Cold War

FOURTEEN

The snowmobiles descended toward cold corners through razor bends in the slope, tacking between rock falls, ramparts of drifted and avalanche-piled snow, blue ice pinnacles that soared hundreds of feet into the dusky hanging clouds.

Out front, Burkhart again coaxed the team to speed, his engine greedily pulling fuel from the tank. The wind bragged in the faces of his riders, pelted them with freezing precipitation. Spiral blooms of snow and hail exploded in the beams of their headlamps. Bullets of electrically charged graupel smacked their helmets, flattened out with little coughs of static that went rasping up and down their encrypted radio communications link.

If his task went off as Burkhart intended, the storm would be their only resistance. But in matters like this there could be sudden and unexpected turns, and he had done all he could to prepare his men for a change in plans.

Their firearms had been an easy choice. Lightweight, compact, field-tested after hours sheathed in ice at minus- 300°F cold-chamber temperatures, the Sig Sturmgewehr

552’s were optimally designed for extreme-weather commando action. Their hinged trigger guards could be moved to the left or right to facilitate firing with alpine-gloved hands. The variable-magnification optics were frost-resistant and reticulated with luminous tritium markings, their foresights hooded against glare and snow. Each of the transparent three-stack magazines under their barrels held thirty rounds of 5.56 × 45mm NATO ball ammunition. Attached side by side for rapid open-bolt reload, they effectively gave the guns a ninety-round capacity.

The riders carried these assault weapons on their backs in biathlon harnesses, as Burkhart had done on ski-patrol drills with the Swiss special forces, where he’d had to unclip his weapon from its straps and zero in on a line of numbered targets from both prone and standing positions, firing after rapid downhill runs, his performance measured to a rigorous standard of time and accuracy.

In his elite unit, Burkhart’s skills had leaped above the highest bar. It was as if he were born possessing them. But he’d accepted recognition from his superiors and comrades with indifference. His competitiveness came from old angers of the soul, and he’d worn his decorations as emblems of a secret spite. For the child of the moon, every medal pinned to his chest was a reminder of some beautiful shining face that had once looked scornfully at him under the sun, left further in the past as he flogged himself toward new levels of accomplishment.

At last, though, it was restlessness as much as anything else that had sent him along the path of the mercenary. His prowess had seemed wasted against cardboard soldiers. What pluck was there in mock combat against an enemy that bled red dye? Games had not demanded enough of him. And so he had moved on to find a profitable and satisfying alternative.

Since then Burkhart had only improved upon his innate abilities, refining his tactical know-how, his situational adaptability. He had actualized a vision of his own potential, made it hard as steel, and found a kind of chambered peace within it.

Now Burkhart took a sinuous curve around a glacial edge and urged his bike over a series of jarring bumps into the downhill channel he had reconnoitered before the storm. A final glissading run, his flaps threshing up a wake of powder, gravity squeezing the ribs around his heart, and then he was on a smooth flat field of ice, headed across the basin between the mountains and frozen shore.

Dimly visible through the snow, just a handful of miles seaward, lay the UpLink base.

“Pete.”

Nimec turned his head from the window in the empty corridor. It was oval and not much larger than a porthole, its fixed pane reinforced with a shatter-resistant polymer coating. He had stood there alone staring at the thick pulsing snow outside, listening to the freight-train roar of the wind, once pressing his hand against the glass to feel its buffet. He could see neither land nor sky, only the close, incursive whiteness.

“Meg,” he said. He had not noticed her approaching. “Figured I’d take a look at the thousand-pound giant.”

“And maybe stare him down?”

“Maybe.”

She stood beside him awhile.

“I’ve been trying to find you,” she said. “Ron Waylon told me he’d taken you on the grand tour, then left you at your workstation after you two went poking around the utilidors.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t exactly. Just had a hunch you might be where everyone else wasn’t, and wandered around until I hit the spot.”

“It would’ve been faster and easier to have me paged.”

“But absent the intimate touch for which we strive at this lodge.”

Nimec looked at her another moment, then moved his somber eyes back to the window.

“I know what you’re thinking and feeling, Pete,” she said.

“Never occurred to me you didn’t.”

“One thing to keep in mind is that the storm won’t reach the Valleys. None of them do. The mountains form a barrier. And any snow that does get over them is dried by the katabatic effect before it hits the ground.”

He kept staring out the window.

“Our people have been missing eleven days,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe no one’s been able to get to Bull Pass on foot since they were lost. Or obviously down in a chopper. But the boss told me MacTown sent out pilots in Twin Ospreys. And we’ve used Hawkeye III. State-of-the-art satellite recon that can practically image a mole on somebody’s chin.”

