Rising Storm

agony. He choked, then let out the excess air in slow bursts to ease the excruciating pain in his side. The sensation was familiar, but it wasn't one you ever got used to. This time he didn't seem to be waking up in a hospital, either —always a bad sign.

Broken rib, he thought. At least one.

Von Rossbach opened his eyes to surprisingly dim light. Then realized that he was in some kind of snow cave, which explained why he hadn't frozen solid. In fact, comparatively speaking, he was relatively warm; snow could be good insulation, at the very least it stopped the wind. He moved his legs experimentally and found them merely cold and not broken. One of his arms was free, but the other was pinned and numb. Carefully he lifted his head to take a look.

A seal's head and neck pinned him down. The surreal sight brought the circumstances of his fall back to him in a rush. Was that when all these huge blocks of snow had fallen, too? He lowered his head and realized that he'd laid it down on something reasonably soft. Turning carefully, he saw that he was also lying on top of a seal. Sandwich, he thought wryly. Blubber made good insulation. Another reason why I'm not a Popsicle.

John won't know where I am, he suddenly thought.

He shoved at the seal's head with his free arm, with about the same results as pushing at a boulder. The whole animal had stiffened into one solid piece; four hundred pounds of meat stiffened into rigor mortis could only be shifted by a crane. He raised his head to study the situation and decided to try sliding out from under it. Only its head, neck, and part of a shoulder held him pinned.

Luckily. Otherwise he'd never have woken; the weight of the thing on his broken ribs would have smothered him or driven the broken ends of the bones into his lungs. But its slowly cooling body had saved his life.

Carefully he tried to wriggle out from under the huge creature, only to find himself held fast by his trapped right arm. Dieter tried to move it; he couldn't feel his arm at all anywhere below his shoulder. Nevertheless, it did move; he could feel it slide down toward his back by a couple of inches. Not broken, he thought with relief. Not frozen solid either. Just a pinch on the nerve, blood still circulating.

He managed to slide it down until it struck the seal beneath him; once there, he was stuck again. The flesh of the dead seal on top of him had molded itself around his arm and then hardened, giving him no leeway. The one beneath formed a solid floor that might as well have been oak. Sucking in his breath to make himself smaller was not in the equation at the moment.

Interesting problem, he thought. He got his left hand underneath the seal's chin and lifted; a fraction of an inch might be all he needed to get tree. But his ribs quickly, and loudly, protested. He stopped; it had been a faint hope anyway. If all he'd had to do was break its spine it might have been possible, but getting this thing moved would require breaking its whole body.

Even in my younger days— without broken ribs— I doubt I could have done it.

He'd been lucky about the ribs; they might be broken, but they hadn't pierced any important organs. He'd better make sure they hadn't. Every muscle in your gut and upper body pulled on the spine and breastbone, and the ribs were what joined those.

Dieter bent his left leg and began sliding his booted foot toward his free hand.

He reached for the knife in his boot sheath, straining toward it despite the grating protest from his ribs. Definitely more than one, but only on one side. Almost

more than the pain he hated the sensation of wrongness in his body.

His fingertips brushed the hilt, but he had to stop and get his breath. Grasping his pant leg to prevent his foot from sliding out of reach, he allowed himself to relax. Not easy to do in this slightly curled posture, where he felt his ribs separate with every painful breath.

Realizing that he wasn't going to get any rest until this was finished, he walked his hand back toward his boot, trying to pull his leg closer with every move.

Dieter pulled until the tendons in his knee protested, then pulled some more.

Finally he gritted his teeth, then lunged, to be rewarded by possession of the knife's hilt and a pain so sharp from his side that he almost grayed out.

But he held on, to both his consciousness and the knife. Closing his eyes, he took a series of long, slow breaths to calm the pain and get himself in the zone. Then he started carving at his prison.

After what seemed like eternity in a freezing, white hell, Dieter flung himself up onto the hard surface at the top of the crevasse. Then he pulled himself into fetal position to conserve body heat and rested. Don't rest too long, he warned himself. Too long being a very short time here. Wincing, von Rossbach pushed himself into a sitting position. Some of his senses seemed to have shut down—

smell, for example, though that might just be the cold. The world seemed to be very far away, seen through a thick plate of clear glass. At least the blizzard had stopped. If it had still been snowing, things would be even more desperate. He thanked God for great favors.

He checked the time and date. Early afternoon, day after I acted like a complete

dummkopf and left the tent alone. He knew better than to do a thing like that and had paid dearly for the mistake. Dieter struggled to his feet and after a moment's dizziness felt better for it. Without the weight of a full-grown seal crushing his body, his ribs didn't hurt nearly as much. Looking around, he saw that someone else might have paid for his mistake.

There was a mound of bloodied snow near where he'd crawled out of the rift, and following the blood trail with his eyes led him to the imprint of the snowmobile.

As he looked over the marks in the snow, he decided that John must have fallen into the crevasse and that Wendy, clever girl, had used the snowmobile to pull him out. Von Rossbach leaned over the edge cautiously to find another seal, this one broken on the same massive blocks of ice that had sheltered him.

Dieter sincerely hoped that the blood belonged to the animal, because there seemed to be quite a lot of it. Turning away, he followed the snowmobile's tracks back to their campsite and wasn't really surprised to find John and Wendy gone.

They'd naturally assumed that he was dead and had continued the mission without him. Which was entirely reasonable, especially given John's training, but not a very welcome discovery. A man on foot without supplies was at a distinct disadvantage here, even if it was just a short walk to shelter.

He looked into the distance. Yes… the rock ridge was unmistakable; even a storm wouldn't recarve the surface ice that much in so short a time.

That's the direction. So I'd better get going before the weather changes again.

Traveling on foot was going to be bad enough without risking another sudden storm. Though the sky seemed clear enough now. Perhaps it was the ribs, but he felt pessimistic.

With a grimace of distaste he pulled a chunk of seal blubber out of his pocket and, lifting his balaclava, worried off a piece with strong white teeth. Then he returned the bloody lump to its place. He chewed thoughtfully as he walked. Seal blubber was awful stuff, tasting like fishy lard with a slightly more solid texture.

But it was high energy and would keep him going as long as anything that came out of a nutritional lab.

Talk about cold comfort.

Clea lay on her cot, going over and over the corridors and the labs and the offices of the complex through the eyes of the security cameras, and found herself very close to being bored. Where are the cameras that watch Tricker?

she wondered. And those that watched the perimeter of the base, where were they? Every other inch of the base was wired, why not the sheds?

Lab after lab flicked by and then the deserted offices. But there were omissions in what she was seeing. There were fifty-seven separate labs or offices on view.

But the cameras in the base's various corridors showed sixty doors.