Authors: Robert Doherty
* * *
The MK/B 61 nuclear bomb weighs 772 pounds. Using the same small tractor that Tai had used to clear out the armory, Min's men pulled the first bomb along the hallway to the east ice storage tunnel. There, they placed it on a large sled and secured it with ropes.
Corporal Sun had started the large bulldozer and was up on the steel grating ramp, cutting away at the ice with the blade, aiming for the surface. As soon as he cut through they would take the large SUSV tractor and head out. The SUSV consisted of a large engine section on treads that could seat three men up front, and a second section on tracks that was pulled along and could fit ten men and all their supplies. Min watched Sun's efforts for a few minutes and then went back to the armory.
South Pacific
"Captain James Cook was the first to sail around Antarctica, from 1773 to 1775, yet he never once spotted land, the ice pack keeping him well out of landfall."
Fatima sipped a cup of coffee as she listened to the captain. She and Araki were on the bridge of the freighter, the heaters going full-blast, fighting against the Antarctic wind that blasted against the glass that separated them from the world outside.
"The first party ever to land on Antarctic land and spend the winter did not succeed until well over a century later, in 1895. And in the slightly more than a century since, men in ships have been able to accomplish little more in these vicious seas."
"Your point?" Fatima asked.
The captain glanced at her, and then returned his focus to the sea ahead. He had a copy of the OPLAN in his hands and had just finished reading it. "These idiots in Pyongyang want us to pick people up off the coast of Antarctica." He laughed. "As if by a simple command such a thing could happen. Let's see what you have to say when we hit the ice pack in the morning. Whoever it was that wanted to get picked up will have to come to us—not the other way around."
"All right," Fatima said. "Once we make contact with them, I will inform them of this."
The captain twisted his head and peered into the distance as the lookout phoned in another iceberg off the port bow. "It's going to get worse," he lamented.
"It always does," Fatima agreed.
Antarctica
The way to the surface 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 Min 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.
Min was uncertain what words would be correct to say good-bye to his soldier, so he simply stood in front of his man and saluted. Yong looked up and returned the gesture with his nonwounded arm. Before he had second thoughts, Min turned and swiftly walked back to the east ice storage room. He climbed up the ramp and crunched across the ice to the cab of 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. Min directed the driver to their one last stop before heading for the mountains lining the coast. The sled bobbed along in their wake, its cargo securely tied down.
Geneva
Dyson's body was strapped to the chair in the middle of the Intelligence Center. His dead eyes stared straight ahead. The man who had been "working" on him packed up his equipment and left the center.
Then the High Counsel spoke to the Assessors. "I want a Course of Action Projection based on what we just learned about Majestic-12."
"With what parameters?" the Senior Assessor asked.
"I want to know what the possible outcomes will be if we exterminate Majestic-12."
Pine Barrens, New Jersey
The two men walked down the corridor, the squeak of their shoes echoing off the cinder-block walls. They went into a small room with a secure satellite link to Geneva. "I got everything out of Whitaker," the Tall Man said into the mike. "He put the bomb on the airplane carrying the engineers."
"Why?" the Senior Assessor asked.
"To keep the location secret and for $500,000. He also helped wiped out the convoy that accompanied the four MK-17 bombs down there."
"That was years later, so Lansale kept him on retainer. What about the submarines?"
"He didn't know about those."
"Terminate him."
Pentagon
As questions bombarded him, the head of the Intelligence Service Agency didn't like the role reversal. The hastily assembled officers and senior administration officials wanted answers, and he, unfortunately, didn't have many. Being the bearer of bad news had a historically poor rating.
The ranking officer in the room, Army Chief of Staff General Morris, listened to the confusion for five minutes before he cut to the heart of the matter. "Gentlemen, we have to accept the fact that there are bombs down there 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 Citadel was built."
Morris looked about the room to make sure everyone, particularly the President's National Security Advisor, 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 the situation." He swung his gaze to the ISA director. "I want your sources to find out everything they have on this. I also want everything you've received from the personnel you've already detained in connection with this incident." Morris fixed a full colonel at the end of the table with his gaze. "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 7th Fleet are operating off of Australia. The big problem is that we have no way to deploy forces by air there without an in-flight refuel. That's the most isolated place in the world—you have a minimum of a two-thousand-mile flight from the nearest land." "I don't want problems. I want results."
"Yes, sir."
Antarctica
Kim laid the satchel charge in the middle aisle of the Earth First plane. They'd just found it, parked four hundred meters away from the base, and Major Min had directed him 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 Min. The driver immediately threw it into gear, and they headed away.
Three minutes later the dull crack of the explosion sounded through the blowing snow, but the flash was lost in the white fog. Thirty miles directly ahead lay the coast.