“Pete, you know air and orbital sat searches are hampered by the terrain no matter how sophisticated the tech. There are recesses, cliff overhangs… too many blind spots.”

Nimec turned to her again.

“Eleven days,” he said. “And counting. We have to be honest. Let’s believe they found food and water caches. Give them that. How long before they’d all succumb to the cold? When do we stop talking rescue, and admit anything we do is about recovering bodies?”

Another silence.

“I won’t offer false encouragement,” Megan said. “Not to you or myself. But neither will I stop hoping. You’d have to know Scar. He’d try to find places where they could shelter, and the same ground features that make hunting for his group difficult might very well provide it.”

Nimec didn’t reply. He was conscious of the wind barreling outside.

Megan studied his face.

“There’s more on your mind,” she said.

He waited a moment, then nodded.

“Working with Tom Ricci these past couple of years… I suppose the way he thinks outside the box has started to rub off on me. Something about the rover disappearing, and then those people who went looking for it, makes me suspicious. Or maybe that’s going too far, using too strong a word. It makes me wonder. I’m not sure about what. I figure the reason I’m not sure is there’s probably nothing to it. But I’ve been on my job so long, I can’t stop wondering. It’s instinct. Doesn’t matter where I am. Doesn’t matter that it’s pretty hard to imagine who’d want to make trouble for us here, interfere with what we’re doing. Or how they could. I’m looking for answers when I can’t even decide if there are any logical questions.” He paused, moved his shoulders. “I wish I could put it to you straighter.”

“You’ve been straight enough,” Megan said. “I never disregard your instincts, Pete. We need to talk more about this.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s late, and I want to sit on my thoughts a little longer, give them a chance to work themselves out.” He paused. “That’s why I waited to bring them up.”

Megan looked at him. The blowing wind and snow slammed aggressively against the window.

“I’m supposed to meet Annie for drinks,” she said. “You can join us if you like. It might make the waiting easier. For you and me.”

Nimec was quiet.

“Better not,” he said then. “Don’t think I’d be very good company.”

She stood looking at him a few seconds, nodded.

“We’ll be at the bar if you change your mind. You know where it is?”

“I can find it.”

She nodded again, and started away down the silent corridor.

“Meg?”

She paused, half turned toward Nimec.

“I almost forgot to mention you run one hell of a lodge,” he said.

Megan smiled warmly at him.

“Appreciated,” she said.

Burkhart heard a cannonade in the southern distance: long rolling rumbles, a bellowy roar, then a rending crash. Someone less familiar with Antarctica might have mistaken the din for thunder, but that was an infrequent occurrence on the continent. Instead he knew it to be a berg calving from the ice sheet, its great tortured mass breaking off into the sea, the stresses of its division accelerated by the storm.

As the sounds continued rocketing across the sky, he set his full attention on the dome some eighty or ninety feet up ahead. His men waited at his sides, snow whipping around them, their snowmobiles left a short distance back. The vehicles would have made this final stretch of ground easier to cross, and Burkhart was convinced the wind would have muted the buzzing of their engines even if they had ridden straight into the center of the compound. Still, he’d taken no chances and ordered his group to dismount.

Given a choice, Burkhart would have vastly preferred the storm’s assault had not coincided with their mission. But he had refused to be stopped by caprices of the weather, and decided what couldn’t be helped might be turned to his advantage. For one thing, it reduced the likelihood of his men encountering base personnel — almost certainly they would shelter in until conditions improved. It was also just as well he would not have to worry about the observation cameras mounted high on the desalinization plant’s dome. To his knowledge, no other Antarctic research base had any real perimeter surveillance, a measure believed pointless in an environment that gave natural safe haven from attack… and unworkable besides. Nor did the rest of the installations maintain defensive forces. While UpLink had broken with convention and done what it could on both accounts, the cameras were little more than token reminders. Scarecrows to frighten the birds away from the crop field. Having learned about them independently from Granger and the captive scientist, Burkhart had originally planned to steal past blind spots in their placement and motion patterns, and if necessary knock out those that presented the most serious threat of detection. He had been bothered by the thought that disabling them could trip an alarm and alert the facility’s security contingent to his team’s presence nonetheless, but that too had ceased to be a meaningful consideration.

Once he’d learned of the storm’s approach, Burkhart had become sure it would incapacitate the cameras, and what he saw now supported his confidence. Cataracted with snow, their lenses stared outward from the roof of the dome like blank, blind eyes.

There would be nothing to come in the way of his entry.

