by Pamela Clare
Hard Line
Pamela Clare
Contents
Hard Line
Acknlowledgements
Glossary
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Thank You
Also by Pamela Clare
About the Author
Hard Line
A Cobra Elite novel
Published by Pamela Clare, 2020
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Cover Design by © Jaycee DeLorenzo/Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs
Cover photo: prometeus
Copyright © 2020 by Pamela Clare
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials by violating the author’s rights. No one should be expected to work for free. If you support the arts and enjoy literature, do not participate in illegal file-sharing.
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ISBN: 978-1-7352939-0-5
This book is dedicated to my father, Robert White, who loves science and has spent his life looking at the stars. When I was a kid, he and I used to stand outside together late at night and look at the Moon through a small telescope. For the sake of astronomy, he founded the Black Canyon Astronomical Society in Montrose, Colorado, with my mother’s participation and support. For a time, he wrote a column for my newspaper called “Stargazer,” which my staff affectionately referred to as “Stargeezer.” The stars and planets have always been a part of our family life.
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If I could, Dad, I’d name a galaxy after you.
Acknlowledgements
Thanks as always to Michelle White, Benjamin Alexander, Jackie Turner, Shell Ryan, and Pat Egan Fordyce for their support during the writing of this book.
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Special thanks to my mother, Mary White, an RN and respiratory therapist, for her guidance with the medical scenes.
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And a big thank you to my readers for their encouragement and for reading my stories. Thanks for exploring these imaginary worlds with me. You are the best.
Glossary
SPT — South Pole Telescope
LO Arch — The Logistics Arch where supplies are stored
On Station — The act of being at the South Pole station
Going to Pole — Traveling to the South Pole
BICEP — Acronym for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization
IceCube — The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole
Skiway — The runway at Amundsen-Scott Station
Cosmic Microwave Background — Relic radiation left over from the Big Bang
Skua — A kind of bird that scavenges whatever it can. Also, the nickname given to areas where South Pole residents trade and give away their belongings to others.
Author’s Note
This story is set in the unique environment of Antarctica, where few of us will ever go. Down there, they have some fun and unique slang. I’ve done my best to incorporate that into the story when possible without overwhelming my readers.
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Also, the hero is Danish and, although he speaks English well, I have included some language errors for the sake of veracity. I speak Danish and lived in Denmark, so I’m familiar with the kind of pronunciation and syntax mistakes native Danish speakers make when speaking English. There are also Russian characters in the story. Their English isn’t perfect, either. Those are not mistakes in the text; they are deliberate.
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It’s been a strange experience to write about the coldest place on earth while in the middle of a very hot summer. I will admit to being jealous of my characters at times. Can’t it just be minus eighty for five seconds?
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I hope you love Thor and Samantha as much as I do.
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Pamela Clare
August 19, 2020
1
April 6
Thor Ravn Isaksen put the ax back in his tool shed and locked it up, enough firewood stacked near the porch to get him through the next several days. It might be April, but in Colorado’s high country, spring had yet to arrive.
He picked up an armful of firewood and carried it inside, where the fire had almost gone out. He had gas heat, of course, but he preferred the warmth of the woodstove. When the fire was burning hot again, he grabbed a beer from the fridge, stepped outside onto his deck, and sat on the bench he’d built from scrap lumber.
He drew in a breath, the air clean and fresh, no sound but the wind in the pines.
He’d bought this property just before the holidays, moving from a condo in Northglenn to this three-bedroom house in the mountains. His property abutted National Forest land, which made it seem far bigger than a mere fifteen acres. It also came with an endless view of the snow-capped peaks to the west. His nearest neighbors were black bears, cougars, elk, bobcats, and mule deer.
It was Thor’s idea of paradise.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like people. He just preferred solitude.
He’d grown up an only child in the Danish countryside, surrounded by a dense birch forest, and had learned to be content in his own company at an early age. That skill had come in handy during his two years with Sirius Dogsled Patrol, the Danish special forces unit that guarded the unpopulated expanse of Northeastern Greenland. Some of the guys had struggled with the isolation and the cold, the darkness and the vastness of the landscape creeping inside them.
But for Thor, that had been salvation.
The hard part had been returning home. After Greenland, the world had seemed too loud, too rushed, too … meaningless.
The only thing missing from his life was a partner. He had no interest in getting married. All the fuss and paperwork seemed like bullshit to him. Still, it would be nice to share his life—and his bed—with someone special. But he had yet to meet a woman who loved him enough to tolerate his profession.
