47
   Gabrielle Ashe stormed out of Marjorie Tench’s office and practically knocked over a secretary in doing so. Mortified, all Gabrielle could see were the photographs—images—arms and legs intertwined. Faces filled with ecstasy.
   Gabrielle had no idea how the photos had been taken, but she knew damn well they were real. They had been taken in Senator Sexton’s office and seemed to have been shot from above as if by hidden camera. God help me. One of the photos showed Gabrielle and Sexton having sex directly on top of the senator’s desk, their bodies sprawled across a scatter of official-looking documents.
   Marjorie Tench caught up with Gabrielle outside the Map Room. Tench was carrying the red envelope of photos. “I assume from your reaction that you believe these photos are authentic?” The President’s senior adviser actually looked like she was having a good time. “I’m hoping they persuade you that our other data is accurate as well. They came from the same source.”
   Gabrielle felt her entire body flushing as she marched down the hall. Where the hell is the exit?
   Tench’s gangly legs had no trouble keeping up. “Senator Sexton swore to the world that you two are platonic associates. His televised statement was actually quite convincing.” Tench motioned smugly over her shoulder. “In fact, I have a tape in my office if you’d like to refresh your memory?”
   Gabrielle needed no refresher. She remembered the press conference all too well. Sexton’s denial was as adamant as it was heartfelt.
   “It’s unfortunate,” Tench said, sounding not at all disappointed, “but Senator Sexton looked the American people in the eye and told a bald-faced lie. The public has a right to know. And they will know. I’ll see to it personally. The only question now is how the public finds out. We believe it’s best coming from you.”
   Gabrielle was stunned. “You really think I’m going to help lynch my own candidate?”
   Tench’s face hardened. “I am trying to take the high ground here, Gabrielle. I’m giving you a chance to save everyone a lot of embarrassment by holding your head high and telling the truth. All I need is a signed statement admitting your affair.”
   Gabrielle stopped short. “What!”
   “Of course. A signed statement gives us the leverage we need to deal with the senator quietly, sparing the country this ugly mess. My offer is simple: Sign a statement for me, and these photos never need to see the light of day.”
   “You want a statement?”
   “Technically, I would need an affidavit, but we have a notary here in the building who could—”
   “You’re crazy.” Gabrielle was walking again.
   Tench stayed at her side, sounding more angry now. “Senator Sexton is going down one way or another, Gabrielle, and I’m offering you a chance to get out of this without seeing your own naked ass in the morning paper! The President is a decent man and doesn’t want these photos publicized. If you just give me an affidavit and confess to the affair on your own terms, then all of us can retain a little dignity.”
   “I’m not for sale.”
   “Well, your candidate certainly is. He’s a dangerous man, and he’s breaking the law.”
   “He’s breaking the law? You’re the ones breaking into offices and taking illegal surveillance pictures! Ever heard of Watergate?”
   “We had nothing to do with gathering this dirt. These photos came from the same source as the SFF campaign-funding information. Someone’s been watching you two very closely.”
   Gabrielle tore past the security desk where she had gotten her security badge. She ripped off the badge and tossed it to the wide-eyed guard. Tench was still on her tail.
   “You’ll need to decide fast, Ms. Ashe,” Tench said as they neared the exit. “Either bring me an affidavit admitting you slept with the senator, or at eight o’clock tonight, the president will be forced to go public with everything—Sexton’s financial dealings, the photos of you, the works. And believe me, when the public sees that you stood idly by and let Sexton lie about your relationship, you’ll go down in flames right beside him.”
   Gabrielle saw the door and headed for it.
   “On my desk by eight o’clock tonight, Gabrielle. Be smart.” Tench tossed her the folder of photographs on her way out. “Keep them, sweetie. We’ve got plenty more.”

 48
   Rachel Sexton felt a growing chill inside as she moved down the ice sheet into a deepening night. Disquieting images swirled in her mind—the meteorite, the phosphorescent plankton, the implications if Norah Mangor had made a mistake with the ice cores.
   A solid matrix of freshwater ice, Norah had argued, reminding them all that she had drilled cores all around the area as well as directly over the meteorite. If the glacier contained saltwater interstices filled with plankton, she would have seen them. Wouldn’t she? Nonetheless, Rachel’s intuition kept returning to the simplest solution.
   There are plankton frozen in this glacier.
   Ten minutes and four flares later, Rachel and the others were approximately 250 yards from the habisphere. Without warning, Norah stopped short. “This is the spot,” she said, sounding like a water-witch diviner who had mystically sensed the perfect spot to drill a well.
   Rachel turned and glanced up the slope behind them. The habisphere had long since disappeared into the dim, moonlit night, but the line of flares was clearly visible, the farthest one twinkling reassuringly like a faint star. The flares were in a perfectly straight line, like a carefully calculated runway. Rachel was impressed with Norah’s skills.
   “Another reason we let the sled go first,” Norah called out when she saw Rachel admiring the line of flares. “The runners are straight. If we let gravity lead the sled and we don’t interfere, we’re guaranteed to travel in a straight line.”
   “Neat trick,” Tolland yelled. “Wish there were something like that for the open sea.”
   This IS the open sea, Rachel thought, picturing the ocean beneath them. For a split second, the most distant flame caught her attention. It had disappeared, as if the light had been blotted out by a passing form. A moment later, though, the light reappeared. Rachel felt a sudden uneasiness. “Norah,” she yelled over the wind, “did you say there were polar bears up here?”
   The glaciologist was preparing a final flare and either did not hear or was ignoring her.
   “Polar bears,” Tolland yelled, “eat seals. They only attack humans when we invade their space.”
   “But this is polar bear country, right?” Rachel could never remember which pole had bears and which had penguins.
   “Yeah,” Tolland shouted back. “Polar bears actually give the Arctic its name. Arktos is Greek for bear.”
   Terrific. Rachel gazed nervously into the dark.
   “Antarctica has no polar bears,” Tolland said. “So they call it Anti-arktos.”
   “Thanks, Mike,” Rachel yelled. “Enough talk of polar bears.”
   He laughed. “Right. Sorry.”
   Norah pressed a final flare into the snow. As before, the four of them were engulfed in a reddish glow, looking bloated in their black weather suits. Beyond the circle of light emanating from the flare, the rest of the world became totally invisible, a circular shroud of blackness engulfing them.
   As Rachel and the others looked on, Norah planted her feet and used careful overhand motions to reel the sled several yards back up the slope to where they were standing. Then, keeping the rope taut, she crouched and manually activated the sled’s talon brakes—four angled spikes that dug into the ice to keep the sled stationary. That done, she stood up and brushed herself off, the rope around her waist falling slack.
   “All right,” Norah shouted. “Time to go to work.”
   The glaciologist circled to the downwind end of the sled and began unfastening the butterfly eyelets holding the protective canvas over the gear. Rachel, feeling like she had been a little hard on Norah, moved to help by unfastening the rear of the flap.
   “Jesus, NO!” Norah yelled, her head snapping up. “Don’t ever do that!”
   Rachel recoiled, confused.
   “Never unfasten the upwind side!” Norah said. “You’ll create a wind sock! This sled would have taken off like an umbrella in a wind tunnel!”
   Rachel backed off. “I’m sorry. I...”
   She glared. “You and space boy shouldn’t be out here.”
   None of us should, Rachel thought.