His submachine gun held at the ready, he led his men forward through the battering wind. He estimated its speed at close to forty knots, strong enough to rock him on his heels — and the worst of the storm was still many miles and hours to the south. When its brunt finally struck, Burkhart realized travel of any kind would be out of the question.

His team reached the dome, circled to its slatted roll-down door, and gathered before it. Ever cautious, Burkhart paused a moment to glance up at a security camera, noting its white-filmed lens with reassurance. Then he bent, unfastened the door’s wind locks with a gloved hand, grasped its handle, and raised it.

Recessed overhead lighting bathed the structure’s interior in a soft, even glow. Burkhart entered with a quick step, Langern and three of the other men following closely, lowering the door behind them, the rest of his team taking watch positions outside the dome. After all he had led them through, knowing the dangerous return journey they faced, it was odd to consider they would only need minutes to execute their job. But something would have to go very wrong for it to take longer.

He scanned the enclosure from behind his goggles, listening to the continuous hum of working machinery. On a large steel platform, an array of three water-distillation, treatment, and storage tanks — their respective functions stencil-painted on their exteriors — was connected to an intricate mesh of pumps, intake and outlet valves, hoses, PVC pressure lines, and electronic metering and control consoles. A pair of wide main pipelines curved downward from the distillation tank through the platform and then deep into the ice underneath. These, in turn, led outward to branching feed ducts, where seawater melted by recaptured exhaust heat from the base’s power generators was forced up through reverse-osmosis filters into the tanks.

It was a clean and energy efficient system, Burkhart mused. An impressive system. That he would have to cripple it gave him a strange twinge he’d experienced on occasion throughout his career as a soldier of fortune. Perceived but unidentified, the feeling would brush past him like a stray, vagabond brother who’d been missing since childhood, his existence nearly faded from memory.

And then, as always, it was gone. Burkhart stepped up onto the platform and called for one of the men to join him. An Austrian named Koenig, he approached briskly, well prepared for his role in the operation.

“Place the TH3 under here.” Burkhart moved to the distillation tank’s inflow pump, touched a hand to the metal plate over its motor. He thought a moment, then indicated the valve where the seawater pipeline connected to the pump. “And here. On these plastic lines as well. It will simply look as if the fire spread to them from the motor housing. “Du seist das?” He paused. “Be sure to give the charges a five-minute delay.”

Koenig nodded, waiting to see if there was more.

Burkhart thought again, but decided to leave his instructions at that. There were bound to be heat sensors, an alarm of some kind, and his band would have to be away from here before anyone responded. They also needed time to see that their tracks were scattered as they retraced them, though much of what had been underfoot as they approached was blue ice, and he believed the wind would take care of the light imprints they’d made. The trick was to be careful of overkill, balance his objectives against the risk of discovery, cause sufficient damage to take the plant out of commission while making it appear accidental. As it was, the fire’s rapid ignition and intensity would bring about considerable flooding beyond the initial destructive burst, even if automatic cutoff occurred when the pump went down — an interrupt mechanism Burkhart had no doubt would be in place.

Prompting Koenig to get to work, he watched him remove the pump motor’s cover plate, then slip off his outer glove and reach into a belt pouch for a laminate squeeze tube of the type that might contain toothpaste or pharmaceutical ointment.

Koenig unscrewed its cap, pulled off its airtight nozzle seal, then ran the nozzle slowly over the motor’s exposed wiring and components, pinching the tube between his thumb and forefinger to dispense a spare, smooth coating of its glutinous contents. Within seconds he’d moved on to the connector valve.

Although Gabriel Morgan had never said where he’d procured the incendiary material, Burkhart’s independent sources had rumored that it was engineered in a now-defunct Canadian laboratory operated by El Tio, the head of a transnational underworld combine who was alternately rumored to be dead or in hiding. Wherever it came from, Burkhart knew the pyrotechnic solgel nanocomposite was a product of far-boundary chemical technologies.

Standard military-grade thermate — or TH3—was a fine granular mixture of iron oxide, aluminum, and barium that generated temperatures of between 5,500° and 7000° Fahrenheit when ignited, sufficient heat to melt through a one-half-inch-thick steel sheet, its combustive reaction producing a molten iron slag that could do further, extensive damage to metal surfaces and equipment. There were, however, quantitative and qualitative limitations to its precision usage. It required slightly over twenty-five ounces of TH3 powder to generate a forty-second burn of significant destructive yield, and conventional mixing processes resulted in somewhat heterogeneous and volatile compounds that could have inconsistent results. Because the distribution of ordinary thermate’s constituents was uneven, a small amount was less reliable than a larger amount — much as a pinch of mixed salt and pepper might be noticeably short one or the other ingredient, while chances were an entire shakerful would not.

