"You've got a good man," said Pitt admiringly.

"The best," Gillespie agreed.

"We'll wait ten minutes, then come up with another cock-and-bull story and hope the sub's commander is gullible."

"Let's pick up the pace," urged Gillespie.

Pitt turned to Evie Tan, who was panting heavily. "Why don't you at least let me carry your camera equipment?"

She shook her head vigorously. "Photographers carry their own gear. I'll be all right. Go ahead. I'll catch up to you at the ship."

"I hate to be a cad," said Gillespie, "but I've got to be on board at the earliest possible moment."

"Push on," Pitt told him. "We'll see you on board."

The captain took off at a dead run. Pitt had insisted Evie use his skis at the ice cave, but she had indignantly refused. Now, with little coaxing, she allowed him to strap her feet into the bindings. Then he handed her the poles. "You go ahead. I want to get a closer look at the sub."

After sending Evie on her way, Pitt moved off on an angle until he was fifty yards astern of the ship. He stared across the ice floe at the submarine. He could clearly see the crew manning the deck gun and the officers leaning over the coaming of the conning tower. They did not appear to be wearing the standard Nazi unterseeboot crew uniforms. They were all dressed in black single-piece, tight-fitting, cold-weather coveralls.

Pitt stood where he could clearly be seen by the crew. He pressed the transmit button on his portable radio. "I am speaking to the commander of the U-2015. My name is Pitt. You can see me standing off the stern of the Polar Storm." He let that sink in for a moment before continuing. "I am fully aware of who you are. Do you understand?"

Static rasped out of the radio, then was replaced by a friendly voice. "Yes, Mr. Pitt. This is the commander of the U-2015 speaking. How may I help you?"

"You have my name, Commander. What's yours?"

"You need not know."

"Yes," Pitt said calmly, "that figures. Your cronies from the New Destiny, or should I say Fourth Empire, have a mania for secrecy. But not to worry, I promise not to whisper a word about your slimy band of killers, provided you take your geriatric pile of junk from nostalgia land and be on your way."

It was a long shot, pure guesswork at best, but the long silence told Pitt he had struck a chord. A full minute passed before the U-boat commander's voice came over the little radio.

"So you are the ubiquitous Dirk Pitt."

"I am," Pitt answered, feeling a sense of triumph at pressing the right button. "I didn't know my fame traveled so quickly."

"I see you wasted no time in arriving in the Antarctic from Colorado."

"I would have been here sooner, but I had several of your buddies' bodies to dispose of."

"Are you testing my patience, Mr. Pitt?"

The conversation was becoming inane, but Pitt egged on the U-boat commander to gain time. "No, I only wish for you to explain your weird behavior. Instead of attacking a helpless unarmed ocean research ship, you should be in the North Atlantic torpedoing impotent merchant ships."

"We ceased hostilities in April of 1945."

Pitt did not like the look of the machine gun mounted on the forward section of the conning tower and pointing in his direction. He knew time was running out and was certain the U-boat meant to destroy the Polar Storm and everybody on it. "And when did you launch the Fourth Reich?"

"I see no reason to carry this conversation any further, Mr. Pitt." The voice came as tonelessly as a newscaster giving a weather report in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "Goodbye."

Pitt didn't need to be poked by a sharp stick in the eye to know what was coming. He dove behind an ice hummock in the same instant the machine gun on the conning tower opened up. Bullets buzzed through the air and made strange hissing sounds as they struck the ice. He lay in a slight depression behind the hummock, unable to move. Only now did he regret wearing the NUMA turquoise Arctic gear. The bright color against the white ice made him an ideal target on which to train their sights.

From where he lay, he could look up at the superstructure of the Polar Storm. So close, yet so far. He began wiggling out of his Arctic suit, stripping it away until he was down to a wool sweater and woolen pants. The boots would prove too clumsy to run in, so he removed them, down to his thermal socks. The hail of bullets stopped, the gunner probably wondering if his fire had struck Pitt.

He rubbed snow on his head so his black hair would not be obvious against the white. Then he peered over a lip of the hummock. The gunner was leaning against his weapon, but the U-boat commander was looking through binoculars in Pitt's direction. After several moments, he could see the commander turn and point toward the ship. The gunner swung his weapon in the direction his captain motioned.

Pitt inhaled a deep breath and took off, sprinting across the ice, pumping his legs and zigzagging with almost the same agility he'd used many years before when playing quarterback for the Air Force Academy, only this time there was no Al Giordino to run interference for him. The ice slashed his socks and cut into his feet, but he shook off the pain.

He had dashed thirty yards before the crew of the U-boat woke up and began firing again. But their shells went high and behind him. Before they corrected and began to lead him, it was too late. He had curled around the rudder of the Polar Storm a second before bullets smashed into the steel, chipping the paint like angry bees.

Safe on the side of the ship away from the submarine, he slowed and caught his breath. The gangway had been pulled up and Gillespie had ordered the ship into a 180-degree turn at Full Ahead, but a rope ladder was thrown over the side. Pitt thankfully jogged along the ship as it increased speed, grasping the ladder and hoisting himself up, just as the jagged ice chunks thrown aside by the bow slid past under his stocking feet.

As soon as he reached the railing, Cox lifted him over and stood him on the deck. "Welcome back," he said, with a broad smile.

"Thank you, Ira," Pitt gasped.

"The captain would like you on the bridge."

Pitt simply nodded and padded across the deck to the ladder leading up to the ship's bridge.

"Mr. Pitt."

Turning, he said, "Yes?"

Cox nodded at the bloody footprints Pitt left on the deck. "You might ask the ship's doctor to take a look at your feet."

"I'll make an appointment first thing."

Standing out on the bridge wing, Gillespie was studying the U-boat, her black hull floating rigid amid the ice where she had surfaced. He turned as Pitt hobbled up the ladder. "You had a nasty encounter."

"It must have been something I said."

"Yes, I heard your little exchange."

"Has the commander contacted you?"

Gillespie gave a curt shake of his head. "Not a word."

"Can you get through to the outside world?"

"No. As we suspected, he's effectively jammed all satellite communications."

Pitt stared at the sub. "I wonder what's he's waiting for."

"If I were him, I'd wait until the Polar Storm swings around and heads toward the open sea. Then he'll have us in position for an easy beam shot."

"If that's the case," said Pitt grimly, "it won't be long now."

As if reading the U-boat commander's mind, he saw a puff of smoke from the barrel of the deck gun, instantly followed by an explosion that erupted in the ice immediately behind the icebreaker's big stern. "That was close," said Bushey, standing in front of the control console.