“Tell it to me, Ron,” she said.
“Sure,” he said, “I was just waiting for you to ask.”
And then he told her.
Burkhart did not decide upon a conclusive plan of action until several hours after Granger failed to report — convincing him the pilot’s true failure was more critical than that.
The plan’s crucial elements, however, had germinated in his mind much earlier. In fact, its rough contours had emerged after his return to Bull Pass. He had known that even Granger’s success — his elimination of UpLink’s head of security — would only forestall the inevitable.
Looking backward, Burkhart could see the road to his fall so clearly. With all veils of conceit and ambition lifted from his eyes, now he could see. The destruction of UpLink’s robotic probe, his taking of its recovery team, his exposed sabotage attempt and the bloodletting that followed, and at last, his hastily necessitated reliance on Granger to do what Burkhart had recognized was far beyond the pilot’s competence… from the day he’d set foot on that road, and perhaps onto the many forking junctures he had walked along the way, it now seemed there had been something almost deterministic about where he was headed.
Gabriel Morgan was dead. The Albedo Consortium’s vast and elaborate underpinnings were on the verge of complete breakdown, a thunderous crash that would send legal and political ground quakes through scores of nations.
What options remained before him then? What roads on which to push toward success… or if not that, then some little measure of self-redemption? There was no way to erase — or substantially reduce — the evidence of the uranium digging and transshipping operation in whatever scant time was left to him. Not even if the mines were razed would that evidence be concealed for long. He could, perhaps, physically remove
They were men who had fought bravely beside him. Men who had been loyal and true to him in the darkest face of his own failure.
He would not do it.
Would not desert them.
Deep beneath the frozen earth, Burkhart had decided to make his stand in the pass above, and hold the high ground where he was certain the enemy would show his own resolute face.
“These ATVs were shipped from Kaliningrad a few months back, when they ordered and got themselves updated models,” Waylon was saying. “They’re two-passenger, fully automatic, and have noise-dampened engines. Our field researchers love zipping around in them.”
Megan stood beside Nimec and Waylon in the heated garage arch outside CC1, looking at the ten parked, neatly aligned vehicles, and remembering.
“They were used by Max Blackburn in Operation Politika,” she said. “I was… we were together in Russia at the time.” She paused and glanced at Nimec. “When you and I signed off on the upgrade request right before leaving San Jose, it came to me that the older vehicles might be perfect for the ice. Waste not, want not, you know?”
Nimec was quiet a moment. He had tried very hard to ignore the sadness in her voice as she’d spoken of Max.
“Their VVRS pintle guns,” he said. “They were transported with the ATVs?”
Megan nodded.
“And stored away, yes. It’s ironic, I suppose, that we stripped down the weapons. It was the one feature we never thought we’d need here.”
Nimec nodded thoughtfully.
“Waylon, you grab some men, take care of getting the guns remounted,” he said. Then he turned to Megan. “In the meantime we better see about getting those extra choppers from MacTown.”
The cage door grated open, then shut with a dull clang.
Shevaun Bradley was startled. A while ago the echoing of the machines had stopped and left her in almost total silence. The sounds of the door seemed very loud against it.
Sitting on the cot that doubled as her chair and bed, her back against the wall of the enclosure, she lifted her eyes as the marked man came inside.
He was alone, unaccompanied by guards.
It was the first she had seen him since the time of the screaming in the black. The first instance in which he’d appeared without his guards.
He stepped over to the cot and stood watching her in silence.
She could see him easily now. The cage was no longer in darkness. Her conditions had improved after she’d talked to him, answered his questions. His men had returned to screw a bare lightbulb into an overhead socket and wheel in the cot. And the food had gotten better.
They hadn’t brought Scarborough back, though. She hadn’t heard anything from him.
Not since the time of those screams…
“You deceived me,” the marked man said at once.
She stared at him in tense silence, trying to pretend she didn’t know what he meant. Except she did, of course.
“It was an artful deception,” he said. “The dome’s outer cameras were precisely where you revealed they would be. But you neglected to mention the internal cameras.”
She felt her heart pound in her chest, but said nothing.
“It was what you call a lie of omission,
Bradley said nothing.
The marked man came closer to her. His hand slowly lowering toward the pistol holstered at his waist, hovering inches above its grip.
“You were loyal to your own. You showed courage. But your guile killed four of my comrades,” he said. “Does the knowledge please you?”
She looked at him, but continued to say nothing.
“Does it
“No,” she said, her voice trembling as she gave her answer. “I’m not happy that men died.”
The marked man scrutinized her features a moment, and then suddenly crouched in front of her.
His right hand still near his gun.
His face level with her face.
“I could kill you out of vengeance,” he said. “Without pity or moral constriction. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
A pause.
He reached out his left hand, clamped her wrist in it, and forced her palm against the crescent birthmark on his cheek.
“Describe what you feel,” he said.
Her heart was knocking. “I don’t know—”
“Describe it to me,” he said.
Bradley commanded herself not to cry, and the tears began streaming from her eyes.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told him. “I don’t know what you want me to say.
He pressed her hand against his cheek for several more seconds, his eyes radiant with that terrible intensity.
Then he relaxed his grip on her, let her pull back.
“All right,” he said. “Listen well, scientist. I’m going to tell you something you’ll surely wish to remember… ”
