Eternity Base (13 page)

The one quality Riley had—a quality Sammy noticed in almost every ex-SF man she'd ever met—was a sense of quiet competence and confidence. He looked as though he'd had a rough couple of days, with his growth of beard and his red-rimmed eyes, but then she had no idea what he'd been doing, so that didn't bother her. Something about him told her that he'd know what to do, and that he'd do it without his ego getting in the way. Underlying that, she also sensed some other deep emotion, but right now she couldn't put her finger on it. She only hoped that he would be willing to go along with her plan.

"I need to check it with the colonel," was Riley's only reply to her words. "Let's make a call."

Sammy followed as Riley led the way over to a pay phone in the terminal. She could hear only his side of the conversation and was impressed that Riley gave his boss just the facts with no editorializing. Most men she'd met had seemed to feel that no matter what a woman said, they could think of a better idea.

"He wants to talk to you." Riley held out the receiver.

"Mike, it's Sammy."

The colonel's voice rumbled in her ear. "You heard what Riley told me?"

"Yes."

"Is that what you want to do?"

"I think it's the only thing we can do," she replied.

The colonel chuckled. "You sure have your daddy's smarts. He was always a good one for coming up with some harebrained scheme. The amazing thing was that they usually worked. I'm alive today because a few of his ideas worked when mine wouldn't have.

"I can't order Riley to go with you. I'm going to tell him I'll pay him double his usual salary, but that won't mean much to him. If he decides to go, it'll be because he wants to—not for money. That's all I can do. If he decides against it, I suggest you two come here to my safe house and I'll try using some of my contacts to sort out this shit storm. Is that all right?"

Sammy knew it was the best she was going to get. "Yes."

"All right. Put him back on."

She handed the phone to Riley; he listened for a few minutes, not saying a word. His eyes continually scanned the airport and the parking area outside.

“Talk to you later, sir." Riley hung up the phone and then looked at her. "The colonel says your dad was in Special Forces. MACV-SOG. And he's MIA."

Sammy nodded.

Riley looked over her shoulder at the deserted ticket counters. "We won't be able to get our tickets until they open up in a few hours. I say we get some sleep in the van before then. I also need to get rid of the gun. Can't take it with us."

Sammy held up her hand. “Tickets to where?"

Riley gave a hard smile. "Antarctica. Where else?"

Chapter Eight

I
NTELLIGENCE
S
UPPORT
A
GENCY (
ISA
),
H
EADQUARTERS,
S
OUTHWEST OF
W
ASHINGTON,
D.C.

Bob Weaver was a third of the way through his in box when he came upon the encrypted fax from Falcon. He quickly decoded it and then stared at the resulting message for a few seconds before turning to his computer:

Request ID on Antarctic base, code-named Eternity Base.

Established 1971 by army. Investigative team dispatched
P.M.

25th to locate Eternity Base.

Falcon 2200Z/11/25/96

Weaver accessed military records and quickly searched the database. After twenty minutes of fruitless effort, he was convinced of one thing: there was no record in the ISA's classified database of an Eternity Base.

The Intelligence Support Agency was the military's secret version of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lavishly funded by the Pentagon's multibillion dollar black budget and accountable to no one but the National Security Council, it had tentacles in every domestic and foreign source of information. The ISA was more than a gathering agency, though. It also acted on the information it received, implementing numerous covert actions both in the United States and overseas in the name of national security.

The ISA had contacts throughout the business world, men and women in critical places who worked with the ISA to forward the interests of the military and, concurrently, the massive industrial complex that supported the military. The ISA was the covert arm of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower had so feared, and its power was far greater than even those briefed on its existence dared believe.

Weaver encoded a message and electronically dispatched it to Falcon's handler, stationed in Atlanta. He had no idea when it would be relayed to Falcon, or even who Falcon was, but that wasn't his responsibility. He picked up the next piece of paper in his in box and went to work on that.

S
T.
L
OUIS,
M
ISSOURI

The hand on her shoulder woke Sammy out of a deep sleep, and she was momentarily disoriented as she took in her surroundings.

"We're boarding," Riley said quietly. His eyes were red rimmed from not having slept at all, either in the van or in the terminal.

Sammy stood up and stretched. She had nothing but her wallet and the rumpled and stained clothes on her back. She'd managed to wash off most of the blood on her shirt and jeans in the airport ladies' room, and since both garments were dark, what remained wasn't noticeable.

Riley held out a newspaper and cup of coffee. "Not a thing in here about a body being found, so that's good."

Sammy accepted the paper and watched as the herd moved toward the boarding gate. "The colonel said you'd been in Special Forces."

Riley nodded as he sipped his coffee. "I had almost twenty years in."

"Officer or enlisted?"

"Enlisted, then warrant officer."

"Why'd you get out?"

Riley looked at her for a second before replying brusquely. "I retired. Is that OK?" He didn't know what Pike had told her and he didn't want to talk.

"So you think I shouldn't ask questions?"

Riley was surprised at her directness. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by what I said. I mean, you asked me why I got out and I told you."

Sammy relaxed. The loudspeaker in the waiting area announced final call for boarding. Riley pulled out the tickets. "Window or aisle?"

Sammy blindly grabbed one and looked at it. "Aisle."

