Darting through the tempest on his snowmobile, leading the surviving members of his team back toward their sheltered camp, Burkhart weighed his operation’s failures against its successes and tried to determine on which side the balance fell.

His assigned goal had been met; he had ravaged the desalinization plant. Perhaps not irreparably destroyed it, but that was never the plan. His blow to the UpLink base never had been meant to be mortal, just sufficiently forceful to make its tenants concentrate on nursing their open wounds.

That was all on one side of the scale. But what about the other?

He had lost four of his best. He had exposed himself, revealed what was supposed to have looked like an accident to be a manned attack . . . and as a consequence assured that UpLink would have its hounds out in force once the storm relaxed its grip on the coast.

It would be acceptable to Burkhart if they only came after him—he was a professional whose occupation demanded putting his neck on the line. What was more significant, however, was that he had opened a path to their learning the truth about the whole Bull Pass endeavor.

Where did the balance of success and failure fall?

He knew the answer, knew he could not hide from it.

Its opprobrious weight hung heavy as a mountain on his back.

SEVENTEEN - COLD CORNERS BASE, ANTARCTICA MARCH 15, 2002

SEVENTEEN

COLD CORNERS BASE, ANTARCTICA MARCH 15, 2002

PETE NIMEC’S FACE BETRAYED NO EMOTION AS HE looked down at the five zippered white body bags laid out on the floor of the utilidor. The line of four to his right bore no name tags. A fifth, set apart from them, did.

It read: Sprague, Wm. Sword ID: 45734-CC12.

Disturbing as it had been for the men to bring their casualties here prior to evac, it had made undeniable, practical sense. And in Antarctica practical considerations were always the last word.

Like all of the base’s subsurface tunnels, the utilidor was twice as cold as a morgue refrigerator compartment, which would be typically kept at 40° Fahrenheit. Indeed, its temperature more closely matched that of the super-freezers used in cryogenic preservation banks, making it ideal for its current purpose.

Consistent with USAP and Antarctic Treaty rules, Cold Corners’ strict waste-disposal procedures required that all refuse generated by human habitation, including byproducts of laboratory experiments, effused motor oil and gasoline, food scraps, paper wrappers, plastic and metal throwaway containers, bodily excreta, sanitary napkins, condoms, contraceptive sponges, and any other rubbish that could not be recycled on-site, was to be either compacted and baled, or sealed away in large drums for transport off the continent. Some of the retrograde—as prepped waste is called on the ice—was then repositoried near the airfield in rows of milvans, trailerlike metal storage containers manufactured for loading aboard military cargo ships.