Nimec entered the water-treatment dome, strode to its central platform, asked the group working on the pump where he could find the man he was seeking, and was pointed in his direction.
“You Mark Rice?” Nimec said, approaching him from behind.
The man glanced up over his shoulder and nodded. He was crouched at a warped metal pipe-coupling near the platform, a small plasma cutter in his hand, a welding helmet and mask covering his head.
“I’d like to talk,” Nimec said. “When you’ve got a minute.”
“Got one right now.”
Rice switched off the torch, rose, carefully set it down on the wheeled tool cart beside him, turned off the oxygen supply to his face mask, and raised its glass hatch.
“What can I do for you?” he said.
Nimec looked at him. A few spikes of hair showed over Rice’s brow, sweaty despite the penetrating cold inside the dome. They were blond with dyed cobalt-blue streaks.
“I’ve seen your folder,” Nimec said. “You were with the Sword detail in Ankara, my old friend Ghazi’s section.”
Rice nodded silently.
“Ghazi sent your team to flush those terrorists out of the mountains a couple, three years ago. On horseback.”
Rice nodded again.
“Before UpLink, you were Army Ranger,” Nimec said. “The 3/75th, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Saw your share of action in the service… Task Force Somalia, an anti-narc unit in Colombia…”
“Right.”
“And earned some impressive commendations,” Nimec said. “The Distinguished Service Cross, a couple of sharp-shooter’s medals…”
Rice flicked a Nomex-gloved hand into the air between them.
“With all due respect,” he said. “It’s been a long while since I wore a black beret. Or rode a horse—”
“Or fired a rifle,” Nimec said.
Rice looked steadily at him.
“True,” Rice said. “Before the attack on this plant the other night.”
Nimec met his gaze. “You were going to resign from Sword until Rollie Thibodeau talked you out of it, and even then only agreed to stay if you could ship out to Cold Corners,” he said. “Feel comfortable telling me the reason?”
Rice regarded him another moment, then shrugged.
“I didn’t want to shoot anything anymore except with a camera,” he said. “What I do here is mostly work for the beakers. Photographic ecosystem profiles. It suits me fine.”
“And still puts that trained eye of yours to good use.”
Rice made no comment.
“I need a sniper,” Nimec said. “Someone who’s dependable. Who won’t make mistakes. A bunch of lives are going to be on the line. Mine’s incidentally one of them.”
Rice looked at him.
“The talk’s been that you’re going out to bring back the missing search team,” Rice said.
Nimec gave him a nod. Their eyes were still in contact.
“I’m not a quitter,” Rice said.
“Nobody thinks that.”
Rice nodded.
“Go ahead and count me in,” he said.
Burkhart led his men from the ascending passage’s mouth onto a black rock uplift, whipped by freezing wind, his boots stepping across striations that memorialized the labored seaward slide of ancient ice.
A hundred feet below him Bull Pass was congested with shadows. Faded orange, the sun floated on an almost even plane with his line of sight, giving the illusion that he could have squeezed it in his hand if only his reach were longer. It had been like that for days as wintry gloom made its onset.
His attention now, however, was captured by the writhing purple-red blot of light in the sky beside the sun. He had never before seen anything like it. Nor most certainly had any of the others.
Here was the first outward sign of the sun’s advancing fever.
Burkhart turned to him.
Langern’s eyes remained wide behind his goggles.
Burkhart was silent. Then he tapped Langern’s arm to stir him from his rapt absorption, motioning down at the pass.
This bitter windswept terrace was where they would position themselves for the enemy’s arrival.
Pete Nimec watched his hookup teams finish rigging their all-terrain vehicles to the pair of choppers requested from MacTown, each Sikorsky S-76 moments from bearing away its maximum sling-load of three vehicles. As the cargo hooks were slipped into their apex fittings, the wand men waved their static wands and the teams jumped off the ATVs to move out from under the downwash of lifting rotors.
Then the birds climbed from their hover, pulling slack from the sling legs, flying off against the strange, wavery orchid of color that had appeared in the sky near the slipping sun.
Nimec turned to Megan. His backpack heavy on his shoulders, loaded with his own gear, he was ready to join his strike force aboard one of the two UpLink helicopters on the pad.
“How you holding up?” he said.
“Fine.” She lowered her eyes from the auroral radiance and studied his face. “I only wish I were going with you, if you want to know the truth.”
Nimec smiled a little.
“You’ve been awful scrappy since I taught you to box,” he said.
She gave his chest a light swat with her mittened hand.
“Fisticuffs are my thing,” she said. “Before long I’ll have to watch out for cauliflower face.”
“I think,” he said, “You mean ‘cauliflower ear.’ ”
“Close enough.”
They stood there facing each other.
“Got to head off,” Nimec said, and nodded toward the waiting choppers.
“Yes,” Megan said.
“You mind the store. There should be enough men here to—”
“I’m really okay,” she said. “I’ll be okay. And so will this base.”
They stood a few seconds longer in the blowing cold. Then Megan stepped forward and hugged him.
“Thanks, Pete,” she said, her voice catching, her arms tight around him. “Thanks very much.”
Nimec cleared his throat.
“What for?” he said.
“Just for being you,” Megan said.
“We’re seeing…
