Eternity Base (23 page)

Conner shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We just report it."

"We just report it," Sammy said. "Is that it? What about these bombs?"

"Let's take it easy," Riley interceded. "We still don't know who was behind the building of this base. We need to stay focused on that as far as the story goes. As far as reality goes, Sammy is right—we need to be concerned about those two bombs."

"Who knows about the bombs in Atlanta?" Sammy asked.

"Only one person," Conner said firmly. "Mister Parker, who runs SNN."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I coded the message for his eyes only, and the only one who can uncode it is Mister Parker." Conner turned to Riley and asked a question of her own. "What kind of damage could those bombs do if one of them went off?"

Riley shook his head. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On what they're set at. I think the MK/B has four settings for yields ranging from ten to five hundred kilotons. So it depends on the setting."

"You mean you can change the power of the bomb by flipping a switch?"

Riley gave her a weak smile. "Pretty neat, huh? The theory is the bomb is set for required yield prior to a mission, depending on the target profile. I'm sure there's an access panel on the casing that opens to that control. I for one don't plan on messing with it."

"Well, for instance, what will a ten-kiloton blast do?" Conner felt somewhat embarrassed to be asking this. Somehow, she felt she ought to know more about the subject.

"A kiloton is equal to a thousand tons of TNT. So ten kilotons is ten thousand tons of TNT. If it blew here, it would take out this base but not much more than that.

"There are five effects of a nuclear explosion. Most people think of only two—the blast and the radiation. The blast, which is the kinetic energy, uses about half the energy of the bomb. That's what blows things up: it's the shock wave of compressed air that radiates from the bomb at supersonic speed. If the bomb goes off underground, that wave is muffled, but it takes out whatever it blows near, creating a crater. If it's an airburst or above surface, then the blast does more damage. You have to worry about not only the original wave but also the high winds that are generated by the overpressure. We're talking winds of more than two hundred miles an hour, so it can be pretty destructive.

"There are two types of radiation: prompt and delayed. Prompt is what is immediately generated by the explosion and uses about five percent of the energy of the bomb. It's in the form of gamma rays, neutrons, and beta particles. We measure those in rads. Six hundred rads and you have a ninety percent chance of dying in three to four weeks."

"How many rads would these bombs put out?" Conner asked.

Riley shrugged. "I can't answer that. It depends on the strength of the blast, whether it goes off in the air or underground, your relative location to ground zero, and how well shielded you are. Usually you'll die of blast or thermal before you have to worry about prompt radiation.

"If you survive the initial effects, then you have to worry about delayed radiation—also known as fallout. However, with the strong winds down here, the fallout would get dispersed over a large area. And there aren't many folks here to be affected by it. In a more populated and less windy area, fallout can be devastating.

"The other two effects are thermal and electromagnetic pulse. Thermal causes damage in built-up areas because it starts fires. If you're exposed to it, the flash will blind and burn you even before the blast wave reaches you. Thermal uses up about one-third of the energy of the bomb.

"Electromagnetic pulse, known as EMP, is the one effect that few people know about. When the bomb goes off, it sends out electromagnetic waves, just like radio except thousands of times stronger. Those waves will destroy most electronics in their path for a long distance."

Riley was depressed. He'd buried all those facts deep inside his head and had refused to dig them out for a long time. "The bottom line is that no one really knows exactly what impact nuclear weapons will have on people. There are too many variables. The only times they've ever been used against people—at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—were so long ago, and those bombs were so different from what we have now, that the data is not very valid.

"I think Nikita Khrushchev, surprisingly enough, summed up nuclear war quite well. He said the survivors would envy the dead."

Conner and Sammy were silent for a few minutes as the implications of what Riley had said sank in.

Riley was lost in his dark thoughts. He remembered the debates in the team room about their nuclear mission. Most had been worried about simple and more personal things such as whether there was actually a firing delay in their ADMs, as they had been told. Many believed that once the bombs were emplaced and initiated, they'd go off immediately. Why would the powers-that-be risk an hour's delay to get the team to safety? Riley had spent his time worrying about more global effects. He'd read all that was available about nuclear weapons, mesmerized and repelled by the destructive power he could carry on his back.

"What if there's a fire down here? Would those bombs go off?" Conner interrupted his thoughts.

"It has thermal safety devices that would prevent accidental detonation due to fire," Riley replied.

"How do you think the bombs got here?" Conner asked. "I thought you said those things were tightly controlled."

"How did this base get here?" Riley replied. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Sammy pointed at the blue binder. "Do you think we should open the safe?"

Riley shook his head. "I looked at it. It's set in the ground and requires a combination. We don't have that. I recommend we don't mess with it. You've got the bombs. You don't need the codes." Riley suddenly stood.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to start earning my money." He looked at Sammy. "You want to give me a hand?"

"Sure," she replied.

With that they were gone. Conner speculated for a few seconds about what Riley might be up to, but then dismissed her sister and Riley from her mind as she opened up her portable computer and got to work, preparing her story.

SNN
H
EADQUARTERS,
A
TLANTA,
G
EORGIA

Falcon carefully read the reply from
ISA headquarters.