The solgel process synthesized — in essence, grew—thermate’s molecular chemical components within a matrix of crystallized silica gel, encasing them in beadlike particles a thousandth of a meter in size. So uniform and energetic were the beads that each was like a microscopic incendiary grenade. For Burkhart’s purposes, they had been implanted within a pH-neutral material that resembled soft putty and contained an ethylene glycol additive to lower its freezing point to minus-30°F, allowing it to retain its malleable consistency in ECW conditions.

Burkhart wondered how many infinitesimal thermatic particles were contained in a single drop of the material. Thousands, by fast estimate. Perhaps tens of thousands. The desalinization plant was going down, and even returning it to partial functionality would be no small feat.

Now he stood quietly as Langern climbed onto the platform and got a spool of timed initiator cord and clippers from one of his packs. When he finished applying the thermate putty, Koening helped him set the lengths of cord, snapped the plate back over the pump’s motor, then looked over his shoulder at Burkhart.

“Fertig,” he said in German. “We’re ready to ignite the material.”

Burkhart looked at him, nodded.

“Do it,” he said.

The woman was taller than Nessa had thought she would be, slightly younger, but unmistakably English. She crossed the breakfast room of the hotel with the air of someone who knew her place in the world — at its pinnacle.

Nessa waited for her to pick up the menu before going over to the table. The corners of the detective’s eyes scratched and her mouth was parched, but she knew those annoyances would vanish as soon as she opened her mouth.

“I beg your pardon,” said Constance Burns.

“Yes, I suppose you do,” Nessa told her. “My name is Nessa Lear and I’m with Interpol. No, thank you, sit here a wee bit, please,” she told the woman, grabbing her arm firmly and pinning it to the table.

Burns’s eyes seemed as if they might pop out and strike her in the face. Nessa flattened her right hand against the underside of the table, ready to overturn it if the bitch tried to get away.

Not that she would get very far. The building was surrounded by the Swiss police.

“My friends at the door there, the very handsome lads in the suits, are with the national police force,” Nessa told Burns. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the German name for it, which they seem to use here; I was never very good with languages in school, and now going from French to German with English in between has gotten my brain in a twist. Plus I’ve had no sleep, tracking you down.”

“Miss—”

“In a few minutes, my friends over there will take you away. You’re wanted in connection with an inquiry in Scotland. Some accidents. Or murders. Definitely murders. But questions have been raised concerning shipments of depleted uranium, and I suspect they will be looking to you for answers.”

Burns jerked her arm, but Nessa held it down firmly. She really was tired; she could feel the burning sensation in her muscle as she pressed against the table.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” Nessa said. “I was hoping you might help me so that I could help you in your future life, such as it is. I’m seeking Marc Elata.”

“Who is he?”

“A forger. A very good one.”

Burns made a dismissive sound.

“Gabriel Morgan?” Nessa asked.

“The bastard. The bloody, sodding bastard!” Burns screamed, and pounded the table with her free hand. “He’s left me to take the blame for everything, hasn’t he?”

“Everything?”

Burns went silent. Nessa waited nearly half a minute before asking, “Nothing else?”

She waited a few more seconds, then waved over the Swiss detectives. Burns pulled her hand away as Nessa let go, holding it to her chest as if it had been hurt.

Maybe it had. It did look quite red. But perhaps because the two policemen who prodded her shoulders did not appear terribly sympathetic, Burns made no comment as she rose and walked from the room under their escort.

John Theiber, the Swiss liaison — a tall, wide-shouldered man with gorgeous blond hair — came over as they left, saying something in clipped German to the men before turning toward Nessa.

“Your office in Paris wishes you to call,” he said in an English so perfect the Queen would have assumed he was one of her subjects. “A Mr. Jairdain.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Nessa punched the number as Captain Theiber took a few steps away to accord her privacy.

Such manners.

“Jairdain.”

“What’s up?” she asked.

“About a half hour ago, we received a strange e-mail, beaucoup strange, sent to our public e-mail address,” said the Frenchman. “It was from Elata.”

“Elata?”

“ ‘Picassos at Castello Dinelli now. Quickly. Elata.’ That’s the message.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s also a bank name and address, along with a number in America. We believe — I don’t know if I have it correct, but the FBI liaison believes it is a safety-deposit box — a safe in a bank there. They are getting an order to have it seized. Louis is taking care of it.”

Nessa looked over at the gorgeous Swiss. “Castello Dinelli?”

“An island castle in Lake Maggiore, at the Italian border. Near the border. In the fourteenth century—”

“We need to get there now,” she said, jumping up. “That helicopter you promised — where is it?”

