by Tom Clancy
Looking backward, Burkhart could see the road to his fall so clearly. With all veils of conceit and ambition lifted from his eyes, now he could see. The destruction of UpLink’s robotic probe, his taking of its recovery team, his exposed sabotage attempt and the bloodletting that followed, and at last, his hastily necessitated reliance on Granger to do what Burkhart had recognized was far beyond the pilot’s competence… from the day he’d set foot on that road, and perhaps onto the many forking junctures he had walked along the way, it now seemed there had been something almost deterministic about where he was headed.
Gabriel Morgan was dead. The Albedo Consortium’s vast and elaborate underpinnings were on the verge of complete breakdown, a thunderous crash that would send legal and political ground quakes through scores of nations.
What options remained before him then? What roads on which to push toward success… or if not that, then some little measure of self-redemption? There was no way to erase — or substantially reduce — the evidence of the uranium digging and transshipping operation in whatever scant time was left to him. Not even if the mines were razed would that evidence be concealed for long. He could, perhaps, physically remove himself from it, arrange to be carried off in a small plane from one of the South American gateways… but that would mean abandoning all or most of his men.
They were men who had fought bravely beside him. Men who had been loyal and true to him in the darkest face of his own failure.
He would not do it.
Would not desert them.
Deep beneath the frozen earth, Burkhart had decided to make his stand in the pass above, and hold the high ground where he was certain the enemy would show his own resolute face.
Cold Corners Base
“These ATVs were shipped from Kaliningrad a few months back, when they ordered and got themselves updated models,” Waylon was saying. “They’re two-passenger, fully automatic, and have noise-dampened engines. Our field researchers love zipping around in them.”
Megan stood beside Nimec and Waylon in the heated garage arch outside CC1, looking at the ten parked, neatly aligned vehicles, and remembering.
“They were used by Max Blackburn in Operation Politika,” she said. “I was… we were together in Russia at the time.” She paused and glanced at Nimec. “When you and I signed off on the upgrade request right before leaving San Jose, it came to me that the older vehicles might be perfect for the ice. Waste not, want not, you know?”
Nimec was quiet a moment. He had tried very hard to ignore the sadness in her voice as she’d spoken of Max.
“Their VVRS pintle guns,” he said. “They were transported with the ATVs?”
Megan nodded.
“And stored away, yes. It’s ironic, I suppose, that we stripped down the weapons. It was the one feature we never thought we’d need here.”
Nimec nodded thoughtfully.
“Waylon, you grab some men, take care of getting the guns remounted,” he said. Then he turned to Megan. “In the meantime we better see about getting those extra choppers from MacTown.”
Bull Pass
The cage door grated open, then shut with a dull clang.
Shevaun Bradley was startled. A while ago the echoing of the machines had stopped and left her in almost total silence. The sounds of the door seemed very loud against it.
Sitting on the cot that doubled as her chair and bed, her back against the wall of the enclosure, she lifted her eyes as the marked man came inside.
He was alone, unaccompanied by guards.
It was the first she had seen him since the time of the screaming in the black. The first instance in which he’d appeared without his guards.
He stepped over to the cot and stood watching her in silence.
She could see him easily now. The cage was no longer in darkness. Her conditions had improved after she’d talked to him, answered his questions. His men had returned to screw a bare lightbulb into an overhead socket and wheel in the cot. And the food had gotten better.
They hadn’t brought Scarborough back, though. She hadn’t heard anything from him.
Not since the time of those screams…
“You deceived me,” the marked man said at once.
She stared at him in tense silence, trying to pretend she didn’t know what he meant. Except she did, of course.
“It was an artful deception,” he said. “The dome’s outer cameras were precisely where you revealed they would be. But you neglected to mention the internal cameras.”
She felt her heart pound in her chest, but said nothing.
“It was what you call a lie of omission, nicht wahr?” he said. “Is that not true?”
Bradley said nothing.
The marked man came closer to her. His hand slowly lowering toward the pistol holstered at his waist, hovering inches above its grip.
“You were loyal to your own. You showed courage. But your guile killed four of my comrades,” he said. “Does the knowledge please you?”
She looked at him, but continued to say nothing.
“Does it please you?” he repeated with a vehemence that made her flinch.
“No,” she said, her voice trembling as she gave her answer. “I’m not happy that men died.”
The marked man scrutinized her features a moment, and then suddenly crouched in front of her.
His right hand still near his gun.
His face level with her face.
“I could kill you out of vengeance,” he said. “Without pity or moral constriction. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
A pause.
He reached out his left hand, clamped her wrist in it, and forced her palm against the crescent birthmark on his cheek.
“Describe what you feel,” he said.
Her heart was knocking. “I don’t know—”
“Describe it to me,” he said.
Bradley commanded herself not to cry, and the tears began streaming from her eyes.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told him. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I only feel your face.”
He pressed her hand against his cheek for several more seconds, his eyes radiant with that terrible intensity.
Then he relaxed his grip on her, let her pull back.
