Eternity Base (30 page)

Falcon's fingers flew over the keyboard as he ran through directories, looking for the correct file. In less than a minute he had it. He opened up the first "eyes only" message for J. Russell Parker from Conner Young. He glanced down the screen as he ingested the decoded message. Halfway through he froze, his stomach executing a backward somersault.

"What are you doing, Mr. Cordon?" Miss Suwon stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, her diminutive form blocking the exit.

The words barely registered on SNN's executive vice president of operations. He hit the command and exit keys, sending the screen back to the opening prompt. "I had to check on something for Mr. Parker," he muttered absentmindedly as he stood.

"No one is to have access to my computer without proper authorization," Miss Suwon warned as she strode across the room and claimed her seat. "What file were you in?"

"I had authorization." Cordon simply turned and walked out. Miss Suwon, even an irate Miss Suwon, was very low on his priority list. He took the elevator up to the main lobby and strode out into the street. The rising sun was battling with the night's chill, but Cordon didn't notice. He walked to the closest pay phone. When he picked up the receiver there was no dial tone. Broken.

Cordon dashed across the busy street to the 7-Eleven and checked the pay phone on the building's wall. This one functioned, and he quickly punched in an 800 number.

The other end was picked up on the second ring. A mechanical voice answered. "Yes?"

"Falcon. One three six eight."

"Verifying." There was a short pause as both his code name and number were checked and his voice pattern was run through the analyzer. The echoing machine voice came back. "Go."

"Priority one message. Reference file Falcon Seven Three. News team has found two U.S.-manufactured nuclear weapons at Eternity Base. I repeat, two U.S.-manufactured nuclear weapons at Eternity Base. PAL codes and instructions are also present at base. That is all I have for now. Will try to find out more. Verify."

"Message received." The machine affirmed that his message had been copied.

"Out." Cordon hung up the phone and leaned against the store's wall.

E
TERNITY
B
ASE,
A
NTARCTICA, 30
N
OVEMBER 1996

The way was clear, and Sergeant Sun had managed to drive the SUSV up the uneven ramp to the surface, where it sat rumbling on the ice cap, the sled hitched behind it. Major Pak walked back down the ramp and across the base to the armory where Sergeant Yong was propped up, back against the wall, his weapon on his knees. His wounded arm and leg were swathed in bandages. The bodies of Jae, Song, and Nam were laid out in the hallway under ponchos.

Pak couldn't find the right words to say good-bye to his soldier, so he simply stood in front of him and saluted. Yong looked up and returned the gesture with his non-wounded arm. Before he had second thoughts, Pak turned and swiftly walked back to the east ice storage room. He climbed up the ramp and crunched across the ice to the SUSV. He got into the cab and nodded at Sun. The medic threw the vehicle in gear, and the treads slowly started turning. At a crawl of ten miles an hour they headed away from the base. Pak directed the driver to their one last stop before heading for the mountains lining the coast. The sled bobbed along in its wake, with cargo securely tied down.

P
ENTAGON,
A
LEXANDRIA,
V
IRGINIA

General Hodges didn't like the role reversal. The hastily assembled officers and senior administration officials were bombarding him with questions, and Hodges, unfortunately, didn't have many answers. Being the bearer of bad news had a historically poor rating.

The ranking officer in the room, the army chief of staff, General Morris, listened to the confused questioning for five minutes before he cut to the heart of the matter. "Gentlemen, we have to accept the fact that SNN knows about these two bombs, and there is nothing we can presently do to make that knowledge disappear. Given that, there are two courses of action we have to pursue.

"Our primary concern must be to secure the bombs. I say that is primary because of the potential physical threat they represent. Our secondary concern is to find out where these bombs came from and how they ended up at this base. Attached to that second concern is to find out why and how this Eternity Base was built."

Morris looked around the room to make sure everyone, particularly the president's national security adviser, was following him. With the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Middle East, this problem was his problem. "In line with the first, I am going to have certain military forces alerted and deployed to the Antarctic to secure the weapons and remove them."

"Won't that violate the Antarctic accord?" an air force general asked.

Morris bit off a sarcastic reply. "The accord has already been violated. It is now time for damage control, and we have to get those bombs out of there.

'To help solve the second problem, the various intelligence organizations have all been notified and are investigating this situation." He swung his gaze to General Hodges. "I want your source at SNN to find out everything they have on this situation. I also want everything you've received from the two personnel you've already detained in connection with this incident."

Morris fixed his gaze on a full colonel at the end of the table. "What do we have that can get there ASAP to secure those weapons?"

The colonel looked at the large map at the end of the room. "To be honest, not much, sir. I think the closest ground forces would come from either Panama or Hawaii. Elements of the Third Fleet are operating off Australia. The big problem is that we have no way to deploy forces by air without an inflight refuel. That's the most isolated place in the world—a minimum flight of two thousand miles from the nearest land."

"I don't want problems. I want results."

"Yes, sir."

V
ICINITY
E
TERNITY
B
ASE,
A
NTARCTICA

Kim laid the satchel charge in the middle aisle of the Our Earth plane. They'd just located it, parked four hundred meters away from the base, and Major Pak had directed Kim to destroy it. He estimated that thirty pounds of explosive would more than do the job. Kim pulled the fuse igniter and hopped out the door. He ran back to the SUSV and clambered into the cab, next to Pak. The driver immediately threw the vehicle into gear and they headed away.

