by Tom Clancy
Gorrie glanced toward his wife. The teapot was near her; if she could just pick it up, it might catch the American off guard.
Surely the woman’s reflexes were quick enough to kill both of them before the water even scalded her.
She’d kill them soon anyway.
But she wouldn’t shoot them if she didn’t have to. She wanted this to look like an accident, and the bullets might be found.
“The kitchen, Inspector,” said the American, sidling past him toward the door.
She wanted to lock it. She could just barely reach it and still cover them.
Not both at the same time. He had to do something quickly.
“Nan, the kitchen!” he shouted.
As the killer jerked her head toward his wife, Gorrie twisted around and sprung at Plower. The gun went off near his face, but he heard it as if from a vast distance away, muffled by his surging adrenaline. She was stronger than he’d guessed, far stronger, and the bulk at her chest had come from a special vest; he felt the hard panel with the first punch. He slammed his skull against her chin, felt a sharp pang at the back of his neck, pushed himself against her with everything he had, hoping Nan had the sense to run and save herself.
She didn’t. But it was quite likely the smash she gave the American with the hammer from their tool drawer was the blow that rendered her unconscious.
TWELVE
ROSS DEPENDENCY, SOUTHERN OCEAN (66°25’ S, 162°50’ E) MARCH 13, 2002
A storm was coming, and the Petrels and Skuas were its outriders, brawling up from the bare sea cliffs in wild sprays of gray-white wings.
Above their Bellany Island rock colonies a moist, restless warm front from New Zealand had bumped against the outer bounds of an Antarctic air mass. Cold and dry, heavy as the breath of a slumbering frost giant, it presented a resistant barrier.
In collision, the two fronts took on a clockwise rotation, generating great eddies of wind around a central area of low pressure. Rising above the dense mass of cold air, the buoyant warm flow pulled its moisture higher into the atmosphere to be cooled and condensed into radiating bands of clouds.
As the fronts continued to spin in conflict, their winds gained speed and intensity, sucking up more water vapor from the low-pressure trough, pushing the clouds further toward its edges, evolving into a potent cyclonic cell that whirled southward across the Antarctic Circle, racing over archipelagoes, open sea, and pack ice toward the continental landmass.
A storm was coming.
Streaming from their bleak slopes, the rousted seabirds were first to know its aggressive force.
Soon many others would as well.
South Victoria Land, Antarctica (Approx: 74°50’ S, 164°00’ E)
They tramped over the snow berm ferrying a pair of cargo-laden banana sleds toward the first of their widely separated destinations.
The team consisted of ten men. Their parkas, wind pants, and duffels were white. White too were the ski bags they carried over their shoulders on padded nylon web slings, their lightweight fiberglass sleds, and the canvas tarpaulins over the large, sealed crates that had been left at the drop-off point some three quarters of a mile back. This was a heavily crevassed area, and Granger had refused to land his helicopter any closer to the depot.
At the rear of the small column, two men hauled their freight of equipment on sturdy polyfiber tow cords, harnesses buckled around their chests and waists.
They marched along the north side of the trench with a kind of slow wariness, the lead walker probing the un-tracked snow ahead with a telescopic avalanche pole, its shaft locked at its maximum six-foot extension. Far from any known camp, their chances of being detected by ground or aerial recon were slight. Their clothes and equipment were furthermore designed to blend with the terrain, and the sun’s prolonged descent toward austral winter had butted it increasingly low toward the horizon, leaving no appreciable shadows to betray their movement.
The wind blew hard and cold. They moved on toward their goal, their leader repeatedly thrusting his probe into the rumpled snow, locating a masked drop, and then steering them around it. The depot’s location had been programmed into their GPS units, and they would reach it soon enough if they stuck close to the berm line. Their main interest right now was getting safely past the crevasse field, past those fissures waiting beneath the snow, their open, icy mouths filled with darkness. Often hidden under fragile snow bridges — corniced drifts that sweep across their openings and become obliterated from sight as surrounding accumulations overspread their peaks — they might be a few feet in depth, or two hundred feet. One did not learn which until the misstep was already taken and the bottom fell out from underfoot.
