by Tom Clancy
Her face bore a troubled expression. She would not deny that part of it related to things left unfinished with Pete Nimec . . . a large part. But Annie’s focus wasn’t on her personal loose ends. She didn’t think she had the right to turn it in that direction.
Minutes earlier, Annie had checked her e-mail and found a dashed-off reply to a note she’d sent to Jon Ketchum. Then she had scanned, in order, Goddard’s public Internet and confidential Intranet sites for the latest SOHO updates.
Everything she’d read and seen on-line indicated the solar flares that had been cooking on the far side of the sun—and heating up news lines around the world—were at last set to make their highly trumpeted appearance. It would almost surely be a brief one. But Annie had been persuaded it also would be dramatic . . . especially in Antarctica.
Given their high threshold of tolerance for challenging circumstances, she doubted the majority of polar bases would have much to worry about. In fact, she was sure their personnel would await the event with delirious anticipation, seeing it as an opportunity to gather scads of exceptional astrophysical data and enjoy one humdinger of a light show when the aurora australis got an energetic cosmic jolt. For most of them it would be like having ringside seats at an extravagant once-in-a-lifetime circus that came rolling into their backyard. Few to none would complain if the price of admission included a spell of erratic communications and ambiguous blips and ghosts on their radars that would be construed by imaginative Atlantis mappers as signs of the Lost Continent rising. While she realized power fluctuations and outages were a more serious potential consideration, Annie also knew virtually all of the ice stations had hardened electrical systems, and multiple backup generators that would kick in if their primaries were effected by the sun’s demonstrative tizzy.
The situation at Cold Corners gave Annie pause, though. Its water supply plant was down, its security compromised . . . existing predicaments that would be magnified by what were only nuisance problems elsewhere. The last thing the crew here needed was to have their difficulties compounded, to become more isolated than was usually the case because of radio and satcom disturbances. And the last thing Annie wanted was to be leaving when they were in a pinch. Many of the researchers were longtime friends. There was Megan. And yes, there was Pete.
Annie sighed. Like it or not, she was shipping out, soon and without any choice. But she still had time to make herself useful, talk to Meg about the latest info she’d gotten off the computer, give her recommendations on how to address some of the technical hiccups that might be expected during the solar outbursts. Her soap, dental floss, and makeup could wait till afterward to be tucked away in their luggage pouches.
She rose, strode to her door, started to pull it open.
And then blinked in surprise.
Pete Nimec stood in the partial opening, his hand raised in the air, frozen as if he’d been about to knock.
“Pete,” she said, startled.
“Annie,” he said, his eyes as surprised as hers.
They stood there in silence, her hand on the doorknob.
Nimec lowered his arm and indicated the parka he’d left on after hitching a ride back from the chopper pad aboard one of the big-wheel shuttles.
“The reason I’m wearing this is I was about to leave base—” He cut himself short. “Well, I’m pretty much on my way out . . . there’s a helicopter waiting to take me into the valleys right now. . . .”
“I’d heard.” Annie nodded toward her open carry bag. “It so happens I’m busy packing myself. . . .”
“Ah,” he said. “If I’m getting in your way—”
“No, no. It was just a comment.”
“Ah,” he said.
“About the timing,” she said.
“Right.”
There was another beat of silence.
Nimec inhaled.
“Annie . . . can I come in a minute?” he said. “I’d like to talk. That is, I’d like to apologize for not . . . you know . . . talking to you sooner . . .”
“It isn’t your fault.” She opened the door a bit wider. “We’ve both had our hands full here at Cold Corners, and our paths just haven’t crossed—”
Nimec was shaking his head.
“I don’t mean talking to you here. I mean, well, before this particular occasion.”
She looked at him, but said nothing.
“Months before this occasion,” he said.
She remained quiet.
“I want to explain why I never called you,” he said. “After you invited me for the Thanksgiving holiday—”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. Really. If you’ll let me.”
Annie stood watching Nimec another long moment. Then she nodded slowly, opened the door the rest of the way, and shut it behind him.
They faced each other in the room.
“Okay,” Annie said, a step or two inside the door. “You were saying . . .”
Nimec swallowed hard, his throat even scratchier now than it had felt in Megan’s office.
“Annie,” he said, and halted. Which he guessed made it three, or maybe four times he’d already done that like a bumbling fool. “When we first met . . . in Florida, remember . . . ?”
“Yes, Pete,” she said. “I told you I’ve been busy. But I think my recollection’s fairly intact.”
“Good,” he said. “Of course, that is. Anyway, when we met . . .”
“In Florida . . .”
“Right . . . well, I knew right off we could never be friends.”
She arched a puzzled eyebrow.
“Oh?”
Nimec shook his head, frustrated with himself. Had he just said what he thought he’d said?
He held up his hand.
“No, wait, that isn’t what I mean,” he said. “What I mean is that I didn’t want to be just friends. That meeting you was special . . . I felt we really clicked, you know—”
“I know, Pete. I felt the same way,” Annie said. “I thought we both realized it.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Exactly . . .”
