The Silent Sea

But

No buts. I'm sorry. Once we convince the Argentines that it's in their best interest to abandon their plans here, we can't leave a window open for Beijing to fill the vacuum. They're riding on the Argentines' coattails because they have no claim. This gives them one. A damned big one, at that. They discovered Antarctica three hundred and eighty years before the first European laid eyes on the continent.

I . . . Tamara's brow furrowed. I hate politics. This is one of the most significant archaeological finds in history and it has to be sacrificed so some power-hungry men can't get their hands on a bunch of oil.

That's it in a nutshell, I'm afraid, Juan said as kindly as he could. The stakes are too high for anything else. Our government has decided it doesn't want to play the role of world cop, but we need to show people that there are still consequences for breaking international law. One of the ways we have to do it is to destroy that wreck.

She didn't look at him, or even speak, but after a second she nodded slightly.

Juan laid a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then went back to the controls. He vented some water out of the ballast tanks, and as the submersible rose toward the surface the light slowly became brighter.

When they broached, Juan climbed out of his seat and over Linda to reach the topside hatch. Back in a second.

He stood to the side when he spun open the locking wheel to avoid the deluge of freezing water that cascaded to the deck. He climbed up the integrated ladder, his hands going numb on the wet steel. He popped his head out of the hatch. The chill took his breath away. Needles of agony pierced his sinuses, and it felt like his eyes were being seared. Juan ignored all this and concentrated on his surroundings. A tongue of ice stood poised in the gap between two black mountains that soared at least two thousand feet into the sky. The ice formed a vertical wall between them that ran right to the water. The bottom edge had been partly eroded by waves and tides, but the rest looked like a solid massif.

You'll do, he said aloud, his words torn from his mouth by the wind, and then he ducked back into the relative warmth of the submersible.

His first act when he retook his seat was to crank the heater to maximum, power-reserve requirements be damned.