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call, but he sure as hell was not going to get any of that right now. Two makeup specialists hovered like gnats, poking and primping at his face and hair. Directly in front of his desk, a television crew was setting up, and an endless swarm of advisers and PR people scurried around the office, excitedly discussing strategy.

T minus one hour...

Herney pressed the illuminated button on his private phone. "Lawrence? You there?"

"I'm here." The NASA administrator's voice sounded consumed, distant.

"Everything okay up there?"

"Storm's still moving in, but my people tell me the satellite link will not be affected. We're good to go. One hour and counting."

"Excellent. Spirits high, I hope."

"Very high. My staff's excited. In fact, we just shared some beers."

Herney laughed. "Glad to hear it. Look, I wanted to call and thank you before we do this thing. Tonight's going to be one hell of a night."

The administrator paused, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. "That it will, sir. We've been waiting a long time for this."

Herney hesitated. "You sound exhausted."

"I need some sunlight and a real bed."

"One more hour. Smile for the cameras, enjoy the moment, and then we'll get a plane up there to bring you back to D.C."

"Looking forward to it." The man fell silent again.

As a skilled negotiator, Herney was trained to listen, to hear what was being said between the lines. Something in the administrator's voice sounded off somehow. "You sure everything's okay up there?"

"Absolutely. All systems go." The administrator seemed eager to change the subject. "Did you see the final cut of Michael Tolland's documentary?"

"Just watched it," Herney said. "He did a fantastic job."

"Yes. You made a good call bringing him in."

"Still mad at me for involving civilians?"

"Hell, yes." The administrator growled good-naturedly, his voice with the usual strength to it.

It made Herney feel better. Ekstrom's fine, Herney thought. Just a little tired. "Okay, I'll see you in an hour via satellite. We'll give 'em something to talk about."

"Right."

"Hey, Lawrence?" Herney's voice grew low and solemn now. "You've done a hell of a thing up there. I won't ever forget it."

Outside the habisphere, buffeted by wind, Delta-Three struggled to right and repack Norah Mangor's toppled equipment sled. Once all the equipment was back onboard, he battened down the vinyl top and draped Mangor's dead body across the top, tying her down. As he was preparing to drag the sled off course, his two partners came skimming up the glacier toward him.

"Change of plans," Delta-One called out above the wind. "The other three went over the edge."

Delta-Three was not surprised. He also knew what it meant. The Delta Force's plan to stage an accident by arranging four dead bodies on the ice shelf was no longer a viable option. Leaving a lone body would pose more questions than answers. "Sweep?" he asked.

Delta-One nodded. "I'll recover the flares and you two get rid of the sled."

While Delta-One carefully retraced the scientists' path, collecting every last clue that anyone had been there at all, Delta-Three and his partner moved down the glacier with the laden equipment sled. After struggling over the berms, they finally reached the precipice at the end of the Milne Ice Shelf. They gave a push, and Norah Mangor and her sled slipped silently over the edge, plummeting into the Arctic Ocean.

Clean sweep, Delta-Three thought.

As they headed back to base, he was pleased to see the wind obliterating the tracks made by their skis.

Chapter 61-65

61

The nuclear submarine Charlotte had been stationed in the Arctic Ocean for five days now. Its presence here was highly classified.

A Los Angeles-class sub, the Charlotte was designed to "listen and not be heard." Its forty-two tons of turbine engines were suspended on springs to dampen any vibration they might cause. Despite its requirement for stealth, the LA-class sub had one of the largest footprints of any reconnaissance sub in the water. Stretching more than 360 feet from nose to stern, the hull, if placed on an NFL football field, would crush both goalposts and then some. Seven times the length of the U.S. Navy's first Holland-class submarine, the Charlotte displaced 6,927 tons of water when fully submerged and could cruise at an astounding thirty-five knots.

The vessel's normal cruising depth was just below the thermocline, a natural temperature gradient that distorted sonar reflections from above and made the sub invisible to surface radar. With a crew of 148 and max dive depth of over fifteen hundred feet, the vessel represented the state-of-the-art submersible and was the oceanic workhorse of the United