EIGHTEEN
His pistol was a Beretta 92 nine-millimeter, top of the line, with a stainless-steel barrel, black-matte finish, low recoil, and open-slide action. The same side arm used by the U.S. armed services, it couldn’t be beat for accuracy and reliability.
A handsome weapon.
Granger had never fired it except on practice ranges, never killed anything bigger than a rabbit in his life. He guessed that he was decent enough with a handgun, a better shot than your average person, although popping holes in a cardboard target that came gliding toward you down the lane was a far cry from taking out a human being. Or most likely was. The peculiar thing was that Granger had found himself without any moral or emotional constraints about the ruse he’d worked out, a setup that would have completely unstrung him once upon a time.
Sure, he’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Granger liked the money he was making hand over fist from the Consortium. He liked being where he was, and the freedom of living on the ice — liked his freedom,
His concern was whether the snare would work. Conscience, guilt… he just didn’t harbor those feelings. In fact, he’d discovered that part of him, a strong part, actually enjoyed running all the way home with the devil.
Peculiar thing.
Seated in the cockpit of his Bell chopper, Granger carefully adjusted his parka, tugging and smoothing it until he was confident the side-arm holster underneath made no visible bulge. An hour had passed since he’d agreed to give Pete Nimec his ride in the sky, a bit less since he’d phoned Burkhart on his secure mobile phone, and Granger was about ready to charge up the bird. He had laddered through all the routine steps of a preflight systems check, looking over the gauges, video displays, and digital readouts on his control panel, inputting coordinates into his onboard GPS unit, testing his navigation and communications equipment. Outside, the cleanup crews were still making a racket with their bucket loaders, but most of the storm’s dumping of snow around the pad had been hauled off. Now Granger was only waiting for Nimec to return from Cold Corners One, where he’d gone to wrap up some unspecified last-minute affairs.
Granger had tried to figure out what it was about the UpLink crew that had irritated him from the day they broke ground in Antarctica and that now gave an undeniable appeal to the proposition of his sticking it sharply into their gut. Whenever he thought it over, his mind would turn back to something one of the old VXE-6 Ice Pirates he’d known had told him right around the time their unit was being dissolved. What the guy claimed was that he and a couple of his flyboy buddies had decided their ceremonial good-bye to the continent would be to stroll off a ski way on their final Herc run, squat down, and empty their bowels right there on a patch of ice, leaving behind freeze-dried commemorative monuments that would last longer than any footprints they could make. In fact, they would probably last forever.
Granger wasn’t sure if the crewmen had ever gone ahead with their distinctive hail-and-farewells, or if it was the sort of notion that would have occurred to them after too many beers in a Cheech watering hole and been forgotten once they sobered up the morning after. And he supposed that wasn’t important. It was the idea itself that had stayed with him. Granger remembered finding it funny in a crude sort of way. But there was also something more than a little bitter about it, something almost contemptuous, that had caused Granger to believe those flyboys had been eager for a parting shot. He hadn’t known at whom or what. Maybe the cold hell they were vacating. Maybe their superiors and Air Guard replacements for making them feel expendable. Maybe all three. He’d really never cared enough to wonder or ask.
What Granger did know was that thinking about UpLink always left a comparably bitter taste in his mouth. He resented the fawning treatment they received from the Base Commander and NSF Directors at McMurdo, resented their instant prestige on the continent, especially resented how everybody jumped when their redheaded bitch-in- charge clicked her fingers, as if her entire perfect flock, hatched and delivered straight from the mother nest in San Jose, deserved whatever favors and assistance they wanted. He’d seen women like Megan Breen in action before, and they were very good at that — getting what they wanted by being nice but not
Granger reached toward his controls, hit a switch to fire the Bell’s APU, and then settled back to let it warm. The auxiliary power unit would start his hydraulics, and it was important to be certain their line fluids were clear and circulating before he cranked the main turbines.
It occurred to Granger now that UpLink’s closed-door, closed-mouth policy after the sabotage of their water- treatment facility had been what turned him onto his own drastic course. Nimec’s reasons for wanting to go ahead with the Dry Valley overflight plainly weren’t the same as they had been a little more than seventy-two hours ago. Couldn’t be. At that stage there had been no apparent space between the hero’s real and stated aims — he had wanted to begin looking for Alan Scarborough and the two beakers, who’d been thought to be victims of some kind of accident. But after the dome attack, the whole thrust of his search would have shifted. Breen and Nimec had learned they had enemies on the continent with a serious desire to shut down their operation, and would be figuring the lost S&R team had either fallen or been drawn into their hands. They would also figure those enemies were hidden somewhere in the rocks of Bull Pass. Yet Nimec had given Granger no tip-off that anything was different from before.
In asking himself why, Granger had decided it didn’t mean
No, he thought, Nimec wouldn’t stop coming at it. Not unless he was stopped in his tracks. And that would itself barely postpone the inevitable.
UpLink, goddamn them…
Granger could read the writing on the wall, and intended to remove himself from the scene before his connection to Albedo was exposed. But he wanted to gain a lead, deal UpLink a blow that would send a major shock through its system, and convince Burkhart to provide him with money and an avenue of escape. But with or without those arrangements, he’d still do what he had to, and couldn’t say that he had any scruples about it.
Aware of the Beretta’s encouraging pressure against his side, Granger listened as the whir of the spinning APU filled his cabin. He was only a little anxious, and not in a particular hurry.
Nimec could take his time at Cold Corners One, squeeze in a final ounce of the redhead’s exclusive hospitality.
His warm and cozy stay there was about to get cut short.
Annie Caulfield shut down her laptop, detached its modem cord from the telephone jack near her room’s tiny desk, and sleeved the computer into her Timberland carry bag. Then she went across the room, put the Timberland on her bed, considered gathering her toiletries from the night stand, and instead sat thinking at the edge of her mattress.
Her face bore a troubled expression. She would not deny that part of it related to things left unfinished with Pete Nimec… a large part. But Annie’s focus wasn’t on her personal loose ends. She didn’t think she had the right to turn it in that direction.
Minutes earlier, Annie had checked her e-mail and found a dashed-off reply to a note she’d sent to Jon Ketchum. Then she had scanned, in order, Goddard’s public Internet and confidential Intranet sites for the latest SOHO updates.
