Dry Ice (42 page)

Dan busied himself flipping switches and positioning levers while Tess sat next to him, trying to nerve herself up to do what she had to do. Which was, basically, blow up a building full of explosives while attempting to avoid self-immolation.

Talk about conflicting goals.

The engines came to life and Tess craned her head to look through the side window. The propellers, hanging from the wings, which sat about halfway back along the plane’s body, began to spin, first one way, then, it seemed, the other. She knew it was an optical illusion, but it had always fascinated her.

“Eyes forward, Tess. You can’t afford to get dizzy or distracted,” Dan snapped, and she immediately turned back to the huge dashboard in front of them.

“I wish you’d just tell me what to do,” she said for the third or fourth time. “You’re not supposed to stick around for the fireworks.”

“If you’re going to do this, I want you to do it right, lass. It’s not like you’ll get a second chance,” he muttered as the plane began to move forward.

The Dash 7 left the safety of the hangar and lumbered slowly down the mostly windswept blue-ice runway. The sky was spectacularly clear, with hardly any wind. The sparkling canopy of stars above took her breath away.

“When I was little, my mother used to brush glitter through my hair on my birthday,” she said, more to herself than to Dan. “I wanted it to look like there were stars in it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Dan exploded, and Tess jumped.

“Don’t be going all maudlin on me, Tess. You’re the one who wanted to blow yourself to an early fucking heaven,” he roared. “I don’t want to hear your fucking last confession, either. Stay focused.” He took a breath and tried to calm himself, but his voice remained harsh from emotion. “We’ll try to get the old girl up to at least a hundred miles an hour. I don’t think we’ll be able to do more. The path is too fucking short. The hydrogen explodes at a fucking spark, Tess, and makes white-hot light. Don’t look; it’ll burn your eyeballs to a cinder. It burns at thirty-six hundred degrees, so you don’t want to hang around, right? Keep the fucking night-vision goggles on your head, but don’t put them on until
after
the boom. You’ll blind yourself with the flash. But put them on right afterward, otherwise you won’t know what you’re walking through.”

Tess stared at him.
“You think I’m going to survive?”

“I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure of it,” he snapped. “Jesus Christ in the manger, I grew up in Ireland. I’ve had enough of the scent of burning fucking martyrs to last me a lifetime.”

They drove slowly along the runway. The fuel depot sat parallel to it, about two hundred yards away. Beyond that sat the radome-covered arrays, which surrounded the rest of the compound in a bizarre constellation.

Dan brought the plane to a near-standstill and slowly brought it around at a right angle to the runway. It now sat at the top of a service drive, also ice. The fuel depot was directly in front of them.

“Okay, you take the controls now,” Dan said, and guided her hands into the correct positions. “Easy now. I know you think you’re taking this for some sort of point-and-shoot joyride, but there’s more to it than that.”

Tess followed his guidance, the overwhelming sense of doom making her clench her hands much too tightly. It was better than throwing up, though, which is what her body really wanted to do.

Dan’s voice was strikingly calm. “There’s no room for error out here under the best conditions, Tess, and in the dark, it’s more dangerous. There aren’t any heat signals to pick up.”

“The building has a glow to it.”

“Barely.”

“Dan, it’s enough. I’m going to plow into it. I need momentum and mass, not precision,” Tess snapped.

“Yeah, well, you need more information. Do you know what the fire suppression system is in that building?” he asked as he slowly increased the engines’ power.

Tess caught her breath as she remembered the schematics she’d pored over just a few days ago. “Halon,” she said, too quietly to be heard, then cleared her throat and repeated, “Halon.”

“That’s right. I’m not sure how effective the Halon will be, sucking all the oxygen away from the fire when we’ve ripped the shite out of the side of the building, but there’s no point in assuming you’ll have enough air to breathe,” Dan said, twisting around in his seat. He handed Tess a gas mask with a small insulated canister of compressed oxygen attached. “Put this on now. Open the valve later. Get as far away from the fire as you can before you do it.”

“Thanks,” she shouted.

“Here’s the plan. We now have a southerly heading. I’m going to go open the back door. I showed it to you, remember?”