* * *

   Amateurs, Norah seethed, cursing the administrator’s insistence on sending Corky and Sexton along. These clowns are going to get someone killed out here. The last thing Norah wanted right now was to play baby-sitter.
   “Mike,” she said, “I need help lifting the GPR off the sled.”
   Tolland helped her unpack the Ground Penetrating Radar and position it on the ice. The instrument looked like three miniature snowplow blades that had been affixed in parallel to an aluminum frame. The entire device was no more than a yard long and was connected by cables to a current attenuator and a marine battery on the sled.
   “That’s radar?” Corky asked, yelling over the wind.
   Norah nodded in silence. Ground Penetrating Radar was far more equipped to see brine ice than PODS was. The GPR transmitter sent pulses of electromagnetic energy through the ice, and the pulses bounced differently off substances of differing crystal structure. Pure freshwater froze in a flat, shingled lattice. However, seawater froze in more of a meshed or forked lattice on account of its sodium content, causing the GPR pulses to bounce back erratically, greatly diminishing the number of reflections.
   Norah powered up the machine. “I’ll be taking a kind of echo-location cross-sectional image of the ice sheet around the extraction pit,” she yelled. “The machine’s internal software will render a cross section of the glacier and then print it out. Any sea ice will register as a shadow.”
   “Printout?” Tolland looked surprised. “You can print out here?”
   Norah pointed to a cable from the GPR leading to a device still protected under the canopy. “No choice but to print. Computer screens use too much valuable battery power, so field glaciologists print data to heat-transfer printers. Colors aren’t brilliant, but laser toner clumps below neg twenty. Learned that the hard way in Alaska.”
   Norah asked everyone to stand on the downhill side of the GPR as she prepared to align the transmitter such that it would scan the area of the meteorite hole, almost three football fields away. But as Norah looked back through the night in the general direction from which they had come, she couldn’t see a damn thing. “Mike, I need to align the GPR transmitter with the meteorite site, but this flare has me blinded. I’m going back up the slope just enough to get out of the light. I’ll hold my arms in line with the flares, and you adjust the alignment on the GPR.”
   Tolland nodded, kneeling down beside the radar device.
   Norah stamped her crampons into the ice and leaned forward against the wind as she moved up the incline toward the habisphere. The katabatic today was much stronger than she’d imagined, and she sensed a storm coming in. It didn’t matter. They would be done here in a matter of minutes. They’ll see I’m right. Norah clomped twenty yards back toward the habisphere. She reached the edge of the darkness just as the belay rope went taut.
   Norah looked back up the glacier. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the line of flares slowly came into view several degrees to her left. She shifted her position until she was perfectly lined up with them. Then she held her arms out like a compass, turning her body, indicating the exact vector. “I’m in line with them now!” she yelled.
   Tolland adjusted the GPR device and waved. “All set!”
   Norah took a final look up the incline, grateful for the illuminated pathway home. As she looked out, though, something odd occurred. For an instant, one of the nearest flares entirely disappeared from view. Before Norah could worry that it was dying out, the flare reappeared. If Norah didn’t know better, she would assume something had passed between the flare and her location. Certainly nobody else was out here... unless of course the administrator had started to feel guilty and sent a NASA team out after them. Somehow Norah doubted it. Probably nothing, she decided. A gust of wind had momentarily killed the flame.
   Norah returned to the GPR. “All lined up?”
   Tolland shrugged. “I think so.”
   Norah went over to the control device on the sled and pressed a button. A sharp buzz emanated from the GPR and then stopped. “Okay,” she said. “Done.”
   “That’s it?” Corky said.
   “All the work is in setup. The actual shot takes only a second.”
   Onboard the sled, the heat-transfer printer had already begun to hum and click. The printer was enclosed in a clear plastic covering and was slowly ejecting a heavy, curled paper. Norah waited until the device had completed printing, and then she reached up under the plastic and removed the printout. They’ll see, she thought, carrying the printout over to the flare so that everyone could see it. There won’t be any saltwater.
   Everyone gathered around as Norah stood over the flare, clutching the printout tightly in her gloves. She took a deep breath and uncurled the paper to examine the data. The image on the paper made her recoil in horror.
   “Oh, God!” Norah stared, unable to believe what she was looking at. As expected, the printout revealed a clear cross section of the water-filled meteorite shaft. But what Norah had never expected to see was the hazy grayish outline of a humanoid form floating halfway down the shaft. Her blood turned to ice. “Oh God... there’s a body in the extraction pit.”
   Everyone stared in stunned silence.
   The ghostlike body was floating head down in the narrow shaft. Billowing around the corpse like some sort of cape was an eerie shroudlike aura. Norah now realized what the aura was. The GPR had captured a faint trace of the victim’s heavy coat, what could only be a familiar, long, dense camel hair.
   “It’s... Ming,” she said in a whisper. “He must have slipped....”
   Norah Mangor never imagined that seeing Ming’s body in the extraction pit would be the lesser of the two shocks the printout would reveal, but as her eyes traced downward in the shaft, she saw something else.
   The ice beneath the extraction shaft...
   Norah stared. Her first thought was that something had gone wrong with the scan. Then, as she studied the image more closely, an unsettling realization began to grow, like the storm gathering around them. The paper’s edges flapped wildly in the wind as she turned and looked more intently at the printout.
   But... that’s impossible!
   Suddenly, the truth came crashing down. The realization felt like it was going to bury her. She forgot all about Ming.
   Norah now understood. The saltwater in the shaft! She fell to her knees in the snow beside the flare. She could barely breathe. Still clutching the paper in her hands, she began trembling.
   My God... it didn’t even occur to me.
   Then, with a sudden eruption of rage, she spun her head in the direction of the NASA habisphere. “You bastards!” she screamed, her voice trailing off in the wind. “You goddamned bastards!”

* * *

   In the darkness, only fifty yards away, Delta-One held his CrypTalk device to his mouth and spoke only two words to his controller. “They know.”

 49
   Norah Mangor was still kneeling on the ice when the bewildered Michael Tolland pulled the Ground Penetrating Radar’s printout from her trembling hands. Shaken from seeing the floating body of Ming, Tolland tried to gather his thoughts and decipher the image before him.
   He saw the cross section of the meteorite shaft descending from the surface down to two hundred feet into the ice. He saw Ming’s body floating in the shaft. Tolland’s eyes drifted lower now, and he sensed something was amiss. Directly beneath the extraction shaft, a dark column of sea ice extended downward to the open ocean below. The vertical pillar of saltwater ice was massive—the same diameter as the shaft.
   “My God!” Rachel yelled, looking over Tolland’s shoulder. “It looks like the meteorite shaft continues all the way through the ice shelf into the ocean!”
   Tolland stood transfixed, his brain unable to accept what he knew to be the only logical explanation. Corky looked equally alarmed.
   Norah shouted, “Someone drilled up under the shelf!” Her eyes were wild with rage. “Someone intentionally inserted that rock from underneath the ice!”
   Although the idealist in Tolland wanted to reject Norah’s words, the scientist in him knew she could easily be right. The Milne Ice Shelf was floating over the ocean with plenty of clearance for a submersible. Because everything weighed significantly less underwater, even a small submersible not much bigger than Tolland’s one-man research Triton easily could have transported the meteorite in its payload arms. The sub could have approached from the ocean, submerged beneath the ice shelf, and drilled upward into the ice. Then, it could have used an extending payload arm or inflatable balloons to push the meteorite up into the shaft. Once the meteorite was in place, the ocean water that had risen into the shaft behind the meteorite would begin to freeze. As soon as the shaft closed enough to hold the meteorite in place, the sub could retract its arm and disappear, leaving Mother Nature to seal the remainder of the tunnel and erase all traces of the deception.
   “But why?” Rachel demanded, taking the printout from Tolland and studying it. “Why would someone do that? Are you sure your GPR is working?”
   “Of course, I’m sure! And the printout perfectly explains the presence of phosphorescent bacteria in the water!”
   Tolland had to admit, Norah’s logic was chillingly sound. Phosphorescent dinoflagellates would have followed instinct and swum upward into the meteorite shaft, becoming trapped just beneath the meteorite and freezing into the ice. Later, when Norah heated the meteorite, the ice directly beneath would have melted, releasing the plankton. Again, they would swim upward, this time reaching the surface inside the habisphere, where they would eventually die for lack of saltwater.
   “This is crazy!” Corky yelled. “NASA has a meteorite with extraterrestrial fossils in it. Why would they care where it’s found? Why would they go to the trouble to bury it under an ice shelf?”
   “Who the hell knows,” Norah fired back, “but GPR printouts don’t lie. We were tricked. That meteorite isn’t part of the Jungersol Fall. It was inserted in the ice recently. Within the last year, or the plankton would be dead!” She was already packing up her GPR gear on the sled and fastening it down. “We’ve to get back and tell someone! The President is about to go public with all the wrong data! NASA tricked him!”
   “Wait a minute!” Rachel yelled. “We should at least run another scan to make sure. None of this makes sense. Who will believe it?”
   “Everyone,” Norah said, preparing her sled. “When I march into the habisphere and drill another core sample out of the bottom of the meteorite shaft and it comes up as saltwater ice, I guarantee you everyone will believe this!”
   Norah disengaged the brakes on the equipment sled, redirected it toward the habisphere, and started back up the slope, digging her crampons into the ice and pulling the sled behind her with surprising ease. She was a woman on a mission.
   “Let’s go!” Norah shouted, pulling the tethered group along as she headed toward the perimeter of the illuminated circle. “I don’t know what NASA’s up to here, but I sure as hell don’t appreciate being used as a pawn for their—”
   Norah Mangor’s neck snapped back as if she’d been rammed in the forehead by some invisible force. She let out a guttural gasp of pain, wavered, and collapsed backward onto the ice. Almost instantly, Corky let out a cry and spun around as if his shoulder had been propelled backward. He fell to the ice, writhing in pain.

