Vassikin ducked below the lip of the tower. “Fowl can see us!” he hissed at Kamar. “Stay low.”
Kamar scuttled to the far side of the tower, opening a line to his men. “He’s here. Fowl is here. Search the area.”
Vassikin brought the phone back to his ear. “So come down here and check. You’ll see soon enough.”
“I can see fine from right here. Just take the hood off.”
Mikhael covered the phone. “He wants me to take the hood off. What should I do?”
Kamar sighed. Now it was becoming plain who was the brains in this outfit. “Take it off. What difference does it make? Either way they’re both dead in five minutes.”
“Okay, Fowl. I’m taking off the hood. The next face you see will be your father’s.” The big Russian propped up the prisoner high over the lip of the conning tower. He reached up with one hand and pulled off the rough sackcloth hood.
On the other end of the line, he heard a sharp intake of breath.
Through the filters of his borrowed LEP helmet, Artemis could see the conning tower as though it were three feet away. The hood came off, and he could not supress a sharp gasp.
It was his father. Different, certainly. But not beyond recognition. Artemis Fowl the First, without a shadow of a doubt.
“Well,” said a Russian voice in his ear. “Is it him?”
Artemis struggled to stop his voice from shaking. “Yes,” he said. “It is him. Congratulations. You have an item of some value.”
In the conning tower, Vassikin gave his partner the thumbs-up.
“It’s him. We’re in the money.”
Kamar didn’t share his confidence. There would be no celebrating until the cash was in his hand.
Butler steadied the fairy Farshoot rifle on its stand. He had selected it from the LEP armory. Fifteen hundred yards. Not an easy shot. But there was no wind, and Foaly had given him a scope that did the aiming for him. Artemis Fowl senior’s torso was centered in the crosshairs.
He took a breath.“Artemis. Are you sure? This is risky.”
Artemis did not reply, checking for the hundredth time that Holly was in position. Of course he wasn’t sure. A million things could go wrong with this deception, but what choice did he have?
Artemis nodded. Just once.
Butler fired the shot.
The shot caught Artemis Senior in the shoulder. He spun around, slumping over the startled Vassikin.
The Russian howled in disgust, heaving the bleeding Irishman over the lip of the conning tower. Artemis Senior slid along the keel, crashing through the brittle ice plates clinging to the sub’s hull.
“He shot him,” yelped the khuligany. “That devil shot his own father.”
Kamar was stunned.
“Idiot!” he howled. “You’ve just thrown our hostage overboard!” He peered into the black Arctic waters. Nothing remained of the Irlandskii but ripples.
“Go down and get him, if you wish,” said Vassikin sullenly.
“Was he dead?”
His partner shrugged. “Maybe. He was bleeding badly. And if the bullet doesn’t finish him, the water will. Anyway, it’s not our fault.”
Kamar swore viciously. “I don’t think Britva will see it that way.”
“Britva,” breathed Vassikin. The only thing the Menidzher understood was money.
“Oh, gods. We’re dead.”
The cell phone rattled on the deck. The speaker was vibrating. Fowl was still on the other end. Mikhael picked up the mobile as though it were a grenade.
“Fowl? You there?”
“Yes,” came the reply.
“You crazy devil! What are you doing? Your father is as good as dead. I thought we had a deal!”
“We still do. A new one. You can still make some money tonight.”
Mikhael stopped panicking, and started paying attention. Could there possibly be a way out of this nightmare?
“I’m listening.”
“The last thing I need is for my father to return and destroy what I have built up over the past two years.”
Mikhael nodded. This made perfect sense to him.
“So he had to die. I had to see it done myself, just to be sure. But I could still leave you a little something.”
Mikhael could barely breath. “A little something?”
“The ransom. All five million.”
“And why would you do that?”
“You get the money; I get safe passage home. Fair enough?”
“Seems fair to me.”
“Very well. Now look across the bay, above the fjord.”
Mikhael looked. There was a flare burning, right at the snow-covered hill’s tip.
