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plutonium, and sneak right back out again. No fireworks.”
    Cabrillo and Overholt knew that was a promise Juan couldn’t make, so instead Juan asked for details about the exact location at which the missile exploded and the trajectory of its fall back to earth. He pulled a cordless keyboard and mouse from a tray under his desk, which sent a signal for a flat-screen monitor to slowly rise from the desk’s surface. Overholt e-mailed pictures and target projections. The pictures were worthless, showing nothing but dense cloud cover, but NASA had given them just a five-square-mile search area, which made the grid manageable, provided the terrain didn’t go to hell on them. Overholt asked if Cabrillo had any idea how they were going to get into Argentina undetected.
    “I want to see some topographical maps before I can answer that. My first instinct is a chopper, of course, but with the Argies ramping up activity along their northern borders that might not be possible. I should have something figured out in a day or two and be ready to execute by week’s end.”
    “Ah, here’s the other thing,” Overholt said so mildly that Cabrillo tensed up. “You have seventy-two hours to recover the power pack.”
    Juan was incredulous. “Three days? That’s impossible.”
    “After seventy-two hours, the President wants to come clean. Well, cleaner. He won’t mention the plutonium, but he’s willing to ask the Argentines for their help recovering, quote, sensitive scientific equipment.”
    “And if they say no and search for it themselves?”
    “At best we end up looking foolish, and, at worst, criminally negligent in the eyes of the world. Plus we give Generalissimo Corazón a tidy bundle of weapons-grade plutonium to play with.”
    “Lang, give me six hours. I’ll get back to you on whether we’re willing—hell—able to back your play.”
    “Thanks, Juan.”
    Cabrillo called Overholt after a three-hour strategy meeting with his department heads, and, twelve hours later, found himself and his team standing on the banks of a Paraguayan river, about to cross into God alone knew what.

TWO
     
     
     
    THE WILSON/GEORGE RESEARCH STATION
ANTARCTIC PENINSULA
     
    T HE SKELETON STAFF OF THE WINTER-OVER CREW COULD feel spring coming in their bones. Not that the weather was much improved. Temperatures rarely rose above twenty below, and icy winds were a constant. It was the growing number of × marks on the big calendar in the rec hall marking the advancing days that buoyed their spirits after a long winter in which they hadn’t seen the sun since late March.
    Only a few research bases remain open year-round on the planet’s most desolate continent, and those are usually much larger than the Wilson/George Station, run by a coalition of American universities and a grant from the National Science Foundation. Even at full staff during the summer months starting in September, the clutch of prefabricated domed buildings atop stilts driven into the ice and rock could house no more than forty souls.
    Because of money pouring into global-warming research, it was decided to keep the station online all year round. This was the first attempt, and by all accounts it had gone well. The structures had withstood the worst Antarctica could throw at them, and the people had gotten along well for the most part. One of them, Bill Harris, was a NASA astronaut studying the effects of isolation on human relations, for an eventual manned mission to Mars.
    WeeGee, as the team called their home for the past six months, was out of some futurist sketchbook. It was located near a deep bay on the shores of the Bellingshausen Sea, midway along the peninsula that thrusts toward South America like a frozen finger. Had there been sunlight, a pair of binoculars on the hills behind the base was all one would need to see the southern ocean.
    There were five nodes surrounding a central hub that served as the mess and recreation hall. The nodes were connected by