* * *

   Rachel immediately forgot all about the printout in her hand, Ming, the meteorite, and the bizarre tunnel beneath the ice. She had just felt a small projectile graze her ear, barely missing her temple. Instinctively, she dropped to her knees, yanking Tolland down with her.
   “What’s going on!” Tolland screamed.
   A hailstorm was all Rachel could imagine—balls of ice blowing down off the glacier—and yet from the force with which Corky and Norah had just been hit, Rachel knew the hailstones would have to be moving at hundreds of miles an hour. Eerily, the sudden barrage of marble-sized objects seemed now to focus on Rachel and Tolland, pelting all around them, sending up plumes of exploding ice. Rachel rolled onto her stomach, dug her crampon’s toe spikes into the ice, and launched toward the only cover available. The sled. Tolland arrived a moment later, scrambling and hunkering down beside her.
   Tolland looked out at Norah and Corky unprotected on the ice. “Pull them in with the tether!” he yelled, grabbing the rope and trying to pull.
   But the tether was wrapped around the sled.
   Rachel stuffed the printout in the Velcro pocket of her Mark IX suit, and scrambled on all fours toward the sled, trying to untangle the rope from the sled runners. Tolland was right behind her.
   The hailstones suddenly rained down in a barrage against the sled, as if Mother Nature had abandoned Corky and Norah and was taking direct aim at Rachel and Tolland. One of the projectiles slammed into the top of the sled tarp, partially embedding itself, and then bounced over, landing on the sleeve of Rachel’s coat.
   When Rachel saw it, she froze. In an instant, the bewilderment she had been feeling turned to terror. These “hailstones” were man-made. The ball of ice on her sleeve was a flawlessly shaped spheroid the size of a large cherry. The surface was polished and smooth, marred only by a linear seam around the circumference, like an old-fashioned lead musket ball, machined in a press. The globular pellets were, without a doubt, man-made.
   Ice bullets...
   As someone with military clearance, Rachel was well acquainted with the new experimental “IM” weaponry—Improvised Munitions—snow rifles that compacted snow into ice pellets, desert rifles that melted sand into glass projectiles, water-based firearms that shot pulses of liquid water with such force that they could break bones. Improvised Munitions weaponry had an enormous advantage over conventional weapons because IM weapons used available resources and literally manufactured munitions on the spot, providing soldiers unlimited rounds without their having to carry heavy conventional bullets. The ice balls being fired at them now, Rachel knew, were being compressed “on demand” from snow fed into the butt of the rifle.
   As was often the case in the intelligence world, the more one knew, the more frightening a scenario became. This moment was no exception. Rachel would have preferred blissful ignorance, but her knowledge of IM weaponry instantly led her to a sole chilling conclusion: They were being attacked by some kind of U.S. Special Ops force, the only forces in the country currently cleared to use these experimental IM weapons in the field.
   The presence of a military covert operations unit brought with it a second, even more terrifying realization: The probability of surviving this attack was close to zero.
   The morbid thought was terminated as one of the ice pellets found an opening and came screaming through the wall of gear on the sled, colliding with her stomach. Even in her padded Mark IX suit, Rachel felt like an invisible prizefighter had just gut-punched her. Stars began to dance around the periphery of her vision, and she teetered backward, grabbing gear on the sled for balance. Michael Tolland dropped Norah’s tether and lunged to support Rachel, but he arrived too late. Rachel fell backward, pulling a pile of equipment with her. She and Tolland tumbled to the ice in a pile of electronic apparatus.
   “They’re... bullets...,” she gasped, the air momentarily crushed from her lungs. “Run!”