“There is a briefcase tied to that flare. It goes out in ten minutes. I’d get there before then if I were you. Otherwise the case could take years to find.”
Mikhael didn’t bother to cut the connection. He just dropped the phone and ran.
“The money,” he shouted at Kamar. “Up there. The flare.”
Kamar was after him in a heartbeat, shouting instructions into the radio. Someone had to reach that money. Who cared about a drowning Irlandskii when there was five million dollars to be claimed?
Root pointed at Holly the moment Artemis Senior had been shot. “Go!” he ordered.
Captain Short activated her wings, launching herself off the hilltop. Of course what they were doing here was against all the regulations, but the Council was cutting Foaly a lot of slack having more or less convicted him of treason. The only conditions were that the centaur be in constant communication, and that every member of the party be fitted with remote incineration packs, so that they and all their fairy technology could be destroyed in the event of capture or injury.
Holly followed events on the submarine through her visor. She saw the shot hit Artemis Senior in the shoulder, knocking him against the larger Russian. Blood registered in her field of vision, still warm enough to be picked up by her thermal imager. Holly had to admit. It looked effective. Maybe Artemis’s plan could actually work. Maybe the Russians would be fooled. After all, humans generally saw what they wanted to see.
Then things went horribly wrong.
“He’s in the water!” shouted Holly into her helmet mike, opening the wing rig’s throttle to the max. “He’s alive, but not for long, unless we get him out.”
Holly skimmed silently over the glistening ice, arms crossed over her chest for speed. She was moving too fast for human vision to pin her down. She could be a bird, or a seal breaking the waves. The submarine loomed before her.
On board the Nikodim, the Russians were evacuating, clambering down the tower ladder, feet slipping in their haste. And ashore, the same. Men breaking cover, crashing through the frosted undergrowth. The commander must have set the flare. Those Mud Men would be delirious to find their precious money, only to have it dissolve in seventy-two hours. That would just about give them time to deliver it to their boss. Odds were he wouldn’t be happy with disap
pearing cash.
Holly skimmed the sub’s keel, safe from radiation in her suit and helmet. At the last moment, she flipped upward, shielded from the northern shore by the conning tower. She popped the throttle, hovering above the ice hole where the human had fallen in. The commander was talking into her ear, but Holly didn’t reply. She had a job to do and no time for talk.
Fairies hate cold. They hate it. Some are so phobic about low temperatures that they won’t even eat ice cream. The last thing that Holly wanted to do right now was to put so much as a toe into that sub-zero, radioactive water. But what choice did she have? “D’Arvit!” she swore, and plunged into the water.
The microfilaments in her suit deadened the cold, but they could not dispel it entirely. Holly knew that she had seconds before the temperature drop slowed her reactions and sent her into shock.
Below her, the unconscious human was as pale as a ghost. Holly fumbled with her wing controls. A touch too much on the throttle could send her too deep; not enough, and she would fall short. And at these temperatures, she only had one shot only.
Holly hit the throttle. The engine buzzed once, sending her ten fathoms down. Perfect. She grabbed Fowl senior by the waist, quickly clipping him on to her Moonbelt. He hung there limply. He needed an infusion of magic, and the sooner the better.
Holly glanced upward. It seemed as though the ice hole was already closing. Was there anything else that could go wrong? The commander was shouting in her ear, but she shut him out, concentrating on getting back on dry land.
Ice crystals spun themselves across the hole like spiders’ webs. The ocean seemed determined to claim them.
I don’t think so, thought Holly, pointing her helmeted head at the surface, and opening the throttle as far as it would go.
They crashed through the ice, landing on the slatted surface of the sub’s forward deck. The human’s face was the color of the surrounding landscape. Holly crouched on his chest like a predatory creature, exposing the supposed wound to the night air. There was blood on the deck, but it was Artemis Junior’s own blood. They had pried the cap from a hydrosion shell, and half filled it with blood taken from Artemis’s arm. On impact the fizzer had knocked Artemis Senior off his feet, sending the crimson liquid spiraling through the air. Very convincing.