Hal Pruitt had thought landing Pedro Martinez in the pre-season draft to be the deal of a lifetime until it was finally cut, at which point he’d realized he couldn’t live with himself for having gone ahead with it. As Captain Ahab had screamed from the Pequod’s bow moments before he went under with a long sucking sound, his topmost greatness lay in his topmost grief.

Pruitt sighed and leaned back in his seat, hands linked behind his head, elbows winged out to either side. He was alone at a computer console on the lower level of Cold Corners’ main facility, only thirty minutes into his four-hour security/communications shift. In the heat of the chase, Martinez had seemed a bargain at any price. Still did, looking at it purely from the standpoint of what the guy brought to his team’s pitching roster. This was Pedro here. Multiple Cy Young Award winner. A career earned run average of two bucks, two and change. Maybe the best arm since Koufax. Arguably the most dominating modern-day pitcher in the game, though it was Pruitt’s steadfast opinion that Roger Clemens edged him out as king of the hill by virtue of his stare-you-in-the-eye gutsiness, ability to bear down in tight situations, and of course his longevity. With eighteen major league seasons under his belt and a zillion broken strikeout records, the Rocket’s critics could wet their diapers about his high-and-ins all they wanted. He had stuff in humongous abundance. That, and a plush red carpet waiting to be rolled out for him at the door to Cooperstown.

Hal Pruitt guessed he liked Clemens better than anybody who’d ever fastballed a batter at the plate, which was why he’d outbid the McMurdo Skuas by nineteen dollars to pick him up for his own fantasy team, the Cold Corners Herbies, this year… five dollars over and above what he’d laid on the auction block for him the year before. Of course it didn’t hurt that Clemens had been wearing a New York Yankee uniform in real-world baseball since the ’99 season, but that was another story. Sort of. Anyway, Pedro was the issue right now. Pedro, whom Pruitt had gone after like obsessed old Ahab stalking the White Whale—towards thee I roll! Pedro, the final jewel in his crowning lineup of starters, guaranteed to put his team in position to outstrip the competition. Pedro Martinez, who also happened to be a star player with the real-life Red Sox, hated arch-rivals of Pruitt’s beloved Bronx Bombers since the earliest hominid species emerged from the steaming veldts of Africa to club stones at each other across diamond-shaped patches of turf.

Pruitt leaned forward on his chair, his hands poised over his computer keyboard like those of a master pianist about to launch into some intricate concerto, thinking he needed a nimble, delicate touch for the e-mail he was writing to Darren Codegan, GM of the Palmer Base Polecats, in an effort to make himself right with some kind of trade before the April 1st season kickoff. As he listened to the lunatic wind rattle outside the building walls, it was hard to imagine spring training was almost at an end within the neatly demarcated borders of civilization, where the sun went up and down rather than around and around in hanging circles. But the final exhibition games were in fact being played in Florida and Arizona, with home stadium groundskeepers getting their gorgeous green grasses groomed and ready for opening day. Pruitt knew he very definitely had to move fast.

He chose to believe that he looked at baseball with a capitalistic, pragmatic eye, treating it as a business that was more or less the same as any other. It was not without good reason that his Herbies, which he’d named after an Antarctic slang word for the very sort of hurricane/blizzard crossbreed that was now roughing up Cold Corners and the rest of his neighborhood, had won three consecutive on-line Ice League championships. If the other GMs in the league wanted to criticize him for raising the bar on individual salaries, fine. If they wanted to scoff at his handing over a quarter of his team’s capped payroll to a single player, let them go ahead. Pedro was a unique talent. Well worth $65, plus Shane Spencer and a couple of AAA infield prospects from the Yankees farm system.

Pragmatically speaking, Pruitt thought.

The problem with this latest deal was that it had suddenly banged him up hard against the limits of that pragmatism. It was true some had called his attitude into prior question because of his tendency to stack his team with players who either wore, or had once worn, the midnight-blue pinstripes and interlocking NY on their caps—see ya, Kay and Sterling, oh, exalted voices of the New York airwaves — but again Pruitt knew this was because they possessed duller entrepreneurial minds than himself. These were the Bombers they were talking about here. Winners of almost thirty World Series titles they were talking about here. You wanted the best in the big leagues, you picked from the top of the heap, so of course his franchise was going to be something like ninety-five-percent Yanks. And what about his first baseman, Jason Giambi? Or Kenny Lofton in his outfield? Neither of them had ever called the hallowed Stadium home.

