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By Root 503 0

on Hideo Nomo, Kozuhiro Sasaki, and Tomo Ohka for reasons he adamantly denied had anything to do with matters of ethnic pride. Pruitt really didn’t care about Ikegami’s reasons for coveting Suzuki, who would be a valuable asset to any team in the league. It was enough just to know he did want him with a passion. Because now Pruitt was thinking he would dangle Pedro Martinez and the heavyweight bat Jason Giambi in front of Cadogan, provided Cadogan was willing to give Ichiro to Ikegami for Spencer, the two Yank minor leaguers, and a large handful of cash, all of which Pruitt would then get in return from Cadogan as part of a three-way swap. His purchasing power recharged, Pruitt would be able to go after a replacement starting arm to fill the hole left by Pedro. Maybe Andy Pettite. With Mike Stanton to strengthen his bullpen if there were some leftover funds. Either that, or he could see what the Air Guard Herkybirds over in Christchurch were asking for Jose Visciano.

Pruitt skimmed over the language of his message again. It could use some minor refinements, one more quick but careful pass before it was ready to go.

He lowered his fingers back onto his keyboard, and was about to make the first of his changes when a loud electronic warning tone grated from the console beside him, a row of color-coded chicklet lights to one side of his console blinked on in startling sequence, and the e-mail on his display screen was displaced by the base security program’s automatic pop-up window.

Pruitt’s response was practiced and immediate, his mind cleared of everything except for a task list that would need to be executed in a hurry. Bolt-erect at his station, he palmed his computer mouse, clicked to zoom, clicked again to recall and isolate an image, his eyes wide with rapidly building shock and astonishment as they confirmed what they were seeing was no bogie.

Less than fifteen seconds after the alert sounded, he flipped the redline radio switch on the panel beside him and got hold of Ron Waylon.

“It’s the desalinization plant,” Waylon told Nimec. He was breathless from his urgent hustle to the security station. “The images are from those FLIR thermacams behind the ceiling panels . . . ones we installed to replace the outside cameras when they went inoperational.”

Nimec nodded tensely. He recalled Waylon showing him their locations during their base tour just hours ago, while explaining that his people hadn’t yet gotten around to removing the weather-damaged external units. Both men were standing behind Pruitt as the thermal infrared pictures on his monitor shifted through their color palette. They could see four intruders—actually the spectral radiant heat signatures of four intruders—moving about inside the dome, heading toward the door. And Nimec knew that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Look.” He indicated three bright red streaks on the image, matching them against assigned colors on a horizontal measurement bar at the bottom of the screen. “Something’s burning in there.”

“Fires,” Waylon said. “They have to be fires. And they’re damned hot.” He breathed, pointed. “Jesus Christ, looks like one’s on an inflow pump . . . and over here, this is the seawater pipeline . . . I don’t know what the hell’s going on. . . .”

Nimec looked at him, his heart pounding.

“We’re being hit,” he said. “Pull together some men, we have to get out there now.”

A long, narrow room on the main building’s upper level, the Meat Lockers had metallic walls, bar, tables, and chairs that were washed with a reflective tungsten-blue radiance from overhead truss lighting to create a decor and ambience that wryly suited its name.

The crowd of off-duty ice people assembled inside was subdued but not altogether cheerless. Their awareness of the missing three was weighable as they marked the passage of the storm, but these were men and women whose rigorous living conditions demanded a unique spirit and adaptability, and it was understood that brooding would do nothing to help the situation. Morale was bolstered in different ways. During work rotations their