Megan looked at her and winked.
“Dear girl,” she said, “one of the beauties of living in Antarctica is that last call’s whenever you want it to be.”
Pete Nimec pushed open the high-mounted 4x4’s passenger door, then frowned as gusting wind slammed it back hard against his shoulder. He gave it more oomph and jumped out into shin-deep snow.
Waylon came around from the driver’s side of the truck. He’d left the engine running.
“Storm’s really on the move now,” he said.
Nimec couldn’t make out his comment. It was difficult enough to hear through his hood and face mask without the wind batting the words off into space.
“What was that you said?” he almost shouted, moving closer.
Waylon pointed overhead to the south, his arm at ten o’clock. “Check out the space invaders.”
Nimec gazed up at a huge floating armada of vaporish flying saucers and took an involuntary breath of raw air. It ranked as one of the eeriest sights that he’d ever seen.
“They snow clouds?”
“More of an advance escort,” Waylon said. Steam puffed from his mouth and froze into little pearlets of ice on his mustache, causing it to droop further down the sides of his chin. “Those are lenticular hogbacks. If this storm fits the regular pattern, we’ll see some shreddy cirrus clouds made up of ice crystals stream in behind them and then get low and thick and cover the sky. That’s whiteout time, and it’s no fun. The cumulus clouds come last, bring the main front. You know them right away because they’ve got these ugly anvil tops. The higher their tops, the harder they slam down on you.”
Nimec looked at him. “Sounds like you know your stuff.”
Waylon shrugged. “A bug in the jungle better know when an elephant stampede’s on the way.”
“Your antennas tell you how long before it reaches us?”
“I’m guessing an hour till snow starts falling, four or five before we feel the real brunt. But don’t hold me to that,” he said. “The on-line sat voodoo says it’ll be closer to six, which just seems way outside the mark.”
Nimec stood looking at him in the face of the wind.
“I’ll go ahead and bet my money on you,” he said.
Waylon didn’t comment. After a moment he nodded his head toward the long, ribbed metal structure to their right, where a group of men had formed a human conveyor belt from the entrance to a Caterpillar parked outside, stacking its flatbed high with crates.
“Anyway, sir, I’ve got a couple of reasons for showing you this arch first,” he said. “One, it’s our outermost building, a warehouse where we store contingency provisions. I figured we’d start here and work our way back to the main compound.”
He paused, watching the big tracked vehicle get loaded up.
“And two?” Nimec said.
“What you see is a perfect example of a Sword operation, Antarctic style,” he said. “It’s obviously not very exciting. The crates are filled with canned food and bottled water. We’re shifting them to the utilidors in case of a pinch, which is SOP before any Class II storm.”
Nimec was perusing the arch from where he stood. Although a wide path had been dozed in front of the entrance, its roof and sides were inundated with a thick caking of snow.
He searched his recollection.
“Just curious,” he said. “Maybe there aren’t any marauding hill tribes about to come after your soup and jerky sticks, but you ever get any security systems functional out here?”
Waylon shook his head. “We considered all kinds of monitoring and access-control equipment to stay in line with normal UpLink requirements. Experimented with swipe-card scanners, biometrics, even robot hedgehogs… didn’t have much luck in these conditions.”
“Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember the requisitions totaling up to a fortune,” Nimec said. “The techies kept trying to modify the stuff. Weather-harden it.”
“And every one of those req slips probably had my name on them,” Waylon said. “No matter what we did to enhance their shieldings, the electronics would go down as fast as we got them fixed.” He pointed a gloved hand at a spot above the arch’s open entry door. “There’re some surveillance cams hidden up top. IR thermography, one-eighty-degree rotation, recessed so they’re protected from some of the elements. On a good day they work all right. But it takes constant maintenance to keep frozen precip off the gimbals and lenses.”
Nimec grunted. The wind boomed around him, a gust almost lifting him off his feet. He was starting to desperately miss the 4x4’s heated interior.
“Okay,” he said in a loud voice. “What’s next?”
Waylon shrugged.
“Your call, sir,” he said. “I can walk you inside the arch for a look around, or drive us on over to the water-desalinization and treatment dome.”
Nimec looked at their waiting vehicle, decided in about a second.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
Burkhart crouched under the tent fly as he entered from outside and quickly zippered shut the double door flaps. Here in the upper elevations, the pregnant clouds had begun to spill their frozen moisture, flinging drops of sleet and snow hard into the wind.
Squatted over their open crates of weapons, his men turned to look at him, the cloth sides of the tent thumping and rattling around them.
He flipped off his balaclava, pressed a warm hand against the searing birthmark on his cheek.
“Get ready,” he said. “It’s time to strike.”
Elata paced the length of the small room, trying to contain his energy. He’d been here, in this room, in this small stinking village near the Italian border, for five days now, five overlong and crushing days, waiting. He needed this to end, and soon.
Pages from three sketchbooks littered the floor. He’d tried to draw, but it had deepened his frustration. Lines of other artists intruded into his work. A sketch of the bed became an early Van Gogh; the scene from his window a study by Titian. The masters swirled around him like ghosts. He was losing his sanity as well as his sense of himself.
It was Morgan’s fault. Morgan had put him here. Morgan had sucked him into his orbit, jailed Elata as he himself was jailed in exile.
Elata dropped to the floor and did a set of pushups, trying to stifle his paranoia. Then he folded himself back up and crossed his legs, trying to meditate.
This would end in an hour, a day. He was free to walk around the village if he wished; he would be shadowed, but that was for his own protection — Interpol had issued a bulletin for his arrest.
Morgan would pay him and supply him with a different passport. He would be off to nearby Milan, then down to Florence. He could see friends there; they would let him stay for as long as he wished, even forever.
He’d give up forgery completely. There would be objections — Morgan would complain bitterly. Worse, he would tempt him. Money was to be made. But Elata had enough money.
If anyone objected, he would threaten to tell all to Interpol. He had only to make a phone call — one phone call — and hundreds of art collections would be called into question.
He could make the call now. He was tempted. He wouldn’t even have to say anything himself — there was a list in a safety-deposit box in the States that could keep the wolves at Interpol busy for decades.
If he did that, Morgan and the others would be very, very angry. They would kill him. He would have to expect that.
A heavy set of footsteps ascended the steps. It was Morgan’s minion, Peter. The thug never bothered to knock before opening the door.
“Time to go,” he said. “We’re not coming back.”
“Fine with me,” said Elata, grabbing his knapsack but leaving the sketches on the floor. He went down the stairs quickly; a small yellow Fiat waited nearby, the same car that had brought him here. Belting himself in, he felt paranoia steal over him again. Peter pushed the seat forward harshly as he climbed past into the back; the forger pushed back with a shove.