 50
   The Washington MetroRail subway now leaving Federal Triangle station could not speed away from the White House fast enough for Gabrielle Ashe. She sat rigid in a deserted corner of the train as darkened shapes tore past outside in a blur. Marjorie Tench’s big red envelope lay in Gabrielle’s lap, pressing down like a ten-ton weight.
   I’ve got to talk to Sexton! she thought, the train accelerating now in the direction of Sexton’s office building. Immediately!
   Now, in the dim, shifting light of the train, Gabrielle felt like she was enduring some kind of hallucinogenic drug trip. Muted lights whipped by overhead like slow-motion discotheque strobes. The ponderous tunnel rose on all sides like a deepening canyon.
   Tell me this is not happening.
   She gazed down at the envelope on her lap. Unclasping the flap, she reached inside and pulled out one of the photos. The internal lights of the train flickered for a moment, the harsh glare illuminating a shocking image—Sedgewick Sexton lying naked in his office, his gratified face turned perfectly toward the camera while Gabrielle’s dark form lay nude beside him.
   She shivered, rammed the photo back inside, and fumbled to reclasp the envelope.
   It’s over.
   As soon as the train exited the tunnel and climbed onto the aboveground tracks near L’Enfant Plaza, Gabrielle dug out her cellphone and called the senator’s private cellular number. His voice mail answered. Puzzled, she phoned the senator’s office. The secretary answered.
   “It’s Gabrielle. Is he in?”
   The secretary sounded peeved. “Where have you been? He was looking for you.”
   “I had a meeting that ran long. I need to talk to him right away.”
   “You’ll have to wait till morning. He’s at Westbrooke.”
   Westbrooke Place Luxury Apartments was the building where Sexton kept his D.C. residence. “He’s not picking up his private line,” Gabrielle said.
   “He blocked off tonight as a P.E.,” the secretary reminded. “He left early.”
   Gabrielle scowled. Personal Event. In all the excitement, she’d forgotten Sexton had scheduled himself a night alone at home. He was very particular about not being disturbed during his P.E. blocks. Bang on my door only if the building is on fire, he would say. Other than that, it can wait until morning. Gabrielle decided Sexton’s building was definitely on fire. “I need you to reach him for me.”
   “Impossible.”
   “This is serious, I really—”
   “No, I mean literally impossible. He left his pager on my desk on his way out and told me he was not to be disturbed all night. He was adamant.” She paused. “More so than usual.”
   Shit. “Okay, thanks.” Gabrielle hung up.
   “L’Enfant Plaza,” a recording announced in the subway car. “Connection all stations.”
   Closing her eyes, Gabrielle tried to clear her mind, but devastating images rushed in... the lurid photos of herself and the senator... the pile of documents alleging Sexton was taking bribes. Gabrielle could still hear Tench’s raspy demands. Do the right thing. Sign the affidavit. Admit the affair.
   As the train screeched into the station, Gabrielle forced herself to imagine what the senator would do if the photos hit the presses. The first thing to pop in her mind both shocked and shamed her.
   Sexton would lie.
   Was this truly her first instinct regarding her candidate?
   Yes. He would lie... brilliantly.
   If these photos hit the media without Gabrielle’s having admitted the affair, the senator would simply claim the photos were a cruel forgery. This was the age of digital photo editing; anyone who had ever been on-line had seen the flawlessly retouched spoof photographs of celebrities’ heads digitally melded onto other people’s bodies, often those of porn stars engaged in lewd acts. Gabrielle had already witnessed the senator’s ability to look into a television camera and lie convincingly about their affair; she had no doubt he could persuade the world these photos were a lame attempt to derail his career. Sexton would lash out with indignant outrage, perhaps even insinuate that the President himself had ordered the forgery.
   No wonder the White House hasn’t gone public. The photos, Gabrielle realized, could backfire just like the initial drudge. As vivid as the pictures seemed, they were totally inconclusive.
   Gabrielle felt a sudden surge of hope.
   The White House can’t prove any of this is real!
   Tench’s powerplay on Gabrielle had been ruthless in its simplicity: Admit your affair or watch Sexton go to jail. Suddenly it made perfect sense. The White House needed Gabrielle to admit the affair, or the photos were worthless. A sudden glimmer of confidence brightened her mood.
   As the train sat idling and the doors slid open, another distant door seemed to open in Gabrielle’s mind, revealing an abrupt and heartening possibility.
   Maybe everything Tench told me about the bribery was a lie.
   After all, what had Gabrielle really seen? Yet again, nothing conclusive—some Xeroxed bank documents, a grainy photo of Sexton in a garage. All of it potentially counterfeit. Tench cunningly could have showed Gabrielle bogus financial records in the same sitting as the genuine sex photos, hoping Gabrielle would accept the entire package as true. It was called “authentication by association,” and politicians used it all the time to sell dubious concepts.
   Sexton is innocent, Gabrielle told herself. The White House was desperate, and they had decided to take a wild gamble on scaring Gabrielle into going public about the affair. They needed Gabrielle to desert Sexton publicly—scandalously. Get out while you can, Tench had told her. You have until eight o’clock tonight. The ultimate pressure sales job. All of it fits, she thought.
   Except one thing...
   The only confusing piece of the puzzle was that Tench had been sending Gabrielle anti-NASA e-mails. This certainly suggested NASA really did want Sexton to solidify his anti-NASA stance so they could use it against him. Or did it? Gabrielle realized that even the e-mails had a perfectly logical explanation.
   What if the e-mails were not really from Tench?
   It was possible Tench caught a traitor on staff sending Gabrielle data, fired that person, and then stepped in and e-mailed the final message herself, calling Gabrielle in for a meeting. Tench could have pretended she leaked all the NASA data on purpose—to set Gabrielle up.
   The subway hydraulics hissed now in L’Enfant Plaza, the doors preparing to close.
   Gabrielle stared out at the platform, her mind racing. She had no idea if her suspicions were making any sense or if they were just wishful thinking, but whatever the hell was going on, she knew she had to talk to the senator right away—P.E. night or not.
   Clutching the envelope of photographs, Gabrielle hurried off the train just as the doors hissed shut. She had a new destination.
   Westbrooke Place Apartments.

 51
   Fight or flight.
   As a biologist, Tolland knew that vast physiological changes occurred when an organism sensed danger. Adrenaline flooded the cerebral cortex, jolting the heart rate and commanding the brain to make the oldest and most intuitive of all biological decisions—whether to do battle or flee.
   Tolland’s instinct told him to flee, and yet reason reminded him he was still tethered to Norah Mangor. There was nowhere to flee anyway. The only cover for miles was the habisphere, and the attackers, whoever the hell they were, had positioned themselves high on the glacier and cut off that option. Behind him, the wide open sheet of ice fanned out into a two-mile-long plain that terminated in a sheer drop to a frigid sea. Flight in that direction meant death by exposure. The practical barriers to fleeing notwithstanding, Tolland knew he could not possibly leave the others. Norah and Corky were still out in the open, tethered to Rachel and Tolland.
   Tolland stayed down near Rachel as the ice pellets continued to slam into the side of the toppled equipment sled. He pillaged the strewn contents, searching for a weapon, a flare gun, a radio... anything.
   “Run!” Rachel yelled, her breathing still strained.
   Then, oddly, the hailstorm of ice bullets abruptly stopped. Even in the pounding wind, the night felt suddenly calm... as if a storm had let up unexpectedly.
   It was then, peering cautiously around the sled, that Tolland witnessed one of the most chilling sights he had ever seen.
   Gliding effortlessly out of the darkened perimeter into the light, three ghostly figures emerged, coasting silently in on skis. The figures wore full white weather suits. They carried no ski poles but rather large rifles that looked like no guns Tolland had ever seen. Their skis were bizarre as well, futuristic and short, more like elongated Rollerblades than skis.
   Calmly, as if knowing they had already won this battle, the figures coasted to a stop beside their closest victim—the unconscious Norah Mangor. Tolland rose shakily to his knees and peered over the sled at the attackers. The visitors stared back at him through eerie electronic goggles. They were apparently uninterested.
   At least for the moment.

* * *

   Delta-One felt no remorse as he stared down at the woman lying unconscious on the ice before him. He had been trained to carry out orders, not to question motives.
   The woman was wearing a thick, black, thermal suit and had a welt on the side of her face. Her breathing was short and labored. One of the IM ice rifles had found its mark and knocked her unconscious.
   Now it was time to finish the job.
   As Delta-One knelt down beside the oblivious woman, his teammates trained their rifles on the other targets—one on the small, unconscious man lying on the ice nearby, and one on the overturned sled where the two other victims were hiding. Although his men easily could have moved in to finish the job, the remaining three victims were unarmed and had nowhere to run. Rushing to finish them all off at once was careless. Never disperse your focus unless absolutely necessary. Face one adversary at a time. Exactly as they had been trained, the Delta Force would kill these people one at a time. The magic, however, was that they would leave no trace to suggest how they had died.
   Crouched beside the unconscious woman, Delta-One removed his thermal gloves and scooped up a handful of snow. Packing the snow, he opened the woman’s mouth and began stuffing it down her throat. He filled her entire mouth, ramming the snow as deep as he could down her windpipe. She would be dead within three minutes.
   This technique, invented by the Russian mafia, was called the byelaya smert —white death. This victim would suffocate long before the snow in her throat melted. Once dead, however, her body would stay warm long enough to dissolve the blockage. Even if foul play were suspected, no murder weapon or evidence of violence would be apparent immediately. Eventually someone might figure it out, but it would buy them time. The ice bullets would fade into the environment, buried in the snow, and the welt on this woman’s head would look like she’d taken a nasty spill on the ice—not surprising in these gale force winds.
   The other three people would be incapacitated and killed in much the same way. Then Delta-One would load all of them on the sled, drag them several hundred yards off course, reattach their belay lines and arrange the bodies. Hours from now, the four of them would be found frozen in the snow, apparent victims of overexposure and hypothermia. Those who discovered them would be puzzled what they were doing off course, but nobody would be surprised that they were dead. After all, their flares had burned out, the weather was perilous, and getting lost on the Milne Ice Shelf could bring death in a hurry.
   Delta-One had now finished packing snow down the woman’s throat. Before turning his attention to the others, Delta-One unhooked the woman’s belay harness. He could reconnect it later, but at the moment, he did not want the two people behind the sled getting ideas about pulling his victim to safety.