After a while the lead man stopped, planted his avalanche pole in the snow, and slipped his binoculars from their case. Beside him along the slope, the others stood with the crampons of their mountaineer boots biting into the hardpack. The dry wind nagged at them, flapping the ruffs of their parkas, clotting the fibers of their balaclavas with their own frozen breath. Out beyond the opposite embankment, sastrugi flowed away northward in wild, swirling patterns.
Glasses held up to his eyes, the team leader looked carefully down into the trench. The entrance hatch was buried in snow, but he could see the reflective strip at the top of its marker wand projecting above a nearby drift.
He signaled to his men, and all but the load carriers began preparing for their run. They zipped open their ski bags, extracted their boards and poles, mounted rigid alpine touring bindings onto the skis, and slipped their booted feet into them.
The leader moved to the edge of the depression on his skis. Behind him, the carriers unharnessed. There would be no need for their assistance below; better they rested here and stayed with the sleds and crates.
“Gehen Meir!” he ordered in throaty Schwyzerdüsch. Then he leaned into the fall line, bent low at the knees, pushed off with his sticks, and went slicing downhill.
The rest whipped after him, poles swung out and back, powder flying from the tails of their skis in wide sweeping sprays. The floor of the trench came upon them in a rush, and they wedged their tips and edges to check their descent, turning parallel to the grade, plowing snow into the air as they braked.
Near the marker wand down at the base of the slope, the leader inspected a high undulation in the surface cover, gave his men a confirmatory nod, and crouched to remove his skis. They quickly followed suit, then got to work digging at the mound with foldable snow shovels from their duffels.
Soon they had exposed most of a circular stainless-steel hatch, its frame almost flush with the rock of the hillside. There was no lock. Intruder prevention depended on effective concealment rather than access control, for mechanical rods and electromagnetics were prone to climatic damage and might very well fail to release.
It took fifteen minutes before the manhole-sized entry hatch was completely dug out. The leader stood to one side and waved for a couple of the men to pull it open. Then he took an electric krypton lantern out of his bag and strode through the passageway, the lantern held forward, the rest of the group filing in at his heels.
The small, cavelike storage depot measured five yards in depth, somewhat less in width. Shielded from wind chill, insulated from outside temperature extremes by the snow and ice cover, its corrugated steel liner was cold enough to patch with frost from the vapor of their exhalations, but still perhaps twenty degrees warmer than ground level.
The leader paused a few feet past the entry, swept his lantern from side to side, and steadied it to his right as his men hastened to pull a large protective covering from over a low wooden platform that spanned the length of the shallow tunnel.
Within moments the covering lay crumpled around the skis and treads of a half-dozen white snowmobiles. Dressed with flared aerodynamic windshields, cargo racks, and saddle bags, the swift, agile little vehicles sat atop the platform in a neat row.
The leader turned to the opposite side of the tunnel and saw a woo
den skid stacked with rubber fuel bladders by the bright glow of his lamp. These, he knew, contained a premixture of high-octane gasoline and two-stroke oil formulated for cold-weather running.
He grunted. Ja, gut. Alles ist burzüglich.
Everything was indeed as he’d been told it would be.
Satisfied, he looked back at his men, then used the torch’s bright shafting beam to point toward the snowmobiles. They had a long distance to travel across the ice plate, and no time at all to waste.
“Bring them down and put some fuel in their tanks—hurry!” he said, still speaking Swiss German. “I want to return to the others, unpack the weapons and explosives, and strike out for our target within the hour.”
Cold Corners Base, Antarctica
“Diamond dust,” Megan Breen said. “Something to see, isn’t it?”
Nimec looked where she was pointing. Arcs of iridescent color chased across a glittery veil of ice crystals wavering above the helipad despite a total absence of clouds. In the far distance, sun dogs teased the horizon at opposite sides of a solar halo, the circle’s violet inner rim bleeding away into faint rainbow bands of green, yellow, tangerine, and primary red.
