Deception Point (28 page)

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.

T
he 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.

W
hile 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.