Pruitt released another deep exhalation. All would have been fine and dandy if Pedro hurled for Baltimore, Kansas City, maybe Toronto. Better yet if the Devil Rays or Tigers had been the ones to steal him from Montreal back in ’98. But the fact was that Pedro Martinez pitched for Boston, the Evil Nemesis. And since a GM’s victory in fantasy baseball was determined by his players’ average rankings at season’s end, Pruitt had put himself on a torturer’s rack by acquiring him. Who was he now supposed to root for when the Yanks and Bosox had a Bronx blast or Fenway face-off? What if they were in a neck-and-neck pennant race come September? Despite Pruitt’s quest to win that Ice League pot — which came to a sweet two grand — the pull between commerce and loyalty had gotten well nigh unbearable for him weeks before the first regular season crack of home-run wood even went echoing into the blue American sky. It was a sure thing six more months of it would sap his very will to live… especially because he’d been forced to give Shane Spencer, the Yank utility man who’d heroically worked his way back to the majors after suffering a right knee ACL tear, to GM John Ikegami’s Snow Petrels over at Amundsen-Scott in exchange for the finances he’d required to close on the Pedro deal with Cadogan’s thin-benched, low-slugging Polecats.

There was no way around it, he thought. Pedro had to be ditched. Spence had to be reacquired. A transaction had to be transacted. And Pruitt had the Machiavellian makings of one very clearly in mind.

Ichiro was the linchpin of his scheme. John Ikegami had dropped out of the frantic Suzuki auction in a frustrated snit, surrendering him to the Petrels after he’d emptied the last of his $260 purse on Hideo Nomo, Kozuhiro Sasaki, and Tomo Ohka for reasons he adamantly denied had anything to do with matters of ethnic pride. Pruitt really didn’t care about Ikegami’s reasons for coveting Suzuki, who would be a valuable asset to any team in the league. It was enough just to know he did want him with a passion. Because now Pruitt was thinking he would dangle Pedro Martinez and the heavyweight bat Jason Giambi in front of Cadogan, provided Cadogan was willing to give Ichiro to Ikegami for Spencer, the two Yank minor leaguers, and a large handful of cash, all of which Pruitt would then get in return from Cadogan as part of a three-way swap. His purchasing power recharged, Pruitt would be able to go after a replacement starting arm to fill the hole left by Pedro. Maybe Andy Pettite. With Mike Stanton to strengthen his bullpen if there were some leftover funds. Either that, or he could see what the Air Guard Herkybirds over in Christchurch were asking for Jose Visciano.

Pruitt skimmed over the language of his message again. It could use some minor refinements, one more quick but careful pass before it was ready to go.

He lowered his fingers back onto his keyboard, and was about to make the first of his changes when a loud electronic warning tone grated from the console beside him, a row of color-coded chicklet lights to one side of his console blinked on in startling sequence, and the e-mail on his display screen was displaced by the base security program’s automatic pop-up window.

Pruitt’s response was practiced and immediate, his mind cleared of everything except for a task list that would need to be executed in a hurry. Bolt-erect at his station, he palmed his computer mouse, clicked to zoom, clicked again to recall and isolate an image, his eyes wide with rapidly building shock and astonishment as they confirmed what they were seeing was no bogie.

Less than fifteen seconds after the alert sounded, he flipped the redline radio switch on the panel beside him and got hold of Ron Waylon.

“It’s the desalinization plant,” Waylon told Nimec. He was breathless from his urgent hustle to the security station. “The images are from those FLIR thermacams behind the ceiling panels… ones we installed to replace the outside cameras when they went inoperational.”

Nimec nodded tensely. He recalled Waylon showing him their locations during their base tour just hours ago, while explaining that his people hadn’t yet gotten around to removing the weather-damaged external units. Both men were standing behind Pruitt as the thermal infrared pictures on his monitor shifted through their color palette. They could see four intruders — actually the spectral radiant heat signatures of four intruders — moving about inside the dome, heading toward the door. And Nimec knew that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Look.” He indicated three bright red streaks on the image, matching them against assigned colors on a horizontal measurement bar at the bottom of the screen. “Something’s burning in there.”

“Fires,” Waylon said. “They have to be fires. And they’re damned hot.” He breathed, pointed. “Jesus Christ, looks like one’s on an inflow pump… and over here, this is the seawater pipeline… I don’t know what the hell’s going on… ”

Nimec looked at him, his heart pounding.

“We’re being hit,” he said. “Pull together some men, we have to get out there now.”

A long, narrow room on the main building’s upper level, the Meat Lockers had metallic walls, bar, tables, and chairs that were washed with a reflective tungsten-blue radiance from overhead truss lighting to create a decor and ambience that wryly suited its name.

