Soon they had exposed most of a circular stainless-steel hatch, its frame almost flush with the rock of the hillside. There was no lock. Intruder prevention depended on effective concealment rather than access control, for mechanical rods and electromagnetics were prone to climatic damage and might very well fail to release.

It took fifteen minutes before the manhole-sized entry hatch was completely dug out. The leader stood to one side and waved for a couple of the men to pull it open. Then he took an electric krypton lantern out of his bag and strode through the passageway, the lantern held forward, the rest of the group filing in at his heels.

The small, cavelike storage depot measured five yards in depth, somewhat less in width. Shielded from wind chill, insulated from outside temperature extremes by the snow and ice cover, its corrugated steel liner was cold enough to patch with frost from the vapor of their exhalations, but still perhaps twenty degrees warmer than ground level.

The leader paused a few feet past the entry, swept his lantern from side to side, and steadied it to his right as his men hastened to pull a large protective covering from over a low wooden platform that spanned the length of the shallow tunnel.

Within moments the covering lay crumpled around the skis and treads of a half-dozen white snowmobiles. Dressed with flared aerodynamic windshields, cargo racks, and saddle bags, the swift, agile little vehicles sat atop the platform in a neat row.

The leader turned to the opposite side of the tunnel and saw a wooden skid stacked with rubber fuel bladders by the bright glow of his lamp. These, he knew, contained a premixture of high-octane gasoline and two-stroke oil formulated for cold-weather running.

He grunted. Ja, gut. Alles ist burzüglich.

Everything was indeed as he’d been told it would be.

Satisfied, he looked back at his men, then used the torch’s bright shafting beam to point toward the snowmobiles. They had a long distance to travel across the ice plate, and no time at all to waste.

“Bring them down and put some fuel in their tanks—hurry!” he said, still speaking Swiss German. “I want to return to the others, unpack the weapons and explosives, and strike out for our target within the hour.”

Cold Corners Base, Antarctica

“Diamond dust,” Megan Breen said. “Something to see, isn’t it?”

Nimec looked where she was pointing. Arcs of iridescent color chased across a glittery veil of ice crystals wavering above the helipad despite a total absence of clouds. In the far distance, sun dogs teased the horizon at opposite sides of a solar halo, the circle’s violet inner rim bleeding away into faint rainbow bands of green, yellow, tangerine, and primary red.

“It’s easy to appreciate,” he said. “Harder to enjoy under the circumstances.”