* * *
"I wonder why they haven't cut off the power?" Brothers asked.
"Maybe they don't care if we're hiding in here," Vaughn suggested.
"Maybe they've already left;" Logan added. "Surely they wouldn't want to hang around any longer than they have to."
The five of them were sitting in a semicircle, facing the hatch. There had been no noise for quite a while. Tai had to admit to herself that she was surprised the power was still on and that the North Koreans hadn't tried to finish them off. The more she thought about it, the more it didn't make much sense.
She nudged Vaughn. "What do you think?"
He considered his reply for a few seconds. They were all deferring to him since he was the only one who'd had some sort of plan, which was why they were alive now. "This whole thing doesn't make sense. Skipping the issue of why the Koreans—be they 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 here 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 someone else knows about the bombs. The U.S. would then send a team down here to search for the bombs, and when they didn't find them, the heat would be on."
"Maybe they were hoping there would be enough of a time delay before that was discovered, that they could get away," Tai offered.
"True," Vaughn agreed. "But then they would have had to kill 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 then what are they going to do with them once they get there?"
"Whatever happens," Logan said, "the United States government is going to look pretty stupid. How could they have put nuclear weapons down here and then just forgotten about them?"
Vaughn had spent quite a bit of time thinking about that. "There's a lot of ways that could have happened. You all probably don't realize the shear number of atomic weapons the U.S. has. If I remember rightly, there were over three thousand of these MK/B 61s built. And that's just one of several types of weapon in the inventory. There's easily over ten thousand weapons in various places all over the world, and that's just the U.S.'s. Add in the former Soviet Union's and it's a wonder no one has had some stolen or turn up in the wrong hands before this."
"Well, let's pray that these two never get used," Tai said.
"Amen to that," Brothers added.
Logan abruptly stood up. "I can't sit here any longer and just allow this to happen."
"What are you going to do?" Vaughn asked.
"You're probably right," Logan said to Vaughn, "the access tunnel is most likely booby-trapped." 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 coming that way—that's if they're still here. Or we go for the plane."
Brothers, Tai, and Burke all turned to Vaughn, for his opinion. "Well, we're going to have to get out of here sooner or later," he said, "but I would prefer 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. Plus, I think the Koreans have probably destroyed the plane. I would if I was them."
"Someone won't come here looking for us for several days at least," Logan countered.
"I still think we ought to wait," Vaughn quietly replied. "You don't have a plan beyond getting to the surface."
"Let's at least see if the shaft is blocked," Tai offered.
Vaughn 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 his efforts for a few minutes. Brothers took his place and tried. After three attempts the latch slid free and the door swung down, sending Brothers sprawling on the floor.
"You all right?" Vaughn asked.
"Aye, mate."
Vaughn stepped up and shined his flashlight into the shaft. It was clear for five feet, then another hatch blocked the way. "They sure believed in putting a lot of doors in this place," he remarked.
Logan explained that. "That's to keep the radiation in once they powered the plant up. It's the same reason this place is set 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 in between here and the main base. They probably planned on using this room only for occasional maintenance checks."
Vaughn 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 extended all the way around the first door. The second door was similar to the first, and he went to work on the latches.
Both moved relatively easily, and he knelt down to let the door swing open over his head. Shining the light up, he 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 it is blocked." He looked at Logan. "How far below the surface do you think we are?"
Logan shrugged. "Hard to say. If we're on line with the main compound, then I'd say about thirty feet under. But I got the sense going through the access tunnel that it sloped down a little bit, which makes sense, as they would want to have enough ice on top to help shield it. I'd say we might be as deep as fifty or sixty feet below the surface."
Vaughn didn't fancy the idea of digging through thirty feet of ice if the entire shaft was blocked. On the other hand, the plug might only be 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."
He took the entrenching tool from his ruck and tucked it inside his parka. He also unsnapped a twelve-foot length of nylon rope attached to the outside of his ruck. He wrapped the rope about his waist and through his legs, making an expedient climbing harness, tied two loops in the ends and connected them with the snap link that had held the rope to his ruck. Then he clambered back up into the shaft and used the rungs to climb up.
Reaching the ice, Vaughn clicked the snap link on a rung and sat back in the harness. He reached inside his parka, pulled out the e-tool and unfolded it. Carefully pulling his hood over his head, he used the point of the shovel to break chunks of ice free, letting them fall down the shaft to the floor. He worked mostly by feel, as the reflected light from the room below barely lit the shaft.
It was the sort of mindless work that Vaughn enjoyed doing. It took his mind off the sight of Smithers lying in the corridor, bullets slamming into his body. He hadn't allowed himself to think about the fact that he had killed again today, and he knew now wasn't the time. There would be plenty of time for thinking after they got out of here.