White Death

Seventeen

Naked, Nick Carter ran across the granite cell and stood behind the door. He heard only one man outside. Still on the cot, Anna Blenkochev pulled on clothes and quickly took stock of the cell, alert and ready.

The door swung open.

Carter counted to three, then slammed back against it.

The visitor went flying, landing with a thud against the outside corridor wall.

Carter pulled the door open. Anna threw his clothes at him.

She ran past him into the corridor, looking both ways for danger.

"Come on!" she whispered. "Hurry!"

"Wait!" he said, grabbing her arm. "Do you know him?"

They stared at the square-faced Silver Dove with the bushy black mustache.

"I… I think so…"

She walked forward.

"Lev Larionov. He's an Orthodox priest. Or at least he used to be."

"Back in the cell," Carter said, and he picked up the limp man.

Carter put Larionov on the cot while Anna closed the door. The newcomer groaned and rolled his head.

"I wonder what he's doing here," Anna said as she tried the door lo make sure it hadn't relocked.

"I suspect your father planted him," Carter said as he dressed. "He'd want his own people in each of the KGB's undergroups. Now my question is why Larionov came back."

"Blenkochev…sent me…" Larionov said weakly. "I'm glad… you told me."

He grabbed the wall behind the cot and pulled himself up. Anna sat on the cot beside him.

"Can you get us out of here?" Carter said.

"Told you what?" Anna said, confused.

"Carter sent me to tell your father where you were," Larionov said, holding his head. "And I'm going to try to get you out."

She looked at the AXE agent.

"You trusted my father when even I didn't," she said, her eyes full of wonder.

"I know his reputation," Carter said. "He's smoothest at double-crossing. Now he's double-crossing Skobelev's Silver Doves. But he doesn't trust easily either. He couldn't trust us to know for sure what he was up to." He looked at the former priest. "We'd better leave."

Larionov nodded, then made the sign of the cross.

"I'll be glad when this assignment is over," he said.

He stood, and opened and closed his eyes. They were bright now, gone was the dull, stupid look he'd assumed earlier as a Silver Dove.

"Blenkochev wants you to come back with reinforcements," Larionov said.

"He's not leaving here?" Anna said. "Then I won't go."

"It's not safe for you here," Carter agreed. "You've said too much. Skobelev knows you fundamentally disagree with him."

"And Skobelev will keep you locked up down here with the others," Larionov warned. "Blenkochev can't help you without endangering the mission. He orders you to leave."

She blanched, wringing her hands in her lap as she understood the situation.

"You have no choice," Carter told her gently. Then he looked at the square-faced Larionov. "You have a hidden radio that I can contact you on?"

Larionov nodded and gave Carter the frequency. Then the priest opened the door and checked outside. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a sack.

"Two air rifles," Larionov explained. "There'll be survival supplies in the skimobile."

He gave them directions as Carter and Anna checked the weapons.

"They'll think we stole these along the way," Carter said, opening the door. "Lie where you fell, Larionov. You've got a bruise on your head. No need to hit you again."

"You'll help my father?" Anna asked as the former priest slid down the corridor wall.

"Of course," Larionov said simply. "We all must stop Silver Dove. Whether we believe in God or not, we must believe in people's right to choose."

Carter and Anna ran down the hall, past the faceless cell doors and the keening women, over the rough granite.

As they approached a sharp comer, they slowed. Larionov had warned them that floor-to-ceiling bars, a locked door, and a guard waited on the other side.

They peered around the granite wall's edge. Beyond were plasterboard walls, forced-air heat, the locked, barred door, and not one guard, but three. So far, only one of Larionov's predictions was wrong.

Two of the three men were leaning against a wall, smoking. The third sat in front of a metal desk, drinking coffee. They talked in loud voices, telling stories and jokes. They were totally involved with themselves, oblivious to the faint sounds of the locked-up, weakened women.

Their air rifles were across their arms. Two were right-handed; the third was left-handed. Their belts wore loaded with knives, walkie-talkies, keys, saps, and brass knuckles. An unused arsenal that made them feel like men.

"What will we do?" Anna whispered.

"No time and no choice," Carter said. He needed them alive, needed at least one of them healthy enough to unlock the cell door.

He motioned her back behind him, then raised his rifle. He aimed and shot two of them in the right arm and the third in the left before any of the three had a chance to raise his own weapon and retaliate.

The wounded men shouted with surprise and pain. Their air rifles fell clattering to the floor. Blood splattered briefly, a fine spray that quickly dispersed into the air as red pools spread across their arms.

"Unlock the door!" Carter ordered.

One man dived for his air rifle.

Another scrambled behind the desk, preparing to bolt down the hall to safety.

Carter shot the Silver Dove air rifle as the man reached for it. It skidded across the floor.

He shot above the desk, sending metal slivers into the air, a warning.

"Unlock the door!" Carter again ordered.

The third Silver Dove narrowed his eyes at Carter.

Suddenly a knife flew from behind the desk.

Carter ducked.

The knife slammed uselessly against the granite wall behind Carter.

