and spoke as would a drill instructor to a raw recruit. 'I'll see you weirdos are airlifted by an Osprey to within ten kilometers of the ship. No closer, or we'll lose the element of surprise. from there you can damn well hike in. If I'm lucky, you won't arrive until it's all over.'
'Fair enough,' Pitt agreed.
Hollis backed off then. He looked at Giordino and snapped, 'I'd be grateful if you'd release my second in command.'
Then he refaced Pitt. 'We're shoving off, now. In fact, if you don't leave with Major Dillenger and me, you ain't going. Because, five minutes after boarding my command aircraft, our entire assault team will be airborne. '
Pitt eased the automatic from Hollis's groin. 'We'll be right behind you.'
'I'll tag along with the Major,' said Giordino, giving Dillenger a friendly pat on the back. 'Great minds run in the same channels.'
Dillenger gave him a sour look indeed. 'Yours might run in a gutter but mine don't.'
The room cleared out in fifteen seconds. Pitt hurried to his cabin and snatched up a tote bag. He made a quick trip to the bridge and conversed with Captain Stewart.
'How long for the Sounder to reach Santa Inez?'
Stewart stepped into the chart room and made a quick calculation.
'Pushing throttles to the stops, our diesels should put us off the glacier in nine or ten hours.'
'Do it,' Pitt ordered. 'We'll look for you around dawn.'
Stewart shook Pitts hand. 'You take care, you hear?'
'I'll try not to get my feet wet.'
One of the ship's scientists stepped over from the bridge counter. He was black, medium height, and wore a stern expression that looked as if it was chiseled there. His name Clayton Findley, and he spoke in a deep, rich bass voice.
'Excuse me for eavesdropping, gentlemen, but I could have sworn you mentioned Santa Inez Island.'
Pitt nodded. 'Yes, that's right.'
'There's an old zinc mine near the glacier. Closed down when Chile halted government-subsidized production.'
'You're familiar with the island?' Pitt asked in surprise.
Findley nodded. 'I was chief geologist of an Arizona mining company who thought they might make the army pay through efficient, cost-cutting operations. They sent me down along with a couple of engineers to make a survey. Spent three months in that hell hole. We found the ore grade about played out. Soon after, the mine was shuttered and the equipment abandoned.'
:'How are you with a rifle?'
'I've hunted some.'
Pitt took him by the arm. 'Clayton, my friend, you are a gift from the gods.'
Clayton Findley did indeed prove to be a godsend.
While Hollis bnefed his men inside an unused warehouse, Pitt, Gunn and Giordino helped Findley sculpt a diorama of Santa Inez Island from mud scooped beside the airport's runway on an old Ping-Pong table. He refreshed his memory of what he'd forgottened from Pitts nautical chart.
He hardened the miniature landscape with a portable heater and highlighted the features with cans of spray paint scrounged by one of Hollis's men. Gray for the rocky terrain, white for the snow and ice of the glacier. He even molded a scale model of the Lady Flamborough and set it at the foot of the glacier. At last he stood back and admired his handiwork.
'That,' he said confidently, 'is Santa Inez.'
Hollis interrupted his briefing and gathered his men around the table.
Everyone stared at the diorama in thoughtful silence for a few moments.
The island was shaped like the center piece of a jigsaw puzzle produced by a drunken cutter. The ragged shoreline was a mine of spurs and hooks, gashed by barbed fjords and gnarled bays. It backed on the Straits of MageUan to the east and faced the Pacific Ocean to the west.
It was dead ground, not fit for a graveyard, 65 kilometers wide by 95
kilometers in length and peaked by Mount Wharton 1,320 meters high.
Beaches and flat ground were virtually nonexistent. The lowlying mountains rose like rockbound ships, their steep slopes falling in forlorn agony to meet the cold sea.
The ancient glacier sat like a saddle on the island. It was the result of cold and overcast summers that did not melt the ice. Barren escarpments of solid rock flanked the frigid mass, standing in sullen silence as the glacier gouged its irresistible passage toward the water where it calved section after section the way a butcher slices sausage.
Few areas of the world were more hostile to man. The entire island chain of the Magellans was uninhabited by permanent settlers. Through the centuries, men had come and gone leaving behind wrathful names like Break Neck Peninsula, Deceit Island, Calamity Bay, Desolation Isle and Port Famine. It was a hard place. The only vegetation that survived was stunted, twisted evergreens that merged with kind of a scrubby heath.
Findley swept a hand over the model. 'Imagine a barren landscape with snow at the higher altitudes, and you pretty much get a picture of the real thing.'
Hollis nodded. 'Thank you, Mr. Findley. We're much obliged.'
'Glad to help.'
'All right, let's get down to the hard facts. Major Dillenger will lead the
