She shoved her hands into her pockets, the hand warmers almost unbearably hot. “See that metal box just beneath that electrical node? That’s what we came for—that and the unit just beside it.”
He looked inside, studied the situation. “Got it.”
He positioned the drill, the small device whirring as he removed the first bolt. Then Thor looked up at the dark sky. “Here they come.”
Samantha heard it, too—the sound of an approaching airplane.
5
Thor shoved his hands into his pockets to warm them and watched the plane circle overhead. “Segal, you speak Russian, right?”
“Enough to get by. Come on, Jones. We’re the welcoming committee.”
Thor didn’t need to tell them what to do. He’d worked with them for three years in many different situations. He trusted them not to allow anyone to come near Samantha or the satellite.
Samantha struggled to position the drill for the next bolt. “This battery isn’t going to last long in the cold.”
“Worry about that when it happens.”
“What if they point guns at you or start shooting?”
“They’re not going to open fire. They can’t be that stupid. They’d be proving their guilt. Besides, we have bigger problems right now. The wind is picking up. Just focus.”
The front edge of that storm system was moving closer.
Samantha removed a bolt and stuck her hands inside her pockets again. “One of the bolts is hidden beneath a twisted strut. We’re going to have to cut through.”
“I see it.” Thor replaced the blade of the saw and began cutting through the strut as the plane landed and came to a stop. He focused on the job and left the intruders to Jones and Segal. The sooner they had these components in their hands, the sooner this would be over. “That’s one done.”
But his exposed fingers couldn’t take more.
It was Samantha’s turn again.
From some distance behind them came a man’s voice in heavily accented English. “We are from Vostok Station and have come to help.”
Samantha shook her head. “Right.”
“Don’t worry about them. Just focus on that GPS unit.”
Segal chuckled. “The six of you flew out here in dangerous conditions from four hundred miles away to help—and you’re carrying weapons.”
That was Segal’s way of warning Thor that they were outnumbered—and that the Russians were armed.
“You have rifles, too, I see. You are military, yes?”
“We’re not military, no. The rifles are just to protect us from polar bears.”
“There are no polar bears in Antarctica.”
“We were misinformed.”
Segal was lying. The Russians were lying. Everyone knew it.
That was international relations in a nutshell.
Meanwhile, Samantha had stopped sawing, her hands in her pockets again. “This is taking too long.”
“We’re almost there.” Thor glanced at his watch. “We’ve got eight minutes.”