“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.

Bull Pass

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.

“Mein Gott,” Langern said behind him, staring with awe at the bruisy radiance. “Was ist das?”

Burkhart turned to him.

“Der Gott des Krieges,” he said. “Kann sein, eh?”

Langern’s eyes remained wide behind his goggles.

“Ja, mein Herr,” he said. “Kann sein.”

Burkhart was silent. Then he tapped Langern’s arm to stir him from his rapt absorption, motioning down at the pass.

“Hier müssen alle durchhalten,” he said. “Verstehen?”

“Ja,” Langern said, nodding to show he indeed understood.

This bitter windswept terrace was where they would position themselves for the enemy’s arrival.

Cold Corners Base

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.