Free Survivalist - 15 - Overlord by Jerry Ahern

right arm extending upward, driving the knife into the ice like a stake into the heart of a vampire. He wrapped the sling around his right fist and tugged. The knife moved slightly, then held, locked in the ice —he hoped at least. Holding to the sling, he eased himself down to where his knees could bend, searching for a
    toehold against the ice, finding none but wedging his legs against the narrowing walls which were glass slick. He used his left hand and fought at the Crain knife, ripping the Life Support System X free, swinging crazily for a moment as the force of his exertion freed his body from the wedged position he had taken.
    Instantly, he modified his plan of attack against the sheer ice face. Instead of driving the Crain knife into the same wall, he would drive it into the opposite wall, using a modified rock chimney technique.
    Rourke balled his gloved left fist more tightly still over the handle of the Crain knife and drove it into the ice almost at chest height, pulling himself up against the sling’s tension, getting his left foot into the handle of the Crain knife, raising himself up, the walls closer together here, an advantage for what he had determined as his means of locomotion, but a growing danger. Rourke ripped the smaller Russell knife free, then stabbed it into the ice at the maximum extension of his right arm’s upward reach.
    Again, he half swung, was half wedged —and he wrenched the Crain knife free, then drove it in again at nearly chest height, raising his left leg, getting a foothold, starting to drag himself up — his boot slipped. Rourke started to lose his hold on the sling, but caught himself as his left hand grasped for the haft of the Crain knife.
    He swung there, knowing that at any moment one of the knives might lose its bite into the ice and he could fall.
    The ice groaned around him again, a sound like tortured metal under great strain.
    Again, he brought his left foot up, getting it as firmly as he could into position on the haft of the Crain knife, then pushing himself up. There was no time to rest. He tore the smaller knife free, then hammered it into the ice with all the force he could summon, at maximum reach above him. Again, he grasped the sling/lifeline, again he tugged the Crain knife free of the ice, each time the task more difficult,
    his strength ebbing, he knew.
    He drove the Crain knife home, again rising to stand on its handle. His shoulders were touching the walls of ice which confined him and the crevasse seemed even narrower in the gray light above him.
    John Rourke repeated the process — drive the smaller knife into the ice, swing from the sling, wrench out the larger knife and then drive it into the ice, then climb up to stand upon it, then begin again —he didn’t know how many times, realizing at one level of consciousness that he was moving automaton-like, marveling at still another level of consciousness that he was moving at all. His arms ached with weariness; his legs cramped.
    As he rose to perch precariously again on the handle of the Crain knife, his head impacted something above him —ice.
    “Jesus,” Rourke cried into the darkness.
    He was trapped.
    Annie Rourke —Sarah Rourke watched her, praying for the child. The gift the girl had was also a curse, perhaps more a curse than a gift at all.
    “I can feel him, Momma —he’s trapped —he’s in darkness. He’s never been so tired. I can feel him thinking—about us and never seeing us again —Momma!”
    Sarah Rourke held her daughter tightly in her arms. They were trapped under enemy fire, had no radio, were still at least a quarter mile from the rim of the volcano. And Annie Rourke had said a word which said it all, moaned the word like pain —ice.
    “John!” Sara screamed her husband’s name until her throat ached with it …
    Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna felt something—Annie? She looked at Paul Rubenstein beside her, crouched near the
    height of the cone, Russians in front of