I put the 9mm in my pocket, remove the handcuff key, unlock one wrist, and quickly get out of his way. I grab the gun again and wait. For a moment he doesn’t believe that I’ve unlocked him, but then when he sees that he’s completely free he gets to his feet and begins rubbing the circulation back into his wrists.

Keeping the gun on him I place the backpack in front of me and unzip the central pocket. I take out the sledgehammer and slide it to him over the ice.

He looks with astonishment at the vicious maple-handled, steel-headed five-kilo sledgehammer.

“What’s this for?” he asks.

I point at the ice.

His face shows incomprehension, but then he gets it. “You want me to make a hole in the ice?”

I nod.

He picks up the hammer.

As I knew it would, my heart starts to race. This is by far the riskiest part of the whole plan. Now, if he tries his trick, I’m dead.

Maybe we’ll get that sweet karmic ending after all.

He’s got a fantastic weapon, he’s strong, he’s angry, he’s free.

He holds all the cards but one.

Information.

He doesn’t know that the gun is empty.

He stares at my masked face for a moment, smiles unnervingly, and tightens his grip on the maple.

He looks like Pitt at the party, like Thor at Ragnarok-the hammer, the ice, the bloody face, the blond locks.

I raise the Smith & Wesson and hold it in both hands. I sight him with the utterly useless gun.

“And what if I don’t?” he says.

I nod as if to say, Try it.

“This is totally insane,” he mutters. He shakes his head in disgust. “What kind of a man are you?”

No kind of a man.

Smith & Wesson. Hammer. Blue eyes. Brown eyes.

“Hell with it then,” he says and violently smashes the hammer into the ice. The first hit cracks the surface. The second makes a hole the size of a football. The third makes a large pancake-size fissure that I can easily lift out.