Chapter 126 - The Breach on the Ice
The floodlights on the icebreaker switched from blinding white to tactical infrared, plunging the shoreline back into darkness, but Emma knew what that meant: night-vision snipers were taking aim.
"Move!" Sterling bellowed, tackling Emma and Maya into the lee of a concrete mooring bollard just as two heavy armor-piercing rounds gouged chunks of frozen stone from the dock where they had been standing seconds before.
"Claire, suppressing fire on the ship's bridge!" Sterling ordered, pulling two smoke canisters from his belt and hurling them across the open ice toward the dock slip.
Thick, sulfurous gray smoke billowed into the freezing air, creating an infrared-scattering thermal screen. Claire leaned out from behind an overturned steel dumper and fired five precision shots into the glass of the icebreaker's wheelhouse. The reinforced panes spider-webbed, forcing Eleanor and her handlers to duck out of sight.
"To the airboat! Go!" Claire yelled.
Emma gripped Maya tightly by the waist and scrambled down the icy embankment toward Slip B-14. The terrain was treacherous; jagged slabs of river ice had buckled against the wooden pilings, creating a labyrinth of frozen hazards. Beneath them, the black, freezing water of the Saint Lawrence churned violently between the ice sheets.
Tucked beneath the rotting hull of a defunct tugboat was the airboat—a wide, flat-bottomed craft powered by a massive aircraft propeller enclosed in a steel cage. The engine was already idling, sending a low vibration through the ice.
A grizzled French-Canadian man in a heavy caribou parka leaned out of the cockpit, extending a gloved hand. "Vite! Get in! They’re dropping zodiacs from the port side!"
Emma lifted Maya up into the cargo well, climbing in right behind her. Maya curled into a ball on the metal deck, pulling her hood down, her tiny hands clutching the brass key against her chest like an amulet.
Sterling vaulted aboard next, the heavy boat rocking violently beneath his weight. "Claire, fall back! We're green!"
Claire fired three more shots toward the gangway of the icebreaker, where four armed operatives were descending via rope ladders, then sprinted across the ice sheet.
Just as her boot hit the airboat’s rubber pontoon, a shot echoed from the crane tower three hundred yards away. Claire gasped, stumbling forward. Emma caught her by the tactical vest, hauling her into the cockpit with a frantic heave.
"Claire! Where are you hit?" Emma screamed.
"Left shoulder... clean through... vest took the blunt force," Claire grunted between clenched teeth, pressing a gloved hand against her collarbone. "Get us moving, Jean! Drive!"
The pilot slammed the throttle forward. The massive airplane propeller behind them roared to life with an ear-splitting howl, blowing a blizzard of loose snow fifty feet behind the craft. The airboat surged forward, sliding off the dock ice and hitting the churning, slush-filled surface of the Saint Lawrence at forty knots.
Behind them, the icebreaker’s heavy diesel engines thundered, its bow pushing through the frozen pack ice in pursuit, while two high-speed tactical zodiacs hit the water, their outboard motors screaming over the wind.
Maya reached out from beneath the canvas tarp and gripped Emma’s hand. "Mommy, are we going home?"
May you like
Emma looked back at the receding skyline of Montreal, then ahead into the black, frozen void of the river leading toward the international border.
"We’re going to build a new home, Maya," Emma said, her voice steady and resolute. "A home where no one will ever call you a burden again."
