Nimec was perusing the arch from where he stood. Although a wide path had been dozed in front of the entrance, its roof and sides were inundated with a thick caking of snow.

He searched his recollection.

“Just curious,” he said. “Maybe there aren’t any marauding hill tribes about to come after your soup and jerky sticks, but you ever get any security systems functional out here?”

Waylon shook his head. “We considered all kinds of monitoring and access-control equipment to stay in line with normal UpLink requirements. Experimented with swipe-card scanners, biometrics, even robot hedgehogs . . . didn’t have much luck in these conditions.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember the requisitions totaling up to a fortune,” Nimec said. “The techies kept trying to modify the stuff. Weather-harden it.”

“And every one of those req slips probably had my name on them,” Waylon said. “No matter what we did to enhance their shieldings, the electronics would go down as fast as we got them fixed.” He pointed a gloved hand at a spot above the arch’s open entry door. “There’re some surveillance cams hidden up top. IR thermography, one-eighty-degree rotation, recessed so they’re protected from some of the elements. On a good day they work all right. But it takes constant maintenance to keep frozen precip off the gimbals and lenses.”

Nimec grunted. The wind boomed around him, a gust almost lifting him off his feet. He was starting to desperately miss the 4x4’s heated interior.

“Okay,” he said in a loud voice. “What’s next?”

Waylon shrugged.

“Your call, sir,” he said. “I can walk you inside the arch for a look around, or drive us on over to the water-desalinization and treatment dome.”

Nimec looked at their waiting vehicle, decided in about a second.

“Let’s roll,” he said.

Near Cold Corners Base, Victoria Land

Burkhart crouched under the tent fly as he entered from outside and quickly zippered shut the double door flaps. Here in the upper elevations, the pregnant clouds had begun to spill their frozen moisture, flinging drops of sleet and snow hard into the wind.

Squatted over their open crates of weapons, his men turned to look at him, the cloth sides of the tent thumping and rattling around them.

He flipped off his balaclava, pressed a warm hand against the searing birthmark on his cheek.

“Get ready,” he said. “It’s time to strike.”

Elata paced the length of the small room, trying to contain his energy. He’d been here, in this room, in this small stinking village near the Italian border, for five days now, five overlong and crushing days, waiting. He needed this to end, and soon.