Page 73 of Air Force One

Then she thought of her radio and pulled it out.

Oh God, she was so stupid. Outside pocket, battery drained by prolonged exposure to frigid cold, dead as a doornail.

So many of her skills had gone stale. She didn’t even know who she was anymore.

Holly could only sit there with her back to the rock wall and watch the thick waves of snow blasting past the slit. Nothing to do but sit here on the ice hard floor. The lumpy ice hard floor.

She shifted to one side, then the other—and the lump moved with her. She shifted well aside and checked. No lump on the floor, she’d made it well, expecting to sleep out the storm in here. Then she felt for the lump on her ass.

Something was there underneath all those layers of clothes.

70

A radio crackled to life, and he heard a faint voice.

Mike grabbed his off the bar. “Holly! Holly! Can you hear me?” Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing.

Max looked at him oddly.

“What?”

Max looked down with some surprise and reached into his own pocket, pulling out a tiny radio as if it might explode. Then he keyed the mike and asked, “Holly?”

“Hey, Max. Did you get them?”

Mike grabbed for the tiny radio and Max let him have it. “They got us. Where are you? Ready for us to come get you?”

“Uh, not quite.”

“Why not? What’s up?”

“From here? Not much. Maybe a thousand meters of glacier.”

He looked at Max. It didn’t make any sense.

“She’s still high on the mountain.”

Mike looked back at the radio. “Why?”

“Nothing better to do.”

“Holly, goddamn it. Give a straight answer for once.”

“For a couple crooked people like us, I think that’s cheating. No, I really have nothing better to do. There’s a major whiteout blizzard going on. I’m dug in. I’m safe. My other radio battery is dead. So I’m going to turn this one off to save it until the weather clears. I delivered the pilot. You deliver Inessa.”

“I already did. I had Clarissa send a plane. Andi is going to get Miranda to escort her in to see Sarah. I want you to check in every twelve hours.”

“Good boy. This storm is going to last a lot longer than that. Love you, Mike. Over and out.”

“Love you too.”

But he got no reply.

Max took the radio from his nerveless fingers and inspected it. Then he reached under the bar, grabbed a charger cord, and plugged the radio in.

“But— Did she just say goodbye?” The last word out tried to choke him.

Max was shaking his head. “You know she’s got skills, right?”