His eyes were flashes of blue, catching the light from the bulb above them. He pulled a pistol with a bulky barrel out of his shoulder holster. He put the muzzle against Sammy’s temple and stared at her with a crooked smile. He stayed like that, his eyes boring into hers, for a very long minute, then put the pistol away. “We need another two hours for the drug to clear your system. Wouldn’t do to have that found by some enterprising coroner. Might make people ask too many questions.” He stood up and looked down at her. “You understand, don’t you?”
Sammy gazed back blankly.
He stood and began pacing about the room. “You didn’t do very well with your life. Couldn’t even keep a husband. Maybe in your next life you’ll do better.”
Sammy whispered to herself.
The man spun about. “What did you say?”
Sammy muttered again. The man knelt down next to her and reached for her shoulders, pulling her to her knees. “Speak up.”
She pressed her chest against his.
“That’s not going to work,” the man said, as she leaned into him.
Sammy kept her eyes on his. She could feel him growing hard against her stomach. Despite his protestations, he was staying close.
“Not in the head,” she said softly.
For the first time the man was confused. “What?”
“Please don’t shoot me in the head. I’ll make it worth your while. Anywhere but the head.”
The man stood up and moved a few feet away. Sammy awkwardly shuffled toward him on her knees until he was against the wall. She pressed her face into his crotch. He was most definitely hard now. Sliding her tongue up the zipper, she flipped out the steel tab and gripped it with her teeth.
Sammy slowly pulled down the zipper. He wasn’t wearing underwear, and she could feel flesh for the first time. She pushed in harder, moving her head until she found the tip of his cock, then she drew it into her mouth.
The man moaned. She took it in as far as she could and then let it pop out. She started licking one of his balls gently and then started sucking him again.
“All right,” the man muttered as he leaned back against the wall. “I knew you liked to do this. The needle made you tell me all about what you like to do.”
Sammy clamped down on the flesh in her mouth with all the power in her jaws, and the man’s scream echoed off the walls as he doubled over. Sammy rolled away to the right, tucking her knees to her chest and sweeping the handcuffed wrists down her back, over her feet, and up in front. Staggering to her feet she ran for the man; he was still doubled over, blood pouring over his hands as he grasped his groin.
Sammy first struck him in the face with her manacled hands, then, looping her hands behind his head and pulling down with all her might, she slammed her left knee into his face, doubling the strength of the blow. His teeth clicked shut and his head rocked back. Blood exploded in a spray from his shattered nose.
Sammy snaked her hands inside his jacket and retrieved the pistol as he belatedly tried to stop her. She dove away as he blindly struck out with a flurry of punches. She held the gun in front of her with her manacled hands and pulled the trigger.
There was no sound of a shot — just a sickening thud as the side of the man’s head exploded in a spray of brains and blood, adding its own gory mark to the wall beyond. His body crumpled to the ground; an arm briefly twitched and then he was still.
Sammy felt her stomach flip, but the nausea quickly passed and a black sense of calm swept over her. After taking a few deep breaths, she went over to the body and searched the pockets until she found the key for the handcuffs. Holding the key in her teeth, she freed herself. She grabbed a thermos the man had brought and washed out her mouth and cleaned the blood from her face. She took his wallet and key ring and strapped on his shoulder holster. Then she retrieved her crumpled leather jacket from a corner of the room and put it on. Without a backward glance, Sammy left the room and headed out of the abandoned tenement.
Two and a half hours out of San Francisco, and Conner was still working on her laptop, summarizing and organizing the data Miss Suwon had drawn out of the SNN computer. All those pages and pages of notes would result in maybe three minutes of airtime in a fifteen-minute spot if she did find something.
“Do you know all you ever wanted to know about Antarctica now?” Vickers interrupted her thoughts.
“Not yet,” Conner answered tersely.
“Want to tell me about it?” Vickers asked with a smile.
Conner looked at him. “Tell you about what?”
Vickers pointed at the computer. “Antarctica.”
“Why?”
Vickers shrugged. “I’ve never been there or really seen or read anything about it. Besides, it will do you good to verbalize all this information. I’ve always found that putting thoughts and ideas into words clarifies them.”
Conner realized this was a chance to show him that she wasn’t just another pretty face, and he would undoubtedly relay that information to the rest of the team. Sometimes she grew very tired of having to prove herself. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, why is it named Antarctica?”
Conner started tapping keys on the computer, but Vickers interrupted. “How about from memory?”
Conner stopped and looked at him, considering the subtle challenge. “All right.” She turned off the power, shut the lid on the computer, and put it under the seat in front of her. “Arctic comes from arktos, which is the Greek word for bear, referring to the northern constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, more commonly known as the Big Dipper. As you know, the region surrounding the North Pole is called the Arctic region. Well, the prefix ant means opposite or balance, so basically Antarctica means opposite Arctic or, literally, opposite bear.”
Vickers didn’t seem overly impressed with her mastery of language. “Tell me about the continent.”
Conner mentally sorted through all the numbers and facts she’d been steeped in for the past hours and imagined herself facing the red light of a camera. “Antarctica is the fifth largest continent, encompassing more than five and a half million square miles.”
“Is that land or ice?” Vickers asked.
“Almost the entire place is ice covered,” Conner replied. “The extent of the land underneath is at best a guess. A lot of people don’t realize it, but the North Pole is ice on top of the Arctic Ocean, not a land mass. Antarctica is a true land mass, and it holds ninety percent of the world’s ice and snow. It is the only continent not to have its own native population.”
“How many people are at McMurdo?”
“It’s the middle of the short summer down there, so there will be about seven or eight hundred folks — mostly scientists working on a variety of projects.”
“How about at this Our Earth base?”
Four people are there every winter. How many are there in the summer, I don’t know.”
“How well mapped is Antarctica? I mean how could this Eternity Base, if it’s there, have remained hidden for twenty-five years?”
Conner didn’t appreciate the “if it’s there” qualifier. “If you wanted to hide something, the best place in the world would be Antarctica. Although it’s the size of Europe and the United States combined, less than one percent of it has been seen by man.”
Vickers was skeptical. “Even with overflights?”
“Even with overflights. From 1946 through 1947 the U.S. Navy ran a mission called Operation High Jump, using more than five thousand men, thirteen ships, and numerous helicopters. They took so many pictures that some of them were never developed. Despite all that equipment and manpower, their coverage of the interior was very limited and they managed to photograph only about sixty percent of the coastline.”