A
UCKLAND,
N
EW
Z
EALAND, 27
N
OVEMBER 1996

Conner threw bags into the back of the pickup truck while Vickers, Kerns, and Lallo carefully stowed the cases containing their electronic gear. It was hard to believe their seemingly never-ending flight from Hawaii was finally over.

Conner didn't know what to make of Devlin. For some reason she'd remembered him differently. About six foot four, tanned, with blond hair cut in a carefully casual style and rugged good looks, he would have been perfect for one of those beer commercials—kayaking down whitewater rapids while several beautiful women awaited him at the other end. Perhaps that's what bothered her. He looked as though he came from central casting. She hoped there was more to him than that.

There was a curious intensity about Devlin that was offset by a congenial, perfect smile. Conner had not remembered that smile, and it made her slightly uneasy. She had to give him credit for one thing, though—he ran a very smooth operation. Within forty-five minutes of landing, they had all their gear gathered together, were through customs, and were ready to move.

Conner slid in the passenger side of the pickup while Vickers and Lallo joined Kerns for the ride in the van. They rolled around the perimeter road of the runway until they came to a small hangar.

"Here we go," Devlin announced, getting out and sliding the hangar doors open. They drove in and parked. Two planes were sheltered inside. Conner got out and joined the rest of her party.

"This is our bird," Devlin announced, standing in front of the nose of a sleek-looking twin-engine plane. Conner noted the skis bolted on over the three wheels and the extra fuel tanks hanging under the wings. "And this is our pilot, Peter Swenson."

The pilot, who was toiling over the left engine, acknowledged his introduction with a grimy wave. Swenson looked as though he'd done more than his share of hard living, his graying hair and lined face indicating a life spent in the outdoors. "Swenson was originally a bush pilot from Australia, but he's done quite a few Antarctic runs for us," Devlin added. "We'll leave the gear here. Let's move into the ready room and get coordinated."

Conner was trying to get over her jet lag while at the same time trying to sort out her feelings. Her greeting with Devlin after getting off the plane had been awkward, somewhere between a lover's hug and the polite handshake two professionals would bestow on each other. There was no doubt now, though, as the team settled into metal folding chairs in front of a tacked-up map of Antarctica, that Devlin was all business.

Conner stood in front of the group to lead things off. "Devlin and I have decided to depart tomorrow first thing in the morning."

"How long a flight is it to where we're going?" Lallo asked.

"We'll be in the air almost ten hours," Devlin answered. Ignoring the groans, he turned to the map. "By the way, the base that Our Earth runs down there is called Aurora Glacier Station. It's located here, on Ross Island, about fifteen miles from McMurdo Station, right next to—what else?—Aurora Glacier. Right now we've got eleven people down there, but seven are out on the ice shelf doing research and won't be back for a while, so we'll be able to squeeze in without much trouble."

Conner stood back up. "The plan is to fly down there and start the search immediately. I faxed Devlin some xeroxed photos of the base when it was built, and he has some ideas about where to look."

As Conner sat back down, she felt a little disoriented. The sun was setting in the west, yet her body felt it was time to be getting out of bed.

Devlin used his finger to point on the map. "Eternity Base appears to be set in a sort of basin, surrounded on three sides by mountains. Based on the flying time I was given—two hours—I've estimated it to be about five hundred to six hundred miles from McMurdo, straight line distance. That places it in one of three locations: to the south here at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in the Transantarctic Mountains; to the east at the edge of Marie Byrd Land where King Edward the VII Land juts out into the Ross Sea; or to the northwest here along the Adelie Coast.

"The order in which I've just shown you these possible sites is also the order in which I think we should look. Six hundred miles from

McMurdo along the Adelie Coast puts you almost right smack on top of the French Station, Dumont d'Urville. I doubt very much that Eternity Base is in this area for several reasons. First is simply that it would have been built too close to an already established base—d'Urville. And the Russians also had a base in '71 farther east along that coastline, here—Leningradskaya.

"Additionally, I and many of my colleagues from Our Earth have been in this area several times conducting protests over the airstrip the French have been trying to build there for the last four years. We have made numerous overflights of the area and spotted nothing. Also, there's no doubt the French themselves have extensively searched that area.

"It's possible the base is here along the coast to the east, but I like the location in the Transantarctic Mountains, because if the purpose was to hide this base, putting it there would locate it much farther south than any known existing bases except for Amundsen-Scott Base, which sits right on top of the geographic South Pole itself. This area is along the original route explorers used to reach the South Pole. Both Amundsen and Scott traversed the Ross Ice Shelf and traveled up glaciers into that mountain range. Nowadays, though, expeditions bypass the mountains, going around either to the east or west. The area has not been extensively explored. Therefore it is my recommendation that we look first in this region.

"What I've done is make a montage of the silhouettes of the mountains around Eternity Base along with azimuths at which the pictures were taken. Fortunately we were able to determine this from the shadows. Then, as we fly along the mountains, we'll try to match the outlines."

Devlin held up a piece of paper with an outline of three jagged peaks poking above a sea of ice. "This is the view we should see along a due north azimuth. Mountains whose peaks manage to make it above the ice are called nunataks. As you can see in this picture, we have three very distinctive nunataks—two large pointed ones on the flanks of this rounded one. This three-mountain setup is what we should be looking for."