“Sir,” he said after a while. “We’re reaching the notch.” His flight helmet dipped downward. “See it down there?”

Down dere.

Nimec’s eyes traced the pass seaming its way between jagged mountain slopes, saw the dark shark’s-tooth crosscut coming up fast.

He nodded. “The intercom working?”

Smith reached for a switch, and static burst loudly into the cabin.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, and flicked off the com.

Nimec started unstrapping himself from his seat.

“Keep her steady,” he said. “I’m going back to talk to Rice while my vocal cords can still transmit.”

Bull Pass

Outside the tunnel entrance on the notch’s spiny eastern shoulder, Langern thumbed off his radio handset, and then stood pensive and silent under the ribboning polar lights. He had scarcely spotted the helo through his binoculars before attempting to contact Burkhart, but all he had gotten from the handset was a senseless bark of static.

It was the same signal breakup he had received when he’d hailed Koenig on the western side of the notch, and Reymann’s squad at the far end of the pass.

Meanwhile, the Bell helo was close enough now for its UpLink markings to be seen with the unaided eye.

Zum Teufel mit ihnen, he thought. Zum Teufel mit dem ganzen verfluchten Land.

To the Devil with them. With this whole accursed land.

He turned toward the other men waiting on the crest with him, ordered them to stand to arms.

From this point forward they would be on their own.

The Sikorsky helicopter designated Chinstrap One after the ubiquitous chinstrap penguins of the peninsula had lowered its own “strap” of ATVs at the intersection of Bull Pass and McKelvey Valley—or the point where the shank of the valley system anchor would be seen to meet its ring end on a map. The pass walls were at their widest distance apart here, and katabatics weren’t too bothersome a factor for the bird’s pilot.

This was only one of the reasons the site was chosen for the linkup with Ron Waylon and his group. The other was because of its coordination with the separate rendezvous Sam Cruz’s team was making elsewhere.

Dropped by the UpLink tail ship on its second hop, Waylon’s team was waiting to receive the sling-load as Chinstrap One came in over the ridge and bellied low above their heads.

They took less than five minutes to get it unhooked and derigged.

Waylon stared up at the S-76, waved to the men in the cockpit as it lifted away into a sky swirling with brilliant color.

“Don’t know if I’d want to be heading back up into that weirdness,” said the man beside Waylon.

Waylon looked at him.

“Don’t know if he’d want to be going where we are either,” Waylon said.

Then he turned toward the ATVs and gestured for the others to mount up.