He watched her go, her small light getting smaller and smaller until it vanished completely. And one joy scatters a hundred griefs, he whispered. Despite the gloom of the dark passages, and the knot he felt in his belly at the thought of scaling down any further in the dark caves, the idea that this young woman would be waiting for him suddenly filled him with lightness and hope.
CHAPTER 15
Sergeant Bill Monroe stood in his snowmobile and looked out over the bluff. Below was a plain of blinding white, with a few swirling flurries, looking like small ghosts racing each other across the freezing landscape. The wind was only around twenty miles per hour with gusts of thirty — mild. Down here katabatic blasts got up to 250, easy. Still, the chill factor made the wind feel like needle sharp teeth trying to get at his flesh.
Monroe wore standard extreme weather kit, with goggles fitted into a full-face covering. The face plate was padded with insulation on the inside and externally was of a tough polymer that had shielded him from far worse temperatures than these. And he knew well what the cold could do — freeze burn gave black blisters on the skin, the same as if you touched a red-hot stovetop. Extremities exposed for longer periods were lost. Fingers, toes, ears, noses — once the meat was frozen, the cells got ice crystals in them, and the flesh died. Removal was the only option — lose a bit to save the rest — it was as simple as that.
His comm. link pinged. “Captain, come in.”
It was Jennifer Hartigan, his onsite medical officer. She was smart, wholesomely attractive, and could hold her own in field exercises, stitching a wound, or on the dance floor. He smiled, and guessed this message was going to be about the fancy dress party they were organizing this Saturday night to farewell the day-trippers. He squeezed the comm. link at his neck to connect.
“Monroe. Go ahead, Hartigan.”
“Bill, got a message coming in from HQ, high priority. You need to take it.”
“Can you patch it?” He frowned at her tone.
“No can do, sir, coded squirt. Not to be delivered over this frequency, or any frequency. You’re going to have to be in the chair for this one.”
What the hell? he wondered. “Okay, coming back in. See you in twenty.”
He took one last look over the snow plain. The shadows were long, the sun just a weak orb sitting on the horizon. Winter coming, party’s over, he thought. He threw a leg back over the snowmobile and turned it around, quickly lifting the machine to eighty miles per hour, and shooting a rooster tail of white into the air behind him.
Within thirty minutes, Monroe had taken the urgent call from a Colonel Jack Hammerson, acting on executive orders. He was told to expect a Special Forces soldier — no name, no rank — but he was to do everything the guy said without question. Bottom line, he was to link up the soldier with the British scientific team over at the Ellsworth project base.
Cate Canning and her team of Brits were under Monroe’s support umbrella, but to date they had pretty much kept to themselves — fine with him — no noise, no trouble. Until now.
As if I don’t have enough to damn well do, he thought, as he waited out in the cold for the soldier, getting more pissed off by the minute. He was told to wait, but he forgot to ask, how long?
“Who is this guy?” Ben Jackson stamped huge boots beside him, trying to get circulation into his long legs.
Monroe was a fair sized man, but the big soldier trying to stay warm beside him looked down on everyone. He liked Jackson, and if some hardass was going to show up, who better to have standing with him than the local giant? Monroe grinned confidently.
“No idea who he is. But we’ve been ordered to meet him, get him sorted out, and then push him towards the Brits.” He turned. “And now you know as much as I do.” He looked up at the leaden sky. “He’s too late anyway. With the storm coming in, we won’t be going anywhere till it passes on.”
Jackson grunted, and lifted huge arms to hold a pair of fieldglasses to his eyes. “Bill, incoming; one o’clock.”
Monroe lifted his own glasses, seeing the snow plume kicking in the air. Where could he have come from? he wondered.
Then it hit him — shit, he thought, as the soldier powered up to them on a high-speed military snowmobile that was more like a torpedo. He wore some sort of armored wetsuit, with full-face shielding… and he was frozen, really frozen, with an ice crust over his shoulders and arms. The lunatic must have come from the water — how was that even possible? It was an unbelievable 120 miles of exposed granite, loose snow, and ice crevasses.
“Holy shit.” Ben Jackson scoffed. “The ice man cometh.”
The soldier stepped off the sled and rolled his shoulders, cracking ice that fell from him in large flakes. He flipped his faceplate up. Any thoughts Bill Monroe had about chewing the soldier out vanished immediately. Though the guy had sort-of handsome features, there was something about him that set alarm bells ringing. Perhaps it was the iron-hard physique, or the sense of menace behind those gray-green eyes, that hint of explosive violence barely held in check. Every time that stare alighted on Monroe, it seemed to cut right through him. Frankly, Monroe thought, he’d be happy when this guy, and his secret mission, was just a memory.
The soldier held out a hand, and Monroe grabbed it, shook it, and quickly introduced himself and then Ben.
“Thank you for meeting me, Sergeant.” The soldier turned and nodded briefly to Ben, but then immediately turned back to Monroe. “I’ll need a chopper and a pilot.”
Monroe nodded. “I can fly you,” he said, while watching him carefully. “Is there anything else you need? Hot coffee, a few minutes to gather your shit together? If you’ve…”
“No. Just to get going.”
“Not sure that’s a good idea. There’s a storm coming in, and I strongly…”
“Now.” The man’s eyes never seemed to blink.
Ben Jackson held up a hand. “Sir, Sergeant Monroe is right, down here the storms can…”
The soldier turned to Ben, and the big man’s mouth snapped shut.
So much for my big scary backup, Monroe thought. Fine, you want to go to hell, well then, be my guest.
Monroe thumbed over his shoulder. “This way.”
The helicopter descended towards the five figures standing on the snow. All were wearing thick clothing with hoods up and goggles over their faces, making them look like chubby clones of one another. Alex saw that the Ellsworth base wasn’t large — one fair sized silo-shaped building and then mostly a temporary set of shelters designed to accommodate the scientific staff while they went about their technical work. Just off to one side stood a structure that looked like a round elevator shaft, rising several dozen feet into the air.
“You know about the Kunming?” Alex asked.
Monroe nodded.
“I knocked out their communications. Sooner or later they’ll figure out how to get it back online. Once they do, they may decide to pay you or the British team a visit.” Alex turned to Monroe. “An unpleasant one.”
Monroe nodded. “We don’t have the manpower or ordnance to repel a coordinated attack.” He smiled grimly. “But we don’t intend to surrender the base, or anyone under our protection.”