When he awoke, she was gone.
The sleeping bag was empty. The tent was empty.
Shock of what it meant set in.
Naked, he ran into the howling wind.
"Anna! Anna!"
There was no answer.
Nineteen
Naked, Nick Carter couldn't pursue Anna. He ran back into the tent, threw on clothes, and raced back outside. He stared into the thick whiteness. There was no sign of her. There wouldn't be. She'd see to that, and the storm would help. The blizzard poured a curtain of thick wet flakes down. The wind hurled snow back up from the ground. The temperature must have been forty below zero.
He struggled through drifts, making wider arcs around the tent. She could have been gone eight hours. With the right conditions, she'd have been dead in fifteen minutes.
He forced his way on, the tent fading in and out of the sheets of whiteness. The cold pierced his bones. He pushed the danger from his mind. She'd left so that he could move swiftly to complete the mission. The dream about Scott's empty dog sled, the remarks that she was holding him back, all came back to haunt Carter. He shuddered and stumbled on, hoping, searching for the bright blue snowsuit.
Then he fell into the drift.
It was soft, wet, like quicksand sucking him deeper and deeper. He clawed the snow, coughed for air. He felt himself sinking into oblivion. It was easy. He was tired, and it was very easy just to stay in the womb of snow. And die.
He jerked with the thought. His mind had grown sluggish with the cold. Soon he wouldn't care.
He struggled, found the rock ledge that the drift sided, and pushed up through the snow. He made his arms and legs work until he emerged, clawing his way out to lie on the surface, panting.
He couldn't stay there. Had to go on. Find Anna. He rolled off the drift and stumbled to his feet. Where next? Where had he come from?
He looked around. He didn't know. He was going to die because he didn't know. And Silver Dove would complete their plan to take over the world.
With all his tremendous will, the Killmaster forced himself to focus his numb mind. He had to get back to the tent or perish. He had to accept Anna's sacrifice.
Then he saw it. The brief shine of chrome. The skimobile. The curtain of white closed, but Carter held the direction steady in his mind and, stunned and grieving, fought his way back to the shelter of the tent.
The next day, the blizzard stopped. Stone-cold silence enveloped the lonely tent Immediately Carter tried the radio. All he got was static. He dressed and went outside.
She'd taken nothing with her. She'd put on her blue snow-suit and walked away. Any direction. As far away as she could get. Where he couldn't find her. Couldn't rescue her.
He went to the skimobile and kicked it. Once. Twice. He wanted to throw it over the side of the mountain. He wanted to smash the mountain into a million pieces and hurl them into the face of the merciless gods.
Instead, the AXE agent packed supplies and took down the tent. He loaded everything onto the skimobile. He knew where he was going. He'd planned the shortest, quickest route to the closest base that he was sure he could trust.
He started the motor and drove off, Anna's beautiful face with the flowing flaxen hair set forever in his mind.
Northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula on the Weddell Sea sat the cereal-box structures of the United Kingdom's Halley Station. After a loss of funding during the fighting on the Falkland Islands, the station again pulsed with activity, much of it centered on new high-speed satellite communications equipment and a new geophysical observatory.
It was a clear Antarctic day, the sun gleaming above the horizon. Assorted scientists and maintenance crew walked and rode around the snowy compound, checking for damage caused by the blizzard.
Inside a quiet office, alerted at last by Carter's helicopter radio, sat David Hawk and Chester ffolkes, their faces grim.
"Sorry about Anna," Hawk said. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and stared at it thoughtfully. "Blenkochev and Leslee Warner. Their daughter. Must have been a damned fine agent." He looked up at Carter. "You thought a lot of her. It happens."
"So that's how that bloody bastard got away, David," ffolkes said and smiled. The gold on his teeth shone in the overhead lights. "He never did take the usual way out. And all these years we thought he'd killed poor Leslee. Sorry she ended up in Moscow. Boring place. Gray. They say Siberia's worse, but I don't believe it. I suppose that's what she gets for defecting."
Hawk nodded and lit the cigar. His cheeks bellowed as he drew it to life. He looked at Carter, waiting.
"I've radioed Lev Larionov," Carter reported. "He'll relay the plan to Blenkochev and tell him about Anna. Her death should keep him in line, although I think he's sincere about not wanting General Skobelev and the Silver Doves in power."
"A bit ticklish," ffolkes said, "breaking into a place that manufactures bacteria for biological warfare. We'll need all three of you. We'll have the troops ready by the time you get there."
Carter nodded. His thoughts, energy, and emotions were now focused on only one thing: the mission.
"Good luck, Nick," Hawk said solemnly. "I'm afraid you'll need it."
Mike Strange was waiting for him in the little nuclear helicopter. Her face was flushed pink with excitement. A ski cap hid her chestnut hair, only a few glossy strands blowing in the breeze.
"I'll pilot," she said happily. "God! It's so good to be out!"
Her enthusiasm made him smile.
"All right," he said. "Glad you're well again. We'll head toward. Novolazarevskaya, I found a place we can land that's close to the Silver Dove installation."
She turned on the helicopter, listened with satisfaction to its noise.
"And our antiterrorist backup troops?" she said.
"They'll be flown in from the opposite direction. Americans, New Zealanders, English, and Russians through Blenkochev's Silver Dove sleeper. An international force to solve a global problem. They'll wait hidden outside on skimobiles. Our job is to sneak in seize General Skobelev, and isolate the lab. If the timing's right, the units will be able to come in then and take care of the rest of the Silver Doves before the Doves get us."
She looked at him, her dark eyes worried.
"There are so many things that can go wrong," she said. "Too many," he agreed.
"And if we can't prevent one of the fanatics from setting free some lethal bacteria?"
"Then it won't matter," Carter said somberly. "We're all dead anyway."
Silently involved with their own thoughts and worries, they flew up into the glassy Antarctic air, over the snow and rock of Coats Land into Queen Maud Land and toward the mountains that rimmed the Princess Astrid Coast. Alert, they watched the skies for Silver Dove aircraft.
Ahead, the mountains where the Silver Dove installation was concealed rose raw and rocky, the snow settled fluffy and innocent as clouds into valleys and crevasses. Some where in those snowy depths brave Anna's body was buried.
"I'm sorry about her," Mike said at last. "Anna Blenkochev. Rotten break."
"Yes."
They flew above a pair of snow petrels, hardy Antarctic birds that nest on mountain crags as much as two hundred miles inland, and then above a striated caracara, dark and hawklike, one of the world's rarest birds of prey. The two agents flew on as the sun slowly circled the horizon and shadows moved like sluggish wraiths across the sparkling, rocky earth.