As an operative with Cobra International Security, a private security company, he spent as much time out of the country as he did at home, leaving at a moment’s notice. Women thought his job was sexy until the reality of broken dates, missed birthdays, and long absences sank in. Or maybe that wasn’t it at all.
The last woman Thor had dated ended things one night after he’d failed to say anything about her expensive new shoes. He hadn’t even noticed them. Amy had broken down on the phone, accusing him of being cold and uncaring. He hadn’t known what to say. How could anyone care that much about something as frivolous as shoes?
Thor’s time in Greenland had stripped him down, bared his strengths and weaknesses, testing him in ways he couldn’t have imagined. It had helped him make peace with what he’d done in Afghanistan. It had showed him who he really was.
He had no interest in small talk, and he didn’t give a damn about shoes or possessions or fast cars or any of that stuff. They were overfladisk.
He searched for the English word.
Superficious? Superfictal? Superfiscal?
He wasn’t sure.
Plus esse, quam simultatur.
Hellere at være, end at synes.
It was the motto of the Jægerkorpset—the elite Huntsman Corps—but it might as well be Thor’s credo.
Rather to be than to seem.
Either he would meet a woman who meshed with his lifestyle, or he wouldn’t. He’d already lived most of his adult life in the all-male world of spec-ops, serving first in the Jægerkorpset in Afghanistan before making the cut for Sirius. He had a lot of practice channeling his sexual energy into his work—and jacking off when he needed release. It wasn’t as pleasurable as a night with a woman, but it was less complicated.
No emotional messiness. No one to disappoint.
He took another drink of his beer, let his mind go blank, and watched the sun dip below the horizon, its last rays turning the sky pink.
Buzz-buzz. Buzz-buzz.
His cell phone vibrated.
He drew it out of his pocket.
It was Derek Tower, his boss and one of the two owners of Cobra.
“Isaksen here.”
“Get your cold-weather gear together and drive to HQ. We’ll meet you there and head straight to the airport. We’re flying to Christchurch, New Zealand, and from there, we catch an Air Guard flight to Antarctica.”
Thor stood. “Did you say Antarctica?”
English wasn’t his mother tongue. He must have misunderstood.
“We’re going to Pole—Amundsen-Scott Station.”
Hold dog kæft.
Shut the fuck up.
Thor had a hundred questions, but he knew Tower couldn’t say much over the phone. “I understand.”
The South Pole had been on Thor’s wish list for years.
“It’s Antarctic winter, and this operation is going to be extremely high-risk. Just getting to the job site is going to be the most dangerous thing we do this year. I’m asking only those of you who aren’t attached—you, Jones, Segal. But if you want to opt out—”
“I’m in, sir.”
Thor wouldn’t miss this for anything.
Amundsen-Scott Station
South Pole
Samantha Park stared at Dr. Decker, his words hitting her like a fist, driving the breath from her lungs. “She’s … dead?”
Decker nodded, jaw tight, lips pressed in a tight line. “I’m sorry, Sam. We did everything we could, but it was too late.”
Samantha shook her head. “No! No, no. This can’t be happening.”
Patty couldn’t be dead. She was only thirty-two, healthy and active. She’d been fine yesterday.
Decker wrapped an arm around Samantha’s shoulder and shepherded her into the infirmary. “Sit down. I don’t want you fainting on me.”
“I don’t faint.” She sat.
“I know you and Patty were close.”
Samantha nodded, her throat tight, tears stinging her eyes. “We went to grad school together. We were … uh … housemates, too. This is our second year as winter-overs. She’s my best friend.”
Why was it so hard to think?
Shouts. Footfalls. Whispers.
Lance stuck his head inside, his brown hair disheveled as if he’d just gotten out of bed. “Sam? What’s going on? Where’s Patty?”
Sam looked up, shook her head, unable to say it.
Lance and Patty had been lovers for the past six weeks or so. Though most relationships on the ice were temporary and forgotten the moment people boarded the plane home, Patty had told Samantha last week that Lance might be different.
Decker gave him the awful news. “I’m sorry, Lance. Patty’s dead.”
“What?” Lance gaped at Decker, his face going pale. “She was fine last night.”
“Sam found her in her bed this morning, unconscious and barely breathing. We intubated her, bagged her, got fluids going. She went into V-tach. We did chest compressions, defibrillated her, and pushed the meds—epinephrine, lidocaine, bicarb—but she bottomed out. Her heart stopped, and we couldn’t bring her back.”
“Keep trying!” Lance pushed past Decker.