“It’s easy to appreciate,” he said. “Harder to enjoy under the circumstances.”
Megan turned to face him. She was in minimal ECW gear, her parka’s hood down, snow goggles raised above her brow, no balaclava. The comm tech had notified her of the arrivals just ten minutes ago, but she could already hear the choppers rumbling in, and expected to be out of the cold before too long.
“And wood sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets,” she said.
“Nice line. Yours or borrowed?”
“You know I’m not that poetic.”
“Nice anyway,” Nimec said. “What’s the message?”
Megan gave him a shrug.
“Our astronomers and field photographers throw conniptions when diamond dust settles on their optics,” she said. “They spend weeks preparing to observe an event of some sort or another, use the finest equipment available, and a little ice shoots the works. It wastes time, effort, and lots of money. People get upset, accuse each other of negligence, incompetence, all sorts of idiotic things. And naturally I wind up having to referee. It’s worse than a nuisance. But the sky. That’s the other side of it for me.”
Nimec frowned. “This time it isn’t about telescopes,” he said. “It’s about three missing human beings.”
Megan was quiet for several moments.
“I don’t need to be reminded of that,” she said then.
Nimec instantly regretted his snappiness. He studied her features. Her gaze was direct, penetrating, but showed no sign of anger. Somehow that made him even more regretful.
“Guess that wasn’t one of my smartest remarks,” he said.
Another pause. “Probably not.” She took in a slow breath. “Pete… one thing I’ve learned from my stay on the ice is that there can be magic secrets in the gloom. Don’t close your eyes to them. They help you learn how to live.”
He was silent. They both were. Colors slipped and tailed through the suspended ice motes overhead. Still out of sight, the two approaching helicopters knocked away at the air.
Nimec supposed he really was on edge. Some of it was a carryover from those tumbling boomerangs aboard the Herc. Some of it was his impatience to get going with his search for Scarborough and the two scientists. But there was more besides, and he knew it involved Annie Caulfield’s imminent landing aboard one of the choppers. The news that Annie was already in Antarctica with the Senatorial delegation had made him feel nothing less than ambushed.
He rubbed his face with a gloved hand, thinking. How had Meg originally alluded to their presence? We’re short-handed as far as pilots go, but I’ll explain that later. Just a passing comment as she’d tapped a number into her cell phone. It had gone right by Nimec. But when she got around to her promised explanation, he had learned that one of the base’s three chopper pilots was grounded because his bird was in for repairs, that another was on emergency loan to a French station because their only resident pilot had shipped out for civilization due to illness, and that the third had been to assigned to give the distinguished visitors — DVs, as she called them — a lift from Amundsen-Scott station, the first stop on their tour of the continent. It’s the storm that’s being predicted, Pete. Bad weather’s nothing abnormal around here, but once it hits, there’s a chance it can last for days. The Senators pushed up their schedule to get here before it grounded them at the South Pole, and we were obliged to make accommodations, go ahead with our hosting duties. Incidentally, did Gord happen to mention that Annie Caulfield’s been nannying them?
Ambushed, Nimec thought. Why feel that way, though? Why should the prospect of seeing Annie again have so much guilt attached to it? They’d made an effective team in Florida, but that was in connection with the Orion probe. It was a working relationship. Well, mostly. There was that movie afterward. Dinner and a movie. A nice evening. Annie had introduced him to her kids when he’d picked her up… Chris and Linda. Nice. But their date, say you wanted to call it that for lack of a better term, their date was collegial. More or less. At best they were casual friends unwinding after a tough shared assignment. And once it was over they’d gone their different ways. Again, more or less.
