“You sound as if you’re giving orders, Major.”
Li sounded edgy. He stepped past Gushan, studying the compartment. He focused on the clothes strewn about and then picked up the bottle and sniffed the aroma. “Warming your own bones?”
“It’s very effective,” Gushan insisted. He figured there was no point in pretending. “See for yourself.”
He poured the admiral a shot and handed it over.
Li drank it swiftly. His face betrayed neither pleasure nor disdain. He put the glass down without commenting on its quality. “You don’t seem quite yourself, Major. What’s bothering you?”
“It’s pointless for us to sit here,” Gushan said. “Waiting for a plane that isn’t coming.”
“The high command—”
“The high command is wrong,” Gushan snapped, dangerously interrupting his superior.
Li took this dereliction with a surprising level of calm. “They have information that says otherwise.”
“From whom?” Gushan demanded. “Where is this story coming from? Who is this mysterious source?”
“An emissary of the hijackers,” Li said.
This was the first time Li had shared that bit of data. It moved the needle enough for Gushan to pause. Sadly, he doubted its veracity.
“The plane isn’t coming,” he repeated. “Nightfall has come and gone. It’s nearly midnight.”
“It may remain hidden.”
“There are only so many places to hide an aircraft that large,” Gushan said. “By now the Americans will have checked them all. The plane has obviously crashed. Whoever this mouthpiece for the hijackers is, he or she is playing a game. Probably trying to get something for nothing. Mark my words, they will soon ask for money—as a show of good faith or an entry fee of some sort. They will tell us there are other bidders. It’s a stalling tactic at best. Or a con.”
“Perhaps,” Li said with a groan. “But that’s not our concern. We have our orders. Maintain the runway, and find and eliminate the American. We will accomplish both.”
The runway was useless at this point, Gushan thought. The Americans had obviously spotted it. They would be watching it. If the EAGL somehow materialized and attempted to reach them it would be shot out of the sky, and the runway and the icebreaker would be hit with a barrage of cruise missiles.
Gushan let that point go. Li would never go against the high command. “I’ll look for the American using the helicopter. We can rig up an infrared camera. If he’s out there, it will be easier to spot his heat.”
Li considered this. “Very well,” he said. “The captain wants to move the ship before the ice at our stern gets any thicker. We’re going to turn and move back up the cut and clear things out a bit to keep the channel from closing. I’ll have him wait until you’re airborne. Be quick about it.”
Gushan had no intention of delaying. He nodded his understanding and put the cork back in the bottle. Celebrations would have to wait.
Joe sat in the helicopter drumming his fingers on his knee. He’d had to run the engine three times since Kurt’s radio message and was wary about going through the start procedure a fourth time without actually taking off. Each start was a significant draw on the battery. But to conserve fuel for the ride home he could only run the engine for five minutes before shutting it back down, which was not enough time to recharge the power pack.
He watched the oil temps dropping, allowing them to go lower than he had before, attempting to squeeze every last second out of his delay. Finally, he’d waited as long as he dared.
Time to go.
He started the engine once more. It came to life without protest and Joe made a mental note to commend the mechanics and write a letter to the company that made the batteries, thanking them for the quality of their product.
As the helicopter powered up, he turned on the plethora of deice equipment it carried. Heated cockpit windows, heated control surfaces, heated rotors. The window cleared slowly, and the darkness of the night poured in.
It was a quarter to midnight. He would wait a couple minutes before attempting to take off. Then he’d fly across the ice, listening for a call from Kurt and looking for a light in the darkness.
He only hoped Kurt understood his mention of the goblin shark. The strange-looking creatures spent most of their time dwelling in the cold, dark depths of the ocean, but on rare occasions they came to the surface late at night.
On an expedition to the Indian Ocean, Kurt and Joe had been visited by one of the mysterious beasts on three successive evenings, each time almost precisely at midnight.
With the engine humming and the deicing equipment glowing red-hot, Joe decided to get the helicopter up into the sky. He put his hands on the controls, brought the power up slowly, and tested the lift. The blades were clawing the air as they should, with no ice buildup to prevent them from generating lift.
“It’s showtime,” he said, speaking as if Kurt could hear him. “Ready or not, here I come.”
