Cold War

Langern started across the snow, walking downhill to where the rest of the men had waited with the snowmobiles and equipment.

Alone on the escarpment, Burkhart lifted the binoculars back to his eyes and resumed studying the base.

There was much yet that he wished to observe.

Cold Corners Base

“I really feel responsible for you being stranded,” Megan said. “Sorry, Russ.”

Granger was careful not to show his uneasiness.

“You didn’t call in the storm,” he said.

“No, but I did call you, even knowing it was on the way.” She shook her head, her shoulders moving up and down. “Guess I’d been anxious for Pete to make it to the pass and take a look-see.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Granger coerced an accepting smile out of himself. “There isn’t much difference whether I’m wheels-down at Cold Corners or MacTown. And from what they told me over the radio, our field camps are in fair enough shape for the duration. So it’s not as if my detour caused any harm.”

Megan looked at him a moment, then nodded.

“Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the weather blows over fast,” she said. “Meanwhile, you should be okay using this bunk. There weren’t any others available with our delegation from the States needing accommodations.” She paused, glanced down at the neatly made bed to her right, and settled herself. “It’s Alan Scarborough’s, you know. Sam Cruz here is his roommate.”

Granger turned to the man beside them in the little dorm and shook his hand. In fact, he wouldn’t feel remotely okay sleeping in that bed. Knowing what happened to the rover’s S&R team, the idea of it gave him the horrors.

“This must be a tough spell for you,” he said to Cruz. “Hope I’m not being too much of an imposition.”

“No, no, please,” Cruz replied. He was dark-complected, wavy-haired, with a strong grip. “It’ll be good for me to have some company.”

Granger had noticed the humorous marker-inked rendering on the closet door across the room. He glanced at the words above it.

“Prisoners of Fashion,” he read aloud.

“Blame me for that one,” Cruz said. “Megan lets us juvies amuse ourselves by making a mess of our quarters. It’s sort of an in-joke I’ll explain to you later.”

Granger manufactured another smile and plucked at his synthetic thermal vest.

“Think I already get it,” he said.

* * *

A half hour after stalking out of Megan’s office, Nimec beckoned the manager of base security over to the same paneled workstation he’d seized for his ultimately wasted planning session with Granger.

“I want to conduct a site security check while there’s an opportunity,” he told him. “Tour the installation so I can get a close-up sense of things.”

And feel like I’m doing something marginally constructive with my time, he thought but did not say.

The Sword base chief nodded. He was a burly guy named Ron Waylon, with a thick walrus mustache and a head that was shaved smooth except for a gladiatorial nape lock reaching to the middle of his back. The lock of hair was bound with a leather cord down its full length. Some sort of body tattoo peeked above his shirt collar on the right side of his neck. The silver earrings he wore on both sides were shaped like long swords, an interesting but questionably appropriate variation on the organizational badge. Or maybe they were supposed to be daggers and Nimec was reading too much symbolism into them.

Whether or not that was the case, he’d found dress and appearance codes to be pretty damn lacking at Cold Corners. Hadn’t the base chief been clean-cut when he was hired? Or was his recollection about that also off the mark?

“Yes, sir,” Waylon replied now. His road-warrior appearance belied a disarming mild-manneredness. “I’m thinking I should mention CC’s probably different from other locations, where the emphasis would be to harden it against corporate spies, armed intruders… human threats to property and employees. Here we try to prepare for emergencies shaping out of natural events. Like, say, the storm that’s headed toward us. If any of our personnel become sick or injured when we’re snowbound, it could be a long spell before relief arrives. So we push real heavy on self-sufficiency, and drill a crisis-and-escalation checklist into everybody’s minds. We try not to ignore perimeter defense. But rescue transport, triage, stopgap equipment repair… I guess they’d be stressed over it.”

Nimec nodded, itching to make himself useful.

“Understood,” he said. “How soon can we do this?”

“Be ready in a jiff, sir. We just need to suit up.”

Nimec rose from his chair. He gave the big man an after-you gesture.

“Lead the way and I shall follow,” he said.

Megan Breen stared at her computer screen feeling strangely under assault from the e-mail messages in her queue. Turn on the machine, and there they were demanding attention, zipped through electronic space from scattered points of origin around the world. Amsterdam, Johore, Tokyo, New Delhi, San Jose, Washington, D.C…

There were two, no, three, waiting to be answered from Bob Lang in Washington, D.C.

She sighed. It was stupid, she knew. An armadillo’s reflex to roll up behind its head and tail shields. But when the boss had first requested that she do a stint in Antarctica, its isolation — and separateness— had appealed to her. In fact, his proposition had come at just the right stage in her life, filling a definite need to time-out from the Cuisinart grind of corporate affairs, the relationships with men that seemed like listless dances around a circle broken and faded from too many retracings of her own footsteps…

She didn’t immediately acknowledge it. In fact, she’d been too knocked for a loop at the time to know exactly what to think.

“We’ve been through a lot of wear and tear lately, Meg,” Gord had said when he’d broached the idea. “A change of scenery might be good for you. Something dramatic. Along with the chance to captain your own ship.” And then he’d given her the look that might have almost convinced her she’d been struck by a thunderbolt. “I know it could only help you prepare for the day you inherit mine.”

Boom.

Megan’s automatic reaction had been a kind of befuddled astonishment. Inherit mine. The thought had never occurred to her. Not consciously, at any rate. The boss had been her vertical constant for too long. Her Kilimanjaro towering at an unmatched height. Turn her eyes to their loftiest reach and he’d be there. Even when he was hospitalized, part of her had denied admittance to the prospect that she could lose him. Somebody take his place one day? Her? It seemed inconceivable…

Gordian had asked her to wait a bit before giving her answer, let the idea sink in, and she’d agreed out of deference alone, or told herself that was the reason, figuring she’d put the whole crazy thing out of her mind, wait a respectable week or so, and courteously decline.

Surprise, surprise. She’d found herself thinking about his proposition, really thinking about it, at odd instances throughout that day. And the next day. And the next. The thoughts had sneaked up on her during morning workouts, business conferences, lunches, cocktail parties. They had slipped between lines of office memoranda, the paragraphs of a novel she was reading, song lyrics on her car stereo. And they’d struck her often when she was with Bob, much too often… once, finally, while they were thrashing toward the climax of an ardent scene on his living-room rug.

It was fairly crass as turning points went, but you weren’t often able to choose their times of arrival, and she supposed you just had to be grateful when you recognized them. That hers had coincided with a moment of intense physical pleasure, some emotional connection to Bob clicking off even as her body aggressively pursued its own independent gratification, was fitting and probably necessary in its way. Action plus conflict equaled change, wasn’t that how it went?

Megan didn’t fault Bob for not noticing; she was almost sure she hadn’t shown any outward signs, and there had been enough happening to distract him if she had. But the episode had been privately embarrassing. And