“What surprised me was that you could choose to let something that special go.”
Nimec’s heart was racing in his chest.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Pete—”
“I never let it go.”
“Pete—”
“Not for a day. Not for a single minute—”
She gave him a look.
“Pete, is it only me, or are you aware it’s been months since I’ve heard from you?”
“I am,” he said. “I didn’t intend—”
The sudden anger on her features stopped him.
“I don’t care what you intended,” she said. “You aren’t even making sense. Did it occur to you . . . did you ever once in all those days and minutes of supposedly not letting go think it might be wise to share that information with me?”
Nimec looked at her.
“Annie,” he said. “I was afraid.”
She touched a hand to her forehead in disbelief, rolled her eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “We aren’t two college kids—”
“I know. I know that. But after my wife left me . . . I guess the idea of getting close to someone else . . . opening myself up to a woman—”
Annie flashed him another silencing glance.
“Pete, it isn’t like I’ve been living in a paper bag for thirty-five years,” she said. “I lost a husband. Lost my best friend aboard Orion. I understand those things. But that doesn’t excuse—”
“I’m not asking to be excused,” Nimec said hoarsely. He swallowed again, realized his throat was no longer dry. In fact, it had almost clogged with moisture. “I’m asking you for a second chance.”
Annie was quiet. Nimec waited, trying in vain to read her expression.
“A second chance,” she said.
He nodded.
Silence from Annie again. This time it seemed infinitely, torturously
long.
Nimec’s heart kept tripping away in his chest.
Then she met his eyes with her own, locked her eyes on his own.
“Okay,” she said. “You’ve got it. I’m giving it to you. But I’m telling you very honestly there won’t be a third.”
Nimec pulled some air into his lungs. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought it had been an hour since he’d last caught a breath.
“I won’t need a third,” he said. “Won’t let ancient history carry over into my life anymore . . . make you accountable for a bad divorce . . .”
“Pete, enough.” Annie moved closer to him, reached out a hand, lightly touched his wrist. “We both have important things to do.”
“This is important,” he said. “Explaining why I wasted so much time—”
“It is, yes,” she said, still touching him with her hand. All at once smiling gently. “And we’ll pick up on it when we’re back home. Over a quiet dinner. Maybe in front of a warm fireplace.”
He stood there. Very conscious of her hand on his wrist.
“That’d be perfect,” he said. “Soon as I get back, I promise—”
“Shhhh,” Annie said. And then leaned forward and kissed his lips, her own lips slightly parted, their mouths lingering together a moment before she pulled back, the taste of her remaining with him a good deal longer.
Nimec looked at her. She looked at him.
Both of them were silent now.
“Annie?” Nimec said after a while.
She nodded.
“I kind of know you and Megan have gotten tight. . . .”
She nodded again.
He took another deep breath.
“That part about me being afraid . . . ?”
“Will be our secret,” she said.
Over Victoria Land, Antarctica
The Bell made a jarring launch from the USARP expedition camp where it had dropped its load of survival bags, having been forced to touch down at an angle in the steep-walled trench where the dome tents were clustered.
Nimec felt its sudden acceleration in his stomach as Granger throttled up. He held onto the sides of his tagalong seat though he was buckled and strapped in tight.
He glanced out his window. The scientific team that had called out for extra supplies—they had introduced themselves as micropaleontologists, mentioning something to Nimec about collecting flake-sized remnants of fossilized mollusks—stood waving at the bird in appreciation, arms high against a white background.
It struck him that Scarborough and his team must have looked much the same when Granger had become the last known person in the world to set eyes on them.
Then tents and expeditioners alike dwindled to vibrant orange specks under the chopper’s skids, and blanked out of sight as Granger flared off above two spiring crystal-cathedral seracs.
“I’ll have to see if we get any more urgent hails, but so far we’re in good shape,” he said. “One more scheduled inspection, a fill-up at the Marble Point fuel dump, and I think we’ll be all right to head into the valleys.”
Nimec turned his head from the window to look at him.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
Over Victoria Land, Antarctica
“The reason they use bamboo for wands is that it can bend a hell of a lot before it breaks, and is almost climate-proof . . . I think it has something to do with the fibre density,” Granger said above the flap of his chopper’s rotors. “You can spot them up ahead, straight out to starboard.”
Nimec gazed down at the rows of marker wands with their orange and green flags. Granger had explained that they were planted to guide traversers and field parties across crevasse fields, steering them safely around the dangerous fissures. The purpose of his aerial survey, he’d said, was to make sure the bamboo staves hadn’t toppled, gotten their flags shorn away, or been drifted over in the storm’s gale-force winds.
“What’s your verdict?” Nimec said. “They look in decent shape to me.”