Tess nodded.

“When I do that, it’s going to get even colder and louder in here. Then I’m going to bring the engines up to full thrust, do the equivalent of popping the clutch, jam the steering mechanism, and drive this bird into that building,” Dan said, pointing at their target at the end of the roadway. “When we get close to the building, we get the hell out of here. Remember to take the goggles off or the blast will fucking blind you. Tess, are you listening to me? We’re both going to get up and run like hell out the back door. Jump, drop, and roll, but then get up and run like bloody hell. And keep running.”

“I already told you, I’m going to do the driving. You go down to the back of the plane as soon as it’s in motion, and I’ll follow as soon as I can,” Tess replied, her jaw aching with the tension of the last few hours. “There’s no point in you getting hurt, too.”

Dan stared at her for a minute, then shook his head slowly. “You’re a fucking mad one, you are, Tess. Whatever you say. Now put that thing on,” he said, pointing to the oxygen mask before getting up and walking to the back of the plane. Tess heard the back door open, then Dan returned to his seat and began to slowly bring the engines up to an ever higher pitch. The entire plane was vibrating and the engines were screaming before he released the brakes.

The sheer, brain-numbing terror that Tess had felt while Dan revved the engines was a mere dress rehearsal for what she felt as the empty, rattling plane began hurtling toward the power station.

It seemed to take no time at all before they were careening at a breakneck speed along the ice. Tess’s entire field of vision narrowed to the solid wall of death rushing toward her. Her fingers, icy in the thick gloves she wore, clung painfully to the controls in front of her.

The building was getting closer and closer, looming before her like a harsh death. She was frozen in her seat, paralyzed with fear. Her brain snapped back to consciousness as she felt a hard hand grab her upper arm. Looking up, she saw Dan’s face, creased with mingled alarm and anger. She wrenched herself out of the seat, awkward in her heavy clothing, and lumbered to her feet. Dan practically dragged her through the rushing plane and together they fell out of the open door as the unmanned aircraft slid and began to fishtail along the ground on its wide skis.

Tess had barely hit the ice when she heard the enormous crash as the plane slammed into the building. Instantly, a burst of blazing white light, brighter than anything she’d ever experienced, enveloped her. The force of the blast sent her skidding along the ice, tumbling like an inconsequential piece of trash. When she came to a stop, she gasped for air, not knowing for sure if she was alive or dead. Then pain, just as dazzling and just as hot, sliced through her.

Tess lay sprawled on the freshly shrapnel-pocked blue-ice roadway, staring at what she’d created. As Dan had said they would, the flames had died almost instantly to a nearly invisible blue, but the sound was like something from Hell. She reached up with a padded, shaking hand and pushed into place the night-vision goggles that were somehow intact and still on her head.

With the goggles in place, the scene before her was much different. The flames were vivid and achingly bright; calling the scene an inferno would not be an exaggeration. The sucking roar of the flames deafened her, the thunder and sparkle of steel beams crashing to the ground and the huge batteries exploding were magnificent in a horrifying way. It was the most beautiful, terrifying thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t feel any heat, though, only the cold creeping through her, knifing her throat and lungs with every breath. She had to get moving.

“Tess?” The voice came out of the long, flickering shadows cast by the blazing building.

“Dan? Are you okay?” Tess struggled to a sitting position, hampered by the heavy clothes and a useless arm that sent vivid shards of agony through her at the slightest movement.

“No, I’m not fucking
okay.
My leg is killing me. I think it’s broken, if it’s still fucking attached. How about you?”

“I did something to my shoulder. I think I see the Delta coming toward us. Do you think you can get to me?”

“If I knew where the fuck you were, I might. I’m—oh, Sweet Jesus Christ in a handbag, this hurts,” he yelped.

“Stay where you are. I’ll help you.” Tess struggled to her feet and looked around.

Dan lay ten feet away, one leg at an unnatural angle. Under other circumstances, seeing him like that would have made her sick. Right now, she was just glad to be breathing.

Tess limped to him and hunched down, using her good arm for balance. His face was contorted in pain.