The crowd of off-duty ice people assembled inside was subdued but not altogether cheerless. Their awareness of the missing three was weighable as they marked the passage of the storm, but these were men and women whose rigorous living conditions demanded a unique spirit and adaptability, and it was understood that brooding would do nothing to help the situation. Morale was bolstered in different ways. During work rotations their stresses were redirected toward productive effort, a conscientious attendance to shared and individual responsibilities. And while it had been some days since anyone commandeered the small corner stage where they would showcase variable degrees of musical talent on better night/rec cycles — and sing karaoke when the prospects for diversion were lean — it seemed out of the question to concede that the fate of Scarborough’s team had been decided. Hence, many of them continued to gather here in their downtime, drinking together, making small talk, amusing themselves, determined to carry on as well as possible in spite of their common fears.

Annie Caulfield sensed all this as she gazed across the room and watched a group of CC’s staffers shoot their own idiosyncratic version of darts. With each successive round a moveable bull’s-eye, striped red and white like the Geographic South Pole’s traditional marker, was peeled off the board and reaffixed slightly further below center, mirroring the annual thirty-three-foot movement of the polar marker as it shifted with the ice cap. Eventually, Megan Breen had explained, the bull’s-eye would meet the scoring ring and get stuck back in the middle of the dartboard.

Annie noted the game’s out-of-whack humor with an appreciative smile, then turned back toward Megan to resume their meandering conversation.

“So I’ve told you how much it hurt when Pete backed off from me, and you’ve told me how much it hurt your FBI director when you backed off from him,” she said. “Does that about cover things?”

Megan looked at her across the barroom table.

“The story thus far,” she said. “Sounds simple.”

“Mm-hmm,” Annie said. “But feels complicated.”

Megan nodded.

“I’ll drink to that,” she said.

“Here, here,” Annie said.

The women raised their tumblers of Barbayannis Aphrodite ouzo, clinked, and took long sips.

Loose, glassy-eyed, they sat quietly at the table, picking away at plates of olives, sliced hydroponic tomatoes, and cheese to moderate the ouzo’s strong licorice flavor and absorb enough alcohol to keep their heads barely afloat. At somewhere around eighty or ninety proof, the liqueur was CC’s recreational drink of choice, perfect for shaking off the cold and remedying cabin fever.

“Anyway, here’s a question. Well, actually two questions.” Annie had snatched at a drifting thread of thought. “You’ve been at Cold Corners… how long now? Three months?”

“Three months, twelve days”—Megan paused, checked her wristwatch—“fourteen hours.”

“Three months plus then.” Annie said. “I’m curious… what’s the one thing you miss most about home?”

Megan shrugged.

“Easy,” she said. “My kitchen.”

Annie flapped a dismissive hand in the air.

“Come on, be serious,” she urged. “I’m asking as somebody who had hopes of being the first woman colonist on Mars.”

Megan shrugged again.

“I’m completely serious,” she said. “I like to cook.”

“Cook…”

“And bake.”

“Bake…”

“European pastries, especially croissants,” Megan said, gulping more ouzo. Her voice was a little dreamy. “Maybe because making the crusts is such a challenge. About two years ago I had the kitchen professionally re-modeled with all commercial appliances. My range is the best. It’s one of those great big stainless-steel jobs… dual-fuel, you know. Six gas burners, an electric oven that keeps the temperature right where you set it.”

Annie looked at her a moment. Then she suddenly ducked her head, clapping a hand over her mouth.

Megan leaned forward. The damn ouzo, she thought guiltily. There were more than a few staffers who could down it like lemonade without showing any effects, but poor Annie was a vacationer, only a few hours out of a helicopter from Amundsen-Scott. How could Megan have even considered suggesting that she order it?

“Annie, what’s wrong? If this poison’s getting to you—”

Annie shook her head in the negative, keeping it bent, still covering her mouth.

Megan’s eyes widened at the stifled sound that escaped Annie’s lips.

“My God,”she said. “You’re laughing.”

That was the final straw. Annie giggled helplessly, struggled to compose herself, and laughed even harder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really, I hope you aren’t insulted—”

It was a no-go. She broke up again.

Meg looked at her.

“Okay,” Megan said. “Out with it. What’s so funny about my domestic interests?”

Annie waited until she’d managed to catch her breath.

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Picturing you in a kitchen apron sort of caught me by surprise.” Annie wiped her eyes. “I just had the impression you’d yearn for Bay Area shopping or nightlife or something… that you’d prefer to get your desserts from a gourmet shop instead of a cookie sheet.”

Megan realized she’d split a grin of her own.

“I’m not sure why, but something tells me I should be offended by that characterization,” she said.

“Probably should,” Annie said. “I would be, come to think of it.”

