Rosen Trowbridge had no answer. Instead he turned to the little coal stove with the little pot of water steaming atop it. “Would…would you care for a cup of coffee, Ms. Russell?”
Chapter Twenty-six
Saddleback Glacier
Smith studied the row of glowing green numbers in the LED strip of the handheld “Slugger” Global Positioning unit. “Don’t quote me on it, but I think we’re close,” he said, lifting his voice over the wind rumble.
Whatever weather Wednesday Island received, the glacier between the two peaks got the worst of it, the mountains channeling the polar katabatics between them. On this afternoon, the sea smoke and cloud cover had blended, streaming through the gap between the mountains in a writhing river of mist intercut with stinging bursts of airborne ice crystals too hard and piercing to be called snow.
As Smith had hoped, the rappel down the mountainside to the glacier’s surface had not proved excessively difficult, but the crossing of the glacier itself had turned into a slow, painful crawl. Visibility had varied from poor to nonexistent, and the threat of crevasses had mandated a wary roped advance, probing constantly with their ice axes. Away from the shield of the mountains, the incessant winds tugged and burned, penetrating even their top-flight arctic shell clothing. Frostbite and hypothermia would soon become a factor.
They weren’t in trouble yet, but Smith knew his people were tiring. He was feeling it himself. Night was coming on rapidly as well. Soon they would have to break off the hunt for the plane and start the hunt for shelter, if such existed up here.
That thought decided him. If he was thinking “soon,” it should be “now,” while they still had some reserves remaining. He must conserve his team’s strength and endurance. Time was critical, but squandering it by stumbling around in this freezing murk would accomplish nothing.
“That’s it,” he said. “Let’s pack it in. We’ll dig in for the night and hope for better visibility tomorrow.”
“But, Jon, you said we’re close.” Valentina’s muffled protest leaked through her snow mask. “We must almost be on top of it!”
“It’s been here for fifty years, Val. It’ll be here tomorrow. We just have to make sure we’re here to find it. Major, we’ll try and make it across to East Peak. That’ll be our best bet to find some cover out of this wind. You’ve got the point. Let’s move.”
“Yes, Colonel.” Obediently Smyslov turned and started his hunched trudge, probing ahead with the spike end of his climbing axe and slamming his crampons into the wind-abraded ice with each step.
How’s that for command, Sarge? Smith grinned to himself, telepathing the thought to his distant mountain warfare instructor.
In the saddleback, the prevailing wind was as good as any compass. They only had to keep it on their left shoulder to eventually reach the far side of the glacier. Last on the safety line, Smith’s attention was centered on the other two members of his team, ready to brace and hold should either suddenly fall through into a hidden crevasse in the ice. Accordingly it took him a moment to comprehend why Gregori Smyslov came to such an abrupt halt.
“Look!” The Russian’s excited yell was torn by a wind gust. “Look there!”
Almost directly ahead of them, a towering finlike shape had materialized, ghostlike in the streaming mist: the vertical stabilizer of an aircraft, a big aircraft, the outline of a storm-scoured red star still faintly visible.
“Yes!” Valentina Metrace lifted her fists in triumph.
Wasn’t that always the case? When you weren’t looking for it, you found it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Wednesday Island Station
Randi Russell trudged up the trail to the knoll overlooking the station. Every few feet she stopped and heaved on the heavy, weatherproof coaxial cable that led up to the radio mast, peeling a length of it up and out of the snow cover. Carefully she ran each exposed cable section through her mittened hands, looking for breaks or cuts.
It had to be the antennas. She’d checked everything else on both the sat phone and the sideband set. The little SINCGARS transceiver they’d brought with them was useless. It simply lacked the power to override the solar flare that was demolishing communications. Once they’d broken the line of sight she hadn’t even been able to raise Jon and the others on the aircraft party.
She was on her own. As much as one could get. Impatiently she shook her head, displeased with the pang of loneliness that had flared within her. Giving the MP- 5 a hitch onto her shoulder, she doggedly plowed another few feet up the compacted snow trail.
Reaching the base of the ice-coated radio mast, Randi knelt down and traced the last few inches of cable into the booster box at the tower base. It was intact, and all the connectors were still screwed tight. Frustrated, she rocked back on her heels. The radios should be working. Given they weren’t, she was missing something. Randi suspected sabotage, but if such was the case, some very subtle methodology had been used.
Somebody was being very, very clever, and she hoped that soon she would have the opportunity to make him suffer for it.
Standing, Randi took her binoculars from her belt case. From her position on the knoll she had a fair view of the immediate cove area. Degree by degree, to the limits of the haze and the fading daylight, she made another scan of her environs, her augmented gaze lingering on the jumbled piles of pressure ice along the shoreline and on the shadows and swales of drift at the foot of the central ridge.
That clever person was out there now, somewhere nearby, possibly even watching her. He was waiting, maybe for assistance or maybe for her to make that one mistake. To defeat him she was going to have to be a little bit more clever than he was.
She had one immediate advantage. Movement in this snow-blanketed environment meant leaving obvious and unerasable tracks. The science station was centered in a straggling, lopsided web of flag-marked snow trails that interconnected the buildings, supply dumps, and more distant experiment and research sites. Randi ran her glasses down each track, seeking for fresh ground disturbances or sets of snowshoe or boot tracks angling off from the regular routes of travel.
She found one. Disconcertingly, it was almost immediately below her, branching off from the trail to the knoll she had followed just a few minutes before in her climb to the radio mast. In her intent study of the communications cable, she hadn’t paid attention to the short lateral stretch of broken snow that led out to a small disturbed drift. She did so now, and a chill rippled down her spine that had nothing to do with the sinking evening temperature.
She hastened downslope to the divergent trail and followed it for a dozen yards, kicking her way along and restirring the surface. She found what she had feared: red-stained snow, covered over and hidden. Reaching the end of the trail, she dropped to her knees and dug into the drift. It didn’t take long to uncover the parka-clad body.
Kayla Brown wouldn’t be going home to her fiancé in Indiana. Gently Randi brushed the snow from the young woman’s face. She had died from a smashing blow to the temple from some heavy, pointed object, possibly an ice axe. Traces of shock and terror, her last expression, lingered frozen on the student’s face.
Kneeling beside the girl’s body, Randi Russell decided that it would not be adequate for this clever person to suffer. He was going to die, and it would please her to be his executioner.
Randi reburied the body with a few sweeps of her arm. She would not tell Trowbridge about this discovery. Not immediately, at any rate. Kayla Brown would keep here for a time, at least until Randi could arrange for her avenging.
Randi continued to the hut row. The lights were already on within the bunkhouse. Doctor Trowbridge had volunteered to prepare an evening meal. Pausing on the main trail that led past the hut entrances, she judged vision angles and distances. Near the front of the bunkhouse, Randi veered off the trail, plowing out into the virgin snow for a few yards.