Murderer's eyes narrowed in helpless rage at Barney's death.
Dragging himself into Barney's forward cockpit, he valved air into the minisub's forward flotation tank, raising the torpedo-like nose. It was then that he saw them up there, silhouetted small and frog-like against the blinding white ice, two divers.
The two silhouettes were looking down at him, and he knew they had been attracted by the explosion of their gelatinous picket buoy. He looked all around for the dim gray outline of their submarine, but there was no sign of their "home," and his gaze concentrated with wide-eyed intensity on their black paddling shapes as his minisub rose from the depths.
He saw them exchange hurried hand signals. They began to swim away, side by side, their fins fluttering rapidly now. They were swimming a definite course, and still there was no sign of their submarine as his minisub inexorably gained on them.
Now that he had reached their altitude, he noticed they were already tiring. One diver looked back, then swam frantically to catch up with the other. Like a slow fighter plane, the minisub came in on them from behind, and one diver pushed at the other. They again exchanged hand signals, losing yards to the minisub, and one began to swim hard while the other turned back, facing the minisub, raising his hand in what appeared to be a courteous military salute. The minisub kept coming straight at him.
Then the diver spread his arms in a gesture of peace. The minisub's torpedo-shaped nose rammed his belly. Unsheathing his long blade, the Murderer struck.
As the diver wriggled, the Murderer withdrew the blade and struck again. Air bubbles streamed from the diver's chest with each exhalation of breath as he backwatered. His expression seemed mild surprise as the Murderer struck a third time, driving the blade down between the man's neck and collar bone, pushing him deeper. The next blow smashed the mask. Belatedly, the man's hand flurried, seeming to clutch at his bubbles as he sank.
The Murderer looked up. Far off under the ice, the other diver had stopped, was looking down, watching, and the Murderer held up his blade as a signal and turned the minisub upward, after him. This diver took evasive action among the downward bulges of old Siberian ice and suddenly vanished.
Although there was no sky glare in the water, the Murderer supposed the diver had found an open lead in the ice and would rather freeze to death, or at least put up a fight from the edge of the ice, than die in the water.