Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Christa Faust, Gabriel Hunt

Book: Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Christa Faust, Gabriel Hunt Read Free Book Online
Authors: Christa Faust, Gabriel Hunt
Tags: Fiction, thriller
thing?” Millie asked, lowering himself hand over big hand down the rope, which swayed despite Gabriel’s best efforts to hold it steady. “I oughta have my head examined.”
    The Spryte groaned and shifted under Millie’s considerable weight on one end and the even greater weight of the piled-up ice on the other. A sudden lurch shook the vehicle. Gabriel tasted an icy metallic fear in the back of his throat. The rope bearing Millie’s weight swung to one side and a barrage of colorful swearing echoed up the chasm.
    “Don’t want to rush you,” Gabriel called down, “but…shake a leg, okay?”
    “What’s happening up there, boss?”
    The groaning and creaking was getting louder, and though the darkness was now almost complete, by peering closely Gabriel could see the metal frame of the Spryte bulging inward. “Not your problem. Just get down.”
    Suddenly, Gabriel felt the rope jerk in his hands. There was no weight on it anymore. A moment later, he heard a heavy impact. “What happened?” he shouted.
    “I got down,” Millie called. “Figured I could stand to drop the last dozen feet or so. Wasn’t the slickest landing ever, but I’m in one piece. Now you, boss. Get your ass down here.”
    Gabriel didn’t need to be told twice. He took hold of the rope and pushed off, sliding down as quickly as he could into the blackness. His head was aching from the altitude and his breath was leaden in his constricted chest but he pushed all that aside and concentrated only on lowering himself into the chasm.
    Above him, he heard the sound of metal twisting, and he felt the motion transmitted through the rope. The Spryte couldn’t fall any farther—could it?
    It was a chance he couldn’t afford to take. He slackened his grip on the rope and slid, as quickly as he wasable. He could feel the walls of ice narrowing around him until he had to twist his body sideways in order to slip down between them. Another noise came from above, the sound of metal snapping this time—and a moment later, there was no tension in the rope at all. It had been severed, and Gabriel was falling.

Chapter 11
    There was a moment of blind plummeting, the useless rope still gripped between his hands. Then he hit—but where’d he’d expected to strike solid ice, he felt something soft under him instead. Millie’s arms wrapped around him from behind and set him down gently on the ground.
    Velda swung the light around.
    They were in a long narrow corridor of ancient ice that glowed blue in the flashlight’s glare. Above their heads, the crack leading up to the crushed Spryte was the only opening. Everything else was sealed solid, the ice bulging around them in an oval pocket that was disturbingly reminiscent of the spine and ribs of some enormous animal, viewed from the inside. Only in one direction was there any way they could go—and who knew how far?
    “What do you think, Nils?” Gabriel asked. “Think there may be another way up? Nils?”
    The big Swede was bent over, sorting through a pile of smashed equipment scattered across the ground. It was the contents of the first pack, Gabriel realized, the one that had fallen out of the Spryte when they were still aboveground, the one that had plummeted pastNils while he’d been clinging to the ice ledge. Nils was gathering up what he could, sorting the hopelessly broken from the salvageable.
    “Velda,” Nils said, excitedly. “Look at this. These are not mine.” He held up a pair of broken goggles.
    Velda took the goggles from him and examined them up close in the flashlight’s beam.
    “They’re his!” she said, her voice shaking. “They are, aren’t they?”
    “I think you might be right,” Nils replied. “They certainly look like your father’s. I don’t think any of the rescue team lost their goggles while searching, and no one else has been anywhere near this area recently that we know of.”
    “So he must have been down here,” Velda said, almost to herself. She swung

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