Eternity Base (39 page)

"Peter? Peter?" Woodson muttered.

"Peter," the short man intoned. They'd been at this one question for two hours now.

The tall man could barely hear the next words. "The keeper of the gate."

The short man glanced over at his partner and turned down the lights to half power. "The keeper of the gate?"

"The keeper. Yes. The keeper."

"What gate?"

"To the base." Something must have clicked in Woodson's brain, for the information began spilling out. "Peter made up the list of who would come in. There were fourteen. He picked them all."

Woodson hesitated a few seconds, then continued. "It was his ace in the hole. The base. The last refuge."

"Why did he put the bombs—" The short man halted as the tall man made a chopping motion with his hand. He mouthed, "Stay with Peter."

"Who is Peter?"

"The gatekeeper ... the builder. The man with the money."

"A name."

"Peter."

"His real name."

Woodson blinked and his face settled into normalcy for a brief moment. "Bradford P. Kensington." Woodson gave a dreamy smile. "He uses his middle name for people like me."

The two interrogators exchanged glances. The tall man stood and headed for the door; this had just gone to the highest echelons, and he wanted nothing further to do with it.

R
UPPERT
C
OAST
A
NTARCTICA

"Ready?"

Sammy looked up at Riley and weakly nodded. Conner had a death grip on Sammy and didn't say a word. The two women were wrapped in a nylon poncho, lying on their backs inside a sleeping bag, heads cushioned with their backpacks. Riley's M16 was on Sammy's chest, her hands wrapped around it.

Riley began walking, the rope tightening around Sammy's and Conner's waists, pulling them along on the ice. He accelerated to a jog, the slope helping increase their speed. Satisfied, he flopped down on his stomach, his Gore-tex parka and pants sliding on the ice.

Linked together, the three tobogganed down the glacier, Riley trying to control speed and direction with the point of his entrenching tool. As they rattled over bumps in the ice, Sammy thought to herself that they'd all be very black and blue, if they survived.

They were three-quarters of the way down to the coast, Sammy too numb to feel anything anymore, when Riley broke through the ice into a crevasse. His yell gave Sammy less than a second to react. As her feet slammed against the far side of the break, she did the only thing she could do, raising the M16 up across her body and desperately jamming the muzzle of the weapon into the ice. She and Conner started sliding down. The poncho and sleeping bag fell off and disappeared into the depths. Sammy came to an abrupt halt, bracing herself against the rifle, and then felt a tremendous jar as Conner reached the end of the rope and dangled below.

Suddenly there was no more weight on the rope. Sammy held still, not believing she was alive. Her feet and back were pressed up against the walls, and the rifle, dug into the ice, kept her in a precarious balance across the mouth of the crevasse. Carefully, she looked down.

The crevasse widened and descended into a blue darkness as far as she could see. No sign of Riley. Conner was standing there, her feet on a narrow ledge of ice, looking up, eyes wide with fear. Sammy followed the rope with her gaze until it disappeared under an overhang of ice.

"Riley!" she cried out.

"Yeah. Are you all right?" The voice echoed off the walls.

"I can't move!" she replied.

"Hold still! I'm on a small ledge down here. Let me try to climb up."

Sammy wasn't about to go anywhere. She could hear Riley working with his entrenching tool below her. The minutes passed and she felt her feet shift slightly on the ice, her heart going to her throat. How far would she fall if she slipped? she wondered. Would the fall kill her, or would she lie there broken but alive, waiting in an icy grave for the cold to take its final toll, preserved like the body at the base?

"Hang tough," Riley called up. She could hear his labored breathing. Finally, out of the corner of her eye, she could see him. He had reached up and was digging out a hold in the ice with the shovel so he could haul himself up. It was a slow process. Sammy wasn't sure how long she could hold on, her numbed hands wrapped around the rifle, all feeling in her feet already gone. She assumed her feet were still at the end of her legs.

Riley had passed Conner and was almost at Sammy's level. She carefully turned her head to look at him. He gave her a very forced smile. "Some ride, eh?"

He was now wedged as she was—his back and feet against the ice. She watched as he squirmed his way up to the lip. He disappeared over the side, then his head reappeared. "Okay, I'm anchored up here. Sammy, you come on up first."

Sammy shook her head. "I can't feel my feet."

Riley puffed out a deep breath. "All right. I'll pull you up. When I yell, you pull your feet out. OK?"

"Can you do it?"

"I'll do it." He was gone. Sammy anxiously awaited. "Ready?"

Sammy briefly closed her eyes. "Yes."

"Let go."

Sammy tucked her knees in and fell for an interminable split second. Then the rope tightened down on her waist, causing her to exhale sharply. But the rope stopped her fall. She scrabbled at the ice with her dead hands and feet, trying to help Riley as much as she could. Inch by inch, she went up until she could slap an arm down on the surface. The pressure on the rope was maintained, and she continued up until she could get her waist over and roll onto the surface.

She lay there, savoring the sight of the open sky. Riley crawled up next to her and collapsed, throwing an arm over her and pulling her in tight. "You all right?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Let's get your sister up here." Together the two leaned into the rope and hauled Conner to the surface. When she flopped down on the ice and stared up at the sky, Riley leaned over her.

"Do you want to go on?"

Conner shook herself, and with great effort she managed to stand.

