Archangel was the closest Russian city, over five hundred miles away. The ocean surrounding the island was ice covered year round. The weather was extremely unpredictable, with fierce weeklong storms common. A large portion of the island, south of this location, had been used by the Soviet government for years as a nuclear test site. This precluded anyone coming north by land, even if they could make it across the brutal terrain that had no roads. There were only two ways to this spot: by air or by icebreaker.
The man was on a steep mountainside, overlooking a cluster of buildings huddled around a landing strip between the base of the mountain and a glacier to the east. The ice-covered ocean stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the small level cove of land, caught between mountain, sea, and glacier.
He heard the other coming long before he saw him. The other was making his way through the thick forest, moving slowly in the thick snow. The first one didn’t move, not even when the other stopped in front of him, breathing heavily and leaning on ski poles.
“I am Gergor,” he said simply.
The other caught his breath and nodded. “Coridan,” he introduced himself.
“Your trip went well?”
“It was difficult,” Coridan allowed.
Gergor nodded. “That is why this”—he gestured at the complex—“is here. Not like the Americans putting their Area 51 in the middle of their country where civilians could drive up to the boundary.”
“No one will drive here,” Coridan acknowledged.
Gergor pointed to his right. “Rest there for a minute.”
Coridan didn’t do that right away. Instead he pulled a set of binoculars up to his eyes, letting the sunglasses he wore fall to the end of their cord. He scanned the compound. “How many people work there?”
“Forty.”
“Security?”
“Half of them. The rest are scientists. This is the core of Section Four.” “It is smaller than I thought,” Coridan noted.
“Most of it is underground. Those buildings are just quarters for the security force and supply sheds. That gray concrete building holds the elevator access to the main facility.”
Coridan lowered the binoculars, revealing eyes that were the same as Gergor’s — elongated dark red pupils set against a lighter red eye. His hair was cut short and pure white. His skin, the little that was exposed, was pale.
“We are only two,” Coridan noted. He threw his backpack down.
“I have had many years to prepare,” Gergor said. “Do not worry. We are enough.”
The two sat still for several minutes as Coridan caught his breath.
“It is time.” Gergor pushed aside the white sheet and stood, snow falling off of him. He began walking down the hill. Coridan scrambled to gather his gear together.
Gergor was halfway to the Section IV compound by the time Coridan caught up to him.
“What are you going to do?” Coridan asked. “Knock on the front door?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Gergor said. He pulled a slim black controller from inside his heavy coat. “Let us knock.” He pressed the number one on the numeric pad.
Coridan staggered as the surface buildings erupted in violent explosions. When the smoke cleared, only the gray building that housed the elevator to the complex was still standing, the other buildings leveled.
“What did you do?” Coridan demanded.
“I told you I have had many years to prepare,” Gergor said. He continued walking. “I believe they heard our knock. But I don’t think they will open the door. So we must open it.”
He pressed the second button on the controller. The steel door on the front of the gray building blew open with a flash. Gergor led Coridan inside.
Two large stainless-steel doors stood at the end of a corridor. A security camera was above them, the light on it a steady red.
“The doors are six inches thick,” Gergor noted as they walked up to them. “The shaft is eight hundred meters deep. There are emergency explosives planted along the shaft designed to go off and bury the entire complex.”
Gergor smiled, revealing very smooth, even, white teeth. “Of course, I disabled the destruct long ago. I imagine someone down there is pressing a red button quite futilely, yet at the same time secretly relieved that it doesn’t work.”
“There will still be guards below,” Coridan said.
“They will be dead guards,” Gergor said. He walked to a vent shaft and ripped it open. He pulled a glass ball from inside his bulky clothes. A green, murky liquid filled it, glowing as if it were lit from inside. He dropped the ball into the shaft.
“It will take less than a minute,” Gergor said.
Almost immediately screams echoed up the air shaft, horrible undulating cries of pain. As Gergor had promised, though, within a minute there was only silence. “How do we get down?” Coridan asked.
“We ride,” Gergor said, hitting another button on the remote.
The doors slid open. “Will it be safe?”
Gergor stepped into the elevator and Coridan followed.
“It is safe now,” Gergor said as he pressed the down button and they descended.
The elevator came to a halt, but Coridan did not open the doors. He waited, checking his watch, until finally he was satisfied the gas had dissipated. Then he opened the doors.
“There’s Antarctica.”
Turcotte looked over the pilot’s shoulder, out the front windshield. Dark peaks, streaked with snow and ice, poked through the low-lying clouds, overlooking the ice-covered ocean.
“We’ll parallel the shore, then punch in when we’re closest to Scorpion Station,” the pilot added.
UNAOC had confirmed the location of the secret base STAAR had been headquartered in with a flyby. The flyby had also noted that the foo fighter had blasted the surface over the base badly. It had been impossible to determine from that, though, whether Scorpion Base had also been destroyed. The American Navy had airlifted an engineering unit to the site that had confirmed that the entranceway to the base was destroyed. The unit had begun digging, trying to get down the mile and a half of ice to the base.
As always, Turcotte knew, it was going to require someone on the ground to find out what the situation was. And, as he was used to in his military career, he was the person who got that honor.
Turcotte checked the map as they continued south and more peaks appeared along the coast. To the right was the Admiralty Range facing to the north; then the shoreline turned and headed south into the Ross Sea.
A single massive mountain appeared straight ahead, above the clouds, set apart from the others to the right: Mount Erebus, which actually formed an island just off the coast of Antarctica — Ross Island. Turcotte knew that McMurdo Station was on the far side of Ross Island, the largest man-made base in the continent. But where they were heading was far beyond that base, deep inside the continent. Looking over his shoulder to the back of the Osprey, Turcotte could see the Special Forces team in the cargo bay. He had no idea what they would find inside the base, so it was best to be prepared. The Osprey was a tilt-wing aircraft, capable of landing like a helicopter. A second Osprey followed them, carrying a HUMMV and a squad of Air Force Engineers to supplement the group already there.
Turcotte watched the slopes of Erebus come closer and then they punched into a thick cloud layer and all view was blanketed. The nose of the plane tilted up as the pilots made doubly sure they had plenty of sky between them and the mountain.
“The engineers have a beacon on the spot,” the pilot said. He pointed at his control panel. “We’re about two hours out.” The pilot turned his wheel and the plane headed over the coast and toward the interior of Antarctica.
They crossed the shoreline mountain range, and as far as they could see in front of them was just a rippling white surface.