The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

“Sir!” Huss shouted after King, then stepped out from behind the desk to block his path. King pushed him aside, and the man was knocked backwards into the desk, his shoulder bearing the brunt of the fall. “What the hell...?”

King made no apology. The door to the ice hotel had shattered and the cold escaping the tunnel was raw. Two guests almost fell through the broken doors into the lobby. Staff members wrapped them in jackets and King noted that both Russian men - the waiter and the barman – were quick to expertly check them over for injuries. He observed they acted like experienced soldiers – calm, methodical, measured. It was clear both men had extensive battle-field medical training.

Caroline caught up and stood beside King. “What on earth has happened?” she asked, directing her question to an affronted Huss.

The man stopped rubbing his shoulder. Considering the cuts and bruises the couple had received, his actions seemed trite by comparison. He seemed to realise this, too and quickly forgot about his bump on the desk. “We think the ice hotel was struck by lightning,” he said sourly. “There was a terrific thunderclap and some of the guests report seeing a great white light.”

“The manager said it was a bomb,” Caroline protested.

“It was,” replied King. He glanced back at the desk, noticed the thin man with the hooked nose was no longer there. He looked back at the owner. “I’d say it was a grenade.”

“It was a lightning strike!” Huss persisted.

“Nonsense,” King said. “It was a grenade.” One of the Russians looked up. King had forgotten who was who. He thought it was the waiter. King caught the man’s eye. “Something you want to say?”

The man shrugged. “It sounded like a grenade to me,” he said, standing up and dropping a wad of bloodied paper towel onto the floor. “I was in the military.”

“In Norway?”

The man hesitated, then said, “In Russia.”

“What?” Huss shook his head despondently. It was evident he had been lied to, but there was precious little the owner could do at this time. He shrugged and asked, “Why do you think it was a grenade?”

King stepped over to the entrance of the tunnel. “A dull, hollow thud drowned out almost instantly by what sounds like a secondary explosion.” He shrugged. “You get to know what they sound like.”

The young Russian nodded. He turned back to the woman he was treating and started to strap what was a clearly a badly fractured arm.

King could hear moans and screams down the labyrinth of carved ice. He looked at Caroline and said, “Stay close.”

Caroline was tugging on a jacket and zipped it up as she followed. The cold bit at their skin under their thinner clothing. Caroline tucked her hands under her armpits and King kept his hands in his pockets, his right hand gripping the butt of the tiny Walther. Ahead of them, a couple in their fifties stumbled towards them, their hair and clothing covered in a fine powder of ice and snow, as if a patisserie chef had dusted them with copious amounts of icing sugar.

“Are you okay?” asked King as they drew near. They didn’t respond. “Is there anybody else down there?”

The couple still didn’t reply, then King realised they couldn’t hear him. Their hearing had been damaged, most likely perforating their eardrums. He waved them past him, pointed for them to continue down the ice tunnel.

Caroline put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Keep going that way,” she said loudly, mouthing every syllable so that she stood a chance of lip-reading her as well. “The tunnel is clear, and the staff are helping people at the end.” She smiled. “They’ll have hot chocolate and mulled wine on the go in no time…”

“My ears are ringing,” the woman said feebly and started to cry. “Malcom can’t hear a thing…” The tears came from relief. That the worse was behind them, and safety and comfort awaited them. She nodded a thank you and wiped the tears from her face and was guided past them by her husband.

King could see the epicentre of the explosion. The room they had looked at. The room with the ice sculpture of an eagle outside the open doorway. The room where somebody had been watching them from outside. Only now, the eagle was in shattered pieces on the floor of the tunnel. He bent down and peered through the doorway, could see the night sky from where he crouched. The entire roof of the sleeping chamber had collapsed in seven or eight huge slabs of ice, and the metal bars that looked like corkscrews and acted as a bonding and support agent for the ice had twisted and bent into a gnarled mess. King had seen it before, on a larger scale, the twisted mess of bombed-out bunkers in Iraq and Syria.

“What’s up?”

King turned around to see Peter Stewart standing behind Caroline. Caroline moved away, not hiding her disdain.

“A grenade, I think,” King said. “It’s taken down the entire roof.” King turned back to the doorway and heaved at a slab of ice. His hands stuck to it and he tore them away, breathing warm air onto them.

Stewart reached into his pocket and retrieved a pair of gloves. He tossed them at King, and he wasted no time in putting them on. Stewart stood beside him and together they got the first slab clear of the doorway.

Caroline followed them inside, gasped when she saw the grisly sight. “Oh, no…” she trailed off.

Two pairs of legs poked out from underneath the largest slab of ice, a six-foot by six-foot section of roof with metal all twisted and broken. The bodies were fully dressed, as was the protocol for staying in the ice hotel, and blood had already frozen solidly and somewhat macabrely to the floor.