The Ice Limit

the cigar. This oficial de guardia was a green, foolish man, and the challenge was not unexpected. He looked around at the other officers on the bridge. All of them quickly lowered their eyes.

With one smooth movement, Vallenar withdrew his sidearm and pressed its barrel against the officer's chest. As Santander opened his mouth to protest, he pulled the trigger. The 9-millimeter slug thrust the man back like the blow of a fist, slamming him hard into a bulkhead. The officer of the deck stared down in disbelief at his ruined chest and the small horizontal fountain of blood that pumped its rhythmic stream. Air sucked in and out of the wound, once, then again. The man fell to his knees, then toppled forward onto his elbows, surprised eyes now turning glassy, mouth still open wide.

Vallenar returned the gun to its sling. The only sound on the bridge was Santander's stertorous attempts to breathe and the quiet patter of blood as it rained from his chest onto the deck.

Vallenar glanced at the conning officer. 'Mr. Aller. Effective immediately, you are the officer of the deck. And you, Mr. Lomas, are the conning officer. A new course has been ordered. Execute it.'

He turned away, drawing on his cigar, looking once again out over the storm-tossed ocean. The heel of his right hand still rested on the Luger. He waited to see if the incipient mutiny would continue. It would be a pity to lose Aller as well.

Aller looked at the new conning officer, and nodded weakly.

'Right standard rudder,' said the conning officer, 'steady on course one eight zero.'

The helmsman answered. 'Aye, sir, right standard rudder, coming to course one eight zero.'

Vallenar slipped his hand from his weapon. It was over. Cut off the head and the body will die.

The ship began to turn broadside to the sea, helped along by terrifying shoves from each passing wave. As the shuddering and reeling grew worse, the bridge personnel took hold of stanchions, flagbag rails, anything that would help them keep upright.

'Steady on one eight zero,' said the helmsman in a quavering voice.

'Very well,' the conning officer answered.

Vallenar leaned into the speaking tube. 'Radar, estimate when we will be within targeting range of the American ship with the Vickers guns.'

After a moment, the response came: 'Sir, at present course and speed, estimated range in three hours, thirty minutes.'

'Very good.' Vallenar leaned away from the tube and flicked a thumb toward the dying man at his feet. 'Mr. Sanchez, take this away. And get a cleaning detail up here.'

He turned back to the violent sea.

Rolvaag,

11:30 A.M.

GLINN STOOD next to Britton, motionless beside the helm. As they fled southward toward the sixtieth parallel, the Rolvaag had moved squarely into the westerlies that raged around the bottom of the world, endlessly circling, building up the greatest seas on earth. As far as the eye could see, a terrifying progression of Atlantic rollers swept eastward, high as mountains. In the last hour, as the storm grew in intensity, the ocean seemed to have lost a solid surface; there was no longer a sharp line between water and air. The screaming winds and heaving seas joined in a fury of spray and spume. As the tanker sank into the trough between each wave there would come a brief, eerie calm; and then the great ship would shudder and rise back into the howling gale.

But Glinn did not see the storm. For some time his thoughts had been elsewhere. Vallenar had staked everything — his career, his crew, his ship, the honor of his country, his very life — on this chase. He knew they were carrying only a rock; a huge rock, but a rock nonetheless. This chase did not make sense.

He had miscalculated badly. Unforgivably. For the briefest of moments, Glinn contemplated failure; rolled it to and fro on his tongue, as if tasting it. Then, with a spasm, he forced it from his thoughts. There would be, could be, no failure here.

The problem did not lie in the computer profile, or in the two-foot file on Vallenar back in New York; it lay in himself. There was a crucial piece missing. And this piece was in his own mind, waiting for him to recognize it. If he could understand Vallenar's motivation for this insane pursuit, then he could act upon it... How far would Vallenar take it? Would he pursue them past the Ice Limit? He shook his head, as if to shake loose the answer, but there was nothing. Without understanding Vallenar's motivation, he could develop no plan.

He glanced over at Britton. She was staring at the radar, and the wavering green pip that represented the Almirante Ramirez.

'The Ramirez has matched our course for the last half hour,' she said, without looking up. 'One eight zero, dead astern, holding at twenty knots, constant bearing and decreasing range.'

Glinn said nothing. It was incredible to him that Vallenar would take his ship into a beam sea like this. The giant Rolvaag was struggling, and it was far better at handling the storm than a destroyer with scarcely a forty-foot beam. It was truly insane. There was a good chance that the Almirante Ramirez would be capsized. But a good chance was still a chance, and Glinn had no idea what kind of seamanship Vallenar could bring to bear. He suspected first-rate.

'At current speed and bearing, he'll catch up with us at the Ice Limit,' Britton said. 'And he'll come within firing range considerably before then.'

'In just over three hours,' said Glinn. 'Around dusk.'

'Once we're in range, do you think he will fire?'

'I have no doubt of it.'

'We have no defense. We'll be ripped to pieces.'

'If we're unable to lose him in the darkness, that's unfortunately true.'

She looked up at him. 'What about the meteorite?' she asked in a low voice.

'What about it?'

She lowered her voice, glancing at Lloyd. 'If we drop it, we'll be able to increase our speed.'

Glinn felt himself stiffen. He glanced over at Lloyd, who stood frowning at the bridge windows, trunklike legs planted wide apart. He hadn't heard. When Glinn answered, he spoke slowly, reasonably.

'To jettison it, we have to bring the ship to an absolute halt. That would give Vallenar all the time he needs to catch us. We'd be sunk before we came to rest.'

'Then you've run out of answers?' she asked, her voice even lower.

He looked into her green eyes. They were clear, and steady, and quite beautiful. 'There is no such thing as a problem without a solution,' he said. 'We just have to nd it.'

Britton paused. 'Before we left the island, you asked me to trust you. I hope that I can. I would like to very much.'

Glinn looked away, feeling an unexpected flush of emotion. For a moment, his eyes fell on the GPS screen, and the dotted green line marked Ice Limit that ran across it. Then he looked back into her eyes. 'You can trust me on this, Captain. I will have a solution for you. I promise.'

She nodded slowly. 'I don't believe you're a man who breaks his promises. I hope I'm right. Mr. Glinn — Eli — there's only one thing I want out of life right now. And that's to see my daughter again.'

Glinn began to answer. But what came out instead was a hiss of surprise. He took an involuntary step back. In a blinding flash of insight brought on by Britton's final sentence, he understood what was driving Vallenar.

He turned and, without a word, abruptly left the bridge.

Rolvaag,

12:30 P.M.

LLOYD PACED restlessly across the long expanse of the bridge. The storm battered furiously against the windows, but he had averted his eyes from the tearing seas. In all his life, he had never seen anything so frightening. It barely resembled water anymore, looking more like mountains, green and gray and black, rising, falling, sweeping, crumbling apart in gigantic creamy avalanches. He could hardly see how their ship — any ship — -could survive five seconds in such a sea. Yet the