Cold War - Jerome Preisler [126]
In asking himself why, Granger had decided it didn’t mean he was under immediate suspicion, but was just further evidence of how UpLink would huddle up in secrecy when they were under fire. And when they were preparing to move. Even if he managed to steer Nimec away from the notch this time around, Granger knew the princely hero would return to investigate, probably with a Cold Corners pilot at the sticks, maybe going in with a whole damn squad of his own men.
No, he thought, Nimec wouldn’t stop coming at it. Not unless he was stopped in his tracks. And that would itself barely postpone the inevitable.
UpLink, goddamn them . . .
UpLink International wouldn’t stop coming.
Granger could read the writing on the wall, and intended to remove himself from the scene before his connection to Albedo was exposed. But he wanted to gain a lead, deal UpLink a blow that would send a major shock through its system, and convince Burkhart to provide him with money and an avenue of escape. But with or without those arrangements, he’d still do what he had to, and couldn’t say that he had any scruples about it.
Aware of the Beretta’s encouraging pressure against his side, Granger listened as the whir of the spinning APU filled his cabin. He was only a little anxious, and not in a particular hurry.
Nimec could take his time at Cold Corners One, squeeze in a final ounce of the redhead’s exclusive hospitality.
His warm and cozy stay there was about to get cut short.
Annie Caulfield shut down her laptop, detached its modem cord from the telephone jack near her room’s tiny desk, and sleeved the computer into her Timberland carry bag. Then she went across the room, put the Timberland on her bed, considered gathering her toiletries from the night stand, and instead sat thinking at the edge of her mattress.
Her face bore a troubled expression. She would not deny that part of it related to things left unfinished with Pete Nimec . . . a large part. But Annie’s focus wasn’t on her personal loose ends. She didn’t think she had the right to turn it in that direction.
Minutes earlier, Annie had checked her e-mail and found a dashed-off reply to a note she’d sent to Jon Ketchum. Then she had scanned, in order, Goddard’s public Internet and confidential Intranet sites for the latest SOHO updates.
Everything she’d read and seen on-line indicated the solar flares that had been cooking on the far side of the sun—and heating up news lines around the world—were at last set to make their highly trumpeted appearance. It would almost surely be a brief one. But Annie had been persuaded it also would be dramatic . . . especially in Antarctica.
Given their high threshold of tolerance for challenging circumstances, she doubted the majority of polar bases would have much to worry about. In fact, she was sure their personnel would await the event with delirious anticipation, seeing it as an opportunity to gather scads of exceptional astrophysical data and enjoy one humdinger of a light show when the aurora australis got an energetic cosmic jolt. For most of them it would be like having ringside seats at an extravagant once-in-a-lifetime circus that came rolling into their backyard. Few to none would complain if the price of admission included a spell of erratic communications and ambiguous blips and ghosts on their radars that would be construed by imaginative Atlantis mappers as signs of the Lost Continent rising. While she realized power fluctuations and outages were a more serious potential consideration, Annie also knew virtually all of the ice stations had hardened electrical systems, and multiple backup generators