Chapter 60
Arctic
Dammit!” Kasey fumed as her foot sank into a pool of slush. She quickly extracted her already half-frozen shoe, but it was hopeless. Frigid seawater was sloshing inside.
She looked back at Chen. He was ten yards behind and limping heavily, his head bent down against the cold.
“I need to stop for a minute,” she said.
Kasey dropped her load and sat on Sky Fire’s case, turning the world’s most advanced AI weapon into a seat. She dug into the backpack, thankful she’d had the foresight to pack extra pairs of heavy wool socks for them both.
Chen finally caught up as she was unlacing her shoe.
“Do you need a fresh pair?” she asked, holding up the socks.
“I think mine are dry,” he said, “but perhaps I could wear them on my hands. These gloves aren’t very thick.”
She handed over the socks and watched him fumble to pull them onto his hands and over the forearms of his jacket.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Okay,” he said weakly.
“We can take a break if you want. I’m guessing we’ve got about four miles to go. We’ll stop in another twenty minutes or so to check for messages from Langley and update our position.” She retrieved a small towel from the backpack and used it to mop out her right shoe.
Once she began lacing back up, Chen set out again to get a head start. He’d only gone a few steps when he stopped and said, “We may have a problem.”
Kasey stood and went to join him. He pointed ahead and she saw what he was referring to: a wide lead was blocking their path. They walked closer to get a better look, stopping just short of the breach.
“Any luck we may have had appears to have ended,” Chen said.
Only a few minutes earlier, Kasey had remarked that they’d been fortunate.
They’d encountered only a few leads so far and had gotten around them with minor deviations.
This gap was six feet wide at its narrowest point and stretched endlessly to both the north and south.
As far as the eye could see, their path to the weather station was blocked.
Chen said, “There’s no way we can cross that, and I don’t see an end in either direction.”
Kasey studied the icy terrain but saw nothing encouraging. The break had to stretch half a mile in each direction before curving out of sight. “It would be a half-hour detour, probably more.”
“Or we might never find a way across.”
“Is there any way Sky Fire could help us?” she asked.
“We could contact Langley. They would see our precise position and be able to cross-reference their most recent ice maps. I don’t know if they have enough resolution to see these small channels, though.”
Kasey didn’t know either, but it was worth a shot.
A logical course of action that entailed minimum risk beyond pulling power from the device’s battery.
Nevertheless, she had a terrible feeling the news would be grim.
An alternate route, if there even was one, could conceivably add five or ten miles to their trek.
And Chen, she was certain, wasn’t capable of that.
In truth, Kasey wasn’t sure if she was up to it herself.
Her methodical nature, her relentless need to process and plan, kicked into overdrive.
Could the SEALs come to their aid? Not anytime soon.
Was there another weather station not blockaded by the sea?
Probably none that were closer. At every turn, with every fresh idea, Kasey hit a wall.
A wall of ice and wind and glacial water.
She was deep in thought when a single hushed word broke her concentration.
“Kasey…”
She looked at Chen.
His face was mostly covered, but all she needed to see was his eyes.
They were shot with concern as he stared at something behind them.
Kasey turned, scanned into the distance, and had no trouble spotting what had seized his attention.
A man was approaching, probably a hundred and fifty yards back.
A lone figure hauling something on his back.
He was perfectly aligned with the tracks they were leaving.
“He’s following us,” Chen said.
“No doubt about it.”
In heavy clothing and with full facial coverings, there was no way to tell who it was. The figure’s weary stride, and the absolute lack of any local population, guaranteed it was someone from the crash site. The possibilities of who this was ranged from helpful to disastrous.
“Do you think it’s the Chinese?” Chen asked.
“It’s a possibility.”
“What do we do?”
Kasey didn’t reply.
“If that lead was half as wide, we could jump across.”
“But it’s not. So we wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Her eyes narrowed, straining to see through the mist. Soon, fifty yards behind the man, she saw another hulking silhouette materialize out of the gloom.
Kasey quickly dropped her gear and extracted the Winchester. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, settled the scope, and took careful aim. “Whoever it is,” she said in a low voice as she looked through the optic, “he’s definitely not alone.”
Her half-numb finger put pressure on the trigger.