The Ice Limit

undertone.

'It's the Almirante Ramirez,' said Britton in an undertone.

'What? How can you know that from the radar?' Lloyd asked, the prickly sensation turning into a flush of disbelief.

Britton looked at him. 'There's no way to tell for sure, but it's in the right place at the right time. Most shipping would be heading through the Strait of Le Maire, particularly in this weather. But this one's coming after us, with all it's got.'

Lloyd watched as Glinn conferred with the man at the computer. There was the faint sound of a dial tone, of highspeed dialing, the hiss of a digital handshake.

'I thought you put that son of a bitch out of action,' Lloyd said.

Glinn straightened up, and Lloyd was immediately reassured to see that the collected, confident expression had returned to his face. 'Our friend proves unusually resourceful.'

'Resourceful?'

'Comandante Vallenar has managed to repair his vessel, at least partly. Quite an achievement. I can scarcely believe it possible. But it makes no difference.'

'Why not?' Britton asked.

'It's all in the computer profile. He will not pursue us into international waters.'

'That's a rather arrogant prediction, if you ask me. The man's crazy. He might do anything.'

'You are in error. Comandante Vallenar, despite everything, is a naval officer at heart. He prides himself on his honor and loyalty, and on a set of abstract military ideals. For all these reasons, he will not pursue us beyond the line. To do so would be to embarrass Chile — and create an unpleasant incident with his country's largest supplier of foreign aid. Furthermore, he will not take a crippled ship too deeply into a building storm.'

'So why's he still coming?'

'Two reasons. First, he doesn't know our exact location, and he still hopes to cut us off before we reach international waters. Second, our comandante is a man of the noble gesture. Like a dog running to the end of his chain knowing his quarry is out of reach, he will drive full bore to the edge of his country's waters, then turn back.'

'Fancy analysis,' said Britton, 'but is it right?'

'Yes,' said Glinn, 'it is right.' His voice was serene with conviction.

Lloyd smiled. 'I've made the mistake of not trusting you before. I'm satisfied. If you say he won't cross, he won't cross.'

Britton said nothing. Glinn turned to her with a personal, almost intimate gesture, and Lloyd was surprised to see him clasp her hands gently. He did not quite catch Glinn's words, but Britton appeared to flush.

'All right,' she said, in a voice that was just audible.

Puppup suddenly appeared, both glasses empty, holding them up in a supplicating gesture. Lloyd glanced at him, noticing the way he unconsciously kept his balance despite an unusually heavy roll of the deck. 'Any more, then?' the Yaghan asked. 'For me and me friend, I mean.'

There was no time to answer. There was a sudden vibration, a subsonic boom, that shook the very frame of the tanker. The bridge lights flickered, and the banks of monitors sank into a wash of gray electronic snow. Immediately, Britton and the rest of the officers were at their stations. 'What the hell was that?' Lloyd asked sharply.

No one answered him. Glinn had returned to his operative's side and was conferring with him in low, urgent tones. There was a deep vibration in the ship, almost like a groan. It was followed by another.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the disturbance ceased: the screens returned, the lights brightened and steadied. There was a chorus of chirps and whirrs as devices across the bridge rebooted.

'We don't know what it was,' Britton said, finally answering Lloyd's question. Her eyes swept over the instrumentation. 'Some kind of general malfunction. An explosion, perhaps. It seems to have affected all ship's systems.' She turned to the chief mate. 'I want a damage assessment right away.'

Howell picked up the telephone and made two quick calls. After the second, he replaced the phone, face ashen. 'It's the holding tank,' he said, 'the one with the meteorite. There's been a serious accident.'

'What kind of accident?' Glinn asked.

'A discharge from the rock.'

Glinn turned to McFarlane and Amira. 'Get on it. Find out what happened and why. And Dr. Brambell, you better get to —'

But Brambell had already disappeared from the bridge.

Almirante Ramirez,

8:30 A.M.

VALLENAR STARED hard into the murk, as if the act of staring itself would bring the elusive tanker into view.

'Status,' he murmured again to the conning officer.

'With the jamming, sir, it's hard to tell. My best estimate is that the target is heading zero nine zero at approximately sixteen knots.'

'Range?'

'Sir, I can't tell exactly. Somewhere around thirty nautical miles. We wouldn't even have that close a fix, except their jamming seemed to drop briefly a few minutes ago.'

Vallenar could feel a rhythmic surge to his ship: a sickening lifting and dropping of the deck. He had only felt this motion once before, when he had been caught in a storm south of Diego Ramirez during a training mission. He knew what this odd motion meant: the distance between the wave crests had begun to exceed twice the length of the Almirante Ramirez. He could see the following sea from the aft windows: long muscular swells, topped with a breaking line of water, coming at his stern and foaming along the hull before disappearing forward into the darkness. Once in a while a giant wave, a tigre, would come up from behind, the water piling up against the rudder, giving the helmsman a loose wheel and threatening to shove the destroyer around, causing it to broach to. It would only get worse when they turned south and took the sea on their beam.

Reaching thoughtfully into his pocket, he withdrew a puro and examined its soiled outer leaves absently. He thought of the two dead divers, their cold stiff bodies wrapped in tarps and stored in sea lockers aft. He thought of the three others, who never resurfaced, and a fourth, shivering now in the last stages of hypothermia. They had done their duty — no more, and no less. The ship was seaworthy. True, they could make only twenty knots with their damaged propellers. But the tanker was only making sixteen. And the long eastward run toward international waters was giving him the time he needed to achieve his strategy.

He glanced back at the conning officer. The crew was frightened: of this storm, of this chase. That fear was good. Frightened men worked faster. But Timmer had been worth any ten of them.

He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it away. Timmer had been worth the entire complement...

Vallenar mastered himself, taking the time to light the cigar carefully, methodically. The glowing red tip reflected back from the inky windows. By now they surely knew he was coming after them once again. This time he would be more careful. He had fallen into their trap once, and he would not allow it to happen again. Initially, his plan had been to cripple the ship. But now it was clear that Timmer was dead. The time for mere crippling was long past.

Five hours, maybe less, would bring them into range of his four-inch guns. In the meantime, if there was even a short respite from jamming, the Exocets were ready to fire at a moment's notice.

This time, there would be no mistake.

Rolvaag,

9:20 A.M.

AS MCFARLANE ran down the center corridor of the medical suite, Rachel on his heels, he almost collided with Brambell, stepping through the operating room door. He was a very different Brambell than the wry, dry man of the dinner table: this Brambell was grim, his movements brusque, his wiry frame tense.

'We're here to see —' McFarlane began, but Brambell was stalking down the hall and disappearing behind