James Cobb - The Arctic Event

Randi’s face went dark. “Thanks so much for the vote of confidence, Colonel.”

Annoyance cut across Smith’s features. “Don’t cop an attitude with me, Randi. I don’t need it. I suspect the minimum you’ll be confronting down here is a mass murderer. Your only backup will be Professor Trowbridge, who, I also suspect, will be about as much use in a fight as an extra bucket of water on a sinking ship. If I didn’t think you were the most survivable member of this team, I wouldn’t even be considering this scenario. As it stands, I estimate you have the best chance of coming out of this job alive. Are we absolutely clear on this?”

The cold words and cold focus in those dark blue eyes jolted her back momentarily. This was a facet of Jon Smith Randi had not encountered before, either in his time with Sophia or in her chance encounters since then. This was the full-house soldier, the warrior.

“I’m sorry, Jon, I got off base. I’ll cover things here for you, no problem.”

The look on his face disengaged, and Smith smiled one of his rare full smiles, resting a hand momentarily on her shoulder. “I never doubted it, Randi. In a lot of ways this will be the tougher job. You’ve got to verify our suspicions about what’s happened here while watching your back to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. You’ve also got to find out how the word was passed off the island and who it was passed to. Trowbridge may be of help to you there. That’s one of the reasons I brought him along. Anything you can learn about the identities, resources, and intents of the hostiles could be critical.”

She nodded. “I have some ideas about that. I’ll try and get the big radio working, too.”

“Good enough.” Smith’s expression closed up again. “But while you’re about it, remember to stay alive, all right?”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with the mission,” she replied. Then she tried to lighten the Zen of her statement. “And while you’re up there on that mountain I suggest you watch your own back with that scheming brunette. I think she has designs on you.”

Smith threw his head back and laughed, and for an instant Randi could see what had enraptured her sister. “An arctic glacier is hardly the environment for a romantic interlude, Randi.”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way, Jon Smith, and I have a hunch that lady has a lot of will.”

Standing outside the laboratory hut, Randi watched the three small figures trudge up the flag-marked trail, the one that led eastward along the shoreline toward the central peaks. The snow had stopped altogether, but the mist, the near-perpetual “sea smoke” of the poles, was closing in. The arctic camouflage her teammates wore blended them into the environment until, abruptly, they were gone.

“What now?” Doctor Trowbridge stood beside her in the lee of the hut, garish in the Day-Glo orange cold-weather gear issued to the science expedition. Randi could see that the academic was beginning to regret his momentary burst of responsibility back aboard the Haley.

He was a man meant for the warm classrooms and comfortable offices of a university campus, not for the wild, cold, and dangerous areas of the world. She could see the fear and loneliness of this place sinking into him. It would be so even without the overlay of the Misha scenario.

He was questioning his only companion as well, this alien being with the submachine gun slung over her shoulder.

Randi felt a momentary surge of contempt for the academic. Then, angrily, she dismissed the thought. Rosen Trowbridge could no more help what he was than she could help being the bitch wolf she had become. She had no right to judge who was the superior.

“That was a computer data link attached to the satellite phone, wasn’t it?”

Trowbridge blinked at her. “Yes, that was how most of the expedition’s findings were downloaded to the project universities.”

“Were the expedition members allowed access to that data link?”

“Of course. Every expedition member had a personal computer and was allotted several hours of Internet access a week for their project studies and for personal use-for e-mail and the like.”

“Right,” Randi replied. “That would work. The first thing we do, Doctor, is to collect laptops.”

The Southern Face of West Peak

After the first hour they had been forced to strap on crampons, and their ice axes had become something more than walking staffs. The safety line linking them together had also become a comfort rather than an encumbrance.

“This is it. Last flag. End of the trail.” Smith shot a look up the mountain slope above them, checking for unstable rock formations and snow cornices. “Let’s take a breather.”

He and his teammates shrugged out of their pack frames and sank down with their backs to the vertical wall of the broad ledge they had been following. The climb itself had not been technically challenging. There had been no piton and rope work involved, but the cold, the icy footing, and the intermittent patches of broken stone had made it physically demanding.

They’d been climbing into the overcast, and the gray haze had folded in around them, limiting their world to a fifty-yard radius. Visibility grew somewhat better-looking downward from the ledge. They could see as far as Wednesday’s coastline, but the differentiation between ice-sheathed land and ice-sheathed sea was a subtle one.

“Hydrate, people.” With his snow mask tugged down and his goggles lifted, Smith opened the zip of his parka, removing a canteen from one of the large inside pockets, where the warmth of his body kept the water liquid.

With a physician’s instincts he watched as his companions followed suit. “A little more, Val,” he counseled. “Just because you don’t feel like you need water in this environment doesn’t mean you don’t require it.”

She made a face and took another grudging mouthful. “It’s not the input that I’m worried about; it’s the inevitable outflow.” She screwed the cap back onto her canteen and turned to Smyslov. “That’s the curse of having a doctor perennially in the house, Gregori. He goes around insisting you enjoy good health.”

The Russian nodded ruefully. “He erodes you like water dripping on a rock. The bastard has me down to ten cigarettes a day and feeling guilty about them.”

“If he starts going off on chocolate and champagne, I’m planting a cake spatula between his shoulder blades.”

“Or vodka,” Smyslov agreed. “I will not have him attacking my national identity.”

Smith chuckled at the exchange. He didn’t need to worry about team morale at any time soon. Nor about the capabilities of his companions.

Smyslov had obviously undergone the same kind of mountain warfare training and conditioning he had. He knew and could apply the simple, effective basics, with no unnecessary flash. Valentina Metrace was a tyro but with a very steep learning curve. She was quick, she kept her eyes open, and she was ready and willing to take instruction-the kind of individual who could pick up an understanding of any skill rapidly. And for all her urbane drawing room sophistication there was a startling reserve of wiry strength in that slender, long-lined body.

There were intriguing things to be learned about this woman, Smith mused. Where had she come from? Her accent was an odd combination of educated American, British, and something else. And how had she developed the odd set of talents that made her a cipher agent.

And as one of Fred Klein’s ciphers, she, like Smith, must be a person without personal attachments or commitments. What disaster had made her alone?

Smith forced his mind back to immediate concerns. Unsnapping his map case, he took out a laminated sectional photo map of Wednesday Island as scanned from polar orbit. “This is as far as the expedition’s ground parties got-the official ones anyway. From here the climbing party that found the bomber started working directly upslope to the peak. We’ll follow on around the mountain to a point above the glacier in the saddleback.”