“I have a hard time believing it was worth a man’s life,” Juan muttered.

“In the great scheme of things it probably wasn’t, but your guy knew the price going in. You all do.”

Juan wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical discussion with his former case officer, so he asked, “What’s this delicate situation you mentioned?”

Overholt told the Chairman everything he knew about the situation at the Wilson/George Station, including what he’d learned from Tom Parker.

When he finished, Juan said, “So it could be this guy Dangle—”

“Gangle,” Lang corrected.

“Gangle could have gone off the deep end and killed the others?”

“It’s entirely possible, although Dr. Parker’s assessment from what he’d learned from the astronaut is this Gangle kid was just a loner with a chip on his shoulder.”

“Lang, those are always the ones who take axes to their families or shoot sniper rifles from bell towers.”

“Well, yes. But still we need to keep in mind that there’s an Argentine base less than thirty miles away. As you know, they’ve been making noise about how all of the Antarctic Peninsula is their sovereign territory. What if this is the first play in a larger operation? There are other bases down there. The Norwegians, Chileans, the Brits. They could be next.”

“Or it could be a deranged kid who’s spent too much time on the ice,” Juan said.

“The problem is, we won’t have a definite answer for the better part of a week, maybe longer if the weather doesn’t clear. If this is an Argentine play, then by the time we figure it out it will be too late.”

“So you want us to head south and investigate what happened at Wilson/George.”

“Exactly. It should be a milk run. A quick dash down, a little look-see, and then tell old Uncle Langston that he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

“We’ll do it, of course, but you have to know that Max and I aren’t going.”

“You have something planned?”

Cabrillo explained about discovering the Flying Dutchman and his desire to tell the families of the blimp’s crew what had happened to their loved ones a half century ago.

“I think that’s a tremendous idea,” Lang boomed. “Just the thing you need to gain a little perspective. The crew won’t need you two on this mission anyway. Max frets too much, and you should get out of your head for a while.”

“Oh, before I forget, my weapons guy said there’s a chance that satellite was shot down.”

“Come again?”

“You heard me. There are a couple of dings on the power cell’s outer casing. Two correspond to a pair of bullet strikes, but the third is a mystery. You need to have that thing gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”