Zero Hour

“I have plenty of reason,” she replied. “You’ve become a murderer. The man I knew was never like that. You wanted peace.”

“And this is what it got me!” He pulled off his mask to reveal a face horribly scarred by melted and burned skin. His nose had been burned off, the skin over his right eye scarred and twisted until that eye bulged grotesquely.

Thero stepped toward her angrily. She tried to back away but tripped and fell. Thero’s gaze flicked off to the right and then settled back on her.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he said aloud. “She’s a traitor. She betrayed us like all the rest.”

Hayley stared up at him, one hand raised to defend herself. She looked around but saw no one else in the room.

Still poised to assault her, Thero glanced over his shoulder. Finally, slowly, he lowered his hand and centered his gaze upon her once again. “They’re using you,” he told her.

“Who?”

“All of them,” he replied. “The ASIO, the Americans, the Russians. All of them are out to destroy us together.”

Thero’s paranoid delusions had always run to the grandiose. Strangely, his radical actions had now united much of the world against him.

“They forced me to come along,” she said, thinking quickly and playing to his thoughts. “They were going to put me in prison if I didn’t help. They claimed I was collaborating with you.”

Thero stared down at her. His scarred face showed no trace of emotion. She felt sorry for him in a way. Sorry and afraid and confused.

Thero glanced off to the side once again, staring into the distance. She found it frightening.

He shook his head as if responding to a question. “No,” he muttered. “No, I don’t agree. We must be cautious. What makes you think she can be trusted?”

Once again, Hayley looked in the direction of Thero’s gaze. There was no one there, not even in the distant shadows. Her mind whirled. She took a chance.

“George?” she whispered. “George, I promise I’ve come to help you.”

Thero turned her way again.

“I looked for you both,” she insisted, gazing up into his eyes, her face quivering. “I went to Japan after the explosions. I flew there to find you even though I was afraid to get on the plane. You know how I hate to travel. I was there at the memorial services for you and your father and Tessa. You have to know this. Now I’ve come all the way here to find you.”

Thero straightened a bit, he eased back. “I told him you were always loyal,” he said in an odd tone.

He held out his hand, his left hand this time. The skin was smooth, unscarred. George had been left-handed, Thero used his right. She reached over and grasped the smooth palm.

“Come with me,” Thero said. “I’ll show you what Father and I have built.”

Father and I.

She now understood. Part of her recoiled at the thought, but she could not reject it any further. George was dead. She was certain of it. He’d died along with Tessa in Japan. Thero alone had survived. The pain and guilt of it had broken his already fragile mind and split his personality in two. Both the threat of destruction and the slim chance at salvation had come from the same body. In life, George Thero had been called his father’s conscience. Now, after death, he’d become just that.

Hayley felt an all-encompassing sadness at this realization, but some part of her mind realized she needed to act. If she could use this break from reality to save her country, she must try, however distasteful it might be.

She reached out a hand and touched Thero’s scarred face, looking into his eyes as if she were gazing at her old friend.

“It’s good to see you, George,” she said. “It’s so good to see you again.”

The tears in her eyes were genuine. They seemed to touch this aspect of Thero’s personality. “It’s good to see you too,” he replied softly. “Father and I have missed you for so long.”

FORTY-ONE

Hours of hiking through the blizzard and the frigid darkness brought Kurt to what geologists call a lateral moraine, a ridge of material deposited along the side of a glacier. Just beyond it, he could see the imposing wall of ice that made up the Winston Glacier.

Having made his first landmark, he turned south and began hiking down the slope toward the lagoon and the series of hot spots photographed by the Russian drones.

As he traveled, he received a low-battery warning on the night vision goggles.

He’d known the cold would drain the batteries and had been using them sparingly, turning them on, studying the terrain, and then switching them off as he hiked. Now as he forced his way down the rugged slope, he needed them almost constantly. When they finally shut down, Kurt was left in utter darkness.

Removing the goggles, Kurt trudged onward, holding the hood of his parka across everything but his eyes. He stumbled on a pile of unseen rocks, cursing under his breath as he smashed his shin. He fought his way over uneven terrain, and then he took a bad step in the dark.

He dropped and slid down a steep incline, causing a minor avalanche that took him for a ride and spat him out on flattish ground moments later.

Kurt allowed himself to rest for just a moment, but he knew better than to linger. The cold and fatigue would try to drag him into a sleep from which he would never awake. He found a spot to push off and forced himself to stand.

Breathing deeply, he noticed something. Not a sight or sound, but an odd scent. He couldn’t quite place it, but it smelled like food cooking. Bad, greasy food, mixed with smoke. He couldn’t exactly call it a pleasant smell, but it wasn’t his imagination.

His fatigue was instantly forgotten as he thought about the reco

“Even people who live underground need to eat,” he whispered.

Kurt sniffed the air in an attempt to locate the source of the smell, but he was no bloodhound. The best he could do was get a general sense that it was traveling upslope toward him. He eased forward until he found a treelike column of snow and ice.

He pulled the flashlight from a pocket, covered it, and then switched it on, allowing a tiny portion of light to escape from beneath his glove.

The column rose about ten feet. A few yards away, a second column stood only four feet high. And thirty or forty feet from that, he saw a third and a fourth and a fifth.

Kurt shut off the light and made his way to the shorter column. He found it was open at the top and roughly circular. As the wind gusted, it made a hollow sound, like someone blowing across the top of an open wine bottle.

He leaned over and peered down into the mouth of the icy tube. It was about the size of a manhole on a city street. Looking down into it, he saw nothing but darkness, nor did he detect a strong scent of food or grease. Still, he could feel warmth rising up and bathing his face. It felt almost surreal after so many hours in the cold. It also felt humid.

Kurt put a hand on the edge of the column and broke a piece off. It was just ice, and not very thick at that. It was also blackened with soot. He began to understand what he was looking at.

He’d been in Iceland a few years before and found similar structures near the geothermal vents up on the slopes of the active volcanic mountains. As the heated air from inside made its way to the surface, it brought humidity with it, some of which cooled and froze almost instantly as it mixed with the frigid outside air. Slowly, like coral building up a reef or the black smokers in the depths of the ocean, the freezing water vapor created chimneylike tubes. Since they were merely thin sheets of ice, they tended to topple in high winds. But as long as the vent was active, they would regrow.

Kurt risked another quick flash from his flashlight, aiming it down into the opening.