“Do you think they’ll steal our plane?” Devlin asked.
Swenson laughed. “Hell, they can steal it, but they sure aren’t going to take it anywhere. You can’t get off the ice in this weather.”
Riley agreed. “I doubt they’ll steal it. They could try to walk out. For all I know they came here on some sort of oversnow vehicle and are going to use that to leave. They’re hard soldiers, and they’re used to operating in cold weather. They’ve already taken several casualties, but I don’t think they expected any opposition. From here on out they’ll be ready for us if we make a move. So I say we sit tight-”
Conner was at a loss for words. She felt as though they ought to be doing something, but Riley’s cold logic made sense.
“So you say we just let them walk away with two nuclear weapons?” Devlin demanded.
Riley looked over at Conner and their eyes met. “Like our boss here said — we didn’t put those bombs down here, so they’re really not our problem, are they? In fact, since these men are most likely here because of a leak at SNN, and since Vickers was the one who killed Kerns and tried sabotaging this whole mission, I would say you two have the greatest sense of responsibility for this mess.”
Riley’s words were met with silence.
The MK/B 61 nuclear bomb weighs 772 pounds. Using the same small tractor that Sammy had used to clear the way to the armory, Pak’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 Sun cut through, they would take the large SUSV tractor and head out. The SUSV consisted of a large engine section on treads, which could seat three men up front, and a second section on tracks, which was pulled along and could fit ten men and all their supplies. Pak watched his soldiers’ efforts for a few minutes and then went back to the armory.
AS soon as Falcon turned on his computer and accessed the message log, he noted that a second message had been sent directly from Antarctica to Parker more than an hour ago. The reply from ISA headquarters urgently requesting more information spurred him to action.
He went down to the computer center in the basement. The graveyard shift workers were eyeing the clock, ready for relief. The supervisor’s office was dark, and Falcon used his master access card to electronically unlock the door. He sat down behind the desk and booted up the main computer. He knew this was the one terminal in the entire building that had open access to all information in the data banks, regardless of coding. It was necessary to allow the computer supervisor to do her job.
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.
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.
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.