[MISSION DAY 3, FEBRUARY 18, 2033]
[1630 hours local time]
[Bering Strait, Alaska]
The storm had blown itself out, in that fickle way of weather in the arctic. The skies were gradually shedding themselves of the dense black clouds. Even the sun was out, hovering low above the horizon as always. The Angels were heading toward it, which made a bright orange glare across the windshield of the pickup truck.
They had taken it, with Bowden’s blessing, from the hangar at Little Diomede. It was not really designed for driving across the broken ice floes of the Bering Strait, but they didn’t have a lot of other choices.
The cab was large enough for only three of them.
Monster drove. Price, semiconscious, was beside him, her head on his shoulder. Barnard drew the long straw and got the other seat. Wall and the Tsar lay on the back tray, in the space left where the de-icing tank had been removed.
They went as far south as possible before the ice got too rough and ridged. Even so it was slow going, keeping a close watch out for crevasses or fissures. As slow as it was, it was still safer here in the south than north of the islands where the battle still raged.
It was a different kind of battle now. No longer an invasion, it was a fighting retreat and the Bzadians were taking heavy losses.
“Did you know the ice floe would crack the way it did?” Monster asked.
“I kind of hoped,” Barnard said. “There was a lot of weight sitting on the edge.”
“Shame about your friend Wilton,” Wall said.
“On Operation Magnum,” Barnard said, “Wilton told me that he would give up his own life for his buddies. For us. If he had to.”
“I remember,” the Tsar said. “I said that was the mark of a great man.”
“I told him he wasn’t a man yet,” Barnard said.
“Yes, you did,” the Tsar said.
Monster strained his eyes, uncertain of what lay ahead. A gray blur on the horizon gradually resolved into snow-covered slopes and rocky falls.
“Greater love hath no man than this,” Barnard said. “That a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Around them the crushed and cracked floes of the ice field were gradually healing themselves. What had happened here today was no more than a flicker of an eyelid in the endless grind of the ice and the eternal flow of the sea.
“Is that Shakespeare?” the Tsar asked.
“It’s from the Bible,” Wall said. “I think Emile would have appreciated that.”