Alistair MacLean Arctic Chillers 4-Book Collection: Night Without End, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, Athabasca. Alistair MacLean

again. Zagero, cat-like as ever, was only feet behind him, moving so fast, so unexpectedly that Smallwood’s swift snapshot missed him altogether.

      ‘Call your friend Nielsen.’ Smallwood must have realised how things were going behind the concealing shelter of the rocks for his voice was suddenly savage, urgent. He spared a swift glance in Jackstraw’s direction – Jackstraw, followed at some distance by two more of Hillcrest’s crew, was crossing the glacier at a dead run and now less than fifty yards away. ‘His rifle. In a crevasse. Quickly!’

      ‘Jackstraw!’ My voice was hoarse, cracked. ‘Throw your rifle away! He’s got a gun on Miss Ross, and he’s going to kill her.’ Jackstraw braked, slipped on the ice, halted and stood there for a moment irresolute, and then at my repeated desperate cry carefully, deliberately dropped his rifle into a nearby fissure and came slowly on to join us. It was at that moment that Hillcrest grabbed me by the arm.

      ‘He’s moving, Mason! He’s alive!’ He was pointing down to Levin, who was indeed stirring slightly. I had never thought to examine Levin, it had seemed a ludicrous idea that a professional like Corazzini could have missed at such point-blank range, but now, regardless of Smallwood’s reaction, I dropped to my knees on the glacier and put my face close to Levin’s. Hillcrest was right. The breathing was shallow, but breathing there undoubtedly was, and now I could see the thin red line that extended from the temple almost to the back of the head. I rose to my feet.

      ‘Creased, concussed probably, that’s all.’ Involuntarily I glanced over my shoulder towards the rocks. ‘But too late now for Corazzini.’

      And I needed no eyes to know that this was so. The unseen battle behind the rocks had been fought out with a dumb feral ferocity, with a silent savagery that had been far more frightening than all the most maddened oaths and shouting could ever have been, but even now, as Smallwood jumped down from the tailboard of the tractor cabin, Margaret Ross still held in front of him, and started hustling her towards the rocks, a hoarse high-pitched scream that raised the hackles on the back of my neck froze us all, even Smallwood, to immobility: and then came a long quavering moan of agony, cut off as abruptly as it had begun. And now there was no more screaming or moaning, no more slipping of feet on ice, no more gasping or frenzied flurries bespeaking the interchange of desperate blows: there was only silence, a silence chillingly broken by regular rhythmic pounding blows like the stamping feet of a pile-driver.

      Smallwood had recovered, had just reached the rocks when Zagero came out to meet him face to face. Smallwood moved to one side, his gun covering him, as Zagero came slowly towards us, his face cut and bruised, his blood-saturated bandaged hands hanging by his sides, with two long ribbons of red-stained bandage trailing on the ice behind him.

      ‘Finished?’ I asked.

      ‘Finished.’

      ‘Good,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Your father’s still alive, Johnny. Scalp wound, that’s all.’

      His battered face transformed, first by disbelief then by sheer joy, Zagero dropped on his knees beside Solly Levin. I saw Smallwood line his pistol on Zagero’s back.

      ‘Don’t do it, Smallwood!’ I shouted. ‘You’ll only have four shells left.’

      His eyes swivelled to my face, the cold flat eyes of a killer, then the meaning of my words struck home, his expression subtly altered and he nodded as if I had made some reasonable suggestion. He turned to Jackstraw, the nearest man to him, and said, ‘Bring out my radio.’

      Jackstraw moved to obey, and while he was inside the cabin Zagero rose slowly to his feet.

      ‘Does look like I was a mite premature,’ he murmured. He glanced towards the rocks, and there was no regret in his face, only indifference. ‘Half a dozen witnesses, and you all saw him beatin’ himself to death … You’re next, Smallwood.’

      ‘Corazzini was a fool,’ Smallwood said contemptuously. The man’s cold-blooded callousness was staggering. ‘I can easily replace him. Just leave that radio here, Nielsen, and join your friends – while I join mine.’ He nodded down the glacier. ‘Or perhaps you hadn’t noticed?’

      And we hadn’t. But we noticed it now all right, the first of the party from the trawler climbing on to the ice at the precipitous tip of the glacier. Within seconds half a dozen of them were on the ice, running, stumbling, falling, picking themselves up again as they clawed their way up the slippery ice with all the speed they could muster.

      ‘My – ah – reception committee.’ Smallwood permitted himself the shadow of a smile. ‘You will remain here while Miss Ross and I make our way down to meet them. You will not move. I have the girl.’ Victory, complete and absolute victory was in his grasp, but his voice, his face were again devoid as ever of all shadow of expression or feeling. He stooped to pick up the portable radio, then swung round and stared up into the sky.

      I had heard it too, and I knew what it was before Smallwood did because it was a factor that had never entered into his calculations. But there was no need for me to explain, within seconds of hearing the first high screaming whine from the south a flight of four lean sleek deadly Scimitar jet fighters whistled by less than four hundred feet overhead, banked almost immediately, broke formation and came back again, speed reduced, flying a tight circle over the tongue of the fjord. I don’t like planes, and I hate the sound of jets: but I had never seen so welcome a sight, heard so wonderful a sound in all my life.

      ‘Jet fighters, Smallwood,’ I cried exultantly. ‘Jet fighters from a naval carrier. We called them up by radio.’ He was staring at the circling planes with his thin lips drawn back wolfishly over his teeth, and I went on more softly: ‘They’ve had orders to shoot and destroy any person seen going down that glacier – any person, especially, with a case or radio in his hand.’ It was a lie, but Smallwood wasn’t to know that, the very presence of the jets above must have seemed confirmation of the truth of my words.