No further information on Eternity Base.

Confirm information that U.S. Air Force C-130, tail number

6204 from 487th TAS, Clark Base, Hawaii, was reported as

MIA 21 December 1971, Vietnam

Actual location U.S. Army Engineer unit, B Company, 67th

Engineer Battalion, from August 1971 through December 1971

was Chi Lang, Vietnam, OPCON MACV-SOG.

Falcon scanned the page-long printouts for pertinent information on the people he'd had checked out. The fact that Riley was an ex-Special Forces man who'd run counterterrorist operations caught his attention. He wondered if there was a connection between that and the MACV-SOG cover-up. There were so many classified organizations conducting various operations that Riley could still be working for the government.

This whole damn thing didn't make much sense. The end of the message indicated that his superiors thought the same.

Request all information you have on Eternity Base.

Priority One.

Slowly he put the papers down on his desk. The report had yielded no significant information. Eternity Base's cover had been back- stopped all the way through the classified files in the ISA's database. Although Falcon knew such a thing was in the realm of possibility—especially for something that had happened so long ago—it meant that the secret of Eternity Base could be a bad story publicity wise. Since they didn't know what the base was or what the original cover story had been, there was no way to plan for damage control.

Falcon typed into his computer and studied the data that Young had already sent. His forehead wrinkled in concern as he saw that the last transmission had been coded only for Parker's ID and password. Why had she done that? What had she found that was so important—more important than the existence of the base and the finding of the body? Falcon was worried about what Parker now knew that he didn't.

Falcon tapped a finger against his teeth as he pondered the situation. Wheels were turning, but he wasn't sure where they would lead him. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he searched other databases. He stopped when he found the order from Parker sending the new support team to Antarctica ASAP. Why hadn't he been informed of that? Falcon slammed a fist down on his desktop in frustration. Damn Parker and his penchant for secrets.

Falcon reopened the data file on information that Young had sent prior to the coded message. There had to be something that would help him figure out what was going on.

Chapter Sixteen

K
AESONG,
N
ORTH
K
OREA

The headquarters for the North Korean Special Forces is located twenty-five miles north of the famous border city of Panmunjom. This puts it in close proximity to the demilitarized zone, where many of its units' covert activities are conducted. Tonight, however, Gen. O Gulc Yol, the army chief of staff and former commander of the Special Forces Branch, had his eyes focused on a map that had never before been unfurled in his operations room. The fact that his staff had even been able to find the map on such short notice was quite an accomplishment. General Yol had been awakened by the duty officer and given Kang's message from New York just forty-five minutes ago.

Yol pointed a gnarled finger, broken many times in hand-to-hand combat training, at the map. "It is there, sir."

There were only two people in the world to whom General Yol would have shown such deference. One was Kim II Sung, the leader of North Korea for forty years, who had died two years ago. The other was the man who presently stood opposite him looking at the map—Kim's son, Kim Jong II. "It is very far away," Yol said.

"Yes, sir, but it is a golden opportunity. It gives us a lever that is the perfect solution to the problem that has kept us from implementing the Orange III plan."

Kim, designated heir to Kim II Sung, rubbed the side of his face. He had watched his father slowly die without having seen completed his dream of uniting the two Koreas. It was unthinkable that his father's life-long vision had not been realized. He would not allow the same thing to happen to himself.

The recent reduction of American forces in South Korea had left that threat a paper tiger. Kim had no doubt that his massive army—sixth largest in the world—could now overcome their enemies to the south. The problem was that the Americans still held a real threat—tactical nuclear weapons.

Korea is a land of mountains and narrow plains. It is along these narrow plains that any offensive movement has to advance. And tactical nuclear weapons were the ideal countermeasure to such movement. If that one factor could be removed, the entire balance of power in the peninsula would shift to the North's favor.

In late 1991, the United States had removed all tactical nuclear weapons from the peninsula in a gesture meant to force the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear weapons program. The North ignored the gesture for the simple reason that it was seen as an empty one. The Americans maintained enough tactical nuclear weapons on the planes, submarines, and cruise missiles of the Seventh Fleet to more than make up for the lack of land-based ones.

Orange III was the classified operations plans (OPLAN) for a northern invasion of the south. Unfortunately, to Kim Jong Il's mind, his father had not approved the implementation of the plan because of the high risk and cost potential if it failed—and fail it most likely would if the Americans used their nuclear weapons.

The fact that the North Koreans had their own small arsenal of nukes did not change that balance for two simple reasons: First, they had only limited abilities to project those weapons a few hundred miles into the South—and, of course, they could never touch the United States itself. Second, tactical nuclear weapons favored the defender, not the attacker.

North Korea had even opened its nuclear facilities to international inspection in 1992, having already made two dozen weapons and secreting them. They'd done that in exchange for political concessions from both the South and the Americans. For the past several years they had played the nuclear card close to their chest; there was not much more they could hope to gain in the political arena.

But now, now, there was a window of opportunity. This new information, if it was used properly, could make Orange III a reality.

Kim looked up at his old friend. "I cannot believe that the American government has abandoned two nuclear weapons and that this so-called news organization has not notified the military of their presence."