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Pak felt a wave of relief. “This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over.”

“Roger.” There was a brief break of squelch, as if the other station had gone off the air. Then the voice came back. “Do you have the package? Over.”

“Yes. Over.”

“Roger. We will wait for you. Out.”

AIRSPACE, ROSS SEA

“What language does this sound like?” the SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) operator aboard the E-2 Hawkeye asked the other four men on board. He played back the message he had just intercepted.

No one could identify it, although the pilot suggested it was Oriental. “Where’d you pick it up?”

“Low-power, high-frequency radio coming from the southeast.”

“Airborne platform?” the pilot asked.

“Negative. I don’t think so — the signal was fixed,” the SIGINT operator replied.

“I’ve got zip on the scope,” the radar operator told him. “We’re the only thing in the air other than the blip down near McMurdo.”

“Relay it back to the ship. Maybe they can figure it out,” the pilot ordered.

“Roger.”

MCMURDO STATION, ROSS ICE SHELF, ANTARCTICA

The Osprey slowed as its engines switched from horizontal to vertical. Major Bellamy watched in amazement as the aircraft slowly settled down in a whirlwind of snow. He’d heard of the Osprey but had never seen it in operation. In fact, he could have sworn that the program had been canceled. Simply watching the aircraft land made him question the wisdom of such a decision.

“Let’s go,” he yelled. His men followed him, hauling their two as- yet-unopened bundles. They crowded into the cargo bay, while the crew chief ran out to coordinate the refueling. Hoses were run from the fuel blisters, and JP-4 fuel was pumped as Bellamy’s men settled in. Bellamy went forward into the cockpit.

The pilot looked over his shoulder as Bellamy poked his head in. “Captain Jones.” He nodded at the copilot. “Lieutenant Langron. As soon as we’re topped off, we’ll be lifting.”

“Major Bellamy. Have you heard anything about the target site?”

Jones shook his head. “Nothing. We’ve got a Hawkeye in the air, and it should be in radar range of the site soon. I’m not sure if that will give us anything, but at least we’ll know if we’re the only ones in the sky.”

Bellamy frowned. He’d expected something more.

“We’re full,” the pilot announced.

Bellamy made his way to the rear. His men had opened the bundles and were passing out weapons, each man receiving a type suited to his specialty and talents: silenced MP-5SD submachine guns, PM sniper rifles, SPAS 12 shotguns, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW), LAW 80 rocket launchers, and sidearms. If there was anybody left alive at the target site and they were antagonistic, Bellamy’s men were ready.

AIRSPACE, ROSS SEA

The radar operator stared at his screen. “Shit, there’s still nothing out here,” he muttered to the man on his left. He’d never seen such a blank screen: not a single aircraft in a six-hundred-mile radius, the Osprey having disappeared as it landed at McMurdo.

He flipped a switch, and the radar went from air to surface. This was a different story. He tried making sense out of the jumbled mess on his screen. The surface bounce back was very cluttered, even where the sea should be. He was used to a flat reflection where ships stood out in stark relief to the ocean. Here ice formations broke up that image, creating a confusing disarray.

The naval officer began sorting out the screen, trying to see if there was anything identifiable. He fiddled with his controls, adjusting and tuning, like a kid playing a computer game.

“Hey, I’ve got something here,” he told the SIGINT operator. Keying his mike, he relayed his report back to the Kitty Hawk. “Big Boot, this is Eye One. We have a surface target, bearing zero nine three degrees true. Distance, two hundred seventy-three miles. Speed zero. Over.”

“This is Big Boot. We copy. Out.”

Chapter 29

RUPPERT COAST, ANTARCTICA

Pak had been tempted to pile his survivors on board the sled and ride down the glacier, but wisdom had prevailed and they lashed themselves to the rear of the sled as a human brake, keeping the bomb from getting away from them only with great difficulty.

They’d gotten off of the glacier less than ten minutes ago, and now they were on top of the ocean, making their way across the ice pack. In most places the ice was so thick they couldn’t tell the difference between it and the polar cap, but in other places the ice thinned out and, with the snow blown off by the wind, the ocean could be seen below. These areas were dangerous, and Pak had his men skirt around them. He estimated another four to six hours until they arrived at the Am Nok Gang, which was now hidden by the surface ice.

PENTAGON, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

General Morris listened to the intercepted message as he tried to shake the cobwebs of sleep out of his brain. “That language sounds familiar,” he remarked.

“It’s Han Gul — Korean,” Hodges informed him.

Morris felt a chill hand caress his spine. “Where did the Hawkeye say this originated?”

Hodges tapped the map. “Here, along the coast due north of Eternity Base. It was someone on the shore communicating with a ship the Hawkeye has located in the icepack right here, eight miles off the coast.”

“Do you have a translation of the message?” Morris asked.

“Yes, sir.” Hodges pressed a button on a tape player and an unemotional voice spoke in English:

Station One: Tiger, this is Wolf. Over.

Station One: Tiger, this is Wolf. Over.

Station Two: Wolf, this is Tiger. Over.

Station One: This is Wolf. We are within sight. Over.

Station Two: Roger. Do you have the package? Over.

Station One: Yes. Over.

Station Two: Roger. We will wait for you. Out.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Morris muttered to himself. He spoke up. “Do you have an ID on the ship?”

“No, sir. The E-2 is more than two hundred miles away and at its fuel limit range. They just have a radar image. They’re launching another E-2 right now to replace it, and that plane will be able to get in a bit closer.”

Morris turned to the duty officer. “Get the SECDEF here ASAP, and also General Kolstov.”

He looked at the situation map. The Kitty Hawk was still 1,100 miles from Eternity Base, more than a thousand from the Korean ship. “What’s the range on your attack aircraft from the carrier?” he asked the naval duty officer. “More specifically, do you have anything you can put on station over that Korean ship?”

The naval officer didn’t even have to consult his notes. “Not yet, sir.”

“When?”

“We’ll be able to launch some Tomcats in about three hours. They won’t have much time on station — less than twenty minutes — and they’ll have to carry a minimum armament load.”

Morris stared at the situation map. The pieces were falling into place, even though he wasn’t sure what they all meant. The North Koreans had one bomb and were making for the ship. Once they made

it on board, it was going to be a very ticklish situation. But it definitely fit in with the alerts they were hearing from the peninsula. Morris wondered what the North Koreans were going to do with one nuclear weapon. There was a variety of answers, none of them good.

If Hodges’s source at SNN hadn’t alerted them, the whole thing might have been overlooked — even the explosion, since no one would have initially thought of a nuclear weapon. The reaction here definitely would have been much slower. Damn, the sons of bitches almost got away with it, he thought. They still might, he reminded himself.