Decker grabbed for him. “Lance, stop! You don’t want to see this.”
But Lance was quicker. He jerked aside the curtain that shielded Patty’s body from their view—and froze. “Jesus.”
Samantha gasped.
Patty lay there, unmoving and shirtless, her skin pallid, her eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling, a tube protruding from her mouth.
Kristi Chang, the station RN, stood beside her, tears streaming down her cheeks as she removed an IV from Patty’s arm. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”
Lance coughed as if choking back tears, took Patty’s lifeless hand. “Patty.”
Samantha stood, took a step toward the bed. “If I had found her earlier… If I had gone to check on her the moment she was late for breakfast…”
Lance rubbed his thumb over the back of Patty’s hand. “I should’ve been there.”
Decker put a hand on Lance’s shoulder, looked over at Samantha. “Don’t do this to yourselves—either of you. This isn’t your fault. She must have had some hidden condition, some undiagnosed pulmonary or cardiac problem. Until there’s an autopsy, we won’t know for sure what killed her.”
Lance stroked Patty’s cheek. “You’re doing an autopsy?”
“Me?” Decker shook his head. “No. That won’t happen until we get her body back to the US in November.”
Lance wiped tears from his face. “That’s seven months from now.”
There were no flights in or out of the station during austral winter. The risk of a plane’s fuel freezing was too high.
Decker nodded. “We have no choice but to bag her body and keep it on ice.”
“Oh, God.” Samantha’s heart constricted at the thought of Patty spending seven months, frozen solid, in a body bag in the subzero service arches below the station.
Steve Hardin, the winter site manager, walked in. “I heard that Patty… Oh, no! Son of a bitch! What the hell happened?”
But Samantha needed to get out of here.
She hurried past Steve and stepped into the hallway, where the others had begun to gather, worry on their faces.
Kazem Hamidi, a friend who worked with the BICEP2 telescope, was the first to speak. “Is Patty okay?”
Samantha pushed the words past the lump in her throat. “She’s … dead.”
“I’m so sorry.” Ryan McClain, one of the firefighters and an EMT, rested a hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “How? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“First, the satellite crash, and now this.” Bai Zhang Wei, who studied neutrinos, raised his hands to his face in disbelief. “What is going on?”
“How can she be dead?” Charli Ortega, the coms manager, had tears in her eyes. “I didn’t see this in the cards during her last Tarot reading.”
Jason Huger, the breakfast cook, held up his smartphone. “How did she die?”
Shock and grief became rage.
Samantha knocked the phone out of his hand. “You’re not putting this online, Jason. Patty didn’t die to amuse your YouTube audience.”
“Hey!” He bent down, reached for his phone.
But Ryan was faster. He picked it up, deleted the footage, and handed the phone back to Jason. “Show some respect, man, or I’ll put your phone through the shredder.”
“What happened?” Charli asked.
Samantha swallowed. “When Patty didn’t show up this morning, I went to her room. She was unresponsive. I couldn’t even tell she was breathing. Decker and Kristi tried to save her, but… I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Samantha turned and ran down the hallway toward her room, locking the door behind her. She sank onto her bed and sobbed.
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Cobra’s private jet was somewhere over the Pacific, headed toward a refueling stop in Hawaii before Tower called Thor, Malik Jones, and Lev Segal into the conference room for a briefing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting and in the dark, but we’re caught in a developing situation.” He motioned toward the chairs. “Take a seat.”
Thor sat, exchanged glances with Jones and Segal, the three of them eager to find out what was so important that the US government would risk sending them to Antarctica in the middle of austral winter.
Tower tapped at his pad, and a map of Antarctica appeared on the large monitor on the wall. “Eighteen hours ago, a new US military satellite with a state-of-the-art missile-control system crashed about three hundred fifty miles from Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. It wasn’t a mechanical failure. The satellite was hacked.”
Thor gaped at him. “Hacked? Fuck.”
“Holy shit.”
“Who could do something like that?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment.” Tower tapped his pad, and a schematic of the satellite appeared on the screen. “Are any of you familiar with Golden Horde? No? I’m not surprised. It’s the nickname given to a new guidance system that enables missiles to adjust course and coordinate with one another after launch. In the past, once a missile was in the air, it simply followed its trajectory until impact, like a cannonball. With Golden Horde, a sophisticated GPS and communication between missiles enable the weapons to act as independent swarms after launch, giving them the ability to respond to and overwhelm enemy air defenses—and making it possible for an operator to change their trajectory to new targets.”