* * *

   Michael Tolland had just witnessed a murderous act more bizarre than his darkest mind could imagine. Having cut Norah Mangor free, the three attackers were turning their attention to Corky.
   I’ve got to do something!
   Corky had come to and was moaning, trying to sit up, but one of the soldiers pushed him back down on his back, straddled him, and pinned Corky’s arms to the ice by kneeling on them. Corky let out a cry of pain that was instantly swallowed up by the raging wind.
   In a kind of demented terror, Tolland tore through the scattered contents of the overturned sled. There must be something here! A weapon! Something! All he saw was diagnostic ice gear, most of it smashed beyond recognition by the ice pellets. Beside him, Rachel groggily tried to sit up, using her ice ax to prop herself up. “Run... Mike...”
   Tolland eyed the ax that was strapped to Rachel’s wrist. It could be a weapon. Sort of. Tolland wondered what his chances were attacking three armed men with a tiny ax.
   Suicide.
   As Rachel rolled and sat up, Tolland spied something behind her. A bulky vinyl bag. Praying against fate that it contained a flare gun or radio, he clambered past her and grabbed the bag. Inside he found a large, neatly folded sheet of Mylar fabric. Worthless. Tolland had something similar on his research ship. It was a small weather balloon, designed to carry payloads of observational weather gear not much heavier than a personal computer. Norah’s balloon would be no help here, particularly without a helium tank.
   With the growing sounds of Corky’s struggle, Tolland felt a helpless sensation he had not felt in years. Total despair. Total loss. Like the clichй of one’s life passing before one’s eyes before death, Tolland’s mind flashed unexpectedly through long forgotten childhood images. For an instant he was sailing in San Pedro, learning the age-old sailor’s pastime of spinnaker-flying—hanging on a knotted rope, suspended over the ocean, plunging laughing into the water, rising and falling like a kid hanging on a belfry rope, his fate determined by a billowing spinnaker sail and the whim of the ocean breeze.
   Tolland’s eyes instantly snapped back to the Mylar balloon in his hand, realizing that his mind had not been surrendering, but rather it had been trying to remind him of a solution! Spinnaker flying.
   Corky was still struggling against his captor as Tolland yanked open the protective bag around the balloon. Tolland had no illusions that this plan was anything other than a long shot, but he knew remaining here was certain death for all of them. He clutched the folded mass of Mylar. The payload clip warned:

CAUTION:
Not for Use in Winds over 10 Knots.

   The hell with that! Gripping it hard to keep it from unfurling, Tolland clambered over to Rachel, who was propped on her side. He could see the confusion in her eyes as he nestled close, yelling, “Hold this!”
   Tolland handed Rachel the folded pad of fabric and then used his free hands to slip the balloon’s payload clasp through one of the carabiners on his harness. Then, rolling on his side, he slipped the clasp through one of Rachel’s carabiners as well.
   Tolland and Rachel were now one.
   Joined at the hip.
   From between them, the loose tether trailed off across the snow to the struggling Corky... and ten yards farther to the empty clip beside Norah Mangor.
   Norah is already gone, Tolland told himself. Nothing you can do.
   The attackers were crouched over Corky’s writhing body now, packing a handful of snow, and preparing to stuff it down Corky’s throat. Tolland knew they were almost out of time.
   Tolland grabbed the folded balloon from Rachel. The fabric was as light as tissue paper—and virtually indestructible. Here goes nothing. “Hold on!”
   “Mike?” Rachel said. “What—”
   Tolland hurled the pad of wadded Mylar into the air over their heads. The howling wind snatched it up and spread it out like a parachute in a hurricane. The sheath filled instantly, billowing open with a loud snap.
   Tolland felt a wrenching yank on his harness, and he knew in an instant he had grossly underestimated the power of the katabatic wind. Within a fraction of a second, he and Rachel were half airborne, being dragged down the glacier. A moment later, Tolland felt a jerk as his tether drew taut on Corky Marlinson. Twenty yards back, his terrified friend was yanked out from under his stunned attackers, sending one of them tumbling backward. Corky let out a blood-curdling scream as he too accelerated across the ice, barely missing the overturned sled, then fishtailing inward. A second rope trailed limp beside Corky... the rope that had been connected to Norah Mangor.
   Nothing you can do, Tolland told himself.
   Like a tangled mass of human marionettes, the three bodies skimmed down the glacier. Ice pellets went sailing by, but Tolland knew the attackers had missed their chance. Behind him, the white-clad soldiers faded away, shrinking to illuminated specks in the glow of the flares.
   Tolland now felt the ice ripping beneath his padded suit with relentless acceleration, and the relief at having escaped faded fast. Less than two miles directly ahead of them, the Milne Ice Shelf came to an abrupt end at a precipitous cliff—and beyond it... a hundred-foot drop to the lethal pounding surf of the Arctic Ocean.

 52
   Marjorie Tench was smiling as she made her way downstairs toward the White House Communications Office, the computerized broadcast facility that disseminated press releases formulated upstairs in the Communications Bullpen. The meeting with Gabrielle Ashe had gone well. Whether or not Gabrielle was scared enough to turn over an affidavit admitting the affair was uncertain, but it sure as hell was worth a try.
   Gabrielle would be smart to bail out on him, Tench thought. The poor girl had no idea just how hard Sexton was about to fall.
   In a few hours, the President’s meteoric press conference was going to cut Sexton down at the knees. That was in the bank. Gabrielle Ashe, if she cooperated, would be the death blow that sent Sexton crawling off in shame. In the morning, Tench could release Gabrielle’s affidavit to the press along with footage of Sexton denying it.
   One-two punch.
   After all, politics was not just about winning the election, it was about winning decisively—having the momentum to carry out one’s vision. Historically, any president who squeaked into office on a narrow margin accomplished much less; he was weakened right out of the gate, and Congress never seemed to let him forget it.
   Ideally, the destruction of Senator Sexton’s campaign would be comprehensive—a two-pronged attack sacking both his politics and his ethics. This strategy, known in Washington as the “high-low,” was stolen from the art of military warfare. Force the enemy to battle on two fronts. When a candidate possessed a piece of negative information about his opponent, he often waited until he had a second piece and went public with both simultaneously. A double-edged attack was always more effective than a single shot, particularly when the dual attack incorporated separate aspects of his campaign—the first against his politics, the second against his character. Rebuttal of a political attack took logic, while rebuttal of a character attack took passion; disputing both simultaneously was an almost impossible balancing act.
   Tonight, Senator Sexton would find himself scrambling to extract himself from the political nightmare of an astounding NASA triumph, and yet his plight would deepen considerably if he were forced to defend his NASA position while being called a liar by a prominent female member of his staff.
   Arriving now at the doorway of the Communications Office, Tench felt alive with the thrill of the fight. Politics was war. She took a deep breath and checked her watch. 6:15 p.m. The first shot was about to be fired.
   She entered.
   The Communications Office was small not for lack of room, but for lack of necessity. It was one of the most efficient mass communications stations in the world and employed a staff of only five people. At the moment, all five employees stood over their banks of electronic gear looking like swimmers poised for the starting gun.
   They are ready, Tench saw in their eager gazes.
   It always amazed her that this tiny office, given only two hours head start, could contact more than one third of the world’s civilized population. With electronic connections to literally tens of thousands of global news sources—from the largest television conglomerates to the smallest hometown newspapers—the White House Communications Office could, at the touch of a few buttons, reach out and touch the world.
   Fax-broadcast computers churned press releases into the in-boxes of radio, television, print, and Internet media outlets from Maine to Moscow. Bulk e-mail programs blanketed on-line news wires. Telephone autodialers phoned thousands of media content managers and played recorded voice announcements. A breaking news Web page provided constant updates and preformatted content. The “live-feed-capable” news sources—CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, foreign syndicates—would be assaulted from all angles and promised free, live television feeds. Whatever else these networks were airing would come to a screeching halt for an emergency presidential address.
   Full penetration.
   Like a general inspecting her troops, Tench strode in silence over to the copy desk and picked up the printout of the “flash release” that now sat loaded in all the transmission machines like cartridges in a shotgun.
   When Tench read it, she had to laugh quietly to herself. By usual standards, the release loaded for broadcast was heavy-handed—more of an advertisement than an announcement—but the President had ordered the Communications Office to pull out all the stops. And that they had. This text was perfect—keyword-rich and content light. A deadly combination. Even the news wires that used automated “keyword-sniffer” programs to sort their incoming mail would see multiple flags on this one:
   From: White House Communications Office
   Subject: Urgent Presidential Address
   The President of the United States will be holding an urgent press conference tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time from the White House briefing room. The topic of his announcement is currently classified. Live A/V feeds will be available via customary outlets.
   Laying the paper back down on the desk, Marjorie Tench looked around the Communications Office and gave the staff an impressed nod. They looked eager.
   Lighting a cigarette, she puffed a moment, letting the anticipation build. Finally, she grinned. “Ladies and gentlemen. Start your engines.”

