"Until now, I was told not to interfere with your communications, but I believe everybody here would like a coherent report."

"I understand, sir," Cleary said, finding it next to impossible to believe he was actually talking to his commander in chief. "I'll have to make it quick, Mr. President. We still have to round up the Wolfs, their engineers, and the last of their security guards."

"I understand, but please brief us on this macabre vehicle that came on the scene. Who does it belong to and who was operating it?"

Cleary told him, but failed miserably at attempting to describe the snow monster that had burst forth from the ice at the last minute and s.n.a.t.c.hed victory virtually from the mouth of defeat.

Everyone sat and listened, bewildered, but n.o.body was more bewildered than Admiral Sandecker when informed that two men from his government agency who were under his direct authority had driven sixty miles across the barren ice in a monstrous 1940 snow vehicle and helped crush a small army of mercenary security guards. He was doubly stunned when he heard the names Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, who he thought were due to land in Washington within the hour.

"Pitt and Giordino," he said, shaking his head in wonderment. "I should have known. If anyone can make a grand entrance where they're not expected, it's them."

"I'm not surprised," said Loren, with a smile across her lovely face. "There was no way Dirk and Al were going to stand by pa.s.sively and wait for the world to stop."

"Who are these people?" demanded General South, angrily. "Where does NUMA get off interfering in a military operation? Who authorized their presence?"

"I would be proud to say I did," Sandecker said, staring directly at South without giving an inch, "but it simply would not be true. These men, make that my men, acted on their own initiative, and it looks to me that it was a d.a.m.ned good thing they did."

The argument died before it had begun. It never left the minds of those present in the war rooms of the Pentagon and White House that without the intervention of Pitt and Giordino, there would have been no estimating the frightful aftermath.

PITT'S and Giordino's ears should have been burning, but without a link to Cleary's headgear radio, they could not hear what was said half a world away. Pitt sat on the step of the Snow Cruiser and pulled the bandages off his face, revealing several cuts that would require st.i.tches.

Cleary looked down at him. "You're certain the Wolfs are still here?"

Pitt nodded. "Karl, the head of the family, and one sister, Elsie, must be in tears at seeing the aircraft they'd planned to use to flee the facility has been rendered nonflyable."

"Can you and Mr. Giordino lead me to the hangar?"

Pitt cracked a smile. "I'd consider it an honor and a privilege."

General South's voice cut into the brief conversation. "Major Cleary, I am directing you to regroup, do what you can for your wounded, and secure the rest of the facility. Then wait for the main Special Forces unit, which should be landing inside half an hour."

"Yes, sir," answered Cleary. "But first there is a little unfinished business to settle." He pulled out the connector between his mike and receiving unit, turned to Pitt, and fixed him with an enigmatic stare. "Where is this hangar?"

"About half a mile," said Pitt. "Are you thinking of rounding up a hundred people with the few men you have left?"

Cleary's lips spread in a shifty grin. "Don't you think it only fitting and proper that the men who have gone through h.e.l.l should be in on the final kill?"

"You'll get no argument from me."

"Are you two up to acting as guides?"

"Did you get permission from Washington?"

"I neglected to ask."

Pitt's opaline green eyes took on a wicked look. Then he said, "Why not? Al and I never could pa.s.s up a diabolical scheme."

45

IT WOULD BE A cla.s.sic understatement to say that Karl Wolf was horrified and enraged when he laid eyes on the broken wreckage of his aircraft. His grand scheme was in tatters, as he and his scientists and engineers milled around the hangar in fear and confusion. To his knowledge, the mechanism to break away the ice shelf was still set to come online in less than four minutes.

Misguided by Hugo, who told them his guards at the control center were still locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Special Forces teams, Karl had no perception that the Fourth Empire had died before it was born, or that Project Valhalla was aborted.

The Wolfs stood in a solemn group, unable to accept the full impact of the disaster, unable to believe the incredible story of a huge vehicle that had run amok and smashed their aircraft, before heading off toward the battle raging in front of the control center. They stood stunned with disbelief at the sudden reversal of their long-cherished plans. Hugo was the only one missing from his family members. Committed to the end, he had disregarded their predicament and was feverishly organizing the remaining members of his security force for the final resistance against the Americans he knew for certain were short minutes away from a.s.saulting the hangar.

Then Karl said, "Well, that's it, then." He turned to Blondi. "Send a message to our brother Bruno on board the Ulrich Wolf. Explain the situation and tell him to send backup aircraft here immediately with all speed. We haven't another moment to lose."

Blondi didn't waste time with questions. She took off at a run toward the radio inside the control room at the edge of the airstrip.

"Will it be possible to land on the Ulrich Wolf during the early stages of the cataclysm?" Elsie Wolf asked her brother. Her face was pale with anguish.

Karl looked at his chief engineer, Jurgen Holtz. "Do you have an answer for my sister, Jurgen?"

A frightened Holtz looked down at the icy floor of the hangar and replied woodenly. "I have no way of calculating the exact arrival time of the expected hurricane winds and tidal waves. Nor can I predict their initial strength. But if they reach the Ulrich Wolf before our flight can land, I fear the result can only lead to tragedy."

"Are you saying we're all going to die?" demanded Elsie.

"I'm saying we won't know until the time comes," Holtz said soberly.

"We'll never have time to transfer the Amenes artifacts from the damaged planes after Bruno arrives," said Karl, staring distraught at the family's personal executive jet, sitting broken like a child's toy. "We'll take only relics of the Third Reich."

"I'm going to need every able-bodied male and female who can shoot a weapon." The voice came from behind Karl. It was Hugo, whose black uniform was splattered with blood from the dead guard who'd failed to tell him of the havoc in the hangar. "I realize we have many frightened and disoriented people on our hands, but if we are to survive until rescued by our brothers and sisters at the shipyard, we must hold out against the American fighting force."

"How many of your fighting men have survived?" asked Karl.

"I'm down to twelve. That's why I require all the reserves I can find."

"Do you have enough weapons for us all?"

Hugo nodded. "Guns and ammo can be found in the a.r.s.enal room at the entrance of the hangar."

"Then you have my permission to recruit any and everyone who wants to see their loved ones again."

Hugo looked his brother in the eyes. "It is not my place, brother, to ask them to fight and die. You are the leader of our new destiny. You are whom they respect and venerate. You ask, and they will follow."

Karl stared into the faces of his brother and two sisters, seeing his own expression of foreboding in their eyes. With a mind as cold as an iceberg and a heart of stone, he had no misgivings about ordering his people to lay down their lives so that he and his siblings might survive.

"a.s.semble them," he said to Elsie, "and I will tell them what they must do."

LEAVING four of his men who were not hurt seriously to tend the wounded and stand guard over the surviving security guards, Cleary and twenty-two able-bodied men of his remaining team, led by Pitt and Giordino, who knew the way to the hangar, entered the main tunnel in tactical formation, with two of Garnet's Delta Force acting as forward flanking scouts.