Cold War

Neither of them had ever called the hallowed Stadium home.

Pruitt released another deep exhalation. All would have been fine and dandy if Pedro hurled for Baltimore, Kansas City, maybe Toronto. Better yet if the Devil Rays or Tigers had been the ones to steal him from Montreal back in ’98. But the fact was that Pedro Martinez pitched for Boston, the Evil Nemesis. And since a GM’s victory in fantasy baseball was determined by his players’ average rankings at season’s end, Pruitt had put himself on a torturer’s rack by acquiring him. Who was he now supposed to root for when the Yanks and Bosox had a Bronx blast or Fenway face-off? What if they were in a neck-and-neck pennant race come September? Despite Pruitt’s quest to win that Ice League pot — which came to a sweet two grand — the pull between commerce and loyalty had gotten well nigh unbearable for him weeks before the first regular season crack of home-run wood even went echoing into the blue American sky. It was a sure thing six more months of it would sap his very will to live… especially because he’d been forced to give Shane Spencer, the Yank utility man who’d heroically worked his way back to the majors after suffering a right knee ACL tear, to GM John Ikegami’s Snow Petrels over at Amundsen-Scott in exchange for the finances he’d required to close on the Pedro deal with Cadogan’s thin-benched, low-slugging Polecats.

There was no way around it, he thought. Pedro had to be ditched. Spence had to be reacquired. A transaction had to be transacted. And Pruitt had the Machiavellian makings of one very clearly in mind.

Ichiro was the linchpin of his scheme. John Ikegami had dropped out of the frantic Suzuki auction in a frustrated snit, surrendering him to the Petrels after he’d emptied the last of his $260 purse on Hideo Nomo, Kozuhiro Sasaki, and Tomo Ohka for reasons he adamantly denied had anything to do with matters of ethnic pride. Pruitt really didn’t care about Ikegami’s reasons for coveting Suzuki, who would be a valuable asset to any team in the league. It was enough just to know he did want him with a passion. Because now Pruitt was thinking he would dangle Pedro Martinez and the heavyweight bat Jason Giambi in front of Cadogan, provided Cadogan was willing to give Ichiro to Ikegami for Spencer, the two Yank minor leaguers, and a large handful of cash, all of which Pruitt would then get in return from Cadogan as part of a three-way swap. His purchasing power recharged, Pruitt would be able to go after a replacement starting arm to fill the hole left by Pedro. Maybe Andy Pettite. With Mike Stanton to strengthen his bullpen if there were some leftover funds. Either that, or he could see what the Air Guard Herkybirds over in Christchurch were asking for Jose Visciano.

Pruitt skimmed over the language of his message again. It could use some minor refinements, one more quick but careful pass before it was ready to go.

He lowered his fingers back onto his keyboard, and was about to make the first of his changes when a loud electronic warning tone grated from the console beside him, a row of color-coded chicklet lights to one side of his console blinked on in startling sequence, and the e-mail on his display screen was displaced by the base security program’s automatic pop-up window.

Pruitt’s response was practiced and immediate, his mind cleared of everything except for a task list that would need to be executed in a hurry. Bolt-erect at his station, he palmed his computer mouse, clicked to zoom, clicked again to recall and isolate an image, his eyes wide with rapidly building shock and astonishment as they confirmed what they were seeing was no bogie.

Less than fifteen seconds after the alert sounded, he flipped the redline radio switch on the panel beside him and got hold of Ron Waylon.

“It’s the desalinization plant,” Waylon told Nimec. He was breathless from his urgent hustle to the security station. “The images are from those FLIR thermacams behind the ceiling panels… ones we installed to replace the outside cameras when they went inoperational.”

Nimec nodded tensely. He recalled Waylon showing him their locations during their base tour just hours ago, while explaining that his people hadn’t yet gotten around to removing the weather-damaged external units. Both men were standing behind Pruitt as the thermal infrared pictures on his monitor shifted through their color palette. They could see four intruders — actually the spectral radiant heat signatures of four intruders — moving about inside the dome, heading toward the door. And Nimec knew that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Look.” He indicated three bright red streaks on the image, matching them against assigned colors on a horizontal measurement bar at the bottom of the screen. “Something’s burning in there.”

“Fires,” Waylon said. “They have to be fires. And they’re damned hot.” He breathed, pointed. “Jesus Christ, looks like one’s on an inflow pump… and over here, this is the seawater pipeline… I don’t know what the hell’s going on… ”

Nimec looked at him, his heart pounding.

“We’re being hit,” he said. “Pull together some men, we have to get out there now.”

* * *

A long, narrow room on the main building’s upper level, the Meat Lockers had metallic walls, bar, tables, and chairs that were washed with a reflective tungsten-blue radiance from overhead truss lighting to create a decor and ambience that wryly suited its name.

The crowd of off-duty ice people assembled inside was subdued but not altogether cheerless. Their awareness of the missing three was weighable as they marked the passage of the storm, but these were men and women whose rigorous living conditions demanded a unique spirit and adaptability, and it was understood that brooding would do nothing to help the situation. Morale was bolstered in different ways. During work rotations their stresses were redirected toward productive effort, a conscientious attendance to shared and individual responsibilities. And while it had been some days since anyone commandeered the small corner stage where they would showcase variable degrees of musical talent on better night/rec cycles — and sing karaoke when the prospects for diversion were lean — it seemed out of the question to concede that the fate of Scarborough’s team had been decided. Hence, many of them continued to gather here in their downtime, drinking together, making small talk, amusing themselves, determined to carry on as well as possible in spite of their common fears.

Annie Caulfield sensed all this as she gazed across the room and watched a group of CC’s staffers shoot their own idiosyncratic version of darts. With each successive round a moveable bull’s-eye, striped red and white like the Geographic South Pole’s traditional marker, was peeled off the board and reaffixed slightly further below center, mirroring the annual thirty-three-foot movement of the polar marker as it shifted with the ice cap. Eventually, Megan Breen had explained, the bull’s-eye would meet the scoring ring and get stuck back in the middle of the dartboard.

Annie noted the game’s out-of-whack humor with an appreciative smile, then turned back toward Megan to resume their meandering conversation.

“So I’ve told you how much it hurt when Pete backed off from me, and you’ve told me how much it hurt your FBI director when you backed off from him,” she said. “Does that about cover things?”

Megan looked at her across the barroom table.

“The story thus far,” she said. “Sounds simple.”

“Mm-hmm,” Annie said. “But feels complicated.”

Megan nodded.

“I’ll drink to that,” she said.

“Here, here,” Annie said.

The women raised their tumblers of Barbayannis Aphrodite ouzo, clinked, and took long sips.

Loose, glassy-eyed, they sat quietly at the table, picking away at plates of olives, sliced hydroponic tomatoes, and cheese to moderate the ouzo’s strong licorice flavor and absorb enough alcohol to keep their heads barely afloat. At somewhere around eighty or ninety proof, the liqueur was CC’s recreational drink of choice, perfect for shaking off the cold and remedying cabin fever.

“Anyway, here’s a question. Well, actually two questions.” Annie had snatched at a drifting thread of thought. “You’ve been at Cold Corners… how long now? Three months?”

“Three months, twelve days”—Megan paused, checked her wristwatch—“fourteen hours.”

“Three months plus then.” Annie said. “I’m curious… what’s the one thing you miss most about home?”

Megan shrugged.

“Easy,” she said. “My kitchen.”

Annie flapped a dismissive hand in the air.