Operation Antarctica

- 18 -

He hit soft snow over hard ice, landing on his back, and was able to turn just in time to see the saucer hit the surface of the sea far out in the bay. It skipped like a flat stone, twice, before breaking apart with a screech of tearing metal that echoed around the cliffs.

At the last, as it sank a black shadow, wings unfurled, spread out across the surface, then slowly sank away. A fresh squall of wind and snow came in, passed over and when it cleared, there was nothing to see but the sea itself. The last thing to go was the far-off sound, monks chanting, not in the wind as Banks had thought, but from somewhere deep — deep, dark, and dancing in the abyssal swell, with the taste of salt water at their lips.

He was trying to pull Wiggins out of a snowdrift when the three remaining members of his squad came up the slope at a run. Wiggins’ eyes were fluttering — he had taken a blow to the head and wasn’t fully conscious, but there didn’t appear to be any broken bones.

Hynd reached them first.

“I don’t know what you did, Cap, but it fucking worked. There’s nothing left but dirty freezing water down there.”

Banks heard a new noise. He looked out over the sea again. The icebreaker was coming around the farthest point on the right side of the bay, and the distant whop of the heavy engines of a dinghy in the water echoed all around the cliffs.

“I sent the fucker where it wanted to go all along, ever since it was trapped on that Jerry sub all those years ago.”

“And where was that, Cap?”

“Home. I sent it home.”

They were all on the quay waiting by the time the dinghy came alongside. Wiggins, still semi-conscious, hung held upright between Hynd and McCally, and they moved quickly to get him into the dinghy as soon as it reached the dock. A bespectacled, bearded man that Banks took for the expert got out of the dinghy, took one look up at the shattered dome, and looked back at Banks in disgust.

“You call this sanitizing?”

“You’re fucking welcome,” Banks replied.

“That’s what the sarge’s wife says too,” Wiggins replied.