They landed on the flatlands where Carter and Anna had camped. The marks of their tent and skimobile were still there.
While Mike unleashed the new skimobile from the back of the helicopter, Carter walked in widening arcs around the area. He knew it was hopeless, but he had to be sure. And he wanted to give Anna's body a proper burial.
But there was no sign of her. Snow from the blizzard was piled an additional fifteen feet in some places. He covered the entire flat area and then ranged around the rim. She couldn't have gotten any farther in the thick, bitter storm. He remembered stories of some bodies being found thirty years after they'd been lost in Antarctic blizzards.
"Nick!" Mike called. "Let's go!"
It was over. Anna was dead, and he wouldn't find her body. It was unrealistic to think otherwise. He needed to put her out of his mind. Get back to the living. Get back to the vital work he had to do.
He slogged back toward the skimobile, and Mike met him in it halfway. Her vibrant face watched him compassionately.
"I'll drive," he told her.
She nodded, sliding across the seat. He hopped in, and felt the wheel hum under his hands. It was a familiar sensation. Machinery at work. Reliable. Trustworthy. Depending on you for care. But without emotion and passion. What made humanity special. Why he loved his work, making a better world for people.
He smiled, turned the skimobile, and headed back the familiar trail toward the Silver Dove installation.
"Keep close watch," he warned Mike. "The Doves will be out patrolling. And they wear white suits. It's almost impossible to see against the snow and ice."
She nodded, then glanced at her and Carter's khaki snow clothing.
"But when our antiterrorist troops go to work," she said, "they'll at least be able to tell us and themselves from the Silver Doves."
"That's the idea."
Skillfully Carter drove the skimobile along the trail, along ridges, over crests, between slopes, and down valleys as they drew closer and closer to the mountain mat housed the Silver Doves.
At last Carter stopped the machine. He gestured for Mike to put on her cross-country skis, and he put on his. With backpacks and ski poles, they silently, stealthily made their way on a new path that Carter hoped…
Suddenly he raised the special air rifle that Lev Larionov had given him so long ago in the Doves' dungeon. He had to be quick before he was spotted.
Mike's eyebrows went up with surprise. She looked around for a target.
Carter shot across a wide gorge. The shot made a dull, quiet sound.
Mike's gaze followed the line of his trajectory. Across from them, a tall figure dressed all in white suddenly stood, grasping his chest. He was far enough away that he was as small as a child's doll. He let out a low cry of pain and toppled down over the high mesa, spinning end over end, until he landed silently below, almost invisible in the snow.
"One of the sentries?" Mike said, impressed.
Carter nodded grimly.
The one who radioed the Dove headquarters for reinforcements when Anna, Blenkochev, and I wanted to be captured," he said. "One of the reasons to let yourself be captured at a secret base is to get enough information so that you can break in later undetected."
"It's a dangerous way to get the information."
"But sometimes it's the only way," he said. "Now we can backtrack and follow the trail for a while with less chance of discovery. On the other side of that mesa is the valley where the Silver Doves have dug in."
They skied back and around to the sheer rock wall where they could look down. Mike watched the white stick figures below through binoculars.
"They'd be impossible to see from the air," she murmured. "They may be bigots, but they're smart ones."
She handed the binoculars back to Carter. He tucked them into his backpack and checked his watch.
"Sixty-four minutes," he said. "Should be plenty of time."
She smiled, and they skied silently down the mountain. They stopped behind a house-size boulder. They could hear the noisy motors of trucks and jeeps not far away.
They took off their skis and backpacks, opened the backpacks, and unfolded white suits made by personnel at Halley to fit Carter's description. The two agents put the snowsuits on over their khaki suits. Each white suit had a silver dove embroidered over the heart.
They dug a hole in the snowdrift behind them and buried their backpacks. They stepped into their white cross-country skis and locked them to their boots. They slung the authentic Silver Dove air rifles over their shoulders, pulled white ski masks down over their hair and faces, and like two sentries returning for dinner, they skied around two behemoth boulders and into the Silver Dove valley.
Carter looked at his watch.
"Thirty-three minutes," he told Mike.
She checked her own watch and nodded.
They skied on as white jeeps and trucks carrying construction crews and boxes drove sedately on the packed-snow road. Boulders had been bulldozed aside. A taped Russian folk tune played from someone's skimobile.
The two disguised agents skied on toward the massive doors that opened into the Silver Dove installation. None of the valley workers looked at Carter and Mike with more than idle curiosity, probably grateful they didn't have the boring job of sentry.
Tension growing, using the information his careful observations had given him, Carter and Mike skied through the doors and into the exhaust-filled warehouse. Inside the tall doors they look off their skis and put them over their shoulders.
"Twenty-one minutes," he told her.
They carried their skis and ski poles past the rows of vehicles and workers. Carter leading, Mike silently behind, toward the doors hewn into the granite.
There Carter stopped and lilted his ski mask to encircle his head. Mike did the same, her long chestnut hair hidden beneath the remaining cap. Without makeup, walking with her shoulders swinging rather than with her hips, a stern expression on her usually radiant face, she looked masculine enough to pass a superficial visual examination.
They left their skis propped against the rough granite wall, took off their mittens, and went through the door into the heated hallway. Their quiet, efficient, and safe passage couldn't continue forever.
They walked down the hall past clattering typewriters and ringing telephones. Office workers in white slacks and shirts moved back and forth across the hail carrying clipboards and sheaves of papers.
Carter and Mike looked straight ahead, businesslike. They were two ordinary sentries on the way back to their bunks.
They continued down the hall, around corners, toward the door of General Yevgeny Skobelev's office. Carter checked his watch.
"Fifteen minutes," Carter muttered under his breath to Mike.
She nodded, whistling tunelessly.
They stopped at a water fountain and drank, people passing up and down the hall.
In a short lull, the hall briefly empty, they swung their air rifles into their hands.
"Twelve minutes," Carter said.
They were cutting it close. But if they had no problems, the timing would be perfect.
Weapons aimed straight ahead, Carter opened Skobelev's door.
"Drop the guns!" Skobelev ordered harshly.
He held Carter's Luger, Wilhelmina, and it was aimed directly at Carter's heart. Carter could kill Skobelev. A shot through the head and it would be over. But he needed Skobelev, and time was running out.
Twenty
A dozen White Doves poured in through the two doors that led to the hall and laboratory. They brandished their weapons at the agents, surrounding them with leers and the potential of instant death.
"Don't look so surprised, Killmaster," Skobelev said with satisfaction. "We've been tracking you since you killed our sentry. Did you think we didn't expect you back?" He laid Carter's Luger on the desk and dusted an imaginary speck from its shining barrel. "You must appreciate your reputation. If the blizzard didn't kill you, we could assume no less than your return."