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RUPPERT COAST ANTARCTICA

“Ready?”

Sammy looked up at Riley and weakly nodded. Conner had a death grip on Sammy and didn’t say a word. The two women were wrapped in a nylon poncho, lying on their backs inside a sleeping bag, heads cushioned with their backpacks. Riley’s M16 was on Sammy’s chest, her hands wrapped around it.

Riley began walking, the rope tightening around Sammy’s and Conner’s waists, pulling them along on the ice. He accelerated to a jog, the slope helping increase their speed. Satisfied, he flopped down on his stomach, his Gore-tex parka and pants sliding on the ice.

Linked together, the three tobogganed down the glacier, Riley trying to control speed and direction with the point of his entrenching tool. As they rattled over bumps in the ice, Sammy thought to herself that they’d all be very black and blue, if they survived.

They were three-quarters of the way down to the coast, Sammy too numb to feel anything anymore, when Riley broke through the ice into a crevasse. His yell gave Sammy less than a second to react. As her feet slammed against the far side of the break, she did the only thing she could do, raising the M16 up across her body and desperately jamming the muzzle of the weapon into the ice. She and Conner started sliding down. The poncho and sleeping bag fell off and disappeared into the depths. Sammy came to an abrupt halt, bracing herself against the rifle, and then felt a tremendous jar as Conner reached the end of the rope and dangled below.

Suddenly there was no more weight on the rope. Sammy held still, not believing she was alive. Her feet and back were pressed up against the walls, and the rifle, dug into the ice, kept her in a precarious balance across the mouth of the crevasse. Carefully, she looked down.

The crevasse widened and descended into a blue darkness as far as she could see. No sign of Riley. Conner was standing there, her feet on a narrow ledge of ice, looking up, eyes wide with fear. Sammy followed the rope with her gaze until it disappeared under an overhang of ice.

“Riley!” she cried out.

“Yeah. Are you all right?” The voice echoed off the walls.

“I can’t move!” she replied.

“Hold still! I’m on a small ledge down here. Let me try to climb up.”

Sammy wasn’t about to go anywhere. She could hear Riley working with his entrenching tool below her. The minutes passed and she felt her feet shift slightly on the ice, her heart going to her throat. How far would she fall if she slipped? she wondered. Would the fall kill her, or would she lie there broken but alive, waiting in an icy grave for the cold to take its final toll, preserved like the body at the base?

“Hang tough,” Riley called up. She could hear his labored breathing. Finally, out of the corner of her eye, she could see him. He had reached up and was digging out a hold in the ice with the shovel so he could haul himself up. It was a slow process. Sammy wasn’t sure how long she could hold on, her numbed hands wrapped around the rifle, all feeling in her feet already gone. She assumed her feet were still at the end of her legs.

Riley had passed Conner and was almost at Sammy’s level. She carefully turned her head to look at him. He gave her a very forced smile. “Some ride, eh?”

He was now wedged as she was — his back and feet against the ice. She watched as he squirmed his way up to the lip. He disappeared over the side, then his head reappeared. “Okay, I’m anchored up here. Sammy, you come on up first.”

Sammy shook her head. “I can’t feel my feet.”

Riley puffed out a deep breath. “All right. I’ll pull you up. When I yell, you pull your feet out. OK?”

“Can you do it?”

“I’ll do it.” He was gone. Sammy anxiously awaited. “Ready?”

Sammy briefly closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Let go.”

Sammy tucked her knees in and fell for an interminable split second. Then the rope tightened down on her waist, causing her to exhale sharply. But the rope stopped her fall. She scrabbled at the ice with her dead hands and feet, trying to help Riley as much as she could. Inch by inch, she went up until she could slap an arm down on the surface. The pressure on the rope was maintained, and she continued up until she could get her waist over and roll onto the surface.

She lay there, savoring the sight of the open sky. Riley crawled up next to her and collapsed, throwing an arm over her and pulling her in tight. “You all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Let’s get your sister up here.” Together the two leaned into the rope and hauled Conner to the surface. When she flopped down on the ice and stared up at the sky, Riley leaned over her.

“Do you want to go on?”

Conner shook herself, and with great effort she managed to stand.

“Yes.”

ISA HEADQUARTERS, SOUTHWEST OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

“What does the president want done?” the bald man at the end of the table asked General Hodges.

“The president wants the matter kept quiet.” Hodges nervously fingered his eel skin briefcase.

A snort of laughter. ‘That’s damn near impossible. What’s his second choice?”

“He needs to satisfy the Russians that this wasn’t a government-sponsored action in Antarctica that malfunctioned and that we’re trying to cover ourselves by this story. We need to pick up Kensington.”

“Kensington is the second richest man in America,” the bald man replied. “He’s supported every Republican president for the past thirty years.” He picked up a file. “Since we uncovered the name, we’ve done some checking. The facts fit. Kensington helped us recover the codes from that Soviet sub off Japan back in ‘68 using his oil exploratory deep-sea minisub. Apparently he used the same minisub to recover the two nuclear bombs on that A-7.

“Kensington has had extensive contact with many government agencies—”

‘To include this one!” Hodges threw in.

The bald man acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “Yes, including this one. And the CIA. And the FBI. I understand he also paid people to do covert work for the Republican Party. That would make interesting news.

“Kensington had the government contacts, the subsidiary companies, and the money to get Eternity Base built as his own personal bomb shelter. We’ve discovered that his nuclear power plant in Utah had a contingency plan to load rods onto a plane with a three-hour notice. The specifications fit the power plant at Eternity Base.

“Kensington also is the man behind a very large number of defense manufacturing companies in this country. Even with all the cutbacks, he still has his finger in a lot of pies.

“I wonder what names would be on the list of people that Kensington planned to bring down to Eternity Base in case of nuclear war. I’m sure we would not want that to become public record.

“There are other things we’ve discovered, but we won’t go into them right now.” The bald man closed the file with a snap. “Again. What does the president want done?”

“Kensington has gone from an asset to a liability.” Hodges stood. “I’ll inform the president that it will be taken care of.”

The bald man did not seem happy with the decision, but he nodded. “All right.”

Chapter 30

RUPPERT COAST, ANTARCTICA, 1 DECEMBER 1996

“Come on!” Pak exhorted his three exhausted partners. “There’s the ship.”

The four leaned into the rope, and the sled creaked along the ice, making way toward the ship now slightly less than two miles away.

* * *

“How close… do you… have to… get?” Sammy asked, trying to catch her breath as they crossed a high point where two sheets of ice had buckled together.