“All right,” he said. “Listen well, scientist. I’m going to tell you something you’ll surely wish to remember… ”
Cold Corners Base
Nimec entered the water-treatment dome, strode to its central platform, asked the group working on the pump where he could find the man he was seeking, and was pointed in his direction.
“You Mark Rice?” Nimec said, approaching him from behind.
The man glanced up over his shoulder and nodded. He was crouched at a warped metal pipe-coupling near the platform, a small plasma cutter in his hand, a welding helmet and mask covering his head.
“I’d like to talk,” Nimec said. “When you’ve got a minute.”
“Got one right now.”
Rice switched off the torch, rose, carefully set it down on the wheeled tool cart beside him, turned off the oxygen supply to his face mask, and raised its glass hatch.
“What can I do for you?” he said.
Nimec looked at him. A few spikes of hair showed over Rice’s brow, sweaty despite the penetrating cold inside the dome. They were blond with dyed cobalt-blue streaks.
“I’ve seen your folder,” Nimec said. “You were with the Sword detail in Ankara, my old friend Ghazi’s section.”
Rice nodded silently.
“Ghazi sent your team to flush those terrorists out of the mountains a couple, three years ago. On horseback.”
Rice nodded again.
“Before UpLink, you were Army Ranger,” Nimec said. “The 3/75th, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Saw your share of action in the service… Task Force Somalia, an anti-narc unit in Colombia…”
“Right.”
“And earne
d some impressive commendations,” Nimec said. “The Distinguished Service Cross, a couple of sharp-shooter’s medals…”
Rice flicked a Nomex-gloved hand into the air between them.
“With all due respect,” he said. “It’s been a long while since I wore a black beret. Or rode a horse—”
“Or fired a rifle,” Nimec said.
Rice looked steadily at him.
“True,” Rice said. “Before the attack on this plant the other night.”
Nimec met his gaze. “You were going to resign from Sword until Rollie Thibodeau talked you out of it, and even then only agreed to stay if you could ship out to Cold Corners,” he said. “Feel comfortable telling me the reason?”
Rice regarded him another moment, then shrugged.
“I didn’t want to shoot anything anymore except with a camera,” he said. “What I do here is mostly work for the beakers. Photographic ecosystem profiles. It suits me fine.”
“And still puts that trained eye of yours to good use.”
Rice made no comment.
“I need a sniper,” Nimec said. “Someone who’s dependable. Who won’t make mistakes. A bunch of lives are going to be on the line. Mine’s incidentally one of them.”
Rice looked at him.
“The talk’s been that you’re going out to bring back the missing search team,” Rice said.
Nimec gave him a nod. Their eyes were still in contact.
“I’m not a quitter,” Rice said.
“Nobody thinks that.”
Rice nodded.
“Go ahead and count me in,” he said.
Bull Pass
Burkhart led his men from the ascending passage’s mouth onto a black rock uplift, whipped by freezing wind, his boots stepping across striations that memorialized the labored seaward slide of ancient ice.
A hundred feet below him Bull Pass was congested with shadows. Faded orange, the sun floated on an almost even plane with his line of sight, giving the illusion that he could have squeezed it in his hand if only his reach were longer. It had been like that for days as wintry gloom made its onset.
His attention now, however, was captured by the writhing purple-red blot of light in the sky beside the sun. He had never before seen anything like it. Nor most certainly had any of the others.
Here was the first outward sign of the sun’s advancing fever.
“Mein Gott,” Langern said behind him, staring with awe at the bruisy radiance. “Was ist das?”
Burkhart turned to him.
“Der Gott des Krieges,” he said. “Kann sein, eh?”
Langern’s eyes remained wide behind his goggles.
“Ja, mein Herr,” he said. “Kann sein.”
Burkhart was silent. Then he tapped Langern’s arm to stir him from his rapt absorption, motioning down at the pass.
“Hier müssen alle durchhalten,” he said. “Verstehen?”
“Ja,” Langern said, nodding to show he indeed understood.
This bitter windswept terrace was where they would position themselves for the enemy’s arrival.
Cold Corners Base
Pete Nimec watched his hookup teams finish rigging their all-terrain vehicles to the pair of choppers requested from MacTown, each Sikorsky S-76 moments from bearing away its maximum sling-load of three vehicles. As the cargo hooks were slipped into their apex fittings, the wand men waved their static wands and the teams jumped off the ATVs to move out from under the downwash of lifting rotors.
Then the birds climbed from their hover, pulling slack from the sling legs, flying off against the strange, wavery orchid of color that had appeared in the sky near the slipping sun.
Nimec turned to Megan. His backpack heavy on his shoulders, loaded with his own gear, he was ready to join his strike force aboard one of the two UpLink helicopters on the pad.
“How you holding up?” he said.
“Fine.” She lowered her eyes from the auroral radiance and studied his face. “I only wish I were going with you, if you want to know the truth.”
Nimec smiled a little.
“You’ve been awful scrappy since I taught you to box,” he said.
She gave his chest a light swat with her mittened hand.
“Fisticuffs are my thing,” she said. “Before long I’ll have to watch out for cauliflower face.”
