Cold War - Jerome Preisler [135]
Nimec entered the water-treatment dome, strode to its central platform, asked the group working on the pump where he could find the man he was seeking, and was pointed in his direction.
“You Mark Rice?” Nimec said, approaching him from behind.
The man glanced up over his shoulder and nodded. He was crouched at a warped metal pipe-coupling near the platform, a small plasma cutter in his hand, a welding helmet and mask covering his head.
“I’d like to talk,” Nimec said. “When you’ve got a minute.”
“Got one right now.”
Rice switched off the torch, rose, carefully set it down on the wheeled tool cart beside him, turned off the oxygen supply to his face mask, and raised its glass hatch.
“What can I do for you?” he said.
Nimec looked at him. A few spikes of hair showed over Rice’s brow, sweaty despite the penetrating cold inside the dome. They were blond with dyed cobalt-blue streaks.
“I’ve seen your folder,” Nimec said. “You were with the Sword detail in Ankara, my old friend Ghazi’s section.”
Rice nodded silently.
“Ghazi sent your team to flush those terrorists out of the mountains a couple, three years ago. On horseback.”
Rice nodded again.
“Before UpLink, you were Army Ranger,” Nimec said. “The 3/75th, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Saw your share of action in the service . . . Task Force Somalia, an anti-narc unit in Colombia . . .”
“Right.”
“And earned some impressive commendations,” Nimec said. “The Distinguished Service Cross, a couple of sharp-shooter’s medals . . .”
Rice flicked a Nomex-gloved hand into the air between them.
“With all due respect,” he said. “It’s been a long while since I wore a black beret. Or rode a horse—”
“Or fired a rifle,” Nimec said.
Rice looked steadily at him.
“True,” Rice said. “Before the attack on this plant the other night.”
Nimec met his gaze. “You were going to resign from Sword until Rollie Thibodeau talked you out of it, and even then only agreed to stay if you could ship out to Cold Corners,” he said. “Feel comfortable telling me the reason?”
Rice regarded him another moment, then shrugged.
“I didn’t want to shoot anything anymore except with a camera,” he said. “What I do here is mostly work for the beakers. Photographic ecosystem profiles. It suits me fine.”
“And still puts that trained eye of yours to good use.”
Rice made no comment.
“I need a sniper,” Nimec said. “Someone who’s dependable. Who won’t make mistakes. A bunch of lives are going to be on the line. Mine’s incidentally one of them.”
Rice looked at him.
“The talk’s been that you’re going out to bring back the missing search team,” Rice said.
Nimec gave him a nod. Their eyes were still in contact.
“I’m not a quitter,” Rice said.
“Nobody thinks that.”
Rice nodded.
“Go ahead and count me in,” he said.
Bull Pass
Burkhart led his men from the ascending passage’s mouth onto a black rock uplift, whipped by freezing wind, his boots stepping across striations that memorialized the labored seaward slide of ancient ice.
A hundred feet below him Bull Pass was congested with shadows. Faded orange, the sun floated on an almost even plane with his line of sight, giving the illusion that he could have squeezed it in his hand if only his reach were longer. It had been like that for days as wintry gloom made its onset.
His attention now, however, was captured by the writhing purple-red blot of light in the sky beside the sun. He had never before seen anything like it. Nor most certainly had any of the others.
Here was the first outward sign of the sun’s advancing fever.
“Mein Gott,” Langern said behind him, staring with awe at the bruisy radiance. “Was ist das?”
Burkhart turned to him.
“Der Gott des Krieges,” he said. “Kann sein, eh?”
Langern’s eyes remained wide behind his goggles.
“Ja, mein Herr,” he said. “Kann sein.”
Burkhart was silent. Then he tapped Langern’s arm to stir him from his rapt absorption, motioning down at the pass.
“Hier müssen alle durchhalten,” he said. “Verstehen?”
“Ja,” Langern said, nodding to show he indeed understood.
This bitter windswept terrace was where they would