“I promise.”
“Give me your fax number.”
Sammy copied the number.
“I really appreciate this, Sam. I’ll talk to you when I get back, OK?”
“All right.” Before Conner could hang up, though, Sammy continued. “Listen, Conner, I want you to be careful. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to hide the existence of this place. Even though it was twenty-five years ago, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a dead issue. The fact that my boss couldn’t find anything in the classified files worries me more than if he had found something. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. You take care and be safe.”
Sammy hung up the phone. She took the photographs and copied them, then returned the folder to the loading dock. She went to the ladies’ room, where she slid the pictures under her T-shirt and tucked it back in. At her desk she put on her leather jacket, then went over to Brad’s office to tell him she’d be out for a little while.
She made it past the guard without arousing any suspicion and hopped on her motorcycle. There was an office supply store less than three blocks away. Sammy roared over there and parked her bike between two cars out front. She hurried in and gave the copies to the lady behind the counter along with Conner’s fax number. It all took less than a minute. Then she tore the copies into little pieces and deposited them in a trash can on her way out.
Sammy opened the door with a feeling of relief that this whole episode was now out of her hands and into Conner’s. As she grabbed her helmet off the motorcycle seat, she noted a Chevy van blocking her in. Sammy put the helmet on and cranked the engine, waiting for the driver of the van to take the hint and move. After thirty seconds she beeped her horn. She couldn’t make out the truck’s occupants through the tinted windshield.
“Goddamnit,” Sammy muttered. She got off her bike, walked up to the passenger side, and rapped on the door. The cargo door slid open and a man leaped out. He wrapped her in a bear hug and rolled back into the rear of the van, the door sliding shut.
Sammy kicked backward, feeling her boot strike home, but the man holding her didn’t make a sound. Sammy struggled desperately, but her arms were locked to her sides with a grip of steel. She felt a prick in her wrist and looked down to see a needle sliding into the flesh. As she watched, the plunger was pushed.
The last thing her conscious mind processed was the van pulling out into traffic.
Chapter 6
The phone woke the old man out of a deep sleep. The young woman who was sharing the bed rose without a word and slipped toward the door, not even taking the time to put on a robe. As the door closed on her pert rear end, the man hit the speaker button.
“Peter here.”
“This is Lazarus. I’ve checked out the Pintella woman. She knows little other than that the base is in Antarctica. The exact location is secure. She found some old photos in a file from the engineer unit that built the place. I will secure the photos.”
“Good.”
“We have another problem, though.” The man’s voice paused and then continued. “Pintella told someone about what she found.”
“Who?”
“Her sister. Conner Young. She’s a reporter for SNN. Apparently SNN is planning to send a news team down to Antarctica to check out the story.”
Peter sat up in the bed, flexing the muscles in his right arm as his eyes focused on the phone. “I already know about the SNN contact. Is that the only person she told?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. I’ll handle SNN. You take care of your end there in St. Louis.”
“Yes, sir.”
Peter terminated the conversation. He sat for a long time, thinking of options. He knew better than to react immediately — there were possibilities to be explored. And, of course, he already had a plan in place at SNN to provide damage control. After forty minutes and several phone calls, the course of action was determined. He dialed Atlanta.
“I’m Conner Young. I will be the team chief for this trip.” Conner looked at the three men assembled around the conference table. “I’d like each of you to introduce yourself.”
An overweight man with thinning gray hair took the initiative. “I’m Les Lallo. Cameraman.”
Seated next to him, a young man with a sallow face under an unruly mop of blond hair bobbed his head nervously. “Tom Kerns. Sound.”
The last man’s voice rumbled. “Keith Vickers. Satellite communications and computer.” Vickers was a large man and looked as though he spent all his time off in the weight room. The muscles under the black skin of his arms rippled and flowed. His shaved head reflected the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
Conner reached forward and hit a button on the remote built into the tabletop. The men studied the map that appeared on the screen. “What are we going there for?” Lallo asked as he recognized the location.
“The purpose of our trip is to find a place called Eternity Base. It was constructed somewhere in Antarctica in 1971 by a U.S. Army engineer company.”
“What do you mean ‘somewhere in Antarctica’?” Lallo pointed at the screen. “That’s a pretty big place.”
“Right now, all we know is that this place is a little less than a two hour plane ride from McMurdo Station.” Conner wanted to keep the information about the faxed pictures to herself for the time being. Sammy’s warning had made some impression.
“What kind of place is this Eternity Base?” Kerns asked. “And why do we want to find it?”
“It’s a group of buildings constructed under the ice. We want to find it because the existence of the place has been secret.”
Lallo was interested in her first sentence. “If it was built under the ice, how are you going to find it?”
Conner fixed him with a stare. It was time to establish the chain of command. She’d found that men tended to usurp control unless firmly kept in their place. “You’re here to work the camera, right?”
Lallo shrugged. “Yes.”
“How we find Eternity Base is my problem and I’ll take care of it. The purpose of this meeting is to work out the logistics of getting from here to Antarctica.”
Lallo obviously felt put in his place, and he shut up. It was Kerns who asked the next question. “How do we even know it exists?”
“Because there were photos taken of it.”
The communications man, Vickers, stirred for the first time. “Do you have the photos? I’d like to take a look.”
Conner shook her head. “I don’t have them yet.”
Lallo and Kerns exchanged a look. The older man spoke very carefully. “Ms. Young, may I say something?”
She nodded.
“We’re going to be working together for ten days. Now, I know this is probably a very important story to you, since you’re new here. Tom and I… well, we want to help you out as much as possible. For this to work, you’ve got to tell us everything. That goes from the day-today stuff to the story. The better we understand how you are approaching the story, the better we can help you with the shots and the sound. We’re all a bit behind the power curve here because we got notified of this tasking less than an hour ago, so you’re going to have to bear with us a little bit.”
Vickers agreed, pointing at the screen. “Mister Lallo is right about the location. This is a very big area.”
Conner tapped the map. “We’re pretty certain that the base is to the south or east of McMurdo Station.” Her long, manicured finger swept across a large white area labeled Ross Ice Shelf and came to rest on the far side. “It’s probably somewhere here in the Transantarctic Mountains or in Marie Byrd Land. Maybe even in the vicinity of a base that was abandoned in 1972: Byrd Station, located right here.” Her finger was resting in the middle of what appeared to be a vast expanse of nothingness. She’d studied the map; based on what Devlin had told her and her own common sense, this was the best she could come up with.