At such times, logic vanishes and men rise magnificently to the occasion. Stirred to action, shouting and cursing and without a spoken command, the surviving Marines, Delta Force, and SEALs leaped from their pitifully sheltered positions in the ice and rushed forward. Running through the breach left by the Snow Cruiser, they overran the barricade, concentrating their fire and eliminating most of the surprised security guards, who were caught unaware of the a.s.sault while they were still concentrating their attention and fire on the rampaging vehicle.

HUGO Wolf stood in pure horror. The gigantic red monstrosity from nowhere had, within the s.p.a.ce of two short minutes, turned the tide of battle, wiping out two Sno-cats and their crews, and crushing nearly twenty of his men. Like a football quarterback who'd thrown a surefire touchdown pa.s.s in the closing minutes of the game, only to have the ball intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown, Hugo could not believe it was happening. Abruptly overtaken by panic, he leaped astride a nearby snowmobile, gunned the engine, and roared away from the turmoil toward the aircraft hangar.

Left abandoned and leaderless, the security guards saw faint hope of escape, and one by one, they surrendered their weapons and placed their hands on their heads. A few melted away and circled Cleary's a.s.sault teams in an attempt to reach the hangar before the aircraft took off. Suddenly, mercifully, the scene of carnage became strangely still and quiet. The b.l.o.o.d.y and nasty fight was over.

THE control room was in unspeakable shambles. Consoles had been catapulted from their bases and hurled against the walls. The contents of desks, shelves, and cabinets were spilled across the floor, carpeting it in files and paper. Tables and chairs were twisted and smashed. Monitors hung from their mountings in crazy angles. The Snow Cruiser sat astride the insane havoc like some great wounded dinosaur, showered by a thousand bullets. Astoundingly, she did not die. In defiance of all the laws of mechanical engineering, her diesels still turned over at idle, with a low rapping sound coming from her shattered exhaust pipes.

Pitt pushed aside the bullet-riddled door of the Snow Cruiser and carelessly watched it drop off its fractured hinges and fall away. Remarkably, he and Giordino had not been killed. Bullets had cut through their clothes, Pitt had taken a shot that had cut a small gouge in his left forearm, and Giordino was bleeding from a scalp wound, but they had survived without serious injury, far beyond their wildest expectations.

Pitt searched the mangled control room for bodies, but the Wolfs, their engineers, and their scientists had evacuated the building for the hangar. Giordino stared through those smiling yet brooding dark eyes of his at the scene of havoc.

"Is the clock still ticking?" he asked gravely.

"I don't think so." Pitt nodded at the remains of the digital clock lying amid the debris and pointed at the numerals. They were frozen at ten minutes and twenty seconds. "By destroying the computers and all electronic systems, we stopped the countdown sequence."

"No ice shelf breaking and drifting out to sea?"

Pitt simply shook his head.

"No end of the earth?"

"No end of the earth," Pitt echoed.

"Then it's over," Giordino muttered, finding it hard to believe that what had begun in a mine in Colorado had finally reached a conclusion in a demolished room in the Antarctic.

"Almost." Pitt leaned weakly against the wrecked Snow Cruiser, feeling relief dulled with anger against Karl Wolf. "There are still a few loose ends we have to tie up."

Giordino stared as if he were on another planet. "Ten minutes and twenty seconds," he said slowly. "Could the world have really come that close to oblivion?"

"If the Valhalla Project had truly gone operational? Probably. Could it have truly altered Earth for thousands of years? Hopefully, we'll never know."

"Do not move a finger or twitch an eye!" The command came as hard as cold marble.

Pitt looked up and found himself face-to-face with a figure in white fatigues pointing a mutant-looking firearm at him. The stranger was bleeding from the chin and a wound in one hand.

Pitt stared at the apparition, trying unsuccessfully to gauge the eyes behind the polarized goggles.

"Can I wiggle my ears?" he asked, perfectly composed.

From his point of view, Cleary couldn't be sure whether the nondescript characters standing in front of him represented enemy or friend. The shorter one looked like a pit bull. The taller of the two was disheveled and had slipshod bandages covering half his face. They looked like men dead on their feet, their gaunt, barely focused, sunken eyes set over cheeks and jaws showing the early stages of scraggly beards. "Who are you and where did you two characters come from, wise mouth?"

"My name is Dirk Pitt. My friend is Al Giordino. We're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."

"NUMA," Cleary repeated, finding the answer little short of lunacy. "Is that a fact?"

"It's a fact," Pitt answered, perfectly composed. "Who are you?"

"Major Tom Cleary, United States Army Special Forces. I'm in command of the team that a.s.saulted the facility."

"I'm sorry we couldn't have arrived sooner and saved more of your men," Pitt said sincerely.

Cleary's shoulders sagged and he lowered his gun. "No better men have died today."

Pitt and Giordino said nothing. There was nothing fitting they could say.

Finally, Cleary straightened. "I can't believe a couple of oceanographic people from NUMA, untrained to fight hostiles, could do so much damage," said Cleary, still trying to figure the men standing in front of him.

"Saving you and your men was a spur-of-the-moment action. Stopping the Wolfs from launching a cataclysm was our primary goal."

"And did you accomplish it?" asked Cleary, looking around at the wreckage of what had once been a high-tech operational control center, "or is the clock still ticking?"

"As you can see," Pitt replied, "all electronic functions are disabled. The electronic commands to activate the ice-cutting machines have been terminated."

"Thank G.o.d," Cleary said, the stress and strain suddenly falling from his shoulders. He wearily removed his helmet, pulled his goggles over his forehead, stepped forward, and extended his unwounded hand. "Gentlemen. Those of us still standing are in your debt. Lord only knows how many lives were spared by your timely intervention with this ..." As he shook their hands, he paused to gaze at the twisted shambles of the once-magnificent Snow Cruiser, her c.u.mmins diesel engines still slowly clacking over like a pair of faintly beating hearts. "Just what exactly is it?"

"A souvenir from Admiral Byrd," said Giordino.

"Who?"

Pitt smiled faintly. "It's a long story."

Cleary's mind shifted gears. "I see no bodies."

"They must have all evacuated the center during the battle and headed for the hangar to board the aircraft and make their escape," Giordino speculated.

"My map of the facility shows an airstrip, but we didn't see any sign of aircraft during our descent."

"Their hangar can't be seen from the air. It was carved into the ice."

Cleary's expression turned to fury. "Are you telling me the fiends responsible for this shameful debacle have vanished?"

"Relax, Major," Giordino said with a canny smile. "They haven't left the facility."

Cleary saw the pleased look in Pitt's eyes. "Did you arrange that, too?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Pitt answered candidly. "On our way here, we happened to run into their aircraft. I'm happy to announce that all flights from the facility have been canceled."

SHOUTS and cheers erupted unabashedly in the Pentagon and White House war rooms at hearing Cleary's voice announce the termination of the ice shelf detachment systems, followed by Lieutenant Jacobs's report that the survivors of Wolf's security force were laying down their arms and surrendering. Elation washed over the two rooms at learning the worst of the deadly crisis was over. They heard Cleary's voice carrying on a one-sided conversation with the saviors of the mission, who carried no radios and whose words could not be heard intelligibly over Cleary's throat microphone.

Unable to contain his exhilaration, the President s.n.a.t.c.hed up a phone and spoke sharply. "Major Cleary, this is the President. Do you read me?"

There was a flicker of static, and then Cleary's voice answered. "Yes, Mr. President, I hear you loud and clear."