 53
   All logical reasoning had evaporated from Rachel Sexton’s mind. She held no thoughts for the meteorite, the mysterious GPR printout in her pocket, Ming, the horrific attack on the ice sheet. There was one matter at hand.
   Survival.
   The ice skimmed by in a blur beneath her like an endless, sleek highway. Whether her body was numb with fear or simply cocooned by her protective suit, Rachel did not know, but she felt no pain. She felt nothing.
   Yet.
   Lying on her side, attached to Tolland at the waist, Rachel lay face-to-face with him in an awkward embrace. Somewhere ahead of them, the balloon billowed, fat with wind, like a parachute on the back of a dragster. Corky trailed behind, swerving wildly like a tractor trailer out of control. The flare marking the spot where they had been attacked had all but disappeared in the distance.
   The hissing of their nylon Mark IX suits on the ice grew higher and higher in pitch as they continued to accelerate. She had no idea how fast they were going now, but the wind was at least sixty miles an hour, and the frictionless runway beneath them seemed to be racing by faster and faster with every passing second. The impervious Mylar balloon apparently had no intentions of tearing or relinquishing its hold.
   We need to release, she thought. They were racing away from one deadly force—directly toward another. The ocean is probably less than a mile ahead now! The thought of icy water brought back terrifying memories.
   The wind gusted harder, and their speed increased. Somewhere behind them Corky let out a scream of terror. At this speed, Rachel knew they had only a few minutes before they were dragged out over the cliff into the frigid ocean.
   Tolland was apparently having similar thoughts because he was now fighting with the payload clasp attached to their bodies.
   “I can’t unhook us!” he yelled. “There’s too much tension!”
   Rachel hoped a momentary lull in the wind might give Tolland some slack, but the katabatic pulled on with relentless uniformity. Trying to help, Rachel twisted her body and rammed the toe cleat of one of her crampons into the ice, sending a rooster tail of ice shards into the air. Their velocity slowed ever so slightly.
   “Now!” she yelled, lifting her foot.
   For an instant the payload line on the balloon slackened slightly. Tolland yanked down, trying to take advantage of the loose line to maneuver the payload clip out of their carabiners. Not even close.
   “Again!” he yelled.
   This time they both twisted against one another and rammed their toe prongs into the ice, sending a double plume of ice into the air. This slowed the contraption more perceptibly.
   “Now!”
   On Tolland’s cue, they both let up. As the balloon surged forward again, Tolland rammed his thumb into the carabiner latch and twisted the hook, trying to release the clasp. Although closer this time, he still needed more slack. The carabiners, Norah had bragged, were first-rate, Joker safety clips, specifically crafted with an extra loop in the metal so they would never release if there were any tension on them at all.
   Killed by safety clips, Rachel thought, not finding the irony the least bit amusing.
   “One more time!” Tolland yelled.
   Mustering all her energy and hope, Rachel twisted as far as she could and rammed both of her toes into the ice. Arching her back, she tried to lift all her weight onto her toes. Tolland followed her lead until they were both angled roughly on their stomachs, the connection at their belt straining their harnesses. Tolland rammed his toes down and Rachel arched farther. The vibrations sent shock waves up her legs. She felt like her ankles were going to break.
   “Hold it... hold it...” Tolland contorted himself to release the Joker clip as their speed decreased. “Almost...”
   Rachel’s crampons snapped. The metal cleats tore off of her boots and went tumbling backward into the night, bouncing over Corky. The balloon immediately lurched forward, sending Rachel and Tolland fishtailing to one side. Tolland lost his grasp on the clip.
   “Shit!”
   The Mylar balloon, as if angered at having been momentarily restrained, lurched forward now, pulling even harder, dragging them down the glacier toward the sea. Rachel knew they were closing fast on the cliff, although they faced danger even before the hundred-foot drop into the Arctic Ocean. Three huge snow berms stood in their path. Even protected by the padding in the Mark IX suits, the experience of launching at high speed up and over the snow mounds filled her with terror.
   Fighting in desperation with their harnesses, Rachel tried to find a way to release the balloon. It was then that she heard the rhythmic ticking on the ice—the rapid-fire staccato of lightweight metal on the sheet of bare ice.
   The ax.
   In her fear, she had entirely forgotten the ice ax attached to the rip cord on her belt. The lightweight aluminum tool was bouncing along beside her leg. She looked up at the payload cable on the balloon. Thick, heavy-duty braided nylon. Reaching down, she fumbled for the bouncing ax. She grasped the handle and pulled it toward her, stretching the elastic rip cord. Still on her side, Rachel struggled to raise her arms over her head, placing the ax’s serrated edge against the thick cord. Awkwardly, she began sawing the taut cable.
   “Yes!” Tolland yelled, fumbling now for his own ax.
   Sliding on her side, Rachel was stretched out, her arms above her, sawing at the taut cable. The line was strong, and the individual nylon strands were fraying slowly. Tolland gripped his own ax, twisted, raised his arms over his head, and tried to saw from underneath in the same spot. Their banana blades clicked together as they worked in tandem like lumberjacks. The rope began fraying on both sides now.
   We’re going to do it, Rachel thought. This thing is going to break!
   Suddenly, the silver bubble of Mylar before them swooped upward as if it had hit an updraft. Rachel realized to her horror that it was simply following the contour of the land.
   They had arrived.
   The berms.
   The wall of white loomed only an instant before they were on it. The blow to Rachel’s side as they hit the incline drove the wind from her lungs and wrenched the ax from her hand. Like a tangled water-skier being dragged up over a jump, Rachel felt her body dragged up the face of the berm and launched. She and Tolland were suddenly catapulted in a dizzying upward snarl. The trough between the berms spread out far beneath them, but the frayed payload cable held fast, lifting their accelerated bodies upward, carrying them clear out over the first trough. For an instant, she glimpsed what lay ahead. Two more berms—a short plateau—and then the drop-off to the sea.
   As if to give a voice to Rachel’s own dumbstruck terror, the high-pitched scream of Corky Marlinson cut through the air. Somewhere behind them, he sailed up over the first berm. All three of them went airborne, the balloon clawing upward like a wild animal trying to break its captor’s chains.
   Suddenly, like a gunshot in the night, a sudden snap echoed overhead. The frayed rope gave way, and the tattered end recoiled in Rachel’s face. Instantly, they were falling. Somewhere overhead the Mylar balloon billowed out of control... spiraling out to sea.
   Tangled in carabiners and harnesses, Rachel and Tolland tumbled back toward earth. As the white mound of the second berm rose up toward them, Rachel braced for impact. Barely clearing the top of the second berm, they crashed down the far side, the blow partially cushioned by their suits and the descending contour of the berm. As the world around her turned into a blur of arms and legs and ice, Rachel felt herself rocketing down the incline out onto the central ice trough. Instinctively she spread her arms and legs, trying to slow down before they hit the next berm. She felt them slowing, but only slightly, and it seemed only seconds before she and Tolland were sliding back up an incline. At the top, there was another instant of weightlessness as they cleared the crest. Then, filled with terror, Rachel felt them begin their dead slide down the other side and out onto the final plateau... the last eighty feet of the Milne Glacier.
   As they skidded toward the cliff, Rachel could feel the drag of Corky on the tether, and she knew they were all slowing down. She knew it was too little too late. The end of the glacier raced toward them, and Rachel let out a helpless scream.
   Then it happened.
   The edge of the ice slid out from underneath them. The last thing Rachel remembered was falling.

