Tom Cain - No survivors

While the food was digested, Larsson worked on Carver's mental fitness: memory tests, spot-the-difference puzzles, anything that boosted his ability to take in information fast, notice patterns or anomalies, and recall what he had just seen. Next time he checked out his surroundings, or walked into a new environment, he'd have his wits about him.

Midmornings were spent on the ski trails and rifle range. In northern Norway, the winters are dark, with only a few hours a day of gloomy blue light before the sun finally rises over the mountains at the end of January. But by the last week in March the sun rises at 5 A.M. and doesn't set until 7 p.M., and the light on the snow can be dazzlingly clear and intense. The landscape is raw, but spectacular: the white snow, blue skies, gray-black rocks, and deep-green sea all colliding as the mountains plunge into the fjords, where the waters of the North Atlantic mount their eternal, erosive assault.

As time went by, Carver realized that although there was never a ski session that did not involve a steadily escalating quantity of pain, inevitably building up to a grand finale of tortured muscles and burning lungs, it took longer every day for the agony to kick in. Little by little he actually began to enjoy the process. He took pleasure in his increasing fitness and pride in his rediscovered proficiency on the rifle range. He was able to appreciate the majesty of his surroundings. Some days, he even managed to complete an entire course without once wishing to kill Thor Larsson.

That, though, was never a good sign. Larsson always noticed any lessening of Carver's hatred. The next day, he would go that little bit further, pressing harder and faster, just to crank the pain and the fury back up to the proper level.

Lunchtimes, they replaced lost energy with pasta, potatoes, or brown bread. Protein came from chicken, fish, or, if Ebba was feeling indulgent, lean, intensely flavored cuts of moose and reindeer. His stomach full and his body shattered, Carver collapsed into bed for a couple of hours' rest, only to be raised again for an afternoon of weights, weapons training, and unarmed combat in one of the farm's outbuildings. Guns are legal and relatively easy to come by in Norway, compared with much of Europe. Within ten days, Carver was stripping and reassembling a rifle and pistol as fast as Larsson, and easily outsparring him. His body was gradually returning to its natural shape: 175 pounds of muscle and bone, a balance of endurance and strength. He felt like a fighting man once again.

Three weeks in, the temperature was regularly several degrees above freezing, and down on the lower ground the snow had started to melt. Finally, at the end of an eighteen-mile ski, Larsson told him, "Okay, now you are ready. Tomorrow we prepare our equipment. The day after, we leave."

"Leave for where?" Carver asked.

Larsson turned to his right and pointed up into the mountains. "Up there, four nights. We'll carry everything we need. Now we find out just how fit you really are."

The customer-relations executive could barely contain his enthusiasm as they walked toward the aircraft. A fortnight beforehand, Waylon McCabe had asked for some unusual modifications to be made to one of his executive jets, for a charitable project he had in mind. The corporation's Special Missions Department thought about it for a couple of days, just to see if his requests were technically feasible, but there was only ever going to be one answer. For the past five years, having switched his supplier after the Canadian disaster, McCabe had bought all his jets from their range. They keenly appreciated his business. They had no intention of losing it.

"I just want to say, on behalf of our whole team, that we think what Mr. McCabe is doing is just great," said the suit, pausing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the cabin. "Airlifting medical supplies to the starving people of Africa-you know, it's a privilege to be able to contribute to something like that. It sure is a pity we couldn't tell Mr. McCabe in person."

McCabe had sent his lawyer to take care of the handover.

"Sadly, he's a little indisposed at this time, but I'll pass on your good wishes," said the lawyer, who didn't know what his boss planned to use the plane for, exactly, but it certainly wasn't Africa.

He glowered at the executive, who didn't seem to be moving.

"So, can we take a look at the plane?"

"Sure, sure, of course, my pleasure. Our chief engineer will show you around."

The executive stepped aside, and the engineer led the way up the stairs, bending his neck as he stepped into the cabin. Take out the fancy decorations and the high-tech accessories, and the main body of the plane was nothing but a metal tube with an internal diameter of less than six feet. There wasn't a lot of room. The men formed a single line, the engineer leading, as they made their ungainly way through the cabin.

"You gentlemen are all familiar with one of these, right?" asked the engineer rhetorically. "Okay then, up ahead of us, at the rear of the cabin, there's a closet and a restroom, and aft of that a small baggage hold. The regular bulkhead at the back of that hold offers structural support to the rear of the aircraft. Well, we took that bulkhead out and moved it forward, right up against the side of the restroom. That opened up the whole of the rear section of the fuselage, so's to make more space for loading up whatever it is you're going to be dropping. As you can see, we've put a hatch, kind of like on a submarine, right there in the bulkhead."

He stood by the crude undecorated wall that now blocked off the end of the cabin, with the oval hatch beside him.

"We didn't want to compromise the strength of the bulkhead, so we had to make the hatch kinda snug, but there's just about room to step through into the new, bigger hold we made there."

The engineer opened up the hatch. Through it, the empty rear end of the aircraft was dimly visible.

"It's pretty tight, so you gents might want to take a look one at a time. You'll see, in back, on the floor of the new hold, there's a door. It's hinged at the front, so that it opens downward, like a ramp, with the open side at the rear. It's hydraulically operated from the pilot's cockpit, or you can see a handle, like a pump, right there on the floor next to it. That's the manual option. We fixed up a rig you can put your load in, so's it can be dropped when the door is opened. Or there's just room for one person to be in there, do the job himself. We fixed up a safety line there, so he won't fall out."

"Glad to hear about that," said the lawyer. "Wouldn't want a lawsuit from a grieving window."

There was a peal of sycophantic laughter from the executive, more of a grunt from the engineer.

"Hope that's what you were looking for, anyway," the engineer concluded. "Mr. McCabe gave specific instructions. I believe we were able to follow them pretty much to the letter."

"Yes," said the lawyer. "I believe you did."

Back home in Texas, McCabe now knew that he had a plane capable of dropping a bomb over Jerusalem. Even now, despite everything, when he thought about what he had in mind, McCabe still asked himself if he was really doing the Lord's will. He wasn't too sure how you could be certain about a thing like that, but he decided it would soon be clear enough. The doctors had told him the tumors were getting worse. They were begging him to undergo chemotherapy, but McCabe had said no. He knew what those chemicals did and he didn't see the point in buying a few extra weeks if it meant puking like a dog after every treatment and watching his hair fall out. He'd rather be his real self when he came to face his maker. If he lived to see Armageddon, he'd know that God had been on his side. If he died before then, he'd expect a warm welcome in hell.