Rogue Angel - 06 - The Lost Scrolls by Alex Archer

Author:Alex Archer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780373621248
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2010-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

"Dang," Tex said. He didn't say it loud. Annja was surprised she could hear it over the reverberations of that last thunder crack. Her ears literally rang.

"What? What 'dang'? 'Dang' does not sound good."

"Depends on your definition of 'not good.'"

"Try me."

"Just lost GPS."

"The lightning bolt did that? I didn't know lightning could knock it out."

He shrugged despite the sheer physical effort of keeping the little airplane under control in the brutal winds. Annja suddenly realized just how difficult that must have been with no power assist on a plane that size. "Might just be the storm blocks the signal. One way or another we're flying by dead reckoning now."

"It never occurred to me until now," Annja said, "just how ominous that phrase is. Can you really find the platform without it?"

The rig, which had seemed so huge and intimidating when she and Tex had worked out their tactics for infiltrating it, shrank in her mind to the dimensions of a Matchbox model in this vast and hateful sea.

"Well," Tex said, drawing it way out, "I can give it the old college try."

"What if we miss it in the storm? This rain is like lead curtains at times."

"Lemme put it this way – got a hankerin' to see the Arctic up close and personal?"

"We can make it all the way to the ice pack?"

"Oh, shoot, no. I'm just funnin' you, ma'am. We'll run out of fuel and ditch in the sea long before that. The good news is, it's a short-enough hop from Papa Westray to the platform. We don't see it in the next five minutes, we've got plenty of leeway to double back and try a quartering search."

"What if we still can't find it?"

"Then we'll be well and truly lost. As opposed to just lost."

"I love a man who knows how to show a girl a good time."

"We aim to please, ma'am."

****

The big man sat in a chair, oblivious to the spray the wind lashed against the window of the commissary. A generator-run space heater blasted away, turning a far corner of the room into a localized furnace. He was out of its baleful radiance, but cushioned by layers of clothing, fat and a genuine indifference to his own comfort, he ignored the chill that inevitably seeped in from the storm outside.

Sulin stood by the window, as far as possible from his coleader, with his hands clasped behind the back of his high-collared jacket, gazing out into the storm.

For some reason, both turned and looked at Jadzia. The girl sat eating a bar of jerky, tearing at the tough strip with sharp white teeth. She had been semicovertly admiring Sulin. She almost regretted that Annja Creed would inevitably kill him.

Something in her manner seemed to irk Marshall. "Time is running out for you, girl," he rumbled.

Sulin stiffened slightly. "It's true that the ultimatum has expired," he said. "But we are to wait for further orders from above before we take any action, my friend."

"I'm not your friend, pretty boy," Marshall said without looking at him.

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