Chapter 21
Day 2—Harper Research and Testing Facility, East Antarctic Ice Sheet
“Goddammit!”Sampson’s fist left a dent in the wall.
Clive forced himself to stay rooted to the spot and watched with a wary eye. There seemed to be an awful lot of rage simmering beneath Sampson’s smiling surface.
In this case, his frustration arose from their inability to track Cooper and the woman. A storm raged outside—Condition 2, according to the reports coming out of McMurdo—which meant they were stuck.
He couldn’t say that he was glad, exactly, since his objective was to get his hands on that virus, but he didn’t mind seeing this asshole foiled. Again. He pressed his lips together to hide a smirk.
“Bastard can’t possibly survive in this shit,” Sampson spat out and moved to the map on the wall. “But without wings, we’re just as screwed. We need eyes in the sky or this hunt’s gonna be a crapshoot. Over before it starts.”
Sampson traced a circle around the South Pole and stared at the dots and ridges and wide-open spaces that made up the highest, driest, coldest wilderness on earth.
“We’ve got a man and a woman on their own out there. Wind chill as low as seventy-five below. Can’t see. Can’t move.” He tilted his head, staring at that single dot marring the middle of the continent. “Why’d they leave Pole?”
“Surely, they guessed we’d return for the samples.”
“And the bastard took ’em with him.” Sampson shook his head, looking…excited almost. “Fucker’s smarter than he looks.”
“Or paranoid.”
It took an effort not to step back when Sampson focused his sharp blue eyes on Clive. “Ain’t paranoid if a threat’s real.”
Clive narrowed his eyes and considered the map. The most commonly used route for long expeditions headed through the Transantarctic Mountains to McMurdo, the large U.S. base on the coast. But that had to be close to a thousand-mile trek. People did it in the summer, but in this season? Impossible. What else could they do?
Was there some place they could hunker down through the winter? Had they left the station and hidden nearby, only to return once the coast was clear? The South African station was the obvious choice.
Or… His eyes widened as they landed on a small dot that lay a good distance across the ice from Burke-Ruhe. Wouldn’t that be funny?
There was always door number three. Clive glanced at Sampson to see if he’d come to the same conclusion.
When their eyes met, he felt, for the first time, a sense of camaraderie with this monster. Which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing, since they’d be stuck at this facility for months, wintering together along with the staff and researchers, not to mention the trial subjects.
“We should probably just wait for now, given the weather,” Clive suggested lightly, to which Sampson replied with a smirk and a wink. He was in a much better mood apparently.
Good. It was best to keep the caged animals from getting too agitated.
Clive smiled back.
In fact, things were absolutely looking up again, weren’t they? While Sampson stomped off to do whatever it was meathead brutes did in their downtime, Clive made his way to the lounge, hoping he’d find a book or two in English to read.
* * *
Day 2—239 Miles to Volkov Station—19 Days of Food Remaining
Coop reentered the tent to find that Angel had made the decision for him: the bags were zipped together.
“Is this okay?” Angel had to yell above the wind’s boisterous din. His chest did an odd clenching thing.
“Good. Good idea.” He nodded as he pulled his boots off, wincing when they rubbed against the raw places on his feet. He needed to take a look at them. “We’ll share, uh, body heat.”
“Sharewhat?” she yelled through the unbelievable din of wind-shaken nylon.
“Heat!” he replied.
When she shrugged, he gave up. He couldn’t yell and she couldn’t hear. He wiped the frost from his face and body, removed his outer layer, and then slowly dropped to the ground, where he slid into the sleeping bag.
