Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

on the ship, tomorrow morning.”
“We’ll be there,” Madeleine said breezily.
Daniel smirked. “Looking forward to it…”
“Well, until then,” King smiled and walked out of the bar towards the foyer. He imagined that punching Daniel square in the face would have been most satisfying. There was an arrogance about the man that King did not like, or maybe it was just the man’s competitiveness over Madeleine. Or it could have been his intention like King to spot foreign agents and elicit a response. King paused and checked his phone, glancing back at the two of them at the bar. Daniel’s body language had changed, and he appeared to be more relaxed. King was sure he was pleased to be the only male on the scene, but Madeleine just looked sad. Could she have been interested in him? There was more than a decade and a half between them, so he doubted it really. He caught Daniel watching him and replaced his phone to his pocket as he headed back through the foyer and up to his room, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling and a shiver running down his spine.

Chapter Eight
 
King changed into his travelling clothes of jeans and several layers of T-shirts and sweatshirts and his leather bomber jacket with a wool lining, then made sure he did not forget to put on the pair of thermal socks. He covered up with the trouser bib set and threaded the ski jacket over his bomber jacket. He put spare gloves in his pockets along with two small plastic bottles of water and the chocolate from the minibar, then loaded the Browning rifle, but kept the bolt drawn back as he shouldered it on the strap. King tucked his gloves under his armpit and left them there as he put on his beanie and headed back downstairs.
Outside the digital thermometer in front of the hotel indicated that it was -25ºc, the darkness shearing off another ten degrees or so from when he had landed and making it feel like another twenty. He walked across to the front of the convenience store and put the key in the ignition of a large Yamaha snowmobile. It was a 1049cc model and looked reasonably new in terms of aggressive design and wear and tear. King checked the gear selector was in neutral like he had been shown and used the electric ignition to start it seamlessly into life. He sat astride, buttoned up his jacket and took the rifle off his shoulder, drove the bolt forward and locked it down. He set the safety and slung the rifle over his head and shoulder to secure it firmly in place. He donned his gloves, his hands already burning from the cold. When he slipped the machine into gear it crept forwards ever so slightly, and when he touched the thumb throttle the snowmobile lunged forwards. The fastest accelerating vehicle he’d ever driven or ridden had been a snowmobile in Lapland, and he already knew this was on another level. He gripped the tank firmly with his knees and eased the machine forwards, then when he straightened the handlebars, he gave it plenty of throttle and took off down the street like a scalded cat. He couldn’t help beaming the daftest smile he’d had in years, and the adrenaline surged through him, his heart pounding and his breathing becoming erratic. There was no gearing, simply a forward gear and a reverse like a boat’s outboard engine and the noise sounded like a chainsaw at maximum revs. It felt two or three times as powerful as the fastest quadbike or wetbike he had experienced, and although he hadn’t ridden many all-out sports motorbikes, he knew this was up there with them, or perhaps faster accelerating even still and he had to stop himself grinning like an idiot as he revelled in the rush the speed gave him. The belt-driven ‘blades’ underneath simply gripped harder the faster he went. A huge rooster tail of snow trailed behind him and the featureless terrain in the darkness made it difficult to navigate, but soon he was well outside the town limits and following the compass heading he had memorised earlier.
The instruments on the handlebars were shrouded in a sealed unit with a Perspex screen and indicated his speed in kilometres, fuel level, temperature – both ambient and engine temperature – all displayed digitally, as well as in the form of a coloured dial for the engine, compass, and oil level. He had not opted for the GPS option, as he did not want any evidence of his journey, especially of his destination, recorded. He had a GPS on his own phone and had started to use Google Maps in his room to plot his course, but it was a pointless exercise as the terrain was merely white and featureless. Instead, he had the coordinates and compass heading of both where he was aiming for, and of course, the town of Longyearbyen upon his return. All he had to do now was head North-West and follow the frozen shoreline for an hour. Which was easier said than done, because the cold was finding the stitching in his clothing, and what little exposed skin on his face remained, was burning with the cold. He had taken a pair of goggles with the snowmobile, and they were steaming up terribly, and that steam was now freezing – his own little snowstorm going on in his goggles. King released the throttle and the snowmobile stopped so suddenly that he almost went over the handlebars without any additional braking. He kept the engine running as he looked all around him to check for polar bears. Everything was monochrome, but despite the darkness and the sliver of moon in a cloudy night sky, there was enough ambient light to see for several hundred metres in every direction. He wondered how much better than his own a polar