"Yes."

ISA
H
EADQUARTERS,
S
OUTHWEST OF
W
ASHINGTON,
D.C.

"What does the president want done?" the bald man at the end of the table asked General Hodges.

"The president wants the matter kept quiet." Hodges nervously fingered his eel skin briefcase.

A snort of laughter. 'That's damn near impossible. What's his second choice?"

"He needs to satisfy the Russians that this wasn't a government-sponsored action in Antarctica that malfunctioned and that we're trying to cover ourselves by this story. We need to pick up Kensington."

"Kensington is the second richest man in America," the bald man replied. "He's supported every Republican president for the past thirty years." He picked up a file. "Since we uncovered the name, we've done some checking. The facts fit. Kensington helped us recover the codes from that Soviet sub off Japan back in '68 using his oil exploratory deep-sea minisub. Apparently he used the same minisub to recover the two nuclear bombs on that A-7.

"Kensington has had extensive contact with many government agencies—"

'To include this one!" Hodges threw in.

The bald man acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. "Yes, including this one. And the CIA. And the FBI. I understand he also paid people to do covert work for the Republican Party. That would make interesting news.

"Kensington had the government contacts, the subsidiary companies, and the money to get Eternity Base built as his own personal bomb shelter. We've discovered that his nuclear power plant in Utah had a contingency plan to load rods onto a plane with a three-hour notice. The specifications fit the power plant at Eternity Base.

"Kensington also is the man behind a very large number of defense manufacturing companies in this country. Even with all the cutbacks, he still has his finger in a lot of pies.

"I wonder what names would be on the list of people that Kensington planned to bring down to Eternity Base in case of nuclear war. I'm sure we would not want that to become public record.

"There are other things we've discovered, but we won't go into them right now." The bald man closed the file with a snap. "Again. What does the president want done?"

"Kensington has gone from an asset to a liability." Hodges stood. "I'll inform the president that it will be taken care of."

The bald man did not seem happy with the decision, but he nodded. "All right."

Chapter Thirty

R
UPPERT
C
OAST,
A
NTARCTICA, 1
D
ECEMBER 1996

"Come on!" Pak exhorted his three exhausted partners. "There's the ship."

The four leaned into the rope, and the sled creaked along the ice, making way toward the ship now slightly less than two miles away.

*****

"How close ... do you ... have to ... get?" Sammy asked, trying to catch her breath as they crossed a high point where two sheets of ice had buckled together.

"A quarter mile at maximum. I'd like to get closer than that," Riley replied. They were at least three-quarters of a mile behind the Koreans. Riley's best estimate was that it was going to be close, very close.

He hadn't mentioned the additional problem of weapons on board the ship. If it carried weapons, Riley had to assume that once he fired on the party pulling the sled, the ship would return fire. He didn't fancy the idea of being caught out on this ice in a running gun battle—the forseeable conclusion wasn't favorable for him and the two sisters.

As they went along, Riley noticed black spots on the ice about three hundred yards to the left. He dropped down, out of sight, pulling Sammy and Conner with him. An ambush? He raised his head and peered at the figures, finally realizing what he was looking at. Seals were lying near a water hole they'd broken in the ice. It was the first sign of animal life they'd seen.

*****

'There they are!" the political officer exclaimed, pointing off the starboard bow.

The captain trained his telescope in that direction. "There are four men, and they are pulling a sled with something on it."

"I want you to gather a party of men to go out there and help them."

The captain wasn't thrilled with that idea. His men were civilians, and he didn't want to risk them on the ice. But he turned to his executive officer and reluctantly relayed the order.

Seven hundred yards off the port side, the ice suddenly erupted, three long black shafts pushing through. The shafts abruptly widened and a massive black conning tower appeared, tossing aside the ice like child's blocks. The ice behind the tower split to reveal a long black deck sloping 150 feet behind the tower. The exposed portion of the vessel was almost as long as the Am Nok Gang.

"What is that?" the political officer gasped.

"A submarine," the captain replied, stunned at the sight.

"I know that, you fool," the officer snapped. "Whose submarine? American?"

"I don't know."

"What should we do?"

The captain turned to look at the officer. "There is nothing we can do." He nodded at the black hull. "We wait to see what they do."

Pak and his men halted, staring past the ship at the submarine. He knew in his heart that it was all over. Even if they made it to the ship, the Americans would never let them sail away. He wondered how the plan had failed.

"Sir?" Kim turned to him for instructions.

Pak looked at his executive officer. "We go to the ship. Quickly."

The four men strained against the rope.

*****

Riley started sprinting as soon as the submarine broke surface, leaving Sammy and Conner behind, yelling at them to stay put. He passed four seals around a small circle of open water. The distance was now down to five hundred yards. Another two hundred and he could fire.

*****

The present Hawkeye on station was the third one rotated in; the earlier ones had exhausted their fuel supplies and returned to the Kitty Hawk. The radar operator had picked up the sub as soon as the mast breached the ice. Now he was busy guiding in the Osprey and the two F-14 Tomcats from the Kitty Hawk, matching the glowing green dots representing the planes with those of the ship and submarine.

"Eagle One, this Eye One. Assume heading eight seven degrees, range one hundred fifty kilometers and closing. You've got a sub on the surface, about seven hundred meters to the east of the ship. Over."