“I’ll give it to you the way I got it,” I said. “The mission has two layers. Our cover story is a surprise inspection to evaluate the status of a research base designated ‘Gateway.’ This is a repurposed facility. The original Gateway was an old radar station from the early Cold War era. Satellites made it mostly obsolete so it was closed up. Operative word is ‘was.’ The base was built at the foot of Vinson Massif, the tallest mountain in Antarctica. The Russians and Chinese both have research stations in the same region.”
“What’s the hurry for us to get down there?” asked Top. “The neighbors getting cranky?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Our intelligence says that in the last twenty-eight hours the Russian and Chinese bases have gone dark. No radio, no communication of any kind. Nineteen hours ago our facility also went dark. We’re about six hours ahead of the Russian and Chinese investigative teams. Bolton got wind of this from his network but he’s in the middle of something else so he called Mr. Church.”
Top grunted. “Do we think it has been taken?”
“Unknown, but on the list of possibilities,” I said. “Gateway isn’t a radar outpost anymore and hasn’t been for over a decade. But that’s where things get muddy. Bug had trouble finding out who actually opened it and what they’re doing. We know it’s some kind of black budget thing, but we only know that because of how well the details have been hidden. Very little of it is in any of the databases Bug and his geek squad have infiltrated. And like all of that kind of stuff there are lots of things named only by obscure acronyms, and projects identified by number-letter codes instead of names. That makes it tough to find, because something labeled A631/45H doesn’t exactly ring alarm bells. Bug needs to have something to go on.”
Top and Bunny nodded. This was familiar — and deeply frustrating — territory for us. Our own government is so large and so compartmentalized, and there’s so much bickering, infighting, and adherence to personal and political agendas, that one hand truly does not know what the other is doing. And that gets even murkier when you factor in illegal operations, of which there are many.
“Do we know anything about what they’re doing down there?” asked Bunny.
I shrugged. “Not much, and what we do know is because Bolton brought us into the loop. Not sure how he found out.”
“He’s Harcourt Bolton,” said Bunny.
“Fair enough. Anyway, we now know the Gateway base is active and apparently serving as a research and development shop. Mr. Church had Bug do a MindReader search on Gateway and so far he’s only come up with a few things, but not as much as we’d like.”
“How’s it possible we can’t find out everything?” asked Bunny. “MindReader can go anywhere.”
“In theory,” I said, “but a lot of people in Washington know that we have MindReader and some of them are pretty stingy with their stuff. Can’t blame them. It’s not like we are actually allowed to poke our noses everywhere.”
“Yeah,” said Top dryly, “been a whole bunch of stuff on the news the last few years about government overreach. Maybe you read something?”
I ignored him. “The point is that more and more departments are using intranets instead of the public or military networks. Closed systems that can’t be accessed from outside. MindReader can’t go and hardwire a tap, you know.”
Top punched Bunny on the arm. “That don’t mean your browser history is safe yet, Farm Boy, so stop looking at all those naked pictures. Gonna grow hair on your palms.”
“Blow me,” said Bunny.
“There are other ways to hide from MindReader,” I told them. “Paper files instead of computer records. That sort of thing.”
“Still got to be paid for,” said Top. “Operating a research base way down here? Even if it’s coded, something like this has to be expensive. Got to be mentioned in the budget somewhere.”
I nodded. “That’s what Bug’s looking at now, but it’s time-consuming.”
“If they ain’t a radar station, then what are they doing down there?” asked Top.
“That’s the problem,” I told them, “we don’t know for sure. The intel is thin. Bolton said his sources believe they’re working on some radical technology for renewable energy. Nonnuclear but with a lot of potential. Far as he could tell it was sold to the black budget people as the thing that will take us away from any dependence on foreign oil. Don’t ask me what the science is because I don’t know and neither does Bolton.”
“If this is energy research,” said Top, “and it’s non-nuclear, then why go all the way the hell down to the rectum of the world to develop it?”
“That’s what I asked,” I said. “Almost the same words. The short answer is we don’t know. Bolton and Bug both found some oblique references to — and I quote—‘side effects resulting in pervasive power outages of limited duration.’”
“EMP?” suggested Bunny.
“Maybe. Dr. Hu said that there have been a number of new energy technologies that have had side effects, and EMPs are on that list. What confuses us all is the ‘limited duration’ part. EMPs fry electronics. There’s nothing limited about that effect. You have to replace the damaged parts.” I sighed. “So you see our problem — we have bits of intel and the pieces don’t fit together. We’re not even sure if any of that intel is reliable or even relevant, and we can’t get anyone up here to admit to knowing anything about it, and no one down at Gateway will pick up the damn phone. Bug found a code name in the same partial data file that referenced the power outage side effect. Kill Switch.”
“Cute name,” said Bunny, not meaning it.
“If the power outage thing is a reproducible effect, then they may have isolated it in order to develop it into a new classification of directed-energy weapon. Maybe some sort of portable EMP cannon.”
Bunny whistled.
Top frowned. “EMPs,” he muttered in pretty much the way you’d say genital warts. “Been hearing nothing but trash talk about portable EMPs for ten years now.”
“I know,” I said, “but that’s the next new technology for the good guys and bad guys. We want them to use as the next generation of missile shields, and to protect against small drones launched by hostiles. The bad guys want to use them against us because everything we put in the field or in the air has a microchip, motor, or battery.”
“That sucks,” said Bunny. “Couple guys sitting in a cave with a portable EMP weapon and suddenly our gunships are dropping like dead birds.”
“Won’t just be caves, Farm Boy,” said Top. “Portable is portable. Put those same assholes in a UPS truck in Manhattan and it’s lights out for the whole damn city.”
“Well, for some of it,” countered Bunny. “One cannon’s not going to flip the switches on a whole city.”
Top spread his hands in a “we’ll see” gesture. To me he said, “Washington send us down here to see if the Russians or Chinese been stealing our toys?”
“Unknown,” I said, “but that’s an obvious concern.”
Top made a show of looking up and down the otherwise empty hull of the transport. Except for our gear and a modified snowcat we were all alone. “Small team to start a war with a couple of superpowers.”