Hive

Sharkey had just finished telling him two disturbing pearls of knowledge. First that Gates and his people had not been heard from in nearly thirty-six hours now. And secondly, that she’d been on the radio with Nikolai Kolich at the Vostok Station and he had pulled a complete 360 on them, acting like he had never said a word about anything odd happening at Vradaz. Completely denying it all like somebody had a gun to his head. If they’d had an ally there, they’d lost him now.

“We have to decide what we’re going to do, Jimmy. Do we try and sit this out? I don’t think so. Something has to be done and it’s up to us to do it. We can’t expect LaHune to help us and probably nobody else either.” She appraised Hayes with those crystal blue eyes of hers that always made something seize up inside him. “What I’m thinking is we first . . . neuter those mummies out in the hut. A little exposure to our lovely air down here ought to put them back to sleep. Also, how do you feel about me sending a message to the NSF that we’re in serious trouble here?”

Hayes didn’t know if that was such a good idea. “I’m willing to bet the NSF will ignore it. Because, chances are, LaHune is sending in his glowing daily reports, fiddling while Rome burns to fucking toast.”

“You’re probably right.”

He figured he was. “We’ll look like a couple crackpots. Besides, Cutchy says we’re heading into a full-blown Polar cyclonic storm within twelve hours. We’re going to be looking at white-out conditions when those winds start sweeping down from the mountains, picking up everything in their path. No way in hell a rescue team can get in here . . . even if they wanted to.”

Sharkey didn’t dispute any of that.

Winter on the Antarctica continent was savage and relentless, marked by screaming subzero winds, perpetual darkness, and wild blizzards that buried camps almost overnight. Planes did not fly to the South Pole even on good days, let alone what they were facing a Condition 3 blizzard with zero visibility and 80 mile-an-hour winds that would lock Kharkhov down for days if not weeks. So whatever was going to happen here, they were going to face it alone.

“There’s more here at work than the weather, Elaine, and I think we both know it.” Hayes lit a cigarette, seemed to find revelation in the glowing tip. “We’ve all been sensing a lot of things, some of it coming in dreams and some of it coming just as feelings we can’t honestly explain. I’m probably the worst of the lot, spouting out reams of bullshit that I have no way of explaining or proving. Most of what I’ve been . . . what word should I use here? . . . intuiting has been about those dead ones out in the hut, the others down in the lake. But not all of it’s been about that. I told you I had a bad feeling about LaHune and I still do. And now, with our good buddy Nikolai Kolich turning his pink tail on us . . . I’m getting an even worse feeling.”

Sharkey just watched him, far beyond the stage where she would even consider trying to talk him out of his conspiracy theories . . . because piece by awful piece, the puzzle he’d been prophesizing was slowly coming together. “You think . . . “ She swallowed, paused. “You still think that LaHune is sitting atop a conspiracy, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Yes, even more than I did before. I’m seeing him as the big old mother hen sitting on a brood of eggs that are going rotten and wormy, but he’s so fucking brainwashed that he don’t have the sense to climb off . . . until he’s told to. You like that, darling? Well, I got more. You wanna hear more?”

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

Hayes grinned. “Well, sweetheart, it’s your quarter so you might as well get your money’s worth.” He pulled off his cigarette. “LaHune. I told you once he doesn’t belong here and that’s the truth. But I think he was selected for this post by certain high-ranking assholes. Maybe he’s NASA or JPL, shit maybe he’s NSA or Cee-Eye-Aye, baby, I don’t know. But I think Uncle Sugar sent him down here. I think LaHune is some kind of spook. There, I said it. I felt it pretty much all along and now I’m admitting it. You’ve pulled a few tours down here, Elaine, and I’m willing to bet you’ve heard the same tired old stories I have. Crazy, fringe-shit about the government sending certain security types down here on occasion, undercover, just to keep an eye on things.”

Sharkey couldn’t lie. “Yeah, I’ve heard it. And it was probably true during the Cold War . . . but now?”