Rising Storm

inspection, she thought. In which case she could arrange to be on hand to witness Tricker's discomfiture. The idea gave her a nice

feeling of power.

It was a fairly nice summer's day in Antarctica. The temperature must be around thirty-five or so, Wendy thought. There was only a gentle breeze stirring the air and the sky was a light blue gray, indicating a high overcast. She was merely miserably, uncomfortably cold instead of freezing as she'd expected.

The scenery around them was ice and hard-packed snow, wind-sculpted into weird and graceful shapes like a Salvador Dab' painting in monochrome.

Sometimes a mound of snow would heave up like a wave frozen as it crested, frilled with a lacy edging of clear ice sparking on its underside; in the distance cliffs of ice seemed to bear tiny ruffles of white and blue and pale emerald green.

More than once the beauty of the place took her breath away.

The three of them were dressed all in white, the sledge wore a white tarpaulin, and the snowmobile was painted pure white as well. It's Ghost Troop! she thought. It seemed to her that very little here was really pure white; to Wendy's eye they actually stood out against shades of cream, blue white, palest beige.

Although the light was so flat it made things look strange, so that if anyone was watching maybe they couldn't tell where they were going, or how far away they were. Or even that we're here? Well, maybe that was too much to hope for.

On the other hand, it's too cold out here to have people posted with nothing but a parka and a pair of binoculars for any length of time. Cameras would freeze, I suppose. Someone had told her that on the yacht; Antarctica was actually a worse environment for machinery than the moon. So the odds were good that they were unobserved. She looked up again. And that overcast, slight as it is, would obscure satellite observation, if there is any. So I guess we're safe. The

sledge went over a bump and her teeth clopped together. Not comfortable, but safe.

The plan was to travel at an easy pace for the next two days. They'd actually unpacked a stove to cook up some stew for lunch, which they'd eaten in the lee of the supply sledge, along with a whole loaf of bread.

Wendy had tried to refuse the bread, but Dieter had buttered a huge slice thickly and put it into her hand.

'Eat it,' he'd insisted. 'You're not going to get fat at the rate you're burning calories.'

So, reluctantly, she'd done so. And she did feel better for it. After lunch John had slipped her a couple of chocolate bars and she'd gobbled them up.

Guilt-free chocolate, she thought happily. What a concept. She was already looking forward to supper.

By the morning of their third day on the ice, as Wendy lay on her stomach staring at the hidden base's wind farm, all she was looking forward to was getting somewhere warm. Even if it was only for a little while. The sky had become completely overcast by late the first afternoon and the temperature had plummeted accordingly, giving even the most expensive of their travel gear a harsh, and as far as she was concerned, not altogether successful test.

Wendy had thought that as a New England girl she'd be better able to endure the cold than John. She glanced at him. He seemed completely unfazed by the temperature, the hard travel, the cramped sleeping quarters, or what they were

about to do. On the one hand, she admired him; on the other, she was convinced they'd all gone barking mad.

John turned to Wendy and gave her a thumbs-up, smiling encouragingly as he did so, even though she couldn't see his grin. He couldn't see her expression either since they both wore balaclavas and huge dark goggles, not to mention skin-protecting ointment that smelled bad and made them look like ghouls three days dead. But he could tell by the position of her head that she was giving him a blank and puzzled look.

She's so slender, an easy candidate for hypothermia. She seemed to be growing weaker, too, despite all the chocolate and PowerBars and buttered bread they could force on her. He was looking forward to their day of rest when she could languish in her sleeping bag inside the tent for as long as she wished. Not that it would be a visit to the tropics, by any means, but it was a damn sight better than what she was experiencing now. Not that she'd uttered one word of complaint.

Moved by her pluck, he gripped her shoulder and she bent her head to touch her swaddled cheek to his gloved hand. Dieter recalled his attention by slapping his shoulder. The big Austrian signaled that there was no one around and the little gizmo in his hand detected no listening devices. So why. John wondered, aren't we talking?

Then he decided it wasn't worth asking. It seemed the cold was getting to him, too.

The two men rose and trundled over the gentle rise toward the windmills. The few supplies necessary for the sabotage were in insulated packs that they had stuffed inside their parkas to keep them from freezing. Time to take out the

target.

The windmills stood on a slight rise, where the basalt rock beneath crested up beneath the ice. The inhuman whine of their giant blades came whickering down through the frigid air, like a mechanical snarl beneath its chill.

'Why do operatives say things like like 'terminate' and 'take out' instead of 'kill'

and 'blow up'?' John asked.

'The business is hard enough as it is,' Dieter answered.

John unscrewed the panel that led to his first windmill's inner workings.

Awkwardly, he attempted to unscrew the cap on the bottle he'd carried inside his jacket and found it impossible. Stripping off the heavy outer gloves, he allowed them to dangle from cords attached to his sleeves, leaving only his polypropylene glove liners to protect him from the cold—which, since that wasn't what they were designed for. they didn't. Almost immediately his fingers began to go numb. But at least he could handle the small bottle. Removing the

'eyedropper' top, he sprinkled a liquid onto the plastic seal at the top of the unit's hydraulic pump. The liquid was supposed to break up polymer chains, causing the seals to disintegrate.

Putting the liquid back into an inside pocket, he brought out a calculator-sized instrument that he would use to reprogram the windmills' computerized governor. He pulled out the motherboard and attached clips, then set to work. By the time he reinstalled it in its slot, the windmill was already pumping faster, spreading the damaging liquid and on its way to dashing itself to pieces.

Putting his gloves back on, John screwed the protective panel back on and

moved to the next one. There were twelve in all, modular units about fifteen feet high and built sturdy to survive the frequent high winds and the bitter cold. But no attempt had been made to protect them from sabotage. Why would there be?

Who would be out here looking to commit acts of vandalism in Antarctica?

Li’l ol me, John thought. Just li'l ol' me. Well, and Dieter. Oops, looks like the big guy spilled some. Von Rossbach's glove liners were in shreds where the liquid had touched them. John watched him peel them off, wincing at the heat caused by their destruction.

'It felt good at first,' Dieter said when he noticed John watching him, 'but now it's burning. He shoved the ruined gloves into his breast pocket, then worked his reddened hands. 'Could just be the cold,' he muttered, slipping his outer gloves back on.

John looked around. Dieter was finished and he was halfway through with his last one. Checking the watch attached to the outside of his sleeve, he raised his brows. Good job! he thought. They'd obviously allowed more time for this than necessary.

In less than five minutes he was tramping up the low rise to rejoin Wendy.

Behind him the windmills had begun to run crazy, spinning like tops in the wind.