than you will ever know or be willing to understand."
"I don't want for him to be sorry! I want for him to have saved you!" Randi cried back, their argument flaring, as raw and as painful as ever.
"No one could have saved me, Randi. Not Jon, nor even you."
"There must have been a way!"
Sophia's eyes filled her universe now. "If there had been a way, Jon would have found it. Just as you would have found it."
"No!"
"Say Jon's name for me, Randi."
"I won't! I don't want to!"
Sophie's voice grew urgent. "Say his name, Randi!"
Randi couldn't refuse her. "Jon," she sobbed.
"Louder, Randi." Sophie's eyes were loving, frightened, demanding, "Say it louder!"
"Jon!"
Why was her sister doing this? Randi just wanted to sleep. To go away.
Sophia wouldn't allow it. She was bending over her now, shaking her. "Again, Randi! Call to him! Scream it! Scream Jon's name!"
"JON!"
Smith broke step and looked up, scanning the night. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Valentina inquired, coming up behind him. Smith had taken the point, breaking trail with Valentina and Smyslov trailing on the safety line. Following the icefall, fortune had turned in their favor, and the remaining descent to the north shore had gone easily and swiftly. They had been trudging steadily along the beach, making good time in the shelter of the pressure ice, when Smith had checked at the faintest alien sounds rising above the storm.
"I don't know. It sounded like somebody calling my name."
"Not likely." Valentina shoved up her snow goggles. "Who could be out here to call you?"
"Randi! Who else?" Smith unlatched from the safely line and snapped on the lantern clipped to his belt. "Illuminate and fan out! Start looking! Move!"
They found her within five minutes.
"Jon! Over here! Hurry!"
Kneeling in a notch in the wall of pressure ice, Valentina was brushing the snow away from a huddled form. Smith was on his knees beside them in seconds, struggling out of the straps of his pack frame. Smyslov came in behind him a moment later.
"You were right!" Valentina exclaimed. "What in all hell is she doing out here rigged like this?"
"Escape and evasion," Smith snapped back. "The Spetsnaz must have hit the science station."
"That's not possible," Smyslov protested. "Only the one platoon was inserted on the island, the one that engaged you at the crash site."
"Then somebody else is here." Smith spread a survival blanket on the snow, gently lifting Randi onto it. He tore off mittens and gloves, sliding a hand under the mismatched and inadequate jumble of clothing she wore, seeking for a heartbeat.
"She's out solid," Valentina commented, leaning over Jon's shoulder.
"She's dying," Smith replied curtly. "There are chemical heat pads in the packs. Two each. Get them out. All of them."
Valentina and Smyslov obeyed with all the speed they could, flexing the heat pads to trigger the thermal reaction.
"Shove them down her sleeves and pant legs," Smith ordered. "When we start to move her the chilled blood in her limbs will circulate into her body core, and the shock could kill her."
"Jon. Look at this." Valentina had worked Randi's left arm out from under the oversized sweatshirt. A handcuff had been locked around it.
"Son of a bitch! That explains the abrasions on her other wrist. She was a prisoner."
"But whose?"
"I don't know, Val. If it's not the Spetsnaz, then it must be the others. The ones who tried to shoot us down in Alaska."
"How bad is she, Colonel?" Smyslov asked from behind his other shoulder.
"If we don't get her to some shelter and warmth fast, she's gone." Smith wrapped the survival blanket tightly around Randi. They had done all they could do out here.
"I will carry her, Colonel," Smyslov offered.
"All right. I'll take your pack. Let's go."
The Russian lifted his new burden with care. "It is all right, devushka," he murmured. "You are with friends. Don't leave us now."
Valentina took up both the rifles. "We've got to assume the science station's either been occupied or destroyed. Where can we go?"
"We either find another cave or build a snow shelter," Smith replied, playing his lantern beam along the man-high stacks of pressure ice mounding along the shoreline. "Keep your eyes open for any place that looks good."
"Right. We might as well run ourselves out of batteries along with everything else. God, she looks like she's had a job of it."
"I know." His voice was as bleak as the night. "Maybe I've finally done it."
She puzzled over Smith's words, but she sensed this wasn't the time to ask about them.
The probing