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Risen To The Top CHAPTER 161
Sean couldn’t remember being so nervous. The sun was setting on the ocean from atop the grand master suite that had cost him a month’s pay. But this was going to be an important night. The rest of the L.J corporation team had their celebration last night. Sean had sneaked into the hospital room and spent the night in bed with Tori. He’d been tossed out twice, but still managed to get back in. Finally the nurses let him stay.She was just being held for observation, and Sean talked them out of needing a monitor, telling the nurses a lie that he was an intern, on his way to becoming a Naval physician.She had asked him afterwards if that was what he wanted to do, be a doctor.He said, no. He wanted to get naked and inside her as soon as possible.She seemed to like that idea just as much. Maybe better.But tonight was the candlelit dinner he had never done before. He wanted everything to be how she would l
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 162
The last ride.*One year later.Duke was on a military aircraft to Antarctica, Marshall had chosen him specially for this mission.He was the only available member of the L.j corp team.Sean and Tori had just gotten married and were on honeymoon, Marshall and Claire were expecting another child and Alex and Joanne were busy running L.j corporation.Earlier that week, they had gotten Intel that Vladimir Jores, the ex-military assassin that the Connery family had used for their dirty deeds, had been spotted in a small rural village there.Vladimir Jores was one of the most wanted criminals on Earth, he had worked for the Connery family for a long time.Doing their dirty jobs and testing their nuclear weapons in poor villages and testing it on children.Ever since L.j corp exposed the Connery family, the police had immediately
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 163
* * *The small plane taxied down the runway at Inuit in the Inuit Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Antarctica artic axis. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.Dr. Evelyn Cox stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her Polar bears and she was determined to find out what.Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow Polar bears here in the Inuit. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one signal completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a Polar bear called Sheba, one of only two femal
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 164
* * *Two hours later the sun was sinking into the west. Desperation and the need to hurry pulsed through her blood and made her head pound with frustration. The van got stuck twice but they’d managed to push free of the freshly thawing ground. The shock absorbers were toast. Ahead she could make out the faint outline of pale yurts set deep in the shadow of the mountains.A sonorous snore resonated from the back seat where Mikado slept. Ivan’s cheeks were ruddy from the exertion of driving in such demanding conditions. They’d all taken a turn behind the wheel.“Keep going,” she urged as they passed the yurts. To save time they needed to drive as far as they dared toward where she figured Sheba had denned up. Half a mile later they bumped over a rock the size of a football, and her head glanced off the side window. Dammit.“I can’t go much further without breaking an axle,” Ivan warned.“St
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 165
Evelyn slipped inside the yurt to find Mikado cradling a tiny squalling snow polar bear against his chest. Every muscle ached with fatigue, exhaustion scratched at her eyeballs, but she couldn’t help smile at the impossibly beautiful, totally improbable scrap of fur. Then it struck her. If the cubs were in a box in their yurt, then Sheba was unquestionably dead.Everything she feared had come true. Except the cubs were alive…for now. “Do you have any yak’s milk we can feed them?” she asked.He nodded. The cubs were thin and cold and wouldn’t survive long without nourishment.“They were right here, in this box.” The inuit man tapped the cardboard box on the floor with his boot, his brown eyes shining as he jiggled the cub like a baby.A growling sound from inside the box had her reaching down and pulling out a soft tawny bundle covered in inky black spots. The bundle cuddled into her chest for warmth. Evelyn’s eyes ros
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 166
Evelyn dragged herself from her sleeping bag in the main yurt and lit the burner for tea. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday and was pretty sure she stank worse than the resident yak. Personal hygiene would have to wait. Normally she slept in one of the smaller structures, but because of their late arrival last night and their need to bottle-feed the cubs she hadn’t bothered to seek her own bed. She’d simply laid her sleeping bag on the floor and closed her eyes. Ivan lay, open-mouthed, snoring. Mikado hugged a pallet in the corner, curled protectively close to the cubs who, thankfully, were still sleeping. They’d fed them once in the night, all three of them being woken by the insistent cries of the helpless creatures. If that was any indication about having a baby, no wonder her mother had stopped at one.Thoughts of her mother came out of nowhere and she blocked them fast.She made tea for everyone and thought about checkin
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 167
Duke and Jordan had crawled into a hole in the side of a mountain that overlooked this treeless, rock-strewn valley approximately thirty-six hours ago. A million hours later, they were still here, Duke lying prone on top of his sleeping bag while he kept watch. The entrance of the OP was well hidden behind straggly bushes, and he and Jordan had cleared the area of spiders and scorpions and checked for snakes before they’d settled in. They needed to be vigilant for unwanted wildlife because neither wanted a medivac out of here. Plus, they could use the protein.Sri luc and Lucas were on the same mountain but on the south side, getting the benefit of the rising sun while Duke and Jordan froze their asses off in the shadows. The two men they’d spotted that first night had been gone all day yesterday and hadn’t returned until after dark last night. Duke didn’t know what they were up to.The man they’d left behind in camp looked local. He wore an AK-
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 168
“One of the snares has been triggered.” Evelyn strode into the tent to check the satellite download. She needed to know where each of the collared polar bears was. “What’s the data telling us?”When in range of the satellite, the units transmitted positional data every hour. The rest of the GPS coordinates were stored ready to be downloaded when they retrieved the device after the collar fell off—theoretically two years after they were deployed. Mikado had found Sheba’s collar yesterday—sans snow polar bear—which left no doubt in her mind that they had a poacher on their hands. A big, fat, murdering poacher who was targeting the animals using telemetry devices she’d attached.They had to be careful how this played out. It was a political and ecological nightmare.She stabbed her keyboard. Wanted to rip out the sonofabitch’s heart with her bare hands and stomp on his fingers so he could never hold a rifle ever again.I