“I think,” he said, “You mean ‘cauliflower ear.’ ”
“Close enough.”
They stood there facing each other.
“Got to head off,” Nimec said, and nodded toward the waiting choppers.
“Yes,” Megan said.
“You mind the store. There should be enough men here to—”
“I’m really okay,” she said. “I’ll be okay. And so will this base.”
They stood a few seconds longer in the blowing cold. Then Megan stepped forward and hugged him.
“Thanks, Pete,” she said, her voice catching, her arms tight around him. “Thanks very much.”
Nimec cleared his throat.
“What for?” he said.
“Just for being you,” Megan said.
Over Bull Pass
“We’re seeing… nk… think the… tch… can… sn… us… down where… sss… ssssss… sk… ”
“Chinstrap One, you’re breaking up. Say again?”
“Srks… siss…”
“I’m losing you, Chinstrap One,” the UpLink chopper pilot said as Nimec listened from the passenger seat. “Repeat your status. Over.”
“Crkrrsssss—”
The pilot frowned, tried to reach the other MacTown bird. He was a wire-thin black man named Justin Smith who wore a sparse, tightly kinked chin beard and spoke with an occasionally strong peppering of a Caribbean accent. Nimec thought it sounded like Trinidad.
“Chinstrap Two, we’ve lost contact with Brother Penguin,” he said, pronouncing the word Brother as Brudda. “We need to confirm you’ve made your tick mark. Acknowledge.”
“Ngg… you… rppttt—”
“Say again—”
“Still cnnttrd. Extnr… ssssszzzdrr… rceee… ”
Nimec turned to Smith. “Snap, crackle, pop,” Nimec snorted in disgust. “There any way to get a lock?”
Smith shook his head.
“Our radios are already hopping,” he said. “The disturbance cuts across all bands.”
“Try our own bird again,” Nimec said. The trail ship carrying Waylon’s team had peeled away toward its rendezvous moments earlier.
Smith radioed it, got more garbled noise, cursed under his breath.
Nimec wondered if Smith missed palm trees and white sand. “We’ll have to forget about any of them reporting for now,” Nimec said. “Keep our fingers crossed they’re in position.”
“They’ll be doing the same for us.”
“Yeah.”
Nimec looked out his windscreen at the coiling lights in the sky. What had started out as an isolated purplish stain near the sun had become a moving, living rope of color across the horizon, twined with a glowy spectrum of greens, reds, and blues.
“Damned freakish,” he said. “The weatherman says it’ll be a sunny day, you can count on having to leave your house with an umbrella and galoshes. But solar flares, radio interference… this they can all get on the mark.”
Smith flew in silence, making unconscious, minute adjustments to his sticks as a highway driver would to his steering wheel.
“Sir,” he said after a while. “We’re reaching the notch.” His flight helmet dipped downward. “See it down there?”
Down dere.
Nimec’s eyes traced the pass seaming its way between jagged mountain slopes, saw the dark shark’s-tooth crosscut coming up fast.
He nodded. “The intercom working?”
Smith reached for a switch, and static burst loudly into the cabin.
“Sorry, sir,” he said, and flicked off the com.
Nimec started unstrapping himself from his seat.
“Keep her
steady,” he said. “I’m going back to talk to Rice while my vocal cords can still transmit.”
Bull Pass
Outside the tunnel entrance on the notch’s spiny eastern shoulder, Langern thumbed off his radio handset, and then stood pensive and silent under the ribboning polar lights. He had scarcely spotted the helo through his binoculars before attempting to contact Burkhart, but all he had gotten from the handset was a senseless bark of static.
It was the same signal breakup he had received when he’d hailed Koenig on the western side of the notch, and Reymann’s squad at the far end of the pass.
Meanwhile, the Bell helo was close enough now for its UpLink markings to be seen with the unaided eye.
Zum Teufel mit ihnen, he thought. Zum Teufel mit dem ganzen verfluchten Land.
To the Devil with them. With this whole accursed land.
He turned toward the other men waiting on the crest with him, ordered them to stand to arms.
From this point forward they would be on their own.
* * *
The Sikorsky helicopter designated Chinstrap One after the ubiquitous chinstrap penguins of the peninsula had lowered its own “strap” of ATVs at the intersection of Bull Pass and McKelvey Valley — or the point where the shank of the valley system anchor would be seen to meet its ring end on a map. The pass walls were at their widest distance apart here, and katabatics weren’t too bothersome a factor for the bird’s pilot.
This was only one of the reasons the site was chosen for the linkup with Ron Waylon and his group. The other was because of its coordination with the separate rendezvous Sam Cruz’s team was making elsewhere.
Dropped by the UpLink tail ship on its second hop, Waylon’s team was waiting to receive the sling-load as Chinstrap One came in over the ridge and bellied low above their heads.
They took less than five minutes to get it unhooked and derigged.
Waylon stared up at the S-76, waved to the men in the cockpit as it lifted away into a sky swirling with brilliant color.
“Don’t know if I’d want to be heading back up into that weirdness,” said the man beside Waylon.