“I’m getting cold. I think I’m bleeding,” he rasped, breathing heavily.

Tess looked toward the installation and relief crashed over her when she saw the Delta drawing nearer to them. She cradled her injured arm and bit her lips against the pain as she stood up and began trying to flag it down.

The pain would pass. At least she was alive to feel it.

*   *   *

President Hernandez stood at the head of the table in the Situation Room. She was too tense to sit, and it was all she could do to keep herself from pacing. She turned to the group of senior intelligence and military advisors who were waiting silently, but with little patience, for her decision. They’d given her their input and pleaded their cases, but there was room for only one finger on the button.

Hers.

The submarine
Louisiana
sat in the southern Indian Ocean, ready and waiting. The Trident missile was hot and the captain was on standby. If Helena said “Go,” the missile would be launched and approximately ten minutes later, the TESLA installation and its arrays—and all its personnel, and much of the East Antarctic Polar Plateau—would be obliterated. The threat posed by Greg Simpson’s programming would be over.

If she hesitated, she ran the risk of other nations launching attacks—and the odds were that TESLA wouldn’t be the only target. The nation she was in charge of protecting and defending would be on a fast track to oblivion. As might the rest of the world.

Helena looked away from the group of concerned yet professionally impassive faces and let her gaze drift to the large screen directly opposite her, which showed split-screen satellite views of the TESLA base. The enhanced video view showed a small, dark village, its structures barely visible; the infrared view showed a psychedelic welter of hot spots with one glowing brighter than the others.

“Ms. President, the Spec Ops team is about twelve minutes away from the drop zone.” The voice was neutral, as if it had come from a machine instead of one of the many specialists lining the outer edges of the room.

There had been a small burst of activity just moments ago, three tiny dots, presumably vehicles of some sort, moving around on the screens. If those lights had not appeared, Helena wouldn’t be hesitating. If all had been still, it would be easier to pretend that everyone there was already gone.

A new small slash of light appeared on the screen, growing slowly outward from the center.

“What’s that?” Helena asked.

“It looks like doors opening, ma’am. I believe that’s their aircraft hangar.”

Helena didn’t bother to identify the voice. Her eyes were riveted to the screen as a small but very bright light began to separate from the larger glow.

“That’s some sort of a vehicle, ma’am. Big enough to be a plane. They have two onsite, a Twin Otter and a Dash 7.”

“Are they going to fly out?” she asked, incredulous.

It was a question no one could answer.

Everyone in the room had their eyes riveted on the dot of light on the screen. It was moving very slowly in a straight line.

“Ms. President, the Spec Ops team is ten minutes away from the drop zone.”

“Thank you.” Helena’s gaze was held in thrall by the small moving lights on the screen. “Who’s the pilot at TESLA?”

“Daniel Thornton, Irish national, naturalized U.S. citizen. Eight years with the British Royal Air Force. Ten years with the British Antarctic Survey. Six years with Flint.”

“What is he doing?” Helena looked at the nearest Air Force general.

“I don’t know, ma’am. He’s not moving fast enough for a take-off,” was all he could say.

“What else would they use a plane for except to fly it?” the president asked, looking around the room in bewilderment.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” the general repeated.

Helena pressed her hands flat on the table and leaned on them to hide their tremors. Every muscle in her body was straining toward the image on the screen, waiting to see what would happen.

The dot stopped then, and its color rapidly intensified until it was a bright, hot red. After what seemed an eternity, the dot began moving again, perpendicular to its previous path. It was moving faster, too, its speed increasing as it traveled straight toward the largest glow on the screen.

“He’s going to drive it into the building,” someone said in disbelief.

The room went silent, as if everyone in it was holding their breath.

The dots merged then, the larger absorbing the smaller, and then, in an instant, the light grew exponentially larger and brighter, and much, much hotter.

The ultra-high-resolution streaming video showed a building at the edge of the village erupt in a fireball of light, the high, distinctive tail of a Dash 7 visible against the flames.

A wild cheer erupted around the table and Helena sank into the chair behind her, limp, drained, and shaking.