 54
   The Westbrooke Place Apartments are located at 2201 N Street NW and promote themselves as one of the few unquestionably correct addresses in Washington. Gabrielle hurried through the gilded revolving door into the marble lobby, where a deafening waterfall reverberated.
   The doorman at the front desk looked surprised to see her. “Ms. Ashe? I didn’t know you were stopping by tonight.”
   “I’m running late.” Gabrielle quickly signed in. The clock overhead read 6:22 p.m.
   The doorman scratched his head. “The senator gave me a list, but you weren’t—”
   “They always forget the people who help them most.” She gave a harried smile and strode past him toward the elevator.
   Now the doorman looked uneasy. “I better call up.”
   “Thanks,” Gabrielle said, as she boarded the elevator and headed up. The senator’s phone is off the hook.
   Riding the elevator to the ninth floor, Gabrielle exited and made her way down the elegant hallway. At the end, outside Sexton’s doorway, she could see one of his bulky personal safety escorts—glorified bodyguards—sitting in the hall. He looked bored. Gabrielle was surprised to see security on duty, although apparently not as surprised as the guard was to see her. He jumped to his feet as she approached.
   “I know,” Gabrielle called out, still halfway down the hall. “It’s a P.E. night. He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
   The guard nodded emphatically. “He gave me very strict orders that no visitors—”
   “It’s an emergency.”
   The guard physically blocked the doorway. “He’s in a private meeting.”
   “Really?” Gabrielle pulled the red envelope from under her arm. She flashed the White House seal in the man’s face. “I was just in the Oval Office. I need to give the senator this information. Whatever old pals he’s schmoozing tonight are going to have to do without him for a few minutes. Now, let me in.”
   The guard withered slightly at the sight of the White House seal on the envelope.
   Don’t make me open this, Gabrielle thought.
   “Leave the folder,” he said. “I’ll take it into him.”
   “The hell you will. I have direct orders from the White House to hand-deliver this. If I don’t talk to him immediately, we can all start looking for jobs tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”
   The guard looked deeply conflicted, and Gabrielle sensed the senator had indeed been unusually adamant tonight about having no visitors. She moved in for the kill. Holding the White House envelope directly in his face, Gabrielle lowered her voice to a whisper and uttered the six words all Washington security personnel feared most.
   “You do not understand the situation.”
   Security personnel for politicians never understood the situation, and they hated that fact. They were hired guns, kept in the dark, never sure whether to stand firm in their orders or risk losing their jobs by mule-headedly ignoring some obvious crisis.
   The guard swallowed hard, eyeing the White House envelope again. “Okay, but I’m telling the senator you demanded to be let in.”
   He unlocked the door, and Gabrielle pushed past him before he changed his mind. She entered the apartment and quietly closed the door behind her, relocking it.
   Now inside the foyer, Gabrielle could hear muffled voices in Sexton’s den down the hall—men’s voices. Tonight’s P.E. was obviously not the private meeting implied by Sexton’s earlier call.
   As Gabrielle moved down the hall toward the den, she passed an open closet where a half dozen expensive men’s coats hung inside—distinctive wool and tweed. Several briefcases sat on the floor. Apparently work stayed in the hall tonight. Gabrielle would have walked right past the cases except that one of the briefcases caught her eye. The nameplate bore a distinctive company logo. A bright red rocket.
   She paused, kneeling down to read it:

Space America, Inc.

   Puzzled, she examined the other briefcases.

Beal Aerospace.
Microcosm, Inc.
Rotary Rocket Company.
Kistler Aerospace.

   Marjorie Tench’s raspy voice echoed in her mind. Are you aware that Sexton is accepting bribes from private aerospace companies?
   Gabrielle’s pulse began racing as she gazed down the darkened hallway toward the archway that led into the senator’s den. She knew she should speak up, announce her presence, and yet she felt herself inching quietly forward. She moved to within a few feet of the archway and stood soundlessly in the shadows... listening to the conversation beyond.

 55
   While Delta-Three stayed behind to collect Norah Mangor’s body and the sled, the other two soldiers accelerated down the glacier after their quarry.
   On their feet they wore ElektroTread–powered skis. Modeled after the consumer Fast Trax motorized skis, the classified ElektroTreads were essentially snow skis with miniaturized tank treads affixed—like snowmobiles worn on the feet. Speed was controlled by pushing the tips of the index finger and thumb together, compressing two pressure plates inside the right-hand glove. A powerful gel battery was molded around the foot, doubling as insulation and allowing the skis to run silently. Ingeniously, the kinetic energy generated by gravity and the spinning treads as the wearer glided down a hill was automatically harvested to recharge the batteries for the next incline.
   Keeping the wind at his back, Delta-One crouched low, skimming seaward as he surveyed the glacier before him. His night vision system was a far cry from the Patriot model used by the Marines. Delta-One was looking through a hands-free face mount with a 40 x 90 mm six-element lens, three-element Magnification Doubler, and Super Long Range IR. The world outside appeared in a translucent tint of cool blue, rather than the usual green—the color scheme especially designed for highly reflective terrains like the Arctic.
   As he approached the first berm, Delta-One’s goggles revealed several bright stripes of freshly disturbed snow, rising up and over the berm like a neon arrow in the night. Apparently the three escapees had either not thought to unhook their makeshift sail or had been unable to. Either way, if they had not released by the final berm, they were now somewhere out in the ocean. Delta-One knew his quarry’s protective clothing would lengthen the usual life expectancy in the water, but the relentless offshore currents would drag them out to sea. Drowning would be inevitable.
   Despite his confidence, Delta-One had been trained never to assume. He needed to see bodies. Crouching low, he pressed his fingers together and accelerated up the first incline.

* * *

   Michael Tolland lay motionless, taking stock of his bruises. He was battered, but he sensed no broken bones. He had little doubt the gel-filled Mark IX had saved him any substantial trauma. As he opened his eyes, his thoughts were slow to focus. Everything seemed softer here... quieter. The wind still howled, but with less ferocity.
   We went over the edge—didn’t we?
   Focusing, Tolland found he was lying on ice, draped across Rachel Sexton, almost at right angles, their locked carabiners twisted. He could feel her breathing beneath him, but he could not see her face. He rolled off her, his muscles barely responding.
   “Rachel...?” Tolland wasn’t sure if his lips were making sound or not.
   Tolland recalled the final seconds of their harrowing ride—the upward drag of the balloon, the payload cable snapping, their bodies plummeting down the far side of the berm, sliding up and over the final mound, skimming toward the edge—the ice running out. Tolland and Rachel had fallen, but the fall had been oddly short. Rather than the expected plunge to the sea, they had fallen only ten feet or so before hitting another slab of ice and sliding to a stop with the dead weight of Corky in tow.
   Now, raising his head, Tolland looked toward the sea. Not far away, the ice ended in a sheer cliff, beyond which he could hear the sounds of the ocean. Looking back up the glacier, Tolland strained to see into the night. Twenty yards back, his eyes met a high wall of ice, which seemed to hang above them. It was then that he realized what had happened. Somehow they had slid off the main glacier onto a lower terrace of ice. This section was flat, as large as a hockey rink, and had partially collapsed—preparing to cleave off into the ocean at any moment.
   Ice calving, Tolland thought, eyeing the precarious platform of ice on which he was now lying. It was a broad square slab that hung off the glacier like a colossal balcony, surrounded on three sides by precipices to the ocean. The sheet of ice was attached to the glacier only at its back, and Tolland could see the connection was anything but permanent. The boundary where the lower terrace clung to the Milne Ice Shelf was marked by a gaping pressure fissure almost four feet across. Gravity was well on its way to winning this battle.
   Almost more frightening than seeing the fissure was Tolland’s seeing the motionless body of Corky Marlinson crumpled on the ice. Corky lay ten yards away at the end of a taut tether attached to them.
   Tolland tried to stand up, but he was still attached to Rachel. Repositioning himself, he began detaching their interlocking carabiners.
   Rachel looked weak as she tried to sit up. “We didn’t... go over?” Her voice was bewildered.
   “We fell onto a lower block of ice,” Tolland said, finally unfastening himself from her. “I’ve got to help Corky.”
   Painfully, Tolland attempted to stand, but his legs felt feeble. He grabbed the tether and heaved. Corky began sliding toward them across the ice. After a dozen or so pulls, Corky was lying on the ice a few feet away.
   Corky Marlinson looked beaten. He’d lost his goggles, suffered a bad cut on his cheek, and his nose was bleeding. Tolland’s worries that Corky might be dead were quickly allayed when Corky rolled over and looked at Tolland with an angry glare.
   “Jesus,” he stammered. “What the hell was that little trick!”
   Tolland felt a wave of relief.
   Rachel sat up now, wincing. She looked around. “We need to... get off of here. This block of ice looks like it’s about to fall.”
   Tolland couldn’t have agreed more. The only question was how.
   They had no time to consider a solution. A familiar high-pitched whir became audible above them on the glacier. Tolland’s gaze shot up to see two white-clad figures ski effortlessly up onto the edge and stop in unison. The two men stood there a moment, peering down at their battered prey like chess masters savoring checkmate before the final kill.

