"I told you to wait back there."

"I'm not a child that you can tell what to do and what not to do." Tai looked over his shoulder. "What is that?"

"One of the Koreans. Or what's left of one of them," he replied.

Now she could recognize the pieces of white as bone and the charred flesh. Thankfully, there was no smell. "What could have done that to him?"

"I don't know how he died, but someone put a couple of thermal grenades on the body so it couldn't be identified." Vaughn tapped her on the shoulder. "Let's keep going. This means they'll be moving even slower."

Min collapsed. Getting to the top of this ridge, pulling the sled, was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. His entire body reverberated with pain overlaid with exhaustion. He lay there panting, feeling the sweat freeze on his skin. He knew he needed to do something, but he couldn't. Not now. He wanted to be home again, lying on the tiled floor of his parents house, feeling the heat rising through the floor from the burning coal he had to load every evening, hearing his mother in the kitchen pounding cabbage, preparing kimchee.

Min roused himself. "The radio," he called out. Ho pulled a package off the sled and handed it to him. With fumbling fingers inside his mittens, Min unwrapped the radio. He hoped it worked. They had wrapped it in metal foil to protect it from the EMP blast of the bomb, but he had little faith in the recommendations of scientists.

He threw the antenna out on the ice. Taking his mittens off, Min swiftly dialed in the correct frequency and turned the radio on. By the time he put his gloves back on, he had lost the feeling in all his fingers. A distant part of his mind told him that was bad, very bad.

Using both hands, he pushed the Send on the handset with a palm. "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."

As each second of silence ticked by, Min's heart fell.

"Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."

"Wolf, this is Tiger. Over."

Min felt a wave of relief. "This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over."

"Roger." There was a brief break of squelch as if the other station went off the air. Then the voice came back. "Do you have the package? Over."

"Yes. Over."

"Roger. We will wait for you. Out."

Airspace, Ross Sea, Antarctica

"What language does that sound like?" the Signal Intelligence operator aboard the E-2 Hawkeye asked the other four men on board as he played back the message he had just intercepted.

He received negative replies from all, although the pilot suggested it was Asian. "Where'd you pick it up from?"

"Low power, high frequency radio coming from the southeast."

"Airborne platform?" the pilot asked.

"Negative. I don't think so-the signal was fixed," the SIGINT operator replied.

"I've got zip on the scope," the radar operator replied. "We're the only thing in the air other than the blip down near McMurdo."

"Relay it back to the ship, maybe they can figure it out," the pilot ordered.

"Roger."

McMurdo Station, Antarctica

The Osprey slowed as its engines switched from horizontal to vertical. Major Bellamy watched as the aircraft slowly settled down in a whirlwind of snow.

"Let's go," he yelled as his men followed him, hauling their two as-yet unopened bundles with them. They crowded into the cargo bay as the crew chief ran out and coordinated the refueling. Hoses were run from the fuel blisters, and JP-4 fuel was pumped in as Bellamy's men settled in. Bellamy went forward into the cockpit.

The pilot looked over his shoulder as Bellamy poked his head in. "Captain Jones." He nodded at the copilot. "As soon as we're topped off we'll be lifting."

"Have you heard anything about the target site?" Bellamy asked.

The pilot shook his head. "Nothing. We've got a Hawkeye in the air, and it should be in radar range of the site soon. I'm not sure if that will give us anything, but at least we'll know if we're the only ones in the sky."

Bellamy frowned. He'd expected something more.

"We're full," the pilot announced.

Bellamy made his way back to the rear. His men had opened the bundles and were passing out the weapons, each man receiving his according to his specialty and talents: silenced MP-5SD submachine guns, PM sniper rifles, SPAS 12 shotguns, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW), LAW 80 rocket launchers, and sidearms. If there was anybody left alive at the target site and they were antagonistic, Bellamy's men were ready.

Airspace, Ross Sea, Antarctica

The radar operator stared at his screen. "Shit, there's still nothing out here," he muttered to the man on his left. He'd never seen such a blank screen. Not a single aircraft in a six-hundred-mile radius, the Osprey having disappeared as it landed at McMurdo.

He flipped a switch and the radar went from air to surface. This was a different story. He stared at the screen, trying to make sense out of the jumbled mess. The surface bounce-back was very confusing, even where the sea should be. He was used to a flat reflection where ships stood out in stark relief to the ocean. Here, ice formations broke that image up into a confusing disarray.

The naval officer slowly started sorting the screen out, trying to see if there was anything identifiable. He fiddled with his controls, adjusting and tuning, like a kid playing a computer game.

"Hey, I've got something here," he told the SIGINT operator. Keying his mike, he relayed his report back to the Kitty Hawk. "Big Boot, this is Eye One. We have a surface target, bearing 093 degrees true. Distance, 273 miles. Speed zero. Over."

Ruppert Coast, Antarctica

Min had been tempted to pile his survivors on board the sled and ride the glacier down, but wisdom had prevailed, and they lashed themselves as a human brake to the rear of the sled, keeping the bomb from getting away from them only with great difficulty.

They'd gotten off the glacier less than ten minutes ago, and now they were on top of the ocean, making their way across the ice. In most places it was so thick they couldn't tell the difference between it and the polar cap they'd been on, but in other places the ice thinned out and, with the snow scraped off by the wind, the ocean could be seen below. It was these areas that Min had his men skirt around. He estimated another four to six hours until they arrived at the freighter, which was now hidden by the surface ice.

Pentagon, Alexandria, Virginia

General Morris listened to the intercepted message as he tried to shake the cobwebs of sleep out of his brain. "That language sounds familiar," he remarked as the short exchange played out.

"It's Han Gul-Korean," Hodges informed him.

Morris felt a chill hand caress his spine. "Where did the Hawkeye say this originated from?"

Hodges tapped the map. "Here along the coast due north of the Citadel. It was someone on the shore communicating with a ship the Hawkeye has located as fixed in the ice pack right here, eight miles off the coast."

"Do you have a translation of the message?" Morris asked.

"Yes, sir." Hodges pressed a button on a tape player, and an unemotional voice spoke in English:

Station One: "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."

Station One: "Tiger, this is Wolf. Over."

Station Two: "Wolf, this is Tiger. Over."

Station One: "This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over."

Station Two: "Roger. Do you have the package? Over."

Station One: "Yes. Over."

Station Two: "Roger. We will wait for you. Out."

"Oh, sweet Jesus," Morris muttered to himself. Then he spoke up: "Do you have an ID on the ship?"