Hostage Read Online Free PDF Page A

forcing her down the ladder ahead of him. She reached the ground and started to run, but he was on her within two steps.
    'You have guests?' he asked, turning her to face the line of snowmobiles and loaded trailers that were waiting for Alpha Force to return.
    'They're only kids!' cried Papaluk. 'And they don't know anything!'
    'When will they be back?'
    'Not for a few days,' said Papaluk hastily, but she could not help glancing along the shore to make sure there was no sign of an approaching tundra buggy.
    'That soon?' said the man, catching her glance. 'We'd better get on with it.'
    Holding her upper arm in a vice-like grip, he frogmarched her down to the water. When she realized what he was going to do, Papaluk began to cry and her tears made frozen, white trails on her cheeks.
    'Please . . . Please don't. I won't tell anyone about the cyanide. I promise,' she begged.
    The man shook his head sadly. 'Sorry,' he said. 'You know how it is. Boss's orders.'
    'Then let me talk to him!' cried Papaluk as they reached the water line. 'We can go back to the cabin and call him. I'm sure, if I talk to him—'
    Her words were cut off as the man suddenly took her by the shoulders and threw her down into the icy waters of Hudson Bay. The cold was so intense it made all her muscles go into instant spasm. Her mouth opened wide and water flooded into her throat and lungs. She swallowed convulsively and the water entered her stomach, drastically reducing her core body temperature. Papaluk curled into a ball under the water as her muscles contracted even further. It was as though she had received a massive electric shock. The man was holding her down under the water but there was no need. The pain of the muscle cramps was overwhelming and she could not struggle.
    Just as she thought she was going to drown, the man hauled her back out of the water and up on to the ice-covered shore. Papaluk lay curled where he had dropped her, shuddering with intense muscle cramps and coughing up water. She knew she had to get back to the warmth of the cabin. If she stayed out in this wind in soaking wet clothes the heat would drain out of her at a catastrophic rate and she would be dead within minutes. She held out a shaking hand to the man but he simply stood and watched her with a mildly interested look on his face. Papaluk turned on to her front and tried to push herself up off the ground but the man planted a foot on the back of her neck and held her down. Papaluk whimpered once, then concentrated on trying to strip off her soaking clothes, but her hands had contracted into claws and she could not get a grip. As her struggles weakened, the man removed his foot from the back of her neck and stood back, watching. Papaluk began to drag herself towards the cabin but her claw hands could not find a purchase on the ice and she did not get far. The rough surface tore her fingers to shreds but she was so numb with cold, she could not feel it. For five long minutes she struggled to save herself until her core body temperature dropped to a critical level. Gradually, her feet stopped kicking and her hands grew still. Her muscles relaxed and she lay quiet on the ice, barely conscious and breathing shallowly. The man watched her for a moment longer, then bent forward and placed the glass specimen jar next to her hand. If anyone found the body before the bears disposed of it, they would think she had fallen in as she tried to collect a water sample.
    'A tragic accident,' he whispered, easing a strand of frozen hair away from her cheek before turning and walking away.
    Papaluk was not cold any more, even though her hair and clothes were now sheathed in ice. The signals from her nerve endings were no longer getting through and all her major organs were slowly shutting down. The surfaces of her lungs had frozen and the cells in her oxygen-starved brain were winking out one by one. A film of clear ice formed over her open eyes, acting like a prism and breaking the light