The women faced each other, both of them laughing now.

“Annie,” Megan said, “I’ve told you before and I’ll do it again… your visit’s been a major reprieve. This ladies’ night out most of all.”

Annie nodded, reached for her glass.

“I think we should drink to taking the big step,” she said.

“From colleagues to friends?”

“In one drunken toot.”

“It’s going to be an unholy alliance,” Megan said, and was about to lift her own drink off the table when her cell phone bleeped in her pocket — a three-note sequence she’d tagged to Pete Nimec’s cellular only hours earlier.

She held up a finger to Annie, took out the phone, and flipped it open against her ear.

“Pete, hi,” she said. “If you’ve changed your mind about joining—”

She fell silent, listening. Annie watched Meg’s relaxed expression abruptly transform — the grave, alarmed look that came over it making her very worried.

“Yes… yes… how could?… okay, I understand…” Megan said. Her eyes snapped to the group at the dartboard. “Wait, I have some extra people with me. Stay where you are, we’ll meet you right away.”

She shut the phone with one hand, then glanced at Annie with dismay.

“We have a problem,” she said, pushing herself up off her chair.

“Meg, I don’t see how you expect me to use half these people… ”

“They can handle themselves.”

“They’ve been drinking.”

“I know. That’s just how it is. They weren’t on rotation.”

“But I need to rely—”

“I’m vouching for every one of them.”

Nimec and Megan stood facing each other in silence. They’d linked up in one of the interconnected utilidors bored into the solid ice underneath the station, its hooded lights shining down on a tubular steel liner crusted with frost like the inside of a freezer, the temperature almost forty degrees below zero. Close around them, Sword ops were hastily shrugging, zipping, and snapping into their ECW outfits as they came pouring into the tunnel.

After a moment Nimec nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Any suggestions about how to divide the manpower?”

“I’ve got two of our best with Annie and the Senators. I think we can spare four more to secure the area around the building.”

“That’s seven men,” Nimec said. “Not enough.”

“Eight men, counting Hal Pruitt.”

“Still won’t do.”

“Our total force is twenty-nine, Pete. There are only so many places where anyone can gain access to the base, and I can’t see anyone trying a full-scale action in this storm. It’s not feasible.”

“Maybe you’re right. But we also didn’t expect what we already know is happening, and I’m not about to gamble,” Nimec said. “I say we double up the perimeter defense into teams, leave four men inside to guard against a breech. That leaves me with thirteen—”

“I’ll go along with two men to patrol the building,” Megan said. “You’ll need the rest with you. And I’ve got the maintenance and support crew as backup. They’re a solid bunch, Pete.”

Nimec started to protest, hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

“Your call again,” he said. “Make sure Pruitt stays at the monitors. We need him to direct traffic.”

“I understand.” Megan thought a second. “How do you feel about informing MacTown of our status?”

Nimec adjusted a velcro strap at the collar of his parka, then got his gloves and outer gauntlets out of a pocket.

“I can’t see how they can help us right now,” he said. “And I’m not sure I like involving outsiders until we have a better idea what our status is.”

Megan sighed. “I don’t know. We can’t stand around doping this out. But there’s an argument for contacting them. In case anything happens to us—”

“Do either of you want my take?”

This was from Ron Waylon, who had stepped up behind Nimec, his balaclava pulled over his head, the hood of his coat already raised.

Nimec glanced over his shoulder.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“There’s no 911 help in Antarctica,” Waylon said. “If we can’t stand on our own, then by the time somebody responds, it’ll be to bury us. Seems to me there’s nothing wrong with holding off unless things start to look bad. No matter what, we’ll have our chances to reevaluate.”

They looked at him. Looked at each other. Both were nodding.

“Issue decided,” Nimec said. His eyes steadied on Megan’s. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yes,” she said. And suddenly grasped his wrist. “Try not to let anyone get hurt.”

He squeezed the back of her hand, pulled up his hood.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

Burkhart halted in the snow as he led his team toward their snowmobiles.

“Wait,” he ordered, using his headset to communicate with them. Even raised to a shout, his unaided voice would have been overpowered by the wind. Yet he thought he’d heard a sound beneath its leviathan roar.

He wiped his goggles, peering back in the direction from which they had trod.

Someone other than Burkhart might have barely discerned the inverted bowl of the dome through blowing sheaves of whiteness. His keen eyes noticed a vague scintillation behind the dome… a paper-thin skim of light that seemed to be sliding toward him along the ground like a wide, flattened wavelet over the surf.

He thought briefly of the woman scientist.

There had been more backbone in her than he’d suspected.

He turned to his men.

“They know we’re here,” he said.