* * *

   Delta-One was surprised to see the three escapees alive. He knew, however, this was a temporary condition. They had fallen onto a section of the glacier that had already begun its inevitable plunge to the sea. This quarry could be disabled and killed in the same manner as the other woman, but a far cleaner solution had just presented itself. A way in which no bodies would ever be found.
   Gazing downward over the lip, Delta-One focused on the gaping crevasse that had begun to spread like a wedge between the ice shelf and the clinging block of ice. The section of ice on which the three fugitives sat was dangerously perched... ready to break away and fall into the ocean any day now.
   Why not today...
   Here on the ice shelf, the night was rocked every few hours by deafening booms—the sound of ice cracking off parts of the glacier and plummeting into the ocean. Who would take notice?
   Feeling the familiar warm rush of adrenaline that accompanied the preparation for a kill, Delta-One reached in his supply pack and pulled out a heavy, lemon-shaped object. Standard issue for military assault teams, the object was called a flash-bang—a “nonlethal” concussion grenade that temporarily disoriented an enemy by generating a blinding flash and deafening concussion wave. Tonight, however, Delta-One knew this flash-bang would most certainly be lethal.
   He positioned himself near the edge and wondered how far the crevasse descended before tapering to a close. Twenty feet? Fifty feet? He knew it didn’t matter. His plan would be effective regardless.
   With calm bred from the performance of countless executions, Delta-One dialed a ten-second delay into the grenade’s screw-dial, slid out the pin, and threw the grenade down into the chasm. The bomb plummeted into the darkness and disappeared.
   Then Delta-One and his partner cleared back up onto the top of the berm and waited. This would be a sight to behold.
   Even in her delirious state of mind, Rachel Sexton had a very good idea what the attackers had just dropped into the crevasse. Whether Michael Tolland also knew or whether he was reading the fear in her eyes was unclear, but she saw him go pale, shooting a horrified glance down at the mammoth slab of ice on which they were stranded, clearly realizing the inevitable.
   Like a storm cloud lit by an internal flash of lightning, the ice beneath Rachel illuminated from within. The eerie white translucence shot out in all directions. For a hundred yards around them, the glacier flashed white. The concussion came next. Not a rumble like an earthquake, but a deafening shock wave of gut-churning force. Rachel felt the impact tearing up through the ice into her body.
   Instantly, as if a wedge had been driven between the ice shelf and the block of ice supporting them, the cliff began to shear off with a sickening crack. Rachel’s eyes locked with Tolland’s in a freeze-frame of terror. Corky let out a scream nearby.
   The bottom dropped out.
   Rachel felt weightless for an instant, hovering over the multimillion-pound block of ice. Then they were riding the iceberg down—plummeting into the frigid sea.

 56
   The deafening grating of ice against ice assaulted Rachel’s ears as the massive slab slid down the face of the Milne Ice Shelf, sending towering plumes of spray into the air. As the slab splashed downward, it slowed, and Rachel’s previously weightless body crashed down onto the top of the ice. Tolland and Corky landed hard nearby.
   As the block’s downward momentum plunged it deeper into the sea, Rachel could see the foaming surface of the ocean racing upward with a kind of taunting deceleration, like the ground beneath a bungee-jumper whose cord was a few feet too long. Rising... rising... and then it was there. Her childhood nightmare was back. The ice... the water... the darkness. The dread was almost primal.
   The top of the slab slipped below the waterline, and the frigid Arctic Ocean poured over the edges in a torrent. As the ocean rushed in all around her, Rachel felt herself sucked under. The bare skin on her face tightened and burned as the saltwater hit. The flooring of ice disappeared beneath her, and Rachel fought her way back to the surface, buoyed by the gel in her suit. She took in a mouthful of saltwater, sputtering to the surface. She could see the others floundering nearby, all of them tangled in tethers. Just as Rachel righted herself, Tolland yelled out.
   “It’s coming back up!”
   As his words echoed above the tumult, Rachel felt an eerie upwelling in the water beneath her. Like a massive locomotive straining to reverse direction, the slab of ice had groaned to a stop underwater and was now beginning its ascent directly beneath them. Fathoms below, a sickening low frequency rumble resonated upward through the water as the gigantic submerged sheet began scraping its way back up the face of the glacier.
   The slab rose fast, accelerating as it came, swooping up from the darkness. Rachel felt herself rising. The ocean roiled all around as the ice met her body. She scrambled in vain, trying to find her balance as the ice propelled her skyward along with millions of gallons of seawater. Buoying upward, the giant sheet bobbed above the surface, heaving and teetering, looking for its center of gravity. Rachel found herself scrambling in waist-deep water across the enormous, flat expanse. As the water began pouring off the surface, the current swallowed Rachel and dragged her toward the edge. Sliding, splayed flat on her stomach, Rachel could see the edge looming fast.
   Hold on! Rachel’s mother’s voice was calling the same way it had when Rachel was just a child floundering beneath the icy pond. Hold on! Don’t go under!
   The wrenching yank on her harness expelled what little air Rachel had left in her lungs. She jerked to a dead stop only yards from the edge. The motion spun her in place. Ten yards away, she could see Corky’s limp body, still tethered to her, also jolting to a stop. They had been flowing off the sheet in opposite directions and his momentum had stopped her. As the water ran off and grew more shallow, another dark form appeared over near Corky. He was on his hands and knees, grasping Corky’s tether and vomiting saltwater.
   Michael Tolland.
   As the last of the wake drained past her and flowed off the iceberg, Rachel lay in terrified silence, listening to the sounds of the ocean. Then, feeling the onset of deadly cold, she dragged herself onto her hands and knees. The ‘berg was still bobbing back and forth, like a giant ice cube. Delirious and in pain, she crawled back toward the others.
   High above on the glacier, Delta-One peered through his night-vision goggles at the water churning around the Arctic Ocean’s newest tabular iceberg. Although he saw no bodies in the water, he was not surprised. The ocean was dark, and his quarry’s weather suits and skullcaps were black.
   As he passed his gaze across the surface of the enormous floating sheet of ice, he had a hard time keeping it in focus. It was receding quickly, already heading out to sea in the strong offshore currents. He was about to turn his gaze back to the sea when he saw something unexpected. Three specks of black on the ice. Are those bodies? Delta-One tried to bring them into focus.
   “See something?” Delta-Two asked.
   Delta-One said nothing, focusing in with his magnifier. In the pale tint of the iceberg, he was stunned to see three human forms huddled motionless on the island of ice. Whether they were alive or dead, Delta-One had no idea. It hardly mattered. If they were alive, even in weather suits, they’d be dead within the hour; they were wet, a storm was coming in, and they were drifting seaward into one of the most deadly oceans on the planet. Their bodies would never be found.
   “Just shadows,” Delta-One said, turning from the cliff. “Let’s get back to base.”