“What happened?” Charli asked.
Samantha swallowed. “When Patty didn’t show up this morning, I went to her room. She was unresponsive. I couldn’t even tell she was breathing. Decker and Kristi tried to save her, but… I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Samantha turned and ran down the hallway toward her room, locking the door behind her. She sank onto her bed and sobbed.
* * *
Cobra’sprivate jet was somewhere over the Pacific, headed toward a refueling stop in Hawaii before Tower called Thor, Malik Jones, and Lev Segal into the conference room for a briefing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting and in the dark, but we’re caught in a developing situation.” He motioned toward the chairs. “Take a seat.”
Thor sat, exchanged glances with Jones and Segal, the three of them eager to find out what was so important that the US government would risk sending them to Antarctica in the middle of austral winter.
Tower tapped at his pad, and a map of Antarctica appeared on the large monitor on the wall. “Eighteen hours ago, a new US military satellite with a state-of-the-art missile-control system crashed about three hundred fifty miles from Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. It wasn’t a mechanical failure. The satellite was hacked.”
Thor gaped at him. “Hacked?Fuck.”
“Holy shit.”
“Who could do something like that?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment.” Tower tapped his pad, and a schematic of the satellite appeared on the screen. “Are any of you familiar with Golden Horde? No? I’m not surprised. It’s the nickname given to a new guidance system that enables missiles to adjust course and coordinate with one another after launch. In the past, once a missile was in the air, it simply followed its trajectory until impact, like a cannonball. With Golden Horde, a sophisticated GPS and communication between missiles enable the weapons to act as independent swarms after launch, giving them the ability to respond to and overwhelm enemy air defenses—and making it possible for an operator to change their trajectory to new targets.”
Jones grinned. “I like it.”
Segal’s gaze was on the screen. “That’s game-changing technology.”
Thor saw where this was going. “Someone wants to steal it.”
Tower nodded. “That’s the Pentagon’s theory. Our job is to get to the crash site and retrieve sensitive components. But we’ve got serious obstacles to overcome if we’re going to succeed. Isaksen, I’m placing you in command of operations on this one. You’re the only one of us with experience in this kind of environment. I’m counting on you to help us prepare.”
“Understood.” Thor had anticipated this.
Tower fixed his gaze on Jones and Segal. “Will either of you have problems following orders from Isaksen?”
They had been with the company longer than Thor, and both had more straight-up combat experience.
“No, sir.”
“Hell, no.”
Tower went over the plan. “When a weather window opens, you’ll fly to Amundsen-Scott Station on a specially equipped aircraft. It will be a rough flight. If the pilot is able to land, you’ll have to disembark quickly. He has to keep the plane running during refueling, or the propellers and fuel will freeze.”
“That’s how it was in Greenland, too.” Except then, Thor hadn’t just offloaded himself and his gear, but also eleven dogs, the sled, and hundreds of kilos of supplies.
“If the weather holds, you’ll take a Twin Otter with a ferry tank to the crash site, retrieve the package, re-board the plane, and head back to the station. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for a window for your ride back. Due to altitude and consistently cold temperatures, weather at the Pole itself is fairly stable. But the continent overall has the harshest winds and coldest temps on the planet. Getting you safely there and back entails looking at the forecast along your entire flight path, not just local conditions.”
That made sense to Thor.
“I’ll remain in Christchurch, working as the go-between for our operation and the government of New Zealand. We’ll check in via a laptop equipped with satellite VPN.”
“Why retrieve the technology? Why can’t we just blow it up?” Segal asked.
“Plastic explosives are unreliable in that kind of cold,” Tower explained. “Also, by treaty, nations are required to remove all waste. Someone will have to fly out to the crash site in austral summer to remove the wreckage. If we blow it up, that would make their job close to impossible, wouldn’t it?”
Tower and Thor spent the next few hours breaking down each step of the operation, trouble-shooting the entire mission from beginning to end.
“What happens if we get hit by a storm while we’re out there?” Jones asked.