Nimec wasn’t denying he’d felt an attraction to Annie at the time — who wouldn’t, after all? — but he’d known there had been no sense pursuing anything even if she were the least bit interested in him. Which was itself an unrealistic thought. She’d been widowed only a year or so before. Lost her husband to cancer. She wasn’t ready. Also, he had his responsibilities in San Jose, and Annie had her own at NASA’s Houston space center. Texas. Things wouldn’t have worked out long-distance. Yes, he’d phoned her a few times, just to see how she was doing. And sure, they’d talked about getting together in indefinite terms, the way people often did. But nothing firm was ever discussed. The last time they’d spoken was last October or thereabouts, and it was true she’d mentioned that he was welcome to visit if he had any time off around the holidays, stay in a spare bedroom at her place, but he’d considered it one of those polite gestures rather than a serious invitation. And say he had made the blunder of taking her offer at face value? It would have been asinine. An awful imposition. He’d meant to get back to her anyway, but those weeks before Thanksgiving had turned into hell. Pure hell. With Gord in danger everything else had fallen by the wayside. And there had been so much catching up to do since…
Annie had no reason to be insulted. Why club himself over the head with irrational guilt?
Nimec stood there outside the base, steam coiling from his nose and mouth. His cheeks had started to burn and he made himself stop rubbing them. Five degrees above zero out here, and Meg had described today’s weather conditions as mild, a calm before the storm. Since when was five above mild?
The thump of the copters grew louder. Nimec searched the sky, spotted one of them to the west, flying fast, the UpLink logo becoming visible on its flank. That would be the DVs, he thought. Not the first bird he would have liked to see. But the good thing was that he’d get the formalities with those pols out of the way. Plus his foolish nervousness about Annie. His main focus now was making arrangements with Granger. Seeing if he could take him out over Bull Pass ahead of the snow.
The helicopter came in, reduced speed, landed about a hundred feet from him, the downwash of its rotors stirring a cloud of snow off the ground. Then its blades stopped turning, its cabin door slid back, and its passengers came hopping out.
Megan glanced at her wristwatch.
“Right on schedule,” she said. “Special delivery from Washington by way of the Geographic Pole.”
Nimec didn’t comment. There were three Senators in the delegation: Dianne Wertz, Todd Palmer, and Bernard Raines from the Appropriations Committee. Obviously unaware of Meg’s affirmative characterization of the weather, they were wrapped head-to
-toe in CDC orange bag garb. Still, it wasn’t hard to tell them apart. A former basketball pro, Palmer towered above the rest, and had reflexively hunched as he emerged from beneath the chopper’s slowing rotors. Wertz would be the one scrambling to keep pace at his side — Nimec had met the Senator from Delaware at an UpLink function, and remembered her as kind of slight. That left Raines to bring up the rear. Almost seventy-five years old, the committee chairman carried himself like a man whose senior rank qualified him as beyond having to match strides with anyone, almost diverting attention from the fact that in many instances he no longer could. The fourth member of the party had stayed back to help him across the snow, a tactful hand on his elbow.
Nimec took a quick glance at Raines’s companion, unwillingly tightening up inside.
Annie.
Megan leaned close, interrupting his thoughts.
“Time to officiate, Pete,” she whispered, and then hurried to greet their visitors.
Nimec followed a step behind her, suddenly aware of the NSF copter clattering toward the landing zone. About a quarter mile away, it would be touching down in minutes.
Megan whizzed through the obligatory formalities.
“Senator Palmer, I’d like you to meet our head of corporate security, Pete Nimec… Pete, I’m sure you recognize Senator Todd Palmer… Senator Wertz, it’s a great pleasure… Chairman Raines, we feel so deeply privileged… Annie, I know you and Pete don’t need any introduction… ”
Nimec stared as she came close. Hooded, bundled up, Annie nevertheless managed to look fantastic. Fresh. She might have arrived after a half hour’s drive from her home in Houston rather than a long tossing helicopter ride out of South Pole station.
He hesitated.
“Annie, hello—”
“Nice to see you again, Pete,” she said with an entirely pleasant, equally impersonal smile. Then she turned to Raines, escorting him on toward a waiting shuttle. “Sir, I’m sure you’ll be interested in seeing our scientific facilities… ”
