we just crash again?” she asked.

“Oh, we'll make it,” Terence said casually, starting the engines. “It'll be a tad bumpy, of course, bouncing over the ground to the road. And there's a bit of a curve in the road, but if we can get up enough speed on the straight, we'll be okay.”

“If?” said Wade.

“Better buckle up,” Terence added. “Just in case.”

The bounce up to the road was more than a tad bumpy. Twice it felt as if the jet would simply topple over, but Terence finally got it into the rutted tracks. “Here goes!”

The engines' whine changed, thrumming through the fuselage. Lily clung fiercely to her armrests. The jet sped forward, faster and faster, bounding and tilting over the ruts, when a truck appeared on the road ahead of them.

“Uh-oh,” said Wade.

“I see it.” Terence pulled the steering column back, and the jet tore up from the road just as the truck drove underneath. The fuselage thudded, and they heard two loud pops that reminded Lily of the tires exploding on the Williamsburg Bridge.

“They shot out our landing gear!” she screamed.

“We won't need that for another couple of hours,” said Terence. “We'll think of something by then.”

“You're pretty calm,” said Wade, gripping his seat handles.

“I'm always calm when I'm in the middle of writing a novel.”

“You're writing a novel?” said Lily. “
Now
?”

“I'm thinking of calling it
The Greywolf Conundrum
. Hold on while I set the course.” Tapping the name
Vorkuta
into one of the dashboard instruments gave him a sequence of numbers—67°29'18”N, 63°59'35”E—the coordinates for the Vorkuta airport. Though Vorkuta was inside the Arctic Circle, the city was in the same time zone as Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and in Terence's jet, he promised, it would take under three hours.

Two hours and forty-five minutes later, they were descending toward a vast dark city, a blotch of gray concrete on the frozen tundra.

“The airport's still good,” Terence said, “but Galina didn't land there. Look.” The gray Falcon sat on a vast paved area about a half mile from the airstrip. It appeared to be a parking lot next to a coal mine. “Now this will be rough. Hold tight.”

The landing gear grumbled beneath them. Lily knew the tires were in shreds. Her stomach bounced up and up with each hundred-foot descent. She locked eyes with Wade. “I don't like tiny planes.”

“Actually,” he said, “they almost never . . .” He didn't finish.

The bare rims of the wheels shrieked when they hit the tarmac. Lily shut her eyes as they ground into the surface of the airstrip. She nearly tore the arms from her seat. The landing was rough and long and not very straight. Terence did everything he could to keep the jet from veering off the strip. He was successful until the very last moments, when one of the wheels ripped off the gear, and the plane spun around like a car skidding on ice. It finally came to rest with a jerk, its nose tilted forward and touching the ground. Lily opened her eyes. Terence smiled. Wade was holding a barf bag but hadn't used it.