Ice Hunt

As Matt watched the Cessna, a puff of fire rolled from one of the side windows. Though he heard nothing, he imagined the whistle of the incoming grenade. A trail of smoke marked its rocketed path, arcing to within two yards of their wingtip, then vanishing ahead. The explosion erupted against one of the pinnacles, casting out a rain of stone. A section of cliff face broke free and slid earthward.

Jenny banked from the assaulted pillar and turned up on one wing. Matt had a momentary view of the ground below as the Otter shot between the two spires.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod,” Craig intoned behind him.

Once past the spires, Jenny leveled out. Surrounded on all sides by columns and towers, peaks and pinnacles, cliffs and walls. The heights were such that the tops could not be seen out the windows.

Winds buffeted the small plane, jostling it.

Matt clenched his armrests.

Jenny banked hard, tilting up on the other wing. Matt’s eyes stretched wide. He wanted to close them, but for some reason, he couldn’t. Instead, he cursed this firsthand view of Jenny’s flying. Economy seating suddenly did have its appeal.

The Otter shot between a cliff face and a tilted column. To his side, Jenny began to hum under her breath. Matt knew she did this whenever she was fully concentrating on something, but usually it was just the New York Times crossword puzzle.

The plane skirted the pinnacle and leveled again—but only for a breath.

“Hang on,” Jenny muttered.

Matt simply glared. His forearms were already cramped from clutching his seat. What more did she want?

She rolled the Otter over on a wing and spun tight around a spire. For the next five minutes, she zigzagged and barnstormed through the rock maze. Back and forth, up on one wing, then the other.

His stomach lurching, Matt sought any sign of the Cessna in the skies, but it was like searching through a stone forest. He had lost sight of the plane as soon as they entered Arrigetch—which had been Jenny’s plan all along. There were a thousand exits from this region: passes, chutes, moraines, valleys, glacial flows. And with the lowering cloud cover, if the Cessna wanted to know where they were headed, it would have to follow, if it dared.

The plane entered a wide glacial cirque, a natural amphitheater carved from the side of one of the mountains. Jenny swung the Otter in a gentle glide along the edge of the steep-sided bowl. The lip of a glacier hung over the mountain’s edge in an icy cornice. Below, the floor was covered with boulders and glacial till, powdery rock and gravel that had been left behind as the ice retreated.

But in the center lay a perfectly still mountain lake. The blue surface of the tarn was a mirror, reflecting the Otter as it circled around the bowl. The walls of the cirque were too steep for a direct flight out. Jenny began a slow spiral, heading up, trying to clear the mountain cliffs.

Matt let out a slow sigh of relief. They had survived Arrigetch.

Then movement in the tarn’s reflection caught his eye.

Another plane.

The Cessna shot into the cirque, entering from an entirely different direction. From the way the plane bobbled for a moment, Matt guessed their pursuers were just as surprised to see them here.

“Jen?” Matt said.

“I don’t have enough altitude yet to clear the cliffs.” Her words for the first time sounded scared.

The two planes now circled the stone amphitheater, climbing higher, the tense pageant mirrored in the blue lake below. The door to the other plane shoved open. From seventy yards away, Matt spotted the now familiar parka-clad figure brace himself in place, shouldering the grenade launcher.

He turned back to Jenny. He knew he’d eventually regret his next words, but he also knew they would never clear the top of the cliffs before they were fired upon. “Get us back into Arrigetch!”

“There’s not enough time!”

“Just do it.” Matt unbuckled and climbed from the copilot seat. He scrambled over to the side window that faced the other plane.

Jenny banked toward the maze of rock, circling back toward Arrigetch.

Matt unhitched the window and slid it back. Winds blasted into the cabin. Bane barked excitedly from the backseat, tail wagging furiously. The wolf loved flying.

“What are you doing?” Jenny called to him.

“You fly,” he yelled, and cracked open the emergency box by the door. He needed a weapon, and he didn’t have time to free and load the shotgun. He grabbed the flare gun inside the emergency kit and jammed it out the window. He pointed it at the other plane. With the winds, prop wash, and shifting positions of the planes, it was a Hail Mary shot.

He aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger.

The fizzling trail of the flare arced across the cirque, reflected in the tarn below. He had been aiming for the parka-clad figure, but the winds carried the flare to the side. It exploded into brilliance as it sailed past the nose of the plane.

The other pilot, clearly tense from his transit through the jagged clutches of Arrigetch, veered off, pitching the plane suddenly to the side. The parka-clad figure at the plane’s door lost his footing and tumbled out, arms cartwheeling. But a couple yards down, he snagged, tethered in place to the frame of the door. He swung back and forth under the belly of the Cessna.

It had to be distraction enough.

“Go!” Matt yelled, and slammed the window shut. He crawled back to the front seat.

Jenny’s father patted him on the shoulder as he passed. “Good shot.”

Matt nodded to Craig. “It was his idea.” He remembered the reporter pulling the flare gun on him when he came to his rescue a couple days ago. It had reminded him of a lesson taught to him by his old sergeant: Use whatever you have on hand…never give up the fight.

Feeling better, Matt buckled into place.

Jenny was already diving back into the maze. “They’re coming after us,” she said.

Matt jerked around, surprised. He turned in time to see the flailing man cut free. His form tumbled through the air and splashed into the blue tarn.

Stunned, Matt sat back around. They had sacrificed their own man to continue the pursuit.

Jenny swung the plane over on one wing and sped away among the cliffs. But this time, they couldn’t shake the other plane.

And Jenny was tiring. Matt saw how her hands had begun to tremble. Her eyes had lost their steady determination and shone with desperation. A single mistake and they were dead.

As he thought it, it happened.

Jenny banked hard around a craggy column.

Ahead a solid wall of stone filled the world.

A dead end.

They could not turn away in time. Matt braced himself, expecting Jenny to try, but instead she throttled up.