“Mostly, yeah,” Granger said. “But I know this area, and pretty well know the exact location of the wands. I think a few of them at the margins of the zone might have gotten covered.” He worked his cyclic and collective. “It wouldn’t hurt to be safe. There’s an outcrop a couple hundred yards outside the field that’s flattened on top and makes for a good natural LZ. We can land on it, take a walk, check that the banners are exposed to sight. One bad step and somebody could fall right into one of those cracks.”
“Not the sort of surprise a person would appreciate,” Nimec said.
Granger’s eyes flicked to his face.
“It sure isn’t,” Granger said. “You okay with us going down?”
“I don’t see how we’ve got any other choice,” Nimec said.
Getting from the platform where Granger lowered his skids to the first of the marker wands took them about twenty minutes. It was a tough walk for Nimec, his mountain-booted feet alternately sinking into deep snow and scuffling for traction on the slippery sheet ice.
Ahead of him, Granger was making easier progress in the snowshoes strapped over his own boots, moving with the balanced stride of someone practiced at their use.
“I know this must be tricky for you,” he’d said when Nimec stumbled minutes before. “But if you aren’t fitted for paddles that are the right weight and size, wearing them can make things worse.”
Nimec had not commented. That was a discovery he’d made for himself after trying on a second set of aluminum snowshoes Granger kept in the chopper—spares that almost sent him sprawling, and soon wound up hanging over his shoulder by their strap.
The two men stopped now, the helicopter left well out of sight to their rear. Nimec looked at the gaudy red marker poking up out of the snow to his left. Then he wiped the fog of exhaled moisture off his goggles and browsed over the lines of bamboo staves stringing a long way past it into the distance. Their distribution in the groups that he could see appeared fairly even. Wind-rippled colored banners accented all of them, red ones indicating the boundaries of danger areas, green flags indicating the safer paths around them.
He looked over at Granger. The chopper pilot had his back to him and was staring across the crevasse field.
“You ought to have a peek through your binocs,” Nimec said. “So far I’m not finding any problems.”
Granger nodded, still looking out over the range, his probe chocked upright in the snow. Nimec saw him move his arm, reaching for what he assumed was the binocular case around his neck.
Then he turned toward Nimec, a Beretta pistol in his gloved hand, proving that assumption very wrong.
Nimec’s eyes grew large.
“You want a problem,” Granger said, “you’ve got it.”
“What is this?” Nimec said. His gaze was fixed on Granger’s drawn Beretta. “What the hell are you doing?”
Granger stood there pointing it at Nimec, his expression masked by his goggles and balaclava. “It’s like I said. You came here looking for a problem. But sometimes you find ones you don’t expect.”
Nimec looked at Granger, remembered something that had occurred to him just a short while ago. When the chopper was lifting out of sight of the paleontologic expedition.
The last known person in the world to set eyes on Scarborough and his team.
The thought turned over in his mind with new, cutting significance.
“That day in Bull Pass,” he said. “You didn’t just happen to see our people. You were scouting them.”
Granger held the gun steady.
“Forget about a confession from me,” he said. “Won’t happen. I’ve got nothing to gain from it.” He shrugged. “You’ll just have to leave this world holding on to all your questions.”
Nimec lifted his eyes to Granger’s covered face.
“No,” he said. “Not about you.”
Granger stiffened almost imperceptibly, the hand in which he clenched his gun tightening around its stippled rubber grip. Then he
motioned its snout toward the crevasse zone beyond the marker.
“All right, hero,” he said, pulling his probe out of the snow. “I’m taking you for another walk.”
This time their walk was a short one. Moving behind Nimec, his gun held out between them, Granger suddenly ordered him to halt near a cluster of hazard wands some fifteen or twenty yards past the first red marker.
He sidled around him toward the red-flagged bamboo poles, never lowering the Beretta.
“Here,” Granger said. “Let me show you something.”
He inched closer to the poles, extended his probe beyond them, and grooved its tip through the snow. Testing, exploring, prodding.
Moments later Nimec heard a sound like a deep swoop of breath—a giant’s breath. Then the icy crust underneath the probe gave way in a great matted hunk, breaking apart as it spilled into a wide-open hole it had covered from sight.
Nimec stared into the crevasse exposed by the disintegrated snow bridge. Its jagged lips were about six feet apart and around the same length. He couldn’t know how far down it went into the ice sheet, but the darkness filling it hinted at an evil drop.
Granger stood eying him from behind the snout of the Beretta.
“What you see is a pretty small crater,” he said. “Deep and wide enough, though.” He made a snorting sound that might have been intended as a laugh. “I always call holes like this hag’s mouths. You curious why?”
Nimec looked at him and said nothing.
“It’s because they’re ugly,” Granger said.
Nimec continued to say nothing.
“And because they’re just the right size to be man-eaters,” Granger said.
Nimec just looked at him.
Granger jammed his probe into the snow, then snorted out another humorless burlesque of a laugh.
“What’s wrong? Don’t like my riddle?” he said. “Or maybe you’re thinking about how you’re going to miss another man-eater. Your friend Megan over at Cold Corners. She’s got a helluva lot sweeter lips than the one that’s about to gobble you up, huh?”