Carter crouched.

"Don't!" he warned, but the Silver Doves weren't to be so easily stopped.

The man with the narrow eyes had his walkie-talkie out and was scuttling behind the desk to safety. The one who'd gone after his air rifle now had it. And the one behind the desk stood up suddenly and ran down the hall.

As shots rang around him, Carter fired at the Dove who was escaping. The man stumbled and fell, blood pouring from wounds in each leg.

Carter dropped flat on the floor, a smaller target, and fired at the Dove with the walkie-talkie. The walkie-talkie exploded into a thousand pieces.

He fired at last at the rash Dove with the air rifle who was squatting unsheltered against the plaster wall. He put a neat hole in the man's shoulder, then shot the air rifle into another slide across the hall.

The defeated Doves looked at Carter with amazement.

"Unlock this goddamned door!" he ordered.

Now they looked at one another, then the one who'd lost the walkie-talkie crept to the door, never taking his eyes off Carter's air rifle.

He unlocked the door and backed off.

Disgusted, Carter walked through, then rounded up the men against the desk. Anna found rope, and the two agents quickly tied the three guards and sped off down the hall.

Carefully they rounded corners, sometimes having to wait or dashing into an empty room until the hall cleared. They passed through a section of sleeping quarters, behind the clutter of the massive kitchen, and along a row of offices where typewriters clattered and telephones rang. Lev Larionov's directions were good. Their biggest worry was remaining undiscovered.

Just as they entered a back door into the warehouse entryway, the alarm went off.

It was a piercing scream amplified by loudspeakers throughout the complex.

Silver Doves in their white snowsuits and coveralls driving trucks, working on jeeps, carrying clipboards, and looking over manifests jerked to attention and grabbed their weapons.

The piercing scream continued.

Unnoticed, Carter and Anna edged along the wall to the bank of skimobiles. The enormous jaws of the warehouse doors were slowly closing. Anything that big took a while to move. Snow flumes showed beyond the doors. It could be another storm.

"Ready?" Carter said, jumping into the skimobile Larionov had told them to take.

Anna nodded, and Carter turned on the motor, a small noise compared to the alarm's torturous complaint. The opening to the outside world had grown smaller.

He turned the wheel, and the skimobile dashed down the center of the busy warehouse. He was relying on surprise.

The Silver Doves were surprised, but stubborn and well trained as well.

They raised their air rifles and fired.

Crouching, Anna fired back while Carter pushed the skimobile to speeds greater than it was built for.

Shots whizzed around them, hitting the metal sides of the skimobile.

The big doors' opening grew smaller.

Carter pressed on while Anna fired.

They rounded a group of trucks amid a hail of fire and sped toward the closing doors.

The opening was so narrow that the skimobile's sides brushed against it as they passed through.

Air rifle fire and shouts followed them through the opening, then the automatic doors closed It would be a while before the Silver Doves could reopen them.

They were alone in sudden, dense silence.

For the moment, they were safe from the fanatics in the secret installation. Now they faced perhaps a greater foe — the Antarctic weather.

In the open skimobile, the icy air slashed at them as they sped down the valley. They did up their clothes as snowflakes whipped like streamers in the wind. The sky was clouded over gray and brown. It looked like a developing blizzard, but there was nothing to be done. They had to go on.

Anna opened a compartment in front of them and quickly searched until she found a radio. Her fingers were red and wet.

"You're hurt!" Carter said.

She shrugged, pulled on mittens, and went to work on the radio.

"It's nothing," she said. "Anyway, there's nothing to be done about it now."

"Where?" he asked, worried.

"Thigh."

She put headphones over her ears, listened, then talked. Carter leaned over and saw Anna's wound. Her blood-soaked blue snowsuit would freeze soon.

"The radio doesn't work," she said.

"I'm not surprised. Once the weather lifts, it'll be okay."

He glanced at her and saw the drawn face. She was shaking with the bitter cold. The skimobile was wide open. No protection at all.

"Either you take care of that wound now or I stop here and do it myself."

She reached behind them and dug through their gear. She pulled a thermal blanket over her lap, tucked her legs in, and opened a first aid kit. At last she pulled the blanket up and poured antibiotic powder through her snowsuit into the rifle hole. She bit her lip.

"Bullet still in there?"

"Yes."

She wrapped gauze bandages around the leg. They'd have to wait to take the bullet out. If they tried now, hypothermia would set in and she would literally freeze to death. She needed to keep warm, and not move so that she didn't bleed so much.

A beginning fever reddened her cheeks and glazed her eyes. She pulled a knit balaclava over her face.

"Where to?" she said bravely.

"We'll never make Novolazarevskaya in this weather. We'll try to get out of the mountains and find my helicopter. We can lent it and stay warm there." He needed to keep her warm.

They drove on into the brutal Antarctic, the blizzard slowly growing in intensity. She kept the insulated blanket wrapped around her. Still she shook with the cold and fever. Worried, helpless, Carter watched her as he did the only thing he could do — forge ahead.