Three minutes later, the dull crack of the explosion sounded through the blowing snow; the flash was lost in the white fog. Thirty miles directly ahead lay the coast.

Chapter Twenty-Three

E
TERNITY
B
ASE,
A
NTARCTICA

"
I wonder why they haven't cut off the power?" Swenson asked.

"Maybe they don't care if we're hiding in here," Conner suggested.

"Maybe they've already left," Devlin added. "Surely they wouldn't want to hang around any longer than they had to."

The five of them were sitting in a semicircle, facing the hatch. There had been no noise for quite a while. Sammy had to admit that she was surprised the power was still on and that the Koreans hadn't tried to finish them off. The more she thought about this, the more it didn't make sense. She was still missing too many pieces in the puzzle, and the puzzle kept getting more complicated.

Sammy nudged Riley. "What do you think about all this?"

Riley considered his reply for a few seconds. They were all deferring to him now out of default. He was the one who came up with a plan, and that was why they were alive now. "This whole thing doesn't make sense. Skipping the issue of why the Koreans—be they from the South or North—would want two nuclear bombs, we're left with the question of how they think they can get away with this.

"Even if they had wiped us all out and tried to make it look like an accident—say a fire destroying the base and all the bodies—they've got to know that Parker's been told about the bombs. The United States would then send a team down here to search, and when they didn't find the bombs, the heat would be on."

"Maybe they were hoping there would be enough time for them to get away before anyone discovered that the bombs were missing," Conner offered.

'True," Riley agreed. "But then they should have killed all of us." He shook his head, which was beginning to throb with a splitting headache. "They've got a long trip back to Korea with those things, and what are they going to do with them once they get there?"

"Whatever happens," Devlin said, "the U.S. government is going to look pretty stupid. How could they have put two bombs down here and then just forgotten about them?"

Riley had been thinking about that. "There're a lot of ways that could have happened. You all probably don't realize the sheer numbers of atomic weapons the United States has. If I remember correctly, there were more than three thousand of these MK/B 61s built. And that's just one of several types of weapons in the inventory. There're easily over ten thousand U.S.-made nuclear weapons in various places all over the world. Add in the former Soviet Union's, and it's a wonder one hasn't turned up in the wrong hands before this."

"Well, let's pray these two never get used," Conner said. "That's one story I never want to cover."

"Amen to that," Swenson added.

Devlin suddenly stood up. "I can't sit here any longer and just allow this to happen."

"What are you going to do?" Conner asked.

"Riley's probably right—the access tunnel is most likely booby-trapped," Devlin said. He pointed to the ceiling. "I say we go up to the surface and come back down the main shaft. They won't expect us to be coming that way—that's if they're still here. Or we go for the plane."

Swenson, Sammy, and Conner all turned to Riley, looking for his opinion. "Well," he said, "we're going to have to get out of here sooner or later, but I think it's safer to wait for later and let someone come to us. If we get out and the weather still isn't good enough to take off, then we're stuck out on the surface if the Koreans are still in the main base. Plus, the Koreans have probably destroyed the plane. It's the logical thing for them to do."

"Someone won't come here for several days at least," Devlin countered.

"I still think we ought to wait," Riley quietly replied. "You don't have a plan beyond getting to the surface."

"Let's at least see if the shaft is blocked," Conner said.

Riley couldn't find any way to refuse that request. "All right." He grabbed one of the chairs and slid it underneath the trapdoor in the ceiling. The door was held in place by two latches. The first one came free easily enough, but the second was more stubborn, resisting Riley's efforts. After a few minutes Swenson took his place and gave it a try. On the third attempt the latch slid free and the door swung down, sending Swenson sprawling on the floor.

"You all right?" Riley asked.

"Aye, mate."

Riley stepped up on the chair and shined his flashlight into the shaft. It was clear for five feet, then another hatch blocked the way. "They sure put a lot of doors in this place," he remarked.

Devlin tried to make himself useful, if only with knowledge. "That's to keep in the radiation once they powered up the plant. It's the same reason this place is offset a quarter mile from the main base and the tunnel has those turns in it. They shielded the reactor not only with these walls but also with all the ice between here and the main base. They probably planned on using this room only for occasional maintenance checks."

Riley grabbed the inside lip of the first door with his gloved fingers and lifted himself up. There were rungs in the wall, and he could stand on the six inches of frame that rimmed the first door. The second door was similar to the first, and Riley went to work on the latches.

Both moved relatively easily. He knelt down to let the door swing open over his head. Shining the light up, Riley wasn't surprised to see the shaft blocked by ice, about ten feet above his head. He carefully dropped back down into the reactor room.

"It's filled with ice. I'm not sure how much of the shaft is blocked." He looked at Devlin. "How far below the surface do you think we are?"

Devlin shrugged. "Hard to say. If we're on line with the main compound, then I'd say about thirty feet under. But the access tunnel slopes down a bit, which makes sense since they would want to have more ice on top to help shield it. I'd say we might be as deep as fifty to sixty feet below the surface."

Riley didn't fancy the idea of digging through thirty feet of ice, or more if the entire shaft was blocked. On the other hand, the plug might be only a few feet thick. "I'll take the first shift digging." He looked around. "I'll knock the ice down, and you all pile it up in that corner."